Soups @ Fatfree Vegan Kitchen

Quick note:

Fatfree Vegan Kitchen has some great recipe ideas for soups.

No Junk Food, No Elevators. Day One.

Everyone chooses something for Lent. Well, not everyone, but a lot of people. In the spirit of Lent, I'm avoiding junk food and elevators. For fourty days.

Day one has been pretty easy, at least the elevators part. There are not that many floors at my job, so taking the stairs doesn't bother me much. The junk food part? That part is difficult! I haven't eaten any junk food today, but I did run into some temptation.

Today's temptations?
1. Left over packzis
2. Caramel popcorn
3. Doritos

Let's not even talk about the vending machine at work that's at my constant disposal.

Doctor's Orders

The verdict is in.

The doc says to lose weight, you have to eat less. Surprise!

Ok, he had more to say than that. He gave me some information (a diet plan for diabetics, although I'm not), talked to me about the different types of foods I could eat and suggested I keep a food diary. I also asked about whether it's healthy for me to be a vegetarian. He told me it was perfectly fine as long as I was getting my B12 and D vitamins.

But the basic summary was eat less and eat healthier. I knew that, but at least now I have a better idea of what types of things I should cut out an what's a safe calorie intake for me if I want to lose weight quickly.

Final ruling: Less food, less weight.

A Web design P.S.

I am thisclose to buying a domain name and taking up residence on my mom's Web space with Wordpress as a CMS. I feel know there is very little I can do with blogger. Then again, I don't really have time to make my site fancy.

P.S. How cute is this site? webdesignerwall.com

OMG! I can't believe you posted that picture of me!

Today, I untagged a photo of myself on Facebook.

What does that mean?

Let me give a brief explanation of "tagging" photos on Facebook. Say a friend posts pictures from a party and I'm in one of the photos. (This is the actual scenario, by the way.) This friend can choose to associate my name with the photo by "tagging" me. The friend can draw a square that will appear around the image of me when someone hovers the mouse cursor over my name. Also, when people view my profile, they have an option that says, "see more photos of Theresa." They can click this and photos are that "tagged" with my name will appear.

I untagged a photo. I removed the association of myself to that picture. I didn't want anyone to see this photo and know it was me. This is why I cannot give up on losing weight. I am so ashamed of how I look in photos, I would rather not be associated with the photo. I am (in a not exactly the way people use the term sort of way) attempting to disassociate from my own body. I'm guessing this is probably oh, I don't know... not good for me?

If it had been a physical photo my friend stuck on a bulletin board rather than a electronic photo album, I would have wanted to rip up the picture and the burn the negatives. Yes, lots of people do the oh-god-I-look-horrible-in-that-photo thing, but I really, really don't want to feel like that about my body no matter how bad the photo. (I want to just recognize it as that's a badly taken photo, not that's a bad photo of myself and I look so ugly). I know my size is not horrific, but I don't feel healthy and it's something kind of awful that I will untag a photo (and delete it if I could) instead of just commenting "OMG! LOL. That's such a bad picture." and moving on. (Like the chatspeak there? I knew you would.)

Tomorrow, I'm going to the doctor and asking him about weight loss and whether running the Crim in August is not a crazy, crazy goal for me. I think it's physically possible ... if I lose weight, but I also need to talk him about nutrition things and what the type of precautions I need to take if I can do the running by August - if I should walk the Crim instead of running it? Do I need to do anything different than my non-asthmatic runners?

He can't give me a magic pill, but I'm hoping I can at least talk to him about a plan of action for myself and find out if I'm on the right track. Maybe he can give me some tips or something.

Gym Room Etiquette

I just finished eating the least spicy Thai food I've ever had in my life. Highly disappointing. Now, that's not what I want to talk about here. I was just so bummed, I couldn't let it die.

What I want to actually blog about is my lack of gym room etiquette.

Several days ago I was working out in the cardio area - walking on a treadmill and contemplating how I would ever make the switch from walking to running. I have my ipod shuffle on and I'm avoiding watching the clock, allowing myself to watch a bad MTV show with the closed caption on.

The guy on the machine next to mine hops off his machine, cleans it and leaves. Good gym etiquette. A woman gets on and starts running. Next to her is another woman, a younger one who is college age. She's running, too.

