6 Week challenge

I alluded in one of my last posts that I had joined a fitness community called, nerdfitness. Said community has these awesome things called “6-week challenges.” Basically, you set goals for yourself and 6 weeks to complete them. Let the madness ensue.

The rules are that you have to have 3 fitness goals and one personal goal. Here’s my thread if you want to keep track.  My goals are largely personal, in an attempt to make use of the ABUNDANT spare time I have. Some of the physical things I want to do (go rock climbing, travel via bicycle) are put on hold, at least temporarily, because of financial things. For example, riding a bike in Atlanta when you don’t have health insurance is a REALLY bad idea, and money is required for rock climbing. So they will wait till I get a job. Hopefully that will be soon.

But yes. I’m focusing a good bit of my time on five projects: Thoughts on Liberty (blog), sewing, this blog, graphic design, and web design. I’m trying to build up my skills and make some really cool stuff.

Fitness and food wise, I’m largely tightening up bolts. There are a couple of things in TKD warm ups that I am noticeably failing at: sit ups/curl ups and push ups. So I have goals to amp those up in 6 weeks.

Probably most importantly, I have goals to finally incorporate job hunting into my schedule. I’ve enjoyed my time off, but now its time to get to business. I needs meh a job, and it doesn’t matter if I have to move to get there (even if I don’t really want to).

So, yes, in sum: expect more content on the blog, at least for the next six weeks or so. Unless I get a job. Then it’s kind of whatev.

Food Tally (Day 2)

I did sort of have formal meals, though they weren’t at the formal times… Oh well. Let’s see…

Breakfast
1 whole Granny Smith Apple, sliced
Almond Butter

Lunch
Approx 1 cup of Gina’s kind-of goulash

Snack
1/2 granny smith apple, sliced
Almond Butter

Dinner
Approx 2 cup of Gina’s kind-of goulash

Snack #2
Other half of the apple
Almond Butter

As a note, I do not formally weigh or measure any of my food. I dish out what looks about right, eat till I’m satisfied, and then I stop eating. I’ve become a much better judge of how hungry I am lately. For example, dinner was RIGHT after I had finished Taekwondo, and I had been somewhat hungry going into it. So you can be for damn sure that I ate more for dinner than I did for lunch.

Omnomnom

As for tomorrow, I know that everyone is going out to eat for one of our coworker’s last day. I am going too. I have yet to decide whether I am going to partake in the restaurant fare or if I am going to heat up my lunch and go with them. Perhaps the latter, mostly for money reasons. I’ve eaten out a LOT this month.

Deuces,

Gina

My adventure to Dairy Queen

Let’s be honest here: Ice cream is not one of my big vices. As previously discussed, chips are my biggest BIGGEST problem and perhaps right after that are french fries. Sweet things, even  before I went on paleo, turn my stomach after a while. So when I say that I went to DQ today and enjoyed a cookie dough blizzard and that it really wasn’t that big of a deal, I want you to understand that I’m being honest.

I went for a number of reasons:

1) I wanted ice cream
2) I wanted to test my hypothesis that I had developed a lactose intolerance
3) I wanted to see if it tasted as good as I remembered
4) I was bored
5) More generally, I wanted to see what would happen.

I have been pondering this idea, since my discovery of some things —  mayonnaise — not tasting as good as I thought they would. I want to try several of the different things that I remember being really good, and things that I binged on, and now that my palette has “reset” itself, what they taste like and what they’ll do to my body. My plan was to have a day of this stuff and to make myself sick, but the more I think about it, the more I think that that might not be a good idea. Anyway, so me going to get ice cream was partially an experiment in that regard. Darcy has said that there will be some things, no matter what I do, that will always taste good and not make me sick, and that I need to be prepared in that regard. So this trip was prompted by that as well.

I was actually proud of myself for ordering a small

So this is the offender in question. Note that it is a small size, which is actually a pretty big achievement for me. My eyes are very often bigger than my stomach when it comes to ordering… anything. But since I was pretty much expecting this to make me sick, I ordered a small, not without noting that on the sign it said “Get more for your money — ORDER A LARGE!”

I wanted to be aware of what I was feeling, both physically and mentally, as I ate the ice cream so I picked a booth in the back, put on my headphones, and ate with ponderance.

All in all, it was “okay.” As Darcy predicted it tasted good and it didn’t make me sick. It did start to make me queasy after a while, but that was more due to the sweetness than the actual dairy. But I think, before I had the ice cream, I had this vision of it being… better. More satisfying, in a way. This time it was just something that I ingested that tasted really sweet.  Since  I’m not big on sweets, it wasn’t that great. *shrug*

I didn’t finish it, which is also an achievement for me. I often feel this ridiculous pressure to finish things that I buy to eat. When it’s something crappy I have from my school dining hall or something that I  have cooked myself that I can put more for leftovers, finishing isn’t that big of a deal. But when I buy something when I’m out, I always feel like I HAVE to finish it, cause even if I take it home, it won’t taste the same.

A couple of things of note. As I was eating the ice cream, I did start craving something salty. Like pizza. Always pizza.

Finished about 3/4 of it

Anyway, there’s the rest of it.

I don’t really feel guilty about this because I learned from it. I wouldn’t say ice cream is something that is off my menu forever and ever, but it may just be something that I will remember wasn’t as good as I thought it was, and therefore not waste my money on it anymore.

I didn’t really have any after-effects, largely because I didn’t binge. I did go home and promptly fall asleep for 2 hours, but I think that has more to do with my period than the dairy. lawl.

