one of these things is not like the others

I am not feeling very wordy so how about we just take a look at what I’ve been eating the last few days (pardon the crappy cell phone pics!):

I think #1 needs no introduction. Basically, I did not plan carefully on Friday and a lack of breakfast (and coffee) left me very very vulnerable (hunger-wise and emotionally) at the end of the day. I ate McDonald’s. A lot of McDonald’s.

But I got up the next day and had a good breakfast, a decent lunch and #2 for dinner. What you see there is some tasty Five Star Foodies artichoke burgers (which they were out of when I went to Whole Foods yesterday! Boo!), grape tomatoes and, last but certainly not least, the magic golden-crusted Brussels sprouts that I am kind of addicted to for real.

#3 is my first attempt at huevos rancheros . Not very pretty but definitely tasty. And #4 is the chicken tacos I had for lunch using this recipe for slow-cooker chili chicken. (Which, btw, made a ton of chicken, so I think I’ll be having more tacos later in the week and maybe tortilla soup and possibly some enchiladas!)

I am not going to beat myself up, as 3 out of 4 isn’t bad. The poor planning lesson is one I have learned before. A few thousand times. But I picked myself up and dusted myself off and had a pretty good food weekend, all things considered. Plus, I think I’ve planned pretty well for this week, too. So I guess we’ll just see how that goes.

Miso Crazy and DNW!

I did not want to make a post tonight. I still do not! But  I am doing it!

I DNW to cook dinner. I wanted to come home, sit on my ass watching some Supernatural and just stuff my face with whatever and not have to stand in the kitchen cooking up a bunch of healthy shit. Or cooking up additional shit for lunch tomorrow and Friday. But I fucking did it. (OMG SO MANY DISHES TO WASH! DNW!)

And now I am so very tired. I feel like I have to push myself SO HARD to do these simple, everyday things and stay SO FOCUSED (I typed FUCKED first, ha!) on it that I am drained for just about everything else. I know, I know that it gets easier, but right now, I just want to eat a whole pizza and sleep for a week.

There is a little voice inside of me, that troll I mentioned before, that is telling me that it’s just easier to be fat and unhealthy. I mean, it’s only really painful when I leave the house and people stare at me funny. Or I have to go shopping. Or walk up a flight of stairs. Or think about going on a date ever. And I still have to deal with that stuff even if I am eating better right now! I can’t even stuff my face to deal with that shit! How unfair is that? DNW!

Now, that I have the whining out of the way, let’s talk good stuff! *deeeeep cleansing breath*

Yesterday, I made this miso soup recipe from 101 Cookbooks and it was very very tasty. And then, as part of my continuing effort to incorporate veggies using the magical broccoli slaw, I wipped up a version of this miso dressing except I used wasabi paste instead of mustard and it was also very very tasty. I poured half of it over half a bag of the broccoli slaw and added about 1/3 a cup of mandarin oranges and let if marinate overnight. Then I had it along side the leftover miso soup for lunch. SO GOOD! And now I have enough of that amazing dressing for a spinach and chicken salad tomorrow for lunch. To round out this miso crazy portion of my week, I also made this cashew ricotta “Italian pizza cheese” (I substituted some leftover sun-dried tomato pesto) to have with carrots for a snack tomorrow.

Phew. I am tired just typing that and I haven’t even gotten to the most interesting part of the day:

I ATE BRUSSELS SPROUTS AND LIKED IT!

I know! I KNOW! So crazy. Once again, 101 Cookbooks came to the rescue with her AMAZING golden-crusted brussels sprouts! I have been staring at that recipe for, like, a year. It sounded so simple and tasty. I finally got up enough nerve to try it out and I have to say that, yes, it as good as it looks! I used the aforementioned pesto to make one of these baked stuffed chicken breasts and they went very well together. And no pasta or rice as a side dish! I can honestly say that I am sitting here quite satisfied in my stomach.

