On the (better) track

Well, my neighbor moved, and I will say it has given me a major change in habits. I've been cleaning my own apartment more, and I've been eating at home more.
The only thing I've been slacking on recently is my lunch bringing. I need to start bringing my lunch again, and stop eating fast food. When I have been eating out I've at least been trying to do so at Subway and other slightly better for you places.

I am meeting a potential new roommate today for coffee, but otherwise I haven't had coffee for several days. Or soda! I have been making tea at work and trying to make that my caffeine/hot drink of choice. Work ordered some tea to keep at the store and I tried the orange spice tea. It was delicious.

I've been slacking on health lately and I need to get better. I want to feel better about myself and just feel healthier.

I've also been either running two laps or walking three laps around the apartment complex for the last week or so, almost nightly. It's good for Oscar and it's good for me too!

Daily mile

www.dailymile.com

My first goal is 10 miles per week, better than 13:50 a mile. Pretty humble beginnings, but I think I need to feel like I can actually accomplish something.

When I was 21, I picked up running without any study of the sport. Probably averaged less than 15 miles a week at my peak, which isn't anything. But the changes in my body with just those miles in just a couple of months were incredible. I'm not stuck in a fat suit. Some people have a lot to overcome to lose any amount of weight– I'm not one of those. My body can be lean. I'm just lazy, partially, and mainly a huge overconsumer.

How many resolutions does it take to be in the shape I want to be? No idea. But here goes another one!

Oops

My neighbor's boyfriend moved in due to some unfortunate circumstances, and it's created some ripples, both good and bad.
The bad being: he has a dog also, and 4 dogs in a small one bedroom apartment (when two don't get along, one feels the need to mark his territory everywhere, and one is so stressed from the change she pees anytime someone looks at her weird), Oscar is One Dog Too Many, even though he's none of the ones listed above.
The Good: He's really nice, has stepped up to help my neighbor when she's needed it (and almost losing your job is one of those times), and LOVES to cook.
The Bad: They are not healthy meals.
The Good: They are delicious, and make me want to cook more as well. Hopefully I can inspire a few more healthy recipes.
The Bad: I have eaten like a gluttonous pig lately, and it shows.
The Good: I have worked out more, and I am going to the barn tomorrow. Not to ride, but to visit and hopefully traipse about to groom some ponies.

A couple here...

...and a couple there!! I tried on a pair of jeans that haven't fit for probably 8 months.... a wee bit tight but they FIT.
What changed?
A lot less soda and keeping groceries at work. I buy a loaf of bread, lunch meat, cheese and snacks (sun chips and yogurt and/or some version of pudding, and sometimes oreo's... oops), and now iced tea also.
I'm not sure if Snapple iced tea is really that much better than soda, but we're going with it.
I have been REALLY bad about Starbucks. I blame the pumpkin spice latte, and to help negate that I've also stored a small thing if pumpkin pie spice creamer at work to make coffee there. It's not that it tastes like a pumpkin spice latte (it doesn't, but it IS very good) but it helps.
I think it also had to do with my minimal once a week KILLER riding workouts. Which have stopped recently, and have me concerned. I desperately need to get back into the habit of walking. I also wish Houston had more options for hiking, instead of shady back-alley trails running along somewhat shady neighborhoods that just scream "Someone was murdered here recently."
Or maybe I'm paranoid.
I have also been working upwards of 50 hours a week, and not taking lunch breaks (I have been eating, just working while eating).

P.S. I loved checking on this blog and seeing so many posts from Mashley! It was motivating and as soon as I finish blogging I have every intent of flopping on the ground for a few minutes in an "ab exercise" fashion.

Hey hey, blog-ay-ay..

Welp!

I didn't drastically lose ten pounds in two weeks, but I am doing decidedly better. Good choices are coming more easily. Having the house clean helps. I can't explain why, but it does. I'm more inclined to cook, maybe. Or eat here.

