Using Facebook for Good

As my dear friends know, I don't use facebook for social purposes. That's way too much personal information to put out there. Me? I just pour my heart out into 11 carefully crafted blogs. LOL

Anyway, I don't use facebook (other than for work), so all you facebook users, which is basically EVERYONE ELSE in the world, please do me a solid.

I want to get 100 responses to my healthy living habits survey. The responses are still trickling in, but I think I still need about 40 more to reach 100. Will you please post a link to my survey on your wall?

Come on, all the cool kids are doing it.

Here's the survey link: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB229B23QZ9QJ

THANK YOU!!!

Jambalaya!

Darcy made a delicious, low fat, healthy Jambalaya on Sunday - it was fantastic! It was filling, and really stuck to the bones. :) She used free range chicken sausage (2 different kinds), grass fed pork ribs and chicken, whole grain organic rice, tomato sauce, spices/seasonings and veggies - SO good.

I'm mad at my knee. It's still giving me grief. I was in the car for 5 hours yesterday (fun!), and I think that set it back a bit. It was very stiff when I got out of the car, each leg of the trip.

I'm dying to get back to the gym. I'm still up the 6 out of 10 lbs I was up last week. I'm eating okay - not as great as I could since I've been so busy, but not terrible either. I was at about 1200 calories the past few days, but I just haven't been filling my calories with the healthiest of options when I've been rushing.

I *really* need to get back to exercising. I'm thinking of doing laps in Alison's pool tonight, just using my arms to swim since I have to baby my knee. Laps can be a great form of cardiovascular activity. I think that's my plan.

I'm fat

That's my update. :)

Be prepared

I know I've mentioned it before, but it's just so true - to succeed in losing weight/eating healthy, it's important to always be prepared. I do well with healthy eating on the days I'm in the office, because I bring a healthy lunch (and snacks) and that's all I eat. The downside, however, is that lately I've been starving by the time I get home at night, and I am challenged to keep my portions small at dinner (when my meal size should be light).

Last night, I got home from work and I was ravenous. I don't know why. I had a breakfast bar and yogurt for breakfast, a breakfast bar as a snack, a lean cuisine for lunch...I think that was it, but still, that is normally plenty of food for me, but not yesterday.

Darcy made a delicious lean steak salad for dinner with some baked french fries. It was just what I wanted, and so good. I had seconds. I neeever have seconds. Later on, I wasn't hungry anymore, but I wanted snacks - I think because I had been so hungry all day long, or maybe I was feeling pathetic from being so tired with a headache and an achy knee - I have no idea, but I had a 1/2 cup serving of BEN & JERRY'S ice cream! (Cha-ching - just a small 1/2 cup serving is 250 calories) Later, I had some light popcorn.

All in all, I ended up having 1562 calories yesterday. It's not a horrible amount, but it's 352 over the limit I've given myself. I like to have one day a week when I have a meal of whatever I want, and I don't mind going over my allotted calories that day because it's planned, and I don't think it hurts the metabolism to have a little calorie spike from time to time, but I don't like going over my calories due to unplanned snacking.

Today I was down another lb or so from the TEN I was up, but I still have 6 more to lose to get back to where I was last week. I know that if I just stay within my calories, drink plenty of water, watch my sodium intake and make sure not to eat after 7, it will be gone in a day or two. I just have to do the right thing.

On the upside, I've been getting in a lot of fiber lately. It's something I really need to focus on. The past 3 days, I've consumed about 25 g/day, which is perfect and not so easy to do, so good for me. When I'm first adjusting to fiber, it makes me bloated too, so that's not helping my predicament, but it's helping my health, so that must be more important, right? :)

Since I've been so hungry at work the past few days, I decided to bring in some healthy, low fat snacks and foods to the office with me. I also brought in oatmeal, sugar free carnation instant breakfast and multigrain cheerios so that I'll always have a healthy, substantial breakfast here even if I forget to pack my food for the day for some reason.

If I have the snacks I need during the day to curb my hunger, I can get home at night, eat a small meal, and be finished with eating by 7pm. That's my plan, and I know it will work - it always does. I just need to be prepared.

Falling apart

I twisted my knee last week falling, and then I hurt it again (twice) since then. I'm quite sure it's sprained. Don't you hate it when you hurt something once, and then you hurt it again and again? That's annoying. It's much worse than it was when I originally hurt it last week. I have a knee brace on today, so it feels much better than it has.

