So Many Mondays!

"I'll start again on Monday."  The story of my life!

Mondays, firsts of the month...all good times to recommit to your healthy lifestyle, right?  That's what I tell myself every Friday and Saturday night, or on like the 25th, 26th, 27th (etc.) of the month when I feel pleasantly gorged from a calorie-laden, satisfyingly fatty, all-around-happy-making meal.  So imagine the meal I eat when it's the weekend AND the end of the month!

Well, I won't go into details, but I can say it wasn't pretty.  I didn't binge eat or anything like that, but my weekend did involve the following elements:  1) Cheesecake Factory, complete with cheesecake (because how could you not?), 2) my brother-in-law's birthday, complete with birthday cake, way too much wine, and lots of cheese and crackers, and 3) homemade chocolate chip cookies.  I made over 50 on Friday and I think there are 7 left today.  I wonder how that happens.  (Hint:  It's not Hubs' fault.)

The good news?  Well, I'm maintaining my weight.  I haven't gained, which of course is a miracle.  Too bad I'm not looking to hold steady, eh?  So okay, I have a bad weekend behind me...and today is February 1st!  Oh, thank you Jesus for the first of the month again.  You bestow those on me 12 times a year and I am just TICKLED.

I am feeling a little more serious this month, for two reasons.  The first is that I am meeting up with a few of my girlfriends in April for a weekend of drunken, bisexual debauchery in New York City.  I would like to lose a little more weight by then (even though I look super-fabulous already).  The bigger reason though is that we have our family's annual beach vacation in July, and quite frankly I'm tired of not being at my goal weight every time we f*cking go. 

So here's the deal.  I have 23 weeks (and a few days) before that vacation.  If I commit to losing 1.5 pounds a week I can be down about 35 pounds, which really isn't that lofty of a goal.  I'd rather be down 45 (keeping my fingers crossed for 2 pounds a week!) but 35 if better than nothing.  Of course that means I'll only be down 12 pounds by my Girls' Weekend, but again, it's better than nothing.

Since today's Tuesday, that will be my official weigh-in day.  I'll have to wait until next week though, because I just had cereal and coffee for breakfast.  ;) 

Oh...and please don't look back in my blog at how many times I've "recommitted", okay?  Have some mercy.  ;)  And hey, I still lost over 60 pounds and have kept it off for 2 years.  That's a victory, right???

Happy Tuesday!  (I'm taking a non-sick sick day today.  Wheeee!)

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Pssst, hey Lauren...thanks for kicking me in the pants to get another entry up!  :)

Hungry and Disorderly

Oh my, folks.  Let me tell you about this weekend.  Well, to preface, let me tell you that I bake like Betty Crocker.  I'm seriously an amazing baker, and when I bake something, I can't help but to partake.  And so on Friday night, as a gift to my husband for being an amazing man, I baked chocolate chip cookies.  52 of them.

I think that 35 of them may have found their way to my stomach over the course of my three-day weekend.  I'm not exaggerating or trying to be funny...I actually think that happened.  I say that because there were only about 15 cookies left as of this morning, and I just didn't see Hubs eating as many as I did.  Well, that and the fact that Hubs just doesn't binge-eat like I do.  Oh, and on Sunday morning Hubs brought me a donut back from the coffee shop, and I scarfed that as well.  If it weren't for the cookies and the donut it would have been a successful weekend.

Hmmm...okay, that's kind of a lie.  Because Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night, about an hour before we fell asleep, I binged like a starving animal.  Well, maybe it doesn't quite classify as bingeing, but I ate a LOT.  Potato chips, pretty much as many as I could shove in my mouth over a 15 minute period; mixed nuts, which were so delicious and salty and salty and delicious; did I mention chocolate chip cookies?  Oh, and caramel corn, tons of it.  And last night - the piece de resistance - there was pretty much nothing left in our pantry so I found a box of crackers we got in a gift basket for Christmas and pretty much ate three-quarters of those.

Wow, this was like confession. 

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Today has been more successful on paper, but not mentally.  I had a good fiber-filled breakfast, a great fruit- and veggie-filled lunch, and I have an apple and a cheese stick for my commute snack.  But mentally and physically...and I really think it's both, though more mental when it comes to what I choose to eat...I'm ravenous.  I want to eat and eat and eat until the horrible food demon inside of me shuts the hell up, I want him to feel satisfied for once, and I want him to leave me alone.  He's like the monkey on my back that I keep feeding so he'll quiet down, only perpetuating the cycle.  Fucking monkey can kiss my ass.

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And that was cathartic.

Happy Tuesday, folks.  Send good vibes out into the universe for me to have a better week, would ya?  ;)

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Oh, and how could I forget?  I lost two more pounds last week, bringing me down 5 pounds in two weeks.  Not bad, except that I probably undid most of that over the last four days.  Boo!!!

Blindness? Death?

