The Big Snow In

I live in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia and as I look out my window while I type, I have about four feet of snow in my yard. I have been stuck in the house for about eight days. I ventured out to the gym twice-this morning and yesterday morning. I almost totalled my car multiple times, but was so desperate to a)get out of the house and b)work out, I went ahead and did it.

Every single one of my professional dieting girlfriends has the same complaint about this week. We all feel really fat as we have been stuck inside and eating more than we normally would. The bottom line is this: There has been baking-lots of it. We started with the vegan brownie mixes, but moved on to the regular brownie mixes and now I have valentine cupcakes cooling.

Fortunately I don't have a huge sweet tooth and am pretty easily satisfied with a small bite of whatever it is we have made. I use the smallest ziploc containers-the ones you buy to put sauce or dip in and only allow myself to fill that up with whatever it is that I am eating. So, if it is a brownie sundae, it is a little tiny one and that does the trick for me.

I am not losing weight this week, but am also not beating myself up over it and am happy that I haven't gained any. When I get back to my normal life, things will get moving again. Unfortunately, we are due for nine more inches of snow on Monday.

Always learning...

So, Jillian Michaels, Alicia Silverstone, and the Skinny Bitches would all like me to be a vegan. Although, I think Jillian is a little loser on it, she definitely is all about getting the toxins out of your environment. Since we had a big snowstorm this weekend and I knew I would be housebound, I went to the store and stocked up on a variety of vegetarian and vegan foods to experiment with things.

I learned a few things about this type of lifestyle and myself. First of all, that headache I had last time I wrote was NOT from beer. I am pretty sure I am allergic to soy products as I had one the next day and had eaten a similar processed vegetarian lunch. This was WORLD class migraine level stuff. Rather than actually go to a doctor, I consulted Alicia's forums and found post after post about headaches induced by an allergy to soy in processed vegetarian foods. The next day, no soy and no headache. In my world, problem solved.

The other thing I learned is that vegan cheese is gross. The only slight resemblance to cheese would possibly be in the smell which is sort of cheez whizish. I could tolerate it melted on a vegetarian chili with salsa and a bunch of other stuff on it, but that is about the only venue I could picture myself eating it.

Vegan butter is fine as is the rice milk which is like drinking regular skim milk. The coconut milk yogurts are also tasty which is amazing as I don't like coconut in its regular form. However they are four times the cost of a regular yogurt.

Being dairy free is much more of a pain in the ass than being meat free. However, I am going to continue to be without dairy for another few weeks as I have actually lost three pounds this week without counting any calories at all. So, something is working.

I think at the end of this experiment I will be mostly dairy free but will not turn down the occasional pizza or cheese fry. I am committed to eating dairy from organic farms where they are nice to the cows when I add it back in.

Learning the hard way

Guess what I learned at my conference this week? If you are true to your newly adopted vegetarian lifestyle, you should REALLY not go out for drinks at all or you will sorely regret it the next day. I had a few beers last night and my head feels like it is being pounded on with a jackhammer.

The lesson in all this is that I should probably stay away from the booze while my body is transitioning to a new way of eating. I have written before that dieting and alcohol do not play well together and obviously did not take my own advice. And, for some reason I imagine, I will continue to disregard this very advice in the future.

I finished reading Alicia Silverstone's book. I liked everything she had to say about nutrition and diet, but found her recipes to be full of ingredients I have never heard of and am really not sure where to get these things. I have started with simpler things I have found on websites recommended to me by a vegetarian friend. I am also attempting to eliminate dairy from my diet to see how that affects my health and weight loss. Alicia says that dairy is responsible for allergies and I have suffered with them my entire life. I will update you all on how this progresses.

Must sign off now...Head really really hurts.

Food Inc

I watched the documentary "Food Inc" last night and have to say I am researching a vegetarian lifestyle with the goal to go vegan. The US meat industry and their treatment of animals was appalling to me. I guess that on some level we have always known it, but to see it in action was pretty upsetting. Also, as anyone who knows me well knows I am an animal lover and have an obscene number of pets. I also happened to see Alicia Silverstone on Oprah this week and I have to say, "Damn, that girl looks good."

Am I doing it for my good health? Sadly, that is the third reason on my list. My health is actually pretty good. Doctors love me when I go in for check ups as my blood pressure and all the rest always look good. I am doing this because I was so upset by the treatment of the animals in the movie and the filthy conditions under which red meat is processed. Reason number two is vanity and hopes to stall the aging process. Both Alicia and Jillian Michaels have the most amazing skin I have ever seen.

I also know I will lose weight along the way. Speaking of which, I have been at a plateau for the past two weeks because I have been working a lot of late nights and traveling. I am leaving again on Monday for a conference and will be back Wednesday night. I have made good food choices about sixty percent of the time. That is not enough to lose weight but not enough to gain it. It has also been hard for me to get to the gym. I am averaging about three times a week. That is a maintenance level for me, not a weight loss level.

But sometimes you need to pick your battles. Frankly, with the schedule I have had the past two weeks and this next week, I do not expect to lose weight but will be happy not to gain. When things settle down, I will focus on the weight loss more seriously.

When you fall off the horse get right back on...

This past week was very busy for me as I had two nights that required me to work later than 9:00 and it was the last week of the semester which means I had a tremendous amount of paperwork due to the county and the state. The days I was at work I was literally running all day. Now for the fun part...I was also sick.

So, as you can imagine all the stress and being sick caused me to lose some weight as I was moving a lot and not eating much. Fast forward to Friday night which was the first time I was able to take a breath and what did I have for dinner? Bacon cheese fries. Any of you who have done this before know what happened next. By Sunday night I was frying chicken and eating it with a side of white cheddar mac and cheese. Good bye two of the four pounds I lost last week.

