Tag Archives: weight watchers

A New Fruit, A New Chocolate

11 Feb

I got given a new-to-me fruit today, I thiiiink it’s a papaya?

What are youuuuuu?

What are youuuuuu?

Luckily I was given instructions on what to do with it, I was told to peel it, cut it in half, scoop out all the black seeds, and enjoy. Sounds easy enough right?

And guess what? It really was easy lol

The poor fruit had an unfortunately hard ride home in my purse so there were some super soft spots but hey, it happens, shrug. I used a carrot peeler, for some reason I was expecting the skin to be thick like an orange but it wasn’t, it was thin and really easy to peel.

The flesh was firm on the outer parts, the parts that were right under the skin but the farther inside you go the softer the fruit. I didn’t handle it very gently so it kinda turned partially mushy by the time I put it in the bowl, hence the unattractive picture below…

not the prettiest looking food...

not the prettiest looking food…

I’m not sure if I like it or not lol At first I was all “hmm, ok, it’s alright” but the more I ate the less I enjoyed it. I also got a tummy ache out of the blue, not sure if it was from the fruit or not but the pain coinciding with the eating of the fruit makes me suspicious. I ate a little under half of it and then quit it. I’m tempted to chop it smaller and put it in oatmeal tomorrow for breakfast, maybe it’ll be better then…or maybe it’ll ruin the oatmeal? Oh the horrors! lol 😛

I also tried a new hot chocolate this evening and Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! 😀

My Uncle (who is all kinds of awesome!) sends me various goodies from England. He knows I am trying to lose weight, actually, I don’t know if he does know that…but he knows I like Weight Watcher products and that every other country in the freakin world has a wider variety of Weight Watcher foods than Canada. sigh. What’s with that??

Anyways!

He sends me these great hot chocolate packages and this evening I tried a new one, it is Caribbean Coconut and holy cannoli did it smell delish right from when the water hit the powder!

2014-02-10 16.04.50

 

It had a subtle coconut flavour, oddly enough the coconut smell was stronger than the taste but that’s ok cause the taste was still good. They have an orange chocolate that is da bomb! I only have one of those left so I am holding off on drinking it cause once it is gone it won’t be replaced soon and that is all kinds of sadness. 😛 The packages are small, and I like my hot chocolate to be strong so I either use one package and only half a cup of hot water or two packages and a full cup of hot water. This evening I did two packages, to be honest I usually go the two packages route, I mean c’mon, who wants half a cup of hot chocolate? Not me!

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Willpower vs. Rules

3 Jun

I don’t have willpower. There I said it, my big secret is out. I used to have it, or did I? I think what I had was a list of rules I followed and mistook that for willpower. They are eerily close and yet so not the same thing.

Willpower is when you can just say no when somebody offers you something you really really really want but shouldn’t have. Willpower is also when you can say “ok, I’ll just have one” and actually mean it. So, for example, someone puts a platter of your favourite dessert in front of you (say, lemon tarts), a person with willpower can go “no thanks, I’m ok” and mean it! They could also say “yeah sure, thanks, I’ll have one” and mean that too! They don’t go sneaking around and snagging a second, then a third, then a fourth, eating them guiltily when no one is watching. They can set a limit and stick with it.

Someone with rules has a set list of rules in their head in regards to food that they follow come hell or high water. This person, when offered the lemon tarts might say “no thanks, I can’t” then snag one (or some) when there is no one around to catch them. Or they might respond with “sure, screw the diet today!”, take two to start with and end up eating who knows how many by the end. Or! They might say “no” and end up eating something else later when they won’t get caught to make up for the missed treat. The other option of course, for the person with the rules is to say “nope, can’t thanks” and actually stick with it.

This is where the confusion between the two begins because outsiders mistake the saying “no” and sticking with it as willpower when really it was just the person sticking to their self-imposed rules.

Why do I think the saying no and sticking with it is different in those two cases? Because the person with willpower could say yes and eat just one whereas the person who is following rules can’t stop at one – they can’t say “yes” without going overboard with what they eat, they don’t have the willpower to stop. Only the rules keep them in line and if the rules are thrown out the window chaos ensues.

Maybe I am the only one who sees the difference?

The reason I see the difference is because while I was following Weight Watchers I got a lot of comments from people about my willpower, how it was so great, so strong, yadda yadda yadda. At the time I didn’t think about it, I think I usually responded with comments about how anybody can do it if I can type of thing because deep down I felt uncomfie with the term. I didn’t know why I felt uncomfortable, I just did.

Lately though I think I partially figured it out…

I didn’t have willpower when I followed Weight Watchers, I had rules, rules they made up and I followed. As much as I hate following rules I chose to follow those ones, and having made that decision I followed them to the best I was able. Sure I had slip ups, mistakes with calculating my points, unexpected events that had me using flex points I wasn’t intending on using, days I forgot my lunch at home when I went to work so I had to buy something, things like that but I’d say that is fairly normal, and things like that didn’t happen all that often, shrug.

When I plateaued with Weight Watchers I didn’t know where to go, I was lost. For all that they had taught me portion control and I now had an idea of what the layout of my plate should be (half veggies, 1/4 protein, 1/4 carb if wanted) I still had no clue what I was doing. The rules had stopped working for me and I couldn’t survive without them, they were my beacon and it got turned off and I was left in the dark, on a dingy, slowly drifting farther and farther from shore. That plateau was the beginning of a screwy chunk of time for me food wise.

