How to eat, or, a rude awakening.

I admit it, I am bad about eating.  I used to love big breakfasts, either homemade, or eaten out.  Loved it all, something nice about just relaxing and having all those wonderful things you can have at breakfast time.  The problem is, I have always had this little oddity, wherein I can't have the sweets, unless I have the protein, or am willing to have my family put up with me being a sugar induced basket case.

Enter my love of eggs.  The perfect cheap food to counterbalance my love of sweet breakfast.  Then, at about 24 or 25 (after kid number 3 is born) enter my blasted sensitivity to eggs.  I refuse to admit an allergy, because the egg issue just doesn't react the same way as other allergic reactions for me.  Blasted hell, now I can't eat the eggs to counteract the sweets, leaving out the sweets also.  Oatmeal it is.  Which I do love.  Also love yogurt, especially of the Greek variety, and it's a great protein source.

The trouble is, after so many years of eating big breakfasts, I find myself mentally challenged in eating breakfast at all, now that all I can have is the 'healthy' stuff. I know it's sad. 

Then began the work-outs, and yes I would have to work at eating breakfast, and mid-morning snack, and lunch, and mid-afternoon snack, and so on and so on.  I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  I have been so terrible about the eating, it's not so much about freaking out about the diet change, it's actually eating.  I honestly do forget, after years of training myself to subsist until starvation mode on caffeine.   Triple, grande caramel macchiato, non-fat milk, 120 degrees, stirred.  You know so I don't have to think, but can just gulp away.

Realization hit, regarding the error of my ways, as I tried to sit down yesterday afternoon.  I had worked out hard on Monday, per my sadistic trainer, but it was now Wednesday, why am I still in pain.

Well, let's see...you barely ate Monday, you barely ate Tuesday, and It's Wednesday afternoon and all you have to show for it is ONE Greek Yogurt?  And shortly after the realization, ONE Tuna sandwich?  Nice.  Maggie you are a moron, you ware working out to the tune of about 400-700 calories a day, and that's just in the gym.  And you think you can get away with you crappy forgetting to eat lifestyle?  No wonder you are still in pain, your body is probably eating it's own muscles.

So, I did what any tech savy, responsible adult would do:  I got on app center on the iphone and searched calorie counter. 

Photo Credit for My Fitness Pal Screenshot

I started playing with it, putting in what I had eaten, drank, and the exercise I had done that day.  My results:  You will be skinny as hell, and well, dead, in 5 weeks if every day is like today.

So, I hunted up a high protein snack bar from my crazy pre-workout purchase the other day.   And ate it and added to the listing.  STILL 900 calories short of a really low caloric intake number.  Awesome.  So, salad for dinner, with chicken. Still 450 calories short.  Alright, damnit, add some frickin cookies--only trouble is, I only have "Newton's Fruit Thins," which are strangely low in calories and kinda okay for you as cookies go.  Add three.  Still under.  Add five.  Only 200 calories under, I guess that will do, tomorrow will be better, right?

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It's 135 pm here, and I am about to break the rules and chow on a powerbar--since it's right next to my desk and all.  That leaves me with 1125 calories remaining for the day -- and the insanely low caloric count, which really needs to be raised by about 500 calories considering my activity level during the day--outside of the gym.

I seriously have got to get this breakfast crap under control.  I think I will bake some muffins tonight and pray all night long the kids don't slather them with chocolate frosting and eat them as cupcakes.

Any ideas?

Half In The Bag

And the scale says:  same as yesterday!

Last night after my cookie binge and minimalistic dinner I decided to do 40 min on the elliptical (in my home, yo) and then some crunches and some arm weight move thingies.  Thank goodness the Big Bang Theory is on from 7 to 8pm on Fox so that I wasn't counting the seconds to the next minute on the elliptical.

When it was time for crunches I thought I was going to do all right.  When I was in my 20s (which wasn't THAT long ago) I used to do 100 in the morning and 100 before bed every single day.  I had rocking abs.  The kind that actually felt like they were made of rocks.



But last night I got to 10 and thought I had pulled something.  So I stretched and started again.  Went ok until I got to 8.  Hmmm guess its been awhile since I have used those muscles!!  I managed to do 50 total in all different positions.  I did the reverse crunch that Jillian Michaels says will get rid of that pesky fupa fat, and the oblique crunches that should shave some chub off my sides, and then the traditional ones that make me want to die.

