An Award? For me? Ah Shucks.

I got an award! Thanks to IASoupMama over at Soup: Midwestern Mama Cooking Up Life In The Heartland. It totally made my day!!!

It's the Sunshine Award, given to bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspire others in the blog world!

The rules for this award are as follows:
•Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
•Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.
•Link the nominees within your post.
•Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
•Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

Here are the bloggers I pass this award onto:
This Or The Housework
The Sunny Side of Life
Midday Escapades
One 2 Try
Agy Talks
Hearts Make Families
Dimes2Vines
Simply Stacie
Petite Little Bee
Take Me The Way I Am
Extreme Personal Measures
Leigh vs. Laundry

When Life Gives You Lemons...Make Lemonade

When life gives you snow...make a snowman, or some snow roads or the biggest snowball you can muster. That's some big snowball!

We did all of the above. The three-year-old had fun and so did his thirty-something parents.

This is Olympic Frosty.

As soon as this picture was taken, we went all Bruce Lee on his frozen snowman butt and smashed him to pieces. That was probably more fun than building him.

I really need a good workout today, so I'm planning 40 minutes of strength training. I should be pretty tired and sweaty after that. I have to compensate for the snacks I'll be consuming during the big hockey game today. I've got my Olympic shirt and flags all set, but I don't know if I'll be able to take the pressure. I get so nervous, like somehow my own self-worth is wrapped up in the success of our hockey team. It's ridiculous.

Don't forget tomorrow is weigh-in day. I'm not expecting a great result this week, but I'm going to weigh-in anyway.

It's Never Gonna Stop!

Well, winter's here. It snowed all last night and yesterday. It snowed the day before and the day before that and the day before that. I don't think it's ever going to stop.

My workout yesterday was...you guessed it, shovelling. I got the car stuck in the driveway yesterday afternoon and had to spend an hour digging myself out. Thankfully, our next door neighbour came along with his big orange tractor and scooped out the end of our driveway. I wouldn't have gotten out at all if he hadn't come along. My three-year-old was very impressed with the tractor, boys and their machines.

When my husband got home and cleaned the driveway up, I could really see how deep the snow had gotten. It's up to my knees in places, which is approximately the same height as my dog. I had to take her out in it.

It was priceless, watching her hop through the snow and the look of terror on her face when she realized the snow was up to her eyes. She tried to dog paddle through it. It was fantastic. She didn't last long before she wanted to go back inside.

It's just above freezing now (though it's still snowing) which makes it kind of crummy for Xcountry skiing. I guess I'll take the snowshoes out again and try not to get blisters this time.

I’m not sure if I have a losing week coming my way. Hopefully my weight at least holds steady. How’s everybody else doing?

My First Friday Follow

This is my first week participating in the Friday Follow! If this is your first time visiting, welcome! My Inner Foodzilla is a health and fitness blog designed as a support for people trying to lose or maintain their weight. Monday is our big day to update each other on our progress. I hope you'll join our community. The more supportive voices the better!


I was so excited about the Friday Follow yesterday, I spent an unreasonable amount of time fiddling with my layout and changing my background. Down the road, I'd love to have a custom background. I think something involving my head on Godzilla's body. That would be awesome!

Does anyone have anything exciting going on this weekend? My plans have been kyboshed. I was going to do a 5km run in support of the YMCA, but the weather is going to be terrible and it looks like I'll be snowed in. Oh well, that's the chance you take with a charity run in February. waa, waa, waaaaaaaa

Never mind, the Olympics are still on and we have plenty of snow now, so I imagine we'll find something fun to do.

Oh, oh, oh! I got a compliment from my husband last night! All this week, he's been taking a course for his work. The training has taken place at some fancy golf and country club and he's been raving about the catered meals they've been provided with. Well, last night he came home, still raving about the food, but said that my roast potatoes are better than the country club roast potatoes!...HA! Take that, fancy country club!
Have a great day everybody :-)

Encouragement From a Former Addict

No, the former addict isn't me. I'm a huge fan of Craig Ferguson. He's the host of The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, on CBS. If you're not familiar with him, I'll give you a quick background. He's originally from Glasgow, Scotland but now lives in California, USA and has become an American citizen. He dropped out of high school at age 16 and became addicted to drugs and alcohol, all the while hopping from punk band to punk band, repeatedly falling short of success. He went through rehab, stayed clean and got his big break on the Drew Carey Show.

He battled his demons and seems to have evolved into one of the wisest and most down-to-earth personalities in show-biz today.