Today, Polly and I struck out at 7 for a 40 minute powerwalk in the wet air. I came home and sauteed some Idaho Gold potatoes in olive oil and scrambled eggs and put it all on whole wheat tortillas for breakfast. Coffee too, plus the requisite water.

Lunch was unexpected; my former boss took me out to Elaine's (Richard's restaurant) and I had the tortilla-crusted trout, one buttered roll, and some slices of watermelon and plum. And iced tea with lime. Yum.

Snack was a glass of 2% organic milk with Ovaltine. Super chocolatty, but it lasted me 'til well after six.

Dinner I just finished. I sauteed an entire zucchini, threw most of an old jar of Prego mushroom-y spaghetti sauce, and at the end threw in several huge handfuls of spinach to make the consistency really fibrous and yummy once it all boiled down. Ate that on top of whole wheat rotini, sprinkled some fresh Parmesan, and a plain slice of sprouted grain bread, toasted.

Right now after a few glasses of water, I'm enjoying a Diet Dr. Pepper (hey, it's been a little while since I've had one.. like since Monday, whoops) and thinking about the ice cream sandwich I have stashed away in the fridge for later.

I can't give up chocolate altogether. There's no point. I eat some version of it every day, but I think that's just The Way It Is. I was a little bad Monday - Tuesday, eating out twice (one time it was salad!) and frozen pizza (but Kashi!) and like an entire bag of edamame to myself on Tuesday.. And 1.5 glasses of wine. And two other drinks Monday. Whoops. Not willing to give that up altogether.

I feel better. I think my clothes are fitting somewhat okay. I went off of birth control pills —and onto condoms, which we are religious about, please note— and am interested to see what results that may yield in a month or two.

I think my baseline is getting better. Eventually I'd like to add more exercise, but just making sure I do SOMETHING 30 to 40 minutes three times a week is a nice change in consistency. I would like to run again.. It's just that I sort of hate running.. Hm!

Phew

My butt hurts from riding this morning. Which is good on the one hand; bad that just a month off of real riding has already begun to turn me into a limp mushroom.

Breakfast was a banana and a slice of sprouted grain with PB.

Lunch was a tuna sandwich with a tiny bit of mayo —tiny; I hate mayo really, but it helps the tuna out— and salt, pepper, and baby spinach. And four saltine crackers, and a Diet 7up.. And a handful of chocolate chips.

I have to fail at least once a day. Never have I ever (at my skinniest and fittest) skipped failing at some chocolate.

Also had a glass of red wine last night. Just one, and I don't feel guilty. This being in addition to fish tacos and chips, but whatever.

Stupid "no alcohol" plan.

Workout tonight.

"You may delay, but time will not." — B. Franklin

Leave it to Kara to bring this blog back up, whereas I have been eying its presence with disdain whenever I peek back into the Blogger world. But she's right— it was a good tool, and shouldn't be ignored.

The past week, as life has finally seemed to settle down and the threat of Road Trip Food (a.k.a, free-for-all garbage in a bag) is behind me, I've been able to make some much better choices.

Breakfasts have included occasionally two eggs, sunny-side-up, with sprouted grain flourless bread and salsa. Sometimes, like today, I just have Greek yogurt and granola or Kashi cereal— something with a lot of crunch. Other times, it's a slice of sprouted grain bread with peanut butter and a yogurt. (Been eating Wallaby Organic Lemon yogurt for awhile now.. Nomnom.)

Lunch today was Richard's doing (though I was pretty specific on what I wanted.) Scrambled eggs with spinach and tomatoes, a little bit of extra-sharp cheddar, and salsa in two whole-wheat tortillas. As "dessert" and a way to motivate me to go back to work, I drank a big cup of coffee with some chocolate Ovaltine powder (hey, vitamins, right?!) in it, and some organic milk. Also been eating a lot of soup.

