Cannot find server my ass

I am not sure Self understands how traumatic it is for me when the Self Diet Club goes down. How am I supposed to know how many calories I've eaten? How many more I can eat? COME ON!!

Yes, I know. I can use FitDay. But FitDay? Is ugly. I like my Web experience to be esthetically pleasing, thank you very much. Plus, I'd have to re-enter everything. I hate that! Stupid Self.

I think Billy Blanks hates me because my arms hurt so bad today, I don't know what to do. It's just my triceps but still. Pain! I guess the workouts I was doing previously were not properly working those muscles. I have to admit that the Fat Blasting Cardio was extremely difficult and I haven't sweat that much in a long time. I didn't do it this morning because a)my arms wouldn't move and b)I have to work both jobs tonight. I will see what I can do about getting up tomorrow and doing it. It's difficult to get home at midnight, get up and exercise and be to work by 9am at the latest. It makes for a long two days, I can tell you that.

Despite my attempt to not step on the scale for fear of what it might say, I got on it this morning. It is giving me a 197 which, all things considered, wouldn't be that traumatic. But I've got a few days before the official weigh in to erase it and eek out a week at even. It would be a victory, what with the tater tots from hell, PMS and added muscle stacked against it.

I've been surfing through as many weight-loss/fitness blogs that I can find. Does anyone else have an addiction like that? It's rather odd. I feel like I have to emerse myself in it all of the time to keep myself on track.

Oh, thank goodness. The Self thing is back up. I won't have to kill anyone.

Two steps forward, one step back

Is that a negative enough subject line? Probably not but I am trying not to get too crazy with the crap. Let's just preface this entry by saying that I ate a whole order of the weird W-shaped tater tots that Pizza SlHut has on their menu now. I was just going to order the Light n' Fit or whatever the crap their low-fat pizza is called and be done with it. But I saw those potatoes and it was all over.

Now, don't be fooled by the fact that I was going to buy the "healthier" pizza. I still planned on eat a lot of it. A LOT. So instead of eating a whole medium pizza, I had a few slices and a giant box of TATER TOTS! I mean, I might have gotten a few points for effort if I had just binged on the low-fat pizza. But the tater tots were over the top.

Let's examine yesterday and see if we can root out the problem, shall we? It is, of course, that time of the month and I would really just prefer eating a house and being done with it. I am hitting the peak of my crankiness and depression, so that's always fun. And then I tempted fate by responding to something Hannah wrote, about how a woman's comments to her were kind of harsh on her feel-good buzz. I tried to be all smart and helpful so the universe thought a nice karmic bitch-slap was in order for my actually-stupid self.

There is a woman I work with who has taken it upon herself to be my little life coach. She's only a few years older than me, but a mother and a sometimes-marathon runner. She's always asking me how I doing and telling me how good I am looking, all that jazz. Most of the time, I just nod and smile. Sometimes, I feel like sharing more and we chat about stuff. But most of the time, I like, damn woman, I am not your kid. Please stop speaking to me like I am a retarded child!

So, yesterday I wore a sleeveless shirt because it is fucking hot as hell here and it matched the skirt and kicky sandals I wanted to wear. I was feeling pretty good because the shirt was actually a little big on me. Woo! Go me, right? Uh, wrong, I guess. I am sitting at my desk and FitnessMom comes over and starts chatting me. Then, sort of out of the blue she says "man, your arms are getting worse! are you doing weights or anything? they are looking pretty bad! you should lift more weights."

Basically, I was shell shocked and just sort of stared at her and mumbled okaaaay. Of course, the next time I went to the restroom, I spent five minutes staring at the granny flab that had accumulated under my arms. It certainly wasn't pretty, but hey! I am hard enough on myself as it is. I notice plenty of flaws, thank you very much. I don't particularly need your running ass to point more out to me! Damn. I literally ended every trip to the restroom staring at my disgusting arms.

None of this is a legitimate excuse to stuff my face with fried representations of our moron president. But I gotta be honest with myself and put it out there so I remember how I got there. I even entered it all in my food log. We shall see how going almost 700 calories over my daily goal effects. I am going to go back down to 1200 calories for the rest of the week to see if I can maybe even it out a bit and sneak through without a gain.

One positive thing to take away from all of that is that I did get my ass out of bed this morning to work out. I set my alarm for 6:45 and gave myself a big pep talk last night about how I had to get up because those calories weren't going to burn themselves and I needed to get back on the horse before it ran away. Or something.

Of course, I woke up at about 5:50 and decided I needed the sleep more. But when I went back to bed, I laid there for awhile, feeling like I was stuck in the middle of a desert and I hadn't had a drink of water in days. My parched mouth made it impossible for me to pretend that last night's binge didn't happen. All the salt and fat from those stupid potatoes were haunting me. I ended up shutting the alarm off completely and getting up 45 minutes before I had originally planned.

I got Billy Blanks: Tae Bo: Fat Blasting Cardio and Crunch: Fat Burning Dance Party from Netflix yesterday and decided to go with Mr. Blanks this morning. It? Was hard. Like, whoa, hard. Of course, I didn't have resistance bands so it wasn't as hard as it could have been. Thank goddess! So I followed little Rico or whatever his name was, without the bands. It was still hella sweaty up in my apartment, though.

It's been a looooooooong time since I did any Tae Bo and that was the beginner's DVD from back in the day. I appreciate that he still gives examples before the moves and most of them start out slow before he screams "cardio!" and then I flail around like a dying fish on the dock. It's weird but he really makes me feel like he gives a shit about me sometimes. Heh. I can sort of understand why he's got such a cult following.