I've been reading his autobiography 'American On Purpose,' which is a great read with brilliant story telling. I had only made it as far as the preface when I realised how good his book was going to be. In the preface he wrote, "we prepare for glory by failing until we don't."

My stomach did a flip when I read it and I knew that this statement would be added to the mental Rolodex of phrases I keep to inspire myself when I'm feeling daunted.

Through his failed marriages, his addictions, his numerous attempts to break into show business, he continued to fail until one day he didn't. That's the secret!

The people who become truly and uniquely successful aren't the people who learn how to succeed, they're the people who learn how to fail and start over. They are the sort of people who fall and get back up, dust themselves off, and prepare to fall again. They fail until they don't.

People say things like this all the time. I've heard things like this before and shrugged it off and you may shrug this off today. Realistically, no one really 'gets it' until they're ready. You need to reach that place in life where you're prepared to make a mess of things and try again, without fear of looking foolish, because you finally know that there is no other option for you but to try until you succeed.

It applies to anything worth achieving, whether it's a battle with weight, or addiction, or the drive to succeed academically, athletically, in your career, or in love. If you persevere you have an infinitely better chance of success than you have if you give up.

Long story short, it's OK to fail as long as you keep trying, as long as you keep failing until you don't. Have a great day everybody!

A Little Incentive

Nutritionally speaking, the past few days have not been my best work. I may, or may not have eaten a bowl of icing.

But, that's all in the past. See how quickly I bounce back! ha ha

I went shopping again last night and bought myself a little incentive. It's a pair of size 10 Calvin Klein denim capris. That's the smallest size I have bought in my entire adult life! I know how much everyone loves it when I dress-up my pillow, so here you go.
We should probably give that pillow a name.

Anyway, I tried them on and I could do them up, but they were a little snug. There was some muffin-top action happening, but not for long.

In less than two months (time-off approvals permitting) we will be on vacation. I will be wearing these size 10 capris on said vacation. If I want them to be comfortable and look good (which I obviously do) I will have to whip myself into shape by then.

My healthy eating plan today includes some low-fat cheese, chili (again?) with lots of veggies and a dinner of roasted chicken, potatoes and carrots. My post-workout snack will be my standard popcorn, apple sauce and raisins with loads of water. The workout today is a tough one, strength and cardio combined. It always leaves me feeling floppy and like my arms are going to fall off.

What's your favourite workout? I'm always looking for something new!

Have a good and productive day everybody!

Mother Nature is Grouchy

Mother Nature has been in a bit of a mood the past couple of days. It’s probably menopause. Everybody’s talking about how she keeps having hot flashes. I just wish she wouldn’t take it out on us.

On days like this, I picture her looking very much like a bingo player. The sort of cantankerous woman who nags away at you, while she stays in her bathrobe and curlers until it’s time to go reserve her lucky chair at the bingo hall and surround herself with troll dolls, pictures of her grandkids and a wall of dabbers.

So Mother Nature has been a bit of a grouch and has decided to dump a bunch of snow on us. Not the nice fluffy stuff, but the wet sloppy gross kind that makes you skid into the curb, potentially bending your wheel rim. (Which I did, because I’m not just a loser of weight...I’m a loser, just generally.)

I shouldn’t complain. We’ve actually been pretty lucky with the weather this year and haven’t been dumped on too much. As I’ve pointed out before, shovelling snow is GREAT exercise and that has been my workout the past couple of days. I helped to clear a bit of my parent’s driveway and then I helped to clear a bit of ours. It’s hard work and involves the whole body. Depending on how aggressive you are with it, it can be good cardio too. Just don’t give yourself a heart attack.

I’m hungry; we’re going for supper soon. I may or may not make a healthy choice.

Monday Weigh In

It's been a week! How'd we all do?

I'm down about two pounds. I weighed myself on my parent's scale and, while I'm sure it is calibrated properly, it was hard to tell exactly where the needle was. So I lost 2 - 2.5lbs. Regardless, I'm down and I'm happy.

Sing it with me: bow, bow, bow, another pound bites the dust, and another pounds gone and another pounds gone, another pound bites the dust!

How did everybody else do? Leave us a progress report in the comments section...even if you're up a bit (it helps to be accountable) and if you're down, we can celebrate with you!

