You've Lost That Lovin' Mealin'

Nothing happened today. Very low key, which is definitely a good thing!

So...I hope this doesn’t count. Going into Lent, my biggest concern was that I would accidentally forget about the sweets thing. I can be pretty forgetful.

This morning, I wanted to get to the grocery store early but didn’t want to go on an empty stomach, so for Breakfast I took a Luna Bar (Lemon Zest..NOMNOMNOM) and made a GreenSuperFood drink mix…and it was chocolate flavored. Now..okay, it’s a health drink mix, so it’s not like I ate cake. But still! Hrmmmm. I’ll try and forgive myself for this one, since I am avoiding Deep Chocolate Vitatops and my Dark Chocolate Dreams PB&Co. I think I can let a drink mix go.

Lunch:

I had sushi , and then some garlic naan with red pepper hummus. Random but both hit the spot.

Snack:

Half a pink lady apple
Cup of peanut butter puffins

Snack:

Serving of popchips
Handful of peanut butter puffins (I sense an obsession coming on….)

Dinner:

The other half of the pink lady apple from earlier
Wrap: tomato basil la tortilla wrap, 1 LCL wedge, 3 avocado slices, turkey breast, honey mustard, bread and butter pickles, alfalfa sprouts

Aaaand then I had like 18 handfuls of peanut butter puffins. YIKES, GUYS.

(in other obsession news, head on over to Jessica's blog to enter her chobani giveaway!)

I'm too excited to be pun-ny!

I got my SecretValentineBloggieGiftieSchmiftieWhatever today! The incomparable Janetha of meals and moves set this up for everyone who expressed interest and EEE! I LOVE getting things in the mail. No, really:

It turned from excitement to love:

I’m so weird.

Anyway, the awesomely fantastic Jessica is my new best friend! So many fun things in the package:

As you see there is some popcorn and tea (which I’m drinking right now and it’s delish!) and so many other goodies that I can’t wait to try.

The way to my heart is through postal mail. I swear.

Here’s the food for the day!

Breakfast:
*vita top (blue bran...not as good as cran bran!)
*Oikos 0% Greek Yogurt w/Honey (the little individual kind) - with some Kashi Honey Sunshine Cereal mixed in
*cup of black coffee

Snack:

*green apple
*the rest of my Kashi Honey Sunshine cereal...less than a handful.

*cup of green tea!

Lunch:

*baby carrots
*serving of all-bran garlic & herb crackers
*peanut butter sandwich: peanut butter & co The Bees Knees with 1 honey wheat arnold's thin
*can of V8

Dinner:

*everything bagel with: mayo, turkey breast, bread and butter pickles
*2 servings of salt & vinegar pop chips

And as I mentioned, now I’m drinking tea, it’s from Jessica’s package and it’s Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride Holiday Tea. It’s right on time, considering 1: Lent: Sweets ‘n’ Jobs is still in effect, so it fills a nice void and 2: it reminds me of a more magical winter, more Christmas-y and less dirt-covered snow piles as tall as me causing accidents and taking up half the Metro parking lot. Not that I’m bitter. Anyway, it reminds me of a happier wintertime so I love it!

(and I'm OBVIOUSLY drinking the tea in the Penguin Sex Mug. Of course I am.)

(I'm so glad you all appreciated my Penguin Sex Mug story)

Hey Food

(post title original is Hey Dude, a fantastic old show of my childhood that was on Nickelodeon. Oh, the days!)

So I mentioned in a tweet this morning that I had a dumb thing and a heartwarming thing to talk about. The heartwarming thing is below in the dinner section, so here's the dumb thing.

I was getting my coffee this morning and used this mug:

So, this mug was my favorite one growing up. No rhyme or reason other than: Penguins! Being cute! So when I went to college I wanted to take it with me; just to give me a little dose of home while I was away. I'm discussing this with my parents, telling them to which mug I am referring, and they go: "Oh, the one with all the penguins having sex?"