I will confess that yesterday I baked up this spinach/herbed goat cheese/ham/egg beaters casserole that I had planned to eat for breakfast for the rest of the week and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. For some reason, breakfast is the hardest part of my day. It doesn’t help that no matter how I walk to work, I pass eleventy billion places to get breakfast. But I don’t trust myself to have things like bagels or bread for toast in the house right now. And, god, my coffee maker is NEVER going to get here. I’ve basically been telling myself that it’s not a big deal since I am not eating out any other meals but eventually I am going to have to deal with the mornings. (Also, I went to bed early last night so I could get up and do some exercising but that didn’t turn out either!)

Basically, I think the point of all this is that I am still struggling to find a balance between taking care of myself and being realistic about what I can accomplish and also figuring out when I am being a lazy wimp and when I should push myself to go that little bit extra when I am really feeling the DNW.

are you ready for some spinaaaaaaaaaaaaach?

Today is the first official Saturday of college football season! *\o/* When I got up this morning, one of the first things I wrestled with was, “what to eat while watching all this glorious football?” I have to say that even at 10:30am I was so tempted to reach for the phone and just order a big pizza to eat on all day. I had to take a lot of deep breaths, think about my current favorite happy place, and mentally review the contents of my kitchen to keep myself from a pre-planned carb coma.

I went with some scrambled Egg Beaters and diced ham and a pinch of cheese with salsa, a half a slice of whole wheat pita and some cantaloupe for breakfast instead. So, victory! Then, for lunch, I had a spinach salad with goat cheese, cranberries, sliced almonds and homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing. And then a little yogurt with almond butter for dessert.

I ate spinach. That was not in a cheesy fatty dip. While watching football. Please, mark this date on your calendars!

I am not going to lie, though. It was fucking difficult. I do a lot of looking at the clock still instead of listening to my body. I feel hungry? confused? all the time if I am eating non-greasy non-starchy things.  So a day inside with nothing to do but hide the phone to avoid takeout is actually pretty difficult. I feel kind of silly saying that but there it is.

Of course, while watching the games, I’ve been browsing Healthy Yum, which is just fantastic. It’s a nice way to get a variety of healthy things to consider. I found some good stuff to add to my delicious. (You can see whatever I’ve added lately on the right sidebar there! *points*) I think maybe that was a little too much obsessing about food for the day but I got some good out of it, so I am not going to beat myself up about it.

And now for dinner I am experimenting with adding more veggies to things I already like! I am making my favorite comfort food: macaroni and beef! But without macaroni and with the addition of 2.5 cups of broccoli slaw to bump up the veggie quotient (a trick I learned from Hungry Girl). So far, it’s tasting pretty good. I am debating on whether or not to add a little bit of whole wheat penne.

Tomorrow, there may be leaving the house to go hiking. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

hack it

I have been kind of obsessed with this recipe for Trader Joe’s Butternut Squash Soup with Ginger, Soba, and Fried Pork Crumbles from the Apartment Therapy Kitchn. They call it a “hack” because it’s not really a home-cooked recipe but I didn’t really care. (I made some squash soup a few months ago and while it was very tasty, there was SO MUCH OF IT! Cooking for one is hard!) The first time I saw it, I had to have it. Of course, I had no idea what miso was and whether or not I needed to buy some ginger or any of that. I just knew I wanted it!

After some poking around at TJs and WFs (and a little miso assistance from my friend Jenns: “Is it in the spice aisle, Jenns?” “Noooo. Try next to the tofu, crazy!”) (I paraphrase), I finally gathered enough ingredients to give it a go this evening for dinner.

All I have to say is YUM! Seriously. YUM! Now, I must admit I skipped the ginger and the garlic and I used dried cilantro because I live alone and I am not going to buy a big thing of ginger and cilantro. I am not really fans of either in large quantities and the idea of putting pork in a pan with oil in it was kind of boggling my mind (and the sausage was already Thai spiced) but it still turned out fantastic.

