Sunday, February 27, 2011

Baking Again

Bread today. White. First loaf.

No, not a good sign diet-wise. Baking rarely is, for me. My hormones have gone around the bend. I'm somewhere between a week and a week-and-a-half late and bloated as hell; my cycles are ridiculously varied and even by their standards I'm behind. I'm crabby and emotional. I spent at least an hour last night in tears over the ills of the past few decades -- those committed by me and those committed against me -- like that does anyone any good at all.

Oh, and I'm fairly convinced I will NEVER lose this last fourteen to twenty pounds. Urrrgh.

Hopefully the bread at least turns out decently. I'm having an entitlement moment; I'm owed a good loaf of bread.

Dammit.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Is this thing on?

I feel like I should tap into a microphone or something, since this place is way dusty after being neglected for the past -- oh holy crap -- nearly three weeks.

Mea culpa, y'all. And thank you for hanging in there while I contemplated my navel for a bit.

I go through cycles with my food, and at the moment I'm sick and tired of what's been working for nearly six months. URRRGH. Boredom with my tried-and-true menu items leads to baking (mmmmm.... butter), which finally leads to me figuring out something new to cook and then settling down. So between February 1st and now, I've been baking.

I got to play with the stand mixer Choreboy gave me for Christmas -- yay! I made monkey bread from scratch, and let's just say that yeast and I are not yet on totally friendly terms. I made one batch and the yeast activated just fine, everything rose, life was beautiful. Then I started up another batch (I believe we had a teensy "binge", aided and abetted by my offspring), but the stupid yeast didn't work.

Yes, we ate it anyway. I wasn't wasting all that dough, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter!

Ahem.

The next weekend was Valentine's weekend, and Choreboy had requested a vanilla bean cheesecake. After much use of power tools (i.e., the Kitchen Aid and the food processor) we got that sucker mixed up, baked, and in the fridge. And let me tell you, it was awesome. I adore vanilla beans, and although cheesecake isn't my favorite dessert, I'd eat this every night if I could.

If you click on the recipe, by the way, check out the hilarious nutrition information. It's 538 calories per slice assuming 16 slices per 10-inch cake. GACK!!!

Fortunately, this past week marked the end of the baking fest and the return to sense. I made a move to animal-based proteins away from the legumes I'd been concentrating on for dinner with a lean pork tenderloin and a lovely cut of salmon. Happily for my budget, Publix* had a sale on the Eat Smart pre-cut veggies ($1.00/ bag -- for those of you who are Publix shoppers I believe the price goes through this Thursday if you want to grab some) so I stocked up on a bit of fresh broccoli.

Also, today I made a HUGE batch of lentil soup at lunch. It might seem counter-intuitive considering I was trying to move away from legumes, but lentils are different from chickpeas, plus I had carrots to get rid of and what better way than to toss them into soup? It turned out pretty well, I believe, and that's a good thing because I have a ton of it left over. I think my parents are going to have a little soup coming their way.

So, next weigh in? I'm guessing around my birthday, which will make it the beginning of April. I'm going to concentrate on eating well over the next several weeks, because I have this dress I want to wear come summer and although it fits kind of at the moment, it will definitely be more flattering with a few less pounds attached to my ass.

For those who don't want to do the math, I'll be forty-one. I've barely resigned myself to forty. Bleah.

Next up is getting back on my treadmill. JAFG kindly sent me a kick-in-the-butt text (heheh... thanks chica!) and although my words were good, my follow-up sucked. In my defense, my husband has left a table propped against the treadmill so that is impeding my progress somewhat.

Hey, that's my story and I'm sticking to it (ignore the fact that I could have moved the table my own damn self and burned a few calories in the process). Tune in next time for more True Confessions of a Diet Tortoise!


*Note to the FTC: once again, I'm only mentioning brand names and stores because I feel like it. I receive no compensation from anyone for the products or vendors listed.

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Fourteen to Go

I'd determined back in December that I wouldn't do a full, official weigh-in until February 1st. Leading up to the holidays I saw over and over throughout blogland that we needed to decide if we were going to lose weight through the holidays, or if we were "just" going to try to maintain. Quite frankly, the phrasing bugged. Maintaining weight over the holidays can be a huge struggle. There is no "just" about maintaining over the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New-Year's season. Maintaining is awesome!

It's also what I chose, and what I did*. Which, with all due self-awareness, might have a tad bit to do with my defensiveness regarding the usage of "just".

On November 18th, I weighed 144.5 pounds. Today, I weighed in at 144 pounds. And if I want to stretch it -- okay, I totally want to stretch it -- it was more like 143.9. Take THAT, holiday food fest!! 144 is an all-time low from back in 2006 when I weighed 200 pounds.

56 down, 14 to go.

Goal date: December 31, 2011. And geez, that seems a bunch closer than it did back in November!

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In other news, I'd rate my back at 90-95% of normal, and feeling 100 times better than it did a couple of months ago when I first managed to mess it up. Hooray!! The only thing truly bothering me now is trying to determine just how I managed to hurt myself. Was it scrubbing the bathroom floor at work? Carrying the Gum Zombie-who-really-weighs-too-much-for-me-to-pick-up to bed? Dancing around like an idiot to Pink's "Raise Your Glass"? Four times? In a row?

All of the above?

I wish I knew, because I'd really prefer not to torture myself. Also, I want to exercise but there's a serious fear component involved at the moment. So... I'm trying to look at this realistically. In all likelihood I didn't hurt myself exercising. It was probably one of the things I listed above (darn you, Pink!). I know I can walk on my treadmill. I can probably even do the evil-that-is Tabata sprints.

There go those excuses. Looks like my treadmill and I have a date for tomorrow.

*Yes, I did report a post-holiday weight of 146 or thereabouts, but it wasn't from the real weigh in scale; ergo, it was not an official weight. So there. That's my story and I'm sticking to it :P (Okay, plus a couple of pounds fluctuation is maintaining in the real world.)