Food Train hits Yumville

Hello people!

Thanks for all the lovely comments left on my post yesterday! Too sweet of everyone. And yes, I am feeling pretty good about my progress the last couple of weeks. I hate that the scale isn't showing that so much. But then again, I am only weighing on Monday's now...period. So it's sort of a guessing game the whole week and the tension that builds up waiting and wanting Monday to hurry the hell up and get here so I can see what that scale says is even more aggravating than weighing every day. Because if it didn't budge or barely showed results you get even more down because it feels like a whole week was wasted. But I have conquered that mindset. FINALLY! I don't care what the hell the scale says (well, I do but you know what I mean) as long as I KNOW I am getting thinner then it's ok and I will just keep reminding myself that eventually the scale will catch up to my body. That's that.

I just went grocery shopping yesterday and bought so great foods to make great healthy meals. Remember, I am going high protein, complex carbs AMAP. And if I do eat bread, grains, etc. it will be the real wheat kind and not dyed brown crap. I have realized how simple it is to healthy-up any recipe and still enjoy what I love. (Yes, I know, it's taken how many years for that concept to sink in???)

For example: Last night I wanted pizza for dinner so as I was browsing the frozen pizzas in the store I looked over several boxes promising whole wheat crusts, smaller portions, less calories, blah blah blah. When I looked at the nutrition facts on each box it was like "serving size= 1/16 pizza is 250 calories and up it went) I am like really???? Because 1/16 of some of these things would literally be a sliver so thin I might miss it on the plate! So I said screw that, I will make my own pizza! I found the whole wheat thin buns by Earth Grains (???) and read the ingredients. Whole wheat and whole grains were the first ingredients and no high fructose corn syrup. Very little ingredients and no funny words so I bought it. I got some ragu pizza sauce, skim mozarella shredded cheese, red bell pepper, sliced mushrooms, and mini pepperoni slices by Hormel. When I got home I used one bun (2 slices=2 mini pizzas) and threw it all together, baked them in the oven for about 8 min. and then broiled them for about a minute for some added crunch and OH MY DONKEY BALLS, they were absolutely delish!!!!  See below:

I did get stuck a little because of the bread but the crunch helped it go down. This meal was only 239 calories and included veggies, 2 proteins, and a whole grain!!! YUP!

I made chicken salad today for lunch and it was amazing too! I used Rotisserie chicken strips and cubed it up, added 1 tbsp mayo, 1/2 cup of red grapes (halved), and about 11 olive oil and sea salt flavored skinless almonds. SUPER YUMMY!!! It felt so decadent to eat and I forgot how much I love chicken salad with fruit in it like cranberries and grapes. I will list my full menu from today on my post tomorrow.

I also worked out last night for 45 minutes and burned 502 calories in my workout. My only vice now is staying up super late at night until like 1 or 2am and then waking up at 7am for work. I know I need more sleep so I am going to try to start getting more things done earlier so I can go to bed by 11 or 12.

Other than that things are peachy. I am going on Friday for a small unfill to prevent getting stuck on everything all the time. I think a tiny tiny bit out will make a huge difference! I also have an appointment with an ENT speacialist to see why I have constant post nasal drip and congestion in my head and ears. I have been dealing with it for like 2 years and I am sick of it. That may be the answer to why I get stuck all the time (congestion sitting in my pouch?)

We'll see. Have a great day!



Blogger Award and pictures!

Hi everyone,

I haven't had a chance to do any blogging the last few days. I've been really busy at work and have alot of catching up to do now! Ugh!!! I hate getting behind on my reading.

But low and behold I return to the sweet surprise of a blog award from Bec at My Lapband Journey . Thanks alot Bec that was super sweet of you and awesome. I haven't gotten an award in a while so I am very proud that you thought of me for this!

