Hey...well...yeah...

It's been a while, eh?

I pretty much celebrated my birthday through the entire month of July. This resulted in some weight gain, some tummy aches, some body aches, and lots of great memories. Happy birthday to me :)

Party is over and life continues on for this body. After the eating frenzy, I realized that I couldn't get a grip and found myself highly motivated to do something drastic. Short term drastic...

While flipping through Prevention Magazine, I found a four day diet to debloat. Four days. I can do anything for four days. After having a look at the diet, I realized that it wasn't that far off from what I normally ate in a day. Or so I THOUGHT.

Today was my first day and this is what I learned from the experience. I have become a nibbler...a grazer...a take a bite of this and that'er. The Body For Life program had me make the switch to six small meals a day. Somehow, I transitioned that into, "eat all day long...not enough to get full...but constantly so that you never get hungry".

I was hungry today. My meals left me satisfied, not full. I just wished that there had been three or four more of them.

Other than being hungry, it was a good day and a good plan for me. 1200 calories, diet designed by a nutritionist and very short term. After the four days, they want you to transition to their Flat Belly Diet (by the way...I have that book too).

I'm thinking that this may become my Monday thru Thursday diet. It's easy and it will keep me in check.

Still doing my daily exercise before breakfast, but it is clear that exercise doesn't knock the fat off of my arse!!!

How did that just happen?

Do you ever ask yourself this question? I do it all the time. It's as if my body is taken over by another soul. A hungry soul.

My plan for dinner was a simple Muscle Milk Light. It was too hot to cook, and too late to eat anything heavy. Protien shake would hold me over until tomorrow.

Then it happened.

You know what I'm talking about. My brain started to tell me that a shake is not dinner and that I was hungry. So in order to avoid this unwanted message, I got online and putzed around looking for distractions. I drank water. I read email.

And the voice was still there. Eat.

I go to the fridge and look at what would be a good, light meal. Now this is when I totally lost it. The next thing I know, I'm sitting down to a bowl full of brown rice, shredded mozarella cheese and enchilada sauce. Leftovers. In a bowl all tossed together, I had my dinner.

How did that just happen? Who put that mess in my bowl? And why was it so darned tasty???

Tomorrow is another day and I'll survive this out of body experience. As it is my body for life...and a lifetime of work is ahead of me!

Update

I wanted to add something to the last post that I made about all of the benefits of exercise. I was thinking, while on my walk, that there are people out there that would pay tons of money to have all the benefits that are listed. Heck, people DO pay tons of money for prescriptions to fix much of what could be "cured" if only they would commit to a regular exercise program. Shoot, if I were to add that it increased libido or enhanced sexual function, EVERYONE would be creating a cardio plan! Maybe I'll start a little rumor to get the sedentary folks motivated. :)

My summer self-challenge to lose 15 pounds by the end of August is moving along well. I was down another two pounds on Weigh-In Wednesday. Yippee-skippee for me. It helps that I'm currently on vacation and am not faced with the buckets of food that I'm surrounded with at work. It will be there waiting for me when I get back and I'm just going to have to stick with my plan. It's a good plan. But it isn't fool-proof. I guess it is my job to not be the fool.

Reading...

I was digging through some old cookbooks and found one that I MAYBE opened twice. The pages are still crisp and clean...no drip marks...no notes. The only reason that I can think that I stuck this away, is that it is very basic. The title is "Quick & Healthy; Low-fat - Carb Concious Cooking". The book is full of just that, low-fat & low carb. The first several pages are loaded with tips on how to take on a healthy lifestyle. I'm going to share what page 34 says:

The benefits of exercise:
lowers risk of heart disease
increases good cholesterol
improves blood pressure
lowers risk of osteoporosis
imporves blood sugar control
increases basal metabolic rate
helps with weight loss
lowers body fat
improves quality of life
improves mental health and reduces depression

I read this and thought, "Duh...this is probably why I never got into this book. Who doesn't know this stuff already?"

Um...well, there are lots of folks out there that are looking for the solution to many of the issues listed above, but refuse to put any effort into a REGULAR exercise program. REGULAR being the key word here. You can't expect results if you don't put your all into whatever it is that you're doing. This doesn't just apply to exercise. Life baby. If you do something half assed, then you're going to get half assed results. Do something with passion and you're gonna see quality results.

I'm going to borrow the words of a wise 60 year old woman that I know through the Internet. Her name is Judy and in my opinion, she is brilliant. She wrote this in response to a post in a forum:

You want to get the scale moving? Then YOU are going to have to move. You can start with a walk, but don't just stroll. Put on some music and MOVE to it. Apply your mind to your body. For 30 minutes out of your day, instead of watching tv or sitting on the computer researching how to break a plateau, DO SOMETHING to break it.

