Woo Hoo! I’m Running!

Well, okay, lets just say this is one time I’m glad I’m NOT a video blogger.  Cause I really wouldn’t want you guys to see how I run.  But I did!  And I was so excited.  Ever since I posted way back when about hurting my back, I have been very careful about not doing anything to make it worse.  And slowly, my back has gotten back to just about normal.  That is one thing I am truly thankful for, Mizfit.  

So, since I got off work Thursday, I have planned/thought about going for long walks.  But it hasn’t happened.  Friday I was truly too tired.  Saturday I worked out at Curves, and it was hotter than normal outside.  Sunday…day of rest?  But today, encouraged along by my running blogmies Lori, Laura, and Superdave, I decided I just had to get out there.  And, son of a gun, if the old body just didn’t feel like everything was working together just right.  So I started running, slowly, and really holding my stomach in to support my back like my physical therapist taught me, and kinda not lifting my feet up too high (my idea of low-impact running)  and I DID IT!  I did the three mile loop from my house to the end of the road and back.  My road is either uphill or downhill, but I ran the whole time except the really steep hill in the middle, and the last 1/4 mile uphill to home.  Boy I felt great!

 

This is the steep hill.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look so steep in a still photo.

So on the food front, I tried something so completely delicious, I have to share it with you.  My new bloggie friend, Amy Jo, suggested applesauce and cottage cheese this morning.  Since I am obsessed with cottage cheese, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of or tried this before.  So when I got home from my run (it even feels good to say that)  I looked in the frig, and saw this pear spread I make to use for jam on my english muffins.  And I thought-that will work great!  OMG, it is absolutely delicious mixed together.  I am going to include the recipe for the pear spread in my side bar.  Its easy, and it actually lasts a pretty long time in the frig.  (BTW, it is a recipe I found in a diabetic cookbook called Snack, Munch, Nibble, Nosh Book.)

Over and out.  I’m going to a friend’s house to knit this afternoon.

Addendum:  I wrote this yesterday at noon.  The rest of the day went great.  It’s amazing when you have one victory how it can carry you along and encourage you to make better choices for the rest of the day.  For dinner I made a great new ‘pizza’ combo–BBQ chicken pizza!  I’ll write it up in the sidebar too.

Me and Pumpkin Pie

I guess I’ve always been a teacher.  I’ve taught dog grooming, Sunday School, knitting, spinning, dying, Bible Studies, etc.  Even as a nurse, I enjoy ‘precepting’–teaching the new nurses the specifics of neonatal nursing.  Pretty much anything that interests me I end up teaching about in one way or another.  Some people might say I’m just opinionated, or even, heaven forbid, bossy.  My point is, one of my motivating factors in reading others blogs and writing my own blogs is to encourage new ‘dieters’ (wrong word) and let them know the impossible can be done.  You can change the way you eat forever, and enjoy those foods and yourself.

I give you pumpkin pie and me as an example.  I enjoyed pumpkin pie at the holidays.  But really, what I enjoyed was the crust (mostly fat) and the real whipped cream (pure fat) on top.  The pumpkin part just had a nice smell and held the two good parts together.  So when the first Thanksgiving after I started W.W. rolled around (I had already been going for 10 months) and they suggested making an altered pumpkin pie filling, and just eating that, I just guffawed.  Hmmmph…..what’s the point?

The next two years, I thought about how you could use alternate crusts.  Toyed with the idea of making little leaf cutouts of pie dough to limit the amount of crust.  But I never really acted on any of those ideas.  I still didn’t think pumpkin pie filling was ‘worthy.’

Now, this year, someone (Lyn) posted their recipe for ‘Pumpkin Custard.’  To be honest, I think it was the title ‘custard’ that roped me in.  But it is really the pumpkin pie filling that was originally suggested way back when.  And now I can’t get enough of it!  I love it just plain in a cup (okay, with some lite cool whip on top) or if I have enough points, I will sprinkle some of my favorite granola on top.  I think about Lynn’s (different Lynn) post about really savoring what you eat, like a baby does (but I don’t spread it all over my plate and my face :)) !)

