Category Archives: tips that may or may not be helpful

whole30, day 16: i only kind of know what i’m doing

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Eating healthfully isn’t yet engrained in my head. I have slip ups and cheat days and blatant “I will eat what I want because I am a big girl” moments, which are always (every. single. time) followed with a feeling of dread, physical discomfort, and guilt. It continues to happen, though the instances are fewer and farther between since beginning the Whole30.

I do my best to set myself up for success.
There is precious little in the house that is bad for me. We have a gigantic thing of peanut butter which is easy to resist because it’s for the dog (we stuff his Kong with peanut butter and treats and freeze it, leaving it with him when we go). There are some cereals on the top shelf of the pantry which are probably expired by now. There are no sweets. My home is a safe, safe place full of things that are good for me and Whole30 approved.

Work is a really unsafe place.
With regards to food, that is. There is a constant stream of doughnuts, cookies, cake (it’s always someone’s birthday), lattes, and candy. It’s Girl Scout cookie season so there are stupid boxes of cookies everywhere, and I had some yesterday, right after I finished posting my “SUGAR IS POISON AND I WILL NOT EAT IT ANYMORE!” entry. Because I am a hypocrite of epic proportions. And Thin Mints are fucking delicious.

Willpower is a lot of stinking work.
Instead of being cool and calm and collected when faced with something I cannot eat, I instead go through a weird mental process that starts with “Self, do not eat that!” and finishes with me wiping crumbs off of my scrub top. My resolve went out the window on Day 8 and I don’t know how to get it back. Jillian Michaels said that willpower is like a muscle, and recently that muscle has not been worked out too terribly hard. Giving in to one temptation does not have to mean giving into every single one I encounter, especially when those things aren’t really temptations or I don’t necessarily want them.

This is not an all-or-nothing thing.
Maybe the Whole30 is, and if that’s true, then I have failed. But weight loss and overall health is NOT do-or-die. I must come to grips with the fact that sometimes I will not be on point; sometimes I will screw up royally but that doesn’t mean my entire day (or week) is shot. I am learning to eat more good than bad. It’s taking a lot longer than I thought it would and the struggle is purely mental. In one day I stopped smoking and eating terribly and at first it was okay. At first I was awesome. Now that the novelty has worn off it is not so fun and I do not always enjoy eating well all the time. I get cranky and start craving sugar when I want nicotine, so the two things might be related with regarding to the hormones that both of those activities release. It is kind of a battle, one that I do not want to fight or even really want to talk about because I feel a bit lame admitting that I cannot even lay off sugar for two solid weeks.

There is progress amidst the shit storm.
Every day for years I took at least 5 Tums a day. I could not travel without them because my heartburn was so awful. The little pocket in my purse was permanently the chalky, pastel color because I would need to throw a handful in there before going anywhere. I needed them after drinking alcohol, after eating anything with grains in it, after eating salad… basically after eating in general. Heartburn would wake me up in the middle of the night. It would start during sex. I had it constantly for at least five years. I’m surprised I still have an esophagus.

I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve needed Tums in the past sixteen days: the time after I ate the doughnuts, and the time after I drank the wine. I can eat spicy curry and salad and vinegar without any symptoms at all.

My pants are too big. I’m so, so close to being able to fit into the next smallest jean size. I can fit into them but there’s a bit of a muffin top issue going on, but they BUTTON. And ZIP. Without me LAYING DOWN ON THE BED AND SUCKING IN AND CURSING A LOT.

I enjoy the taste of vegetables. Specifically carrots. Perhaps it was because my smoking dulled my tastebuds or I was on sugar overload, but vegetables never tasted really great to me. I ate them because they weren’t the worst things ever, but now I eat carrots for fun. It’s pretty great.


This is a life-long process.
I spent the last tenish years or so developing really poor eating habits, and this behavior will not change over the course of thirty days. Obviously. But little by little I can see measurable progress. I really need to stop focusing on the times I mess up and encourage myself by remembering the times I didn’t mess up, or the times I regained traction after I did eat poorly. I need to remember that I can do this and how good I feel when I have a great day of on-track eating.

whole30, day 13: restricted

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The Whole30 is rigid and inflexible.

I love it.

Left to my own devises I have very little self control. I mean, I have some. I lost twenty pounds via counting calories. That’s all about control. But I’m discovering more and more that I need clear-cut boundaries in order to succeed. I am very task-oriented and don’t do well with abstract concepts like “clean your room” or “eat healthy food.” I need straightforward instructions, such as “dust the dresser” and “don’t eat dairy.”

