My personal trainer is a two year old

I have stumbled onto a new exercise program. It’s called “my toddler loves to dance, and refuses to dance alone.
“We got a new CD last week, and Max loves to shake his little diapered booty  to the funky beat. When his siblings are home, they will dance with him, but this morning he wanted to dance, and the older kids are all in school, so I got to be his dance partner. He doesn’t let up, the second I tried to sneak into the kitchen to get a drink of water (I was working up a sweat) Max yells “Mom! Come back! Dance wif me”
Me: “Max, I need to get a drink, I’m tired”
Max: “No Mom, Preeeeease come back and dance wif me! Now!”
 How can I refuse that?
The added bonus is that he likes it when I pick him up and spin him around in the air. That could be considered weight training couldn’t it?
I need to tell you, it’s much more fun than walking on the treadmill. 
Jill/Jillybeans 

Thinking for myself

By Jen

I cancelled my Weight Watchers subscription today. Not because I have hit my target weight — I have not and I still have a long way to go — but because I’m going to try doing this without thinking about points. I’m going to think about portion control. I’m going to eat good foods, not junk. I will make wise choices. I’m going to take my vitamins daily and drink lots of water.

For now, I am not going to track what I eat and how much. I’m just going to try to live normally and focus on good health.

Since I weigh myself daily, I’ll know soon enough if I’m slipping or if I’m making bad choices. If I see that I’m not toeing the line, then I’ll sign up for WW again. But I’m hopeful that I’ve made enough good habits and broken enough bad ones that I can do this with no problems.

Holding Pattern

Had my weekly weigh-in last night, and I measured in at .8 up from the week before.  Is standard procedure for my body… it stays in this holding pattern, then drops steeply, then more holding pattern.  I think I need to start taking measurements, maybe that would give me a little more in the way of seeing progress.

In terms of rethinking what goes into the mouth.  Why do I think I need so much sweet?  Why do I feel I deserve it, and if I don’t have it I am deprived?  I hate how I chase the sweet, to the extent of ingesting artificial sweeteners to placate myself and still lose weight.  Cannot be very good for me.

One of the things that I feel is a serious drawback to the Weight Watchers program, is a person can follow it to a “T”, lose weight, and still be eating utter crap.  Of course, am personally a big perpetrator of crap-intake when it comes to “my soda-drink-treat;”  AKA Diet Dr. Pepper.   So I am trying to change my brain to need less refined sugar, AND artificial sweeteners.

I won’t pretend that it goes so very swimmingly, but I think a little progress has been made.  Here is a little bit of info….

One teaspoon of sugar is one WW point.

One Tablespoon of honey is one WW point.

Stevia, a natural sweetener is free point wise… but probably ought not be used for more than sweetening a few beverages a day (tea, coffee, Pero etc…) .

So I am trying to push myself more into the “I don’t need it”  mindset.  So far it’s going a little better… but I have got to find a reasonable and crap-free chocolate option STAT… is coming up on TTOTM (that time of the month)!

Re-thinking food

By Jen:

Last week I kvetched here about how I’m a bit bored with the whole dieting thing and the foods I’ve been eating.  I’m in a better frame of mind now.  Thanks to everyone who posted such wonderfully supportive comments.  Apparently I just had a case of the “January Blah’s.”  Several people reminded me that there are a lot of yummy vegetables out there, which is true, and I’ve switched from flavorless salads to more seasonal fare, including vegetable-based soups.

Eating seasonally is something we Americans are largely unaware of.  We go to the grocery store and find rows and rows of fresh produce from all over the world and from all seasons.  While this seems normal to us, in the larger history of humans, this is actually abnormal.  For centuries, people ate locally grown foods in season and preserved as much as they could for the cold months.

Last year I read the excellent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. What an amazing, thought-provoking book.  For one year, Kingsolver and her family decided to eat only local foods in season. That meant they had to either produce those foods themselves or know the back story of the food they bought. That also meant that they gave up M&Ms, soda, chips, and most other junk foods — not inconsiderable when you consider that Kingsolver has an elementary school aged daughter and one in college.

As Kingsolver herself wrote, “This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew … and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.”

Month by month, the reader learns how the family ate foods that were in season or had been stored for later use. The book is a combination of memoir and investigative journalism, as the family researches food issues, including organic vs. conventional, genetically modified vs. heirloom vegetables, and local vs. international supply. This is not a dry read, however, as there are many entertaining anecdotes. For example, with great humor and honesty, Kingsolver discusses the sex lives of her turkeys.  Really.  I promise  it’s not akin to bird porn.

I highly recommend this book. And, if you remain unconvinced of the need for Americans to change the way we eat, I also suggest you read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and Don’t Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock, which I reviewed here last month.

In the meantime, here in Jenworld, we are rethinking our eating habits.  While we’d like to have strawberries in January, we recognize that we’ll have to be patient for a few more months.  Yes, we could go to the store and buy berries, however they would be flavorless and not worth the money spent.  We’re not perfect — we’re still going to buy bananas, which are certainly not local to Virginia.  But we’re going to avoid the crappy berries, tasteless tomatoes, and overpriced asparagus.  We’re going to be patient and wait for the good stuff in a few months.  We’re worth it.

