5K Prep Continued

Workout: 35 minutes on treadmill
               25 minutes= 2 miles
               10 minutes= walking

I'm getting pretty close to being able to jog a 5k! I just have to keep on it and probably try running outside one of these days.

Breakfast: Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwich on Arnold Honey Wheat Sandwich Thin & OJ

Lunch: Sushi @ I Love Mr. Sushi-- My Favorite!!

Snack: Zucchini Bread Muffin

Dinner: Smart One's Angel Hair Marinara & Just for One Broccoli and Cheddar
             Weight Watchers Giant Fudge Bar

The Omnivore's Dilemma

We became vegetarians after we saw Food, Inc. a very interesting and disturbing film about the food industry in America. It was shocking to see the way that animals are raised and treated at farms and how plants are raised with the use of chemicals. It was so upsetting that after seeing the film we became lacto-ovo-pesche-tarians. Basically, we don't eat beef, poultry, or pork--but we do eat fish, fruits, and vegetables.
Michael Pollan was featured a number of times in the film Food, Inc. where he discusses his research into the American food industry. This book the Omnivore's Dilemma begins with information about the "industrial" food industry--which is turns out is primarily based on corn. It was scary to learn about how corn basically turns into all of the food that we eat--processed foods really. Studies have shown that Americans are "made" of corn. Its scary! It is important to return to eating "whole" or "real" foods like fresh fruits and vegetables and foods that are minimally processed.
This is a great philosophy and I hope that I can get back to eating more real foods rather than all of the processed or boxed foods I eat. Once life is back to normal--which might not be for a long time I will return to taking food for dinner and eating real food more often.
If you are at all interested in learning more about the food system in America look into Michael Pollan's books.

Food Freak Out!!

Today was one of the first Sundays in a LONG time that Tom left for work on Sunday afternoon (he always used to leave then but I've been lucky lately and had him until Monday morning). It was brutal! I've been struggling with us being apart for about 2 months. Today was a huge breakdown when he left--I drove to the grocery store and bought 2 pieces of marble cake and ate most of it! Awful mental food breakdown. I did not do great @ WW this Saturday and I feel like I just made it all that much worse by stuffing my face full of cake! Its hard to bounce back but I'm hoping I will wake up tomorrow hit the gym and eat healthy all day!
Wish me Luck!

Romantic Dinner

This blog post is about a week late. I have been pretty lazy about blogging and uploading pictures. So Tom bought us some fancy china so I thought I would plan us a romantic evening--a Healthy romantic evening. I was inspired by another blog I read and I bought a tablecloth, new napkins, and candles. I even brought out the good crystal! I went through some weight watchers recipes and decided to have homemade pesto and whole wheat pasta with salad and shrimp cocktail. For dessert I made chocolate dipped strawberries. Everything turned out pretty good but my timing was not quite right so the pesto and pasta got a little cold while I was finishing the preparation for everything else. Overall it was a success and Tom loved it!

Last weekend we also made homemade pizza--well the crust we bought as raw dough and the sauce was made--but other than that we made it ALL! It was delicious! We used a log of marinated mozzarella and cut it into slices--it was delicious! We also put on fresh basil, spinach, and tomatoes on Tom's half. It was another culinary success over the weekend. It was so rich and tasty that we had no desire to over-indulge. We actually had leftovers which is pretty much unheard of from our previous fat lives. Another healthy success!!

Rough Week

So after doing great last week and meeting my 25 pound goal this week has been a huge challenge. I have not eaten as well as I'd like to have and I did not work out this morning. I will have to work out a lot this weekend and every day next week to lose what I'm sure I gained this week and lose more. This weight loss thing is a continual challenge. Sorry for the short post. Not much else is going on this week. School is insane and stressful!

25 Pounds Down!!

I have officially lost 25 pounds since I started weight watchers in January 2008. Its been a long time but a lot of things have happened in our lives since then. I am trying to decide how much more to lose, 5 pounds would leave me just under the maximum for my height 10 pounds would be great but I don't know if I have the patience to wait the time it will take to get there. I hope to get to my weight loss goals before I leave for Teaching Abroad in South Korea in September. I hope that I can keep on the path I have been on during the past few weeks.