I am operating well within the confines of the Whole30 regiment, though there have been some slip ups with less than desirable bodily consequences (dairy: gas; donuts: heartburn; wine: no effect. Woohoo!). I gave into temptation and I’m glad for it; it turned off the little voice in my head that told me I would feel better if I ate it.

Better than what? First of all, I felt pretty great as I was. Second of all, I do not consider tooting for the duration of the day “better.” I do not consider heartburn “better.” Eating the processed food turned the voice off, but I felt worse, physically, than I had in a week. It wasn’t worth it but I learned from it. I’m kind of glad that I cheated, all things considered. It absolutely took away the temptation to do it again and it gave me a look at how far I’ve come in such a short amount of time.

whole30, day 6: what we eat

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I researched the Whole30 about two weeks before I started it to know exactly what I was getting myself into. The bottom line: lots of vegetables. Some fruit. Some meat, mostly grass-fed and organic. Good fats, like those found in nuts (not peanuts, which are technically legumes. The more you know!) and avocado. But yeah. Vegetables. Mass amounts of the green, leafy goodness.

The resources for recipes are plentiful, and while I was a little ambivalent about the lack of grain or legume in anything, the food is great because it’s fresh, well-prepared, and nutritious.

Wednesday, the start of our Whole30 endeavor, I wanted to start with a bang. I made pork shoulder for dinner, which we ate out of bowls like animals. For lunch the next day I packed us a salad with the leftover pork on top of it. Delicious. Dinner that night was fish with veggies; the next night we had a Mexican dish that consisted of ground up chicken and spices on top of a bed of crisp lettuce, topped with yummy guacamole. We eat better now than we did when we before, probably because we’re limited and thus forced to be creative.

We’ll go grocery shopping once a week. Fresh food tends to not have the shelf life of processed food. We’ve already gone through two dozen eggs, four heads of broccoli, six bags of salad, a head of cauliflower, and two bags of mini carrots. Despite both of us being sick we manage to have dinner together every night and talk about our day. I like that part. There’s usually enough left over for lunch the next day, and even though I used to be opposed to leftovers, these aren’t horrible.

There is lots of prep work involved. I’m taking food from close to its main state and trying to coerce dinner out of it, and that’s kind of difficult when there is no packaged mix telling me exactly which methods to employ. I have found many recipes online (thanks, Google) but I’m not used to using recipes for every. single. dinner I prepare. It’s a big adjustment, but hopefully an adjustment that’s worth it.

whole30, day 3: it’s not hard (yet)

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The biggest adjustment is breakfast. I’m not enthusiastic about breakfast time. Breakfast food is my favorite and has been for a very long time. Now I just eat eggs. It’s very uninspired. I suppose that’s my own fault.

* * * * * *

I’ve been sick for the past ten days with some viral sinus infection that won’t leave me the hell alone. The doctors I work with have assured me I’m not dying and this is perfectly normal but I’m really hesitant to believe them. I know they went to med school and stuff but my head of chock full of snot. That has to mean something, right?
“Yes. It means you have a viral sinus infection.”

I highly recommend starting a Whole30 when you’re sick. You can sleep right through the “I-feel-so-deprived-without-my-coffee-creamer” part and emerge on the “What-is-in-that-bowl-it-doesn’t-matter-put-it-in-my-mouth-hole” part. In that way you can easily consume a dinner of nothing but shredded pork and be completely satisfied.

our professional bed

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We built a bed, folks. Specifically, we built this bed. Specificallyer, Jason built the bed and I stood around and constantly asked him if he needed help. He didn’t, and I’m not sure the result would be so great if I had so much as picked up a paintbrush.

Done.

It started because Garrett and Emily were coming and needed a place to sleep while they visited. Instead of getting a whole new bed and frame for a guests, we got a new bed for ourselves and we put our old bed in the guest room. We’re very generous.

We looked around for a bed and frame for our new bed, but that stuff is really expensive. If it were made out of gold then fine, spend $1600 for a new bed frame. Or maybe if we’d had some more money to throw towards new furniture. It would have been easier, that’s for sure. Instead, we opted to buy a mattress and box spring and make the bed.

We began by finding plans online. We read them and reread them, then read them just once more to make sure this was within the scope of our knowledge. Because we didn’t a saw, we took the cut list to Home Depot and they made all of the cuts for us. We also picked up some things we didn’t have, such as wood putty and finishing screws.