Last night I went to a fisher cats game for a work event. I ended up walking quite a bit (for a sprained knee), and I had to go up and down several flights of stairs. Normally the stairs wouldn't bother me, but they really bothered my knee, and I had trouble walking by the time I got home last night.

My knees are already susceptible to injury because being as overweight as I was for so long really weakened them. I think I want to do physical therapy to try to strengthen them. I know they are strong when I lift weights, but I need to do more healing exercises so that I'm not requiring knee replacement surgery at 35.

My pneumonia is getting better, but I still get winded much quicker than before. I know that will pass soon, and I still need to take it easy.

My newest medical mystery is a bump that appeared on the white part of my eye. I just noticed it last night. My eyes are often dry and itchy from allergies, and my quick web based research tells me it's possibly related to allergies or it could be related to exposure to the sun. I'm not always great about wearing sunglasses because, hello - I don't want to have a raccoon tan. I'm not always great about wearing goggles in the tanning bed, so now, rather than having raccoon eyes, I have a growth on my eyeball - lovely.

I read the treatment for either cause is eye drops, possibly the ones with steroids, and that should do the trick. If not, it's time to see an opthamologist. The fun never ends! :)

Lastly, I'm fat. I was doing so well last week and the week before...I'm not sure what happened (yes I am - I was really tired on Sunday from not sleeping well on Saturday night and getting up so early for my photoshoot, so I decided to lick my wounds by eating a corned beef dinner. The next day, I felt like junk from eating so much junk [garbage in, garbage out!] the day before, that while I tried to eat healthy for the first half of the day, all bets were off by dinner time, and I ate junk...again), but yesterday I was up 10 lbs from 3 days before.

It's seriously crazy how much my weight fluctuates. Yesterday, I ate appropriately. I also knew that our luxury box at the ball game would be filled with unhealthy options, so I made sure to have a light dinner before going. I didn't eat a thing.

Today I was down 3 lbs from yesterday, but I had 2 frozen meals yesterday, so I know that sodium wasn't helping my cause. I still need to go grocery shopping. Darcy picked up a few things, but we need to do a full shopping run so that I'm not eating chemicals for every meal in my feeble attempt to be healthy.

I have a WW frozen meal for lunch, but Darcy is going to make a fresh, low fat dinner tonight, and I'm going to take the leftovers with me for lunch tomorrow. I'm hoping the rest of the 10 lbs will be gone by Friday. They should be.

I wish I could expedite all of this by exercising, but no such luck. I know I need to get well. I'm on my way.

Would you like a little food with your salt?

I desperately need to go grocery shopping. Since I have to pack my breakfast and lunch, my choices have been limited to whatever is handy. I've been doing a great job about not salting my food lately, and that's a big success for me because I love my salt. It's all in vain, however, because the amount of sodium in the processed foods I'm having is insane.

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Yesterday I had this three cheese rotini thing I bought at Rite Aid over the weekend. It was 340 calories, which is a bit more than I like to spend on a small portion of food, but whatever, BUT the sodium was over 1000 mg! Holy cow.

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For breakfast today, I wanted something warm because I was sick of the breakfast bars I'd been having, so I grabbed a Campbell's Soup at Hand - only 80 calories! And 980 mgs of sodium! That's disgusting.

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Here I am cutting back salt, and not even lightly salting my food, but then I'm sucking in the sodium like it's oxygen. This has got to stop.

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I was up 2 lbs today. I've been eating around 1000 calories/day, so I know it's not overeating - the salt is to blame! It's water weight, and it will probably be there tomorrow too since I just had that salty soup. I've been drinking a ton of water too - since I've been in the office. The air is dry, and with my cough, I need to stay hydrated. I probably drink 20 8 oz. cups/day. I think the salt is trapping all of the water in me. I better be careful, or I may float away!

Clearly, we need to go grocery shopping.

This could work for me...

Returning to work in a normal office yesterday, I was so busy I didn't have a chance to have lunch until 3pm. I can't skip lunch - I was in my 1-3pm meeting, and I was fading. Some people can skip meals - not me - my blood sugar plummets, I get week, dizzy and dumb. It's a great combo. :)

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The good thing about being back to work on a fairly normal schedule is that I can finally work out a routine again - hooray! For so long, I've had way too much freedom and flexibility in my schedule, and while that can be nice, it's a bit of a nightmare to someone trying to find a normal and healthy eating and exercise pattern.

