Plugging along

So, I haven’t been paying much attention to my weight, which is good.  I am just trying to do things that make me feel healthy.  I didn’t feel well yesterday or the day before when I let myself eat non-whole grain tortellini, and couldn’t stop snacking on it!  It sat in my stomach for a while.

I haven’t been working out much, not formally anyway, but I have been very active with building my new decorative cinder block raised garden bed.  It was hours and hours of backbreaking cinder block moving and leveling.  My husband did the initial digging-out of the wall, then I did the details of leveling at the end.  Then we picked up the new dirt and had to put it in the bed.

Before the leveling was completed.

Leveling finished! Now some straw and dirt to fill 'er up.

I’m sure I burned a million calories in the process!  And a random strip across my back.  I was amazed one day that I wasn’t getting sunburned, that night I noticed the stinging pain on my back waistline… I guess my shirt wasn’t long enough when I was bending over to level the blocks for hours at a time.  Now we’re in the lovely peeling phase, I haven’t gotten a sunburn in so long.  *sigh*

All full, with potatoes and onions planted. Do you see the trellis I'm going to use for the cucumbers? It's the side of our old drop-side crib.

Now for the fun part… I get to plant things!  I have a bunch of lettuce, strawberries, broccoli and greens waiting for this stormy weather to pass.  I can’t wait to get them in the ground!  I planted blue, red and yellow potatoes, and four kinds of onions before the storms came.  The weather is looking good for the coming week, perfectly springy.

What does this have to do with being sugar sensitive?  Well, with naturally low beta-endorphins or feel good chemicals in my brain, and without the quick and intense spike of sweets and treats, I need other things to stimulate those pleasure centers.  Slow, happy, pretty things like the beauty of the outdoors, and the satisfying work and pleasure that gardening can bring.  I love creating, and planting and watching things grow.  Without my next treat occupying all of my thoughts I can actually spend time enjoying these simple pretty things.

Spring arrived in the backyard.

Lilacs about to bloom.

I love this bush in the Spring, I don't know what it is, but I love it.

Thankful for Friday!

My husband is working tonight so it’s Easter-themed movie night (Veggie Tales ‘Twas the Night Before Easter is on Netflix ).

We had (whole wheat) Spaghetti Carbonara tonight – mmmmm.  And it is so easy to make with the bacon bits from Costco (recipe from the Kirkland Signature Bacon package).  I love delicious, lazy dinners.

My husband made brownie cookies last night, then went shopping today and bought a cheesecake and various other sweets.  I can resist temptation when it’s not in the house, but this is tough!  (And yes I did have two of the brownie cookies last night, but only the first one tasted good.  And after weeks without any sugar, I had such a tummy ache today – maybe that will help me resist the cheesecake!)  We joke that the less sugar I eat, the more he eats.  It drives me a little crazy, but what can ya do?!

In other news, I subbed for a Physical Education teacher at a high school today.  I thought I would be teaching gym class…

…but it was Health.

…They just started their Sex Ed. unit.

…I’m so glad the teacher left a movie for them to watch… phew!

Tough Sunday

Well, it was a tough day, mostly because my husband had to work 10 – 6 today and I really wanted someone around to help.

Cate is teething (she just turned seven months four days ago, and she’s about to cut her 7th tooth!)  She is hard to put down on days like today.  And the other kids are cute and energetic, but all at the same time it’s a lot of energy (and noise)!

I was not motivated to eat particularly well today, but I didn’t overeat.  I probably could have eaten more and felt less irritable.

On a good note, I did make some “green lemonade” yesterday and drank it before each meal.  It was kale, romaine, green apple and a lemon.  Made me feel really good.  I got distracted today and was unmotivated and did not make a juice, but it would’ve helped I think.  I have been eating a little chocolate at night lately, and so I think my cravings for it are making me grouchier!

Breakfast:  a handful of almonds, coffee with soy milk (a dash of cream in it too), scrambled eggs with onion, mushroom, green pepper, cheddar and bacon in them, an Ezekiel sprouted grains english muffin.  (I’m trying to eat less wheat flour, it gives me a tummy ache.)

Lunch:  8 beef taquitos with avocado

Snack: a few slices of apple with PB, green tea, square of 90% dark chocolate (to improve my mood – LOL)

Dinner: baked tilapia with homemade Cajun sauce, mashed potatoes with skin, broccoli and some sweet potato fries

Potato before bed… good thing because I’m hungry.

A fitting follow-up…

After my glowing post yesterday about dusting off my juicer, I ended today eating hotdogs for dinner and calling it a night.  A fitting end to an exhausting day!