Today as I finish off the mac and cheese and the left over fried chicken, I will drag myself to zumba (because I also have not worked out in a week due to time and illness)which will cement my resolve to get right back on the Weight Watchers horse and continue on with the program because at the end of the day, I still had a loss last week. Just not what it would have been if I hadn't lost control this weekend.

All of us will stray from time to time. The key is to not throw in the towel since you "screwed up" on weekend. Just get right back on the horse and you will continue to lose weight. The funny thing is that when I put my weight loss in WW online I got a little pop up warning about not losing too much in a short period of time. This week will look normal to their computer. It all shakes out in the end.

Two more random tips...

I was thinking about these after I last posted and thought I would go ahead and write them as I will most likely not have any time in the next couple of days. They are two small things that have nothing to do with each other, but I swear by both of them.

1. Buy cute workout clothes and the right undergarments and shoes- I am always appalled at how much cute workout clothes cost. The best places to get them are at Target or on the clearance rack at Dick's. If you have a Nike outlet near you, that is a great place, too. Get yourself two cute workout outfits and be sure you have a well fitting sports bra.

If you do not have good shoes, invest in those as well. A good pair of workout shoes will run you anywhere from 60-120 dollars. If you live near a running store, go there and have them fit you. It does not matter if you run or not. They will get you the best shoe for the fit. I have a pair of Asics that were about 100 dollars. Last summer I was experiencing a lot of back pain after I was working out and someone told me to get new shoes and all the back pain went away. I can not stress how much you need to have good shoes. Plan to switch them out every 6-8 months depending on how often you work out. No matter what your size, you will feel more motivated to go to the gym and more interested in taking that zumba class if you look cute and feel good while you are doing it.

2. Never carry cash-In addition to a vending machine at my school, we also constantly are having little bake sales and such put on by the kids or other groups that are fundraising. And, there is the cafeteria. If I do not have cash, I can not buy anything and ruin my diet for the day. It's a really small thing but it does keep temptation away.

It's all in the planning

Typically when you are dieting, you tend to think about it CONSTANTLY. I am not going to lie and say anything about making healthy choices is easily done on the fly. I look at my schedule for the upcoming week and then make decisions about working out and food that will fit into that schedule.

This week I will be working from 6:30 in the morning until 9:00 at night on Monday and Tuesday. We have two basketball games those nights. When you have hours like this, you need to plan for it in advance. Do not allow yourself to eat out. I will pack a lunch box that will also have my dinner and all my snacks for the day in it. I also have a break between school and the time basketball starts and am going to pack workout clothes and head over to the gym during that time.

So, I found some recipes from cookinglight.com that I can easily pack and take with me. I made a chicken tortilla soup and put it in four zip lock containers in single serving sizes in my fridge. Tonight, I am making cooking light jambalaya and portioning it out ahead of time as well.

When I go to work tomorrow, I will have a gym bag and a bag full of all my food for the day. By spending some time planning in advance, I have made eating healthy tomorrow and the next day something that I won't have to think about at all.

Fiber is your friend

I learned this from the Hungry Girl books and have found it to be true. When you are looking to lose weight, always go for the highest fiber products you can. Your body digests them slower and you stay fuller longer. I eat Fiber One pancakes (sometimes even with a few chocolate chips in them) and the high fiber English muffins all the time even when I am not counting calories. Any Fiber One cereal is also a good idea. The only area where you need to be careful is the Fiber One bars. They will give you horrific gas. Sorry to put that out there, but it is true.

The Biggest Loser

I am home from the gym (kick boxing which is horrible) and have a few minutes before the Biggest Loser premier starts. I am about to embark on an experiment next week and try to follow Jillian's advice. I am going to lose the processed foods out of my diet-mainly the Lean Cuisine type stuff that I eat for lunch as it is swimming with sodium and other chemicals. The next few days will be spent researching time saving ways to put this together and come up with a plan on how I am going to do this in a painless way. I will let you know what I find out. I am hoping that losing processed foods out of my diet as much as I can will speed things along in the weight loss department.

Another random observation...I had not been working the past two weeks because it was Christmas break and was not really losing much weight even though I was diligently counting points. One day back at work and I was down two pounds. My theory is more moving around and less time to snack finally got things going in the right direction.

Off to watch Jillian make people cry...

Alcohol

This seems like a good time to bring this up since we have all recently celebrated New Year's. I will preface what I am getting ready to say by letting you know that I am a beer drinker. I love beer. LOVE IT. Now that said, here is what I know about drinking and weight loss.

The only diet that really "Ok's" drinking is Weight Watchers as they have you treat it like any other thing with calories you are getting ready to put in your mouth. So, if you are one of those people that likes to come home from work and have a drink or two every night you are thinking that you will just build it into your daily points and move on. You can't do that for a couple of reasons.

Your body burns alcohol before it will burn food. So, when you are sitting down to your dinner with a glass of wine, that wine will get in line before the food and your body will burn that first, so that the food has a greater chance of being stored as fat.

Alcohol will make you retain water. If you save your drinking for your one splurge night (which is what I do) then the scale WILL go up the next morning. Don't freak out, just drink A LOT of water the next day and it will return to where it was the following day.

So, save your booze for your one splurge night (splurging does not mean binge drinking). I should probably not even be doing that one night a week, but if I can't have one night away from my regimen, I won't hang in as long with it, so it works for me.

Another note about drinking is that it WILL kick you harder and faster if you have been dieting all week. If you are prone to hangovers you will feel worse the next day than you usually do. I call this a "weight watchers hangover." I will have a few drinks which I normally wouldn't feel the next day and will feel awful. It will make you think harder about it the next time around.