This is my before picture: 

Here is a recent picture:

Friday Favorite: Shrimp Cocktail

I love shrimp cocktail! It is a really good source of protein and has few calories and fat! What's not to like about that? I also like tangy and hot cocktail sauce to spice up my shrimp cocktail. Today I bought some precooked peeled jumbo shrimp from Trader Joe's and had some as an afternoon snack. It makes me feel so fancy to have shrimp cocktail whenever I want :)
Think about picking up some precooked shrimp next time you head to the grocery store. It will make you feel healthy and rich!

Great Frozen Meals

I eat a lot of frozen meals. Tom works far away during the week so I tend to eat a lot of meals that come from a freezer. Lately, my favorites have been Lean Cuisine meals. A lot of the meals lack flavor or interesting options. I like a lot of Asian food and Lean Cuisine has many Asian inspired options. My two favorite meals this week have not been Asian but they are:

Butternut Squash Ravioli 

Parmesan Crusted Fish 

Yummy! I hope you enjoy my frozen meal recommendations.

I hate lifting Weights

I hate lifting weights. I know it is critical to my weight loss journey and making it to my goal weight. Unfortunately, I hate it! I would rather do hours of cardio then 15 minutes of lifting weights. I have found one thing that will occasionally inspire me to pick up my weights and do my workouts. This was one of those mornings. I usually can only do 3 pound weights for most of the workout but today I did 5 pound weights for the whole video! So here is my recommendation for a good video to inspire you to do your weights Self Magazine's Biking Ready Fast.

Home is Where....Well I'm not Sure

Tom and I have been married for 4.5 years and have moved 3 times in that time to 3 different states. It gets really confusing to decide where you are from and where you want to live when you are moving around all the time.
Every time we visit Arkansas we are drawn back there. We left in a hurry after we got married looking for new job and school opportunities. We realized quickly we did not like it there too much and wanted to eventually return to Arkansas.
Then Tom got a job in St. Louis and we moved here. We do both love living here but every time we visit Arkansas we want to move back there. We have the HUGE problem of never being able to find jobs in Arkansas.
We had so many good times when we lived there but many bad ones too. We adore our friends but have great friends here too. It is so hard to decide where we will eventually go or what will happen.
We do always feel a draw to go back there no matter how much we like the other places we live. We miss the Lake, our Friends, and Family and of course the Razorbacks! We will just have to wait and see.

Snacks are my Crack

So I went out last night to see Hamlet @ Shakespeare in the Park @ Forest Park with two of my girlfriends from school. We went to dinner beforehand at the Boathouse. It was tasty! I was healthy and had a Greek Salad with grilled salmon. I had calculated those points before I went to dinner and was on track. I even had a Bud Select 55 with dinner (only 1 point!). Then came the show. I have to say I'm not really great at paying attention all the time. Last night was no exception. I had to ask my friends a few times to clarify what was going on with Hamlet etc. I got the gist of what was going on....all the time shoving cheesy snacks and gummy bears in my mouth! BAD Bonnie!! I got carried away by the beautiful atmosphere of people with wine, sandwiches, sitting on blankets watching the show. I must have had a brain meltdown and forgotten that I had already had dinner and happily at a large chocolate chip cookie then handfuls of popcorn and gummy bears.
I'm sure I will pay for this at the WW scale! I am weighing in later this morning since we are going out of town tomorrow for Tom's best friend's wedding! I have a dress that I love! I just hope the gummy bears don't ruin it for me!

I Love Mr. Sushi

I am sort of crazy about going out to restaurants. I look at menus beforehand, I plan, I calculate, I put my meal into my Blackberry so I don't forget. Well I have been going to the same sushi place since I moved to St. Louis.  I have it down to a science-Rainbow Roll & Seaweed Salad. Well today I went for lunch, something I have never done before and I was lured in my the low priced many rolls and sides lunch special. I ended up having 4 California Rolls, 4 Spicy Tuna Rolls, 4 Salmon Rolls, and 6 Cucumber Rolls with Miso Soup and Ginger Salad. Delicious! well it ended up costing me 14 points!! Well over the 7 points the usual meal is. Well I keep learning this lesson over and over whenever I try to deviate from the tried and true things I know work for my weight loss plans. I ate pretty well this evening and had stir-fry veggies and salad. Tomorrow I will be back on track and within my daily points value. Wish me luck!

