I hope everyone had a Happy Easter, Passover, Equinox, etc. I celebrated Easter with family and some dear friends at my house. We had lovely (not very healthy) food and it was a great day. I started the day sitting on the deck with my husband and a cup of coffee on our new deck furniture (that I've been dreaming about owning since he built our deck three summers ago), watching cardinals and chick-a-dees flit around my bird feeders and listening church bells ringing in Easter morning. It was quite glorious and the closest I've felt to God in a while. I think people use the word "blessed" gratuitously, but at the moment, I was truly blessed. I wasn't thinking about losing weight, or that I'm not training enough for the Triathlon, or stressing about work or even obsessing over setting the perfect table for Easter (although my table was beautiful, if I do say so myself). I was at peace and truly in the moment. Blessed, indeed.
My workout scheduled suffered last week mostly from laziness but also getting the house ready to host Easter. I did have a great swim last week, though. I did my first timed 400 meter swim, which is the distance of the triathlon swim, in 15 minutes and 45 seconds! I don't know how that compares to anyone or anything but I don't really care. In that moment, I felt like Michael Phelps and literally heard crowds cheering in my head. It was one of those great days to be at the pool too because I went in the middle of day and it was virtually empty except for a couple of senior citizens doing water aerobics. I love senior citizens, by the way. They are in my lineup of favorite types of people, just under 6 month old babies (who are always giggly and sweet). Senior citizens have been around long enough to not really give a shit about most things and are nice, non-judgmental people. Most of them, at least. But everything has outliers, right?
The triathlon is about a month and a half away and I'm starting to get nervous. The weather has been awful around here, mostly cold and rainy with a few bursts of nice weather that don't last very long. Because of that, I haven't been on my bike once, which is starting to make me really twitchy. I know the bike is my strongest leg and I know that I can do the distance, but I really want to bike the race route and then do what they call "bricks" which is training two of the legs of the race in the same day. So I want to bike, then run to work on my leg stamina and I haven't had a chance to do so because of the weather. Hey, didn't I say in my last blog that I don't complain about stuff like the weather? Well, I am now. I'm so sick of this crappy weather! There, got it off my chest. So, I'll keep swimming and jogging (indoors and out) until I can get my behind on the bike.
I've also decided to re-join Weight Watchers. It really is a great plan that works for me and if I'm not staying on top of what I eat and am accountable to someone other than myself, I'm in trouble. So I start back to meetings on Monday. I go to an excellent meeting in downtown Chicago just down the street from my office. It's not only convenient and has a great leader, but the building and room it is in had a spectacular view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan. Win-win-win. I'll let you know how it goes. Until then, stay dry!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Control this!
I'm laughing looking back at last week's blog and a funny comment from my friend Karen. She said it read like a diet confessional and she's so right. I've been watching too much reality TV! I'm happy to report that I ate well all week, exercised four days and feel great. Although I did splurge on a decadent dinner on Friday and didn't get my swim in, overall I am happy with how I handled my week food-wise and training-wise. Also, I broke in my new running shoes which feel like they were hand-crafted by cherubs in heaven. The are actually New Balance 860's. I get fitted for running shoes at Dick Pond Athletics in St. Charles, IL. If you are contemplating buying running shoes, I highly recommend that you get professionally fitted for them. Fleet Feet is another great place to do this. I am a super frugal person who is smug about finding great deals and scrimping when needed. Good running shoes are not something to scrimp on. Spend the $100 bucks, it's totally worth it.
One of the reasons I didn't get my swimming in was that I had a big event over the weekend where my best friend/co-author and I did a huge cooking demo and sold our cookbooks at a Diabetes Expo put on by the American Diabetes Association (the publisher of our two cookbooks) at Navy Pier in Chicago. That event required me to be on my feet a lot and haul heavy things. I'm not 25 anymore and it wore my sorry ass out. I joke that I used to be a work horse and now I'm a show pony...I was exhausted!
