Life....Enhanced

I've turned another corner in my journey. I went from a fairly unkempt "scenic byway" to a "state highway". I ramped the speed up a little.....okay a lot.....but it's not exactly smooth sailing like an interstate. Potholes abound.

I've gone several months without any weight loss. I've been carefully tracking calories eaten and burned but still no success. At first it was cute. Now? I'm just annoyed. So I took a look at what I could possibly be doing wrong. When I examined my habits I was a little surprised by some of them.

First, I was most likely dehydrated and what I was thinking was hunger might actually be thirst. I was in the habit of only drinking water when eating or working out. I got, on average, 24 ounces of water per day. You're supposed to drink at least 64 ounces per day!
Second, I was addicted to sugar. Everywhere! From sweets to bread to pasta. Simple carbs and refined sugars were a HUGE part of my diet.

I decided to start with those two birds and try to kill them with one stone. I determined that every time I wanted to munch (my munchie of choice is always sugary) I would drink instead. The first day I nearly floated away (90 oz!) and actually stayed kinda hungry all day so a new approach was in order. On day two I found the plan that could work for me. Drink every time I wanted to munch, but instead of 3 larger meals throughout the day I chose to do five smaller  . The challenge with this approach (for me) was keeping the number of calories per meal on a fairly even keel. I've pretty much gotten it down though. I'm already up to 40 ounces of water today and I'm just now starting to get the rumbly in my tumbly that tells me second breakfast is near.

Another change I made was changing the intensity of my workouts and adding in some strength training. I kid you not when I say that right now it hurts to sneeze. Every last muscle group I have is sore! I've only made these changes for about a week now so there are two things yet to be seen....whether I'll stick with it and whether it can get me results. I hope so...I'd hate to think my eyeballs are floating right now for no good reason!

My Veggie Valentine

Ahhh Valentine's Day. Yesterday we celebrated it the way that we usually do...at home. I sequestered the children in another room with a stack of DVDs and all the popcorn they could eat. This way we only have to hear "Mooooom?!" Every five minutes while we have a nice romantic dinner together.

Valentine's Day being the wondrous day that it is, I spent the entire day coaching a second grader through school work. "Stop playing with that. Pay attention. You're doing school work remember?!" Then, once that was over I got up and remembered that, the day before, I started adding strength training to my workouts. I tried all the things. Now my arms are so sore I don't want to move. Joy.

I prepare a feast fit for a vegetarian king. I was so proud. We have recently discovered that portobello mushrooms are good. We like those in stuff better than the white button mushrooms. So I said to myself, "self, you should get those big portobello caps and pretend they're chicken or something and make portobello Parmesan. That would be awesome!" So that is what myself did.

I made a marinara with freshly chopped onions and bell peppers and celery. The chopping went something like this "ow, thunk, ow, thunk...." I coated the portobello caps in a mixture of panko and regular bread crumbs, salt and pepper, basil and oregano and Parmesan cheese. Then I lightly pan fried them in a little olive oil until the coating was crisp and golden brown. I put whole wheat pasta coated with marinara on the plate with my mushroom caps and topped it all with a sprinkling of mozzarella. It was so good! I was proud of myself!

Then dessert. Because you cannot have Valentine's Day without dessert! But even dessert was good for you! I made vanilla soufflé, which is much easier than one would imagine. But all I have to say is thank God in Heaven I have a Kitchenaid stand mixer because I had to beat egg whites until they had stiff peaks and I'm positive I'd have never survived the pain! Just folding the egg whites into the rest of the mixture went something like, "ow...oh ow...ooooow....." The soufflé came out light and airy which was good because portobello can sneak up on you! I'm all "I'm eating a vegetable...it's such a light meal! I'm starving I'll eat the whole thing!" Then afterwards I'm saying, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing...ooooh that mushroom was more filling than I thought!"

So our wonderful delicious Valentine dinner ensued. Peppered with a little "no you can't have that. Where's your water bottle? Go back and watch the movie now." And you know? It was perfect. Now. Excuse me while I go amputate my arm and get the pain over with already!...