Anyways, all that to say that it takes time, but you really can change the way you eat and it can be VERY enjoyable!  Believe me, I am not deprived when it comes to eating well.  In fact, if I am not careful, I could overeat the healthy new foods I eat.

Keep trying new and different foods.  Be willing to be a little more open to try things.  Some you will like and some you will love.  And some you will reject as not being ‘worthy.’  But if I could change the way I eat after 20-plus years of being determined NOT to change my eating habits, I know you can do it.  Come on…try it, you’ll like it!

“I love you like a chubby girl loves cupcakes.”

Oh, man, I have just spent 3 hours reading and catching up with all my blogmies.  That is a word made up by the author of the title of this blog.  She is a great writer and so stinkin’ funny I can hardly stand it.  She wrote that line at the end of a birthday video she made for her sister. Jill, lets make it a goal to be video bloggers before we turn 80, heh heh!  I really only copied that line to a draft on my blog cause I didn’t want to forget it, but then it seemed like a good title to use, cause I guess I love you guys since I spent 3 hours reading and writing to you!

Plus, I decided to just write this short post because I am so tired from the last two days at work.  Good days, but stressful, and boy, did I get my walking in:  6 3/4 miles the first day, and 5 1/4 miles yesterday!  I keep  my pedometer in my pocket for the fun of it, and most days I actually try to walk more than necessary.  The first day I was working on 2 different floors, so I took the stairs each time I needed to go up or down. My legs were so tired as I left work, walking down the 5 flights of stairs and down the long hall to the front door (think BIG hospital,) that I thought, maybe I’ll just take the shuttle bus to the parking lot (1/2 mile away.) But then I was following one of my co-workers who struggles with her weight, and she was walking very slowly and painfully, and I remembered how grateful I am that I can walk fast, even if it does hurt.  I used to walk WAY slower than her.  I thought of some of the ladies that I had seen at the quilt show that were heavier than I had been (but that was exactly where I was heading) and it made me remember how my  back burned from just standing for a few minutes, and how my knees and ankles just ached, and how I resented the two steps I had to take to get into the shuttle bus.  And I put on the speed and walked that half mile as fast as I could to my car.

The thing is, I don’t go around staring at fat people.  But I think that part of being a human is that we forget pain.  I actually have a theory that that is why the human race is still in existence.  Why else would a woman ever have more than one baby, if she REALLY remembered the pain she went through giving birth to the first one?  (Can you tell I’ve watched more deliveries than any single human being should ever have to?)  

So, occasionally, I make myself look at ladies, and think, ‘yessir, that IS how big you were,’ or ‘No, Debby, you actually were bigger than that person.’  Because identifying that helps me to remember how it felt.  Otherwise, I might just believe that that cupcake tastes better than ‘chubby’ feels.  Cause, yes, people, I am still chubby.  But NOT Morbidly  Obese.

After Travel Thoughts

So on the last post, one thing I didn’t tell you was, as I was ‘aerobically’ stacking wood, I was thinking about what I would eat when I was through, all the various options I had, whether I would stop half-way through to eat, or whether I would make it through the whole stack before I was too hungry, and I thought to myself (in regards to my incessant food thoughts,) ‘Oh, Lord, will it ever end?’  Now mind you this was more of a thought to myself than a true prayer, but it seemed that His answer came back so kindly and gently, ‘Not until this life is over, dear.’  So there you have it.  That is the truth of it, and its not so bad.  Valerie wrote about this in a comment on Refuse to Regain.  Valerie really has a worthy blog, and some very wise insights into weight loss and especially maintenance.  

And so it was on these 4 days that I spent out of town.  All the way down to the hotel in the car, I talked to myself about making different choices, having a different mindset, ‘Remember, you just declared that you are going to lose 30 more pounds.’  ‘Keep in mind that you are in the losing mode now.’  ‘You can make different choices.’  Well, I will not bore you with all the poor (but delicious I must admit) choices that I made in 4 days.  There were some very good choices made as well.  I even went to the hotel’s fitness center and spent quite a bit of time on the treadmills.  Who knew watching a tv program could be a motivating factor in keeping you on the treadmill a bit longer!