I halved the recipe, naturally, and used one of these tasty sausages. It’s not something I ever thought I would want to eat but I am really glad I put half of it away for lunch tomorrow before I ate my dinner because I would have scarfed down every last bite otherwise.  Next time, I will try to up the spice quotient a little bit but I was certainly very satisfied with how it turned out this time. I ran it through SparkRecipies and got pretty decent numbers for one filling (thanks, soba noodles!) serving:

• Calories: 396.5
• Total Fat: 12.4 g
• Total Carbs: 64.0 g
• Dietary Fiber: 3.0 g
• Protein: 16.7 g

In the future, I might try to have some sort of salad on the side (perhaps this, another recipe that has been on my mind since I first saw it) (I wish I understood how flavors go together better!) or at least an extra veggie of some sort.

That makes two nights in a row of cooking triumph, as last night, I took a soup from Sunday night that was “meh” and turned it into a dinner I really liked. More gold stars for me! And yummy soup to look forward to for lunch, too!

my darling clementine

I’ve been craving fresh fruit lately (probably because of the recipe surfing and saving I’ve been doing) but my kitchen is such a mess, I haven’t been up for buying them. But it got to be such an obsession, I picked up a bag of these

to keep at my (much neater) desk at work. Yeah, it would make more sense to clean my kitchen but baby steps! I am trying my darndest to go with any healthy impulse I have, no matter how wacky/expensive/complicated/whatever. And not to let any sort of “well, first I need to x/y/z before I can [insert healthy thing here].”

For instance, two weeks ago, I accidentally bought approximately a billion bottles of  instead of       .

It was pretty traumatic at first. But then I started to notice I was sleeping better. Who knew not having one two bottles of regular Diet Coke after 6pm would be bad for sleep! Okay, I totally knew that. I just didn’t know it, you know? Now I am contemplating using this mistake as a way too ween myself from Diet Coke (at least at home) all together. There are many reasons to do so, really. It’s expensive, heavy to carry,  and full of chemicals. Plus, I think that I eat more when I drink soda with my meals.  I haven’t committed to giving caffeine up completely (omgcoffeeilu) but I think this is a baby step I can handle.

You see, summer is coming and I have nothing to wear. I mean, things fit okay but I have clothes from a few years ago that don’t and my favorite pants are starting to wear out. And since we all can’t be Lady Gaga, I’m eventually going to have to buy new ones, which can be rather complicated for someone as short and round in the middle as I am. If I could just get some of my spare tire to migrate down to a badonkadonk, my shopping would be a lot easier. Unfortunately, fat doesn’t work that way so I’ve got to toss out the spare tire so I can fit into actual petite pants.

I’ve been reading this from the Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl for inspriation. I can still remember finding her early on in my diet blogging days and following her progress. Along with Lose the Buddha, her site is one I would recommend to anyone curious about how it really gets done. Of course, both of them have busted a lot of lard in the last eight years and I’m pretty much right where I was (size wise) when I started this thing. I try not to let that get to me while I am reading the book and just focus on the fact that it can be done and that there is a pot of gold lurking out there somewhere at the end of the rainbow. I get afraid sometimes that I’ll have to be obsessed with this stuff for the rest of my life and I get tired even thinking about it. But both Shauna and Erin show that you can get a point where maintenence is just part of a regular day and that getting healthy doesn’t have to consume your every thought forever.

Comfort Food

I made Macaroni and Beef (or goulash, as I prefer to call it!) (also, I highly recommend that recipe site) because I was craving comfort food and it’s ridiculously easy to make. I didn’t use whole wheat noodles or anything because I really wanted it to taste like I remembered it as a kid. I think I came pretty close. I made sure to call dad before I started to get the right tips. Maybe the dash of paprika did it.

