Adjusted Reality

This morning, around 4:45 am, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep for a while, and finally a topic to write on came to me – I spent all yesterday pondering what to write about this week and had some wicked writers block.  All I could come up with are some random recipe and 5 random thing goodness, but I wanted to really tackle something today, something with some thought behind it – because, honestly, I like sharing random stuff going on in my life and some of my best and worst meals, but I don’t want this to be a “I did this, I ate that” journal. So when I woke up this morning, sore, chilled in sweat, and starving, I knew that I had a topic!  My pain is your Monday reading enjoyment.

So, a tale from the weekend – nah, let’s start from Wednesday – I hadn’t eaten much that day and it was my day off workouting, and we decided to try this new Tex-Mex restaurant in our ‘hood (the food was decent, but there was actually an animal of some sort in the ceiling making noise).  Then decided we were all about trying new things, and went to a new bar for ONE drink.  That one drink ended up multiplying by quite a lot, and as is uncharacteristic for me on a weekday, I’m slinking into bed at around 4am.  Needless to say, the normal self control did not win out and I figured I’d just be better over the weekend.  One extra day of 2000 calories is no big deal.

Then Friday, we decided we were going to have a quiet night at home, but the weather was so beautiful, we sat on the patio enjoying a few.  Then, a few more.  Then, all of a sudden, we were off on a walking adventure to get queso and even more booze.  This was ANOTHER unfortunate 2000+ calorie day.  Then the next day was the fried catfish buffet with my parents (which was the only PLANNED day of doom).  We walked 6 miles yesterday and planned to stop at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants on the way home – I devoured half my chips and salsa and the entire taco salad with a quickness.  I didn’t even feel overfull like I should have on the way home.  So, needless to say, I’ve eaten at least 1000 calories MORE this week than my plan.

And I’ve still lost weight.  I’m at a new low of 156.0.

So, perhaps I need to contemplate what this means, on hunger in general, and if there is actually a way, as the diet ads say, to lose weight without ever being hungry.  Because sure, I don’t feel like I’m not getting by on what I’m taking in, but there are many, many times a week where I feel hungry and deny myself the right to eat, or at least try to wait until the “proper” time.

My normal daily hunger fluctuations on the weekdays are:

8 am – Get up, immediately peckish.

8:30am – Get to work, try to make sure to get at least a glass of water down before I eat my oatmeal.  Try to wait until 10am or so, which works sometimes and doesn’t work sometimes.

11 am – Usually by now, I’m starting to anticipate lunch.

12:30pm – It’s lunch and I’m ready to eat inanimate objects.  This is generally my biggest meal of the day.

3pm – Usually about now, the hunger monster comes back for a few, and I usually quell him fine with a glass of water, tea, or in extreme circumstances a diet soda.

5pm – Fruit snack time (fruit as a snack, not fruit snacks).  There is much rejoicing!

6pm – By now, I’m getting my workout on.  This is usually the only period of the day where my appetite decreases without eating.

8pm – Home, showered, and eating dinner.  Om…nom…nom.  Usually fairly light unless I’ve planned and eaten a lighter lunch.  Most of my random recipes are weekday dinners.

10pm – Usually around now, I’m craving a little something.  More for taste than for hunger as long as I ate enough dinner.  I’ll usually grab a second helping of veggies or salad, or if it’s sweets, then a mini candy cane or a hershey kiss, or sometimes tough it out to see if it passes.

Most days, I am pretty satiated by the time I go to bed, but there are certainly points during the day I wish I was not so dedicated to this quest of mine.  To be honest, it was not really any different when I ate more calories – I still got super hungry in the mornings before lunch, and in the afternoons.

I know the answer to this.  It’s not even a mystery.  Listen to what every diet site tells you nowadays – eat every 3 hours.  Eat lots of small meals of mostly veggies, lean protien, and complex carbs.  I’m sure I’d be touting the praises of this from the highest mountain saying “I LOST THE WEIGHT AND WAS NEVER HUNGRY!!!”.

So the problem?  I can’t freaking do it.  I can’t bring myself to commit to something that makes it impossible to be social with other people at mealtimes without making me a sad panda.  Want to go out to eat with my parents, who pretty much only eat at buffets?  Yeah, that’s a fun time grabbing a salad with low fat dressing and maybe a non-cream soup.  They’d also complain I’m wasting their money, heh.  Work doesn’t exactly give 3 short lunch breaks.  For me, all I’d get is weird looks eating so often, but lots of jobs, you can’t just go make food or eat whenever you want.  I would, however, have to pack a crap ton of food to take to work, and for some reason, eating at work just makes me angry.