It cost us about $160 in materials (we already had the paint) to make the bed. That’s it. Jason was out in the garage for a while when we got off of work, and spent a few hours there on the weekends. While we didn’t get it up in time for Garrett and Emily’s visit, it’s up now. And it’s beautiful. Upon seeing it, I squealed “It’s a professional bed!” As if our bed had been at amateur status just to give the Olympics a whirl. What I meant was that it looked like a professional bed maker had made the bed instead of my husband. I mean, he’s an Eagle Scout so I should have known it would all be alright.

Things To Note:
1) Wood is super porous. There are two coats of primer and four coats of paint on the bed. There was a treatment (the wood conditioner, I believe) that we could have done to the wood to make it less porous but because we were all gung-ho and thought we would have it done by the end of December, we didn’t do it. I kind of wish we had.

2) Caulk is our best friend. We painted our bed white, and because of the aforementioned paint-sucking issue that the wood had, there were a few places, namely between the planks, where the paint just kind of disappeared. Enter caulk. We caulked between the boards, let it dry, and then put another coat of paint on. There are no longer any gaps.

3) This was our first project and we still have a lot to learn. We had no idea it would take this long. Maybe if we had conditioned the wood the process could have been a little less time consuming, especially with regard to the zillion layers of primer and paint.

4) I have said this about a million times, but take some pictures of the process. We took none (surprise, surprise). Even though the building of the bed isn’t necessarily difficult (those plans are so straight forward), it would have been nice to look at the whole thing taking shape. Alas.

Building the bed has started a DIY fever within us. We now have plans for floor-to-ceiling bookcases, end tables, and crown moulding that we’re dreaming of building, as well as repainting and reknobing a dresser we bought. It’s fun, and the pride Jason feels over having built the bed makes me want to go build something now. I won’t, though. I will need constant supervision. Power tools scare the crap out of me.

things to think about before getting a puppy

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If I had read this list before getting a puppy it probably wouldn’t have changed my mind at all because, well, PUPPY, so I know that no one will really find this list by Googling “things to think about before getting a puppy.” There is nothing thinking about anything before getting a puppy. People will say “Think about this!” or “Just so you know…” and it will go in one ear and out the other, because, well, PUPPY.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned over the past three months. When you do cave to the cuteness of a puppy, come back and look at this list three months afterwards. Everything I say will ring true, and you will think “If only I had listened!” BUT YOU DIDN’T SO YOU DESERVE IT. But not really. I don’t blame you. Puppy cuteness hypnotizes even the most well-meaning among us.

You will get bitten. A lot. The dog bit me consistently for a good two and a half months. I had bruises everywhere: stomach, arms, legs, feet, and hands. It was puppy biting but he wouldn’t stop and always wanted to play, so my skin bore the brunt of his determination. If you are going to get a puppy, get one without teeth.

Speaking of teeth: the puppy will lose his teeth all at once. Hurley lost his teeth over the span of a week. It started one afternoon when he and Jason were playing tug and Jason noticed the rope was bloody. It freaking him out because he thought he was playing too rough with the dog, but no! The dog was just losing his sharp little dagger teeth! He would do this thing where he would chew on my arm, but it was differently than the other times he tried to bite it off. It seemed like he was using my arm to force his loose teeth out of his head and hey! That’s exactly what the hell he was trying to do! Thanks for the bloody arm!

Big dogs = big poops. Even though they are puppies, big puppy poops are bigger than small puppy poops. Plan accordingly.

They are cutest when they are sleeping or doing the little head tilt or otherwise staying still. I have called my dog every name in the book, from “STUPID MOTHERFUCKING DOG” to “a precious little angel of adorableness.” The more life-affirming names come when he is sleeping, all curled in a little ball of fluff right next to me. The more adult names were reserved for times when he was biting me or zooming everywhere or barking for no discernible reason.

Dogs bark. This, like every other thing on the list, varies by individual dog. If you enjoy peace and quiet and order in your life, do not (I repeat: DO NOT) get a puppy. Apparently dogs can be trained to not bark, but I have tried everything short of clipping his vocal cords and he persists with the barking.

They will destroy everything they see if it’s on their level. If you do not want your puppy to chew your shit into oblivion, get it off the floor. We used to have our laundry in a regular laundry basket, but have since moved it into a closet because the dog would not leave the socks alone. By keeping our clothes on the ground near him we were setting him up for failure. Sure, he had to learn boundaries, but it was up to us to make sure he could successfully reach those boundaries. Also I was tired of my socks being holey. He still gets into things–he particularly loves the remote control–but has calmed down a lot since he’s gotten older.