I can't remember when her friend came in, before or after the man left the machine next to mine, but the younger woman is on her machine chatting away happily with her friend. Not exactly the best gym etiquette, but no one seems bothered by it. That is except for the woman who has replaced the guy that was running next to me.

After about 15 or 20 minutes of chatter, the woman finally just starts to tell the girls off - without even looking at them. I couldn't hear much, but she was getting louder and louder each time the girls responded to her. Eventually, turning up my ipod just wouldn't drown her out - unless I wanted to permanently screw up my hearing. She was so upset about this woman's bad gym etiquette, but she wasn't much better with the rude and very snide comments.

I was really amazed that she was so rude to the girls. I didn't even know they'd done anything horrendously bad. I know all about wiping a machine down, but talking to a friend and running on a machine for more than half an hour? I'd been on my machine 40 minutes when the woman started in on this girl.

I didn't see anything wrong with what the younger woman was doing. But Maybe it's because I had on headphones, as did most of the people in the room, but I just wasn't bothered by this younger woman.

Maybe I just need to brush up on my gym room etiquette.

Just Dance!

Good song to work out to. Lady GaGa is a little weird, but it's a fun song.

Ouchies

Boot camp kicked my butt today!

I'm getting better and better at it. That is so satisfying. I'm jumping rope longer, moving into the steps quicker and learning to control my breathing better. :)

The downside to going skating one day and boot camp the next is that my calves are sore. They feel very tight. I'm wondering what type of exercises I can do to stretch them out. I guess I could try some yoga poses like extended triangle. I love me some yoga. I need to start doing it outside of class as well.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get in a run before a birthday party. Friday, I'm going out of town to go dancing. So that should work off some calories. :) I haven't been dancing in a while. It should also be quite fun.

Sunday, I'm determined to do some grocery shopping and a weigh in/measurement day. I really need to know where I stand. If my exercise buddy is busy, I'll have to get someone else to measure me.

Never too late to skate

Simple blog today.

1. I <3 skating. Maybe I should say so with this really cute skate necklace?). I went skating instead of running tonight. By the time I got home it was too dark to go run on the wooded path I like. So I went skating.

2. I love skating. Did I mention that?

3. I miss roller derby.

4. Skating is a very good work out, but it only get your lower half.

The plan for the week: Monday - yoga, Tuesday - skating, Wednesday - boot camp, Thursday - running, Friday - going dancing, Saturday - sleep in, Sunday - nothing.

Guess Who's Back?

You hear that gnawing sound? That's guilt eating away at me. Don't worry, it's not painful in this form (because a lot of times Guilt is a bad thing). Guilt is actually helpful this time in forcing me to get my act together.

I haven't written in a while and Guilt here knows I haven't been good about my eating habits. It's always the eating part that makes this healthy thing so hard for me. My appetite taunts me. It sits with me at dinner and pokes me on the shoulder like a kid. "Hey, hey, hey. Don't you want seconds? What about chocolate? You should have some pancakes with lots of butter and syrup. That sounds good. You deserve it; you've been stressed out this week." So, I do. If I don't, it'll just keep buggin' me. And since I live alone, no one but me and my appetite knows that I've given in "just one last time".

It's becoming very discouraging for me, since I keep giving in. Sometimes I feel as if I have no control. I try to use that tips that I know - Drink lots of water. Eat fruit. Don't deny yourself, simply have what you want in moderation. 

I was getting better at doing those things, but then I'd have a bad day and eat what I want. The next day I'd feel guilty (the bad kind of guilty), beat myself up for it, feel sorry for myself and then I'd eat even more because I'm an emotional eater. What an endless cycle.

Although the  healthy eating hasn't gotten any better, I haven't given up. I've been working out an average of four days a week now - Yoga on Mondays, Bootcamp on Wednesdays, Cardio machine the other days. I went to step kickboxing the other day. I wasn't fond of the instructor, but I might go again. I also want to add some rollerskating in there. I love skating, so I figure I should throw it into the exercise cycle.

What I need to do is learn how to use weights. I know how to do cardio. Everyone knows how to do that, but the weight room is intimidating. I don't know what I'm doing and there isn't anyone placed in the room to show me what to do. There is no strength training teacher just for me. So, I avoid the weights. Really, who wants to look like a goof in front of a bunch of other people who know what they're doing and look good?

So goes for the month of February - stop eating like I've got the metabolism of an eight year old and learn to use the weight room.