And…life is not worth living without the ability to “save” calories every now and again to have some pizza.  Or a burger and fries.  Or a mexican combo plate.  At the very least, life is too short to not be able to enjoy a real meal, not just snacks all day.   I don’t know if this is the fat girl still somewhere inside, but there is nothing more satisfying food-wise than digging into a big plate of nummy-ness.  At lunch, that was chicken, some rice noodles, and a mess of veggies, so I’m not saying I have to eat junk or fattening food – I just don’t feel fulfilled on a constant diet of snacks.  So, instead, I suffer a bit for my conquest, and what I believe is the lesser of two evils.  And I have to deal with the fractured reality of wanting to eat some extra fruit or a salad or veggies or beef jerky or something that is OBVIOUSLY good for me, and not doing it because I have already planned out my calories that day…

I still always wonder if I should eat more, but it’s always such a difficult process finding the sweet spot (especially when your weight keeps changing).  I’m pretty sure I’ll keep losing on my 11500 calories per week (that’s 1300 for 5 days, 1500 for 2 days, and 2000 for one day), but I would hate to be making such an effort and actually be starving myself, and sooner or later I will end up stuck and have to redo the proccess of maintaining for a few months to fix my metabolism.  I also remember not losing weight when I was at 1500 calories per day (and slightly more like 1800-2000 on the weekends), though I might have already had a burnt out metabolism at that point.

Any advice for me?  I’m 5’5″, 156 lbs, burn somewhere close to 3k calories per week doing cardio (my DDR time is hard to judge, because it says I’m burning 1200 calories per 60 minutes, which would like to but I do not believe at all), and also burn an indeterminate amount of calories doing 2 hours of what is essentially circuit training.  My program on spark says to lose 1.5 lbs per week, I should eat between 1270 and 1630 per day (which works out if you average what I eat per week, not per day).  If you keep track, how many calories do you shove down your gullet per day?  Are you losing or maintaining?  If you’re maintaining, do you ever deny yourself food when you’re hungry?  If you’re losing, have you found the sweet spot, or do you have to endure a little pain for the prize?  Hit me up.  I would love love love to know!

This post is sponsored by a grumpy Quix that is brought to you by allergies, muscle soreness, and lack of energy.  Evidentally I can run 5.5 miles but not walk 6.  Makes perfect sense, right?  Comic relief from icanhascheezburger.com and ihasahotdog.com.

When I started this blog, I hoped to divide about half of the time to talk about game theory, game reviews, and the industry in general.  Well, as you can see, that failed.  I did some early, introductory posts on psychology in games, my previous life as a crazy gamer person, and mentioned games in a few random posts.  I had even had a goal to play one game a month and write about it.

However, just as other interests in my life wax and wane, I’ve just come to terms that my gamer fetish is definitely in a waning phase.  Of course, I regularly DDR, but that’s got the dual purpose of fitness.  I’d even go so far as to say that if it did not provide me fitness benefits, I probably wouldn’t play it THAT often.  I love me some Rock Band 2, but the horrendus allergies making singing sucky coupled with lots of nights out and not in have made playing it a very occasional thing.  I just have no desire to play an MMO right now beyond jumping into mine on a casual basis, I’m enjoying my friends right now who are not just pixels.  So, for the most part, I play some web games and we occasionally have a session of something like Little Big Planet or Fable or some other random game that we picked up, but nothing has grabbed us by the proverbial balls and made us play very long.

As for living the dream – well, the industry is in a sick sad state where people are either clinging to their jobs with clenched fingers, or being laid off and finding themselves competing with hundreds of other applicants for one job.  Everyone I know that has changed jobs has taken pay cuts.  Some have been unemployed for over 6 months.  I sort of have been ignoring the gaming news because it’s just too depressing.  Since I don’t plan to change jobs and my position right now has very little to do with staying on top of trends and the zeitgeist of the scene out there, I have sort of adopted a *hide my head in the sand* approach.

So back to happier, gamier things.  Enter Eternal Sonata.   This is the website’s overview, which I liked and stole:

On his deathbed, the famous composer, Chopin, drifts between this life and the next. In his final hours, he experiences a fantastical dream where he encounters a young girl facing a terrible destiny and the boy who will fight to save her. On the border between dreams and reality, Chopin discovers the light that shines in all of us in this enduring tale of good and evil, love and betrayal.