I stopped eating as much vegg and fruit as I used to, I didn’t make sure to get protein everyday. I started going all over the board with no rhyme or reason. Last summer a friend put me on a new track, a super strict track, a track with not many rules but the rules that were there were hard core. Everyone was surprised and impressed when I not only started following the plan but succeeding at it. Cutting out so many things seemed impractical but in my head I figured follow the plan until I get the final results I want then slowly incorporate some of the restricted foods back in to my eating plan as treats. I can do anything if I know it won’t be forever.

The super strict plan did work, I never got quite as small or as toned as I wanted but I got stronger, and there were changes, and I liked the changes.

Then life happened lol.

A severe restructuring of my schedule (I got a job!) messed with the super strict plan I was on, I started breaking from the eating plan more and more, and missing more and more gym days until I couldn’t say I followed any plan except an eat-whatever-I-choose-and-don’t-regularly-exercise-plan. During all this I was dragon boating, getting in to a relationship, moving, breaking up, and dealing with all the other random shit life throws at ya. *shakes fist at life* 😉

I kept trying to get back on that super strict plan but it just isn’t livable, doable, manageable for a long period of time if you have my job/life/schedule. Or at least I never found a way to make it doable. And voila! My rules were gone. I had nothing in my head saying “don’t eat the dessert”, nothing stopping me from eating carbs (holy hell had I missed carbs!), nothing preventing me from ordering pizza multiple times in a month! I’m so disgusted with myself when I think of how off course I got…although, I suppose “off course” is the wrong term, I wasn’t on a course/eating plan anymore, I was left alone, drifting in that stupid dingy again with even less clue of how to get back. Because now I had failed twice over. Failed at Weight Watchers. Failed at the super strict plan my friend introduced me to.

Failed.

But now I am trying a new way of thinking. I didn’t fail, not at Weight Watchers, I lost 35 freakin pounds on that plan! Sure, I plateaued and they couldn’t help me anymore but losing 35 pounds is not a failure! I find I have to keep reminding myself of that…I also have to keep reminding myself that I have kept that weight off, even with all my problems since then those 35 pounds stayed away, that’s not a failure, right? (although to be honest, I haven’t weighed myself in a loooooong time and I think I may have gained a couple pounds but all my clothes still fit and look good so it can’t be that much of a weight gain) And sure, I fell off the wagon with the super strict plan, but it was never meant to be a long long term plan, and sure, I’ve never been able to get myself back on it, but some healthy things I learned from it stuck with me. Like cutting out the carbs, and increasing my protein, and eating as little processed food as possible…things like that.

What I need to find is a balance, an eating plan I can stick with, that is healthy, that has reasonable rules. But! I need it to be flexible enough that when someone offers me a lemon tart I can start building up my willpower and say “no” because I don’t want it, and actually stick with the “no” and not be saying “no” because of rules I am following. I have to learn to create my own boundaries around what to eat and what not to eat, I need to learn to make my own rules and use those rules like training wheels while I build up my willpower. Does that even make sense? Probably not…

Regardless of if it makes sense to you, I have started coming up with an eating plan that is balanced, healthy, and manageable with my schedule. I can’t afford to go grocery shopping till Friday so I won’t be implementing the plan until I have bought groceries buuuuut I can modify what I already have to follow as close as I can the eating plan I am coming up with. Creating my own rules to help me build up my willpower.

With a plan in place this just might be doable! Yah! 🙂

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A Fresh Start

13 Aug

Alright so I haven’t been on here if for-evah! I know it, you know it, we all know it…so can we just forget about it and move onwards? Please? 😀

Where did I go? Nowhere exciting lol. I’ve still been here, doing the same ol same ol that is my life, I just haven’t been blogging about it because well, I couldn’t figure out what to blog about. It was easy when I was on Weight Watchers, I could talk about the points, what I ate, how I followed or didn’t follow the plan, it was easy to see if I was doing things right or if I was going off course. This new plan I switched to is harder to track, I mean sure I have an app that I use to track all my nutritional information (right down to the macro-nutrients, it’s quite scary actually…) but I wasn’t ever really sure if I was doing things right every day, so how could I type about it, not like it’s fair to ask you to help me figure it out, sigh.

Well, add to the confusion of the new eating plan and my increase in Dragon Boat practices (three times a week, wOOt!) and my laziness (like we didn’t all know that was a factor?? lol) blogging dropped by the wayside…is that the proper expression? I’m never really sure…Oh, and don’t forget my having a life, I do have one of those you know, and it does take time out of my blogging, facebooking, emailing, twittering, msn-ing, google-ing, youtubing when it amps up…hey, something has to give, there isn’t enough time in the day for everything! lol

I managed to get a job, finally! It pretty much rocks, I really like it…not as much as oh say, getting paid to act!!! but it’s a good company, good hours, good people just in general good place so I’m content for now…not that I’m giving up on you Hollywood! I’m still coming for you!…somehow…