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I also like working from an office, as opposed to my home, because I don't think about food as much. It's just not as accessible, and I don't have my whole refrigerator and cupboards with me at work - just the healthy meal I've planned to eat during the day, so my choices are limited and planned in advance - a winning combo. :)

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Since I'll be in the office Tuesdays - Thursdays for the rest of the summer, I'm thinking I'd like to get my workout in before work on those days. It is a nice way to start the day, and if I want to do something active after work, that will just be gravy.

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I like to be in the office at 7AM, and I'm only 15 minutes from my house, so I can get up at 5, work out, get ready, and easily be to work by 7. I like it!

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My weight is the same as last week. Overall, I'm down about 10 lbs from where I was 2 months ago, but again, it's weight I'd already lost before. I have a feeling the number will start creeping downward again when I'm able to exercise. I've probably come as far as I can on my duff. :)

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My pneumonia is much better, but I'm still not able to do any activities. I tried dancing at the wedding, but after a few steps, I kept losing my breath. Even walking down a long hallway causes me to start coughing and to need my inhaler. When I'm at rest, however, I'm almost 100% back to normal, so we are definitely moving in the right direction.

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I think I may try going for a very slow and leisurely kayaking tour this afternoon after work. Baby steps.

A losing battle

It's so hard to eat well when you're traveling. I realize I'm beating Seabiscuit to death on this one, but I'm just always on the road, it seems.

I ordered steak and eggs for breakfast - it all got stuck, and I couldn't keep it down, so I ended up having a half a piece of toast and a slice of bacon. Naturally, I was hungry shortly after, so I picked up "food" for the room at Rite Aide, and I had a dinty moore meal (270 calories + one billion chemicals).

For lunch, we had the dog with us, so our choices were very limited. We ended up finding an outdoor hot dog/fried food stand. There was quite literally *nothing* healthy on the menu. They seriously deserved an award for having no healthy options - that's hard to do. LOL

I got a hot dog. It was good, and grilled of course, so there's 400 calories wasted on junk food that's not even going to be very filling. I have already had 811 calories today, and it's only 1pm. I have no idea what I picked for dinner at the wedding tonight. I feel like it was probably beef related...

For dinner, I'm hoping to just have a salad, and a little bit of beef, so that I'm within my calories for the day. I've been averaging 800-1000 this past week, but I let myself go up to 1200, and I have almost 400 left for dinner, so that should be fine.

I played a little basketball today. I forgot I'm still healing from pneumonia. It didn't take me long to remember. I am just really antsy to be active! Oh well. :)

Finally, a sweat that wasn't a result of my fever!

I'm horridly embarrassed to say that until tonight, I had not mowed my lawn in almost FIVE weeks. I mowed it right before my Mom came to visit, then the days before we left for Nashville, it was raining almost constantly, and the one day it wasn't we spent with my mother in Newburyport. It wasn't that bad when we left, but when we came back, it was HORRID.

It rained the entire week and a half we were away, and by the time we came home, the weeds had overtaken our lawn, and were like a foot tall - seriously. This past weekend we had a bunch of company up for the 4th of July festivities, and I was in bed with pneumonia the entire time. I'm absolutely mortified to think that all of these guests came to our house when we had a lawn that looked like an overgrown field.

I've been sick, sick, sick all week, and today for the first time, I had a little bit of energy, so when we got home from dinner tonight, we mowed the lawn and weedwacked. It took almost an hour because the grass was so ridiculously long. I was schvitzin, let me tell you.

Hopefully I worked off some of the italian food I had for dinner! My appetite was weak all week long, and even though I sat on my butt all week, my weight was creeping downward. Today, I was *hungry*! We had a delicious steak taco salad for lunch at La Carretta, and for dinner I had Pollo Valdostana - a lightly breaded chicken breast with asparagus, italian ham, mozzarella over linguini in a delicious, light wine sauce. (Alison - the leftovers are in the fridge - don't forget!!)

I ate a lot more of it than I thought I would, and I wasn't ridiculously stuffed after either. I do hope I worked off some of the calories while doing yardwork. Since I'm still recovering, and since my allergies really bother me when I'm mowing the lawn, I wore a nerdy mask, but I think it helped a LOT.

I can't wait until I'm well enough to exercise again. I know I sound like a broken record with all that, and I know I have to get well, but I've been on such a good run lately - I just want to keep the momentum I have. I know how hard it can be to get back into a good groove once you lose it.

