Saturday, July 28, 2012

I'll Be Back

I know I disappeared on my Skinny Rules daily posts. Some things happened in my life that have been pretty difficult and honestly I haven't felt like eating, not to mention trying to stick to a strict regimen. When life makes sense again I'll be back.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

What's On Your Apple?

You may or may not have heard of the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen. These are the foods that have the most pesticide contamination and should be purchased organic if possible. Apple are number one on this list. I've known this for a while, but out of cost and convenience I purchased a bag of non-organic apples at the store the other day. Bob wants me to eat apples daily, so I was trying to comply. I washed and dried an apple and it tasted horrible! The apple was probably fine, but it was clear that it was coated with something foul. So, I pitched what was left.

Today I saw this tip for cleaning your produce and thought I'd try it with the remaining apples so I wouldn't have to throw them away. Fill your sink with water and mix in one cup of vinegar. I dropped my apples in and just after a few minutes this was the result...






I could scrape that white residue off in sheets with my fingernail. Think it doesn't matter what we do to our food? Do you really want that going in your child's mouth?

The Skinny Rules Day #2

OK it is day number two and I'm out of all my little indulgences that I had laying around so I should be a lot of fun to be around today. I will be writing the daily posts through the day so I can tell you how I'm feeling and so I remember everything I had to eat!

Morning Workout

30 minute Fat Burner program on stepmill - my pre-workout snack was the last two little muffins I had

30 minutes of weight lifting for shoulders

Breakfast

1 cup strawberries

1 slice Ezekial bread with Polaners all fruit jelly. This is the kind with no sugar and extra fiber.

3 egg white + 1 whole egg omelet with spinach, mushrooms, and a tiny bit of mozzarella

Despite the fact that I slept fantastic last night, I'm totally wiped out today. I feel like I haven't slept in days. I'm assuming it's just stuff my body is going through with the changes, but it stinks.

Mid Morning Snack 

1 1/4 cup of a quinoa breakfast dish I'd made the other day. Not one of his recommendations per say, but it is protein and fruit because I make it with bananas and almond milk. Quinoa is a complete protein too. I need to eat it before it goes bad, so that's the snack. It has some sugar in it, but not too much. I also bought a zero calorie herbal tea with a slight Stevia sweetener.

1 medium banana - just needed something more to get through to lunch

Really made sure I drank the water before lunch. I knew I wasn't hungry, but I felt empty and the water helped.

Lunch

1/2 cup quinoa with mixed veggies, and a crumbled up Morningstar grillers burger.

2 dinner rolls - Not sure what my problem was. I think it's because I know I can't have carbs after lunch and that made me want more during lunch. Not a good choice, but better than some things I wanted to have

1 1/2 cups of cantaloupe

Mid-Afternoon Power Snack

1 piece 2% mozarella string cheese

1 cup pineapple greek yogurt - yes this was a second protein and it has sugar, but honestly, I wanted to eat about four more rolls and I figured this was a better option

Dinner

Well I totally blew it tonight. Tons of carbs and a bunch of ice cream. I don't even want to write it down because it was bad. Had a crappy day and I know that's why I blew it. I have to find a way to stop emotional eating.

Tomorrow is another day

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The Skinny Rules Day 1

Day one of my Skinny Rules attempt isn't going to be perfect. I had zero food in the house so I made a very long trip to the store last night. I was tired and had a splitting headache, so by the time I got home and got everything put away I didn't have it in me to do very much preparation. So, hopefully the days to come will be better.

To start the morning I did end up eating two small muffins that I made with cake mix and canned pumpkin. On WW they are low points so I didn't feel horrible about this choice, but I'm going to need an alternative pre-gym snack. I get up at 4:30 to go to the gym and I need something on my stomach to get through my workout, but I can't eat breakfast at that time. So, I'll find something better to replace this with.

Morning workout

30 minute Fat Burner program on the step-mill

45 minute back and biceps

Breakfast

1 cup of strawberries (Rule #6)

1 piece of Ezekial bread with no salt butter - He doesn't talk about condiments, and this was all I had in the house. Again, I'll find a better alternative.

Omelet with one whole egg, three egg whites, spinach, mushrooms, and a tiny bit of mozzarella cheese (Rule #3)

Normally, by 10:00 I'm ready to eat anything that was within reach, but I was feeling good. In fact, I didn't feel like I needed the mid-morning snack that he suggested, but because I'm doing this the way he said and because I did have such a hard workout this morning I'm going to do it anyway.

Mid-Morning Power Snack

2% string cheese (not exactly what he suggests, but close)

1 cup blackberries

Lunch

1 Morningstar Grillers burger on whole wheat flat bread (In the future I hope to make my own to control more of what is in them, but I was in a hurry)

Large salad with black beans, cucumbers, red peppers, onions, tofu cubes, and a few croutons. Bought this at the co-op and used a locally made dressing that probably isn't the best for me.

