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 57: Point-less

A confession: Since AM has been here, I haven't really been counting points.  I haven't been eating awfully,and we are keeping each other on task for exercise and walking and being healthy.  I haven't been following the Weight Watcher's way, and I haven't been going to meetings, or even really weighing in.

But... I feel healthier.  I am happy.  I admit, my weight has always been a bit of a hassle for me, a bit of a sore spot, and it's not like I don't care about it, but I am happier and I think healthier even if I'm not really paying attention to points.  I eat my vegetables with (nearly) every meal. Instead of candy bars and carbs in my desk, I keep a small container of nuts and dried fruit next to my projector at school and munch a bit while my students are working.  Instead of ice cream every night (I was incredibly addicted to Drumsticks for a while), I grab a mandarin orange out of the basket on our table.

Don't get me wrong, I do still eat ice cream and brownies. I still make mini pies for dinner (bacon, mushroom and cheddar are my favorites), but I'm not constantly craving it anymore.  I'm not constantly in need of something sweet.  I do enjoy it from time to time, but my cravings are starting to go away.

I am watching my carb intake, and my sugar intake (although the White Chocolate Mocha I just had at Starbucks probably would kill any Atkins subscriber immediately), but I'm not starving myself, I'm not feeling deprived.  I feel healthier than I have in a really long time.  I do sort of envy the people who start and continue a program like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or even Atkins.  These are things I just don't have the mental toughness and will power to follow through on.  So, I will just keep on keeping on, making healthier choices without really depriving myself and I will just learn to be happier.  I"m learning that happiness, in the long run, means more to me than food.

I am finding other things to be happy about:  my Nook, my wonderful boyfriend, a shared meal at the dinner table, a good conversation.  I will always be thankful that AM has brought these things into my life. (Ok... ok... enough sappy romance.)

I will continue with my weight loss journey.  I will lose weight, but I will not obsess over it.  I will eat healthier foods (and share them with you, oh obscure reader).  I will strive to lead a healthier, happier, more active lifestyle.  For now, I leave with one parting thought:

It is not how much you weigh that will be weighed in the balance at the end of your life. Friends and family will not judge you on how large your casket is, but how large your heart was.  Be kind, gentle reader, to those around you.  It is the greatest measure of a person.

With love and lollipops,

ToryLynn

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

Episode 9: Vitamins and Vegetables

So, I am supposed to take a multivitamin every day and I have been neglecting it out of laziness.  I finally found my bottle of Woman's One-A-Day (which, oddly enough are called petites and you have to take 2 a day), but I am finally adding vitamins to my weight loss regime.

You know, I'm surprised that I made it to nine posts.  Twelve to go until I feel that I have really made it a good habit.

So, today I made Weight Watcher's Garden Vegetable soup.  It smells divine.  My refrigerator looks like a farmer's market, full of greenery and color and 4 identical containers of soup in beef broth.  Some things I learned today while making soup...

1. We do not own a vegetable peeler.
2. Carrots still taste ok with their skins on.
3. If you mix garlic and onion together in a pot with carrots and saute them, the air will become filled with a thick vapor of onion-garlic essence that makes AH's eyes nearly swell shut.
4. Spinach is remarkably easy to cut into soup-making bites.
5. Carrots are not so easy to cut...

The soup tastes pretty good though. I'm looking for ways to make variations on it, like figuring out some winter veggies that would go well in it, or finding a way to make it perhaps a bit thicker, like a stew, and add some points and meat pieces.  Figuring out how to make it in my crock pot would be great, as I want to make it on Sunday mornings and package it for lunches for school.

I am trying, and I am keeping up with it.  Exact points used today, though I didn't get all of my veggies in like I should have, I did get all of my low-fat milks in, which was always the hardest part for me before.  I am feeling gorgeous today, and my confidence is amazing.  I feel good about myself because I know I am loved.

Speaking of being loved, AH has the evening off for the first time in about 2 weeks.  I am going to go spend some unconscious time with him.. though in reality, I'll probably just fall asleep on the couch!

Thanks for reading!

ToryLynn

Episode 2: So.. I can't do math

This tracking my foods thing is easy, but not as easy as I had thought.

I bought this three month planner to keep track of all of my food.  This is what I've eaten today with the corresponding point value and how I had it figured out. I get 45 points a day

0 Banana (power food! yay!) 45 left
6  Lemon Treats (yummy!) 39
8 Cobb Salad 31 (more powerfood!)
0 Grapes from Frank 31
0 Clemintines 31
3 lemon chiffon cookies (sugar free) 28
3 chocolate chip cookies (sugar free) 25
6 wendy's chicken nuggets 19
12 Wendy's homestyle chicken 7
11 Wendy's medium fries -4
3 Wendy's BBQ sauce -7
0 Banana (power food again!) -7
4 chocolate chips -11
1 creme d'menthe -12

So.. 45 + (-12) = 57.  Right? I'm not insane?  But when I put all of this into the food tracker for weight watchers, it tells me that I've used 65.  Huh?  OK.. recalcuate... Still not getting it. Recalcuate again. Hrm..

I'm confused.  So.. look at the meal points...

Breakfast = Bananas, Lemon treats and Cobb Salad.
Lunch = Cobb Salad.. wait.. um.. ok.. my eight points off.. is right there, I'm too much of a math doofus not to see it and I'm stressing over numbers. BAH!

So go back to the tracker, check all the foods, it says I've used 57 points... I'm all right now. Just a little bit of stress, but hey.  I can handle it.  I add in a few of my activity points (6 earned) and that leaves 51.. so I take 6 from my left over weekly allowance of 42.. and I still have 35 glorious points left for the week.

I should take a few of those off, since I decided that my weigh in and meeting time will be on Sundays and I technically started on a Monday, but I'm not going to.

This might be a bit difficult for me to do, what with all the math, but I know I can do this.  It will just take time and patience and the ability to add and subtract numbers.  I can do that (maybe).  I think I just have to be a bit more careful about adding in foods and keep everything in my written tracker (which lets me use my fancy pens anyway), and then add it into the computer tracker every evening.  Then I blog to you fine folks, which really is just for me, since I am writing this mostly to keep track of my journey for myself.  If I happen to inspire anybody on my way through, even better!  I can accept my musey glory, even if it comes in delicious treats.

I know I can't post the weight watcher's recipes here, since they're probably all copyrighted and everything, but any new recipes I come up with that I think are scrumptious will go here with a point value and everything.  Maybe even pictures, but I'm not going to get ahead of myself. Hehehe.. food blog. How awesome would that be. (/me Imagines paparazzi following her around asking her about her latest fabulous low-calorie recipe, NBC on the line to discuss a new hit cooking show, cookbook signing tours.... hey! It could happen!)

The downside of all of this exercise and lower calorie regime is that my energy levels have dropped to seriously declining levels.  I am *exhausted* most of the time... and an exhausted TL is a cranky TL!  So, I am off to curl up with a good McEwan novel and listen to the beautiful voice of my favorite executive transvestite, Eddie Izzard, as he lulls me into hilarous, happy dream filled sleep.

Goodnight all!

TL