He also said, “remember when I used to make it without the beef and serve it over bread?” I don’t think you need anymore info than that to see how I might have come to have bad food habits. Since he grew up in a household run by parents who survived the depression, he ended up with some interesting food likes that he passed on to me. Our favorite breakfast? Buttered toast dipped into tomato juice. Another bread-tomato staple that my grandfather liked to call “Depression Pizza” was basically ketchup on toast baked in the oven. And don’t get me started on the legacy of Polish food, okay?

Anyway, I am still struggling with eating and cooking at home. Not only is it important for health issues, it’s also financially necessary. Right now I am okay, but if I ever lose my contract freelance job, I’ll be in some deep water. Plus, I’d like to get some things paid off so that when my lease is up, I can afford to sign a new one here if they don’t raise the rent too much. I really love the neighborhood and walking to work!

Part of my love for the neighborhood is the Whole Foods around the corner, which sort of goes against the saving money thing. However, I’ve found that if you go in with a plan, it’s a little easier to come out with some of your paycheck left. It certainly makes it easier to dash over to get forgotten ingredients or fresh produce.

As with all things I attempt, I am struggling with my standard ALL OR NOTHING approach. Hence the goulash. It’s not exactly the whole grain-filled goodness that it should be, nor does it go beyond my love of tomatoes to encorporate any sort of leafy greens. But like I said, it’s easy to make and the ingredients are relatively inexpensive. I figure maybe if I start out as simple as possible, it will become a habit and then I can move on to healthier things later.

Obviously, I also need to look in to returning to therapy, as all the healthy food in the world isn’t going to help if I eat three helpings of it in one sitting. (Which, btw, I did not do. Even though it was very tempting!)

i <3 tomatoes

I was going to post a picture of the cute little heart-shaped tomato slice I had with my lunch but when I tried to capture it with my camera phone it looked like, well, a jay-jay, as The BFF would say.  So, let’s just skip that, shall we?

The point of the post still the same, however. I have a very complicated love/hate relationship with food, which should come as a surprise to no one. It’s a blissful romance filled with candlelight and warm-fuzzy feelings one day, and the next, it’s cruel and abusive and makes life very difficult.

Sometimes, it feels like food and I are a divorcing couple that’s been locked in a room together with no escape at all. Sure, we’ve had good times together and there was so much love once. But now I just hate it and I want to punish it for making me miserable, then I never want to see it again. It’s all food’s fault! I was the good one in this relationship! Food let me down! Food doesn’t make me feel good like it used to. Why can’t food do the fucking dishes for once??!?

Unfortunately, my relationship with food isn’t like your standard romantic relationship. I can’t break up with food. I can’t erase its name from my cell phone and set its emails to spam. I can’t pack up all its shit and set it out in the lawn. And while I can make a playlist full of my favorite sad songs, that really does do much for me health-wise.

No matter how mad I am at food, I still have to deal with it every day or I die. It’s that simple. So one of the hardest things for me is to think of food as simply just fuel for my body. Something that I should enjoy but not let dominate my every emotion. Usually the more frustrated I am with myself, the more frustrated I am with food, too. During these periods, I will literally eat pizza every day for a week, because it’s the only food I don’t want to toss out the window and run over with my car. It’s the only food that still gives me a little pleasure.

(Oh, wow! Pizza is my fuckbuddy, ya’ll!)

At the moment, I am trying not to hate food. I am trying to pack lunches and make dinners and plan breakfasts that are relatively healthy that I know I will enjoy.  This girl loves her some tomatoes, so it’s a good time of year to give into that love. Well, except for the recall but still! I love a freshly-sliced tomato with a little dash of salt and pepper. I like it on sandwiches and diced on salad and in salsa and pasta sauce and sauteed with some zucchini. I LOVE TOMATOES! So I am embracing them, in moderation of course. I’m embracing strawberries and raspberries and sweet corn and dark rye bread and black bean dip and guacamole. Things that I love that love me back which is what you want in a happy relationship, right?

