Friday Weigh-In

OK, this challenge is not going well no my part.

I have officially gotten nowhere! Very disappointing. Sipping my coffee dejectedly.

How did you guys do?

A Little Pep Talk

I finally got a decent workout yesterday. I feel much better. Now to get another workout in today and tomorrow and get myself on track.

I see from the comments that we were off to a whiz-bang start and then we all started to fizzle out for one reason or another. But, this is a new week and hopefully we can make some headway.

We are not going to have anymore colds. We will feel great and have lots of energy and we will only crave healthy food.

And you will go to the gym because I said you have to. That's right, because I said so. Now go.

Friday Update

News Flash

I'm up half a pound. Oh well. I felt like crap most of the week. I had a really crummy cold. Better luck next week. How'd everybody else do?

Not Too Late

Hey!

Just a quick reminder that it is not too late to join the September-October challenge. There are a few of you, I know, who have waited until the kids were back at school to start. That means this is your week one.

Jump on the wagon, before it rolls away! We will weigh in on Friday. Those who have already started are doing really, really well. I got an email update from someone who lost 4 lbs last week and everybody else is doing great work too. Keep it up!

First Friday Weigh In

I know, it's only been two days but we have to start sometime. So, if you're ready...it's first weigh in day. If you're not ready, then weigh in next week.

Good news for me. I've already lost 3.5 pounds. My husband is down 1.4kg - yes, he weighs himself in kilos, just to be annoying.

He also ran the whole 5km run for the first time in a long, long time. He's been working up to it and today he DID IT. Hooray!

I took our little guy to a cooking class today where we learned how to make homemade ketchup and then we used our ketchup to make cupcakes. Weird...yes...deffinately. It was a lot like a spice cake or a carrot cake and had a really nice cream cheese icing.

If anybody's interested, the recipe for homemade ketchup is:
1 small can of tomato paste
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup water
1 pinch ground cloves
2 Tbsp cider vinegar
1 pinch allspice
Combine in a bowl, mix well. Cover and store in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.

I took a chance at dinner tonight and prepared mussels for the very first time. We're not sick yet, so I'm going to chalk it up as a success. They were a little bland compared to the mussels we usually get in restaurants, but they weren't bad. We even got the three-year-old to eat a few.

So how'd you do? Did you weigh yourself this Friday or are you waiting until next week?

September-October Challenge DAY 1

It has begun.

I stepped on the scale this morning and recorded my starting weight for the challenge. Then, I gave myself a hug and told myself that we could fix it.

The number on the scale was a little disappointing, though not unexpected. While some of you hopped back on the health wagon in advance of the challenge, I spent the last couple of weeks saying goodbye to all my favourite foods. I had a proper wake for peanut butter cups.

So needless to say, the scale is a little higher than it should be but that's why we're here, right? We're going to fix this weight thing and we're going to do it together. Who's with me!?!

I'm logging onto Weight Watchers this morning (for the first time in a long time). I'm not sure what to do as a workout though. It's going to be really hot for the next couple of days, then it's due to cool off. I might have to phone in the workout for a couple of days. I'll do something though.

I hope lots of people jumped on the scale today to get their starting weight. Don't tell me what the scale said, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on your starting point. Were you relieved by what the scale said or were you a little disappointed?

Strategery

Tomorrow is the first day of the September-October challenge. Are you ready? Are you excited?

I'm getting a great response on this. A number of people have expressed an interest in joining in this challenge, be it tomorrow or in the coming days. Feel free to join in whenever and however you want.

People are already starting to share elements of their weight loss strategy. I thought I'd throw some of my strategies out there too.

I'm going to use Weight Watchers Online. It's worked well for me in the past and I know it will work this time too. I am, however, going to tweak my approach, ever so slightly.

In the past, I've planned my day to ensure that I have enough 'points' to have a snack in the evening. I would skimp on my meals and reserve enough points for some baked chips, or a bit of chocolate. The snack was always junk, but it was a reward at the end of the day and I looked forward to it each evening.

It worked and I lost the weight. The problem came when I started to maintain my weight loss. I continued my ritual evening snack, but the chips weren't baked anymore, and the servings got larger and larger. Needless to say, the weight started to creep back on. I'm fairly convinced that my meals and snacks through the day are reasonable. My downfall is this evil after dinner snack.

Realising this, I am going to spend the September-October challenge, trying to reduce my dependence on the evening pig-out. I know I can loose the weight if I hunker down, but I want to maintain it this time.

Let's make this the LAST weight loss challenge we'll ever need!

I Have a Plan...Yes Another One

OK folks, I've been itching to post my idea for a new weight loss challenge and I reckon I can watch TMZ and write this at the same time - so here we go.