I'm hoping by next week - maybe mid week - I'll be completely better and working out hard. I'm not sure if it will be that fast - the last time I had pneumonia I think it took like a full month to get all the way better...but here's to hoping! :)

Yummy breakfast!

Darcy made me blueberry pancakes for breakfast! It was the perfect food to have to coat my stomach before taking the last of my Zpack. I only at one, and it was 110 calories. My appetite has been weird since I've been sick.

I'm down another lb or so today.

I just can't wait to be over all this, so that I can eat normal foods and get back to exercising. I miss my Wii personal trainer! He's going to yell at me big time when I sign in next time! LOL.

Yesterday

Every morning, I think I'm doing a lot better because my fever is gone, but then it creeps back and I feel like I'm at square one again. I figured out it's because of the Nyquil. I take a good swig of Nyquil before bed, and then another one when it wears off 4 hrs later in the middle of the night and I wake up coughing/choking. Nyquil has acetaminophen in it, so it makes my fever go away.

Once it wears off, the fever is back. I can't find my thermometer, but I'm pretty sure my fever was probably at 103 yesterday. It's the middle of July, and I had on a sweat shirt, pajama pants, and I was curled up in bed with the blankets on top of me. I was also somewhat delirious.

Darcy went to the store and got me some tylenol, and I finally started to feel more normal right before bed. I've been sick to my stomach for the past 5 days, and I can only eat really bland foods. So far, the only things that don't bother me are crackers, cookies, and pasta. I can't eat much, though, but I'm tracking my calories and making sure I'm getting enough in.

You'd be surprised how little you need to eat of those carbs before you hit 900 calories. LOL. I'm going to try to get protein in today. I want to get back to eating normal foods.

I have weighed in on the Wii the past two days, and as of today, I'm less than I've been since I bought the Wii fit. It must be working. LOL. I've had it for 39 days, it tells me, so that's like what, 6 weeks? I think it has me down 8 or 9 lbs from my first weigh in, and probably more like 15 from my high point in the past 39 days.

Of course, this is weight I've already lost before, so it's not anything to throw a parade over, but I'm just hoping that when I'm better, I can keep this slow and steady weight loss going, so that I can forge past this plateau and start losing original weight again.

I think I'm on my way. Darcy is worried that I'm counting calories while sick with pneumonia, but I'm eating cookies and crackers, and I don't want to go overboard- and I also want to make sure I'm getting enough calories in (without going overboard).

I think I'm going to try to have cereal for breakfast. Milk is dicey, but I have to try at some point, right?

Who doesn't love him?

Darcy and I watched a movie with the very adorable Matthew McConaughey starring today, and to change things up, he took his shirt off a few times. ;-) I can't believe the shape that boy is in - and he's almost 40!

I checked out online to see what I could find out about his workout routine, and from what I read, he doesn't appear to spend much time in the gym - he gets most of his work out through outdoor activity - hiking, biking, running, surfing, yoga, sports, you name it. I think that sounds like an awesome way to stay in shape.

It's back

I think it's a combination of the airplane, my allergies, and the mold in our crawl space that escaped when I had work done on the house while we were away, but I managed to get pneumonia again. Once you have it, it's so much easier to get it again.

It came on FAST this time. On Wednesday, I felt a little tired, on Thursday, I couldn't breathe, and by Friday morning, I had the whole fluid in the lungs, and I was choking every time I coughed. I slept pretty much all day and night Friday and Saturday, and today I'm finally starting to feel better.

I'm still sick, of course. I feel like I have the flu, but it's so much better than the feeling of not being able to breathe, choking on every cough, burning in my lungs, and a fever that made me delirious.

I am going to find an MD in NH and really try to get to the bottom of all of this. I think I'm allergic to my house. Is that covered by homeowners insurance?? :)

Tight

My band has been really tight feeling for the past two weeks. I thought it was from being really bloated, or in a different elevation, but now I'm home and I'm still having trouble keeping things down.

It's not a good thing, because it's the unhealthy things that go down fine - like chips - lean protein and fresh veggies don't seem to be working. I had a sandwich for dinner, and I had to use a ton of (light) mayo to get it down.

I'm not sure what's up with that, but I've decided I'm going to do the liquid diet for a few days, and see what happens. It's tight, like I just got a fill, so why not pretend I did. That's what it's there for after all!