An awesome perk to this job is that I get fed there, for a measly $2 I get to eat what the kitchen makes that day and oh my gawd do they make amazing things! Doesn’t matter if it’s lunch or dinner you get a starter (soup or salad), the main course and then dessert, all for $2!! I’ve never eaten so well! The other night I had leg of lamb for dinner, with Mediterranean veggies and roast potato wedges, oh the salad was a Greek salad and there was a strawberry tart for dessert, YUM! Everyday is like this, which is awesome cause well, hello? Foooood! but what sucks is it is gourmet level restaurant quality food (you are thinking that isn’t a sucky thing but for someone trying to lose weight it is!), cause think about it, when trying to lose weight do you eat out 4 times a week? Nope, you don’t! Unless you’re kinda crazy or have a wicked weird lifestyle but let’s not go there k? 😉 And why don’t you eat out 4 times a week? Oh, maybe perhaps because you have no say in how the food is cooked, what ingredients are used…things like that…and you start to GAIN weight! Yeah, you read that right, GAIN weight! Even with all my dragon boat training and gym going I started getting rounder, sigh, and well, that just can’t be allowed to happen!

I took myself off the meal plan today, no more gourmet meals for moi! Nuh-uh! I am going to go back on my low carb, high protein, high healthy fat eating plan and begging mercy from my metabolism. I am going to amp up my exercise routine and hope to hell I can reverse the damage and start going down in sizes again. I’d say down in numbers on the scale but my scale is wonky so I’m going by clothes sizes right now, and how the clothes I currently own are fitting. Jeans are such a good indicator of how your weight is doing aren’t they? Unforgiving bastards that they are…er, I mean, helpful wonderful pants that I could never do without *grumble*

I’m going to go back to basics with my blog, I started using it way back when to hold me accountable because I knew starting Weight Watchers was going to be hard and if I didn’t have other people to be accountable too I’d find it too easy to cheat. I got over that and realized cheating on what I eat or my exercise was cheating myself so I stopped needing this blog to hold me accountable and used it just because I liked to blog. But now, I am going to use it to hold myself accountable. My food will be boring, you’re going to feel pity for my taste buds, and I know on work days when I am smelling all that amazing food, and watching the others eat it and listen to them commenting on it I am going to be sooooo tempted to cheat, but that is where this blog will come in to play (again! lol) If I cheat I have to tell you, and I don’t want to have to admit that I failed, wasn’t strong enough to resist temptation, couldn’t do it. All of you reading this are what is going to help make me strong while I build up my willpower. I can’t believe I let myself slack so much, not when I put in all that hard work. I’ve gotta get back to the grind and this is my first step towards doing that!

On a side note, I know I’ve been away a while but what’s with all these ads at the top of my wordpress screen?? Can I get rid of those, they are super annoying, grr.

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A New Beginning

24 Feb

Just Do It!

 

I am leaving Weight Watchers…yes, you read that correctly. Although, since I never officially joined, just did the program on my own I guess I’m not “officially” leaving them since well, how can you leave something you were never really a part of?

I learned a lot from Weight Watchers and I will take those lessons with me. I learned about proper portion sizes, and how to eat food groups, I learned how to actually read a nutritional label (I used to glance at them as if I knew what I was doing but didn’t actually read them lol). I think overall I learned common sense, something some people say can’t be learned lol, because, really, in the end Weight Watchers is common sense. They give you the tools and you use them or you don’t and the results you get are reflective of the work you put in to the program.

The only problem with that last sentence is the results you get aren’t always reflective of the work you put in to the program, and that’s where my love affair with Weight Watchers started to go wrong. For the longest time if I ate my points and did my exercising I lost weight every week, maybe not a lot but I’d lose something and so life was good. But I have been stuck on a plateau since last summer, yup, you read that right, last freakin summer! and my irritation with Weight Watchers and myself was reaching a level I didn’t think possible. Yes, since moving to the new apartment I hadn’t been tracking or paying all that close attention to what I was eating or portion sizes but that is partly because for the previous 6 months even though I had been doing all that nothing had been changing, I was stuck at the same weight for so long that I just gave up. Lame huh?

I probably would have stayed on this cycle of meaning to start tracking again but not doing it and going to the gym about 3 times a week but totally counter acting any work I did in the gym by eating a donut or something else ridiculously bad for me except I had a talk with my agent last week. I had emailed her because I am not getting any auditions and I wanted to ask her if she’d be willing to put me in as a wild card for some auditions to help get me seen more. I am aware there aren’t a lot of casting calls for 5’8″ redheads lol so I was thinking if she put me in for say, auditions meant for brunettes or something maybe somebody would decide that hey maybe a redhead would be good in this role too. Well, she called me back and in the nicest voice (she really sounds like such a sweet lady when she’s tearing your heart out) she informed me that she is putting me out there for anything in my height/age range but I need to lose weight because the girls I am going up against are all around 120lbs and I am not…Now, normally anybody with any self-esteem would not let someone tell them they are too fat and that they have to lose a specific amount of weight but an actor’s relationship with their agent is different so all I did during this convo was make agreeing noises, say “yup” a lot and basically just took it. It’s like a whipped dog, tail between it’s legs, just takes the painful crap cause there’s no other option. *rolls eyes* Suckfest huh? Cause, yes, I know I am overweight, especially for the acting world, but come on! I’m a lot smaller then I was and how the fuck am I gonna lose more weight? I’ve been stuck at this weight for so long telling me to lose so I weigh 120lbs, well, you might as well be telling me I need to lose 500lbs, I have no idea how to do it! sigh

Luckily, fates were on my side that day, later in the day I was meeting up with NC who is someone I have recently been seeing and when I told him the gist of the convo with my agent he said he could help me. Turns out that he used to be a personal trainer and he’s kept up with all the info on the topic so he actually knows what he is talking about lol. Guess that explains how he is in such amazing shape…seriously, amazing! He says if I follow the program he makes for me I could lose 20lbs in 2 months but not just lose the weight like become a smaller version of me, I’d be more toned, in shape, fit…so a healthy weight loss…which is what I need but have no idea how to accomplish on my own. Sweet huh?