So, now I am home, making good choices again, planning my food, planning exercise for the day.  But there is no way you can eat the foods I ate and as much as I ate and lose weight.  Suggestions, anyone?  I know all the ways you can make good choices at restaurants.  I am actually very good about packing my own breakfast and lunch foods.  It seems, for me, that I will just have to take a hard line, and not eat out for about 6 months or so.  Its so frustrating, because I really like the healthy foods I eat.  But I feel compelled to eat the ‘old’ foods that I enjoyed so much before.  Some of them I still very much enjoy.  But others, not so much.  For example, my sister and I went to ‘Mimi’s’ for a late lunch.  They have great salads.  So I chose one to try, but then I thought, ‘a sandwich would be really good too.’  So I talked her into ‘sharing’ and we had 1/2 a salad and 1/2 a sandwich each.  The salad was really so good, and I wished I had the whole thing.  The sandwich not so much…I think its that thing I was saying about ‘old habits.’  It will take a very long time (oh, yeah, my whole life) for them to die…

Old Habits

Wow, you guys!  Guess what I just did–stacked a whole cord of wood in about an hour!!!  I just can’t believe it.  Do you know how long it used to take me to stack a cord of wood?  DAYS. This is one of those ‘normal’ things I enjoy doing, now that I have lost so much weight.  I was commenting on this over on Pubsgal’s blog this morning (by the way, an excellent blog.)

So here’s the part about old habits.  I have a ton of stuff to do today.  Going to a quilt show for 3 days!  But this cord of wood got delivered.  So, I looked at it and thought, well, I at least have to start to stack it. So I start out, but if any of you have ever stacked wood, it just looks like a mountain of wood and you’ll never see the end of it.  And I’m thinking, how am I going to fit everything in?  Packing, etc.  And I really want to go to Curves and work out, plus I really want to get a good walk in.  And I’m stacking and thinking. Thinking about Jill’s post, and getting frustrated about why do we think work is not a work out.  And thinking, well, this is not really aerobic, and it is not really weight lifting.  And stacking and thinking. And all of a sudden I realize I am stacking wood exactly the same way I did when I was heavy.  Leisurely walking between the pile of wood and the stacks, picking up two pieces, leisurely walking back and forth and back and forth.  And I thought, well, why don’t you make this aerobic?  Why do you have to go to Curves and run around on machines to have an aerobic workout?  So, I picked up the pace so that I was almost running between the two, and the whole thing was stacked in no time! Its almost like it was an ingrained body habit that there was only one speed (very slow) at which to stack wood!  Well, I was pretty psyched about this so just had to share!

Fascinating

Lori tagged me to write 6 interesting facts about myself.  Since I had done this a while back, I looked up those things, and was just going to copy them here, but I woke up this morning trying to think of more ‘fascinating’ things about myself.  So I will give it a try.

1.  I was obsessed with purebred dogs growing up.  I used to make my sister listen to me list all 125 breeds of AKC dogs after we got into our bunk beds at night.  (Pay no attention to her comments to this blog, haha!)  

2.  I had a list of at least 25 different breeds I wanted to own when I ‘grew up.’  So far I have owned German Shepherds, Cocker Spaniels, Standard Poodles, Maltese, Shih Tzu, Lhasa Apso, Bouvier Des Flandres, Doberman Pincher, and Dachshunds.  I still have a ways to go!

3.  Ha, Lori.  One of your comments reminded me of something.  My dad was the principal of the Jr. High School I attended.  With a last name like Schnabel…well, you can just imagine some of the things that were said.  But one that I actually thought was funny and clever was “Schnabels wobble but they don’t fall down!”

4.  My dad (whom I love) called me “Chubbers” as a kid.  Ughh…could this have been the beginning of the problem?

5.  My brother and I opened a pet shop together!  It was such fun.  We were naive enough to think that we could both put in $5000 and make a go of it. We actually might have made it if life hadn’t gotten in the way…he got married and I went back to college.