I decided I was not going to eat anything after, that I had already eaten enough for the day, and brushed my teeth and got in bed (after showering also of course).  By 10:00 I was DYING for food.  I kept drinking water but it just wasn't cutting it.  "I wish I had a big bag of M&M's" I said to my husband, batting my eyes.  "Hannaford's is closed" are what his eyes were telling me.  Dangit.  I searched my nightstand for any morsel I might have hidden and forgotten about.  Nope.  Going to bed hungry.

Today I woke up late, didn't eat breakfast, and then went to my friend's house and drank two giant coffees with creamer that I didn't measure!  Did you know they make coffee creamer flavored like candy bars now?  GENIUS!!  Then I had some tasty wrap with cheese, turkey, carrot shavings, and honey mustard.  Oh, and before I went to her house I stopped at the grocery store and bought...........A GIANT BAG OF M&MS!!  Which I have been slowly sucking on all day long.  Probably ate about half of the bag by now.   I'm hoping that if I eat them slowly that they won't affect my metabolism.  Maybe I should ask Dr Oz about that one.

After having 1 taco for dinner with some full fatty sour cream I figured I better get on that elliptical again.  20 minutes this time due to this horrible crack in my dried up heel and about 15 situps due to my dried up abs!!

 Off to drink my matcha sensa ass tea now in hopeless hope of compensation.  Can't WAIT to see what the scale says tomorrow.

<3 Betsy

Balance, Balance, Balance

I should really be writing these in sequential order -- but, as I started a week after I 'started', oh well.

I used to run, and I use the term 'used to' very loosely.  I got out of the Army about ten years ago -- exactly ten this summer, wow has it been that long?  Good grief.  Let's see, six years in, ten years out, add 18 to that, yup, 34, so the math is correct.  But, I digress.

Exactly ten years ago, I wasn't doing much Physical Training. Lemme see, it's almost March as I write this, so ten years ago I was about a million months pregnant, with Aidan...who will be, you guessed it, ten in early May.

Back up a few years from that--before Timmy, so keep going. I used to work out hard in the Army.  I mean four or five days a week of mandatory running, push ups, sit-ups and any other medieval exercise the Army can come up with. Never, well maybe rarely, did I leave PT (Physical Training) dripping wet in sweat, and not even wanting to be near myself.

Move forward that decade plus I just mentioned, and enter Average Joe trainer.

He has me working out 6 days a week.  Four of those days I do at least 45 minutes of heavy cardio on the elliptical machine.  And when I say heavy, I mean heavy.  A cross between 45 straight minutes on high resistance, burning my thighs and ass the whole time -- of for a change up, that blasted interval training for the full 45 minutes. Two other days of the week, he ALSO has me do one-hour of intensive weight training.  I hurt just thinking about it.

Granted, even on the light days -- the cardio only days -- I leave knowing I have burned just under 400 calories ... on a bad day.

400 calories, that's about this:

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Mmmm, yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It will be the death of me. I love it so, and look at this baby, not just yellow cake with chocolate frosting--but TEN layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  And just for good measure, Strawberries, you know in case you didn't get enough sugar.  It's like buying the farm and going to heaven.   On the farm.  Which clearly grows strawberries and wheat for the cake. And probably has other things like sugar cane for the frosting.

Or maybe it's just a farm with a pastry chef. Count me in.

That is what I think about starting at about minute 23 on the elliptical.  While listening to Adele belt out songs.  Yeah, I will set fire to the rain while eating that.

Which brings me to my next point.

The other day I am dripping with sweat on about minute 38 of the elliptical. Yes I count those minutes.  Average Joe trainer walks, or mozies, or sashes over and gets on the elliptical next to mine, where I am panting, sweating, nearly done, and STARVED.

He looks at me like, "I want to talk," and I politely take off my earbuds--which are probably blasting some U2 song and say "hi."

"If" he says, deep in thought, "you could have anything right now, what would it be?"

Well, we're about 15 minutes (at least) into my fantasy about pumping yellow cake with chocolate frosting directly into my bloodstream, so yeah, this is a no brainer.  Even though I do honestly know it's a terrible, terrible trap.

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Yeah, it's a trap, just like that.  But, as almost 40 minutes of dripping sweat have passed, I am going ahead with 'the truth.'

"I want a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  Not a piece, the whole cake."  (Remember that previous post about my daughter's mad baking skills?  Yeah, that's what I am up against here.)

"Ah," he says, "I see." He is now looking out into the distance (there is a fat chick in front of us) wistfully, like he is trapped deep in thought...deep thought like he may have just figured out the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

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After a brief pause, and I am not sure if he actually got to the number 42, he says: "If you have one bite, I will have you doing puke drills all week long."