I don't want to use this blog as a forum to promote myself professionally, but my published cookbooks are an important part of my life and a huge part of the reason I want so desperately to get back to a healthy weight. You see, they are healthy cookbooks for people with diabetes (links to the books are here and here). They are also really for anyone who wants to eat healthy because I think the diabetic diet is the healthiest one out there. Now, imagine the irony of me up there lecturing and demoing about cooking healthy food. I acknowledge my weight struggles when I'm demoing so I don't come off as too much of a fraud but I do not believe in the "Do As I Say and Not As I Do" approach and it's hard. I do think people like someone they can relate to (and there is A LOT of me to relate to) but I'd love to be up there saying, "I cooked this healthy food and look where I am now!"
Again, it's that worrying about people judging me that messes with my "I Can Do This" attitude that I so desperately need to get through this struggle. We sold a lot of books and we had more than several people come up to me and tell me they love us and our books (and one extremely creepy guy who was hitting on me...I wanted to tell him that I prefer men with all of their teeth like my husband, but I politely disengaged myself from him instead). So the validation from the people using our books and loving our food from the demo helps and it means the world to me that people are positively affected by our books. The whole point of doing the books and demos is to help people and teach them that healthy food can taste great and is easy to prepare. So to hear that validated is the best feeling. Ever. And I really mean that because anyone who thinks we did it for the money is cracked. Unless you are famous, or JK Rowling, most authors cannot live, even poorly, on book royalties alone.
So, that was a really long way to get to the point of my blog today. It's about control and worrying. This is a problem I have also struggled with for a very long time and I am working on focusing on what I can control and forgetting about that which I can't. This is not a new idea, of course; ask anyone who has suffered from any addiction and is in recovery. I do pride myself on not being one of those people who gets upset over every little uncontrollable thing like the weather, late trains, idiots who talk loudly on their cell phone anywhere they shouldn't be, people who use rolling briefcases that really don't need to, tourists idly standing in the middle of the sidewalk during morning rush hour, etc. That sort of stuff usually rolls off me. I'm talking about when I need to be somewhere important, like the cooking demo this weekend, and forcing my co-author to leave 4 hours early because I've worked up every possible scenario in my head of what can go wrong, from car accidents (which I was in one on my way to prep for the demo, by the way. Everything is fine except the jackass who hit me tried to tell the cop it was my fault and I went batshit crazy), to traffic, to not being able to find parking, etc. Now, to be successful, you need to plan well and double and triple check everything, but unless you're Nostradamus, you can't plan for everything, which I try to do. To the point where I wake up gasping for breath in the middle of night worrying that everything won't fit in the car! This is not healthy! And it's not mentally productive when working on a goal like a triathlon and weight loss. It's exhausting, actually. And worrying about what other people think. That's another one. I just need to get over it and realize that no one is watching me wheeze along the running path. And if they are, and they are judging me, it's probably because they are too scared to look in the mirror and judge themselves.
All easier said than done, but if I was perfect, I wouldn't need to write this blog and you wouldn't have something to waste 10 minutes on at work! So, this week, along with my goal of training five days and maintaining a healthy eating record, I am also going to work on not worrying so damn much and only controlling those things I can. You know, like my husband...ha ha, just kidding honey!
After all, that little fender bender I was in over the weekend could have been a heck of a lot worse, and I'm grateful that I have my crazy life to worry about, instead of being paralyzed from a car accident. It's all about perspective and while everything is relative, it's also good to be grateful and live like no one is watching you wheeze down the running path.
One of the reasons I didn't get my swimming in was that I had a big event over the weekend where my best friend/co-author and I did a huge cooking demo and sold our cookbooks at a Diabetes Expo put on by the American Diabetes Association (the publisher of our two cookbooks) at Navy Pier in Chicago. That event required me to be on my feet a lot and haul heavy things. I'm not 25 anymore and it wore my sorry ass out. I joke that I used to be a work horse and now I'm a show pony...I was exhausted!
I don't want to use this blog as a forum to promote myself professionally, but my published cookbooks are an important part of my life and a huge part of the reason I want so desperately to get back to a healthy weight. You see, they are healthy cookbooks for people with diabetes (links to the books are here and here). They are also really for anyone who wants to eat healthy because I think the diabetic diet is the healthiest one out there. Now, imagine the irony of me up there lecturing and demoing about cooking healthy food. I acknowledge my weight struggles when I'm demoing so I don't come off as too much of a fraud but I do not believe in the "Do As I Say and Not As I Do" approach and it's hard. I do think people like someone they can relate to (and there is A LOT of me to relate to) but I'd love to be up there saying, "I cooked this healthy food and look where I am now!"