So, that is why I haven’t been writing for the last little bit, I’ve been learning the new program I am going to be following and wanted to wait till I had a better understanding of it before I wrote too much about it. I don’t want to write something that ends up being incorrect and have you all think I am nutso lol. Because even though I trust that NC knows what he is talking about and is teaching me good habits etc I am also reading books on the eating style he is having me follow so I can understand the science behind what I am doing…cause, people, there really is a science behind it, it’s crazed! lol

I’ll write more about what my eating and exercise habits are going to be from now on another day, since this post is already nice an long lol but now you know what I am up to over here. 🙂

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I Am An Actor

12 Feb

  • I Am An Actor

    Ok, so this isn’t really a post since I’m not going to write a lot, lol, just thought I’d share this with all of you. 🙂
    I’ve had an awesome weekend, I was trying on clothes and discovered I have gone down a size, yah! I knew my pants were fitting looser but I thought it was cause they are all about the same age and they were stretching out a bit, turns out nope, they really are bigger on me lol. Don’t you love when that happens?
    I feel I shouldn’t celebrate it too too much since I didn’t lose the size by eating healthy and exercising, I did it through poor eating habits and sporadic exercise and really, it’s probably my body’s way of trying to cope with less vitamins and nutrients and more sugar and caffeine but hey, for today anyways I will do a happy dance and rejoice. 😀
    Tomorrow I am meeting up with a contact, we are going to write a short film and post it on youtube, mostly just for fun but if it goes viral and makes us famous we’re cool with that lol. 😉  Also, in the world of contacts, I have a friend whose best friend is involved in making 3 (count that, THREE!) films this year so he asked for my headshots and demo reel so he could give them to his friend. Oh I hope something comes of it! So many “big breaks” come from contacts that the actor has and I don’t have many of those at all (read that to mean I have none 😛 ) *crossing fingers*
    I spent this weekend shopping (mostly window shopping, but I still got to try some stuff on lol), went dancing with friends saturday night which I feel should count as exercise since we were shakin’ our tailfeathers 😉 then today (sunday) I went for brunch with KL, we caught up on all our gossip (hey, we’re girls, it’s what we do!) I love going for brunch with KL, we always have so much fun. 😀 Um, let’s see, then I came home and hung out with the cat, had a nap, which has unfortunately caused me to be not alert exactly but not as exhausted as I would like considering I want to be going to bed soon (it’s 12:13am on Monday…although, when I publish this I will alter the time to be still on Sunday so it shows up on the calendar of my posts on the day I want it to, aren’t I so sneaky? teehee)
    I didn’t do any “real” exercise this weekend, unless you count shopping, dancing and walking lol. I can’t bring myself to be upset about it though since I’m down a siiiiiize! Sorry I keep bringing that up, it’s just so exciting since I’ve been plateaued for sooooo long! Maybe, if I start eating closer to properly and exercise more frequently I’ll not only maintain this new size but go down a bit farther? Ooooh, the excitement! lol
    And look at that, looks like I wrote enough it really is a normal post after all, sigh, I’m so chatty *rolls eyes*

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Ahhhh Telus

10 Feb

My internet died, went down, crashed…whatever term you want to use it went away. It was very sad, doubly so since I don’t have cable so I felt especially cut off from the world.  😦

I don’t understand those people that willingly stop going online and watching tv and using cell phones for a week or a month or 6 months or a year as some kind of test to prove they don’t need technology. I neeeeeed technology! I crave it! I live for it! I was on facebook and twitter via my smart phone (which is not very smart considering how many technical problems the pos has, erg) every 5 minutes or so terrified I was missing something hugely important!

Oh, and no, I don’t mean hugely important like what a friends kid did or didn’t do that was oh-so-cute *rolls eyes* I can’t stand those facebook status updates, sigh, I mean like, a natural disaster, or Obama being killed (and yes, I do think he has a higher chance of getting assassinated (side note, haha! a word that says “ass” twice in the spelling of it!  😛 ) then Harper…the Prime Minister of Canada in case you were wondering who the heck I was talking about lol), or the oilsands lighting fire and all of Alberta being evacuated (I’m allowed to say that, I’m Albertan lol). So much of what I know of the world comes from the internet, it used to come from the news but as I mentioned above I don’t have cable anymore so no more 6pm news watching for me…who’d of thought I’d ever miss the news?? Crazy world! Crazy!

Happily, Telus sent over a very nice and competent man who fixed the internet connection and voila! I was back on the information super highway…right in time to be super busy for days and have almost no time to get online let alone post on wordpress, figures huh?

