Monday, November 26, 2012

Ka-Ching!









I’ll keep it short tonight.  I’ve been eating a lot of veggies and I’m compiling some different ideas for veggie recipes but tonight I wanted to quickly show you pictures of food that isn’t so good from you and pictures from my weekend.  The first is 2 pictures of the cheeseball my mom and I made.  I had an idea to make the cheeseball look like a turkey and my mom made it happen.  I thought it turned out really cute.  I also took a picture of the Deviled Eggs that I always make and they were delicious.  The other two pictures are of the table with all the yummy food and the delicious pies my mom made.  I ate too much but it was worth every calorie!  I also included a picture of myself and Brittany Howard, the lead singer of the Alabama Shakes.  I was privy to a secret concert they were doing and lucky enough to meet her through a friend.  It was an awesome time!  Dad and I also went to the Iron Bowl and that’s the last picture.  We DEMOLISHED Auburn!  Georgia is next!

That’s all I have for tonight!

Roll Tide!

Have a great week and try and remember to send good vibes Friday and Sunday because we will be flying.

Bye!

“If elephants could fly I’d be a little more optimistic
But I don’t see that happening anytime soon
I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic
But I don’t think that cow really jumped over the moon.” When-Shania Twain

Monday, November 19, 2012

We're BAAAAAAAACCKKKKKK!


Hey there, everyone.  I’d like to apologize again for my lack in posting last week.  I’m sure the tens of fans I have out there were devastated. I’m back today, though and I’d like to start by giving a giant ROLL TIDE!!!!!  If you had told me at this time last week that Alabama would be at number 2 and poised to be in the national championship game, I would say that you were living in a fantasy world. Obviously, Bama has to beat Auburn and then Georgia (which will be a much more difficult challenge) in the SEC championship game to get there but the point is…we are back in!  Jordan and I went to the beach this past weekend and I weighed before I left.  I was about the same, maybe up a few ounces.  I am exercising vigorously and dieting most of the time but between football season and now the holidays, it is becoming more and more difficult not to gain.  I have moments of discouragement but I am still committed.  I hope to maintain until the end of the year and then do a major re-charge when 2013 begins.  I like my new food pyramid based diet but at some point, I need to work on finding more diverse recipes to keep the variety going. 




Like I said above, I have been a good girl and eating my vegetables but I haven’t really made an effort to branch out in the WAY I eat my veggies.  I also eat the same ones over and over.  I have probably eaten my weight in green beans over the past few weeks.  While I love green beans, there are only so many ways you can have them.  The next few weeks of recipes will be examples of ways I’ve tried to spice up the standard ingredients I’m supposed to have.  I have noticed that I add most concoctions I make to potatoes.  The first picture is a combo of sautéed green beans with onions, spices, W sauce and topped with almonds.  That seems to be the most typical way I’ve been having my green veggies.  The next two pictures are parts of another green bean dish I made.  This time I used minute rice.  Typically, I find minute rice pretty gross.  However, when you mix it into a stir fry type dish, it’s not so bad.  I bought the multi-grain kind which included quinoa.  I had never tried it before but it pretty much just tastes like rice.  The best part about this diet is that you do get a ton of food.  Veggies are not just good for you, they digest better.  They treat your stomach with much more respect than processed foods do.  However, my mission is to now challenge myself to change it up some so I don’t get bored.  Boredom in the food you eat is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a diet.  Like I said, I’ll give this diet a fair shot and if it doesn’t work, I’m going back to Weight Watchers but it hasn’t had time to get a fair shot yet because of all the bumps…we will see what happens.





Jordan and I enjoyed a long weekend at the beach.  Thanks to my friend Nish for allowing us to stay at her beautiful home in Gulf Shores.  We did a whole lot of eating and relaxing.  I think my butt is permanently molded to the couch.  I watched football all day Saturday.  It was nice to have some down time.  We also went to Old Time Pottery on the way out.  I guess the last time I went there, I was a small child and I didn’t have appreciation for its wonder.  I was overwhelmed with the craft stuff, the kitchen gadgets and the holiday decorations.  I truly think I could’ve spent hours in that place.  I had to get out.  The picture of me with the giant martini glass is in there.  I was happy to see there’s one a bit closer to me near Birmingham so I’ll definitely have to make more visits. 

It is so important to change up your diet and workout routines to keep your body active and prepared to lose weight.  If all it took to lose weight was dedication to exercise, I’d be skinny as a rail but unfortunately, you have to have a combination of good diet and exercise.  In the spirit of muscle confusion, I have been trying to change things up again.  I seem to find the exercises that mix up cardio and muscle work the most effective.  I have tried a circuit that includes quick movements like jumping jacks and squat jumps but also has toning actions like pushups and crunches.  You do a series of exercises and once you complete the circuit, you do it twice more.  The best part about this is you can do it all from home.  I have also been doing the same workout that Jessica Simpson supposedly did when she was preparing to play the role of Daisy Duke in the Dukes of Hazard.  This workout also consists of short sessions of different cardio and toning exercises.  This one is a bit intense so I’ve only been doing it once a week and less crazy workouts on the other days.  It takes me about an hour and a half to complete but it’s pure and cleansing.  I feel great when I’m done.  I hate the process of exercise.  I hate getting up in the morning, I hate the motions as I’m doing them but I work out every day and so every day that goes by, I know I accomplished something that contributes to my well-being and that is a nice feeling.

