One holiday down

I'm proud to report that I did a good job on thanksgiving. I even managed to help with the cooking and not eat :-)

I followed my plan almost to the T, except for the Chili Mac. I was foiled because I didn't have any chili! Anyway, instead I made a surprisingly good Asian dish from the Chicken Creole and Savory Chicken.

May biggest struggle these days has been exercising. Its not that I don't like it, but I've been having a hard time finding time. Lately I've been getting home from my stuff and been just exhausted. Hopefully, though, I can get over it. The last two days I've done a pretty good job of finding time and energy to exercise, though I want to get back to the gym. I'm thinking about trying to go early again, if anything, just so I'm used to getting up at 630/700 when my 8am prelim rolls around in 2 weeks. But, we'll see...

A Thanksgiving plan

Well, its officially Thanksgiving. My first big holiday while fasting. I've given a lot of thought to my plan for today.

Food Plan:

• For breakfast, instead of oatmeal, I will make a vanilla chai.
• For appetizers/lunch I will make chicken soup crackers
• For the big supper, I will combine a Chicken Parmesan and Chili for Chili Mac
• For dessert, I will make oatmeal cookies.

Exercising is a little tougher, but I think I will DDR and exercise ball in the morning after I get up and then do some more DDR after I return from my grandparents.

Hopefully this plan will keep me on track and in the box. Luckily I have another thing going for me, my family is really supportive, so I doubt they will let me cheat even if I tried to.

My goal is to make it through the whole holiday season without cheating :-) And I think I can do it!

The march continues forward

Well, I lost another 3 pounds last week, which is very good. I'm kinda surprised the weight loss hasn't slowed down much. I'm sure I won't do as well this week though. I've been super crazy busy and it looks like the busy-ness isn't going to clear up until Dec. 7th (the date of my thesis proposal). The problem with being as busy as I've been is that there is that I have very little time to exercise, and by the time I might be able to exercise, its very late, and I'm exhausted. Not to mention the fact that exercising before bed leads to not sleeping...

Doing some traveling this week.
I'm off to Cleveland to visit my sister and brother-in-law and spending about 4 hours doing work related things in Pittsburgh. Then back home in time for some doctors appointments. And off to G'ma and G'pa for Thanksgiving. I'm still trying to decide what I'm gonna eat though. I kinda wanna figure how to make some sort of pumpkin-y thing, but I might make this cheese-cake thing in our recipe book. I think it will be nice to try something a little new for the special occasion.

Somewhere amid all this traveling, I need to write a 15 page thesis proposal...

Decisions Decisions...

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking a lot about my goals. I've realized, I really need to figure out the rest of my plan... or at least the next step. To be honest, part of me wants to fast until, well... forever, because its easy. And another part of me is getting a little bored and a little jealous of the wonderful food I see other people eating. So, I've decided what my next step is.

There are two things that weighed into this decision. First) I want to fast through the holidays, and 2) my last body composition test suggested that I should probably be around 165 (that is high, mostly because it assumes no lose of lean muscle mass, which will definitely happen). Anyway, so I've decided I will transition to "Healthy Solutions*" after January 17th as soon as I hit 165. That means I will make it through the holidays (and my birthday) and the church mission trip while fasting (which is the easy part) and I'll be at a weight that I'm comfortable with, so the slow down in weight loss on HS won't be devastating.

I still have no idea what my final goal is...

*Healthy solutions is the plan that requires 2 entrees, 3 shakes, and 5 cups of fruits and vegetables. Its recommended for people who want to lose 30 or fewer pounds

Bugging yourself

Tonight i was reading The Slate when I ran across an interesting article about counting calories. The article was talking about using technology to aid in weight loss and calorie counting (hey, I'm all for that!). Specifically, it featured a newer product called The BodyBugg. Its this little arm band that you'd wear all the time and it counts how many calories you are burning. Its kind of like a pedometer on steroids...

Anyway, it seems like a neat tool for maintaining weight if you are also counting your intake calories. And it could be a fun toy too! that is, if it wasn't so ungodly expensive! It costs almost $500 with a nifty little watch thing...

Anyway, apparently I'm too exhausted to type anything more about it, except that you should check it out...

G'night!

New picture

I dressed nicer than usual today because I'm lecturing in my advisor's class, so i figured I snap a quick picture. I'll post something more substantive soon!