The Mind Marathon

The other week when I was sick and missed boot camp my mom asked if I was to the point where "I needed" to workout. The short answer was "no" I've never been an exercise junkie, I enjoy my workouts and if I miss one I'm disappointed but it is still a choice I have to make everyday to drag myself out of bed or drive to the gym after work instead of home. However in the overall scheme of my weight loss journey it's probably the easiest choice to make. The hard choice is the ongoing mind marathon of choosing what to eat! In a perfect world I could surround myself with good food, banish all the candy, cookies, high fat food, and light n fluffy simple carbs. But my world isn't perfect and every day is a mental struggle to make the right choices. The first month I could say "No" to bad food so easily, but now after making good choices for months good choices are SO much harder to make and it is so easy to rationalize making a bad choice.


Also it is just mentally draining to think about everything I eat, I'm not obsessed about everything I eat, but I am mindful of everything I eat. Being mindful is great, tons better than mindlessly putting food in my mouth not caring that I was gradually poisoning myself. But being mindful is mentally exhausting, I lifelong marathon that I can no longer afford to walk through. So how am I going to keep jogging this mind marathon?

• Better meal planning! This is probably where I continue to struggle the most I'm not planning most of my meals so I spend a lot of mental energy throughout the day thinking about what I'm going to eat. So I'm going to regroup and make a game plan this weekend to help me with my meal planning.
  
• Reward myself with non-food presents. I've decided for each week that I complete all my food journal, I get an eBook, for those of you that don't know I love reading and if left to my own devices I would read an eBook a day so this has the added benefit of also helping my bank account.
  
• Pamper myself, at least once a month with either a massage or nice long bath. Taking time to recharge is what has helped me the most to stay on track both physically and mentally.   

Hope this helps me before I hit a wall in my mind marathon!

Quick Update

Hello Everyone! Wow I can't believe it's already December 16^th and I haven't blogged yet this month....for shame....As I'm sure is true for most of us It has been one crazy month so far. It started out getting ready for my choir concert which was awesome. Then last week at work I found out my company is merging with another bigger company. The company we are merging with is a great company  and I'm excited but in the short term its lots of work for me to do before the merger. Alex came home for Christmas last Saturday! So happy to a have him home for an extended stay. But with everything that's been going on this month it's been a hard fought battle to stay on track. I was sick earlier in the month and missed three boot camps :( and I haven't been home most nights for dinner. Amazingly I'm still on track to meet my December weight goals but it's going to take some extra will power to stay away from all the delicious Christmas treats. Promise to blog again tomorrow!

Choir Concert

I was a Toy in Santa's Workshop

Post Thanksgiving Update and Weight In!

So I've made it past 2 of the 4 major holidays, leaving only Christmas and New Year's left to conquer. Thanksgiving was great, filled with lots of family and delicious food, and the best part about last week is that I lost 1.5lbs! That's right, I lost weight during Thanksgiving! The secret you ask? I treated last week like any other week. Thanksgiving Day I didn't graze all day and had a small portion of everything. For my family's traditional fast food lunch, which we have because we're too busy cooking dinner to make lunch, I had a Carl's Jr. Famous Star with no cheese and no mayo and only ate ¾ of it. Friday I was back on track and even took my boyfriend to the Superwoman Boot Camp post-Thanksgiving Burn Da Bird Workout. When asked to comment Alex said "no" with further harassing Alex had this to say about boot camp "Boot camp was a difficult and rewarding experience. It continues to impress me that Desiree hasn't missed any sessions in the months she has been going." Awwww how sweet! Although, truth be told, I did miss the Friday session after the midnight showing of Harry Potter but that's it. Before I start to ramble too much, my main reason for posting is for another weigh in. This morning I weighed in at 197.5 lbs., which means I hit my goal of being under 200lbs! So far I've lost a total of 26.5 lbs! I was actually pretty shocked that I made this goal. The first part of the month was very slow .5lb- 1lb a week and then the past two week's I've lost about 4lbs. There is something just SO satisfying about weighing less than 200lbs, some mental threshold where above 200 I'm Super Fat, and below it I'm just Fat. Whatever it is, it feels damn good. So by New Years I want to be below 190, which will be a challenge, but I know I can do it!

Holiday Craving

It's that time of year and I've been craving pumpkin pie, one of my all-time favorites. No longer being a slave to my cravings I started searching the internet for some lower calories alternatives and couldn't find a recipe that I was totally in love with. So being the budding pastry chef that I am I decided to take a stab at my own recipe for a crust-less, lower fat, and lower sugar pumpkin pie. Surprisingly after taking out the crust, fat and sugar my version still had the same flavor and texture of a traditional Pumpkin Pie. I liked it SO much I've already made another one.


Ingredients

 ½ cup Splenda's Brown Sugar Blend

½ cup Splenda

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 eggs

2 cups canned pumpkin

3/4 cup Skim Milk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

In a mixing bowl, combine the Splenda, Brown Sugar Blend and flour. Add eggs; mix well. Stir in the pumpkin, milk, vanilla and spices. Mix until well blended. Pour into a 9-in. pie plate sprayed with Pam non-stick spray. Place pie plate in a 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan; add of hot water to pan until the water goes half way up the pie plate. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50-55 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. If you cut your pie into 8 pieces each slice is about 130 Calories, and if you like you're slices a little bigger and cut the pie into 6 pieces and each slice is 175 calories each.


P.S. A small slice of Marie Calendar's Pumpkin Pie is 390 Calories!


 

By Failing to Prepare you are Preparing to Fail

So my week with no added sugar was challenging and went better than expected considering I didn’t really set myself for success. The first day went excellent, day two was going great until I got home and realized that my step-dad had made franks and beans for dinner. The baked beans third ingredient was brown sugar, and although it smelled really good I had no problem saying no and looking for something else to eat. This is where I hit my first problem; I hadn’t done any shopping to prepare for this goal! First I was going to make a sandwich but my wheat bread had added sugar, then I was going to have soup but that contained high fructose corn syrup! Which was really annoying, who knew that the devil of all sweeteners was in soup! I ended up making a low fat whole wheat tuna noodle dish which surprisingly was really tasty and nutritious. This was the pattern of my week because I hadn’t planned for this I was consistently eating the same thing over and over again, I ate the tuna noodle dish three times last week, or I ended up eating something with added sugar for lack of another option. So my plan is to attempt this goal again the week after thanksgiving. My goal this week is to do cardio on all my boot camp off days!  

Whole Wheat Tuna Noodle Pasta
1 Tbsp Butter
3 Tbsp Flour
2 cups of Skim Milk
1 Cup of dried whole wheat pasta (I used bowtie)
1 Cup Frozen veggies ( I used peas, carrots, and broccoli)
1 6oz Can of Solid White Tuna drained
Salt and Pepper to taste

First start by cooking your pasta according to package instructions. When the pasta is almost done start your sauce. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in large sauté pan, once melted, sprinkle flour in pan and whisk until butter and flour form a paste. Once the paste turns from white to a pale yellow add half a cup of milk and keep whisking until the milk thickens. Stir in a cup of milk continuing to whisk and as the sauce starts to thicken add in frozen veggies, tuna, and remaining milk. Let simmer till veggies are cooked. At this point you can add more milk depending on how thick you like your sauce. Once the sauce is ready toss in the cooked pasta and you are all ready to go! This meal is about 330 calories a serving.