That’s all I had for this week.  I hope you all have an amazing Thanksgiving.  I am so blessed and I am truly thankful.  I am most thankful for my friends and family.  There are so many people less fortunate than I am and I tend to take that for granted.  Enjoy the people you love the most in life!  We only get one shot at this! Talk to you next week and ROLL TIDE!
  
"We can load what we own in the back of a U-haul van.
Couple modern day Moses', searchin for the promised land.
We can go four hundred miles before we stop for gas. 
We can drive for a day, and then we'll take a look at the map.

Heads, Carolina Tails, California.
Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer.
Up in the mountains, down by the ocean.
Where? It don't matter, as long as we're goin'
Somewhere together. I've got a quarter.
Heads, Carolina Tails, California.
Heads Carolina, Tails California – Jo Dee Messina

Monday, November 12, 2012

Whoopsie!

Hey y'all.  Between work and school and the cranky mood I'm in because Alabama lost, I totally forgot to post today.  I don't have time to do a full blown post so I apologize but I will have things to share next week, for sure.  As I expected, I didn't lose any weight last week because of my trip to Baton Rouge.  I don't expect much change next week either because I had a little too much fun drowning my sorrows after the game this weekend and I'm leaving for the beach with Jordan Thursday night (yay).  As we all know, the holidays are a tricky time so I'm going to maintain as much as possible until I can get through football season, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's.  I'm still exercising like mad and even tried a couple new things I'll share next week.  And, to update you, I am still eating a crazy amount of vegetables.

Have a good week and I promise to stop being a slacker soon.

Roll Tide Always!

Bye!

Monday, November 5, 2012

Reauxlllllll TIDE!










Roll Tide Y’all! I don’t remember which day I bought the ticket to the LSU game so I wasn’t sure if I shared the news that I was headed to Baton Rouge to watch Bama BARELY escape the wrath of Death Valley.  If you are a football fan, or even if you aren’t, I INSIST that at some point in your life, you go to Death Valley and see an important game in Tiger Stadium.  It’s THE loudest place I’ve ever been and I’m so happy I went.  I ended up going by myself.  I met friends in NOLA on Friday night and then stayed with them (that’s where I got the pictured Hurricane).  Saturday morning, I got up and drove to Baton Rouge.  I stayed with my friend Nichole (the girl in the picture) who now goes to LSU and has converted to an LSU fan.  I had the best time.  Well, I should amend that.  I had the best time before the game and then every second after the last 2 minutes of the game.  Not only is it loud, their traditions and dances and cheers are really cool, too.  They are an in your face bunch and quite honestly, they’re pretty scary.  The two pictures of my car show the aftermath of an angry, drunk LSU fan.  They ripped the flags off my car and then smeared the top of the hood with their hands and what I expect may be urine.  Luckily, that was all that happened.  Even though they were crazy, the people I had one on one conversations with were nice and very hospitable.  They fed me and liquored me up in true bayou style.  There was some friendly ribbing but that was it.  I got to try homemade Etouffe (last pic) which was DELICIOUS!


Admittedly, I kind of phoned it in this week in regards to recipe and blog material.  I have been making A LOT of stir fried type veggies but I went grocery shopping yesterday and I plan on branching out even further to try new things on my food pyramid based diet.  When I weighed on Friday, I was actually down a pound and a half from the previous week.  I ate until I wanted to be sick all weekend so I know I won’t see that kind of success this week but I was very pleased to know that not only can I still lose weight but that my new diet was showing a little progress.  It’s good to know that I can still do well.  I am back on the wagon again and I am going to try my best to follow my system during the weekend too.  I’ll let you know how that goes.  The pictured food isn’t really a recipe but something I put together at home.  With the new diet plan, I can have one serving of nuts, peanut butter or eggs as a protein.  These are foods that I never really ate before on Weight Watchers because they were too many points.  I put ham, egg & cheese on a wheat wrap and ate it.  I've eaten so many fake eggs/egg whites that I can't even stand to look at them so  I can’t tell you how much that real egg yolk meant to me.  I don’t mean to dramatic but it is certainly the little things in life that mean the most and that egg made me a very happy girl.  Also, and I don’t know the best way to say this, my new diet has made me more…"regular."  I feel like Jamie Lee Curtis right now.  I mean, on Weight Watchers, I only THOUGHT I was getting enough fiber.  The first week of my diet, I ate all of those veggies and my stomach looked like a basketball.  Well, week 2 brought some relief and things started happening for me on a daily basis.  This type of regularity hasn’t happened for me in years so it scared me at first because my initial thought was that I was eating too much but I lost weight so I’m thinking this is a good thing.  Who needs Activia when you have 5 cups of fruits/vegetables in a day?

Next week, I promise to try harder in the recipe/food area to give some ideas.

Alabama plays Texas A&M this Saturday with no break so I’m hoping they can rally all of their strength to beat them.
  
“ROLL TIDE!”