Day 35 - A Saturday ... Not in the Park

Good news when I stepped on the scale this morning is I was starting to drop a little bit of anchorage I've been carrying around with me. This is the motivation I need to keep it going. One of the best things I have done to help with this is to really enjoy eating. I've stopped wolfing down everything in a five mile radius and really chewing food and exploring the actual texture. When I'm taking my time, I don't eat nearly as much and I truly enjoy the flavors I am eating. Can this be called the "pleasure diet?" We'll see how it goes after another week or two.

A lot of massive stressors are hitting this weekend for some reason. Kids grades have me perplexed and disgruntled, money woes are rearing their ugly heads, the house is a mess and needs a good and thorough cleaning and that's just the start of it. There's a lot of change that's going to be coming in the next few months and here's to hoping we all survive it. The accomplishment this weekend for me will come when laundry is done and the master bedroom is picked up.

Food & Drink #35 Blueberries - the health benefits are oh so deliciously awesome.

1) Provide antioxidants. Anthocyanins, the pigments that make blueberries blue, are potent antioxidants: A half cup of blueberries provides the antioxidant power of five servings of peas, carrots, apples, squash or broccoli.
2) Are a healthy, low glycemic-index carbohydrate, an especially good choice for diabetics.
3) Are a source of vitamin C, important for a healthy immune system.
4) Help meet your need for daily fiber - two grams per one-half cup serving.
5) Have shown promise in addressing the effects of aging: animal studies have demonstrated improved motor skills and a reversal of age-related short-term memory loss associated with consuming blueberries.
6) May have other health benefits ranging from preventing cancer and defending against urinary tract infections to protecting the brain from stroke damage and reducing heart disease risks.

Food tally for the day:
Breakfast: Rudis Organic multigrain bagel w/ Horizon Organic cream cheese (Yeppers. Organic baby!) Also 1 cup of Light Chocolate Silk and 1/4 cup blueberries
Morning Snack: Frigo Light Cheese Stick
Lunch: 2 Ezekiel tortillas, 1 laughing cow cheese wedge split between them, 1 slice of ham on each tortilla, unk amount of raw spinach (a cup and a half maybe?) and about 3/4 cup sprouts total split on each. Also had 1/4 cup blueberries
Afternoon Snack: A wonderfully delicious Gala apple and 1 oz of mixed nuts including: peanuts, pistachios, almonds, and cashews.
Dinner: TBA BUT..... Planning on steak, potatoes and mini-cheesecakes for dessert. This is all from Omaha Steaks and was a gift from my mother. The key here is moderation and not to eat everything in front of me just because it's there. I'm also thinking I need to add in some other veggies. Veggies are soooo yummy!

I actually had two little Lifesavers candies today. The apple I ate was far more fulfilling. As part of the food enjoyment plan, I actually did nothing other than eat and eat slowly. I discovered I really enjoy almonds (which I have always known.) I am not a huge fan of peanuts and pistachios are pretty yummy too.

Feeding the Spirit #35 Going to try to make it to church tonight. We've all talked about going to a Saturday night service for a long time. Hoping it happens. Will advise later.

Day 34- Friday, the end...

I'm thankful today is Friday. For whatever reason this has been a very long week and I can't wait til the weekend to take care of a few things that I need to take care of and then turn into asparagus - a vegetable. The weather is supposed to be a tad bit warmer, so maybe this means I can finish going through stuff in the garage. It desperately needs to be done and hopefully, this will be the weekend.

So far, diet has been "ok" today, but not quite feeling up to snuff. Maybe it's the large fiber content I've been consuming the past couple of days catching up with me. I can honestly say I'm "stuffed" yet don't feel quite satisfied. How to remedy that I'm not sure.

Food tally for the day:
Breakfast: Apple & Water
Morning Snack: Cherry Jello and 1 peanut M&M
Lunch: 2 Cups raw spinach, 1 cup cubed chicken, 1/2 cup sprouts and 2 Ezekiel Tortillas.. oh and a Laughing Cow Cheese Wedge and 5 peanut M&M's
Afternoon Treat:
Dinner: TBA

Health & Fitness #34 Stairs... so good for exercising those massive muscles we sit on each and every day. If you take two stairs at a time, it burns more calories and who doesn't want that?!?!


Feeding the Spirit #34 Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before? Why and how can you change it?