Today though, something way fun happened that I just gotta share! I had a photoshoot today that was sweeeeeeet! It wasn’t an acting photoshoot, it was for Dragon Boating, I (along with others) got asked to take part in the photoshoot to create the new posters and advertising images for the upcoming Dragon Boating season – how awesome is that?!?! It was all done in a studio, we had paddles but no pfd’s (personal flotation devices, fancy way of saying lifejacket…seriously, when did we stop saying lifejacket??) and we sat on these boxes so that we could pretend we were on the water paddling lol. They will photoshop the pictures so the final images will appear as if we are in boats racing. Yet one more reason I love technology! lol Cause man, if we’d had to be on the water for this shoot we’d of frozen our hands off, the water is not yet warm people!

I felt so honoured to be asked, especially once I got there and saw the other people taking part in the shoot. They are all in so much better shape then me, I don’t know how I fell in to this crowd. lol. Paddlers are those people that are tanned, and no nonsense, and the women don’t wear makeup (at least on days when they are on the water) and their hair is either really short or yanked back in a pony tail and they are fit and outdoorsy and well, a lot of things I am not. Luckily, they are also really accepting of others and happy to have people around who also enjoy the sport, even if they don’t fit the stereotypical mold of a racer. Phew! Lucky for me! lol I got to meet a two time World’s Champion, I couldn’t believe she trains out of the same place I train, wow. Lemme tell ya, I thought I was getting decent upper arm and shoulder definition, she is so muscle defined even when she doesn’t flex she’s looking way toned, but not in a guy way!  😛

For the shoot we were all sprayed with glycerin and water so we looked like we got sprayed while on the water paddling, it is sticky feeling and kinda odd but it works. However, it’s been hours since I’ve been home and I washed my face once already and I am still finding little random sticky spots on my neck and face, ick. It got in my hair too, le sigh. My bangs feel nasty but oh well, it’ll wash out when I shower.  🙂 and really, I complain, but it doesn’t really bother me, I’ve been through lots worse on photoshoots but I always have so much fun that I don’t really care. Heck, I was put in a bald cap once (which, considering how much hair I have was soooo hard for the make up girl to do) and when she took it off she peeled off some of the skin along my hairline cause she didn’t unstick the glue properly. That hurt! But even with the pain, it was totally worth it. 🙂 I must be crazy huh? lol

So, food and exercise for this past week, I was active monday, tuesday and wednesday to levels I am happy with. Monday and wednesday I hit the gym, both days I got thwarted in my wanting to use the weights (the weight room was booked for a class both days) but I did get in over an hour of cardio, some ab work and some stretching on both days. Tuesday I cleaned the apartment, which I never totally feel should qualify as exercise but I know that it does so, shrug, I’ll use it lol. Thursday I walked, and did manage to work up a bit of a sweat, but I don’t feel it was enough walking to properly qualify as exercise and then today I was photoshooting and then we so tired the rest of the day cause of being up so early and on not enough sleep I didn’t really do much. Totally my bad, I should’ve gone to the gym, or at least for a walk, but I just couldn’t make myself move.

Although, having said that, I seemed to have no trouble moving my ass to the kitchen to keep getting snacks, sigh. I didn’t clue in till way later that I was probably eating so much today because I was so tired and my body was trying to get energy, tsk tsk to me. I should have just gone for a nap or something, that would have probably taken care of the over eating problem I had today but yeah, by the time I realized it was already almost midnight. It’s not often I get way tired like that anymore so I forgot that could happen, *rolls eyes* I’ll hafta be more diligent on early morning days from now on.

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Gorged on Grapes

5 Feb

Mmm, fruit! Especially green grapes, double Mmm! lol This whole fruit has no points thing with the new Points Plus Program is gonna be grrrrrreat! (anybody else hear Tony the Tigers voice say that? lol)

I bought a huge batch of green grapes and have been nibbling on them like a crazy person all weekend, they really fill you up though and since they don’t have a points value attached I didn’t measure them out I just sat and mindlessly ate them and then all of a sudden I was getting ready to go out (this was yesterday) and I realized that ugh, I feel disgusting cause I ate way too many grapes. Oops! Guess I’m gonna hafta watch out for that, it’s a little pitfall I didn’t really think about. *rolls eyes*

I had thought this weekend would be the start of my getting-serious-with-tracking-weekend but I realized that Saturday I had plans that involved lots of alcohol and most likely an extremely bad for me meal and then Sunday I was going out for lunch with a friend to Olive Garden and the odds were good of my eating horribly so perhaps I should wait and start my serious tracking on Monday. I’m not normally a Monday Starter (as I call them, you know, those people who always say “I’m starting my diet this coming Monday” but they never do?) but it just seemed to make sense to me. Why start tracking on a day I know I’m gonna blow it points wise, it’d just be a depressing way to start back with my tracking and planning, shrug. This is how I justified it to myself anyways. lol.

