New Food Plan

With a stressful week of school work and events to attend, working out has not always happened. In an effort to have progress on some front, I've been focusing on healthy eating. Not this does not always mean no treats, or low fat. It just means typically controlling calories or portions, and adding healthy staples when that's not possible.

Today's Meals:

15 crackers
2 slices low-fat cheese
1 (huge) banana

1/2 cup coffee with milk/sugar

3 slices of ham
2 slices low-fat cheese
1 cup grapes
1 date

1 activia yogurt
1 frozen meal (beef stir-fry)
1 sugar-free pudding

There will likely be a snack when I get home tonight around 9:30pm, which is a nice way to wind down at the end of the night. I've noticed that carrying my food has gotten easier. The easiest way to include a fast meal is frozen Lean Cuisine meals. Today I have it in the frozen box, but I often just thaw and dump it into tupperware. A lot of them are good cold, which helps when I'm on the run. So this is my latest strategy, and it helps for days like yesterday when I had 3 slices of pizza, 2 chicken wings, and ho-ho's for dinner. Eeek.

Following My Challenge Plan

Today is so busy, I'm wondering when I am going to fit a shower in. And I'm already at school. My intention is to work out and then shower, then go to class tonight, but I'm not so sure. There's a reason they call this thing a challenge.

My workout yesterday exhausted me, but consisted of the following:

24 push-ups
48 lunges
24 bridge poses
30 weighted crunches
24 cat stretches
60 seconds of wall-sits
2 mins boxing with weights
30 leg lifts

Although I am miserable today, my pushups yesterday felt solid, and I can tell I am getting stronger. I just got a new workout, and I'm currently memorizing the routine. I typically don't like to stop and study a move before I do it. If you want to do the moves with me, visit
http://www.self.com/challenge for the latest challenge strength workout. They're good!

Here are the numbers

So to think through my less-savory habits, I've been thinking about numbers and weight, which is typically something I avoid. But to bare the truth is to face it, and here are my numbers.

I graduated from high school weighing 116 lbs.
I finished my freshman year of college at 128 lbs.
I left for greece at 135 lbs (probably my best weight).
I returned from Greece at 145 lbs.
I graduated from undergrad at 132 lbs.
After 3 years of working, I weighed about 160 lbs. Yikes.
I am as of this morning 156.8 lbs.
I would like to be 149 lbs. by May 9th.
I would like to graduate from grad school again at 135 lbs.

These are my numbers. They say to lost weight you should share your goals. Hope this helps!

Pain and Danger

So, every experience has something from which to draw, right? In terms of fitness, I channeled some old boyfriends as I visited the gym today. Workout trick of the day = high jump with jump rope. Now our gym is small, and the jump ropes are very thin rubber. So I ran the high risk of whipping several undergrads as they proceeded through their tough workouts of the day.

I remember doing this same workout as an undergrad, where I would run a lap around the track (1/8 mile) and then jump 50-100 times. As I got stronger, I would lift my knees. This led to extreme pain. I sneezed one night as I was falling asleep, and I screamed, like someone has disembowled me.

Today I felt the pain too. I had just completed three sets of modified crunches and then jumped about 80 times. I tried to breathe deeply into my abdomen, and it hurt! This is great, however it may sound. Painful muscles = fatigued muscles = muscles that are getting stronger. Bring on the pain, and thank you short, hairy guy in a band, you will make my mid-section enviable.

Sweet, Sweet Break

So I had this beautiful vision of working out 90 minutes everyday of my spring break, and I have worked out zero times. The good news is my eating has been much better, so I feel positive in that respect. A week of not carrying two large bags everywhere and power-scheduling my day has been a nice change. Tomorrow I go to the doctor for my quarterly check-up, and I have a simple goal- weigh at least one pound less than when I was last there.

My goal is to continue to trim out food as May 9th quickly approaches. Don't get me wrong... I'm still eating, and not even healthy all the time. I'm just trying to trim out obviously bad foods in large portions. My goal of drinking water seems to ebb and flow, some days I'm great and some days I'm borderline ER admittable with dehydration. Oh bad habits.