Food is not the enemy.

This realization hit me pretty hard yesterday.  I mean, over the past few years I’ve been known to scowl at the contents of my cupboards, make snide comments about certain foods behind their backs…yeah, pretty nasty stuff.  Really though, it’s not about the food for me.  It never has been.

 I don’t particularly like food.  It bores me.  A good book beats a banana any day, and so forth.  Growing up, I only ate because my parents made me, and later on, because I tended to get dizzy if I didn’t.  And since I didn’t like food, when it came time for me to feed myself, I fed myself crap.  Whatever was cheap, easy, and somewhat satisfying.

 When I was at university, my diet consisted of the following (don’t worry, this won’t take long): Grilled Cheese sandwiches and fries, orange juice, chocolate bars, doritos, and whatever I occassionally got fed at family dinners (once or twice a month events).  Seriously.  That was it.  If it hadn’t been for the orange juice I think I would’ve died from scurvy.

I’m not so sure I’m joking about that.

Even so, I ate little enough that I was a skinny little thing.  Until I got married, that is.  First, the pill helped my gain twenty pounds in a month.  Lovely.  Then, I started eating more because hey, my hubby did.  Then I started eating less, because I had a high stress job and lunch was not a priority.  Then we moved to Oregon for fours years and I became a housewife.  With no kids.  And I ate whatever I felt like and I ate a lot of it.

I didn’t particularly enjoy it though.  Seriously, food isn’t my thing.  But it was something to do to pass the time.

So now I’m cultivating a love of food.  I’m taking the time to savour smell, taste, and texture.  I’m experimenting in the kitchen (with varying degrees of success), and trying to find REAL food to fill the void left by the junk I tossed out of my cupboards and pantry a few months ago.

 The old pattern?  Not so easy to escape.  I’m making progress, but it’s slow, and sometimes I slip in pretty extreme ways, like by eating five granola bars in a sitting because I was bored and they were there.

My goal is to only eat foods I truly enjoy, which are real…unprocessed foods that do me some good at the same time.  I think this is attainable.  It’ll take awhile, but it’s totally attainable.

So, no advice to offer this time round.  No inspiring story (frankly, my weight has been creeping up again).  Just some memories and some thoughts.  If I keep focusing on them, I might just do this.  I might just.

…the mood for food

I know how to diet.  I’ve spent my entire life watching my mom on one diet or another.  Cabbage soup.  Atkins.  TOPS, Weight Watchers.  Sometimes successful, sometimes not.  I did Weight Watchers myself after the Princess was born and did really well…until we moved and I lost my momentum and my equilibrium.  I know what to eat to lose weight, so this time I am doing it without a program.  I write down everything I eat, to discourage mindless eating, (and so I can go back when necessary to see where I was successful), but I am not counting calories or fat or points.

My problem is that I am an emotional eater.  Yesterday I had a good moment, and a bad one.  I met my sister for lunch at the mall.  The good.  I had a garden salad and milk.  I haven’t had any desserts or treats in the 3 weeks since I’ve started and I told myself that I could get one little thing at this store.  And when we were outside that store, it smelled delicious.  And I was a little hungry.  But the thing is?  I was happy, and laughing and chatting with my sister and the kids, and I didn’t need a treat.  I didn’t want any chocolate right then.  So I didn’t buy anything.  You have no idea what a strange sensation that was for me.  I always want chocolate.  I always used to want chocolate….but now I think on it, I haven’t lately.  I guess cutting it out completely, just for a little while, really has helped me to break the habit. 

But.  The bad.  Hubs was late getting home from work last night.  I called and left 3 messages on his cell phone to see what time he’d be home, and finally gave up and started serving the kids dinner at 6:00, when they were famished and could wait no longer.  Hubs called 10 minutes later and said he was just leaving a customer and would be home in 45 minutes.  He usually calls and warns me in advance if he’ll be late, so I was a little frustrated.  Okay…I was angry.  I ate my dinner (baked omelette and salad) and fed the kids, but as I was cleaning up I caught myself picking at the kids plates and had to make a conscious effort to stop.  I was full, but I wanted to pick at the pie plate, put something else in my mouth.  I forced myself to empty the kids plates into the trash and put all the leftovers in the fridge.  I made myself a cup of tea and left the kitchen. 

Hopefully just being aware of this will help me stop it, but if any of you are emotional eaters and have any tips on how to control it, I would love them.  I really want to break the cycle.  Help.

Jen’s pick-me-up vegetable soup

Posted by Jen

Thanks to everyone for your supportive comments yesterday. I feel better today.

For dinner I fixed a great vegetable soup and made some multigrain bread in the breadmaker. For now, I’m taking a break from salads and will find other ways to keep my vegetable consumption up.