I substitute taught in a difficult middle school again today, and it went well until the last class of the day.  There’s always one class!  I got to the parking lot after I was done for the day to meet my car full of six kids so that my husband could go work a 4 – 8 pm shift.  So I was there recovering from the horrors of middle school hormone imbalances with my clingy baby who hadn’t nursed since this morning and didn’t want to be put into her car seat, my starving 1st and 2nd graders who just finished school and didn’t have a big enough snack, and my sobbing 3 and 5 year olds who were so upset that I wasn’t going to take them swimming right then… (by myself with all of them in a pool today, yeah right!)  In the midst of it all, my two year old is cheerfully calling out to my husband as he was driving away, “Have a fun time, Dad!”

Then to come home and to have to feed everyone dinner without my other half… so that’s my explanation for the hot dogs.  Quick, no mess, and at least we had whole wheat buns.  And I taught my 7 year old how to peel some carrots for some “raw” with our meal – not that I ate any of them.  Yikes!  I had some 88% dark chocolate instead.  I’m weak.

Confessions out of the way, here’s my food journal.

Breakfast: Green Smoothie Oat Protein Shake – not sure what to call it, but it contained rolled oats, spinach, protein powder, flax seed, greek yogurt, water, OJ concentrate, 1 banana, blueberries, mango, pineapple, and strawberries – mmmm… AND a large coffee with unsweetened vanilla soy milk (and a dash of cream when the soy milk ran out… it’s so hard not to put half-n-half in my coffee when I have it in the fridge!)

Lunch: A small portion of Ground Beef Curry with brown rice (the rest of the leftovers) – I had NO time to eat lunch when I was teaching… I lose weight a lot quicker sweating through a day in a middle school.

Snack: I finished my curry and rice from lunch.  Small piece of 88% dark chocolate.

Dinner: (Those hot dogs I mentioned – I actually at three ball parks to get enough protein, but only on two buns.)

Now I am off to have my potato and sleep.  My hunny is already asleep on the couch.  We’ve both had quite a day.

Who wants to take bets on whether baby Cate will wake up to eat before or after I crawl under the covers?

Journal – It’s been a while since I’ve posted!

I woke up this morning feeling lighter, and although my weight has stayed the same for weeks now, I weighed myself.  It went down .7 lbs!  I know it doesn’t seem like much, but these last 10 pounds are very stubborn!  Any progress is progress.

I’ve been trying to use my juicer more often and have started poking around the Internet for recipes.  I’m learning a lot as I go.  Did you know that both grapefruit and kiwi help with weight loss?  So does green tea.  I also learned that beets help to detoxify the blood.  This is the juice I made yesterday afternoon, and had enough left for my husband and I to have a big glass with our breakfast.

 Apple-Carrot-Beet Juice

• 2 Green Apples
• 4 Carrots
• 1 Beet with leaves
• 6 -8 leaves of Kale
• 1” Ginger Root (1 tablespoon)

I also munched on some cucumbers with the skin because I love them and learned that there is something (I think silicon) in the skin that is helpful for hair and nails.  My nails need all the help they can get!

I’ll do some food journaling for today:

Breakfast – Apple-Carrot-Beet juice, 2 scrambled eggs, 2 sausage patties, one slice of whole grain toast with butter, organic coffee with unsweetened vanilla soy milk

Snack – cucumbers with skin

Lunch – leftover ground beef curry* with brown rice, Frosty Grapefruit Zinger juice (see previous post)

Snack – half of an apple with peanut butter (my kids ate the other half!), hot green tea with lemon

Dinner – still deciding on this, but Spaghetti Carbonara with whole wheat pasta sounds yummy to me right now.

I did about an hour of exercise this morning – mostly Wii Fit.  And I need to drink more water, but what else is new!

* the Ground Beef Curry recipe is from the More With Less cookbook, and was something my mom made on a regular basis when I was growing up – it’s my ultimate comfort food.  Here’s the recipe.

1 lb. ground beef

(Cook up the beef, then add)

2 – 2 1/2 cups of water

2 carrots

3 celery

1 green pepper

1/2 medium onion

1 t. salt

1/8 t. ground black pepper

1 T curry powder (but I always add 2 or 3)

1 c. tomato sauce (like Hunts in a can) 

(Simmer this for 45 minutes, then add)

1/3 c. milk with 2 T cornstarch mixed in it

Serve over rice!

I usually double it to ensure leftovers.

 

 

Where I’ve been

No where in particular, but I haven’t been posting regularly because sometimes life is just so full.

I am feeling well, I haven’t lost any more since I started using cream in my coffee again… but other than that, I’m getting some more exercise in.

Fighting a little cold.

Not sleeping enough with my teething baby.

Chasing my two-year-old out the door.

And trying to figure out how to fit substitute teaching twice a week into my life – nice to get out of the house, but distracting as far as routines go.

I am wondering if I should be starting to take classes towards my masters.  The goal is for my husband to be the “breadwinner,” but if I do spend some time teaching, I need to eventually have my masters.

So just lots to think about, and a very high maintenance little baby to keep me from getting caught up in blogging or any other projects.