Again, it's that worrying about people judging me that messes with my "I Can Do This" attitude that I so desperately need to get through this struggle. We sold a lot of books and we had more than several people come up to me and tell me they love us and our books (and one extremely creepy guy who was hitting on me...I wanted to tell him that I prefer men with all of their teeth like my husband, but I politely disengaged myself from him instead). So the validation from the people using our books and loving our food from the demo helps and it means the world to me that people are positively affected by our books. The whole point of doing the books and demos is to help people and teach them that healthy food can taste great and is easy to prepare. So to hear that validated is the best feeling. Ever. And I really mean that because anyone who thinks we did it for the money is cracked. Unless you are famous, or JK Rowling, most authors cannot live, even poorly, on book royalties alone.
So, that was a really long way to get to the point of my blog today. It's about control and worrying. This is a problem I have also struggled with for a very long time and I am working on focusing on what I can control and forgetting about that which I can't. This is not a new idea, of course; ask anyone who has suffered from any addiction and is in recovery. I do pride myself on not being one of those people who gets upset over every little uncontrollable thing like the weather, late trains, idiots who talk loudly on their cell phone anywhere they shouldn't be, people who use rolling briefcases that really don't need to, tourists idly standing in the middle of the sidewalk during morning rush hour, etc. That sort of stuff usually rolls off me. I'm talking about when I need to be somewhere important, like the cooking demo this weekend, and forcing my co-author to leave 4 hours early because I've worked up every possible scenario in my head of what can go wrong, from car accidents (which I was in one on my way to prep for the demo, by the way. Everything is fine except the jackass who hit me tried to tell the cop it was my fault and I went batshit crazy), to traffic, to not being able to find parking, etc. Now, to be successful, you need to plan well and double and triple check everything, but unless you're Nostradamus, you can't plan for everything, which I try to do. To the point where I wake up gasping for breath in the middle of night worrying that everything won't fit in the car! This is not healthy! And it's not mentally productive when working on a goal like a triathlon and weight loss. It's exhausting, actually. And worrying about what other people think. That's another one. I just need to get over it and realize that no one is watching me wheeze along the running path. And if they are, and they are judging me, it's probably because they are too scared to look in the mirror and judge themselves.
All easier said than done, but if I was perfect, I wouldn't need to write this blog and you wouldn't have something to waste 10 minutes on at work! So, this week, along with my goal of training five days and maintaining a healthy eating record, I am also going to work on not worrying so damn much and only controlling those things I can. You know, like my husband...ha ha, just kidding honey!
After all, that little fender bender I was in over the weekend could have been a heck of a lot worse, and I'm grateful that I have my crazy life to worry about, instead of being paralyzed from a car accident. It's all about perspective and while everything is relative, it's also good to be grateful and live like no one is watching you wheeze down the running path.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Food Glorious Food!
Hope everyone is having a great first couple of weeks of Spring. The weather is nuts (82 yesterday, 51 today, etc.) but I took advantage of the incredibly warm and wonderful days over the weekend. Well, sort of. It was a rough week, actually. I worked 6 days, all downtown Chicago (which is 40 miles from my house) and had a couple of late nights. Now, please refer to my last blog about excuses. Ha! That went right out the window this week. I had every excuse in the book and only worked out TWICE! Yes, twice. And neither workout was all that impressive. I also ate like the Titanic was going down and the only food aboard was nothing but junk food.
Being overbooked and not planning is an equation for disaster in my life, and what a disaster this week was. This blog is about full disclosure for me and I am embarrassed to admit this but I ate McDonald's three times, Dunkin Donuts twice, Epic Burger once, Jimmy Johns once and went out for sushi once. The rest of the food I ate was popcorn, cereal, cookies and cheese and crackers. No wonder I didn't have the energy to workout and felt like crap all week. All I ate was crap! Typically, I am a great meal planner for our household. I shop every week, prep food on the weekend, make sure everything is healthy and use as many whole foods as possible. Unfortunately, I have been on this downward spiral with meal planning and we have been eating convenience foods, fast food and just junk in general. Well, I'm happy to say that I got my kitchen back on track yesterday!