They will grow out of it. The biting, the chewing, the rambunctious running around ALL OF THE TIME WILL YOU PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF CHEESE JUST STOP… it will all calm down one day. We got Hurley when he was three months old and he is now seven months old. I can say with absolute confidence that I thought about giving him away about four thousand times. I remember a very vivid conversation I had while on the phone with the PetSmart trainer: I was calling to sign him up for obedience classes and he was jumping and biting and barking and running, and I was sobbing. The woman on the other end of the phone, completely used to this type of phone call, I suppose, laughed. Clearly she had no idea how terrible my life was. That’s the only reason I can come up with for her to have laughed at my misery. But no. She laughed because she had been there. She had been to that place where she would have left her dog on a corner in a dangerous part of town with no hesitation. She had been there, begging her dog to just sleep, to quit biting, to just lay the hell down for two seconds so she can poop in peace.

I’m glad I didn’t give up on the dog. He’s (more or less) a joy. He still has his moments of getting on my stinking nerves, but I’m so thankful I dug deep into the center of myself and had the patience to stick it out. He was worth it.

Is there anything I’ve missed?

menu planning

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December kind of got away from us in terms of eating well and sticking to our budget. We ate exactly one meal at home when Garrett and Emily were here, which means we a) spent more than we’d planned and b) consumed more than we’d planned.

Enter the reinstatement of the weekly meal planning. The goal of the plan is three fold: 1) create a workable meal plan so grocery expenses are kept to a minimum; 2) decrease portion sizes and calorie intake; 3) use more whole foods in our meals so the calories we do eat are nutritious.

The internet is a great resource for menu planning templates, but I use the tried and true “write it on a piece of paper and stick it to the fridge” technique. Everyone knows what’s for dinner that way, so they either have something to look forward to or have some time to think of excuses to eat something else.

I start by thinking of the week ahead in terms of which meals will be eaten at home and if we have plans to go out. Tuesdays are always Life Group so dinners will have to be quick. Thank goodness for the crock pot and bagged salads.

Other things to take into consideration: the preferences of the people for which you are cooking. I love tomato soup but Jason hates the consistency, which means that leek and potato soup, any winter squash soup, and (sadly) tomato soup are out of the question for dinners. That does not mean I can’t make them and take them to work with me for lunch, however, and while I’ve never actually done that, it’s nice to know it’s an option.

So we begin.
First I scour the internet and cookbooks for dinner ideas that look tasty. I also pull from old standbys and regular dishes. I try not to incorporate too many new meals into the plan. There’s a sort of comfort that comes from eating the familiar.

This week we will have:
Monday night: grilled salmon; broccoli
Tuesday night: bagged salad
Wednesday night: fajitas
Thursday night: spaghetti with ground turkey
Friday night: shrimp over spinach and couscous
Saturday night: roasted chicken and wild mushroom risotto with peas

After making the dinner menu (and running it by my husband), I make a lunch menu. I am a creature of habit and thus my lunch menu isn’t very varied. Usually I eat salad, though in the winter time I’m all about soup. Sometimes I throw in a Lean Cuisine or, even more rarely, leftovers. This week I only see one time I can eat leftovers (Friday I will eat Thursday’s spaghetti), so I will be purchasing many cans of soup.

Then I compose the shopping list based only on what we will eat that week, including any pantry staples of which we’ve run out (note to self: DO NOT FORGET THE OLIVE OIL). This cuts down on impulse shopping and wasted ingredients. If I only buy what I need, there is no chance that a wayward zucchini will get all leaky and brown in the back of the crisper drawer.

Repeat this process once a week, every week. It can be arduous at first, but it is so worth it to cut down on the stress of wondering what’s for dinner. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you can do a month at a time and can cut the grocery shopping down to once every two weeks (though the menu might have to be altered so you can use all of the fresh fruits and veggies before they spoil).

What about you? Do you plan your meals or just stand in front of the refrigerator and decide what to eat half an hour before it’s feeding time?

the two week break

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I have gained two pounds in the last two weeks and haven’t quite mustered up the motivation to start counting calories again. I’m living my life the way an “after” would, though I’m clearly a “before.” Hence the weight gain.