Last night’s soup included these ingredients:

• vegetable broth (I used organic broth from Whole Foods)
• sweet potatoes, peas, corn, edamame, carrots, spinach
• stew meat
• salt and pepper, to taste

I put the meat in for my family, but only had a couple small pieces myself. I had leftover soup for lunch today and finished the meal with cucumber slices and grapes, which satisfied my cravings for fresh produce.

What Motivates Me To Lose Weight

Normally I’m a fairly private person.  I share personal stuff with close family and one or two close friends.  But I will share the following experience with all of you because I only know one person on this blog (my sister, clear over in India, and I think she would enjoy the entertainment value of this story) and I don’t anticipate ever meeting any of you face-to-face.  If  I should ever meet any of you, please do not refer to this experience.

A good-sized group of families from my church invited my family to join them for a week of fun camping on the beaches of Rocky Point, Mexico.  I am normally not a camper and don’t like vacationing with swinging, skinny, active people because I feel that I stick out like a sore thumb.  Well, my husband borrowed a cheap, old, pop-up tent trailer to encourage me to go.  I decided not to be a stick-in-the-mud, threw caution to the wind, and I went.

It was so thoughtful of my husband to get the trailer.  But it was not sturdy.  We decided not to sleep in the same pop-out since we are both large.  However, one afternoon when the kids were busy on the beach and some of us adults were languishing and visiting in camp, my husband got that certain gleam in his eyes and asked me to follow him into the tent trailer.  Oh that wiley man. Before I knew it, and against my better judgment, he had persuaded me to cuddle, in the same pop-out, in the buff, in broad daylight, in a rickety tent trailer with a flimsy door lock.  Before we knew it, the pop-out collapsed, the trailer tipped and a concerned five-year-old was quickly pulling on the door to see if we were okay.  One wise-guy friend cracked “Hey you two!  That ain’t the love boat you know!”

This is what motivates me to lose weight.

My Big Fat Face

I have finally come back to face the music. I went on a month long vacation (way too long, just by the way) and just couldn’t bring myself to step on the scale when I got home. I knew things weren’t good because every time I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I noticed how much rounder my face looked. I just didn’t want to know the number. I am a big believer in avoidance. If I can ignore a problem long enough it just might go away. But that round face just kept showing up. I avoided this website. I didn’t post on it, I didn’t comment and I eventually stopped reading. Seriously, checking in here just made it that much harder to avoid the round face that was stalking me. Soon I started eating more because, if I am not going to try to lose weight I might as well have some chocolate, right? This morning was the worst. I actually made a point not to look in the mirror. I took my kids to the park and visited with people in my neighborhood all without having a clue how I looked. When I got home I started looking for more food, just to keep me from thinking about that face and the number behind it. Finally I gave up. I trudged upstairs and I stepped on the scale.

It’s bad. Not only have I gained back all the weight I had lost, I also tacked on 5 more pounds just for fun. I now weigh 275 lbs. Yikes. Is that classic dieting behavior or what? But I have to say, now that I know the damage and I know that I have 10 months or so before I see my family in the US again, I feel motivated. This is new for me. Before, I wanted to be motivated, I pretended to be motivated, I knew I should be motivated, but I wasn’t. Now I feel like kickin’ some butt. So, here is my plan for this week. I will eat a better breakfast and lunch (dinners are pretty good) and stop the late night snacking. I will ride the stationary bike that has been mocking me. Finally, I will find and purchase one work out DVD and have tried it out before next Wednesday when I check in.

Sorry I flaked. I promise to better.

Bon Apetite

Last week I had gone up 4.4 pounds; there were many reasons for it, but it was still discouraging.  Tonight I went to my WW meeting to find that I had shed those pounds plus a few more, for a loss of 7 pounds.

So odd, but I’ll take it.

In response to Jen’s quest for good winter veggie ideas, here is an amazing recipe that I picked up from Sarah at Hope is Power… To make it a little more weight loss friendly, I have cut the olive oil to four teaspoons.  Also, I have no coriander OR caraway, so I cannot vouch for their flavor, but I love me some garlic salt instead.  I have tried it with dill weed, green curry powder, and fresh rosemary along with the garlic salt.  Makes for interesting variations on exquisite.  Be warned, you will become addicted.
Roasted Cauliflower, or Cauliflower Fries, or The Best Cauliflower You’ve Ever Tasted, Even If You Think You Hate Cauliflower
1 head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized pieces
3 T extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 t ground coriander
1/2 t ground caraway
3/4 t salt
pepper

Toss the cauliflower with the oil, then the spices and salt. Again, if you’re me, double the spices. Put the cauliflower on a baking sheet in one layer, and roast in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes. You should hear a lot of sizzling. Take it out and turn the cauliflower. It might look a little burned on the bottom, but that’s what you want. Return to the oven and roast another 10 minutes. It should be shriveled, blackened and crispy on the edges, and kind of juicy looking. Let it cool a little before you try it, and then prepare yourself for a new addiction. Keep the kids away, because they will eat it all. And beg for more, even fight over the remaining pieces.