A few pieces of dark chocolate. This will not be repeated once it is gone. He wants us to kick the sugar habit for good, and I know it needs to be done. I'm just savoring these last few pieces. 

Mid-Afternoon Power Snack

1 piece of 2% mozzarella string cheese

A few blackberries and half an apple. My apple was awful, so I pitched the rest. Not a huge fan of apples, but I know I need to buy organic because I could taste the damn chemicals.

Around 1:30 I thought I was hungry, but I realize I was just frustrated with my project at work. Around 2:30 I actually did feel hungry so I had my snack. I plan to have some greek yogurt before I leave work because I'm going back to the gym and if I don't, I'll be so hungry when I'm done that I'll overeat after my workout.

Evening Workout

30 minute Fat Burner program on stepmill

Dinner

Mixed veggies with Morningstar "chicken" strips with the spices that he suggests in his stir fry recipe. He lets you add quinoa for lunch so I'm going to try that.

I did cheat a little this evening and I had two of my little muffins. There are only two left so that will be the last of my sugar. Then I should really be fun to be around for a few days.

Overall, I would say that I felt better today than I have in a while. I never really got hungry and everything was satisfying. I kept track of everything in Lose It and I was a few hundred calories under, but I suspect that since I guessed on the muffins calories I was probably just about right. Looking forward to trying again tomorrow!

The Skinny Rules

Sorry that I've been absent, just been trying to get into the swing of things with my new job and new schedule. During the course of working such crazy hours at being exhausted all the time at my previous job, I let my eating and my workouts fall by the wayside and I gained back nearly twenty pounds of the weight that I lost on WW. I tried going back to WW because I still believe that it is the best way to lose weight out there. However, I found that I was relying too much on processed foods, and getting lazy with my tracking. I felt like I needed to change things up, so I switched to a free tracking system called Lose It. So far I like it and it still keeps me in the habit of tracking.

In addition to that I picked up a copy of The Skinny Rules by Bob Harper. For those of you that aren't familiar with him, he is one of the trainers on the hit show The Biggest Loser. I'm also completely obsessed with the man. I couldn't have a bigger celebrity crush if I tried. So naturally if he writes a book, I'm going to read it. I did check it out from the library to begin with because I didn't want to spend the money if I didn't end up liking the advice, or thinking that I could follow it. After I finished it, I went straight out and bought it. The book is well written, with practical advice, sound medical facts, and a little humor thrown in. The best part is that he knows his rules are tough, and he gives you steps that you can use to work to those rules. So what are the rules? Click on the image below to check them out!

Some of them are going to be tough, like no carbs after lunch. But others, like don't drink your calories, won't be too much of a struggle for me. So, I'm going to give it a try. If I remember I will post my daily meals and how I feel about the rules. Hopefully I'll be posting some weight loss too! Interested in trying it out too? I suggest getting a copy of the book!

The Skinny Rules: The Simple, Nonnegotiable Principles for Getting to Thin

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Stormy Weather

I'm spoiled. I live in a perfect little spot in Virginia that never gets a lot of severe weather. We had a pretty nasty snow storm a few years back and I swore if that ever happened again I would move. I freaking HATE snow. I could move somewhere where it never snowed and be perfectly content forever. But, I consider myself lucky that we never experience some of the things other parts of the country do. Hurricanes and tornadoes simply scare the crap out of me. Well Friday night we came as close to something like that as I ever want to get. We had what was called a "Ring of Fire Derecho" and I never want to see one again.

We were very lucky at my house. It was just scary and we only lost power for a few hours. Many people are still without power and will be for a few more days. It was even worse over in WV. Both states are facing gas shortages thanks to the power outages, media hype, and our general tendency to panic around here because we aren't used to things like this. It's somewhat comical to go through a storm like this in the Facebook age. No one has power, but we all have cell phones to complain about that fact on Facebook. Most comments were out of frustration and totally understandable. Going without power for any length of time just sucks. I used to live in a place in the country where we would just randomly lose power for a few hours at a time. You forget how much you depend on it. Plus, more than twenty-four hours without a shower and I'm a bitch. It's why I don't camp anymore. But, some people were just freaking ridiculous about it. Thousands of people are without power. Crews are working day and night in record heat and they're acting like these people are just sitting around flipping coins to see who gets power and who doesn't. Some of it was really rather disgusting.

This experience has made me want to live small and off the grid (to some degree) even more. I need to get a bike so the gas thing is never an issue. There's a lot of things that this has brought to light and made me want to do. It's also made me happy to have so little. When you don't have much, you don't worry about what might get damaged. You don't have to worry about insurance claims or rebuilding something that was already a financial drain. Sure, if my car or my home had been destroyed I would have been devastated, but I see some of the things people are getting upset about and I'm just so happy that I don't have that burden. Sometimes less is so much more.