LOOK CLOSER.

All KINDS of sex positions. What. The. Hell. I had never noticed. I didn't bother to look closer, because, it's just cute penguins, you know? Just hangin' out. Apparently engaging in an enormous orgy. Luckily the mug still manages to remain one of my favorites as I somehow protected my childhood innocence that was connected to the mug. Probably just blocked out the part about animal sex. Ugh.

Now that you've got animal sex on the brain, let's talk about food. I'm sure there's a weird joke or a segue in there somewhere? No? Well you can't win 'em all.


Breakfast:

*3/4 cup cottage cheese
*half of an everything bagel with 3 slices avocado, egg subst. and 1 tbsp ketchup.
*cup of coffee with some almond milk

iced coffee: espresso with 1 half&half packet thing, 1 equal

Lunch: (the one I made/packed yesterday!)

*big handful of baby carrots
*sandwich: arnold’s thin, handful of baby spinach, 2 slices of avocado, 4 bread and butter pickles, 1 LCL wedge.
*can of V8

Snack: green apple

more coffee: espresso with 1 half&half moo thing

Dinner:

For dinner, I went out, but I did GREAT!

I had dinner at one of my favorite Italian places with some family friends - three of my mom's friends and some of their daughters. Basically my mom's friends think I'm a homeless orphan or something when my parents are gone. (I'm also invited over to a family dinner with another one of my mom's friends on Sunday.) So sweet. When I showed up at the restaurant, one woman goes “We thought you needed a MOM!!!” See, this is the heartwarming thing! They're so cute and I'm so lucky to be surrounded and loved by them.

Anyway, before I went to dinner I scoped out the menu online. I had planned to order their Bistecca salad, it sounded amazing: “Rosemary garlic-marinated flat-iron steak over arugula salad and grilled eggplant, sprinkled with parmesan cheese and candied garlic”

…and that’s exactly what I did! I got a water and had that salad. Actually, “dominated” would be more appropriate. It was so good. I know there were probably a lot of hidden calories with whatever dressing was used (some kind of balsamic-y thing, I think) but…hell! I got a salad and I stuck to it. No bread, no bites off of anyone’s pasta-filled plates.

(This restaurant is AMAZING and I’ve never had a bad meal there and I’m happy that their salads are just as good as their pasta dishes, it’s an incentive to choosing salad.)

And then the table split a chocolate ganache thing, and I politely declined! That was more Lent related than anything else, but I stuck to it. (Other Lent news: sent my resume to the boss of a friend who asked for it, and worked on a separate job application…Sweets ‘n Jobs Day Two was a success!)

Huzzah! So it was a good day.

(EDIT: Just hopped on the Wii Fit for 30 minutes! Also, I hope I get some new blog readers from searching for something weird like "Penguin Sex".)

And see below and enter the giveaway if you want and/or haven't already! Haha, the count stands at an impressive NINE as I write this. I love it. TOUGH COMPETITION.

GIVEAWAY!

As you have probably read on like 200 other blogs (written by bloggers that have better time management skills than I do), Progresso Soup, as part of their Souper You promotion contest shenanigans gave me a fun giveaway pack to give to one of you fine peeps!

So I'm finally doing the giveaway!

As a reminder, here's the loot:

You get some Progresso soup, a digital jump rope, and a nice big mug! Fun stuff.

Okay here's the nitty gritty. To enter, leave me a comment telling me something you really like about yourself. It can be silly or serious or weight-loss related or not related to anything! Just a favorite thing about yourself. All you need is one entry. Because otherwise I'm sure to mess it up somehow I want it to be simple and fair!

That's all! You crazy kids have until Sunday at 8pm Eastern Standard Time to leave a comment on this post. Then I'll use random.org to pick a winner and announce it on Monday the 22nd. Sound good? Get to boasting about yourself.



(Progresso provided me with the giveaway materials and the info for the contest! DON'T TAKE ME TO JAIL!)