New Sneakers and St. Louis Bread Co. (Panera)

So today I officially weigh 150. For many people that # might seem sky high but from where I started it is a HUGE improvement! I wanted to celebrate so I set up lunch with a friend from UMSL and then went sneaker shopping. I still have some weight to lose before I am in my healthy weight range about 6 pounds to be exact and I wanted to celebrate. So I went to a tasty lunch where I will admit I indulged a bit, I had 1/2 a portabello panini sandwich with a side of homemade chips. I did not eat my whole sandwich nor all of the chips--not to bad if I do say so myself. Then I headed to Famous Footwear with coupon in hand to find a new pair of sneakers to inspire me to exercise my way to my goal weight.

I was initially drawn to these sneakers because they looked fun and summery and the inside has a fun dot/circle pattern. Since I am normally and pink or blue kind of girl I tried on a few different pairs before I decided to go through with it and get these inspiring shoes. They make me feel like I have a fire on my feet, hopefully they will spark a lot of hard workouts!

On another note--Panera, locally known as St. Louis Bread Co. has deceptively unhealthy options on their menu. It is frustrating when you go into a restaurant willing to make 1 or 2 small bad choices then find out you made a HUGE mistake with your eating. I got the small salad and black bean soup with a side apple (a typical meal for me there) but then I decided to splurge for lemonade and got some petite cookies to share with a friend and the 3 little girls she was babysitting for. I had 3 of the small cookies and ate the rest of my meal thinking I did pretty well today considering I usually celebrate things with an entire sheet cake. When I came home and entered in everything I ate into the Panera nutrition calculator it turns out I ate 19 points!! I only get 22 in a day! So I've already used 13 of my weekly allowance points. I really wanted to splurge tomorrow night when Tom comes home from a bachelor party. I'll only get to see him for a few hours because he will probably get here around 4 from Arkansas then he has to wake up at 5 and drive back to Iowa Monday morning. I guess I will have to put those new sneakers to the test tomorrow morning!

Sweet Treat

I am addicted to chocolate! I'd say that is part of the reason why I am where I am today--2 sizes larger than when I went to college. My mom was great at never having desserts around unless it was fruit or a special occasion. Well when I went to college and realized that I could have chocolate cake twice a day every day no matter what I was thrilled! I overindulged and would say that I continued to overindulge for years. I have had an unhealthy relationship with chocolate. I used it to celebrate, to sulk, and to keep be occupied. During my healthy journey towards "goal-weight" I have realized that yes I can have chocolate each and every day as long as I don't eat too much and I don't use chocolate as a lifestyle. So I've found some tasty chocolate treats to help hold me over. I do have dessert about 2 times a day but I do so in moderation.
Here are some of my favorites:

York Peppermint Pattie-Small Ones= 1 point each

Dove Dark Chocolate-Miniatures= 1 point each

Weight Watchers Giant Fudge Bar= 1 point each

Sex and the City 2 and Dinner

So I have a problem eating well when I go out to eat, especially if it is for a special event like seeing Sex and the City 2. I have been waiting to see it and could not see it when it premiered because I was on vacation. So my friend and I wanted to go all out for the special mid-week viewing we were doing. We spent all day yesterday buying dresses, shoes, accessories, and feathers. Yes feathers! I LOVE to dress up--something I don't get to do nearly as often as I'd like--so I have to take advantage of every opportunity I get and SATC was a perfect excuse.

I suggested we go to Stir Crazy before the movie because I knew they would have Cosmos. I chose the ahi tuna salad from their menu online so when I got there I would not be tempted by other things on the menu. Well I ended up getting an appetizer to share and a $2 mini dessert. The dessert was not worth the $2 or the points I spent on it. I need to learn to be more responsible about all of the other things that come with the main meal when I go out. My salad was delish and I loved it but the appetizer and dessert were not worth the extra time on the Elliptical machine this morning. Lesson learned!

Women Food and God by Geneen Roth

Being the loyal Oprah devotee that I am I take her book references seriously. She recently said that Women Food and God has been very important in her recent weight loss attempts. So I headed over to the neighborhood Borders and invested in this new book. I've read a lot of it already and feel like it is a good investment and helps me think about eating in a new way.

Below are some of my favorite and thought provoking quotes.

"You always have something to do. As long as you are striving and pushing and trying hard to do something that can never be done, you know who you are: someone with a weight problem who is working hard to be thin."

"Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life."

"They realize that brokenness is learned, not innate, and that their work is to find their way back to what is already whole."