The rules of accepting this award are: Thank the person who gave you the award, reveal seven things about yourself, and nominate 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered or love. Then leave a comment on their blog letting them know they've been nominated

Seven things about myself:

1. I love babies

2. I would have a farm or jungle if I could. I love animals.

3. I act pretty tough but am very soft in reality.

4. I have green eyes.

5. I am naturally anal or pessimistic about things most of the time.

6. I am not a people person at all but for some reason people flock to me.

7. I have never broken a bone in my life.

Nominate 15 bloggers:

Kristen @ Kristen's Lapband Journey

Tessie @ Band Me Baby

Manda Panda @ Candyland to Bandland

Dizzy @ Dizzy

Caroline @ Finally Going to Finish what I started

Grace @ Graces (not so) Fat chance

Angie @ I am in repair (Angie, I know you don't do these awards but I still wanted to)

Drazil @ It's just me, drazil, and sheniqua

Lap Band Gal

Janelle @ Lap Band Living

Amanda @ Life of a (hopeful) loser

Meli @ Love, Meli Meli

Amy W @ Once upon a time...

Seeing In Colour

Sandy Lee @ The weight loss rollercoaster

Ok. So now that the award is done. I wanted to say I broke my lowest low on the scale yesterday and weighed in at 176.8lbs! I know it's not that far down but my lowest before that was 177.2! I have officially lost 30lbs on the dot. I figure 4 lbs lost in 5 days is pretty good. But I am definitely kicking it up a notch starting today I am going to exercise 6 times a week (like I have been) but for at least 45 minutes every workout instead of 15-30 like I have been doing. I read that for optimum fat burning you need to exercise at least 45 minutes or it's not worth the trouble. Not sure how true that is but I know my results would improve so that's what matters. I have been eating great I might say. I have been counting all of my calories and trying to eat 5-6 mini meals full of protein. But I am changing it up and cutting out a few more carbs then I have been. I haven't been eating carbs too liberally but I still feel like I could cut out more like crackers and pasta and stick to veggies and fruits instead.

Now for the pictures:

These were taken in September 2009 Before lap band:

And this is 11 months post op: Now! 30 pounds down

Almost forgot to post this picture: This is my stomach now. Thought I show a little update of how my scars have healed in almost a year.

Another Thursday...

I have taken the first step in not weighing every day....starting today. I told myself that from now on I will only weigh on Mondays like I planned to do since December. I have been working out every day and I don't want muscle gains on the scale to discourage me. So MONDAYS only!!! It was hard to walk out of the bathroom this morning without stepping on that lil devil but I managed to do it.

NSV!
My friend, Jessica, from work has been withering away losing her baby fat. LITERALLY melting off of her (lucky witch) and she used to be a size 8. Well in the last couple of months she's gone down to more like a 4/6 (again...lucky witch) and can no longer wear her 8's and 10's so she is retiring her slacks to me as she goes. Well she brought be a pair of 8's today and I told her there was no way in hell I could get in these pants. NO WAY! I have seen her in them and she looks soooo tiny and the pants look tiny! Well I went and tried them on in the bathroom and holy crap, they FIT!!! I was mesmerized, blow away, in shock! These, my friends, are no magic pants like the size 7's I told you about a while back. These are actually size 8 pants!!! I couldn't be more thrilled (unless the scale would go down, then I'd be more thrilled). WOWZERS!

Needless to say I am on an NSV high today. So my mood is chipper.

Menu from yesterday:

Breakfast: Click protein shake
Snack: Plain greek yogurt sweetened with Splenda, with 1/2 c blueberries and 1 tbsp of walnuts
Lunch: 1/2 baked flounder fillet and 1 small stuffed crab (mmm...yum!)
Snack: Click protein shake and 8oz of spicy V8 juice
Pre-workout energy snack: 2 tbsp of raisin bran extra
Post-workout energy snack: a sip of Chocolate Silk milk (literally like 2 swallows)
Dinner: the remaining half of my flounder fillet, 1/4 cup of crawfish cornbread, and a small salad with dark greens, 5 green olives, 4 croutons, and 1 tbsp of jalapeno ranch dressing.
Dessert Treat: a jello mousse pudding cup (love these things) and 4 oz of orange juice

Water: 96oz
Exercise: 15 minutes HIIT cardio when I got home and then another 45 minutes of circuit training after the hubby went to bed (woo hoo!!!)