Happy Friday, folks!  This is just a very quick check-in to say that I weighed in today and lost 3 pounds.  This takes me down to a whopping....oh, damn it.  I just still can't write that number!  Instead, I'll leave you with a few pictures from vacation last week.  We were snowshoeing up to a point called Artist's Bluff in Franconia Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  This hike is just enough to get the heart pumping in the spring, summer, and fall...but in the winter on a pair of snowshoes it's WORK!  And it was a great time.  :)

That's pretty much a 45 degree angle.  (I was a physics minor...I'm not exaggerating!)

See that rock up there?  That's the high point, and that's where we eventually ended up.

Hubs took this picture.  Snowshoeing this really was a fun time.

And the view is ALWAYS worth it.  :)



In other news, my eye is STILL blurry.  I went to the ophthalmologist for a follow-up yesterday and he said, "Yeah, that's definitely not a corneal abrasion.  I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not that.  You'll see our corneal specialist next week."

Boy, when someone is talking about your eye, you really don't want to hear them say "I don't know what it is".  LOL  Ah well...nothing to do but wait until Wednesday to see the specialist and hope I don't go blind or die before then.

Enjoy the weekend!!!  :)

Return of the Purple Monster

Happy Wednesday, folks!  First and foremost, thanks to the few and the proud who welcomed me back.  :)  It was so nice to see that you guys were still here!  Barbara, you were right about that blogging every day thing...that's way too ambitious for me!  It's evidenced by the fact that I said I'd be blogging daily starting Monday, and now it's Wednesday.  You've probably noticed that I didn't post my weight, but that's because I'm not weighing in until Friday. I figure that instead of traumatizing myself, I'll get on the scale after 5 days of peeing and pooing and getting on the wagon a bit. It's just better for my mental health that way.


Things have been going quite well since Monday.  Lots of good food, 5-9 fruits and veggies, and I'm finally pooing normally again.  Sorry if that's too much, but I gotta tell you...a great way for me to tell if my diet sucks is whether I'm pooing or not.  When I don't get enough fruits or veggies, everything likes to stay in my cozy digestive tract, which makes me uncomfortable and angry.  So yay for a normal poo schedule!  My only challenge lately - well, since the summer, really - has been getting in 64 ounces of water a day.  I was always so good with that, but since July I've been doing all outpatient work, and I just don't have the kind of time I had before to use the bathroom.  Isn't that pathetic?  But seriously, if I peed as much as I do when I drink all that water, I'd never get out of work on time.  So I've been getting in about 52 or so...not terrible, but I could do better.  I've also upped my coffee intake from 20 ounces to 40 ounces, but they say an extra cup or two is good for you.  ;)  I certainly feel more alert!

Some of you might remember when I tried my hand at blending fruits and veggies into a smoothie and came up with the Purple Monster.  Well, it's back and better than ever!  I took a few pictures of it because I was proud of how healthy it looked.  The pictures suck, but luckily this isn't a photography blog.

Here it is chilling out in the blender:

For two Purple Monsters (Hubs wanted one!) - 2 cups of unsweetened vanilla almond milk, 2 big handfuls of spinach, 2 bananas, and 2 cups of frozen blueberries.  It was seriously awesome!

Here it is all blended up and looking lovely:

Oh my gosh, it was so good.  I really enjoyed it!

Interesting tidbit:  Hubs and I were in the White Mountains last week doing some snowshoeing.  On Thursday I bent down to tighten my strap while we were hiking and a stick poked me right in the eye.  I said, "If I didn't have more respect for nature I'd break that f*cking thing in half."  Well, Mother Nature heard me.  I started having photosensitivity and tearing of my eye on Saturday, and when I finally went to the ophthalmologist on Monday (because it was still horrible) I found out I have a nasty corneal abrasion.  So now I'm on antibiotics for it.  So anyway, my vision was a little blurry and I was cutting something on Monday night with our Ginsu knife...and I went nearly through the tip of my finger.  It was absolutely ridiculous.  So I have a corneal abrasion, I'm on Augmentin for a sinus infection (that's already cleared), and I have a Band-Aid on my left index finger covering a gross wound.  Which leads me to...

Fun fact o' the day:  Yesterday at work I smelled marijuana all morning.  I thought all of my patients were smoking pot.  You know what it was though?  It was the smell of my Band-Aid.  Yep, my Band-Aid (a clean one, mind you, not a grody old dirty one) smelled like marijuana.  Who knew?

Goodnight!  :)

Knock, knock: Who's there?

Oh, it's just me.  ;)

I've been a bad blogger.  I've also been a bad dieter!  One of my New Year's resolutions?  Just like millions of other people, I will be eating healthier and finally reaching my goal weight in 2011!  And maybe NOT like millions of other people, I will be blogging every day, so please stay tuned.  I know I don't have tons of readers, but for the few that stayed with me, I hope you're still here...and I hope you'll stick with me for 2011.  :)

Oh, ummm...this will be starting January 3rd.  LOL!  See you Monday!

Uggly

I can't help myself.

