Adjusted Reality

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.

So I broke the shocking news early January that I was so happy with my fitness regimen from Decemeber, that I was sticking with it for another month.  The (small) crowd dropped their jaws in shock and awe.  Now for the results, prepare to not be very surprised at some things, and perhaps more surprised at others…

To recap, this was the plan as of January 1:

-Day 1 and 3: 30 mins interval run, 15 minutes on Cybil, full body strength.

-Day 2: 60 minute run, yoga session

-Day 4: 60 minute DDR session, yoga session

By the end of the first week, the plan looked more like this:

-Day 1 : Intervals, cybil, and full body weights

-Day 2: Long run and yoga

-Day 3: Outside Run (about 3-4 miles), either DDR or cybil, and full body weights

-Day 4: DDR and yoga

The last week and a half, due to allergies/just needing a break, it is now:

-Day 1 and 3: DDR and yoga

-Day 2 and 4: DDR and full body strength

I cannot run and snot at the same time.

So this has taught me a myriad of things.  First of all, I cannot ever do the same workout for 2 months straight or I will subconsciously revolt and develop allergies so I just physcially can’t do it.  Secondly, even if I think that I’m handling the exercise regime well, I need to make sure and schedule light weeks and breaks every few months, even if it freaks me out because that nagging voice in the back of my head is saying that if I skip a week of runs something terrible is going to happen.

Thirdly, DDR, done at the intensity I do it, is just about as sweat inducing as running, but somehow less tiring.  I’d like to believe that the hour long DDR sessions actually burn the 1200 calories the game says I do at my weight, but I think it’s probably on par with an hour of running, which is about 750.  When I run, I need at least an extra hour of sleep and regularly get tired around 11:30 pm (even on non-running days).  This week, I’ve been seeing at least 12:30 if not 1am and been sleeping in a little more.  Totally fine for my schedule on studio days which start at 10am no matter what, but not for office days – I can go in as late as 10am, but I like to get there closer to 8 so I’m off earlier.  In summary, if I didn’t really actually like running and want to get better at it, I could probably stop doing it and go back to DDR for the same calorie burn.

Weight Loss Progress:

Sadly, it seems like the exercise really means squat in terms of weight loss.  I am doing the same (or lighter) workouts this month, the only change I made was in my diet, and not a terribly drastic one – from approximately 1500-1600 calorie days most days (plus one untracked day – which at most was maaaaaybe 2300 calories, usually closer to 2000) to 1300 calorie days weekdays and 2000 or under calorie weekends.  This is a change of about 1000 calories per week, or approximately 143 calories per day.  Essentially, I’ve eliminated a snack each day.

This change was enough to break the frustrating cycle of premature maintenance.  I just couldn’t break that 162 barrier and now I’m regularly weighing in at 158.  This is a 5 lb loss this month, just as I hoped for.  This makes me happy and dance!  Although, it’s been anticlimactic since I had that huge loss the first week, and now the scale seems stuck, although I know my body is just adjusting to the changes.  If my predictions are correct, next week should be a stellar week.

So, though we cannot have nice (workouts) things for more than a month, I’m truly pleased with how January went.  It proved that the little subconscious fear I had that I cannot lose any more weight without taking drastic measures was just in my head.  Also, it proved that I don’t have to increase my workout intensity that often to maintain or lose weight.  Unless I want to.  Which I often do, but on less calories, it’s nice to know I can just coast a little.

Incidentally, I toyed with the choice in the middle of last year (once I really fell in love with running) of focusing on the athletic/fitness side of this, or focusing on the weight loss side.  I ended up endeavoring to do both, however, it is slowly hitting me that I might need to pick a side after all.  Once I hit maintenance it will be lovely to not eat to lose and have enough fuel to amp things up, but until then, maybe I need to back off the intensity a little (or at least not increase it so much all the time) until I am done.  To clarify – the most important thing to me for the long term is to be capable, toned, and athletic.  However, I am so close to settling the weight issue with myself in the short term, I think the answer might be to focus on that, and then give myself free reign to go wild after the scale is just a double check.

Just something to think about as I ponder February’s plan.  As in, argh! omg! I haven’t really thought about it and it’s January 30th, eep!  Anyone ever have to make the choice between weight loss and fitness pursuits, or am I the only one that seems to think they might be mutually exclusive?  Wanna convince me that I am a lovely and perfect snowflake just as I am, and I don’t need to lose more even though those BMI jerkfaces say I am still overweight for 9 more lbs?  Hit me up.