I know, I know, it's getting to be a tired story. I have a plan to loose weight. I last a week, or less and you don't hear from me again until I'm ready to pitch the next weight loss challenge.

Well, this time it's different. Not really. But it could be. It could be different, if a bunch of people jump on board and we make this really fun.

The gist is: we start September 1 and finish October 31. The goal is to loose 15 to 20 lbs.

I think it helps if there are rewards so I think each person should choose a prize to reward themselves with upon completion. Choose anything you feel comfortable with. Personally, I'm setting aside $10 for every pound I loose. By the end of October I'll hopefully have $150-$200 to go on a shopping spree.

Anybody who wants in on this can take their starting weight on September 1st (keep it to yourself) and we'll start reporting our losses every Friday after that.

I really, really hope to get some other people in on this. It is soooo much easier to stay motivated when we're dropping weight in a pack. Join the brick-house wolf pack today.

Friday Weigh-In

I weighed myself this morning.

I don't get it! I'm trying to be good, but it's not making any difference!

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh(that's me making a long exhale noise)

I think I need to get serious and start doing a journal of my food intake. That's what worked before.

Discipline! Discipline Foodzilla! Don't start going back to your old ways now. (that's an example of motivational self-talk)

I will start the week with good intentions and see how far I get. How's that for commitment ;-)

Fizzy Skittles Tried to Kill My Family

We were travelling in the US, recently and encountered a daring re-imagining of a favourite confection - Fizzy Skittles.

Skittles, meet Pop Rocks...Pop Rocks, meet Skittles. What a sweet and effervescent delight.

Make that, what a stomach turning, acid reflux producing, vomit inducing mistake.

Never again.

Maybe it was the intense Virginia heatwave the upset our tummies - it certainly didn't help - but after an evening of munching our way through a bag of funky, fizzy Skittles my son fell asleep only to wake himself with vomiting.

Naturally, comforting him as he puked his way through the night, I eventually came unravelled myself. The next thing you know, my stomach had jettisoned its contents.

So gross! I can't even tell you the last time I puked. I will, however, be able to look back on July, 2010 and be able to say, 'that was the last time I ate Fizzy Skittles.'

Too Hot To Maintain Diginity

It was over 30° C by 9:00 a.m. today. So I said, "screw it! It's too hot to have dignity," and I flopped myself down in the little wadding pool, in the yard. I felt better...temporarily.

After my dip, I even considered a workout but, who was I kidding. I was hot again before I knew it and all hope for a workout was dashed.

I miss exercise. I'm sick of sitting around in dark rooms with the curtains drawn trying, with every fiber of my being, not to generate any heat.

We're going to the splash pad tomorrow. I wonder if I'll maintain my dignity there...

Progress Report

The two month challenge is going OK, so far.

I think my husband and I have both cheated on the diet a bit, though we're probably still eating better than we were.

We're keeping up with the exercise and we're seeing an improvement. That in itself is an achievement. It's been so hot lately, it would have been easy to cave and say, "I'll exercise tomorrow." For the most part, though, we've been keeping up with it. I'm even planning to do a little strength training tonight after the boy has gone to bed.

But first, I'm trying to flush dinner out of my system with copious amounts of water. I had a little pig-out on pizza. I said I had cheated on the food a bit. It's a holiday weekend. What do you want from me?

First Weigh In of the Two Month Challenge

I weighed myself this morning. The number was nothing to be proud of, but on the up side, it was no worse than I expected. I think that two months is a reasonable amount of time to get the job done.

I'm pretty sure my husband weighed himself this morning too...not sure what the result was. I'll have to ask him tonight.

You may wonder how I know he weighed himself, if he didn't tell me the result. Well, you see, I'm omniscient. Also, the scale had been switched over to kilograms and I had to flick it back over to pounds. My anally retentive husband conducts his life in metric whether the rest of the world wants to join him or not. He always weighs himself in kilos...I think he does it so I won't know what he really weighs.

Is anybody else in on this with us? If so, let us know how you are making out.

A Renewed Commitment

Well hello you! Long time no see.

I'm writing this blog post in advance of the start of a new and exciting challenge, and this time I have my husband on board. That's right! I've got him on the health and fitness bandwagon - ha ha- I win!

My husband and I both need to lose a little weight and improve our fitness. Neither of us has a huge problem but we've both noticed a little extra weight creeping on and we want to nip it in the bud.

So what we have decided to do is embark on a two month health and fitness crusade. Starting tomorrow, we will spend the months of July and August in a full on commitment to shedding the extra pounds and improving our fitness levels.

Two months is not a huge commitment of time, but I feel confident that it's all either of us will need to whip ourselves into shape. It will also take us to September, when the cooler weather will make it easier to exercise and our son will start school which should allow the two of us time to go out and run or bike together for a change.