Three minutes to go on the elliptical, as he get's down and goes about his business and now I have to choose a new song to push through with.

The Clash. Should I stay, or should I go.

Easy enough.

Fat Tuesday. And Wednesday. And probably Thursday.

Yesterday I decide to stand on the scale in my birthday suit right off in the morning before I had a chance to drop 2 coffees, a heaping bowl of maypo with chocolate chips, and whatever else came up (went down).

For the first time in a while I stepped OFF the scale smiling.  Finally at the lowest weight I've been since 2007!  Not sure how I did that.  Certainly wasn't through exercising.

So of course what is the first thing that I do with this new found skinniness?  I eat my maypo, go for a joy ride, and end up drinking a huge cup of coffee with lots of creamer and probably a hot chocolate in it. I then washed that down with a medium sized Shamrock Shake from good ol' McDongles.  Is it mint?  All I know is its green. Anyway that's 550 calories (or more) of whatever that flavor is goodness!  Don't worry, I skipped the cherry.

I felt I needed some salt also so I had a small fry.  Only what, 250 calories?  So in the span of 3 hours of finding out that I was finally only 3 or 4 pounds away from my goal weight I managed to consume around 1,000 calories!  When I got home and then felt I should eat something nutritious I had a bowl of carrot sticks with hummus.  And 2 packs of chocolate covered pomegranite thingies (100 calories each pack).  So we're up to probably 1,300 and its not even 2:00.  I'm sure I'm forgetting some snack in there somewhere.  When my husband came home asking what was for dinner I told him that I had been bingeing on fatty high calorie crap all day and that he was on his own unless he wanted to join me for a Chobani and glass of water.  

OH yeah I drank a cup of that nasty ass matcha sensa tea.  I seriously wanted to puke it right back up (the tea, not the food.) but forced myself to finish it.  Here's hoping it "ramped up my metabolism by at least 30%" DR OZ!!!  I need every percent I can get with this sweet tooth!   By 9:30pm I was nibbling on Dollar General pita chips and more hummus.  I really do not know how to feed myself, can you tell?

Today started out good but then nose dived around 1:30.  I got on the scale again to see if my deeds had done me in, but no the scale said the same happy weight as yesterday.  I vowed to keep my intake down to something around human instead of polar bear and went on doing as much housework as possible to keep my hands busy.

Then lunch time hit.  I hate that we have to eat!  If I didn't HAVE to eat I might like it more.  I hate thinking of things to eat too.  Lunch!  Bah Humbug!!!

I thought, I'll eat healthy and have some Progresso Chicken soup (80 calories) and a small bowl of tricolor pasta with "smart" butter and parmesan cheese.  Problem was, it was after 1:00 and I had last eaten at 7:30am!  All that housework had made me darn hungry!

My hands shook as I filled the pan with water for the pasta.  First I had to wait for the water to boil, and then another 10 minutes for it to cook!  That seemed like it was an hour away.  Frantically I searched the cupboards for a "snack" to hold me over.  Completely out of carrot sticks.  CRAP.  I opened the freezer and there, like a rose among dandelions, was a forgotten bag of frozen Neuman-o's.  Mint ones.

6 or 7 Neuman-o's later my pasta was done.  I looked at it, then looked at the Neuman-o's, and really wanted to just finish off the bag and say to hell with lunch.  But no, I put them back in the freezer and proceeded to eat my lunch.  That was 2 hours ago and I still have my jeans unbuttoned.  Looks like I'm skipping real dinner again tonight and stopping at the grocery store to stock up on carrot sticks.  I'm a little scared of what tomorrow will bring!  And now I am off to bring Alicia to ballet school and be surrounded by girls who really CAN control themselves. Yippee!

--Betsy

Daytime Television Diet Tips

*********************************Sarcasm Alert*********************************

So you're trying to lose weight.  Who isn't?  At least in America?  You've got a plethora of diets to try and fail:  Weight Watchers (now online so you can cheat at your discretion ;) ) , Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, Mariah Carey (have twins and then tummy tuck), Jennifer Hudson (wait is that the same as Jenny Craig?), eDiets, iPhone apps (I admit I have 5 different ones that i consistently ignore!), and many many more!  Even grocery stores are trying desperately to keep you lean by putting ratings on certain foods to show you that an apple is healthy and a twinkie, not so much.  Because you didn't know that!

