Episode 66: Putting Color Into Life

Today we went to the Farmer's Market behind the Weberstown Mall.  We got up, even before breakfast, put on clothes, braved the cold, crisp morning (at 8:45) and went out to see what sort of fresh produce they had for us today.  What you see in the picture is what we bought.  Fresh veggies, raspberry jams and some pomegranates.  They are all glorious (and barely fit in our tiny tiny apartment fridge).  The plan is to make some really awesome veggie soup, since we're on a type of Weight Watchers.

 In fact, I'm sort of cheating.  I have no money and very little resources to rejoin Weight Watchers at this time, but I have all of my old book and all of my old program stuff, so we're using these as resources, with some help from some web sources, to create our own version of Weight Watchers.  I haven't given up on the whole milk or the whole fat yogurt, as they seem to be better for my digestion than the low fat stuff (I don't get nearly as may ucky tummies), but we are adding many more veggies and things to our diet.  I feel healthier.  According to my Wii, I have lost about 5 pounds in the last two weeks.

Just looking at that picture makes me happy!  The colors, the vibrancy, and I've noticed that since we have been eating better, cleaning our apartment more often and working out a bit more, my whole life seems to be coated in this new vibrant color.  A year or more ago, I was feeling kind of in the doldrums.  I lived in a beautiful place, I had everything I ever wanted, but it wasn't satisfying. I was unhappy.  I was overweight. I was lazy and in pain and everything seemed like crap.  I was taking medication for bipolar disorder and it wasn't helping much.  And the food I was eating was awful!  Looking back at my Weight Watcher's books from a year ago, I was eating fast food daily.  One day was Wendys. One day was Subway. One day was Taco Bell.  Fried foods, foods full of fat, foods full of fillers. These were the things that I was putting into my body, and my body fought back with depression, acne and weight gain.

Now I eat what you see on the table.  Fresh fruits, fresh veggies. I make my own breads sometimes.

 I take a vitamin daily, and I cook my own food. I have even, on occasion, made my own butter (which is absolutely delicious!)  I know exactly what goes in my food. If I write down a recipe, or a list of ingredients, I can pronounce every single one of them.  I still eat meat, though we do have our Wegitarian Wednesdays, and Pizza Fridays (our one little concession to the "how do you pronounce that?" foods).  We will eat out, but we go places where we can eat healthfully.  We found this great little sushi place (at Sherwood Mall, no less) that makes great rolls and you can watch them make them, so we know exactly what goes into them.  All of these things have greatly improved the quality of my life.

I plan on keeping up with this blog some more.  I want to write and keep track.  I want to post about how I organize my life, how I make it can make it better, and how I have learned to enjoy a life lived in less space and fewer calories but much more enriched.  I'll post some of my recipes that we have found particularly yummy, some ideas for keeping life organized, and my adventures of jumping off the high dive of life and just, well... Weighting in the Deep End!

Keeping happy and healthy!

ToryLynn

Episode 54: Starbucks Sunday

It is a beautiful day today.  The sun is shining, leaving golden streaks of light across the floors, there is soft music playing over the loud speakers and the woosh and swirl of coffee drinks being made fill the air as well as the chatter of my fellow diners.  My keyboard clicks pleasantly, and the cares of my week sort of melt away.  It is Starbucks Sunday, and I sit in my neighborhood Starbucks, typing up a new blog post and enjoying the companionship of AM.

It's funny sitting here, drinking my Grande Skinny Cafe Mocha (which we figured at 4 points) and eating my Noah's Everything Bagel Thin with Garlic Cream Cheese and Lox (7 points), for a satisfying, healthyish breakfast.  AM really fell into my Sunday morning routine pretty quickly, and nearly every other day of the week, is trying to feed me healthy foods like vegetables (gasp!) and fruits (swoon!) and even... even.. some Pho soup, which he makes pretty well! 