Course, tomorrow I have dinner plans, but oh well, I know where I am going so I will check the menu out before I go and try my best to pre-plan what I am going to order.  🙂

For exercise over the weekend I got a bit derailed but I tried my best…kinda lol. I walked to my friend’s house on Saturday to meet up with everybody, it is about a 40 minute walk or so and part way through the walk I stopped at Safeway to pick up the pineapple juice and the coconut milk for the Pina Coladas we were making so I had some extra weight to carry which I figure, all adds up in the end lol. I did get kinda sweaty from the walk, ew! Not exactly how I wanted to start an evening of merriment but oh well, shrug. There were three of us and we were going rollerskating, I’ll give you a minute to ponder that…take your time…yes, now that you’ve scratched your head and wondered if I took a ride in a time machine back to the 80’s I will explain. There is a roller rink about an hour away via public transit (which we were taking so we could all drink) and one of my friends really really really wanted to go cause she wants to try out for roller derby but she doesn’t have experience roller skating. The idea was the three of us would go, totally suck, probably fall down a lot, but have loads of fun (the way you always end up fun when doing something dorky, like mini golf lol), KL would get to find out if she has any natural skating talent and well, KS and I would just be there for the fun aspect lol. I mean, come on, alcohol + friends + dorky activity = FUN! 😀

Turns out roller skating is way more popular then any of us though, who knew?? When we got there the line to get in was all the way to the door, as in, we were stuck standing outside the door. It eventually started to move but before we got anywhere near the counter the guy working the counter said they were almost out of skates so it was free admission for everyone, if they had your size skate and you got a pair then you could skate, otherwise you were SOL. They didn’t have my size or KS but they did have skates in the right size for KL so we encouraged her to go skate. She, after all, is the one who wants to join roller derby and thereby had a purpose being on the rink. She did great! Total natural, which is awesome. The exercise I had planned on getting at the rink did not happen but not because I was lazy or backed out or anything so I don’t feel badly about not getting my activity points that evening – not like I have any say over the rink having my size skates available. Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches, or skate with the crowd. hahaha I’m just sooooo witty 😉 lol

Today however, totally my fail lol. I had lunch plans for 12:30p that got moved by my friend to 1p then got moved to 2:30p so originally I was going to go for lunch, hang out with her for a while, then come home, digest a bit and hit up the gym. Wellllll, by the time the plans got changed the third time I was realizing I could have gone to the gym before meeting up with her (but of course my realization came to late, sigh) and we gabbed for so long (hours an hours lol) that by the time I got home it was too late to go. They were still open when I got home (I think, for some reason I can never for sure remember the Sunday hours lol) but I was so full no way could I have gone right away and by the time I was feeling digested enough to go they were for sure closed. Epic Fail on my part.

Tomorrow however is another page in my life and I plan on going to the gym no matter what. I am setting my alarm for earlier then I normally would just to make sure I get up and go before I have to start everything else I am doing tomorrow. I want it to be the first thing I accomplish tomorrow so that it can’t get sidelined or ditched cause I run out of time later in the day.

I have a plan people, albeit, a tentative one, but I’m gonna do my best to follow it, make it more concrete, and make this program work for me! …I feel I should shout that marine shout you always hear in movies lol

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Fitocracy

1 Feb

I joined a website called Fitocracy…the site is http://www.fitocracy.com. It is supposed to make losing weight fun, like a game, you earn points, level up, compete against your friends…basically it is trying to help you trick yourself into thinking you want to eat less, eat healthy and exercise more. I figure with all this wonderous plateauing I have been doing for frickin ever and the fact that I can’t seem to get off my fat arse to get with the program (the new Weight Watchers Points Plus Program that is) maybe I can trick myself into getting back in the game…

And hey, if the tricking doesn’t work then maybe I will start exercising on a more regular basis and eating better just out of embarrassement since you can follow your friends and they can follow you and everyone can see how you are doing…or not doing in my case. lol.

A friend of mine from AB had it on his facebook wall with a link to join, I thought hey, why not, I need to try something new. Since I joined I have been sick (last week, nasty cold, couldn’t breathe or talk, sadness) and this week I have been working longer hours then normal for me (while still getting over my cold) and now, this is so embarrassing, I scraped my chin (yes, the way a child with no coordination would *rolls eyes*) and it got infected, ugh, so now my chin looks horrible! As in disgusting! As in people are staring at me and everyone I speak with eventually says (with a tone of horror) “what happened to your chin” and then they look like maybe they should back away in case it’s something contagious, like leprosy. sigh. So no way am I going to the gym when I look like this, just not happenin!

However, by not going last week due to sickness or this week due to working and (stupid) injury it makes my effort in the land of Fitocracy look like a joke.  😦 There my friends are getting to new levels, building their points up and there is my profile, with nothing happening…it’s almost embarrassing…tho not as embarrassing as the looks people are giving my chin…do you know how hard it is to get gauze to stay on a chin??? Really freakin hard!

So despite my having all the tools needed for the Weight Watchers Points Plus Program I haven’t been tracking. 😦 I was going to, took the books and tracker and calculator with me to work on monday but was so busy I never took the stuff out of my bag and by the time I got home I’d completely forgotten about it. I took everything with me again on Tuesday and same thing happened. Oh and yeah, you guessed it, same thing today. Course, today had the added bonus of my chin scrape being so dry that opening my mouth to talk, smile, eat, breathe, anything really causes the skin to pull and huuuuurt and sometimes even crack and bleed, ick right? So I am restricted to eating things that (1) don’t require me to open my mouth wide to be able to eat them and (2) are not hot or cold so if I spill on my chin I don’t yelp in pain…there aren’t as many options as you may think there are. lol

However, despite my suckyness at tracking I am still taking the books, tracker and calculator with me everywhere I go, maybe eventually I’ll put them to work, or maybe the added weight of them in my bag will help me shed some calories? 😉 lol

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Weight Watchers Points Plus Program

27 Jan

Or as I like to call it WWPPP…actually, lol, I don’t call it that, that’d be even weirder then saying the whole name. I just call it WW still, or the Plus program, anything but the entire name cause that is just toooooo long.