So I have a dirty little secret to get off my chest today.  I feel freakin’ guilty as hell sometimes when people say I’m their inspiration, or they look up to me.  Why?  Well, while I have totally done some awesome things, and I have stopped doing a lot of totally un-awesome things, I also still do some completely reprehensible things or…have some things about me that are just plain weird.  So in the interest of full disclosure, let me unearth some skeletons from my closet and see if you all run away screaming.

1.  I still smoke 1-1 1/2 packs of American  Spirit Lights per week.  Yes, I am well aware of the fact smoking is bad.  I should quit, right?  Like the boy in the picture, I know it’s a bad idea every time I light up, but I do it anyway.  I have cut down over the last few years – I used to smoke in a day what I do now in a week.  I can go a few days without one, but I also cannot completely quit.  It’s like when I tell myself I can’t have chocolate/chips/etc ever again, I go craaaaazy.  Think raging PMS times twenty.  It’s getting easier to go longer periods without one, but I am still not going to hurry myself to quit.

2.  I enjoy a good, solid night of drinking about once a week.  I budget it into my weekly calorie plan and typically only eat about 1000 calories or less of food that day (unless I am really and truly splurging).  I’ve read the same articles everyone else does that say that women should have no more than 1 drink per day.  I just save mine all week for one night.  Unless I drink more than one night.  Then, I’m just screwed.  Incidentally, one of the best hangover cures I have ever found is just slogging through a somewhat intense cardio workout.  Just…not too early in the morning (read: 3pm).

3.  I eat white rice, white bread, white pasta, and potatoes without shame.  Some people, like my mother, claim it makes them craaaaaazy and once they have it, they just can’t stop.  Some people say it fills them up more.  I will absolutely acknowledge that it has more fiber, but generally, I am at or above the recommended fiber count per day.  My poops are regular, yo.  For me, I find no difference between getting the calories through white stuff or through brown stuff.  I also have never been so miserable in my life as the few months I gave up carbs on Atkins.

4.  I regularly go 3 days without washing my hair.  I don’t look like this or anything, but I like my hair with a little…character.  Now that my face is slimmer and I have added pigtails, braids, ponytails, buns, and little poof buns to my hair repetoire and have amassed a decent collection of hats, I can easily go 4-5.  I have, on occasion, febreezed my hair instead of washing it.  I shower, brush my teeth, and wash my face daily – but long hair is sometimes a drag to deal with.

5.  Sometimes only the wrong motivations get me to workout.  Like, fear of getting fat again or that I’ll never get to my goal weight.  Or the fact that someone I inspired to start workout will see me skip a day and…I dunno, but it’s a thought.  Or the desire to burn off enough so I can go splurge on dinner.  Sometimes just the thought of getting a day off to sit on my ass will get me through it.

6.  In general, I think babies are ugly.  And I have no affinity with children.  They scare me to death.  They look into my soul and know things they shouldn’t.  Ok, maybe not, but I am totally missing the mommy gene.  There is one kid who’s the exeption to the rule, but honestly, we are still ackward around each other even after 2 years.

7.  On cold nights, I really and truly wish for a little more fat on my legs and butt – I honestly get too cold and I know it’s partly because I can’t really pinch an inch anywhere down there.  I would totally enjoy if it could come off my stomach though, I’ve got plenty of inches to spare there.

8.  I am such a stargate fangirl, I joke about the fact that IRL there has to be a stargate and the show is just for plausable deniability, but I really and truly hope I’m right!  The picture on the right kinda makes me giddy and hopeful at the same time.

9.  While I am really and truly happy I lead a more active life and enjoy the fact that I have more energy and can keep up with anyone and all that, some of the most cherished days are the ones where my ass barely leaves the couch and we order delivery food for the entire day.

10.  I listen to horrible music sometimes just because it’s fun.  Just think of the stuff you hear on the top 40 stations or the hip hop stations…anything that makes me feel peppy.  But only in my car, alone, or on my mp3 player.  I would never subject anyone else to it.  And I’ll probably not ever admit to specific bands or songs, because it’s less fodder to be teased with.

Does this make me a terrible person, or am I just human?  Go ahead and run away screaming now if you must.  I’m just not one to try to be something I’m not, it’s just too exhausting.  Anyone have a skeleton in their closet they want to get out?  Feel free to hit me up in the comments…

…And pretend this was posted last night, please!  I just got too sleepy to edit it…at least today will be a two-fer!