I feel really good about this and I'm excited to get started. Feel free to join us. We will start with the program tomorrow but our initial weigh in will be Friday.

The Big Picture

"Once you get the blanket thing, you can relax because everything you could ever want or be, you already have and are." I Heart Huckabees

It's time to look at health and fitness as part of the big picture.

Like all good bloggers, I cruise the blogosphere being nosey and seeing what everybody else is up to. I have to say, a lot of people aren't up to much.

However, I have recently stumbled upon a genre of blog that really interests me. A number of bloggers are writing their way through their experiences and experiments in deliberate living, minimalism and the simplicity movement.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, think Walden Pond. We're conjuring the spirit of Thoreau here.

Now some people seem to take these ideas and spin them into an experiment in self-deprivation, "let's see if I can survive with only 25 personal items." That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the idea that you can actively choose your life rather than letting life happen to you.

The idea is that you examine your values and goals and then direct your time, energy and money toward those things and direct your resources away from the pursuit of pointless material things and time sinks that have no value to you. You stop chasing after trends and 'keeping up with the Jones' and start paying attention to the things you'll care about when you're looking back on your life.

You rolled your eyes. Ya, I saw that. Just hang on for a second, before you write this off as a hippie movement (which, admittedly, in some cases it is) hear me out.

Nobody ever says, "if only I'd spent more time at the office," or, "that pair of red pumps would have changed everything for me."

But they might say, "I wish I'd spent more time with my kids when they were young," or, "we should have taken that trip while we had the chance."

Here's a health related example. If you value your health, you would choose to protect it. So, an hour of your time would be better spent exercising instead of watching TV and your money would be better spent on cooking lessons than on Quarter Pounders.

Yet how often we cave - myself included...I'm certainly no better.

I want to live my life deliberately. I think we all do and all try to, with varying degrees of success. I think it's something that takes a great deal of focus. There are a lot of tempting distractions out there.

A lot of proponents of deliberate living suggest making a 'life list' - & no those aren't sarcastic quotation marks. It's an individual list of values and goals that acts as a touchstone to return to when you need to refocus your priorities.

A lot of people seem to be hung up on having 100 bullets on their list. This seems problematic, however, because many people can't come up with 100 things and end up with stuff like, #42 match up all my socks, #78 finish my life list.

That's really lame. I think a list of values and priorities should be as long or as short as it needs to be AND I think it should be open to revision from time to time. Life isn't static and the list shouldn't be stagnant.

I'm going to work on my life list over the next few days and see what comes of it. I should have some time for soul searching while I'm camping this weekend. If anybody else is interested in completing this exercise, by all means feel free. It seems like a worthwhile first step toward constructing an extraordinary life.

P.S. as I mentioned, I'll be camping this weekend so there won't be a post on Friday. I'll check in with everybody on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Chicken Soup for the Soul

We're sick.

First my husband caught it, then he gave it to our son and then somebody shared their germs with me. It's just a cold, but we're all feeling crummy.

What's the centuries old cure for crummy? Answer: Mom's homemade chicken noodle soup, of course.

I am the Mom in this scenario, so guess who got put on soup-making duty. That's OK, I was ready. A couple of years ago, I concocted a chicken noodle soup that is a comfort food extravaganza.

I love soup but I will confess that lunch at our house usually involves cranking open a can of Campbell's. But, commercially prepared soups are skimpy...can we all agree on that? When you make a soup from scratch, do you not always put in way more veggies than you'd ever get in a can? Not to mention more noodles, more chicken and more flavour. Homemade soup is a proper meal that can fill you up after a long day, as opposed to a brothy lunch that necessitates the eating of a snack two hours later.

As I said, my soup is just a concoction, it's not really a recipe and it can certainly be altered to taste. I usually just use what I have on hand, so even the quantities vary. Make it to suit you and your family.

I loaded the pot up with garlic, onion, carrots and celery. I like to add some sliced green onion just before serving but, on this occasion, my green onion had become self-aware and wouldn't let me put it in the pot.

You need chicken, of course. I use chicken breast cut into big rustic chunks. For noodles, I usually choose German egg noodles, since they go over well with everybody.

Now, here's the part that makes my soup different. Toward the end of the cooking I add a can of coconut milk, roughly half a cup of peanut butter and a good palm full of curry powder. I finish the soup with a healthy glug of Red Sweet and Spicy Thai sauce.

It's hearty, yummy, a little exotic and not particularly low calorie - so watch your serving size. With a soup like this we should be on the mend in no time.

P.S. Last night I had a dream that I was eating doughnuts. How sad am I?

Friday Update

It's time to give a progress or regress report.

This week was a total waste, at my end. I couldn't get my act together. My motivation was down the toilet and I did very little of value. No exercise, little house work, very little writing and I ate like I just didn't care anymore.

