Like Buttah

I stepped on the scale this morning expecting good things.

I worked H-A-R-D this week.  My body was mad at me last night after a week of tough, full-body workouts.  But you can probably guess what I'm going to say next.

Wait for it ...

Wait for it ...

Wait for it ...

It's a good sore.


I had to.  It needed to be said.  Because it's true.

But I digress.  You were probably wondering about the scale.

I lost 3.2 pounds this week, bringing my total thus far to 9.8 pounds.

Ask me how BADLY I wanted that to be TEN pounds.  Ask me how many times I stepped off the scale and back on, or how many times I peed (in the toilet, not on the scale) to try and squeeze that extra -0.2 out of my mean old scale.

But alas, my scale is nothing if not annoyingly and disgustingly accurate.  Which, honestly, kinda makes me WANT to pee on it sometimes.  But I try to restrain myself.

Regardless, that 3.2 makes me happy.  I earned every last tenth-of-an-ounce.

I'll have to wait until next week to get up over that 10 pound mark, but in the meantime, I've melted off roughly 39 sticks of butter so far.

That's like ... I dunno ... 8 episodes of Paula Deen's cooking show.  It's just a lotta buttah, y'all.

Oh, and did I mention that Valentine's Day happened in the middle of that 3.2?   That's right, even with a date to PF Chang's (meat 'n veggies only, thankyouverymuch) with the love of my life followed by some obligatory Valentine's Day chocolate, I managed to part with 3.2 pounds.

I'll own that.

How did you do this week?  How many Paula Deen episodes did you burn through?

The right direction

Down one pound for the week.

Would I like it to be more?  Yep.   But will I take that one pound, considering my middle-of-the-week carb frenzy and the fact that--thanks to that visitor I mentioned earlier--I'm probably hauling around about a gallon of fluid in my cankles alone?

Most definitely.

But enough about the scale.

I feel good.  I have changed up my workouts over the last couple of weeks and I am feeling the effects of that.  I have been focusing on full-body strength training routines that hit as many muscles as possible at once (kettlebell swings, squat presses, lunges with upright rows, and so on).  And man do I feel it.  It's great to feel like you really worked everything head-to-toe.   I'm diggin' it.

And let's not forget the 1,000 push ups challenge brought to you by my evil former personal trainer.

I love him.

I hate him.

In case there's any doubt, let me tell you right now:  700-push-ups-in-six-days DOES cause a significant amount of discomfort in the upper body region.  It kicks in right around day three.  Trust me.

Or, go do 100 push ups per day for 10 days straight and find out for yourself.

So, after a week of mostly good eating and hard workouts and 5,000 push ups (give or take a few), the scale is moving in the right direction.

I wonder what it will do if I skip the feeding frenzy this week.   I intend to find out.

When Mother Nature Calls

From my first post on this blog, I said that I'd keep it real and share all of the ups and downs.

The following post is a down, brought to you by Mother Nature.

It all started yesterday.  And when I say "started,"  I think you girls know what I mean.  Aunt Flo came to visit and it turns out she's got a WICKED hollow leg.  Man, can that old girl eat.

I ate very well for the better part of the day, but when I got home from work, I was struck out of nowhere with ravenous hunger.

I mean, AUNT FLO was.

If it looked or smelled like a carb and it wasn't nailed down, it was consumed.

Ladies, you're feelin' me, right?

I may be exaggerating a bit, really.  My Aunt Flo's kitchen spree "only" took place over the space of about two hours.  It wasn't an all-day or even an all-afternoon event.  Casualties may or may not have included leftover Super Bowl queso and a PBnJ.  But I can't say for sure.

Aunt Flo knows, but she's not talking.

All I can say is, this does not represent the majority of my efforts to get healthy.  For the most part, I've been a VERY good girl.  The occasional loss of sanity does not give me the excuse to give up and consider myself a failure.

It's a learning process.  As long as the good choices continue to outnumber the bad choices, I'm on the right track.

So whatever your reason for locking yourself in the pantry while your kids bang on the door crying hysterically (because they know what you're doing in there with their Chips Ahoy), forgive yourself.   Or do what I do and blame Mother Nature.

Move on.  Tomorrow is another day. A better day.

The weekend aftermath

I said I'd come back on Monday and report about how I did with my no-gain goal for the weekend.

As of this morning, the scale said I was up two pounds from Saturday morning.

This is not great, but better.  My husband saw everything I ate this weekend.  He would attest to the fact that I did not eat enough to gain two pounds.  At least not enough for a NORMAL person whose body isn't an unforgiving jerk.

I believe that this two pounds could easily represent water and stuff I'm still carrying around in my insides.  Sorry if that's too gross for you.

Here comes some accountability:

For our Saturday date, we went to a Thai place and I ordered the seafood and veggies curry dish.  I had barely  ANY rice with that.  I shared some with my husband and took the rest home to my daughter.   I had a helping of hubby's beef and veggies entree, too.  Good stuff.  I had a plain old Hershey bar for my treat afterward.  We had our Thai at around 4:00 and  I didn't eat anything else for the rest of the day.  Not to starve myself, but just because I wasn't hungry.

For Super Bowl Sunday, I made tacos with regular sized corn tortillas (not the giant kind) and ate three for lunch.  We had some queso dip with corn chips later on during the game and I had one small helping of that.  That's it.  I ate a very sensible breakfast and nothing else the rest of the day.

These were my "cheats" for the weekend.  I'd hardly call any of that going crazy.  Certainly not "gain two pounds" crazy.