The Food, the Bad, the Ugly

(I know, Good doesn't really work with Food. Oh well, we can't all be Billy Shakespeare ya know!)

Okay anyway, today was good and bad in two ways.

The good way was that my breakfast was healthy and delish!:

*1 vanilla chobani with kashi honey sunshine cereal mixed in
*half a WW bagel with 2 tbsp The Bees Knees PB&Co peanut butter
*glass of OJ

The other good thing is that I packed the following things to eat/snack on at work today:

small green apple
big handful of baby carrots
sandwich: arnold’s thin, handful of baby spinach, 2 slices of avocado, 4 bread and butter pickles, 1 LCL wedge.

Vitatop (cranbran)
Serving of all-bran garlic and herb crackers

Here’s where the two bad things enter in.

1: I only ate the all-bran crackers. At 4pm. I didn’t eat anything from my breakfast at 6:45am until those crackers at 4pm. I was literally up and around and working so much at such a frenzied pace that it wasn’t until 2pm that I even thought about food – and not until 4pm when I could actually pause long enough to eat something while still continuing to work. It was just one of those days.

The other bad thing is that I had the opportunity to come home and eat the food I had packed, but instead went out to dinner with my best friend from grad school. I got a meatball sub, a diet coke, and we shared fries. I’d say I had 20 fries at most. Somewhere between a handful and 20.

I feel guilty about my dinner tonight, I do. Yesterday I didn’t, but today I do. Even if it balances out calorie-wise because I had so little in the beginning of the day, it’s not how I like to eat my meals. I don’t like to eat heavily in the evenings. Tonight I ate heavily AND in the face of having a lighter healthier meal right in front of me. Sigh. But at least I’m here blogging about it. I guess I’ve got that going for me. …it’s a stretch though!

EDIT: I thought of a THIRD good thing to tip the scales towards good: I stuck to Lent: Sweets n' Jobs! No sweets. Boom. Also, I added a second Lent thing - hence the "'n Jobs" - I'm going to do something job-search-related every day. Doesn't have to be applying to a job necessarily, but something. Talking to someone, signing up for a networking event, working on a cover letter, what have you. Right now I'm off to finish an application I've been working on, and I'm waiting on an email from a friend about a connection she might have for me - so I'm going to pursue that too if she gets back to me tonight. Lent Day One is a success.

Mealize

Okay this is gonna be quick and dirty. It's 10:45pm, I'm just getting home from a LONG day at work (didn't leave until 7pm!) and then a friend's house for LOST...I was out of my house from 7:20am to 10:30pm. Redonk. And I have to go in early tomorrow...I think I care entirely too much for only being a temp. Hm.

Anyway, here is the tracking I kept of my meals earlier in the day:

Breakfast:

*1 vanilla chobani mixed with 6 fresh pinapple chunks
*half an everything bagel with ¼ cup egg subst., 3 slices avocado, sprinkling of reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese, and 1 tbsp ketchup

Snack:

vitatop (cranbran)
cup of coffee with litttle mini-moo half&half, 1 splenda

Lunch:

*sandwich: arnold's thin, handful of baby arugula and baby spinach, 1 LCL wedge, turkey breast
*handful of baby carrots
*can of V8

"Snack":  cup of coffee with litttle mini-moo half&half, 1 splenda

And my dinner was a half of an italian sandwich panini (you know with the oil and vinegar, pastrami salami provolone, and for good measure I think there was some spinach in there!), about twice as many mesquite bbq kettle chips as I should have had, a diet coke, and then a GIGANTIC bowl of ice cream. Not a great dinner, I'll admit. I picked it up on the way to my friend's house...I at least avoided fast food, but this still isn't really any better. I don't feel too guilty though; I'm either too tired or riding on how good I was the majority of the day!

Since Lent starts tomorrow, I've decided to give up sweets. Sweet treats. Dessert foods. You get the picture. So obviously I'm going to have a huge bowl of ice cream the night before I can't have any for 40 days. As my 7 year old self used to say, duh hickey.