Day 33 - Eating Clean and Snow Melt

I was laying awake the other night and taking inventory of how my 142 days of resolution are going so far for 2011. I was actually awake because of two factors: snoring and snow. The snoring is rather normal in my house, but the snowstorm... it was freakishly cold outside and yours truly forgot to properly program the thermostat. So.... I was going through some old photographs and compared them to some new ones. I know I have gained too much weight when my face is "fat." Seriously. It's one thing to wear tents, but when my face looks like the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man... well, it's definitely time to reverse the trend.

I've started reading Jillian Michael's "Master Your Metabolism." There's a wealth of information in there. I also recommend Tosca Reno's "Eat Clean Diet." I've started making changes on the diet, but I'm no where near eating TOTALLY clean yet. Slowly but surely. I wish I were one of those people who could make some changes cold turkey, but alas, not so much.

Health & Fitness #33 Still sore from shoveling snow, but did take a pretty good walk around the PD and up and down stairs today. Will probably try to do something at home tonight too.

Food & Drink #33 My mother used to say that I had to chew each bite of food 32 times. I always thought that was a random BS number, but there is some science behind it. So, I've been taking more time to eat and to TASTE foods. Too many times I have found myself just shovelling food in my mouth and I haven't really stopped to taste it. It's actually how my dogs eat - three chews and it's gone. That's totally not healthy because the mouth does a good bunch of digesting food before it even gets to the stomach. Why do I want to make my stomach try to do more work? I have to admit it's harder to eat this way, but I have found that I enjoy my meals more and I have found that I don't eat quite as much. In the long run, that's a good thing. So a couple of tips to help the process:

1. Chew each bite of food about 30 times.
2. Put the fork or spoon down between bites.
3. Don't talk with your mouth full. Not only is it bad manners, but it impedes on eating because you are in such a hurry to speak. A few more seconds won't matter.
4. "Take human-sized bites." This is another of my mom's favorite sayings, but there's truth to it. Smaller bites means better digestion and a feeling of fullness at a decent rate so you don't over-stuff yourself.

There are many articles on the benefits of good mastication and I promise within a week of changing your chewing habits, you will see and feel a difference in your body AND your appreciation for food. Just maybe you will become a true gormand.

Food tally for the day:
Breakfast: 1 cup chocolate Silk
Morning Snack: 2 Ezekiel Tortillas, 15 baby carrots
Lunch:2 Cups raw spinach, 1 cup cubed chicken
Afternoon Treat: 1/2 "Mounds" package, 5 peanut M&M's and cherry Jello (not together!) and 1 cup chopped pineapple (I do sense a carb trend here)
Dinner: Tuna fish salad, ezekiel tortilla, sprouts

Feeding the Spirit #33 How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

Day 30 - How'd that happen?

Superbowl 45 was a bore. I'm sorry to the Packer's and Steeler's fans but in the overall scheme of things, the game was boooooooooor-ing. Even the commercials weren't really up the the normal snuff - though there were a few that reached a level of "awesome" including the Dorito's "Resurrection", Mini Darth Vader, the Bridgestone Beaver and the VW commercials. There were a few others, but those actually do stand out in my mind.

However... I do have a gripe. Usually Christina Aquilera can really give a great performance but when she sang the National Anthem she totally boffed it. The Diva took up an entire two minutes (give or take 10 seconds) to sing the national anthem because she wanted to put her own personal flair into it. By doing so - the lyrics went awry. When she was supposed to sing “o’er the ramparts we watched” she sang “what so proudly we watched”. This as well as the off-key singing was a little too much for this ol' Texas girl. She did finish the song in spite of the screw up and there were plenty of director takes of crying football players, but the mistake can't be forgotten. In fact, one wonders really why the players were tearing up.

However, at one point and time she actually knew the anthem and could actually sing it... case in point.

In fact, I dare say that if the NFL wanted to get it right they should have done a little something like this--->

In other news, been slowly and steadily working on my 142 days. As for diet... yeah, been better but not great. The Snickers bar I'm enjoying this afternoon is something I refuse to feel horrible about. It's either eat that or fall asleep face first on the desk. While I see the comedic value of that... probably wouldn't bode too well.

Lunch break is over. Time to get some real work done. Tally ho!

Sara Bareilles - Oh Darling (Live from Abbey Road)

Amazing how cold it is outside today. Temperature is about 3 degrees with w/a windchill of -22 degrees. (The Weather Channel @1140 hours.) Anyway, leaving the building for lunch didn't seem like such a brilliant idea so I thought I would try to warm up the hearts and minds with a cover of one of my favorite Beatles tunes. Sarah Bareilles has an amazing and often under-rated voice. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did... and also check out her accoustic version of (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay by the one and only Otis Redding. Amazing.