I wanted to put pics with this post, to show you the new WW stuff (aka tools and books) I have that go along with the program buuuuut I may have slightly misplaced the cable to attach my phone to my laptop so I can’t upload the pictures, oops. I will however keep searching for the cable and upload the pics as soon as I can. 🙂

One of the biggest changes tool wise is that now you have to use a Weight Watchers calculator, this is what you use to calculate how many points you get per day and how many points a serving of food has. You can also use it to track what you eat everyday and it stores the information in its memory for a week so you don’t have to use a handwritten tracker anymore if you don’t want to. I however prefer writing down in a little book what I eat and the points values, I like the tactile sensation of writing and it helps me to be able to go back and look at foods I ate in the past. Also, I remember better what I have handwritten down as opposed to typed, shrug, just how I roll. You can use the calculator for the Filling Foods WW Program also, and even, *drum roll* as a regular calculator! Oooooh, the complexity of this little machine lol. 😛 It is pocket sized, blue, easy to use, has large font, really, can’t go wrong. I, being the weird person that I am, will miss the little cardboard slider that I used for the old program, it was easy to casually slide it to the appropriate numbers without really taking it out of my purse at a grocery store so I could calculate the points of a food I was considering buying without anybody seeing. Also, I’ve been through a lot with the little thing, I’m a tad attached to it. I am going to cut the emotional string bond I have to it (is that even a possible thing to have?? lol) and lend it to a friend who isn’t looking to follow the plan completely but wants to be able to track her food at least a bit to get a better idea of how she is eating.  It’s usefulness will be passed on. 🙂

Something else I also have is this decently sized Weight Watchers PointsPlus Getting Started book, it has 102 pages, including charts to help you plan your meals, recipe ideas and a walking plan if you need/want help with becoming more active. As I was reading it I felt like I should be taking notes or something because I kept thinking “oh this seems important to remember” but there is only so much you can remember when reading a new informational book over the course of days. So I went back through it and put those skinny post its on “important” pages so when I need to look something up I can find the most likely pages the information will be on. It now reminds me of my text books in university…yes, I was that girl lol.  😛

After that the next book I have is the Weight Watchers PointsPlus Pocket Guide, which I am sorry to say wouldn’t fit in to any pocket I have…well, maybe my winter jacket pocket but that’s about it. Luckily I am a girl and it is socially acceptable for me to carry almost all my worldly possessions in my purse so phew, the “pocket guide” can come out with me. This little book is packed with useful information, it has an A-Z Food List with points, Weight Watchers food list (including lots of yummy sounding WW foods we can’t get in Canada), dining out ideas, a help guide to reading a menu, food substitutions, condiments and seasonings worth zero points, and a handy quick guide to portion sizes…all of that is just in the first section! The other sections have Power Foods, good health guidelines, aisle by aisle shopping guide, holiday help, weekend ideas and charts to calculate Activity Points. I’ll give more detailed info on what the book says in posts to come. 🙂

Lastly, well almost lastly, I have the Canadian Complete Food Companion book and the Canadian Dining Out Companion book. The food companion not only has a huuuge listing of foods with their points values it also indicates if something is a Power Food and not to be outdone in usefulness the dining out book has an A-Z list of dining out foods and menu items from over 45 restaurants with their points values and an ethnic and regional section with foods listed and the points values for the foods.

If you attend the meetings, which we all know I don’t, you also get these weekly booklets, although, they are so tiny they are more like a flyer. Each flyer has an inspirational story, a recipe, suggestions for your week or how to make something easier or better use your time. There is a ‘moving more’ page with some simple exercises and a suggestion for something to try this week as a challenge. I think I like the recipe page the best lol.

So there we have it, my new tools and books to help me on my journey of trying the Points Plus Program. 🙂 Wonder how long it will take for them to look as worn and used as the books I had for the old program? I’m betting not long at all! lol

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Been Gone A While

23 Jan

So I’ve been gone a while, I hadn’t even realized how long until the other day when I logged in and saw when I last posted and I immediately thought “aw crap, I’ve been gone way longer then I thought”. I did want to post that day, I had a topic and a vague idea in my head about what I was going to write but the entire site was blacked out in protest, seriously? I finally get my ass back on to wordpress and it’s all blacked out?? What are the odds? *rolls eyes*

Any normal person would have just said ah well and logged on the next day, written their post then, but I am not normal in any way and somehow that just didn’t happen…I think cause I was busy with, ya know, life…or something resembling it anyways…

Here’s a little catch up on things:

I got back from Alberta safe and sound, got back to my apartment to find my roomie’s cat was crazy sick (some kind of cat cold) and she hadn’t even noticed (the poor thing was having sneezing fits lasting 10 sneezes or longer at a time, and his poor darker coloured then normal really wet nose, sigh). I ended up hanging at the house for a couple days right after getting home nursing the poor cat back to health (may I remind you, it’s not even MY cat!!) but I can’t let him suffer alone just because his owner doesn’t pay attention or want to take him to a vet, sigh.

