Playing Catch Up

The Holidays were wonderful, busy and wonderful.  There were so many times I planned to post, but between the hustle and bustle and falling out of the posting routine I didn’t quite make it to my computer.

Diet wise, I haven’t been great. I overdid the sugar a few too many times and am still working on kicking the sugar cravings.  I am up about 5 lbs from my pre-holiday weight, but overall things are good.  I had my annual physical last week, my cholesterol is down 25 points from July, putting it at 220.  Neither my Dr. nor I am concerned about the slight elevation since my HDL is good and I am still nursing 6-8 times a day. My blood pressure is normal and I am also down 35 pounds since July.  So, overall things are good.  I just have to work on staying away from the sugar… like the chocolate chip cookie bars I made for my son yesterday, it took quite a bit of willpower not to have them for breakfast, LOL.

I also have some posts planned of some of the things I came up with over the Holidays. My son is a Christmas Eve baby, so there was also a birthday party to put together.  Like many other little (and big!) boys out there he is an angry birds fan; I made him an angry birds cake and fleece angry bird hats as favors that I plan to share.  And a sneak peak of the cake:

I am a NON Cake Decorator, as in my cakes are typically horrific, with frosting always the wrong consistency, melting down the sides like some low budget horror flick, so I came up with a minimal frosting alternative. Tootsie Rolls! If I can make this with my non-cake skills, it must be easy!

and a hat:

Even the older “kids” liked the hats.

I hope everyone enjoyed the Holidays, now to work on getting my groove back 🙂

Thanksgiving Day and Weekend.

I sculpted an Angry Bird to guard over our house for my Angry Bird Obsessed son 🙂 Found an Egg-free Royal Icing that worked really well (my 3 y/o is allergic to eggs)!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  I think, as of today, we have finished celebrating 🙂

So the Turkey Trot is done!  I am really proud of myself for doing the race, there were times I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it.  Wednesday evening, my ankle started hurting out of nowhere.  It started as a dull ache but later became very painful.  We went to take the kids to see Santa and when we got out of the car, the pain became very sharp.  When we got home I decided to ice it.  I was actually concerned that it may be psychosomatic; I couldn’t think of anything which would have caused the pain and was wondering if my fear and nerves about the race were manifesting in my ankle??? It sounds crazy now and sounded crazy to me then too, LOL.  Thursday morning my ankle was aching dully again.  I decided to just got to the race and see.  My sister-in-law was doing the race with me, when we got out of the car, I took a few steps and BAM, the sharp pain was back again!  We had to go down about 12 flights of stairs to get the race and walking down steps was killing me.  I didn’t think I would be able to run, but did not want to back out.  We walked around a bit beforehand and the pain was easing up.  I was afraid to run, thinking the pain would get bad and I wouldn’t be able to walk back.  I decided to do a little practice running and oddly it seemed my foot and ankle actually felt BETTER while running.  At that point I thought, worst case scenario  I have to stop, big deal.   I took the run a little slower than normal, but never had an issue, my ankle felt fine the entire time (finished in 38:48)!  Afterwards I felt awesome, I can’t wait for the next one!

Just before the start of the race! There were over 8,000 runners at the Turkey Trot this year!

After the race we went to my sister’s for the day, I did very well with my eating.  I chose a colorful, flavorful plate of fresh salad, asparagus with colorful bell peppers, roasted brussels sprouts and stuffed acorn squash.  It was delicious and I wasn’t in a food coma afterwards 🙂  For dessert I had my Mom’s incredible apple torte, probably the best dessert ever 🙂

Friday it was back to my sister’s for a cookie bake and today my In-Laws came to our house to decorate Gingerbread Men and a Gingerbread House.  I have had my share of cookies the past few days, it has been a really joyful holiday.

Tomorrow I am going to get back to documenting my meals, please think warm thoughts – it is a run day and it is supposed to be cold outside, BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

…losing track of days :)

I just wanted to check in because it has been awhile, I am still going!  The past few weeks have been busy, I have been helping to organize and deliver donations for Sandy victims,  I’ve had a few big projects come in to my business (Yay!), preparing for the holiday, the Turkey Trot and the daily life of a work-at-home-mom with young boys!  LOL.  I have been on and off with my food, it is a real challenge for me right now.  For the past month I have been going back and forth between 226 and 229.  I am not upset, just know I have to dig in to move forward.  I have great days, pretty bad days and many in between days.  I really wish pizza were good for me, LOL.