I can honestly say I am LOVING working out. I feel great afterward and can really see the improvement in how I feel and my energy level. I am happy about this. I needed this boost. And to think I should have been working out all along.

Short note: I have been using Splenda for the last few months thinking it was a better option than nurtrasweet or sweet n low. Well I have been doing research on it because I feel like I get headaches and stuff shortly after eating something with splenda in it. Well of course it says "splenda is a chemical just like other artificial sweeteners and it can cause digestive problems, headaches, and....WEIGHT GAIN!!!" It doesn't effect everyone but it can cause these problems. SOOO I got some Truvia and I am going to the health food store tomorrow to buy Stevia. Maybe this will be an extra boost!

Have a good day!

What did you eat yesterday???

Hi buddies,

How's it going? Pretty good here. So I have a task for you all! Let's do a daily menu post everyone! Just write everything you consumed yesterday the good and the bad. Just let it all out! I'm just trying to get inspired by some new meal/snack ideas! Also if you exercised yesterday tell what you did and how long!

I will start:

Breakfast: Click protein shake
Snack: 1cup of plain greek yogurt sweetened with splenda and 1 tbsp of walnuts
Lunch: Click protein shake
Snack: 8oz spicy V8 juice, 1 part skim string cheese, and 10 green olives
Dinner: 1 pouch white tuna, 1 tbsp mayo, 1 tbsp mustard, 5 ritz crackers and 1 can asparagus spears
Snack: couple of bites of crawfish cornbread

Water: 112oz
Exercise: 20 minutes of HIIT cardio (approx 250 calories burned)

Now share your yesterday with me please! Thanks!!!

It's been a while...BYOC and some serious stuff

I haven't done BYOC in I don't know how long so I thought I would get back in the game today. Sorry Draz! haha


1. If you were on death row, what would your last meal be before your “death”?


Well this question is thoroughly upsetting because we are all on death row in a sense that death is inevitable but I will answer even though this flares up my death phobia. I would have to say a little of all of my favs including: spinach alfredo pizza, cornbread stuffing, ravioli di portabello, baked potato with chopped bbq, mac and cheese from Golden Corral, and of course, a mexican pizza from Taco Bell. Yup I'd be one stuffed puppy and I'd probably throw it all up before they flipped the switch but that's it!

2. If you drive a car, do you speed?


Yes! I do speed like a bat out of hell. But I am an excellent driver too. No excuse, I know, but it's just me. When I have my brothers and sisters in the car I am more prone to following the speed limit though. I could never forgive myself if my actions hurt them.

3. What movie(s) do/can you watch over and over again?


The House Bunny, Sorority Boys, Titanic, and Wedding Crashers! There's plenty more where those came from! I am def. a movie buff.

4. What’s your favorite blog topic to read about and your favorite blog topic to write about?


To read: Anything weight loss involved. I have been obsessed with this subject (duh) for years and I must read anything and everything someone else is doing to succeed in hopes that I can do the same thing. Yet somehow, I never seem to apply it to myself and am stuck in fat hell.

To write: I like to write about every day life. To me pictures and written words save memories that your mind may have trouble finding as you get older. It's very important to me to have things I can look back on and learn about myself and who I was and who I am now. It all ties into my fear of aging and especially my fear of death. (I have been dwelling on this subject lately, in case you couldn't tell by my multiple mentions of it so far)


5. Repeat question: Summarize your week in blogland and in real life.


Well I haven't been writing so so much because I haven't had much to say really. I am kinda holding back waiting on some success to write about. I am tired of the whole "I'm trying, I'm not trying" crap. So yeah. But I have been keeping up on my reading so that's good. In real life, this week has sucked really. Don't care to go into to details but I see a brighter week up ahead (hopefully)

Onto an explanation of my fears above. I don't want to get too into this because it's something that I honestly probably should go to therapy for. I don't see therapy helping too much though because my fear isn't something that you can be cured of. It's not something jumping out of airplanes or sleeping with the light off can help. I will most definitely age and eventually death will find me. This subject makes me twitch. I don't share these feeling very often with anyone because people find it strange or something they prefer to avoid. The average person can think about it for a minute but ultimately stears clear of the subject because they'd rather not dwell on it. Life is life and it ends for everyone and that's how people see it. I, on the other hand, am a dweller. Over the last couple of years my fears have altered a bit or possibly personified more of the aging part.