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I have decided to go with what I learn from Infomercials and Dr. Oz.  I'm a SAHM and when my little minion is napping or I just feel the need to go hide in the closet I flip through the 15 cable channels we can afford.  There is mostly a whole lotta nothing out there from after Dr Phil ends at 11am until Judge Judy comes on at 4pm!  I happened upon Dr Oz last night and learned a few important things that I think will help me with my Daytime TV Diet.

First, you need to start your day drinking a 16 oz glass of ice water mixed with a 2 oz shot of Jack Daniels.  I mean apple cider vinegar.  Somehow this "jump starts" the metabolism and helps you burn an extra 21,000 calories a day!  I mean year!  But you have to drink it every single morning.  I just ran out of "apple cider vinegar" so I guess its off to the grocery store for me!

Second, to get rid of that cellulite on the back of your hamhocks you have to rub a combo of sea salt, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and sesame oil into it.  Hmmm I think I know what I'm having for dinner!

This is all I could find in my cupboard...think it will work?

Third, if you are feeling a little...unregular, you need to shoot saline up your netherlands and within 1-5 minutes it will "evacuate" faster than a pack of dogs on a three legged cat.  And all the cool kids are doing it.  Seriously, they told me.

Other things I'm currently doing that were influenced by me having way too much time on my hands when I should have been doing laundry or mopping the floor:

That movie Fat, Ugly, and Almost Dead.  Or something like that.  I watched it on Netflix last year and immediately wanted to buy a juicer and drink my way skinny and healthy.  But I can't afford a juicer.  And I'm pretty sure anything with kale squished in it tastes like complete ass.  I'd be dumping way too much salt in it.  Plus it takes a lot of work to chop all that crap up before you throw it in and with three kids and a house that constantly looks like its never been cleaned despite my arsenal of Shark products, who's got that kind of time??  V8 it is!

The Holy Grail of Creamer:  Jumbo Size!

I tried using Stevia in the Raw in my coffee instead of the 8 servings of CoffeeMate French Vanilla that I usually dump in.  Stevia in the Raw tastes like licking your toilet.  In a house full of men.  I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong or what but I can't figure out how that sweetener is still on the market.  Maybe I need to burn the top of my tongue a few more times?  Truvia is not much better.  Licking a toilet in a house full of women maybe.

And an infomercial I saw once told me to weigh myself every day.  So every morning I get on the scale with my eyes closed and fingers crossed and repeat to myself "Light as a feather Stiff as a board" and then peer through one eye at the numbers.  Then subtract a pound for my hair, a pound for my pajama pants, and 10 lb for the contents of my innards and wow I'm as skinny as a super model!

For exercise I do squats while I fold laundry (Ellen), flex my abs while driving (Dr Oz), and squeeze my butt cheeks while mopping (my own idea!).  Once and a while I get to walk about .0002 mph with my 2 year old for about 100 ft.  She won't ride in a stroller so that's out.  And sometimes I power walk in the grocery store, only the perimeter of course (Dr Oz), mostly so I don't have time to stop and grab that box of Chips Ahoy taunting me from the shelf.

 Bad

Good!

Oh look its time for Dr Phil!

<3 Betsy

It's all because of the stress

One week ago today, I signed up for a gym.  I did this for a few reasons:

1) It's closer to my house than the Y, which is 20 minutes away (sucks).

2) I need to sleep better--seriously.

3) I am under mounds of stress, out of work for over 6 months (this time--about 1.5 years ago it was about 1.5 years long.).  My regular unemployment ended, and my couponing is just not going so well - I am stuck at about 50-60% savings.  Add to that 3 kids, a husband stationed 3,000 miles away, and finishing up a masters degree, and yeah you could say stress meter is out of control.

4) I am 34 years old.  Everyone tells you but you don't believe it: "If you don't keep up on stuff, your ass will get squshy at 30."  Yeah,over 30 and have a massive ass to lend to squishyness.  No, not really fat, just have full on apple-bottom ba-dank-a-dank.

So I walked in to sign up for the gym.  And while I was there, sale guy with glasses says: "We have a special on personal training, 3 sessions for only 99 bucks."

Well, I still had some of my tax-return.   So, yeah, I can use that swift kick in the ass a personal trainer provides.  Sign me up, oh mighty one.

They set my appointment for me, for the next morning, much to my dismay.  Although, I suppose it's why I signed up, you know swift kick in the squishy ass to get me motivated.

830 am the next morning, I show up and meet my new trainer, let's call him average joe trainer.

"Hi," he says, "I''m average joe trainer and they tell me I can work the shit out of you."

"You can try,"  I reply.

This is going to be fun.  I can just tell.