Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Diet Continues

How’s the diet going? Well! I do have the world’s most unreliable scale, but over a week I lost around 2.5 lbs. It may not seem like a lot but it has the following results:

  • All my jeans zip easily.
  • I feel better about myself.
  • I cooked dinner and made myself lunch almost every day, so that helped on my list.
  • I didn’t really exercise - just walked a lot. Which is good, but I need more

Here’s where you come in: I’ve had some feedback about exercise. Yes, I hate running, but I actually hate all exercise while I’m doing it, so there. Now, reader i, who has an awesome blog about exercise videos, you can help me pick out an appropriate video to begin with yoga. My yoga background: started at 17, practiced on and off for years, but haven’t done anything in about 3 or 4 years. So, beginner again.
But food isn’t everything, so here we go:

  • Finish sorting my closet
  • Continue the good cooking work
  • Tidy the house for 15 minutes after the boys go to bed, before checking email. Speaking of which…
  • Email checked. Take all my maternity clothes out of my clothing rotation. It’s really not cool, the boys are almost 2.
  • Enjoy the summer!
  • Read more good books

I think that’s all. Just a quick post…. Bye!

Monday, May 21, 2012

A weighty matter (also, puns are cool)


I have a few things that I have been meaning to talk about - so add to my list, “Blog More”. It kind of helps. By the way, I begin with a photo of S and C being cowboys.  Adorable!
So here are my lists of goals / topics. I will expound in a Blog entry, maybe. Who knows these days?

  • Blog more
  • Lose some weight - (yup, I’m one of THOSE people)
  • Read better books (and this one I’ve been sticking with. Over the past month I’ve read “Anna Karenina”, and some more modern literature.
  • Write about my new pet peeve - Financial advisers who suck at month. I mean really, when did it become socially acceptable to admit to being bad at math, when your job IS math? Really!
  • Put away the clothes that I washed yesterday. Hang the damn shelf in the bathroom
  • Not have my kids watching Sesame Street while I Blog. Too late!
  • Write a post about the blogs that I read. I will link any reader’s blog who would like.

List making is one of those things that I do best, but I have to say, a lot of it takes place in my head.

Today I am going to talk about the second item on the list: weight loss. It sucks. For fear of alienating my readers, I’ll make a confession: I’ve never had that much trouble losing weight. At age 24 I had my wisdom teeth out, and developed complications. I lost 10 lbs quickly, and went from average for my height to the low end of average. I kept that weight for years, with no problems, give or take 5 lbs.
When I was pregnant, I was so sick, I had trouble keeping weight on. I saw a prenatal dietitian, who put me on a high fat, high calorie diet, what I like to call the “milkshake a day” diet. With her help, I gained a respectable amount of weight - the minimum for twins. After the babies were born, I lost the weight FAST. At 7 days postpartum, I was at my pre-pregnancy weight. A week after that I was too thin and had to restart the milkshake diet. I switched to whole milk, and had a big bowl of 11% fat greek yogurt for breakfast every morning. I kept this up for the first 9 months of nursing, (yup. Nursed twins for 14 months. I’m crazy), then slowly switched to a regular diet. Awesome.
Fast forward to the twins being almost 2. I’m tired, a lot. I’m miserable, a lot. I eat jelly beans. And cookies. And beer. And more cookies. I love my boys, I love my life, but it’s been a solid month of cold after cold after early morning wake up. I love my job, but (not going into details), it’s just a stressful time of year in my line of work. Also, I took on an extra summer class, and there is a month long overlap, where I am teaching double time. I realized that I can’t really hide what I do, so now you know. I’m a teacher.
Also, my son S loves to share with Mommy. That means that he shoves half of his food in my mouth. (C eats his own meals, thank you very much). S has been a thin boy since he was born, and as an infant, he had jaw and feeding issues. He’s been pretty low on the weight curve, but 50th percentile for height, so we have always given the boys lots of high fat and calorie food. That means when I make them pancakes, I use whole milk and 3 tbs of melted butter. As someone who was raised on skim milk and apple sauce to moisten, this is delicious. So when S puts a whole 500 calorie pancake in my mouth, I eat it.
So I eat S’s meals with him, then I sit down and eat my own. This is an old story - but it still makes me miserable.
But hey, don’t feel that bad for me, I don’t weigh that much. I have a 5 lb range I would like to be in. I am 5 lbs above the top of that range. So, not that hard. So here is my resolutions:

  • Lose 5 lbs over 2 weeks. We are 2 days in, and I was down 1/2  lb, then had a party and ate a lot of pie and drank a bunch of wine.
  • Lose 10 lbs over 2 months. For those of you keeping track, this will bring me close to my wedding day, and at the bottom end of my range.
  • Accomplish this by healthy eating, more veggie and fruit, not a fad diet
  • Exercise. Really truly
  • By new running shoes, and start running with my friend B.

Honestly, this shouldn’t be unreasonable. So I will try to chart my progress on this blog, but, hey, I may just not write for another month. Whatever.

So hey, here’s one more thing. The more comments I get, the more motivated I am to Blog, and then get stuff done. So feel free to comment (nice stuff only please, my ego is fragile), and feel free to share my blog with other friends, or link to it on your blog. Just stick with the anonymous thing, even though I know both of you, my sole readers know exactly who I am.

Until next time!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Gettin' 'er done

Screw my old to do lists, I’m starting fresh. Let’s begin with what I did this past while (It’s been more than a week, but let’s pretend)

  • Booked a marriage officiant! Yes, we are getting married
  • Got most of the addresses for wedding invites, invitations in the mail. Not really my doing, but I’m happy to take credit
  • Hung out with some friends. I even went to a party this weekend for a new friend, which was lovely
  • Read blogs and kept tabs on some of my old friends, including my 2 followers. Yup, I now have two!
  • Made fresh healthy food… for my kids. I had takeout tacos for dinner
  • Filed my taxes. Yes, this wasn’t optional, but I still am taking credit
  • Did a whack of laundry… and magically, all of the dirty hampers are full again. Possibly because my son S is super into putting stuff into hampers. It’s hard to tell what’s dirty and what’s clean….
  • Survived a week of hell:
    • W, my significant other, spent a long weekend out of town for a family wedding. The following week, he had a week long workshop and about 20 hours of extra grading to finish… by the end of the week. Thus, I did over a week of solid single mom work, and I have to say, it’s tough. It is so tough. I did it, and W finished off all of his work, and so now I am doing… nothing.

So what do I have to do?
 
  • Submit some insurance forms. I hate paperwork.
  • Tidy my closet… The new game of “pull Mommy’s clothes out of the closet and roll in them” is getting old fast.
  • Cook more. But fresh food. Eat vegetables
  • Buy less Starbucks out. Starbucks, be less delicious. I’m talking to you raspberry truffle cake pops.

I think that’s all I have right now. If you want me to blog more, leave suggestions of what to talk about in the comments… here are some things I was thinking about complaining about:
 
  • Women who knit during conferences
  • Attachment parenting
  • People who don’t get vaccines.
  • People who use the word “statistics” when they are in fact not talking about statistics
  • Two sided Hypothesis tests
  • Bankers who hate math
  • Childbirth fanatics who say that natural childbirth should be wonderful and pain free
  • The cable company
  • Why doesn’t Netflix Canada have classic Melrose Place?