Something I noticed when I wasn’t counting calories was how, most of the time, I made an okay choice. I rarely gorged, I ate salad (it was with a slice of pizza, but hey! Salad!), we exercised (snowboarding, walking around Redwood National Park, ice skating). Obviously I didn’t make the greatest of choices (cough cough, caramelandwalnutapple cough, cough) but I’m okay with the weight I did gain. Maybe.

I feel different. I’ve read a zillion blogs and magazine articles and books that say that if one eats like shit, one tends to feel like shit. I never realized how unshitty I felt over the last three months until maybe about a week ago, when I felt really blah. I felt like my old self, which is a phrase people use to denote a renewed sense of energy and mirth, though I’m using it to let you know that I felt bloated and gross.

I felt like that because I had been eating salty, fatty foods. Lesson: learned. Crap begets crap. It’s not that I shouldn’t eat anything salty and fatty–they are delicious!–but perhaps eating them four nights in a row is pushing it a wee bit. A very big wee bit.

* * * * *

I added some resolutions to the navigation bar! Did you make resolutions this year? I hope so. Lists are so fun.

bra talk

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Every year my aunt sends me a gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret, and every year it sits in my wallet until I remember that I have it, and then I spend it on things that aren’t underwear and never use the entire thing. One year I bought three lip glosses. The year before that I got new perfume. Each time I stuck the gift card in my wallet without a second thought, which would stop happening if I just cleaned out my wallet once every, uh, ever.

I hate trying on clothes, folks. I find it uncomfortable and am always really scared that the building will spontaneously catch on fire and I’ll have to flee the dressing room clad only in socks and a pair of ill-fitting jeans. The lighting is always horrible, making every blemish on my face stand out all at once. It’s disconcerting, really, and so I rarely enter fitting rooms. I really enjoy looking around, though. Browsing is a wonderful past time.

I needed a bra. The bra I was sporting was saggy in weird places and tight in others. No amount of adjusting would make it feel like it fit. It reminded me of the “glasses up, hair down” a la Gob Bluth/Kitty: regardless of the combination, nothing worked. Straps tighter, back hooks more loose; back hooks tighter, straps more loose. Any way sucked.

On the 26th we took the dog to get groomed and had some time to kill, so we went to the mall. We browsed a few different stores before I remembered I had a gift card to Victoria’s Secret. Jason was less than thrilled to be in there: no wifi, nowhere to sit. It’s really not suited for the men that get dragged along and while I understand it’s a store full of women’s underthings, it started out as a discreet store for men who wanted to buy their women lingerie. What gives, Victoria’s Secret? Just put a fucking bench somewhere so I can look around without the loud sighing of my husband!

Anyway.

I grabbed some bras that I thought were my size and decided to try them on, because buying a $42 piece of underwear without trying that sucker on is ridiculous. I was greeting by a perky (but not overly annoying) clerk who asked me if I’d ever been fitted for a bra. I had not, though I had heard that I should be lest my boobs get sad and stretchy and frumpy. Like tube socks with nickles in the bottom. Who wants tube sock boobs? Hoist those puppies up!

The experience wasn’t horrible at all, once I got over standing in a room in just jeans and a bra and a mirror-facing door. I tried on 5 different styles in three different sizes until I found one that made my chest look like the 8th wonder of the world. I bought two colors, and between the three gift cards I ended up spending zero dollars. It was a pretty good deal, all things considered.

Unless you’re my husband. In which case: sorry about that, love.

land of the living

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I’ve spent the past two days holed up in the house with some weird cough/cold/congestion thing, and if you’ve never spent a day home sick with your 5 month old puppy, let me assure you that it is not a sick day and you will probably hate him two hours in. There was a lot of barking and “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, DOG?”ing and jumping and biting (my arm looks like someone grabbed me really hard, but no. It’s just my dog) and “STOOOOOOP IIIIIIIIIT”ing and finally giving up and just sitting there while he licks my nose drippings (having a dog isn’t pretty, folks).

The next day, the pinnacle of my sickness, I left the dog outside all day and slept until noon. I felt a little guilty but knew I could not look after him like a Good Dog Owner, so he stayed outside to frolic in the sunshine while I slept like a log (thanks, Nyquil!) and then ate half a sandwich. And also watched Scrubs. And then napped some more. It was glorious.

I’m back now. There’s still snot coming out of my face holes and I have to stop moving when I get the urge to cough because it racks my entire body, but I don’t sound like a man anymore and I can remain upright for longer than five seconds at a time so I count that as progress.