6.  Well, this wasn’t so bad.  For number 6, I am actually going to write about what I had been planning to write about for a while.  I made a decision about a month ago that I was going to lose the last 30 pounds.  It was when I was up at Tahoe, and I really wanted to run, but knew that it would really hurt my back if I did, so I just walked fast.  But it was as if God said, Maybe, if you lose this last bit, you might be able to run again.  And maybe it is time to go back to Weight Watchers for the ‘in person’ accountability.  So, I am determined to continue on, making small changes until weight loss occurs.  I think it is really going to be very slow.  Since I made that decision I have only lost 2.6 pounds.  So, besides my W.W. leader, I have only told a few people at work and a couple of friends about this decision.  And now you, my bloggy world. I am not a big fan of accountability!  As you can imagine, being single my whole life, I don’t have to practice it as often as most of you.  But I know its value.  So that’s it.  My new goal is 133, which is 6 pounds less than w.w. goal of 139 for me.  

So there it is.  My big announcement.  I am excited and determined, and hope I make it to that goal before I am 80, Jill!

HOW IMPORTANT IS A SOCIAL SUPPORT SYSTEM?

A few posts back, I quoted another blogger who stated that two of the key components to weight loss success were food journaling and a good social support system.  I found that these two things were and are very important to me.  I thought I’d write today about the different places I found a social support system.

First, there was the friend who originally asked me to go to Weight Watchers with her.  We attended the meetings together, tried out new recipes on each other, shared new snack finds.  Of course, then there was the support of the meeting itself.  My leader is not dynamic, but she is very good at directing the conversation, encouraging everyone, and keeping us on track.  And there were the ‘heroes,’ women whom I watched lose tremendous amounts of weight, slowly and steadily.  It was really encouraging and motivating to me.  There were the stellar cooks who brought in great new ideas, and encouraged me to try new foods and new food combos (this was the reason I first agreed to go to w.w.–I knew I needed some food ideas.)

At work, support came from an unexpected source–the thin girl!  I don’t know how it came up.  I probably overheard her talking to someone else, but she became a real source of information for me.  Turns out, even though she was thin, she was also trying to change her diet a bit, to get her cholesterol lower, and just to eat ‘heart healthier.’  The thin girl turned me on to a really great little magazine ‘Nutrition Action Healthletter.’  I learned so much from this newsletter–the truth about foods and what they do to your body.  Very sobering information.  But it makes it a little easier, sometimes, to turn down a burger and fries when you read about the affect it has on your arteries!  And the thin girl was a very quiet cheerleader for me.  She insisted that I didn’t need to ‘diet,’ just learn how to eat better and different.  Her opinion really mattered to me.

I didn’t even tell my best friend for a couple of months that I was going to w.w. and losing weight.  I think I thought I was going to fail, and that would be too embarrassing.  I’m not really sure why I didn’t tell her.  And here’s the funny thing.  I never thought my BF had any food issues or a weight problem.  But after I told her I was doing w.w., she ended up joining w.w. in her town (we live in different states.)  And now we had this in common too, and could discuss all our food issues, share tips and recipes, and encourage each other when the going got tough.

About the time my original w.w. friend took a break from w.w., help came from another unexpected source.  Another ‘thin’ friend wanted to lose the weight she kept gaining and losing. She had seen my success at w.w., so she joined too.  Even though there was a world of difference in the amount of weight we each needed to lose, we still had more in common–we both LOVED good food.  We enjoy fixing ‘diet’ lunches for each other, trying new recipes and snack foods.

People at work were really very encouraging to me.  They started referring to me as an ‘inspiration,’ which was nice, but added a little pressure and the ‘a’ word–accountability.  I started sharing some of my recipes in the breakroom, and now I have a group of ‘recipe girls’ that I send recipes to via email.  If any of my co-workers want it, I am always more than willing to talk about the whole thing–whatever it is–journey, diet, lifestyle change…its just my life now, I guess.