It’s a really bizarre premise for a game, but it works!  On the surface, it’s your standard jrpg (Japanese Role Playing Game), akin to the Final Fantasy series where you talk to people in towns, travel through the world running into beasts and fight them, and complete quests and progress through a linear story.  And, as is with all good jrpgs, you will inevitably get to a point where you advance through the story too quickly, it gets too hard, and you have to grind (fight creatures over and over just for the sake of getting levels and becoming more powerful) for a while.

The really cool and unique thing is that it’s a 3 player game!  One person navigates around the world, but once you jump into battle, you can assign all three characters either to one, two, or three different controllers!  So, Zliten, Mr. Pangryface, and myself can sit down and play together all day, and not have to either pass around the controller or stop every time someone has to go pee, nap, cook dinner for an hour, or whatnot.  It’s like playing an MMO with your friends, except those friends are actually on your couch with you.  I think if there were more games out there with this control scheme, I would totally be playing more.  This is the game for me and my crew right now.

Other cool things about the game – there are these huge, long… for the lack of a better word “picture sequences” telling the story of Chopin (the real Chopin composer dude) and his life.  The battles are turn based, but timed – so your turn is whatever you can do within the seconds it gives you.  For example, our party right now has 3 seconds to plan and 4 seconds to act, which means you have to be paying attention or you’ll miss your turn.  You can only move your character during this four seconds as well, so there is a lot of strategy involved (do I run in and position myself in back of the two monsters right here so I get maximum damage each hit or do I run up to the front where it’s closer and get more hits off, but they can block).  If that didn’t add a twist to the game this does – certain special spells only work in light, and some in shadow.  So if you want to heal, you have to run to the light and make sure your party is within range and spam it as many times as you can in your 4 seconds.  It sounds confusing here, but it’s actually pretty intuitive and they provide a lot of good tutorials on how to do combat.

The game is not without it’s flaws.  In traditional badly translated Japanese video game fashion, some of the dialogue doesn’t really make sense or it just doesn’t flow well.  It’s not too bad, but you can tell it originated from outside the states.  The voice over work in the cut scenes can be horrendous.  There are some story sequences that seem like they should have been cut scenes but they ran out of time.  Sometimes it seems like you stay…in…one…area…forever and are dying for  change of scenery by the end of it.   It’s also sometimes a little wonky when reassigning controllers to player 2 and 3, sometimes it just doesn’t stick properly.

However, it’s awesomeness totally overwhelms it’s flaws.  If you’re looking for a new RPG to play, and you didn’t pick it up previously (I believe it was 2008 title for the PS3 and a 2007 title for the XBOX 360), definitely check it out.  Considering we’ve logged about 15 hours in less than a week – I think that says something in and of itself.

Happy weekending, crazy kids.  What’s your current game of choice?  Anything dropping soon you’re excited about?  Hit me up.  See ya Monday, for another week of fun and games.  What’s in store?  No clue.  But I’ll be here wingin’ it, like usual! 🙂

So I started the recipe topic because I believe that eating healthy is not as hard as it seems.  There are plenty of fast, yummy, and nutritionally awesome (or at least acceptable because, come on, we can’t be angels all the time) things to make.  Most of the time, our culinary creations turned out yummy.  I wish I had a picture of the delicious curried shrimp and veggies over noodles I made on Saturday – it was awesome.  But it’s ok, because I will SOOOO make it again, and I think I really got the curry marinade down.

Last week, however, we definitely learned that there are some things you just can’t do, and not every recipe is a winner.

We have had “shifty bobs” on the meal plan for a few weeks now.  Technically, the first week it was shish kabobs, and then Zliten made it into “shifty bobs” because it sounded cooler.  So it has been said, and they shall henceforth be referred to as such.  Whatever they are called, they kept getting pushed to the next week because it’s too cold for the grill, or meat wasn’t thawed, or it was a lot of work, or whatever reason.  Finally, last Wednesday was shifty bob day.

Zliten lovingly put the meat, pineapple, and veggies into the marinade around lunchtime to soak up the goodness.  When I got home from work, they went on the grill, and came off looking like sex on a plate.