Day 23 - Winter Weather Advisory

Tonight I'm planning on watching "The Day After Tomorrow" in honor of the big storm that's moving it's way into the Texas Panhandle. We are only supposed to get two to four inches of snow, but the blizzard conditions which include 50 mile an hour winds and a windchill estimated tonight of 15 below is not my idea of a good time. I know this storm is not atypical, but still, storms like this always kind of freak me out. I don't like to think I would be stuck at home with no electricity or creature comforts. I suppose that means I probably should learn what "roughing it" really means. I think I will go add a third pair of socks to my freezing tootsies and may also throw on another sweater. It's cold. I don't like the cold. It's not that I'm a big fan of a Texas summer, which can be hotter than the gates of Hades... but I really don't like the cold.

More later...... when I thaw out. Safe driving peeps...

Day 22 - Not So Sunny Sunday

I'm sitting here looking at my desk at the casa and all I can ask is, "How does it get this messy so quickly?" I guess junk mail is the majority of it (and mess is relative to any given person. Mine is just cluttered, not exactly "messy.") And the good Lord knows that I have no intention of letting my desk look like mother's kitchen table. Heavens that would be bad... I tend to be a pack-rat and I can probably justify most of the stuff I have kept throughout the years; however, the older I get and the worse mother's hoarding gets pushes me to the other extreme and I've started throwing out a bunch of stuff.

If you are wanting to know the difference between hoarding and collecting, there's a pretty observable definition. Hoarding is when the items collected intrude on the living conditions, lifestyle and ability to use areas of the home for their intended purpose. For example, when you are sleeping on the couch or in a chair because you can't make it to your bed, you are a hoarder. Another example is when you are eating off a tv tray in the bedroom because the dining room and kitchen table are covered with stuff, you are a hoarder. If the quality of the air you breath is diminished and you don't even realize it because you are in the stench all the time, you are a hoarder. If you are keeping random items long after the use they were intended for, then you are a hoarder. I'm not saying all of these things apply to my mother, but I can honestly say that she does have a problem.

My brother in law, John, is the opposite of a hoarder. He and my sister live in a wonderful apartment in Manhattan and have an office on one of the most famous streets in the world. Because New York living standards are different from the midwest, it's easy to see how he is able to keep things to a minimum. I admire the ability to do that. And usually about the time their spring cleaning / fall cleaning starts, I sit around at the house and start asking myself, "Ok, time to clean out some of this crap. What goes first?"

With this being said, now is a good time for Life Lesson #22 Cleanliness is next to godliness.

It's an old expression, but in case you were looking for some motivation to actually clean up the casa, here's a list to help you get motivated.


1) Insects. The cleaner you keep your room the less likely that there are creepy crawlies hiding in corners, in your shoes, or otherwise populating a space that should be yours alone.

2) Cleaner rooms are healthier rooms. A lot of people are allergic to dust mites or dust itself. It's bad enough that your messy decor might be making you sick, but if your room is literally making you sick that can lead to feeling awful and possibly preoccupying your immune system so when a cold or flu bug comes your way, you might be too run down to fight it off as well as you otherwise would.

3) When you can find all of your clothes, and they are clean and neatly put away, you can actually wear all of them and vary your wardrobe, which is very cool. This can prevent you from getting bored with your stuff, and even better, prevent you from wasting money on stuff you already have.

4) Cleaning gets rid of some other nasties: It eliminates food and body shed skin that roaches dine upon as well as the stink from oily bed clothing. (I'm thinking I need to do a wash load right now because I'm fairly grossed out by #4.)

5) Pride. If you have a messy room / house, when you have company over they may tell their friends. They may also say something if your room / house smells bad. When friends and family come to call, they don't want to trip over anything, break anything, or sit there with a hankie covering their face because your room smells like decomposing food, old gym shorts, wet dog or what have you.

And a final note taken slightly out of context, the Bible also promotes keeping things clean. This also includes our bodies and our spirits. When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.'Luke 11:25. and the rest of the story at Matthew 12:44 When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.

Food & Drink #22 The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook. —Julia Child

Food tally for the day:
Breakfast: 2 homemade oatmeal cookies and some hot tea
Morning Snack: TBA
Lunch: TBA
Afternoon Snack: TBA
Dinner: TBA

Feeding the Spirit #22 “May the God of peace… equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Hebrews 13:20-21).