one-three-five

Finally! It’s been a long time coming and I lost some ground with our move, so I’m VERY happy to announce that I’ve met my weight goal and am more than ready to be finished “losing” weight. I have to admit, it was a little anti-climactic this morning; the truth is I’ve been at the 135-mark for about a week now and have been literally ounces away each morning. Because of some travel plans we have coming up, I NEEDED to hit it by Thursday (or I would have felt like a complete failure) and I was already stressing, so I weighed after, ahem, using the restroom, and voila! 135.6 to be exact!

I told Andrew a long time ago that my “reward” on the day I hit the magic 1-3-5 would be a guilt-free sundae at Antionette’s. I’ll bring the camera to document that tonight. He said he’s going to get me a present, too! (It’s my love language–gifts–and Andrew is a phenomenal gift-giver. I married the right guy!) This is potentially the BIGGEST accomplishment of my life (so far) and I’ll be milking it for all it’s worth 🙂

Anyway…

I am so incredibly proud of myself (can’t you tell?) and surprised at the same time. I don’t even remember when I was 1-3-ANYTHING, middle school, maybe?? My dad always used to say, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Apparently, despite all my body-whining for the last ten or so years, I never really “put my mind” to doing anything about it.

If you’ve been following the blog, you know I started my weight-loss journey (this one, at least) back in March. Since then, using Livestrong’s MyPlate calorie counter, I’ve lost a whopping TWENTY pounds. Where did it come from, you ask? A little here and a little there–trust me, it was there! Those “pesky ten pounds” on my 5’7″ frame I knew I was carrying all over turned into a personal challenge to look and feel better than I’d ever before.

Here are some photos Andrew-the-photographer took this morning before he rushed off to work:

I am so ready to be DONE! Hitting the ‘maintain’ button on Livestrong has been a long-awaited moment. The most important thing to me is that I actually (and finally) accomplished something I’ve always wanted to, but never really tried hard enough. I don’t ever remember a time in my life, to include being relatively young, that I didn’t want to be thinner. Sometimes I needed to, other times I didn’t. More recently, I didn’t really think I could. I’ve been more active in the past five years than ever, yet I never lost any weight. I may have toned up a bit, and I had excellent endurance, so I just figured I was stuck with a ‘slightly soft’ physique.

Until I tried. Just like running a marathon, you never know until you try. It’s food, people. It isn’t exercise, although that’s a big part of it, and it’s not even WHAT you eat. It’s HOW MUCH.

And it’s more than just ‘trying to eat well’ or ‘watching what I’m eating.’ That may work for some people, but not for me. I have to physically write down everything I eat, or put it in a computer to tally it all up. When the calories are gone for the day, they’re gone. It’s about discipline and accountability.

I didn’t give anything up, I just had to make choices. If I wanted to splurge on dinner that night, I had to get a good workout in and go easy throughout the day. I can’t tell you how many days I “failed” and went over on my calories because of a spontaneous dinner out or a lack of self-control. It was devastating, but only momentarily. The most important thing to remember: Tomorrow is a new day.

Weight-loss, for me, is going to be a life-long process. Not that I’ll be counting every calorie for the rest of my life, but rather that I’ll always need to be aware of what and how much I’m eating. I’m a foodie with a history of being obsessed with my body size–not a good combination. What I strive for is a healthy, balanced diet and lifestyle that I can maintain year after year. Will my weight fluctuate from day to day? Certainly. The goal is to keep it in the ballpark by making good choices.

There are things I’m still working on. The biggest of which is simply STOPPING when I’m getting full. It’s a foreign concept to me, and a new feeling, leaving the table without feeling full. This alone is probably the biggest challenge for me, yet by mastering it I will reap the most reward. I so envy those, like Andrew, who don’t eat when they aren’t hungry, no matter what yummy temptation lies before them. Me? I see a brownie and all of a sudden it’s all I can think about.

My goals from here on out will be to maintain my current weight through diet and exercise, and to go from weighing myself every day to once a week. Right now I have been stepping on the scale each morning, mostly because I have been constantly waiting for that next lower number to appear. Now, I need to make sure I’m not creeping back up over the course of a week. Will the number go up and down? Yes, but when it goes up, that’s when I need to make good food choices for a couple days to get it back in check.

Here’s to meeting goals, healthy living and my ice cream sundae tonight!

BIG breakfast & weekend re-cap

Wireless is back at the hotel! Hallelujah! Seriously, I was really beginning to miss it. Pathetic, I know, but for a blogger without a day job, what the heck else was I going to do?

After going almost three days (gasp!) with only one picture-less post, I feel I owe my loyal readers (ha!) a bit of a re-cap:

First, this morning (since it’s more timely–it’s the journalist in me):

BIG BREAKFAST! Plain yogurt flavored with 1/2 banana, mashed, and 1/2 tbsp Trader Joe’s Mango Butter, blueberries and granola, AND Great Harvest whole-grain cinnamon raisin bread with 1 tbsp Justin’s Maple Almond Butter, the other half of the banana and a tablespoon of maple syrup. I was craving maple this morning.