Oh how things change

It’s a cold afternoon, the sun disappeared and it’s feeling like snow is in the air, even if it is just a few flurries.  We came home from the park and I fixed my kids some hot chocolate.

It is my favorite hot chocolate.

I thought it would be tough to keep myself from wanting to join them, but I didn’t think on it too much. I heated the milk and added the Nesquik – remembering I’ve always taken four scoops in a mug full, but realizing that would be overdoing it, I added three scoops to the first mug.  It was for my two-year-old, so I  took a sip to see if it was too hot for her.

It was so sweet – disgustingly so.  I put even less in the following mugs, but I was shocked at how quickly I wanted that taste out of my mouth.

That had never happened to me before the last five months.  Something I loved tasted terrible to me now.  I’m so glad to know that my tastes have changed, and that helps me to control the emotional attachments I have to a lot of foods.

I had the same experience the other night when my husband made us Pad Thai for dinner.  This is one of his favorites but it had been at least a year since we had it.  It was so sweet that I couldn’t finish my portion, and in the past we had trouble because we thought it was bland or not flavorful when we cooked it – but not this time, the flavor was overwhelmingly sweet to me.  In the past we’ve eaten a lot of Thai food at home, but now when I cook it I realize that the reason I loved it in the past was the sweet chili sauce that we added to up the flavor of each recipe – like pouring sugar on top.

Have you experienced any changes to your taste recently?  Do you think it’s possible to even lose your taste for a favorite dessert?

(p.s.  I wrote this post yesterday, but just didn’t get to post it until today – it did snow, but just left a dusting on everything that is sticking around on this very cold day.)

 

What’s for dinner?

So two nights ago it was Chicken in Tarragon Cream Sauce (only I used brown and wild rice).  This is another one of my so easy to make but tastes fancy meals.

Last night I made a salad, homemade Whole Wheat Rolls (with only a little sugar or honey instead), and the Hungarian Soup recipe given to me by a friend in Canada.  Heart beef stew with paprika, marjoram, sage, thyme, basil, cloves, garlic, black pepper, a bay leaf, onions, potatoes, a little whole wheat orzo, tomato paste, sour cream and caraway seeds.  I should type the recipe out.

I haven’t taken much time online today, because I am planning to start substitute teaching two days a week, starting tomorrow (at 7 am!).  I haven’t been in a classroom since I left my teaching job 5 1/2 years ago when I was pregnant with my third child.  I’m a little nervous!

We moved to a really small town this year, and I’m enjoying some of the perks of that.  My kids go to a K-8 charter school in my subdivision (we can see it from our house).  I went in to apply to be a sub, and they took my paperwork and put me on the list.  So simple!  I started my teaching career in New York City, everything seems simple in comparison.

In other Food Journal type notes, I made it through the 5 days of sugar detox and feel a lot more steady now.  Phew!  I did go to the gym on Tuesday and exercise for 1 1/2 hours… it felt so good!  We’ll see if I can get it up to more than once a week now that we have our membership back.  It’s tough when the baby isn’t used to the child care, but nice for me to have even short, interrupted breaks.

What’s for dinner tonight??

Food Journal

An exhausting day, one of those days where I felt like I used so much energy, and got absolutely nothing accomplished.  And what I did do, I did wrong!  But, I did eat.

Breakfast – leftover whole grain couscous salad (garbanzo beans, zucchini, tomato, artichoke hearts, feta, parmesan and lemon juice) and a green smoothie with whatever my hunny put in it for me.  It was one of those whatever-is-already-made mornings.

Snack – almonds

Lunch – plans back-fired a little and I ended up with a slice of pepperoni pizza at Sam’s Club courtesy of my mother-in-law.

Snack – couple of wheat thins and a snap pea – as we were rushing to a dental appointment (rushing to wait an hour I might add).

Dinner – Tomato, Basil, Fresh Mozzarella and whole wheat pasta.  (One of our summer meals, but a special request by my husband and son tonight.)

Snack – a kiwi

Potato before bed.  🙂

Which is where I’m going now.  Bed.

(I’m looking forward to the newness that will come in the morning!)

Food Journal – A day in Estes Park

Today was my husband’s day off, so he wanted to drive up to Estes Park to see the fresh snow that fell last night in the mountains, and to enjoy the sunshine.  We saw one field full of elk grazing in a canyon.  We still ate pretty well considering.

Breakfast – a protein shake with oats and yogurt, strawberries, a banana, spinach and a little OJ concentrate and water

Lunch – 7 slices of turkey on whole wheat bread, blackberries and smart puffs (cheese puffs!)

Dinner – brown rice, asian veggie stir fry with shrimp and a dash of teriyaki sauce, two egg rolls

(Did I mention I haven’t been worrying about portions, just eating until I’m full and eating the right ingredients and I’m losing the weight?!)