"The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value and possibility. To change your body, you must first understand that which is shaping it."

"To be given wings, you've got to be willing to believe that you were put on this earth for more than your endless attempts to lose the same thirty pounds three hundred times for eighty years. And that goodness and loveliness are possible, even in something as mundane as what you put in your mouth for breakfast."

"When you love something you wish it goodness; when you hate something, you wish to annihilate it. Change happens not by hatred but by love."

Veggie Burger vs. Beef-y Burger

So I've been a fish eating vegetarian since about November 2009. Lately I have been craving meat. For a few weeks I have been thinking about meat, having a bite of meat on a few occasions. Tonight we went all out--I made hamburgers with organic beef. I was so looking forward to eating a hamburger, a formerly favorite food of mine. We bought pickles and baked cheddar lays to accompany the hamburgers. The first bite of my burger was mediocre and not much better than a regular veggie burger.

 
In the end we both un-enthusiastically finished our organic hamburgers then proceeded to eat the whole jar of pickles.

Clearly, our priorities lie in veggies over meat.  So in the end we will stick with the fish & veggie way of life.

Vacation

Let me begin by saying that I love vacation. Actually I LIVE for vacation. Before I'm done with one I'm already mentally planning the next one or two. This time was Aruba with Tom's Parents and Brother.

We had a great time sea, sand, surf, snorkeling & EATING. I ate way way too much bad food and drank way way too many bad drinks with way way to little exercising in between.
This week I will have to buckle down and eat right and exercise a lot! The morning before we left for vacation I went to Weight Watchers and weighed in and I was at my lowest weight since beginning the program only about 5 pounds away from goal. So I need to make sure by the next time I weight in I haven't gained too much. I have accepted there will probably be some residual vacation weight that might take more than a week to take off--but a girl can hope!
Anyway, the beach was well worth the weight gain! Tom and I love to snorkel and this trip was a great opportunity to that. We went to 4 snorkel places and saw a ton of pretty fish, a sunken ship, and a natural pool. The natural pool was my favorite because it was like being inside of a coral reef.

Now I am wishing I knew some places to hit the water in St. Louis, lakes rivers, anything. Going to the beach only makes me want more water in my life. I miss the beach and lakes so much from the East Coast. I'm hoping that I can spend the rest of the summer enjoying some Missouri lakes and rivers!

Girls Night!

So its always tough to stay on track during girls night. Luckily my girls let me cook for them so that I can make food that is conducive to my WW points. We had hummus & carrots, linguine & clam sauce, chocolate dipped strawberries & finally last but best Strongbow!! After some tasty Italian and other goodies we played Scattergories. It was a pretty easy going evening-- just some catch up chatting and gossiping to finish off the night.
D made chocolate covered strawberries. They were delicious and perfectly made! I was totally amazed by her ability to create such a perfect--pretty much healthy dessert.

All of us girls have traveled and lived in London so each of us has a strong personal connection to Strongbow. For those unfamiliar with the beverage it is a hard cider. Sort of like other US hard ciders like Wood Chuck -- but way way better!

While I realize hard cider & chocolate covered strawberries are not necessarily "diet" or WW friendly food sometimes its worth a few extra points to have a great girls night!

On Track

So tonight I'm going to be lazy and not post my food pictures.  I went to see Letters to Juliet with my friend Summer so I got home late and don't feel like uploading everything this late. I did manage to stay totally within my points and I'm feeling great about it! I was even able to sneak a peppermint pattie into my daily points and the movie :)
Today was day 2 of my 5k prep plan. I did 2 minutes of walking, 5 jogging, 5 running, 10 jogging, 5 running, 5 walking. With all of that jogging & running I went 2 miles without stopping! I am really proud of myself. I never passed the President's Medal gym competitions in school. I hope that I can keep up the good work while we are away on vacation.
It is good to have something that Tom and I are working towards together even while he is far away in Iowa (he works there during the week--long story). I think we are going to register for the SLU Cancer Center 5k on August 29th. That seems like a long way away and maybe we will move up the goal to the end of July. We'll see right now we have to see where Tom's next fund-raising assignment will be before we make any concrete plans.
Tomorrow it will be an elliptical and yoga day! I am having the girls over for dinner so that will be a points challenge, but since I'm making dinner it is easier to stay on track. I just have to resist the beer & wine & sweets!