I am loving Uggs!!! After much complaining yet admiring, and a lot of back-and-forth in my mind, Hubs took me out last night to feed me delicious food and to shop for Uggs. Here's the thing: I get that they're ugly. I really do. But let me tell you something...I put my foot into a pair of black Classic Talls and I thought I saw Jesus. Oh my God, the warmth and the comfort... It was love.

And with that successful trial, my mind was made up. There was only one problem - Bloomingdale's didn't have my size, the bastards! But that's okay, ordering them online is where it's at. And in preparation for the boots, I ordered two fabulous pairs of skinny jeans from Gap today. 

You read that right.  The (formerly?) fat chick bought skinny jeans.  No need to applaud.

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Hubs and I got back from a hiking trip to the White Mountains a few weeks ago.  I meant to post pictures but of course I found better things to do.  So here are some highlights:

Lonesome Lake, which is actually a mountain tarn.  We'd already hiked to 2740' at this point.

The view from Lowe's Bald Spot.  This was a LONG hike - 5.5 miles round trip, lots of elevation gained, lots of rock climbing involved.  Exciting!

Square Ledge, one of our favorite hikes.  Short but very steep - a lot of elevation gained over a short distance.  Rock scrambling/climbing involved here.  Love it!

Here I am doing a little scrambling:

 Don't mind the look, I'm a bit tired.  This is after our Lowe's Bald Spot hike...I'm eating a veggie sandwich with hummus on multi-grain bread.  Delicious!

Lowe's Bald spot again.  Yeah, we had to climb that rock.  :)



So what's the point?  The point is that I am so grateful to my body for allowing me to do things like this - for not failing me, for treating me so well even though I spent a lot of time treating her poorly.  It's not quite an unconditional love - Lord knows we CAN do enough to ourselves to cause permanent damage - but it certainly is a forgiving one.

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Who's up for a challenge?  My sister and I are!  Our challenge is to lose 15 pounds by Christmas.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Huh?

All right, all right.  So it's been a hundred years since I blogged.  I just wasn't feeling it, quite honestly.  I'd like to say that I was doing something fabulous like changing the world, but it really was just that I got into a really enjoyable book or three, had a few trips here and there which knocked things off schedule a bit, and at the end of the day, blogging just wasn't on the list.  But better late than never, right?

So, diet-y stuff first.  Depending on your perspective, things could be going well or not so well.  I'm holding steady at 235-240, and I'm not really upset.  I'm eating healthy meals for breakfast and lunch, getting in my 5-9 fruits and vegetables, and then coming home and eating for dinner whatever it is that speaks to me.  Sometimes that means soup, cereal, healthy organic frozen dinners, or  not-so-healthy takeout.  But the truth is, I feel good and my clothes still fit and I look good, and so this makes it a little tougher for me to care about the number on the scale.  Although sometimes I DO care, and then I get furious with myself...but that generally goes away.  ;)  Plus, I've been celebrating my birthday for the past week!  My birthday is on October 9th but I celebrate for a whole week, because why not?  So last weekend we visited my parents and brother and sister, and my grandparents joined us for cake.  My grandmother is an honest woman - too honest for her own good sometimes, like the kind of woman who will give a compliment like this:  "Oh, your hair looks nice...today."  And she really doesn't do it to be rude, she just thinks she's doing you a disservice if she's not brutally honest.  I can't tell you how many times she's gone up to people and said things like, "Oh, have you been eating more?  Your clothes look tight."  She has absolutely no qualms telling you what she thinks.  So imagine my surprise when she said to me last weekend, "Wow, you look great.  You're still losing weight, aren't you?"  So I smiled and said, "Well, of course!"  And I think I mentioned before, although the number on the scale is holding steady, I'm tightening my belt and my watch keeps getting bigger and bigger on my wrist.  Who knows!

Check out this great birthday gift from my sister, and don't mind my badly-in-need-of-lotion hands:

And another fun gift from Hubs:

To answer the question I know you must be asking yourself, no, I'm not into owls.  Or at least I never was before my birthday.  I do find myself quite drawn to them now...  As a matter of fact, after I got my owl ring last weekend from my sister, I heard my VERY FIRST OWL that night when Hubs and I were sitting on the porch.  I'm like the Owl Whisperer.  Hubs got the big owl for me while out running errands yesterday morning - I was getting a pedicure from my little Asian guy Charlie - and now I've decided that I'm going to put the owl in my office tomorrow.  It's going to freak the hell out of my patients.

On a fun note, I was invited to join a raw Ramen-eating contest here in the blog world.  I was about to do it until I realized two things:  1) Ramen has MSG in it, which I really don't eat voluntarily anymore, and 2) We didn't have any left anyway!  So that ship has sailed, unfortunately.

On an even more fun note, Hubs and I recently bought kayaks and we took them out for their maiden voyage yesterday for my birthday.  It was the most beautiful day of the year, which must have been put together just for me.  ;)

And now, on the most fun note ever, Hubs and I are headed up to the White Mountains next weekend for a week's worth of hiking and kayaking.  It's badly needed...can't wait!

Happy Sunday!