Every day when I look in the mirror or am getting dressed and look at myself thoughts sworm my head like what will I do when my looks are gone completely? How will I look when I am 30, 40, 50 and I wish I could look the same? My biggest concern is that when I do grow older and my life changes that I will look back on these very moments from today and wish I could go back, wish I could change everything. I feel like my life has already slipped away in some ways. Like I have waited too long to do things and I am 24. I know I am young but to me it's hard to cope with the fact that we have no choice in the matter. I don't understand life really. I don't understand what the point is for something to be born only to die. I hate talking about it because I know people don't want to talk about these things. They just want to live and enjoy the life they have while they can. I just can't help it. I am consumed by it. Always have been since I was 7 years old. It's only gotten worse over the years. Lately it's been especially hard.

I know I have talked about this once or twice last year and yes, my grandmother's death last year has made this anxiety worse than ever. I just think of how alive she was when I was younger. How vibrant and beautiful she was and how she made it a point to look wonderful every day. I always felt like I would strive to be like her and age gracefully. She gave me hope that you can still be beautiful when you are older. But in the end she gave up on that. She looked horrible. She stopped caring about her looks, about her life, because the pain she endured for years finally got her. It finally beat her and I am terrified that my life will end the same if I even live that long. I have developed a new issue with my mother. Now that Granny is gone my focus has turned on her. My fear of losing her. My mother is the same vibrant beautiful woman my grandmother always was. She is wild and crazy and lives younger than she is. Just like Granny. I am so afraid that one day she will give up too. She thinks like me in some ways and since Granny's death she is fearful of the same thing happening to her. She is the only person who understands how I feel about my grandmother. She is the only one who remotely knew her like I did. So the fears we share are amplified by that bond. It's particularly hard now that she will have been gone one year next month. I honestly don't know how I have made it this far without having a complete mental break down. Sometimes I  think I have and just don't know it.

Enough of this. For those of you still reading, I hope I haven't depressed the hell out of you by this. I am not looking for sympathy or therapy suggestions. I just needed to say this sort of outside of my mind and maybe let someone who feels the same way about some of this that they are not the only ones. It's hard to deal with what's unchangeable.

Anyway...hope everyone has a great weekend!

Liking this game already!

So I told you all how I bought the Your Shape wii game with Jenny McCarthy. Well I finally got to try it out last night and it is soooo neat. It comes with a web cam that actually scans your body image and puts it into the game and you get to tell the game what areas of your body you want to work on and how you want to work on it (i.e. burn fat, strengthen muscle, or tone). It was actually pretty sad to the the blueprint of my body after the scan because it is very realistic and actually shows your troubled areas. I, of course, chose to burn fat on all parts of my body and to tone my butt! haha

Anyway...just the fitness evaluation that it makes you do to see how fit you currently are wore my ass out! I can only imagine what an actual workout will do. It's cool though because the game has a workout calendar and you can either go by what they suggest and work out according to the game (like 4 times a week with mixes of cardio and upper and lower body workouts) or you can customize it to workout whenever you want and how long you want. It even has options to set up your own Challenges or New Year's Resolutions. I will check it out some more tonight. I ran out of time last night but so far so neat!

I did go to the gym yesterday and walked a mile on the treadmill and then did a mile on the bike. My sketchers shapeups I got for Christmas HURT like hell. I can barely walk at 3.3mph on the treadmill and my right calf burns soooo bad and my feet go numb. I might switch back to regular shoes for the gym.

I ate pretty good yesterday:
B: Greek yogurt with honey and walnuts.
L: tuna with a little mayo and 3 small dill pickles, and 1 spicy V8 juice
Snack: string cheese, 2 slices of turkey breast, and 1/2 grapefruit (yuk...I despise the bitter taste of grapefruit but I know they are good for you so I tried it.)
D: 2 slices of baked ham, 1/2 pear, 1/2 c broccoli rice, and 1/4 c green beans
Snack: sliced apple with some caramel dip (not the best but at least I had a fruit instead of chocolate)

One day at a time...

