Still getting over cold, worked half day yesterday. Very very tired! Turned in my ballot Sunday though and finished a pair of socks I’d been working on since July.  Sitting here amazed that this day and age people would have to wait hours to vote in this country.  Happy to have all voting by mail in Oregon!  I think I’ve only voted once in a booth, probably 1992 before vote-by-mail… and that’s all the energy I have to write today!!!

I realized this morning I forgot to eat dinner last night.  About 1/4 of my calories!  I am bizzare.  I went for a 40 min walk/jog after work then ended up food shopping at 3 stores (seriously, is there a spinach shortage or something???? Only one store had spinach!) then came home and crashed on the bed to chill to some tv… no hunger pains at all.  And then I didn’t eat today until 11am… I really need to add eating reminder popups to my calendar!

I don’t have much time to blog… too much work to do and then destressing from work!  I’m down 5.5 pounds since the start.  I was able to get outside yesterday and walk in the almost dark and even added some jogging in (yay!).  I’m either going to have to find my headlamp or take a really long lunch if I want to  workout outside after Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend  

The picture to the right is one of my Hello Kitty Easter Eggs, holding my daily supplements, medication and chocolate. I’m a sucker for Hello Kitty.

Brief medical update: Biopsies clear… No Celiac! And no weird stuff, just run-of-the-mill stomach ulcer!

Thanks for all the comments… I feel bad about not responding to them all, I feel like all I’ve been doing all week is cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping! (and blogging about it all…)

End of day 5 tonight (friday).  Down 3.5 pounds this week.  

Day 4 was Beef Stewy stuff.  The calorie/fat count was high but didn’t end up eating it all anyway.  I’d make it again, but redo with ground turkey or mix with the beef to get the fat down. (I’d also probably just do the meat separately then drain or wash off the fat). I’d also add the veggies later, they were mush when it was done.

The 1/4 cup red wine really gave a nice flavor.  Bascially I just sauteed the onions, added the beef and browned it, then threw in the bouillon, veggies, barley, some dried rosemary and 2 cups water.  Then I let it simmer for about an hour while checking that I didn’t burn it. Finished off with some cornstarch to thicken what juice was left.  It came out edible, which is about all I can ask for…  too much sodium in the bouillon though.  I may tweak it again in a few weeks and post a real recipe.

No exercise on day 4… even forgot the push ups!

Day 5 is my favorite dish so far. It’s a variation on a Chicken and Black Bean cassarole my mom makes.  I made it not a cassarole, and chopped up the chicken and browned it in a pan instead of raw in the cassarole dish (which makes it watery anyway).  I had a cheese craving, so this was great.  I just browned the cut-up chicken in a skillet, added a jar of salsa, a drained can of black beans, and some drained corn and stirred it up.  Then put it in plastic containers with ripped corn toritllas and cheese.  The sourcream was in a tiny separate container for topping after heating up at work.  So easy so yum! and could be easily modified for macros.  It would be good with peppers too, if you like them (I don’t!).

Skillet Chicken and Black Beans Day: (my attempt at recipe is here)

Day 5 exercise: treadmill fast walking.  Two sets of pushups (I keep forgetting, need to add to calendar reminders).

Day 6 (today): More beef stew.  Lots of walking. Down another pound. 

Saturday Wrap-Up

Weight loss (since Monday): 4.5 pounds. woo!

Exercise:

Need more! I have all this weekend’s food already made, so I have no excuese on the weekend. I spent so much time cooking and shopping and cleaning this week, I didn’t get a lot of exercise in.

Food:

Usually ended up eating like this: 9:30am 12pm 3:30pm 9pm.

Most of the days I found it really hard to eat all the food (which sounds so totally crazy to me). I just wasn’t hungry when I got home from work. I’d have the munchies all afternoon but not at night. Several nights I made myself finish while making the next days food (about 8-9pm). I may try setting less aside for the evening and add another part to the afternoon.

Next week I plan on making the Pumpkin Pancakes and some Turkey bacon. I’m also really wanting to try some version of these meatballs: Apple Cheddar and Turkey Meatballs. Bonus: made in a crockpot!

Stuff I need to work on:

• Spread out afternoon meals
• Leave less for dinner
• DOUBLE recipes, spend less time in kitchen
• Remember to do pushups
• Spend less time at grocery stores, plan more ahead of time!
• I hate to say it, spend less time blogging about this and reading blogs. Need more time on weeknights to do stuff like exercise!
• Less fake sugar.  I managed to cut it down to 4 splenda packets this week.

Interesting note: my refeed day falls on Super Tuesday! There may be some alcohol involved!

Parting shot from the Portland Japanese Garden this morning:

Chrysanthemums

Survived day 2! Didn’t eat all the food.  I’m guessing the combo of the garlic sauce and fish oil pills just left me with bad taste in my mouth all day.  I ended up tossing the last third and eating a handful of peanuts and a tiny square of chocolate!  There’s a few ideas on the forums on how to deal with the fish oil, I’ll have to find something that works.

Just finished day 3 tonight.  I ate it all, the last third at 9:10 pm.  I almost forgot about it, I wasn’t hungry!  I was fighting the afternoon munchies though.  May save smaller portions for dinner next time.

Treadmilled 30 min fast walk yesterday until my complained, walked 25 min today from work.  Need to get another pair of running shoes to leave at work so I have no excuses.

Today’s food (yum!)  The sugar was used in some black tea.