These words are not addressed to any single person. So many here and elsewhere avoid EXERCISE; they say "It's not for me, I don't have the time, I don't like it, I can't do it." What they are really saying is "I WON'T follow this rule, I'll look for a way around it." And then they decide they don't eat enough calories, or they don't eat the right combination of foods, or whatever way they want to justify the stall. Anything but the obvious!

Not everybody LOVES exercise, but many find, to their great joy (as I did) that it's fun and addictive. Even those who don't LOVE it, but DO IT consistantly agree that it WORKS! And because they love the results, they wouldn't trade it for anything.

I'm living proof that it works. There are others here who are living proof that it works. And those of you who are still afraid of it can become living proof too, if you dare. It's just a matter of breaking out of your comfort zone. I know you have the courage to overcome your fear of EXERCISE.

See? She is one smart cookie.

2 Fabulous POUNDS

After applying myself...APPLYING is the keyword here...for the past week, I dropped two pounds. And I'm thrilled. Honest and true, I really feel those two pounds gone.

The key to my success? Extra cardio (my Goddess, it seems that is all I do) and healthy small meals without extra bites of this and that. The bites of this and that are what kept me at a plateau. Evil plateau. No matter how much exercise I got, I couldn't out run the bites that I took in. Plain and simple. Calories in...calories out. I hate that. Oh gosh, hate is such a strong word. Let's just go with I disagree with all of the charts. I know what works for MY body and lemme tell ya what, it is not what all of the calculators say. I would be wafer thin if that were the case. Anyhow, I'm on target for my goal of 15 off by the end of August.

As a side note: I originally said that I'd post my before and after B4L Challenge photos. Well, I've changed my mind. Dang, but those are revealing pictures and I'm just not ready to share them with the world! They're going into my personal folder and someday I might post them. But no promises. I'm pleased with the progress that I made after the B4L Challenge. I gained a lot of good lifetime habits after following it for 12 weeks. It really is forever.

Too good to not write about

Every now and again, I'll make something in the kitchen that is so good I have to write about it or take a picture of it...or both. There is no picture tonight, because I was so taken by the flavors, I forgot.

I'm totally in the zone with my diet. Healthy. Organic. Fresh. Flavorful. I should call it the HOFF diet. :)

So this is what I did. I took two chicken breast halves and sliced them into five pieces. Sort of like chicken fillets. I then added some leftover vinaigrette that I found in the fridge when I was cleaning it today (by the way...bad yogurt is just plain stinky). The chicken hung out on the counter for a while. I did some other things...like dressed my dog's newly injured foot. I have no idea what it is that she did, but it was pretty gross in between the big pad and the little ones. She was sure that licking it was the solution to her problems. Nay-nay little one! Here comes MamaVet with her bottle of blue stuff, cotton balls, gauze, boo-boo juice, an old sock and some masking tape. She would call the folks at PITA if she could manage the phone.

Back to my dinner! Chicken is doing it's thing. Check. I then chopped up a chunk of an English cucumber (those English really know how to grow a vegetable), sliced some cherry tomatoes in half, added some chopped red onion (tons of tears were shed...the dog thought that they were for her), sliced a few green olives and added some low fat crumbled feta cheese. Athenos was the brand and I swear that I'll never go back to the full fat stuff again...it was THAT yummy. The dressing...juice of one lemon and the zest as well, about half as much EVOO, tablespoon of oregano, sea salt, pepper and just a couple of shakes of thyme. I put all of those things in a little Tupperware and shook the bejesus out of it. I then poured about a tablespoon of the dressing over my salad and tossed. Now it was the salads turn to hang out. Chicken was drained and simply done in my heavy skillet on medium. Some fresh pepper...five minutes on each side. Done.

This meal was so fresh tasting. Bright. Verdant <--learned that word from Rachael Ray. It was so good that I lost myself and bit my bottom lip. Did it slow me down? Only for a second.

Delish! HOFF is the way to go.

Here is the feta website: http://www.athenos.com/ProductInfo/crumbfeta_re.aspx

Getting my head on straight

I make myself crazy.

I have the most conveluted expectations for my weight loss. Let me just share with you. I have been super focused on eating right, along with maintaining my exercise program, since July 1st. Let's take a look at the calendar...uh...yeah, it is now July 3rd. I've been fully focused for just over 48 hours. So I step on the scale this morning and see that I've dropped a pound and a half. I'm silent. Quiet and staring at the dial of the scale while reading the digital figure. Quiet disappointment.

HOW CAN THIS BE???? I'VE BEEN EATING RIGHT AND THERE IS ONLY A 1.5 DROP???

Now I know this is crazy, so there is no need to email me or send a psychiatrist to my home. If I step outside of my own head space, I can see that this is better than expected and that in reality, a two pound per week loss is a healthy goal.

But still...

In my head I'm screaming. What would make me happy? Seeing it drop 5 this morning. Again, I know that this is crazy, but it is what I'm feeling. It isn't going to derail my efforts. I'll keep on chugging along with the reality of what is.

More of the same for today...exercise...six small meals...rinse and repeat.