In between, whenever I thought everyone was sick to death of talking food, and exercise and discouragement and encouragement and celebration and despair, I read a LOT.  I’ve mentioned some of my favorite books, and I would buy special magazines like Prevention, and the People Magazine ‘Half Their Size’ (I’m a magazine junkie.)  And that’s how I found out about the whole blog world!  Lynn Haraldson-Bering was featured in the magazine, and in one of those little sidebar boxes it mentioned her blog, and I checked it out!  So, of course, as you all know, this blogging community has been a tremendous source of encouragement.  Lynn is a great writer, and she is also a part of the excellent website ‘Refuse to Regain.’  Then there was Pastaqueen, and I think from her website I linked to clever bloggers like Tigerlily, Jill, Laura, Vickie…too many to name now.  Tigerlily offered the walking challenge, and I walked 300 miles (I think) in 12 weeks earlier this year.  Roni has the best recipes, and is encouraging and enthusiastic, AND she has videos that are fun to watch.  Mizfit is one of the most encouraging, kind, and active bloggers around, and has lots of practical advice and good exercise videos too!

I guess I want to end by saying that even though I feel closer to some of you bloggers, like I know you better, and have more in common with, than most of my w.w. meeting cohorts, I think there is something very important about a ‘social support system’ that you can physically see and interact with.  We humans were made to interact with one another.  The computer is a source of great good ( I used to think it was evil,)  but it also can have a tendency to isolate us from ‘real’ people.

What an Adventure!

I’ve done quite a bit of trying out new recipes lately, sometimes tweaking them to suit my way of eating, and sometimes tweaking them to use what I already have in my house.  Yesterday I made the Pumpkin Custard, and I tweaked the recipe quite a bit–partly because I didn’t have all the ingredients listed, and then because I wanted to see if I could get the recipe down to one point.  It was really delicious, and I wanted to eat more of it.  Then for lunch, I made a ‘Skillet Scramble.’  I had some scooped out baked potato innards, and I had in mind to make some scrambled eggs and ‘fried potatoes’ with them, and there on Roni’s blog was another great recipe idea.  Again, I tweaked it to use what I had at home, but it was fabulous.  It ended up being 5 points, which I wasn’t all that happy about, but it was definitely worthy.  Here’s a link to Roni’s recipe.  And I will post my recipe on my recipes page.  BTW, sorry about the recipe page.  It’s rather basic, no organization to it.  Someday, I will spend some time figuring out how to make it more user friendly.

Anyways, while I was making this recipe with Eggbeaters, and then eating it and finding it absolutely delicious and satisfying, I was thinking about how I could make skeptical ‘newbie’ dieters try Eggbeaters.  I was so dead set against using them for so many years.  I don’t really like eggs all that well, and I just thought they were weird artificial food for old people.  Then when I started baking low-cal, a lot of my recipes called for egg whites.  That was the first time I realized that most of the calories in an egg are in the yolk, and most of the protein in the egg is in the whites.  And VERY SLOWLY, I started to think that maybe the taste that I didn’t like so well in eggs was actually in the yolk.  Now, I have my own chickens, but they are on strike, so I started buying Eggbeaters.  And this was the VERY FIRST TIME I actually ate Eggbeaters!  So anyways, it all just made me start thinking about this adventure of learning to eat new foods, new combinations of foods, experimenting to take a few calories out here and there without sacrificing the taste.  It took quite a bit of time (still does) and there has been lots of ‘chicken food’ along the way (that’s what I call stuff I have made that is too bad to eat-I feed it to the chickens.) 

But come on, people.  Here’s what I ate today.  I defy you to find that I am deprived eating this kind of great stuff!

Breakfast:  Cinnamon toast, grapes and cottage cheese, coffee

Lunch:  Skillet Scramble, Berry Oatmeal cup

Snack:  Pumpkin Custard w/Lite cool whip

Dinner:  Rosemary Lemon Roasted chicken breast, corn on the cob, brocolli

Dessert/Snack (very important, because I wanted to have something fun to eat while watching Dancing with the Stars):  chocolate cake w/Cool Whip Lite, and Kettle Corn (Jiffy Pop Healthy, of course)

All this stuff was 23 1/2 points!