Chilly Willy Cook-Off

This weekend, I journeyed back to the land of my birth. Nothing says home like sighting a large woman in stirup pants and Brantford never lets me down.
Foodzilla (that's me) is evolving into a bit of a weekend warrior. Today, the battlefield was the Chilly Willy Cook-Off in Harmony Square. It was a surprisingly successful event! The place was packed, people were skating on the ice rink, the band was actually decent and the chilli was good.

I sampled seven different chillies, ranging from glorified spaghetti sauce to gourmet chilli with loads of toppings. The samples were small enough that, all together, I probably ate about the equivalent of one full bowl.

I voted for the chilli from The Piston Broke. Not because they were the very best but because, I felt, they were a firm second and wouldnt get the recognition they deserved. I also voted for them because they have an insidiously funny name (it took me a while to finally get the joke - a little too long, truth be known) and because they complimented me on my chilli cook-off hat.

Shockingly, I was the only person there who remembered to wear their chilli cook-off hat. Weird, eh?

Even if you forget about the chilli cook-off there have been a lot of goodies this weekend. I hope tomorrow's weigh-in hasn't been effected too much...see what I mean by weekend warrior?

Don't forget to stop by tomorrow and give us a progress report. It really helps to have someone or some group to be accountable to. There's even research to back me up on this. 'Til tomorrow then.

Congrats to Chantal on Her First Place

I went out last night, to a housewarming 'shower' to help Chantal get set up in her first place. It was a good time. The food was fantastic! Yes, I over indulged but, under the circumstances, it could have been much worse.

There was cake, which I can never turn down. It came from East City Bakery, THE best bakery I know of, so I had a piece of that. I also discovered that I have a taste for bacon wrapped water chestnuts and there were dips and breads and cheeses galore.

Linda made hot cheese dip...the bane of my existence. I can't resist a good, hot cheese dip. I certainly had my fair share, but I didn’t go overboard. Other people got to have some too. In the past, I've had out-of-body experiences where I've watched, helplessly, as I ate the whole thing.
Here's a dip picture.

Yummy, eh? The picture probably doesn't do it justice.

Linda wanted me to make it very clear that she made the cheese dip, not me. I would have posted a picture of her (so she could take proper credit) but she took evasive action every time I got my camera out.

The truth is, I would NEVER make a hot cheese dip. I don't even want a recipe for one. It's a self-preservation thing. If I knew how to make one, I would make it all the time and then I'd way 1000 lbs. I'll just indulge at other people's houses. So thank you Linda, for my hit of cheese dip. I was Jonesin'.

The chili cook-off is tomorrow afternoon. It better not let me down.

One Week

OK folks, we've passed the one week mark. Are we having fun yet? Sure we are.

I'm having a great week! I've shown a lot of restraint since the weekend and I think I've dropped a couple of pounds. I've done some quality working out too. My muscles are sore...but in a good way.

How is everybody else doing? I love comments, so feel free to let me know what's going on with you. Are you having a good week? Are you having trouble?

What's on the docket for this weekend? Chili cook off? I think chili cook off. Who can resist? I'll have to find my cowboy hat. It helps to set the mood. nhoward, are you in?

It's strength training day, hooray! I'm actually not being sarcastic either. There are workouts that I dread, but strength training isn't one of them. I've really improved at it over the last year. I can tell that I'm stronger, and that makes it seem worth while.

We're having salad for dinner tonight and then I'm heading out to a little house-warming shin-dig. It should be fun!

A Much Needed Shopping Trip

I bit the bullet, a few days ago, and finally bought myself some decent underwear. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a proper bra.

For a long time after I stopped nursing, I continued to wear nursing bras, because they had been expensive and I wanted to get my money’s worth.

Once I started exercising and getting fit, I made the transition to workout bras. They are very comfortable and I wore them all the time, whether I was exercising or not.

Much as I love my comfy workout attire, I decided that the time had come to purchase a proper, lady-like, supportive garment, or two. So I went to LaSenza where I could be assured of quality and selection.

Here’s one of my new acquisitions. I can’t show you the other one ‘cause I’m wearing it.

If you think I’m going to post provocative photos of myself in my underwear, you’ve got the wrong blog. You wouldn’t want to see it anyway. The pillow looks better in its underwear than I do.

They were pricey compared to the shoddy stuff I’ve been buying at discount stores (which shall remain nameless). They do the job though. The girls are padded, supported and pushed up front and centre.

X Country Skiing

I promised you, earlier this week that would dust off the skis and take them for a spin. Today is the day. I am definitely going skiing. Off I go. Right now...bye.