I Meal It All

REMEMBER THESE?! Ha, it's been a while, no? I would go look through my archives to tell you the last time I blogged my meals, but that would require too much work. I'm lazy, after all!

(I also did 30 minutes on the Wii Fit...some yoga, some strength, boxing, and of course the rhythm kung-fu!)

Breakfast:

 Egg scramble: 1 asiago-and-red pepper chicken sausage, 1/2 cup egg subst., a few dashes of hot sauce, 1/4 cup italian blend cheese, 1 or 2 tbsp ketchup.
*glass of OJ

(once I got to work I made myself a "mochachino" from the Flavia machine. I'm totally obsessed with Flavia machines. Fascinated.)

Snack:

*one small green apple

Lunch:

*1/3 cup cottage cheese
*handful of baby carrots
*sandwich: 1 honey wheat arnold's thin, 3 slices turkey breast, 1 LCL wedge, handful of baby spinach and baby arugula
*can of V8

Dinner:

*sandwich: Everything bagel, 2 tbsp light mayo, 4 slices turkey breast, romaine lettuce.
*serving of all-bran garlic and herb crackers

Dessert:

*1 Breyers Inspirations yogurt in Chocolate Chip (it's like ice cream in yogurt form! Pretty sweet...sweet in terms of taste as well as level of awesomeness)

And I drank water throughout the day too!

Can I just say how much I love Everything bagels? A lot. I don't care what it does to my breath. They are my favorite. Sometimes you have those food items that aren't worth giving up, ya know? I could give up regular bagels no problem, but Everything bagels....probably never. Heh.

(in OTHER news, I sent EHarmony guy that email, and his only response was to close our match on the EHarmony web site. So...I guess that's settled then?)

Edited to add: So as you all know, I've been neglecting you all. Pretty much no commenting - well, since I am vowing to get back into some sort of a groove, I'm also trying to get back into *your* grooves too (that sounds a little bit ew, but you know what I mean!) For example: please take a look at 266 over here in this post. She looks AMAZING and her progress pictures are out of this galaxy.

(Edited to add AGAIN: I just realized in my post this morning, I said there were "two things" on my mind, and then I went on to list FOUR. That's what blogging at 6am gets you, kids. Let that be a lesson!)

Gone Aweigh From Me

It's 6:15am as I type this, and I have to go to work today. Work on a holiday, sheesh! I'm still temping at the same place, and the "big events" that we've been gearing up for are happening at the end of this week. I basically have to front-load all my hours the first three days of the week. They told me not to be surprised if I knock out my 40 hours by Wednesday. Well then.

But you don't care so much about that, do you? I just wanted to start us off with something other than this, what I really wanted to say:

220.4 IN YO' FACE SUCKA!

Mind you, good looking reader, that you are in no way the Sucka to which I am referring. Just a general exclamation (albeit a bit aggressive and/or fratty fratster) that shows my struggles are paying off. I feel like I'm scraping by; like I'm trying so hard but I still don't feel like I'm making progress.

I still feel like I go through an internal battle every time I eat something of good vs. evil, but I am making a difference! I'm down like 4 pounds from last week.

It's a good way to start the day, that's for sure!

***

One other thing before I go, lovelies. I want to start having better blogging practices again. Two things have been on my mind:

1 - The name of my blog is 100in12 - I feel like I've abandoned that journey completely. Not that I'm no longer trying to lose weight, but...that specific goal feels like it's almost all but slipped away. I don't like that, because it's very me. I'm good at starting things and terrible at finishing them. So I want to make an effort to try and return to my former glory of a few months ago.

2- I miss you guys. I miss commenting on your blogs and hearing about your days and your struggles and victories.

3 - I realize this is like the eighteenth time I've made this pledge. Yuck.

4 - I AM DOING THAT DAMN GIVEAWAY THIS WEEK. I AM.