I cleaned out the fridge and pantry and got rid of anything that was not healthy. Luckily, I don't usually keep a bunch of junk in the house (I go through drive-thrus for that) but the cleaning process felt great for both my fridge and my state of mind. Clean fridge=clean mind. I had some bananas that were starting to brown so I cut them up into chunks, portioned them out and froze them for smoothies. You can also freeze whole bananas and use them for banana bread or a sub for oils in baking. They basically turn to liquid when they thaw so they are great for baking and you're not wasting any food.
I shopped smartly, even going to two stores to get everything I needed at the best prices, and came home and prepped for the week. The prepping took less than an hour, which, in my mind, is an hour well spent. I bought a big, beautiful papaya and cut it up into chunks and froze it too (for smoothies). The papaya was $2.79 and I got two bags worth of frozen fruit out of it. A small-ish bag of frozen papaya from the grocery store is about $4.99 so I saved over two bucks. Saving money makes me very happy and smug. "You paid how much for what?" Frozen fruit is great to have on hand for making smoothies, or stirring into yogurt. If you've never had papaya before, this is what they look like and they taste sort of like a tropical cantaloupe with the texture of a mango. They are mild and delicious and make a great smoothies (see smoothie recipe). Peel it, scoop out the black seeds and cut into 2 inch chunks. That's it.
I also made a big batch of turkey taco meat. I add a few things to bulk it up (it's more filling and lasts longer). If you have meat eaters who refuse to eat ground turkey, make this recipe and don't tell them you switched the meat. Trust me, they'll never know! Here's the recipe:
Turkey Tacos
I actually feel less stressed out this week because I know I have all of these meals planned and I don't have to worry about what I am bringing for lunch or cooking for dinner. Now I can focus on working out this week and breaking in my new running shoes. I am also testing different kinds of gels and chews that I will use for energy the day of the triathlon. I'll let you know how it goes.
Have a great week!
Being overbooked and not planning is an equation for disaster in my life, and what a disaster this week was. This blog is about full disclosure for me and I am embarrassed to admit this but I ate McDonald's three times, Dunkin Donuts twice, Epic Burger once, Jimmy Johns once and went out for sushi once. The rest of the food I ate was popcorn, cereal, cookies and cheese and crackers. No wonder I didn't have the energy to workout and felt like crap all week. All I ate was crap! Typically, I am a great meal planner for our household. I shop every week, prep food on the weekend, make sure everything is healthy and use as many whole foods as possible. Unfortunately, I have been on this downward spiral with meal planning and we have been eating convenience foods, fast food and just junk in general. Well, I'm happy to say that I got my kitchen back on track yesterday!
I cleaned out the fridge and pantry and got rid of anything that was not healthy. Luckily, I don't usually keep a bunch of junk in the house (I go through drive-thrus for that) but the cleaning process felt great for both my fridge and my state of mind. Clean fridge=clean mind. I had some bananas that were starting to brown so I cut them up into chunks, portioned them out and froze them for smoothies. You can also freeze whole bananas and use them for banana bread or a sub for oils in baking. They basically turn to liquid when they thaw so they are great for baking and you're not wasting any food.
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| Papaya - yum! |
I also made a big batch of turkey taco meat. I add a few things to bulk it up (it's more filling and lasts longer). If you have meat eaters who refuse to eat ground turkey, make this recipe and don't tell them you switched the meat. Trust me, they'll never know! Here's the recipe:
Turkey Tacos
- Cooking spray plus 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 lb ground turkey (93% lean, sometimes written 93/7, the 100 percent lean stuff is too dry for me)
- 1 packet of your favorite taco seasoning mix
- 1 can petite diced tomatoes
- 1 can fat-free or vegetarian refried beans (the non-vegetarian ones are made with lard and really, no one needs to be eating lard)
 |
| Finished product. Delicious! |
- Saute the turkey in the olive oil and cooking spray until just cooked through.