Sure, sometimes guacamole tempts m to eat tortilla chips by the bowl full and sweet corn is a lot more carbalicious than baby spinach and, man, strawberries never pick up their dirty socks. But by allowing myself to feel good about what I eat inspires me and motivates me to find more things to eat that I love that will love me back.

(Sometimes I feel very much “fake it until I make it” about these types of posts. If you look in my archives, you can probably find a similar post espousing the same ideals. On the one hand, I feel a bit like a hypocrite because I say it and live it for awhile and then stop. On the other hand, you only fail when you give up completely, right?)

i like bread and butter

Two entries in two days? WHAT? Yeah, I know. But I was reading some weight loss blogs at lunch *points to side bar* and I got a little inspired. (Plus, I get a point! Woo! I like to think of them as sparkly gold stars in my head. Because I am twelve!)

Anyway, I didn’t end up meditating last night like I planned. I read a few chapters of Feeling Good (okay, more like skimmed because jeezo, I get it, this works, can we move on please?) and by the time I was done, it was midnight and I felt a little silly mediating before bed. I don’t want to set up a pattern or I’ll be falling asleep every time I try it.

I had a hard time sleeping, though, so I sort of wish I had tried it. I had one of those headaches you get when you are addicted to sugar and caffeine and you spend a whole day avoiding them. Plus, I only ended up eating around 1,600 calories which is probably a lot less than I’ve been used to lately. I laid in bed for a while, fighting the urge to get up and have a slice of bread with butter. I wanted this so badly, ya’ll! Instead, I just laid there frustrated that, once again, I was obsessing about food. And when I woke up, I still had the headache, plus a serious craving for a donut!

Now, I haven’t had a donut in, like, two years. Oddly, I am not a big fan of them normally. I only have them when someone kindly brings them into the office. But for some reason, I just wanted a gd donut! I even Google mapped to see if there was a Dunkin Donuts near my office. (DAMN YOU, RACHEL RAY!) Thankfully, there was not one within a half mile. On the one hand, if you are going to eat a donut, you should probably have to walk a mile round trip to get it. On the other hand, girl is lazy. Of course, there are two Au Bon Pains between me and my office, so I ended up with a cherry danish and some coffee anyway. Still, I entered the food in my Spark log and I did bring a healthy lunch, so I don’t think it’s going to kill me. I am trying so so so sooooooooooo hard to not make things a huge deal. A cherry danish on a Monday morning? Not a big deal. A cherry danish every day until the end of time? A big deal. One day at a time is so cliche but I’ve got to break it down further to, like, on hour at a time or I’ll go crazier.

I am trying not to make too many eating habit changes too quickly (yes, again) because I tend to get obsessive. Like, I should be eating healthier AND focusing on more sustainable eating practices AND trying to save money AND AND AND! But, really, I think that’s asking a lot of anyone. So I am doing my best to focus on things that taste good that are good for me and working from there.  Once I’ve developed a good habit, then I can find a way to make it cheaper/more sustainable/whatever.

checking the gauge

I’ve totally given up on the cutesy “The Office”-related titles. Please forgive me!

So, The BFF requested an update, as is her due, so here we go. It’s been an interesting few weeks. I’ve been doing okay point-wise, as I took her advice and added a lot of positive-point things and avoided the negative. It is easier that way, so I’ll go on record to say she was right. (I know how much she digs hearing that!)

In the middle of this progress, I had a bit of a traumatic experience. I came home from work the other day and got on the elevator with this young boy, probably around 12, I guess? Anyway, I am sorting through my mail, minding my own business, and after I get off the elevator and almost get to the corner, I hear the little cretin scream out “GO TO THE GYM, BITCH!” and the elevator doors slide shut.

I stood there sort of stunned for a moment. I could feel my face heating up and I ran through so many emotions. Anger, embarrassment, confusion. I did my best not to let it bother me because, hello, stupid child. But it was difficult. It’s not fun having your issues trumpeted back at you by a hellchild that is for sure. And I was angry at society in general, that him saying that was something okay in his head, where he probably wouldn’t not have done so to someone else, you know? There really is a cultural norm that making fun of fat people is okay because we are somehow weak and deserve it. That really pisses me off. A lot.