The last couple of weeks haven't been entirely good for my diet though.  My birthday came and went with two different chocolate cakes (I totally *don't* recommend the Chewy Fudge Bistro Cake from Safeway if you aren't prepared to die in a decadent chocolate heaven and want to eat the entire thing in one evening... which I did with the help of a few of my friends) and Valentine's Day as well as one of my students selling Girl Scout cookies.  Thin Mints are evil little minions of the diet devils!  AM finally hid the box of cookies for me on the top shelf of our kitchen storage in a place that I can't get to unless I use the foot stool. So, they are safe for now.  

So, we are rededicating ourselves to the idea of tracking points again, reading articles on the Weight Watchers website, and doing Wii Fit and walking to melt off the weight.  It is just as easy to buy and eat healthy food as it is to buy and eat junk food. There is a sign at the Weight Watchers that says "If you don't buy it, you can't eat it" and I was looking at that sign and thinking about how that is so true. If I don't buy the healthy foods, I can't eat healthy foods and get myself better.  If I don't buy the junk foods, I won't eat them because they won't be at my house.  I think that's a fairly good idea.  And with time, I will start to look at the vegetable aisle more than the cookie aisle; I will start to scope out the flavored waters instead of the Monsters; I will make a berry cobbler rather than a whole tray of cinnamon rolls.  I will be a healthier, happier person... and I will love myself more for it.

I have been eating a lot healthier than I was before, and amazingly enough, I am seeing the rewards.  My skin is clearer, my moods aren't fluctuating nearly as rapidly, and I can almost say that my bipolar disorder is a thing of the past.  I still get sad, and I still get happy, but everything seems so much more controllable. 

I am happy... and that is the best thing in the world.  Thank you to all of my friends and family for helping me to take care of myself.  Thanks most to AM who is helping me be a better person.  

Love, lollipops and hugs!

ToryLynn

P.S. I do plan on posting more often.  Hopefully I can get back to nearly daily updates.  I have a lot to think about and.. Spring Break in 2 weeks! Woot woot!!

Episode 16: Not Eating Enough

Every day I get a certain amount of points that I am supposed to eat.  I remember that it was always so hard to stay under these points, when I previously joined Weight Watchers.  Now... something odd is happening.

I am not eating enough.

I add in my points at the end of the day, look at the total and wonder how I could have eaten so little!  It is a strange feeling indeed.  It is not that I am completely forgetting to eat, because I do eat a pretty steady 3 meals a day.  It is that my meals seem to be getting smaller.. or perhaps it is my appetite.

For instance, AH and I ordered breakfast yesterday as we were both up at 4am, and got Denny's.  Poached eggs, french toast and bacon for me.  A breakfast worth 21 points but... I couldn't eat it all. I couldn't hardly eat half.  I finished the eggs, because I like poached eggs, but only made it through about half of the bacon and 1/3 of the french toast.  I sat looking at the platter, wondering what was wrong that I couldn't finish it.  I used to be able to polish that off no problem without much thought, but for some reason my stomach just couldn't stomach it.  I left half the platter empty and sat wondering why.

I really haven't been eating much lately.  I pick at my food and oftentimes, I just sometimes forget to eat.  I don't know if it is that I am distracted, too busy to do much eating. I don't know if it is that I am not finding myself hungry as often as I used to.  I don't know that my stomach isn't shrinking to much smaller proprotions.  It just seems weird to me.

Another thing is that I'm finding the changes to the plan a bit.. well.. different.  All the fruits I can eat means that I can eat a lot of fruit and not have to worry about points.  I find that rather than grazing on high calorie snacks like potato chips or chocolate, I am picking a grape out of the fruit basket more often than not and eating that instead of heading into the kitchen to find something horrible for me.  I'll peel an orange and leave it open on my desk and nibble on it as absentmindedly as I used to nibble on Chex mix, or something like that.  I love fruit and want to keep lots of it around so that I eat it, but I don't have to count it for anything and I suddenly feel full.

I guess we'll find out if my adventures in undereating will get me any weight loss, but I don't think that it will.  I think that this week may be a bad one at the scale, but we will see.  I need to be healthier and I need to post on this blog more often .

Sorry again for the late post.. it was a late night, but a good one.  Thank you for reading...

ToryLynn