Even without the love, I like that he is always reminding you about proper form and stuff. Most of the time, I am doing exactly what he is reminding me not to do. It's like he can see me! Okay, not really, but you get the picture. Of course, the scary blonde to his left was sort of freaking me out with her screeching and hooahing all the time. And I think her abs my be coming after me someday if I am not careful. One little nitpick, though. The stretching at the end was waaay too short. I spent a few minutes doing some stretches of my own. Less happy-people circle, more stretching, yo.

After I was done and slightly recovered, I made myself a small lunch and some snacks, tossing in cottage cheese and cinnamon for breakfast. The horse is happily trotting along with me riding on it as I type. All I need to do now is stop tempting fate by talking about how easy things are and giving stupid advice to other people.

A little light in the ranch, eh?

Okay, I took this recipe for King Ranch Chicken and modified it by cutting all the ingredients by a half, omitting the margarine and using 2% milk shredded cheese. I also cut the tortillas down to, well, 1 and half La Tortilla Factory Low-Carb/Fat Whole Wheat Tortillas (these suckers are pretty darn big!). Just enough to give it some substance. Even with using regular cream of chicken (chicken verde actually, which I highly recommend!), according to the Self calorie thing, it comes out to about 350 calories per serving if I make four servings out of it.

Is that right? It seems to be! I can't imagine that something that tastes that good could be the cheap in the calorie department. If I added a nice spinach salad to it, it would probably be even better and still around 400 calories for a meal. Next time, I might add a little more of the tortillas, though. It was kind of soupy.

And if you are wondering? The tortillas are actually very good, especially for whole wheat. They can get away with the "low-carb" label because they have a lot of dietary fiber, so it's more of a net carb sort of thing. I know you have to be careful with stuff that is labeled "LOW CARB!" but these seem to be legit. I didn't see anything in the ingredients that was particularly frightening and whole wheat flour was the first ingredient.

Oh! And for the record? It turns out that Sara Lee bread is 100% whole grain! I could have sworn it was, but I couldn't find it on their site. It must be extremely new or something. But it does exist and it is whole grain goodness at only 45 calories per slice, ya'll. That's a beautiful thing.

Doin' the monster math

I chose 126 as my goal weight simply because I knew it was near my "healthy" range and it would be fun to say that I lost 100 pounds. However, just getting myself to the healthy range would be a good thing. For my own reference, I am going to slap those numbers here so I can gaze at them when I need more motivate:

Highest Weight: 226 = BMI of 40 = Morbidly Obese (Ouch!)

Current Weight: 195 = BMI of 34.5 = Obese (HATE THAT WORD! But at least I lost the morbidly)

Working Towards: 169 = BMI of 29.9 = Overweight (How many people have a goal of just being overweight?)

Normal Range: 140 = BMI of 24.8 = NORMAL

Goal Weight: 126 = BMI of 22.3 = Right smack dab in the middle of the NORMAL range

Now, according to the BMI chart, I could dwindle myself down to 105 pounds and still be in my normal range. Uh. Okaaaaay. First of all, never going to happen. Second of all, never would want it to happen.

Speaking of the normal range, when I was in 10th grade, I was on the swim team. At the time I weighed somewhere in the mid 140's. My coach and my dad made up this deal where if I got to 140 or below, I could have some pizza. But NO pizza until I hit that mark. It's the last time I remember working toward a weight goal.I remember hitting it and that pizza tasted *damn* good.

However, at the time, I didn't think that I was at a "good" weight for me. I was already in a size 14 and rapidly working my way out of regular clothing stores. Of course, I look back on how *fat* I felt then and mentally smack myself because damn, would like to have that problem right now. If I could only go back in time and talk to that girl and let her know it would get a lot worse if she didn't do something about it.

Anyway, 140 is admirably and when I make it there, I am going to be damn happy. But there is part of me that wants to get below that because I want to be able to shop wherever I want and not worry that the biggest size in the store won't fit me.

Yeah, yeah. Being healthier, living longer, blah blah blah. I want some wee jeans and a baby-doll t-shirt, dammit.

Do as they say not as I do

Despite the excellent advice from Bob Green and my fellow bloggers, I stepped on the scale this morning for the official weekly weigh in.

195.

I just. What? I mean, when I got out of the shower I got back on the scale and it said 196. But, you know, water in my hair and shit, right? But still. I was preparing myself for a gain and there wasn't one! Wtf?

I didn't even eat that well this weekend. I stayed within my calorie range and stuff but I was basically eating food to satisfy cravings. I lost count of the number of pizza toast thingies I made. I might have to send Sara Lee a love letter for the Delightful Wheat Bakery Bread. It's not 100% whole grain but it's close enough and at only 90 calories for two slices, it saves my life when I want some crunchy-soft bread goodness.

Anyway, a lot of laying around feeling sorry for myself (that time of the month is here! woo!) and eating for comfort and I still come out of it at least even or one pound down! How does that happen? I did work out on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, so that probably helped. It also bumped my calorie range up according to the Self suggestions for my activity level. It tops out at about 1,500 now, which when I am really focused on eating right, I have a hell of a time reaching without several servings of bread or rice.

Don't get me wrong, I am not overjoyed or bragging here. I am surprised and confused and relieved. I am happy that I stuck to working out all week, so there is that. Who knows what would have happened if I had stayed on track all weekend though?

I don't want to be overly harsh on myself but I feel like it's important to sit back and ask myself if it was worth it. And it really wasn't. But I have to admit that it was a nice feeling to see that 195 number and it certainly motivated me to have the hibachi chicken with veggies and no rice instead of a whole California roll (I did snag two small pieces from my friend) at lunch today. It makes it a lot easier to eat a plate full of green beans and broccoli if I know it's going to translate in to smaller numbers on the scale. I know that I am supposed to be taking better care of myself because I deserve it and shit, but I haven't really gotten to that point yet. So I'll take whatever motivation I can get, yo.