It’s one of the hardest things for me to deal with, the inability to escape my weight issue, even for a moment. As soon as I do, I walk by a window or a mirror or someone looks at me funny or, jeez, says something and it’s like I’ve lost all over again.

The BFF&Co wanted to go hiking today and invited me along. I took some time to think about it and decided against it. I’d spent all of yesterday going to the grocery store and doing the dishes and my laundry and I knew that I wanted to prepare some of the stuff for much lunch for the next week today. And I knew that if I spent half the day hiking, I wouldn’t have the energy to do those things when I got back and if I didn’t, I’d be more likely to skip taking my lunch which leads to eating out which leads to bad food choices and spending money I shouldn’t. I realize that there are people out there who can do all those things, who have the energy, emotionally and physically, do all those things in a day, and more. I am just not one of those people right now. I aspire to it, believe me.

But it goes back to that issue of never escaping. It takes me so much energy to be anywhere close to normal because not only do I have to physically do things, I have to use so much mental energy to force myself to keep doing it. For me to eat relatively healthy, I have to focus so hard, I end up spending half the day thinking about food, what I am going to eat, how much of it I can eat, what I am going to make when I get home, etc. etc. etc.

I don’t know, maybe everyone is like this and I am just a wimp about it. I get a lot of “why don’t you just…” from people. I used to get it all the time from my dad, too, and it drove me crazy. If I could, I would? I mean, I don’t know how to explain it. He said to me later, after his own health problems and his wife leaving him drove him into a deep depression, that he was sorry for telling me that I just needed to do things, because he never understood how hard that was until he went through it.

I don’t want to be the type of person that makes excuses. I am frustrated by my seemingly small tank when it comes to emotional energy. And I can’t seem to explain it to people without it coming across as just being lame and weak.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure that I actually did the things I wanted to do so that the sacrifice of the physical activity that would have been good to me would not be in vain. So I got up and puttered around the kitchen. I trimmed the fat from a chicken breast and made up some marinate for it. Then I sliced up the strawberries I bought and I had a nice breakfast. Then later, I made some black bean dip and cooked up the chicken, part of it to take in my lunch and part to have for dinner with some sweet potato fries and some corn. In between, I found a neat recipe site full of lots of things I want to try. I even tracked my food and points, read some of my book and did the dishes! Plus, I am going to do a little meditating before I go to bed. So, overall, I feel like it wasn’t a wasted day. I know that Monday will go easier, which makes the rest of the week go smoother.

Someday, I want to be the person that spends her whole weekend gallivanting around doing lots of productive and fun things instead of using the time to recharge my emotional battery. It’s just going to take me awhile to get there, I think.

New digs…

So, I am all about change. Except, not really. I mean, making like positively, life-altering changes? Not so much. But moving from Blogger to WordPress? WATCH ME, CHANGE! WOO!

I always feel like when I make a post to this (it’s been awhile), I am “officially” starting something which to me means I am on my way to messing it up. Negative self talk and I are very good friends.

I did some financial inventory the other day regarding the amount of money I spend on eating out and the number was so astronomical, I had to take stock of my priorities. And since I am going to have to make eating changes anyway to keep myself out of the poor house, I might as well try to eat better now too.

My usual MO is to make huge sweeping changes that work for a short time and then I end up giving up because I don’t have the energy to keep up the pace. I realize that’s not the best strategy but every time I sit back and look at where I am and where I want to be, it always seems like I’ve wasted so so so so soooooooooooooo much time that I want to put my foot down and just GO even though the map I have is bad and I have a quarter tank of gas and no headlights.

All I’ve really learned so far is that, no matter where you go, there you are. So the look and address may be changing, but it’s still me and my library full of issues. I want to update more. But I want to win the lottery, too, so who knows how this is going to go.