Deuces,

Gina

P.S. Looking at the advertisements for hamburgers in DQ had no appeal to me at all, even though I used to LOVE DQ hamburgers.

Taking Back Ownership of my Food

I mentioned the other day that I hadn’t really had time to get innovative with my food. Between being sick and being overloaded with work, I have taken to the “bake some chicken and fix a salad” approach to my meals. However, that has sorta disassociated me with what I’m eating. Essentially, I went from cooking every night to barely cooking at all.  I decided last night that it was time for me to re-invest in cooking, looking up recipes, and getting innovative.

I knew I wanted chicken (cause that’s about all I have), so I went to this website I found called Paleo Plan that has a massive list of recipes. I pulled one that was creatively named “Garlic chicken, red peppers, and mushroom sauce.” I decided that that was a woefully pathetic name, so I renamed and modified it:

Paleo-Friendly Fajita (sans tortilla)

I didn’t decide to name it this until after I ate it, and decided that it tasted a lot like what would belong in a fajita. In fact, it was reminiscent of fajita my brother used to make. Tasty.

I’m gonna relay the recipe to you as I modified it, but feel free to click on the link and find out the original way to do it

Ingredients

• 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts (4P)
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• salt and pepper
• chili powder
• 6 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 medium white onion
• 1 red pepper
• 1/2 cup milk

After having eaten this, the milk is pretty freaking optional. It’s supposed to fuse with the peppers and onions and create a “sauce,” but it was so thin that it just sorta dregged at the bottom and looked like juice more than anything else. Also, for those of you who can eat nuts without dying, almond milk is a good substitute.

One more notes. The recipe calls for one clove of garlic, but my motto is why have one clove:

Why have one when you can have six?

Directions

Because I had to defrost the chicken, I ended up doing that first, BUT, if you have pre-defrosted chicken, here’s how I would go.

1. Cut up chicken into BITE SIZE pieces. Mix the olive oil, chili powder (to taste), and garlic together in a bowl, and stir it all together. Marinade for 30 min – 1 hr
   Quick note: the marinade doesn’t look like much, but if you manage to mix it all up, it’ll get marinaded pretty well.
2. While your chicken is marinading, cut up your onion and red pepper in whatever sizes you like. Bite size is generally the best way to go about it:
   

   I like my peppers nice and long...

3. Sautee onions until brown, throwing in the peppers for the last few minutes or so.
4. Once your chicken is done marinating, pan fry or sear it until done.
5. Pour in your milk (if you want it) and keep the veggies and milk over low-med heat until the juices and milk seep together.
6. Once chicken is done, combine chicken and veggies together. Nom with pleasure.

Noms.

I had this last night with the magic salad. I think the peppers in the main dish with the vinegar in the salad didn’t get along well, so I didn’t really finish the salad. The experiment of the main dish, though, was a success. Here are some other pictures from my cooking adventures.

The Pepper was a little old, so I was afraid of it...

I like cutting vegetables.

Weigh-in # 6

Weighing in has become a weird ritual for me. As I’ve mentioned previously, I weigh in on both Mondays and Tuesdays, just to be sure things are right. And here’s how my weighing-in sessions typically go.

1) Step on Scale
2) Frown
3) Step off Scale
4) Make sure scale is zeroed correctly
5) Step back on scale
(repeat first five steps, may throw in a nose-blow or bathroom-use)
6) Squint
7) Call Anthony in to read the scale
8) Anthony makes rough estimate
9) Step off scale
10) Move scale to different spot on the floor (step added by Suzie)
11) Step on scale
12) Squint
13) Repeat until get the same measurement twice.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how it goes down.

I think once I get myself financially upright again, I will invest in a digital scale of some sort. Having a bit of certainty — and not having to squint to see the  numbers — would be really helpful. This whole dial scale thing is just not working. Or I could at least get a scale with a bigger dial…

Anyway, another 2.5 pounds lost.

167.5 lbs as of 2/15/2011. Or so I am telling myself. lol

Part of the reason why my posts have been so bland lately is that I’ve sorta settled into a routine of cooking. I eat a LOT of baked chicken, and I scrounge around at Agnes for food that I can eat. I haven’t really had the time, energy, or money to get innovative with  my food. Rest assured, though, if I do make something new, I will keep you guys updated.

There is one last thing that I wanted to talk about today, and to do so we will watch a video.

If you haven’t seen Get Smart, first of all, you should. Cause it’s awesome. Secondly, the movie revolves around the main character, Max Smart. Prior to the timeline of the movie, Max was severely obese and has lost that weight. When things start to go badly during the movie, and Max is in jail, he has a dream that he is fat again, and literally becomes an animal, a slave to his passions (to use the philosopher’s language) for food.

The scene is meant to be comedic, as making fun of fat people is the most PC way to be an asshole in society these days. However, it definitely has been hitting home with me a lot lately, and it has stayed in the forefont of my mind.

Even though I have made and will continue to make great progress, sometimes that fear sneaks up that I will hop on the scale and see 185 again, as if these past few weeks have been nothing more than a dream, or that my scale has just broken. I also fear that I will hit that brick wall and not be able to go anywhere.

It’s not an acute, subconscious fear like Max has, and I certainly haven’t had dreams about being fat and becoming a bitch to cake. However, it is something that has been nagging at me, and almost every time I step on that scale I’m somewhat afraid of what I will see.

I’m not sure if it’s something I will be able to shake, at least for a while. I will have to see.

I guess I need to relinquish this computer to the professor who has made it very plain that this is his territory.

Peace,

Gina