Last night's dinner sounds completely random, but it is one of my FAVORITE things: what we call sweet potato "pillows," thick slices of sweet potato tossed in a bag with olive oil, thyme, sage, LOTS of black pepper, some cayenne pepper, and sea salt, and then baked at high heat. Plus a spinach salad with feta (I've found it's cheaper to buy the blocks instead of the crumbles, and it lasts longer.. and takes .2 seconds to crumble it) and tomato and balsamic vinaigrette, and.. call me weird.. but two veggie dogs with ketchup and mustard wrapped in wheat tortillas. I LOVE veggie dogs. Gross but true. Richard had a sausage link in his, but the same meal. He's been very open and happy to eat my rabbit food.

And most of all.. I drink every meal with a huge glass of water first. At least pint-glass sized, if not larger. Buying a Brita water pitcher has possibly been one of the best contributions to my well-being— part of the draw of drinking orange juice or apple juice or Italian soda (we have been stocking lemon and prickly pear flavors in our fridge; SO tasty) when I come in from the outdoors is that it's COOL, and easy, and fruity and nice. Now, having filtered water in a big pitcher that is constantly kept cold is one more reason I can't start chugging milk instead of water first. If I want something else, like juice, than I drink a glass of water first. A lot of times it curbs the desire to drink the juice in the first place, and if it doesn't, it means I drink the next thing for taste instead of thirst. Meaning I drink less. And then eat less down the line.

As for snacks.. a lot of natural applesauce (no sweetener,) crispbread with Laughing Cow light swiss and basil, tons of green tea— I find that the act of making tea with a little honey can substitute for my natural instinct to relax with some sort of food. That's not to say I don't still want to comfort-emotion eat, but the tea helps. I'm tempted to ask for a real tea set for my birthday so I can graduate from Tazo bags, but I'd probably screw it up.

I realize that I'm going to blow a lot of calories on going out with friends; even though I make "healthy" choices and avoid most meats and overprocessed things, I can still eat a lot of food in one sitting. But structuring the rest of my home meals accepting that fact is helping, and making me feel less like a lard.

As for working out, I've put no stipulation other than I need to do SOMETHING, at least 30 minutes of it, five times a week. Exercisetv.tv has 80-something free videos you can watch on the internet, and I've done a few of them in the evening when I don't have the motivation to power walk or go to the workout room and try P90X again. My job keeps me from being sedentary, but being in "working" shape is quite different from "work-out" shape. Yeah, I can throw saddles and lift buckets all damn day, but that doesn't mean I can run a marathon.

Finally.. I am reading (and this is hard to admit) Bob Green's "The Best Life Diet" book. And following it, in Phase I currently. (Still not totally sure I want to go without ANY alcohol for 2 months again.. I think I may count a weekly glass of wine as a health benefit instead of cheating.)

Basically what that entails is the following:

• Don't attempt to cut out foods altogether, unless they're just really terrible for you. (I'm pretty good, and I've been a pescetarian since May, and I don't really eat a lot of highly processed stuff.) (That said, I fully plan on eating a little bit of turkey at Thanksgiving, and when co-workers start hunting, I will happily be eating venison and other game again.)
  
• Identify your current physical activity level (there's some outlined in his book, or you can figure it out for yourself— I was surprised that I couldn't call myself more than a 1 [between 0 and 5] because when I started reading the book, I wasn't adhering to regular workouts even though my job was physical and I walk everywhere I can) and bump it up at least one level.
• Don't drink alcohol.
• 3 meals and at least one snack per day. Stop eating at least 2 hours before bed.
• Drink water when you eat.
• Take a multivitamin.
• Don't weigh yourself. (I don't anyway, except when I get on the Wii.)

After 4 weeks, you can either ramp it up to Phase II, or keep it at Phase I.

I don't care where my weight's at. My weight never gets that high, considering my height and build. I just want my clothes to fit better, and I want my endurance and core strength to get better.