However, when we started to eat them, the beef was…mealy, and falling apart.  We both ate a bit, looked at each other, and said…”does this taste funny to you?” So, shifty bobs went into the shifty trash can, and we decided to make big mcveggie burgers instead.  They were super good.

So you get a double recipe in one, as well as a warning – do not let your pinapple mix too long with your meat!!!  It’s way too acidic to get along with your meat for extended periods of time.  Add it right before you grill or marinade the veggies separately.

Shifty bobs:

-Cubed beef (or chicken, or shrimp, or actually any meat you want)

-Bell peppers

-Onions

-Pineapple (optional, this is the first time we’ve made it with it)

Marinade:

-Stir Fry Sauce (kikoman ginger garlic is what I use)

-Rooster Sauce (give it a nice big squeeze)

-Newman’s Own Sesame Ginger Dressing (Lite)

-Garlic Powder

Take your meat and veggies, put them in the marinade for 30 minutes minimum (can be longer, as long as the pineapple is quarantined).  Skewer them, throw them on the grill, and we served it with rice.

Big McVeggie Burger:

-Two slices of bread, I used 40 calorie wheat bread.

-Two veggie burger patties, I used Gardenburger California Style.

-Two slices of fat free cheese (believe me, it’s fine for this, I usually hate fat free cheese too)

-Secret Sauce

-Sliced Pickles

-Diced Onions

-Shredded Lettuce

(Not so) Secret Sauce:

-A squirt of ketchup

-A squirt of mustard

-A dollop of low fat ranch

-A dollop of relish

Grill veggie burgers on grill surface of your choosing.  Toast bread.  Apply condiments in this order – bread, secret sauce, pickles, patty, cheese, patty, cheese, onions, lettuce, secret sauce, bread.

It’s not quite a big mac but it’s really yummy.

Calorie count for the shifty bobs varies depending on what meat you use, but the marinade and veggies don’t add much calorie-wise.  It’s well under 500 calories for a good few skewers even with a heaping cup of rice.  The faken-burger was about 400.

Even  if things don’t turn out quite right – at least cooking is always an adventure!

So I still had no idea what I was going to do here.  I have April’s plan in the bag already, and while I’m SUPER excited for it, February is not the right month for it.  March is always a month of sheer survival, since everyone’s birthdays happen in a 3 week window and the parties and revelry barely cease, though I have an idea there too.  This month is problematic.  It’s too cold and gets dark too early to spend a lot of time outside.  I really want to make another month of good progress – the closer I am to 150 by my birthday the better, because, as I said before, March is rough.

So I signed up for the Mardi Gras 5k tonight – woohoo, first race ever (not counting the 400 meter dash in 8th grade)!  I can run the distance in my sleep (for example, tonight, I ran the distance tonight after 15 minutes on cybil the arc trainer and an hour of weights), and I have run at least that far twice outside, but I’d like to work a little more on making good time outside.  My goal is under 30 minutes.  That’s more than feasable pushing myself on a treadmill, but we’ll see how it goes on race day.  The most important thing for me to do is finish, and have a time to improve upon.

So, I have a race to run.  I also did an almost-rest week last week, which actually ended up being a pretty active time, and found that it wasn’t the end of the world that I didn’t do heavy weights, skipped a few weight sessions in favor of cardio, and didn’t do intervals.  So, since I’m focusing on running a race this month, I’m going to give some of the rest of my program a rest, or at least vary it up a bit.

After much deliberating, this is the plan, which as usual, I reserve the right to change it at a moment’s whim:

Day 1: 15 minutes arc trainer, full body strength (at gym), 30 minute treadmill run

Day 2: 60 minute outside run, yoga

Day 3:  45 minutes DDR, full body strength (at home)

Day 4: 60 minute outside run, yoga

The week of the race, I will do a test 5k on Day 2, and skip day 4 since it’s race day.  I’ve eliminated one day of gym weights – my muscles seem to actually be doing better by giving them a week of recovery, so maybe a month of relaxing the weight training will do me good.  I’ve also eliminated my intervals for the month.  I’m sort of sick of them, and would rather start doing them again when I can run them at the track outside, and do real HIIT.

I am also going to try to participate in Charlotte’s challenge this month, because it will be good for my soul.  But I’m starting tomorrow…

I had a good friend tell me that he adopted a motto that served him well – it was, loosely translated, “If I have the time and the money, and it isn’t going to physcially harm me, I try to say yes”.  Essentially, if it’s just fear or laziness or insecurity holding him back from experiencing something new, he tries to shake it off and go for it anyway.  I figured this was a good way to live, and while sometimes my comfort zone and limits get the best of me (honestly, the laziness is usually what gets me), I try to take the chance and participate in stuff that could possibly be cool more often.