While I know, health and fitness will require me to balance it all, food, exercise and life, I have been focusing on the running for now.  I am nervous about the Turkey Trot.  I am OK with having to walk part of it, but I don’t want to, I want to run straight through to the end.  My runs have been tough this time around, I know it is a mental thing and working through that mental block is an important task to take on!  Saturday I mapped out a 2.3 mile run along the canal and into the village.  As I was coming out of the woods to the lock area, there was a family (Mom, Dad, son(4ish), daughter (7ish)) on the trail.  I was pretty surprised by what happened next; the father started calling my a charging elephant to his son.  After going around the lock, I passed them a second time and the boy starts yelling, “here comes the elephant”!   I wasn’t hurt by the name calling, I was an overweight kid and got over that long ago, what upset me was that this father was teaching his son this type of behavior   Now this child is going to enter school having learned to taunt and make fun of others.  Part of me wanted to stop and comment on the stellar parenting, but I was too busy lapping them with my lumbering elephant run.

Last night I mapped out a 5K, the Trot is on Thursday and I just needed to know I could do it! My longest run so far had been 2.3, so it was a good jump.  The route I mapped was also tougher than what I have been running, rather than going around the pond once and then down the big hill to the flat village, I stayed up around the pond.  Adding a few side streets gave me some good hills to climb, I did the extended loop 2.5 times to equal 3.23 miles.  This was really a mental battle for me, I kept trying to talk myself into stopping after one lap, two laps, take out the hills….  but I kept on.  I find it a little funny that the comments I received from others on Saturday drove me to keep going, to prove my abilities, while my negative self talk is  hard for me to work against.  The progress I have made in the past four months is pretty incredible  I remember those first runs when I was pushing to make it through two minutes and last night I ran for 39.  Two quotes run through my head when I need to push: Progress not perfection and Your legs aren’t giving out, your mind is giving up. ( I found them both on Fit for a Year ).  They help me to refocus and keep going, everyday it seems my inner positive voice is getting stronger than the negative one, everyday I move forward just a bit more 🙂

2 more days until the Turkey Trot!

Day 93

waffle with berries

kale, chickpea and sunflower seed salad

almond veggie soup

pretty much what happened between me and some oreos today…

salad with avocado and sun flower seeds

 

Election Day!  Finally!  Started the day with a walk to our polling place, talking about our right to vote with my nearly 4 y/o.  He was very interested and wanted to vote for an Angry Bird…  Maybe the next election.

Today was another run day, it is cold and super dark by the time I am able to go for a run (around 8pm).  I didn’t want to leave my warm house to go out into the dark cold.  After putting the baby to bed, I got on the computer for a few minutes to check preliminary election results and after about 10 minutes of a knotted stomach I got up and got dressed to run.  Tonight felt good.  I can’t run on the trails at night because they are not lighted, the pond gets pretty boring (it is just a 0.5 mile loop around a pond), so I varied my route.  I added a hill, and subsequently a down hill and went down to the village.  I felt really steady and even the entire time and actually felt like I could have kept going at the end.  I started a cool down walk and heard a train, I LOVE trains, always have.  I can remember being about 4 years old, in the Church daycare during Sunday mass and sitting by the window waiting for trains.  I realized the train was going to reach the crossing long before me, so I decided to run there.  Just a little extra motivation and a lot of joy watching the lights dancing and the train rolling by – a good end to a good day.    Now I just hope tomorrow I wake up to see the right candidate has won the election….

Day 92

oatmeal with berries

almond veggie soup

angry bird crackers

salad with avocado, chick peas and sunflower seeds

It is getting cold in Upstate, NY.  I am looking forward to cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, but I really don’t like to be cold.  Spent a lot of time outside with my boys today, my youngest has decided it is time to walk.  He wants to keep up with the bigger boys and since he won’t keep gloves on outside, crawling isn’t working.  I see more exercise in my future 🙂

