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?

Photo Credit

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

It's the diet that's killing me

Sure, sure, Average Joe works me out to death whenever we have a training session.  I often can't lift my arms or legs depending upon which type of 1-hour weight training he has concocted for me. This should be enough, right?

Let's go back to goals.  My goal: sleep better at night.

After about day 2 of training and working out on my own, goal met. I have not slept this well in years.   But let's look at this more closely. 
1) I have worked out pretty hard off and on throughout my adult life. A few months here, a few months there with long stretches between of not working out.
2) I have tried over the counter sleeping medicine, thinking that if I just got that good night's sleep, I could easily start my shape-up "tomorrow". 
3) I have never dieted in my life.   I have never been on a diet, I have not owned a scale for years--like over a dozen years.  The only time I know what I weigh is when I go into the doctors office, and even then, I look away.

So, day one with training, Average Joe weighs me and takes my body fat index or whatever it is.  I look away.  I still do not know what it is, honestly--my goal is to sleep, have more energy and gain maybe just the teensiest little focus on what I do during the day.  (Hint, this blog is not it, at all)

Then he goes over my "diet."  Diet?  What's a frickin diet?  How does one diet?  Well, I guess it's not really a diet --there are a few things out, but generally, it's a shift in how I eat, i.e., I have to eat breakfast and second breakfast.  And no sugar crap after noon.   That's the kicker.  You don't think of fruit as sugar.  Generally when I want to lose weight or slim a little, it's fruit for dessert.

Okay, makes no logical sense to me.  But he explains during our workout, the sugars and no pastas and stuff like that in the afternoons and evenings are about sleep.   I am desperate, I will try it.

So that night and every night after for the last two weeks, its no sugars (not even fruit, that's a morning only thing) in the afternoon and evenings.  Good god it's hard.  I am constantly battling myself, especially since I taught my daughter how to bake over the last couple of years.  Little lady has a knack for fancy schmancy desserts.   And carb-laden breakfasts.  And, good god can she make some mac n cheese.  Mmm, mac n cheese, I miss you so.

And it makes the WHOLE HOUSE smell like fancy schmancy desserts, after I eat my protein and veggies.

Good god how long can this go on?  But again, I DO sleep better at night, and better than I did when I worked out hard before and DIDN'T stop eating those things at night.   So maybe Average Joe has something?

Time will tell.  And tomorrow is the first weigh in again -- to check those blasted numbers. 

The Merits of Pain Relief Cream

I am not an old woman.  At least that's what I tell myself each morning as I slather 30 dollar "proven to fight age" cream on my face, around the eyes, under the chin, between the eyes where the age and kid furrowed brow develops.

I am also not that badly out of shape.  I mean I still have a shape after all, right?  That what I tell myself as I grease my butt to get the jeans on shortly after slathering my face with stuff that promises I will be forever 21.  The jeans do the same, until they rip in the nether-regions, that is.

So imagine my surprise, when, after just a few hours post work-out, I find myself gripping the sides of the bathroom counter along with the tub basin to ease myself into sitting on the "throne."   The ease is not really the word, although I did try to take it gracefully in stride.  Finally I just got to the point that I was gripping, screaming, and plopping down simultaneously--with my kids in the other room wondering if their mother is, in fact, having a stroke

So there I am, stuck, right next to my medicine cabinet, where  I find a tube of "pain relieving cream," which I got for free from couponing.  YEAH ME!!!

Directions: "Rub on area where you feel pain, but do not use on your eyes."  Okay, I can so do that, and what do you know my pants are already down around the ankles.  Just kidding, but easily remedied.

So I proceed to rub it on my thighs, my legs, my knees, and other areas "where I feel pain."

They should warn you not to rub it on your butt.  Nothing like a frozen to the bone butt that's still in pain--when you still may have to pee during the 8 hours of" muscle therapy," which the product says it provides.  It does not, closer to four hours of frozen butt for me.

The next morning, I apparently limp into the gym, and Average Joe is waiting for me at the door. 

"Walking a little gingerly, eh, Maggie-may."  I should have known at this moment that would become my name when inside the confines of the gym.

"Well, yeah, did you know there are muscles under your butt cheeks?"

"Oh, Maggie, yours are anything but cheeks.  'Cheek' denotes something cute, quaint."

Nice. Simply wonderful.  Lemme just push through this sadistic 45 minutes on the elliptical.
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