Just made 2 pots of a beef stew like thing with lots of veggies and barley.  After all the chicken and turkey I’ve had, I crave beef!  I figured if I made 2 dishes Wed. night and two Thur. Night I’d at least have Friday and Saturday nights off cooking.  Maybe a chicken/blackbean/salsa dish tomorrow.  I got some fat free sour cream and fat free mozzarella.  I’m making myself hungry now!

Day 1 of the 30 day challenge: Survived.  

Temptations Resisted: free french fries and cookies.

Misstep: 1 packet splend in vanilla black tea that tasted nasty without.  I have such a sweet tooth  

Sucesses: ate all the food, last bit at 8:45 while making today’s food.  Drank probably 138 oz of water and visited the bathroom a lot.

Exercise: 2 sets of max pushups on a chair in the ladies lounge, 4 each.  Walked down hill from work to streetcar: 25 min.  Still taking it slow because of my lower back, but I took no painkillers yesterday and only 1 muscle relaxer.  I’m taking nothing today and see if I am pain free too.

Down 1.5 pounds this morning!

Here’s Day 2’s food.  A little high on the protein, but I had a whole package of chicken in the freezer weighed before frozen and it was late and I was too lazy or thrifty to weigh it down.  I’ll probably use up my extra 72 calories on a little raw sugar in my tea.

I really like the Sun Luck Black Bean Garlic Sauce now that I’ve figured out how to use it.  It is really not a sauce but a concentrate.  About 1 Tbsp per serving is all I need, any more and the flavor is just too strong.  I dilute it in water then at the end of my stir fry, put in some water and corn starch (about 1 Tbsp per serving) to thicken it up so it sticks to everything.

There will be treadmilling tonight while doing laundry at the BFs.  I’m desparate to watch Sunday’s Mad Men…  It’s on my ipod, taunting me.  Must resist and only watch intersting stuff while working out

Day 1 prep… decided to make something I’ve made a lot… pasta.  I knew at least I could eat it all day long.  There’s no cheese in this (other than what is in the Vodka Sauce).  I loooooove cheese so it is just a well I don’t keep much around.  I just browned up the turkey, put it aside, then sautéd the onion and garlic.  Then add the sauce and herbs and turkey back in.  Let it bubble up and add the spinach, then toss with pasta.

I could have probably added the whole bag of spinach.  I always for get how much it wilts, although if I get too much, I can taste it.  I really don’t like much of the taste of cooked spinach.  I hardly notice it in the dish and I think it adds some nutritional value.  I don’t like bell peppers, but they’d make a good addition sautéd with the onion.  I’m really picky about my veggies

Cooked in my huge skillet… boy is it a lot. The turkey and the pasta are the same color so it looks like it’s all pasta!

And packed in a 8 cup container.  That’s 1.8 liters if you’re metrically inclined.  Looks like a heck of a lot of food.

Monday’s challenge is to eat it and only it.  Hrm.

I have about 1/3 of a package of ground turkey left.  I weighed it and put it in a ziploc bag and wrote weight and date on it with a permanent marker to hopefully use up later this week.

Time for a break in my normal rambling vaguely craft posts for a challenge put out by Leigh Peele, superstar author of The Fat Loss Troubleshoot, an e-book I would highly recommend.  I did about 6 weeks of the OPT program  included with the book and had great results.  My downfall was myself (as usual!) and some health issues.

Details: The 30-Day Fat Loss Challenge: One Big Meal

I love the one big meal concept and eating on it throughout the day.  I typically have been making a big pot of something, adding up the cals then splitting into servings.  The concept is simple, we’ll see how I do.  I like the idea of seeing everything I have to eat all day at once.

Goal: Not to win anything but see how much I can do in 30 days and to jump start my fat loss again.

Current Weight: 226lbs
Goal Weight: 145lbs

Measurements: (Will update Sunday and with pictures too)
Height: 5′7″
Neck: 14.575″
Bust: 40″
Under-Bust: 37.5″
Waist: 41″
Hip: 51″
Thigh: 28″
Calf: 16.5″
Upper Arm: 15.5″

Daily Food: (as calculated for me)

• 1600 calories a day: 145g protien, 36g fat
• 128oz of water (1 gallon)
• Multi-Vitamin and 5g Fish OIl

Training:

• 3 times a day max push-ups
• OPT workout (using plan from weeks 1-3)
  • weights 4x week
  • cardio 3x week steady state 50min total include warm up and cool down

Recovery:

• 20 min pilates
• Stretching/foam rolling

Additional Personal Goals:

• No soda or drinks with sugar/HFCS.  Water, tea, coffee only
• No splenda or other artificial sweetners

Now it’s time to go build a grocery list and some meal ideas and recipes!

2 things finished Wednesday night! Been lying on my back a lot hopped up on muscle relaxers.  Probably too much stress seized my back up. I can’t take any pain reliever but Tylenol, Friday’s endoscopy revealed a stomach ulcer.  Surprise!  

This is probably the first thing I’ve sewn since January.  For my boss on Boss’s Day (today).  Sewn by hand(!) out of some off-white velour.  The pattern is from the book Softies: Simple Instructions for 25 Plush Pals.  I present Tooth with Crown.  (I work with a lot of Dentists)  There’s probably a small industry in selling plush teeth to the dental industry if I make up my own pattern

Also finished these socks out of bamboo yarn.  Very unforgiving splitty yarn.  I had to force myself to finish them.  If they hadn’t of fit they’d be in the trash bin!  Back to wool yarn!

Have I mentioned how much I like my new camera?
Nikon D90 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom Lens