Just a quick word

Hi everyone,

I haven't been writing much I know. I still am feeling blah, blek, however you want to put. I intend on keeping up on my reading but I don't feel the need to post alot until I get my mojo back. I mean what is there really to say? I am stuck in binge eating hell thanks to my own petty will power. So until that turns around for me the last thing I need to be doing is bitching about it every day. I know what the answer is I just have to want to apply it and until then I will spare you all the BS.

On one positive note. I am going to the gym today. It's been a while so that might reset my groove. We'll see...

My word for 2011

I haven't been around much this week, I know. I have been reading a few blogs each day but not keeping up or commenting like I usually do. I am in a bit of a slump. I really just don't feel like it. I don't feel like reading and I feel blah. I don't feel like writing but I decided a little something is better thank going MIA again.

I got my new scale in the mail. It seems pretty accurate and it reads the same over lbs on back to back weigh-ins so that's good. It's actually about 4oz off from my old scale on the good side! So that's a yay too. I am thinking about getting a wii fitness game today to maybe get motivated again about working out. I keep telling myself to go to the gym but it's just not happening. (no time?... yeah right)

Foodwise: Eh...yeah just eh. I haven't been eating tremendously awful but I haven't been eating all that healthy either. Portion sizes are good but content not so much. I am still maintaining between 177-179lbs and I am pretty ok with that. I am proud that I am able to maintain. Some days I think if I am happy with myself as is then maybe I should stop obsessing about the next 30 pounds. Maybe if I just chillax they will come off slowly but surely. But then I remember that I don't want to hover at looking "ok" I want to race to looking "hott and healthy". I just gotta find my mojo again.

I have been drinking dr. pepper once a day for the last couple of days. I LOVE it. I hate that I love it. If I had to choose between eating a meal and drinking a DP I would choose the DP. That's sad. Caffeine addiction sucks monkey nuts. Better yet food addiction sucks monkey nuts. I haven't been drinking enough water every day. Basically one day I will get my 6 bottles in and the next I will drink 2 bottles. In and out of mojo mode. Yeah that's me.

On a slightly more upbeat note, I am going with the bestie tomorrow to see Country Strong with Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw. It looks soooo good. I am from Texas so I am country at heart and I love me some Tim McGraw... Oh yes

Oh BTW, I have come up with my word for 2011.

Consistency:
Reliability or uniformity of successive results or events

Why? Because I am tired of waking up every day with a new diet in mind and then failing by the next day only to start a new one because that one surely won't work. If it was working I would've stuck to it, right? Yeah that's how my mind works. I want to get to a place where I just...am. Where I don't have to think about it and I just do it. Where if one day I choose to have a dr. pepper then it's ok because for the most part I am eating well.

• I want to be able to say that the majority of the time I am being consistent at eating what's good for me and sticking to nutritious foods. 
• I want to be constistently happy at being somewhere in the middle of those highs and lows. 
• I want to be consistent at exercising. (I thrive off of routine so I naturally need to feel consistency but I sabotage that with my all or nothing ways of thinking.)
• I want to be consistent with drinking enough water every day.
• I want to be consistently HAPPY as much as possible because last year sucked for me. There were very few ups and I was drowned by downs.  

Well there's my bulleted list. It took me a few days but I did it. Yay me!
Anyway. Have a great weekend everyone! Until next time...smooches!

New scale!!!

Hey everyone! Happy new year!

This is going to be a super quick post because I am already off of work. But I just had to drop in and tell ya'll that I ordered a new scale on Friday! I have had my Healthometer scale for like over a year and I just feel like it's inaccurate. It's fickle and your weight fluctuates alot if you get on it several times in a row. So I ordered this one....

It's by Taylor and it's supposed to be very accurate. I read several customer reviews. So we shall see if it reads different than my current scale. Watch it say I weight 10lbs more!!!! Then I'll wanna break it!

Food front. I did manage to lose 3 lbs over the weekend but my food choices weren't the wisest (at all). Day by day!

Tata for now!