You know what I think the problem is? I think I'm sick of it. I'm sick of dieting. I'm sick of having "workout 'til you feel like puking" on my to-do list every day. More than anything, I'm sick of shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store, looking for fresh, healthy foods that never satisfy a single craving.

So I rebelled.

But, in juxtaposition to my rebellion, I am DESPIRATE to NEVER be fat again. I hate that I've gained back some of the weight I lost. I hate that I feel less elegant than I did a year ago. I hate that I'm currently stuffing myself into cloths that should fit properly.

I went for a run today. It didn't go well. I started out too aggressively and about two thirds of the way through I was defeated by the heat and had to walk home. Never-the-less, I feel better now than I would have if I'd done nothing...vanquished as I am.

I'm going to take it one day at a time this week and get my head back on straight. My inner foodzilla may have won the battle, but she will not win the war.

I hope you guys did better than me...I have a funny feeling you did.

Dinner Club II

For a housewife, hosting a dinner party is the equivalent of an employee's performance appraisal or a student taking a final exam. A dinner party is the ultimate test of domesticity. The pressure is on and everything has to be perfect.

It's possible I was taking my role as hostess a little too seriously. Regardless, our most recent instalment of Dinner Club went off exactly as planned.

I felt it was important to establish a theme for the evening. Being a fan of the Surreal Gourmet, I decided to plan an evening of edible art and put my focus on the presentation of the food.

I decorated the table with a collage of famous works of art, torn from the pages of a cheap art history book I grabbed from the Bargain Books section of Chapters. It wasn't good for the health of the book but it was a conversation piece.

I didn't want to take the food too seriously, I'd have to be a better cook than I am to pull off anything sophisticated. I decided to shoot for a tongue-in-cheek menu of dishes I thought were fun and funny. After all, if I'm not entertaining myself, I'm not going to have much luck entertaining our guests.

We started with meatloaf cupcakes, frosted with mashed potatoes and decorated with chive sprinkles. I added some wild mushroom gravy as a savoury garnish. I thought they ended up looking pretty cool.

After our cupcakes, we cleansed our pallets with a little champagne gelatin. It was like fizzy Jello, and who doesn't love fizzy Jello.

Our champagne was accompanied by "chicken salad". This dish got a good laugh. Confession: I swiped the idea from Bob Blumer's website. He's THE surreal gourmet and I bow to his originality. I wish I'd taken a better picture but you work with what you've got.

When I was first searching for a theme for the party, I stumbled across this dessert idea and it ended up inspiring the direction of the entire dinner. Behold...candy sushi.


I had been worried that the presentations wouldn't come together properly so I was really relieved everything went as smoothly as it did. With the stress off my shoulders, I was free to enjoy my company.

It was an evening of good friends, good conversation and lots of laughs. It flew by and I can't wait to do it again.

Perhaps a random round of golf followed by Mexican food?..saaaaay Thursday?

Dinner Club

The first rule of Dinner Club: Don't talk about Dinner Club (obviously)

The second rule of Dinner Club: Never SURRENDER!!!!! Roooooaaaarrrrrr!

Now, back to the preparations already in progress.

Victoria Day Picnic and Roll On Dinner Club

Here is a picture taken at our picnic supper on Victoria Day weekend. You probably can't see it very well, but my mother's hat makes the whole affair look much more gentile than it would have if everyone had been hat-less.

"Pass the iced tea and cucumber sandwiches darling."

I did my best to provide a, relatively, clean dinner. We made paninis over the campfire. The boys had ham and cheese and my Mom and I had tuna melts. Nothing beats a good tuna melt.

On the side we had, potatoes roasted in olive oil, grapes, pickles, and frozen watermelon. Frozen watermelon is ridiculously refreshing on a hot day. I highly recommend it.

For dessert, I whipped us up some campfire peaches. It's just a bit of butter, or margarine, a bit of brown sugar and a few peach slices, wrapped in foil and tossed on the fire for a few minutes. It's super easy and tastes - divine.

I'm a little nervous today because tomorrow it is our turn to host Dinner Club. BA ba baaaaa Marcie and Dave are a hard act to follow, but I'm going to try.

The food I'm planning is relatively simple. I'm shooting for a dinner that revolves around its presentation.

The theme I'm hoping to achieve is "Nothing is as it appears." But, I've never attempted any of these presentation techniques before, so the whole thing could be a miserable disaster. Only time will tell.

Oh! Incidentally, I think I'm going to change my weigh-in day to Friday. I read yesterday that people tend to weigh the least on Friday and so if you weigh yourself on that day you can cruise into the weekend inspired by your accomplishments and (hopefully) not derail yourself over the weekend. Let's give it a try.