Today was awesome. The 4 o’clock event I tweeted about went very well (more to come later).
And, to celebrate, I had ice cream. From Graeter’s. My favorite. And it, too, was awesome.
And although my body wants nothing more than to go to bed right now, I’m gonna do a little straightening around the house and go for a run.
Because I am awesome. And I deserve the run too.
So it’s been a while, but welcome back to Meatless Monday! It all started with this recipe from the January 2008 issue of Martha Stewart Food.
Half package of penne pasta into boiling water
Artichoke hearts. I love them, but find them very briny. I always rinse then and chop them up. But both steps are optional.
And then I add a can of white beans to the collander. Drain and rinse them too.
When the pasta is halfway cooked, add 1/4 cup of chopped sundried tomatoes to the pasta water. This softens them and plumps them back up.
Now onto the dressing. Start with EVOO.
Add some mustard. I bought this locally made stuff last week. So good.
Wasn’t vinegar-y enough, so I added some more of this. Salt and pepper and the dressing was done!
Rinse and tear up a head of lettuce. I’m not sure exactly what this was. Similar to romaine but not as stalky.
Put the beans and artichokes in a heat-safe bowl.
Drain the pasta and add to the bean mixture.
Add the dressing – as much as you think it needs. I didn’t use all of this.
Add a little goat cheese and tah-dah!
Such a yummy pasta salad! You can eat it warm or cold. Enjoy!
We just got back to our home from a weekend of time with the families. I’m exhausted. Physically, emotionally. Just exhausted.
I don’t know what my deal was today. I did really well Friday and Saturday. Really well. Food wise? Right on point. When Nate’s mom fixed a big breakfast (my real trigger meal when at home), I had a slice of whole wheat toast topped with one scrambled egg and a lot of cantaloupe. And that was AFTER my run. That was the start of a day that ended with lasagna and yeast rolls and ice cream, but still within my calorie target (again, thanks to my early morning run).
Today was much rockier. It started out on a high note – I put on my wedding dress and it fits perfectly (pictures and more to come later this week, I promise). But it went downhill from there, as I started interacting with people. I ate. Not a lot in quantity, but even less in quality. I ate Oreo dessert. And potato chips. And lots of cheese. And we got home too late for me to exercise, which I had planned on. I could still exercise I guess, but I really just want to crawl into bed.
What is going on? I am having a hard time accepting the fact that I’m an adult. That my family members are getting older. That some family members are hard to get along with. That some family members are getting things that I wish I had. That I thought more people would notice and comment on my weight loss. That I still depend on other people for my self-worth. That you put me back in my hometown and I don’t hold myself to the food standards I do in my usual environment. And I choose to smile through it all. That gets exhausting.
And with exhaustion I tend to welcome things like ice cream sandwiches and peanut m&ms.
It’s not as bad as I let on. I still counted every single bite. And I went about 250 calories over my target today. But I ate nothing green, only one vegetable, and I had coffee for dinner.
I know there will be days that I go over. I just want to be in control of those days. I want the over days to be splurges – ice cream from Graeter’s, Mom’s lasagna, things I love and choose to eat from a place of contentment and a planned indulgence. But today I was over because I was eating from an emotional place, looking for comfort and a peace.
I chose to eat instead of pulling Nathan aside, initiating a walk or something, and letting it all out to him. Or getting on here and blogging about it. Or calling one of my friends. I ate. Because I didn’t want to appear selfish or unthankful or like a big baby. I ate. I suppressed what was going on, stuffed it down inside me and covered it all up with food.
I’m gonna work on that. I have to work on that. Especially before the next time I go home.
Today’s run is brought to you by the letter F.
F is for…
Freshmen to Fast Car (today’s running playlist)
Feline. A cat followed me part of my run. But when he realized I wouldn’t be chasing him, he was done.
Fog.
Fatigue. My legs were unhappy. I mean, really. My breathing was fine. I wasn’t exhausted. My legs just didn’t want to move. But I finished anyway.
Friendly. I stopped and chatted with my mother-in-law’s neighbor. I was pretty out of breath, but I managed.
Fotography. (Yes, I know it’s not spelled right.) I stopped on the way home and took pictures of Flowers.
And? It was effing hard. But I finished. Amen.
(and my brother caught some serious fish today. That starts with F too.)
Fat Bridesmaid has challenged us to show our fresh faces today. Make-up free. And I’m all in. I mean, you see the whole, mostly uncensored emotionally me out there, so why should my face be any different? I’m strangely liberated by this experience.
I remember when I did this the first time. I cannot believe it’s been over 2 years ago. I’ve spent so much time reading my old posts. Trying to remember where I was – physically, emotionally, vocationally – and it’s almost overwhelming. I am so the same but so different. I’ve spent a good chunk of time reading through all of April of 2007 and parts of March and May. Our big old house. We just bought the car. And I still have the same tennis shoes. Am I really still running in them? That’s unacceptable. (Just go check out April 2007 on my sidebar…I wasn’t planning on linking when reading and yammering on.) So from April 2007…
So how am I different now? Longer hair. Pretty sure I weigh less now. By about 20 pounds or so. Living in a different house. A different job. But I still have – and love – the green shirt from my old picture. And my eyebrows are just as uncontrolled in today’s picture.
Here you go!
No photoshop. Under the unforgiving eco-friendly swirly lightbulbs. Me. Fresh and clean.
Alright! Your turn! Just make sure you link to FB and leave her a comment!
You might not see me again until Monday. We’re going back to Greenup to spend time with our families. Not taking a computer. Limitied cell service for Twitter. Have a great weekend!