But this is my life.  This is my reality. When I eat really well all week and work out hard, my metabolism is nice to me.  But when I deviate from the healthy stuff, even for a moment, it suddenly forgets all of the nice things I did for it all week long and hangs on to every last ounce to punish me.

But my mantra is still "No Excuses."  It doesn't matter that my metabolism is bi-polar and hates my freaking guts.  It is what it is.  I just have to work that much harder and be that much smarter.

I do believe those two pounds aren't "real" pounds and that they'll disappear quickly.  I worked out VERY hard this morning and was right back on plan as of 4:30 a.m.

Protein, veggies, nuts, seeds, controlled healthy carbs, almost no sugar, lots of water.

Take that, you dumb old metabolism.

Weight loss enemy #1: The weekend

Remember last weekend when I proudly declared that I had lost 4.6 pounds in 5 days?

So do I.  That was awesome.

Remember last Monday morning--two days later--when I got on the scale and had gained back over the weekend pretty much all of that?

I do.  Opposite of awesome.

Welcome to my life for the last several months or more.  I have a special gift for sabotaging myself weekend after weekend.

Eat nearly perfectly Monday-Friday.  Good.
Get up at 4:30 a.m. six mornings per week and work out hard.  Really good.
Turn a couple of cheat meals on the weekend into an Olympic sport.  Bad.
Spend the next five days trying to RE-lose those pounds I lost and then RE-gained over the weekend.  BAD.  All caps.

What's that saying about the definition of insanity?  Google it if you don't know.

I have been losing the same 4-5 pounds for months and months now.  Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is making me ins... well... you know.

So, while the scale this morning shows a loss of 1.2 pounds from last week's weigh-in, it does not tell the whole story.  From last MONDAY until now, I've lost 5 pounds, after gaining back nearly all of what I lost last week.

Which is stupid.  Really, really, stupid.

What this means is that I am perfectly capable of losing around 5 pounds per week.  As hard as I work and as well as I'm eating, this is a completely reasonable expectation.  But because I am FREAKING INSANE, I'm ending up with a net loss of 1 pound.  Or even zero pounds sometimes.

Not reasonable.  Not even a little bit.

I work too hard and need this TOO BADLY to keep failing myself in this way week after week, month after month.

So I have a new goal.  No more gaining on the weekends.  I WILL, at the very least, maintain for the weekend, so that those five gross pounds (emphasis on gross) become five NET pounds.

And so that, when my friends go and Google the definition of insanity, they won't see this:

I'll be back Monday to report.

I cooked something

Trying to eat healthy is helping me to learn to enjoy cooking.

(Insert laugh here)

"Enjoy" might be a strong word.   I'm learning to hate it less and see the value in it when I get to enjoy the outcome.

That's more believable.

Last night I made this.

Sesame fried rice

I cannot tell a lie.  I'm more than a little afraid of brown rice.  I always see these great brown rice recipes with the cooks commenting on how "delicious" their dish was.  So I tell myself that THIS time, I'll make it and like it.

Not so much.  It's the only food I can think of that manages to be chewy and crunchy and bland all at once.

Why does it have to do that?

I had a much better experience last night, however.

Incidentally, I borrowed this from Andie over at canyoustayfordinner.com.  She's a wonderful writer and glowing weight loss success story.

In other words, my hero.

But please don't go look at her pictures of food.  They're much, MUCH better than mine.  I think she uses an actual camera to take hers.  Maybe I should look into that.

(Oh, all right, I'll save you the trouble.  Here's what hers looks like.  Kinda makes mine look like a plate of fish bait, right?):

Happy now?

I used some different veggies (Andie said it was OK) than she used and tweaked it here and there, but it still turned out great.

Sesame Fried Rice

-2 C. cooked brown rice, set aside.  I used the pre-cooked pouch of brown/long grain rice instead.
-2-3 eggs (I used three to add more protein)
-1 T. sesame oil
-1/2 tsp. ground ginger  (this is what I used, but you can use 2 TB minced fresh)
-A few shakes of garlic powder (or 2 cloves, minced)
-1/2 C. chopped green onion
-Broccoli slaw made up of shredded broccoli/carrots/red cabbage. You can find bags of this mixture in the produce section.  Andie used different veggies, but these actually worked really well.  You can substitute other veggies of your choosing.
-4 T. soy sauce
-1-1/2 T. brown sugar (I tweaked this with 1 TB brown sugar and 1/2 TB. Stevia, but  1.5 TBs of brown sugar spread out over an entire recipe doesn't amount to much anyway.  Do it your way)

1.  Scramble the eggs over medium heat in a skillet with some non-stick spray.  Cook until fluffy.  Set aside the cooked eggs in a separate container.  Wipe out the skillet.
2.  Turn the heat up to medium high and add sesame oil.
3.  Add in the veggies, green onion, garlic, and ginger.  Sautee for about 5 minutes.
4.  Add the rice and sautee for about 2 minutes.  You want the rice to get a little crispy.
5.  Whisk together the brown sugar and soy sauce in bowl until sugar is dissolved.  Add to the skillet and stir well to coat evenly.
6.  Add the eggs into the mixture and stir well.

Done.

This is so very delicious, unless you don't have much love for Asian food, in which case ...

What is WRONG with you?

I served it up (to myself) as a side with a baked chicken breast that I seasoned with some McCormick Montreal Steak Seasoning.  And before you ask ... NO, it's not just for steaks and NO, it's not just for Canadians.

Like I said, I did a few things differently, but this still turned out really tasty and will DEFINITELY be a weapon in my healthy dishes arsenal.  I may try it without the rice and add more vegetables.

Try it.  Best fish bait EVER.  You can't hardly taste them worms at all.