It was 526 calories and felt pretty heavy in my stomach on the way to the gym, but I’m glad I had it! It powered me through an hour of Pilates, 45 minutes of hard swimming (did some sprints!), and kept me going for an additional two hours of putzing around after I got back from the gym. Usually I’m RAVENOUS by the time I pull out of the parking lot of the gym, if not before!

Back to Saturday:

This was my post-run breakfast on Saturday. I went out for a quick three miles while Andrew took Hadrian on a walk/ball-throwing session, then we both did a nice four-miler in the neighborhood near our hotel. This is one of my best shots yet, so I had to share.

I love granola. LOVE. This is Wegmans Granola with Raisins, and unfortunately, it’s only OK. I mean, what did I expect? It’s just light and not very cluster-y. I’d rather it be chock-full of goodies and in big chunks. Alas, it was cheap. It was the peach, blueberries and coconut milk that really did it for me!

(I did order the OpenSky cherry chocolate granola fundraiser that Kath recently sent out in support of another blogger–I would want some nice stranger to order granola to raise money if I got cancer, too–so that should be here soon. Will post when it arrives!)

The rest of Saturday, as I said here, was filled with laziness and movies. Mad Max is STILL on TV as of yesterday and if Andrew puts it on one more time, I might go through the roof.

We tried a new church Sunday, and liked it enough to go back. We’ve been a bit discouraged in the church department, so we’re excited that we found something we felt was authentic and like it could be ‘home’ to us. If we decide it is, I’ll let you know!

As Abigail will be leaving for college in less than a week (where did the summer go?), we popped over there for an impromptu visit. I brought the computer and snagged some of their internet to catch up on calorie-counting (I was trying not to get obsessive about it, but I’m less than a pound from my goal and my OCD tendencies make it hard to just ‘let things go.’) and check my email.

Did you know you can pickle things just by putting them in the juice from your pickles? I didn’t…I think I read it in this month’s Shape. I’ve pickled green beans before, but always using the canning method and pickling salt. The article said you basically just throw veggies into the juice after you finish off a jar of pickles. Go figure.

So, I bought a half-pound of green beans (for 50 cents!) and blanched and shocked them before packing them into the jar:

Don’t they have great color?

I also made two batches of Jeni’s sorbets, but they will get their own post 🙂

dinner theater

I made a recipe from scratch tonight. Well, mostly from scratch.

Yet again, I was on a quest to empty our freezer… I happened to have an abundance of frozen cranberries (you gotta stock up when they’re in season!), and a bag of pearl onions, and more ground beef. I remembered a brisket with cranberries recipe from Everyday Food that I’d found a couple years ago and have made a few times that we love. How could I turn that into a recipe with ground beef?

You make it into soup! I had a beef soup bone in Andrew’s mom’s freezer (points for using up even MORE from our frozen stash!), so I boiled that and made some broth. Then I made meatballs with parsley (also frozen into ice cubes from our garden), sun-dried tomatoes and herbs.

I tried to make them as small as possible–kinda like italian wedding soup. I assembled them early in the day and then refrigerated them.

I boiled the cranberries down with a little tomato sauce, tomato paste and garlic. It smelled awesome! Can I just say that I am SO READY to have a house? I need more than two burners, and my knives need to be sharpened and I just miss my kitchen stuff. Moving on.

I rolled the meatballs in flour and browned them in a skillet, then added them to the soup. I added the last of our whole-wheat egg noodles (score!) and cooked until they were al dente.

By the time I served up the soup, the cranberries had all but disappeared.

Andrew’s face said it all when he tasted the broth–too tart! It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t the “beefy” soup flavor I was going for. So much for making something from scratch! I saved the leftovers but discarded the broth; I’m going to try to find a fancy-schmancy spaghetti sauce at Wegmans tomorrow to use with it for dinner.

We rushed out the door to catch one of the last performances of “As You Like It” at Shakespeare in the Park. Each summer (for the last 36 years!), the troupe has been performing most nights (all but Mondays) in Delaware Park and it’s free. You can bring lawn chairs or blankets, food and drink. In retrospect, we should have packed a picnic dinner or picked something up on the way, as most people did. Lots of people were drinking wine. So fun.

Next year we’ll have to be more prepared with chairs (we brought a blanket from the room), sweatshirts and dinner. I so wanted to snack, but was full-ish from dinner.

We ended up leaving at intermission because we were cold and Andrew was a bit bored. I had gotten into it, but it was pretty hard to follow since it’s Shakespeare, we didn’t have a great view, we arrived late and neither of us knew the plot. Next time we’ll brush-up on the particular play before going.

We didn’t want to end our night just yet, and I was craving some hot tea, so we went to Cafe Aroma in the Elmwood section of town. Very alternative, very trendy, very “happening.” I caved and split a cupcake with Andrew, but stuck to tea to drink. I did try sips of his white mocha–YUM.

I’m looking forward to my laid-back (but hopefully productive!) Saturday!