Day 91

waffle with berries

stuffed acorn squash

roasted squash seeds

first Mcds sandwich since I started this blog…

Today was a run day – 25 minutes without walk breaks.  As seems to be my norm, I had to find my stride in the beginning.  I am self-unconscious about exercise.  I know I am doing a great thing for myself, I am confident and happy in my choice to learn to run, but I do still hold insecurities about begin a 230ish lb, 5’3″tall women running …and jiggling.  Well, today it seem everyone was running around the pond, my friends and neighbors and perhaps a bus of Olympic athletes… My first two laps I was distracted by everyone else, trying to say “Hi” to friends without being winded, and wondering just how much my butt was bouncing.  I was psyching myself out.  I didn’t think I would make it 5 minutes, much less 25.  I decided to leave the pond and run down to the canal.  I love running the trails, through the woods and along the water, I needed to be in that kind of place today.  As I was running I thought of this post by a fellow blogger.  “You’re legs aren’t giving out, your head it giving up. Keep going”.  My legs did feel fine, it was all in my head, I wasn’t hurting I was just afraid.  I got down on the trail and kept going, I ran slowly today and just kept telling myself, “when I get to that tree, I’ll see how I feel”.   I finished the 25 and took a nice cool down walk, feeling good.  Everyday I make a little more progress 🙂

Day 90

oatmeal with berries

almond veggies stew and pomegranate

beef stew

tootsie rols

stuffed acorn squash

If you regularly read this blog, you may have learned that my favorite food is pizza… something I didn’t really realize until I started doing this.  What I have always known though, was my favorite candy, I love tootsie rolls 🙂  We have a ton left over from Halloween, I think I may ask my husband to hide them away somewhere.  I want to hang onto them for my son’s birthday party in a few weeks, I plan to try to sculpt them into Angry Birds for the cake.  I have never seen the colored ones outside of Halloween, so my will must be strong! 😀

Day 89

homemade pizza

almond veggie stew

avocado and veggie sandwich

tossed salad

homemade pizza

homemade pizza

Had the root canal today, I am a major wuss when it comes to dental work.  I have had two kids and would much rather have another than go through a dental procedure!  It started out rough because of the anticipation, I actually cried a bit in the chair!  She stopped and let me compose myself and from then on I was pretty much OK …still would rather have another baby, at least you get a cute and cuddly prize at the end with that one!

Day 88

Roasted pumpkin seeds, oranges

almond veggie stew

pomegranate

Salad with avocado and sunflower seeds, almond veggie soup

So yesterday we ran all over, we went trick or treating in my parent’s neighborhood, visited with my Aunt, who recently had bypass,  visited with my sister and her family and then came home to trick or treat in our neighborhood.   I forgot to take pictures, I even forgot to take pics of the kids trick or treating!  Thankfully I took a few when we went trick or treating over the weekend at my in-laws.  My son now thinks he can go trick or treating everyday 🙂

Today I made a big pot of soup, and (after a week) did some running again 🙂 I felt good and finished well.  Next run is 22 minutes without walk breaks, I feel ready for it …unless the root canal I am having tomorrow interferes.  I have never had one before, so I am not sure if you are sore afterwards… I would imagine you feel better???

Day 86

7 grain waffles with berries

kale, avocado, apple salad

red pepper

cracked wheat bread

Stuffed Acorn Squash

Beef Stew

Nutrition Report

Soooo. I have been MIA.  It seems like there was a bit of a “perfect storm” going on in my world.  I had so much going on, something had to give… so the blog was let go (a bit unconsciously).  I had been sick for a few weeks, with horrible head pain, I was busy with my business and trying to make Halloween costumes and then there was this thing… I had gotten down into the 220s.  For some reason the 220s have always been my stop point.  I get there and freak out, I have been below 220 once, but not by much.  Last time I was running I got down to 217, stopped running and dropped another 10 pounds from muscle loss.   I have been on and off for the past week – off alot.  I did finally get checked out and found out that I had a sinus infection AND needed a root canal, good times.  I also finished the Halloween costume for my son (he loves how it turned out), work is still busy, but that is good!  Tomorrow I will start running again.

I think I have hit the point of really having to dig in.  I have to be careful to not put too much pressure on myself, allow for some blips and somehow get past this mental block I have about getting below 220.

The Stuffed Acorn Squash was incredible!  It is stuffed with wild rice, cranberries, goat cheese, chickpeas and pecans (although I use sunflower seeds because of my son’s nut allergies) , it is super flavorful and filling! The recipe can be found here .

This is the costume, my son wanted to be a RR Crossing Gate. I made the “X” out of felt and peltex, the letters are felt and fusible web. The red/white arms are just felt basted onto his sleeves. My husband did the lights and wiring… electrical things scare me 🙂