But here are my new good habits:

1 activia yogurt everyday
Limit of 1 small cup of coffee, daily
Not eating after 9pm

Some days I don't have anything new to discuss, because learning to be healthier is just that-- it's the same, and more of the same. And then some more. And that's the challenge.

After the Flood Comes the Understanding

I made a vow to eat more healthfully, and I immediately freaked out. I hate Girl Scouts, never was one, never would be one, and now I've eaten two boxes of their f-ing cookies in less than 24 hours. That, by the by, is about 2.400 extra calories. Freak out city. But I'm sticking to blaming the Girl Scouts; they're short, and there's pretty much nothing they can do about it. (I know, I'm a meany.)

So here's my new strategy. I need to identify my triggers, and I definitely have them.

1. Snack time during class when teachers bring in goodies
2. The vending machine
3. Breaks during long classes
4. Girl Scout cookies
5. Weekends sitting around and studying
6. Going out to eat
7. Being thirsty (many people interpret thirst as hunger)
8. Coffee houses (How can I have coffee without candy or cake?)
9. Stress
10. My boyfriend (it's true, he eats garbage, and still as I've said before, weighs the same as me!)

So I need a new lunch/snack packing strategy, so here it is:

Breakfast at home today:

1 egg omelet with tomatoes and cheese
1 slice grainy/seedy bread with Olivio
1 cup skim milk w/ 1 tsp. hershey's syrup

Lunch out with friends today:

1 bowl of soup at Panera (I'm going online now to investigate)
The sad little apple they give you
One of my yogurts that's listed below

Packed in my lunchbag for snacks/dinner:

2 Yoplait light yogurts
2 light cheesesticks
1 lean cuisine meal in tupperware
1 apple
1/2 cup yellow pepper slices
3/4 cup raw broccoli

Wish me luck -- my night class is my first challenge, and I'm reserving a yogurt and broccoli pieces to eat when the professor inevitably hands out some delectable type of treat. I've never made it through one whole day before. Scary but true.

Relax, You Get to Eat Tomorrow, Too

So my new strategy for developing an eating plan is okay. I realize that I feed most often what is not stomach hunger, but blood sugar hunger. I eat when I get shaky, and if I did not get shaky, I would probably not remember to eat. My stomach rumbles, and I go, "What's that?" I get shaky a lot, and so I eat a lot. So far today, this was my meal plan:

Breakfast

1 cup of 1% milk w/ 1tbsp. hershey's syrup
2/3 cup of All Bran Buds
1 tbsp. raisins

1 apple
6 wheat/flaxseed crackers
1 cheesestick

It's 1:50pm and I'm shaky again. Diabetes is stupid if anyone ever asks you. Stupid. I would really not care to eat again right now. Sigh. But I'm digressing.

Other than blood sugar, I'm facing a lot of portion control issues. I don't want to eat a piece of pie.... I want to eat a whole pie, like right now. This weekend I ate a whole bowl of guacamole. And today I'm reminding myself of a quote that I read, "You don't have to eat everything today. You get to eat tomorrow. You get to eat everyday."

The New Mealplan, and Fiber

Although my new magazine has arrived with the SELF Challenge in tow, this year they are simply giving you a prepared menu. Breakfast= have this kind of omelette. Lunch = have this kind of salad. Much less flexibility, though I will admit it is less complicated than in years past. So I'm using it as a guide rather than a set of laws.

I desperately needed to go on a date last night, and we've found out about this new restaurant nestled between the ski resorts. They serve what was rudely described to me as "yuppy food." And if yuppy means edible and delicious, I agree... instead of a salad being iceburg lettuce with a slice of fatty meat and ice water with stuff floating in it... instead I had a beautiful mexican salad with pulled pork, black beans, avocado and more. Not a pillar of health, but a pillar of taste, and that was an awesome plan.

So this morning for breakfast I ate Kashi GoLean Crunch, and it was good. I ate 1.5 servings, and therefore got about 14g of fiber. Yea! My obstacles are this: teachers who bring treats to our classes. They are of course my favorite!, but are also a challenge since I will eat whatever someone offers me. Vending machine-- I've mentioned this one, but its presence is very real. And finally eating out: servings are huge, and they still tasted good after the prescribed amount. So I keep eating.