This week, I’d already turned down an invite to try an African dance class.  The lazy and crazy schedule monster got me.  Sure, I didn’t have anything specifically keeping me away from it on Thursday from 8:30-10:30pm, but I got out of the studio on the East Side at 5, had to go home which is North, and then would have had to go down South.  On top of that, it was an early in day Friday (or at least I attempted to make it one…sigh), so I would just be getting home when I usually start wandering to bed and such.  That being said, I felt a twinge of guilt I just didn’t buck up and do it.

Then, the invite came for a Friday nite Dance-a-thon at one of my favorite bars, the Creekside Lounge (it was actually a new space next door called Creekside Live, but I didn’t know that until we got there), and the motto rang out in my head.  At first I was like, eh, I’ll go, sounds ok, and over the next few days I got more and more excited until I was literally pumped to go dance for hours and hours.  I made sure I was wearing my comfortable shoes and had layers to peel off as it got too hot and/or put on if it was cold (didn’t know if it was inside or outside).  I was totally set.

We walked the 5 minutes to the bus stop, caught the bus, walked about a mile and got there and I got my wristband and scoped out the place.  There were free red bulls but since I don’t drink caffeine very often, I wanted to hold off on making myself crazy.  Finally, around 9:45 the contest started and, sadly, the girls that invited us didn’t show up on time so I was the only one entered.  Everyone took turns dancing with me, keepin’ me going – I think I tired out about 3 different shifts of people.  Soon it was 10:45, 11:45, 12:30…and then they soon figured out they needed to eliminate people, so they started saying you not only had to be dancing, you had to be dancing hard.  A very drunk Zliten came up to talk to me, and I was dancing, but not quite so vigorously, and I got my wristband cut at around 12:45.

While I was a little disappointed, I was also happy.  I wanted badly to pee, have a drink of anything, and to hang out with my friends who had sort of gotten tired of dancing – and sorry folks, pretty much in that order.  I had intentionally only had sips of people’s drinks and about half a redbull so I stayed somewhat dehydrated, simply because I needed to keep the liquid in balanced with the liquid out (sweating, not peeing my pants).  It’s not normal for me to be at a bar, at almost 1 am, and pretty much sober.  And, I missed my friends!  At least we got pictures!

I was pretty proud of how far I’ve come with many things, proved by that night.  Along with the obvious stretching of my comfort zone and overcoming the lazies to get out there, it’s a testiment to how much stronger and how much better shape I’m in than ever before.  Two years ago, the walk to the bus stop, the walk from the bus to the bar, or dancing for a few songs would have tired me out.  A year ago, I was impressed on my birthday I danced for about 30 minutes without a break.  Friday – I mixed it up on the floor nonstop for 3 hours, after doing at least a mile and a half walk.  Sure, some of the time I was just sort of keeping the beat and not going all out, but then there were points of the night l headbanged to Smells Like Teen Spirit, jumped up and down through all of Tubthumper, raved it up through some crazy techno, and got freaky deaky to some hip hop.  I wasn’t even exhausted at the end, just sort of “over it”.  3 hours is a long time to do anything!

And if you’re wondering – I totally counted it as a workout.  I was damn sore the next day.  The hurty-est thing on my body?  My arms.  Puzzling, I know.  The legs talked to me a bit, but my arms were WRECKED.

So, my fine interweb friends – your mission is this:  go out and do something this week that you don’t normally do or something you’ve been putting off.  If you normally get the beef, get the chicken.  If you’ve been waiting to try that new machine at the gym that’s a little intimdating, today is your day.  Even a little thing is good, but the bigger, the better.  I will always remember last Friday, even if the end of the night was a little fuzzy (again, remember, I’m a crappy role model).  It’s also the push I need to just go and sign up for that damn 5k TONIGHT instead of waiting for some mystical time in the future.  I’ve got the money, the time, and it’s not putting me in immediate danger, so I’m there!

Tomorrow I will be here to talk about the plan for the month, because sadly, I need to actually think about it.  This weekend was rough!  FYI, the first picture is pre-dancing, the second is immediately after dancing, and the third is right before we left the bar and scored a cab.