The guy I was seeing and I broke up so I spent some days wallowing in self-pity, depression, despair, sadness – doing all the things girls do at a time like this (I watched Dirty Dancing and got drunk and ate pie). What made it even better was my roomie was dumped two days before my break up so there were two of us going through this together…the amount of chocolate and pizza that has been in this apartment since those days is amazing. Then I decided to give myself a good kick in the ass cause what kind of girl am I? The whiny crying stupid kind? Hell No! I had a really good couple of days where I hit the gym, stopped listening to depressing music, starting wearing makeup again (it’s amazing how pathetic I got…) and then I ended up going for dinner with a friend who spent the entire time yapping about her new boyfriend and how happy she is and how great he is and how wonderful being in a relationship is and blah blah fucken blah…I couldn’t wait to get away. So that dumped me back down in to a pit of despair. I know! I’m rolling eyes at myself right now, I am well aware how pathetic I was (am?).

During this I pulled myself together and met with a guy who went to the same film school as I but a couple years prior, he is starting his own production company and we had a meeting (ie interview) to see about collaborating together, sweet! He wants to get a team of actors and crew and writers together, start filming small scenes that showcase the writing and acting skill/talent of the people involved, then show those to backers and get funding so we can film small films and enter them in to Film Festivals and then get more backing from that and film Feature Films. How awesome is that?! He really liked my demo reel and we are meeting this week to go over the first script he wants me to work on, he said at the interview he already had two characters he thought I’d be great for and he now has a third (which I will be learning more about this week), so way excited for that! There is no money involved, because it’s all entry level, all a bunch of us who are just starting and trying to find a crack in the industry wall that we can get through to get noticed but hey, at least I’m trying. 🙂 The Production Company is going to be focused on sci-fi/fantasy so I’m betting I’ll be working on some pretty crazy scripts, yah!

What else? Oh yeah, I damaged the back bumper of my suv, sadness. I was reversing on a twisty narrow road that cuts through a forest on a freakishly steep hill in the pouring rain as the sun was setting and a tree that had fallen and was partially crossing the path came in to contact (painful contact) with my rear bumper. sigh. I am fairly certain it is cosmetic damage, but by the time I was leaving the area it was too dark to check out the suv (and there is always the fear of wild animals deciding to jump out and eat you…not even joking!) so I waited till I got back and parked in the underground parking that comes with my apartment, turns out I brought part of the frickin tree home with me, all squished in to the crack that is now in my bumper. Awesome huh?

Oh and lastly, my roomie convinced me to start a Plenty of Fish account (for those of you that don’t know it’s a dating website) because she thinks the best way to get over my ex is to start dating someone else. I don’t know about this logic but am willing to give it a try I guess, shrug. Well, turns out I seem to hold a lot of appeal for random guys on dating websites as I have been getting weird emails to my account inbox since I opened the silly thing, which was oh about, 24 hours ago? *rolls eyes* I started emailing with one guy and we are tentatively making plans to meet for coffee this week but I dunno, now that the plans are being made I don’t know that I want to go through with it…I’m not really into this whole internet dating thing, I always think it’s better to meet people the old fashioned way, ya know, in person? Seems to be a dying trend though, shrug.

How does any of this relate to my weight watchers? Well, it kinda does kinda doesn’t. I haven’t been tracking but I have been measuring and portioning my foods (well, except for the “dark days” when I pretty much stopped eating completely, then the couple days after that where I lived off pizza, pie and chocolate…but we won’t go in to that lol) I have been getting to the gym about 3 times a week and the days I don’t go to the gym I make sure to walk somewhere that is a decent walking distance away, so the grocery store, the seabus terminal, purolator…basically, I look at it as there is no physical reason I can not walk to do my errands so walk them I will. It’s working out well. The walking gives me time to get outside, breath fresh air, listen to my iPod and just be by myself but not isolated in my apartment. It’s been almost therapeutic and the days I don’t walk somewhere I find a little sad. Oh, I took a kick boxing class last week, it was alright, not as good as my boxing classes were but decent.

I am reading the books to learn how to do the Points Plus Program and will be starting that soon, perhaps tomorrow? I haven’t finished reading the book yet but maybe I will finally get through it tomorrow. It’s funny, I got so used to the old program and when people would ask I’d say how it’s so easy, nuthin to it, stuff like that, I forgot how overwhelming it can be to read that first book of the program and be introduced all at once to all the crap you have to remember/know/learn, all the rules you will have to follow, just all that stuff. I am reading this book for the new program and just keep thinking I should be taking notes somewhere cause this seems like a lot to have to remember and am I going to want to flip through this book everytime I need to refresh myself about something? But oh well.  I am a (vaguely) smart individual who should be able to figure this out…and if all else fails I’ll call my mom, she’s on this plan so she’ll have answers to all my questions lol.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, yes I am still doing Weight Watchers unofficially, so no going to meetings or using the online support tools for me, I’m still poor, shrug. 😛 A whole new Weight Watcher’s adventure is about to start for me!…I really hope this new program gets me off my plateau, here’s hoping! 😀

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