- Add the taco seasoning packet and the canned tomatoes with the juice. The seasoning packet says to add water but I just use the juice from the tomatoes.
- Let that cook down for a couple of minutes then stir in the refried beans. It makes double the amount you would get with just the turkey and it adds 30 grams of fiber to the whole recipe. Fiber=filling (and tooty so don't eat this if you have a hot date later or have to sit somewhere quiet for a long period of time).
I actually feel less stressed out this week because I know I have all of these meals planned and I don't have to worry about what I am bringing for lunch or cooking for dinner. Now I can focus on working out this week and breaking in my new running shoes. I am also testing different kinds of gels and chews that I will use for energy the day of the triathlon. I'll let you know how it goes.
Have a great week!
Friday, April 1, 2011
Excuses are like...
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| Pumpkin Plod - Highland, IN 2002 (the ole running days) |
Speaking of running, I've been steadily improving each week as I get out there and "run." What I really do is jog very slowly but my short, stubby legs are going faster than walking so I count it as running! I used to be a Runner. Sort of a hard core one at that. Now, mind you, I've always been slow and I always will be. My fastest pace ever was an 11-minute mile and that was when I was in the best shape of my life. I logged that time at the Wacker Drive is Done 5K in Chicago after they revamped lower Wacker Drive in Chicago the first time in 2002 with my friend Kelly (who was and still is an uber-runner). I almost tossed my cookies at the end of the race but she so kindly reminded me that the Channel 7 TV cameras were there and I didn't want to be the person throwing up on the evening news. I still appreciate her for that! I was running 4-5 days a week, participated in Bulldog Bootcamp and eventually trained for a Half Marathon. That's the thing about the running world. It's hard to be happy "just" doing 5Ks. It's always about getting faster, going farther, and I got sucked up into the running world vortex. I eventually came shooting out the other end of that vortex and landed firmly on my couch with a bowl of ice cream and a TV remote!
The Half Marathon is actually what caused my running meltdown. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done and the training for it was a serious mental mind-Fword for me. I've never been a "good" runner. I don't particularly love running. I love how I feel after I run but I don't love (or really even like) the actual running part. It is the one thing exercise-wise, however, that really does it for me both in the weight-loss department and the sense of accomplishment department. So when I got sucked into the running vortex back in the day, I aimed to do a half-marathon. Never a full marathon, mind you. I'm not that big of a masochist (but I support all you marathon-nuts out there and applaud your insanity!). So when I signed up for training, it was with a group of runners who, unbeknown to me, were training for the Boston Marathon. THE. BOSTON. MARATHON. The one you have to be Kenyan or at least super-fast to qualify for. My best friend did the training with me too and she was much faster than I was but was also very sympathetic to feelings of inadequacy in this training group. Running is a serious mental sport as well as a physical one and if you are messed up in the head, it can seriously hamper your ability to run. So imagine me, even in pretty good shape but still running about a 12 minute mile heading out for training runs with these Boston Marathon Nuts (BMNs). There I was, plodding along and I wouldn't even be halfway out on the run and they'd be on their way back, clapping for me and cheering me on like their own personal chubby charity case. I know the BMNs were honestly cheering me on and thought it would help me but I felt like the slowest, biggest loser on the planet and it totally screwed with my head.
I did the Indianapolis Half Marathon in May of 2004 and then never ran again. Ever. Until recently when I started training for this triathlon. I attempted running again a couple of times before this, but all were epic fails and all were because I had a mental block against it. So you have to understand my complete and total glee right now that I am running again. Slowly of course. But I am back in the game. So much so that even though I didn't get home until almost 8 p.m. last night, and it was already dark, and I had about a million things to do, and ended up having to stay up way later than I normally do, I went out for a run. It used to be that if the moon wasn't in the right house, and the temperature wasn't just right, and the wind wasn't blowing a calm, cool breeze, and the Middle East wasn't at peace, I'd find an excuse not to run. Well, you know what they say about excuses...
Have a great week!
P.S. If you weren't able to comment before because you didn't have a Google account, I've changed it so anyone can comment. Again, please be kind! xoxo
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