Tonight I ran Week 2 Day 1 of C25K. Several epiphanies.
So yeah. That’s me today. Tomorrow I have an early appointment with the scale at Weight Watchers. I’m also gonna follow Fat Bridesmaid’s call and post a picture without makeup tomorrow. I mean, really. You have all seen some pretty unflattering shots of me. So bring on the lack of makeup! You should play along too!
Today pretty much stunk.
It’s funny how I never noticed being bloated until I was less fat.
Work? Yeah. Not so fun. Nothing major, you know? Just work stuff.
I was feeling wonky this morning (hello Mr. Bloat!) so I dressed all in grey. Doesn’t do a lot for the mood.
Family drama. Oh, the drama. Entertaining? Yes. But also a little draining.
Saw a really cute little kid last night. With a ukelele. Reminded me that I don’t have a cute little kid. With a ukelele.
Lunch meeting. Lunch provided. Pizza and cake. I had both. I’ve beat myself up for that all day.
Today has felt like I was just…almost walking through mud. Nothing has been simple. I haven’t felt like I fit anywhere. Just off.
But then, just like the hairwashing episode from a few weeks back, I started to snap out ot if. I was doing the Biggest Loser Yoga dvd (man, I love Bob Harper). The first downward dog pose…
I caught a whiff of my shirt. Nice. Lavender. Hmmmm…
Every time I breathed in, I smelled it. Comforting, fresh, clean, new.
And with every breath, I started to turn my day around.
I may never take my green shirt off.
I have a few things that I truly love. One of those? My wedding rings.
I picked them out. Kinda. I took him to see an example of a set that I really liked. And he bought them that day. I love that man.
But since I am becoming less of me, my rings aren’t really fitting anymore. I’ve tried several things. The most McGyver-like was the day I opted for a rubber band arranged in a way that took me back to the days of middle school friendship bracelets.
I’ve since retired my rings. I don’t want to get them sized yet. I’ve tried wearing a smaller ring on the outside (as a bookend) but they spin around my finger. So I decided that I would retire them for now. And I’ve taken possession of Nathan’s engagement ring.
I decided when we got engaged that he needed a ring as well. And since his hands are not the same size, he coudn’t keep wearing it after he started wearing his wedding ring. It now fits my ring finger. And I love it. 
Yes, this is elvish. But instead of being all agressive and dominating like the precious, it says something about one love to bind us and etwine us, you know, something mushy. Yes, I know we’re nerds. And I’m okay with that.
I’m a very visual person.
As much as I love the Lose It! app on my iPhone, I’ve really missed having a weight loss chart that is big enough to read. Also, I started using the app part of the way through my journey, and there’s no way to enter weights on previous dates than food is logged. I’ve thought about tracking down some graph paper and making an old school chart, but then I’d have to scan it in whenever I wanted to show y’all. My other option was excel. And I’m not all that good with excel.
So I was poking around some of the blogs I’ve just started following, and I found the answer to all my problems. I want to say a big THANK YOU! to Roni, and this post in particular. I just opened the link, plugged some numbers into excel from my weight record, and I end up with this beautiful chart. (Wait, I must admit that I spent a good half hour trying to figure out how to change the starting weight in the “weight” column only to discover if I created a whole new chart it would magically reformat itself. So it wasn’t as easy as I just made it sound. But if I knew anything about excel, it would have been that easy. Carry on.) Oh yeah, this beautiful chart:
It is so obvious where I started taking Adipex. I had totally flatlined. My weight just wasn’t budging. And it’s dropped steadily ever since. I’m not taking Adipex every day. I was starting to not feel the effects anymore. I was feeling hunger again. I was having trouble fighting off cravings. And while on it, I wake up promptly at 6am. So for the past 2 weeks, I’ve skipped Friday and Saturday. Partially to keep my body from getting used to it, and partly so I can sleep in on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It seems to be working well for me. It is more difficult on the off days to stay on track, but I’m usually out and about so I don’t think about food as much.
So I’m ready for next week. My wonderful husband has already done the grocery shopping for a week of salads (I’ll show you! Don’t worry!) and I’ve restarted C25K (yes, again) AND I am in love with Biggest Loser Yoga. AND I have a 4 day week ’cause I’m going home home Friday morning to see my little brother who’ll be in from Kansas. So it’s gonna be a great week!
And I’m back to posting my food pictures starting tomorrow. I’m just too far behind to catch up. And being behind stresses me out. So I’m just gonna start over on Sunday. Amen.
Just a few notes from tonight’s walk/run.
1. I am sensitive to light. I need to wear sunglasses.
2. Little ankle socks? Slip down. Into my shoes. But when my butt muscles hurt so bad I think they will literally catch fire, I don’t notice the socks much.
3. If you are using the C25K app on the iPhone, put the phone in Airplane Mode. Otherwise your friend Delicious might call and shut down the program. And you’re not sure how far you’ve gone so you have to improvise. And probably do more walk/run cycles just to make sure you’ve done enough.
4. Dave Matthews Band is awesome running music. Especially the Red Rocks cd.
5. It is some space-time conspiracy that every time you go from walking to running, it is in front of someone. Someone getting out of their car, mowing their grass, chasing their kid on a bike. So the nice homeowner thinks I’m just switching to running to impress them. I want to yell, “No! The tone is telling me to run! Do you want to hear it?” But nope. I just run. Until the tones tell me to stop.
6. Running after work makes you tired. So tired that blogging is the last thing you do before bed. It’s 9:35. Just call me Sophia Patrillo.
I think that’s it. Goodnight everybody!
