Lace Curtain Top

This is a spur of the moment outfit - I wanted to wear the skirt - it's from Sears and I got it on sale last year I think but haven't worn it yet.  And I had a lace top found on the same trip as yesterday's disk necklace.  Big J hates it, but I am already thinking it will go with lots of stuff. 

I call it my lace curtain top because the material looks like something you would find on a curtain, only grey. It has an elastic waist and I think it might've been lovingly home-made since there are no tags.

The scarf was a last minute addition - I was on the train and my neck was cold and it just happened to be the scarf that was in my purse.  I think it turned out quite well - adds some colour to an otherwise monochrome outfit.  Had I styled it myself, conservative-dresser me would've done the matchy-matchy same colour thing and it would've looked less interesting.

For a couple of days now, I've been putting milk in my tea (instead of drinking it asian style with nothing) and I think it's causing me to bloat up.  I felt very tummy conscious today and am not sure if it was the skirt I wore or the tea.

Although I actually feel heavier than a few days ago, the good news is, due to the tummy bloat I weighed myself and am now down to 155 and a half pounds!  Yay!

Two Healthy, One Notso

It's Wednesday! and we are long overdue for a weight loss post, I haven't been actively trying to lose - just trying to eat fewer potato chips and more fruit and veggies.

But today, I had two healthy meals (methinks) and one not so healthy.  The day started with a cup of tea - Earl Grey, black and some cereal.  It doesn't look very good in the photo since I mixed it a bit before taking the picture - but it was yummy.

 

The strawberry-kiwi idea I stole from my Mom - we had that with our cereal in Spain.

Unfortunately lunch was a satisfying but not so healthy mortadella and pickle on sourdough sandwich and 4 leftover gyozas.  I had a strange dream last night of tons of oversized people slathering butter on their bread, so made sure to use very little.

Then for dinner, a high protein meal of chicken breast, chickpeas, shrimp, tomatoes and a few olives.  No dressing or sauce, but yummy.

Yes, it's the same bowl - I did wash it though.

Today's healthy snacks: 2 yogurts and 2 bananas (for my potassium levels)
Beverages today were: Earl Grey tea, green tea, water with lemon

So to end the day, I did a weigh-in and was pleasantly surprised to see that I am down 5 pounds from my initial weight! Now at 158, so another 28 pounds to go to reach 130 which is my doctor's recommendation.

I am hoping to lose a bit faster over the summer months:

• more heat = less eating
• more body conscious clothing = less likely to want to eat
• better weather = urge to go for walks

Today, I'm linking to Wednesday Whites and Welcome Wednesday.

Portion Size

One of the big barriers to weight loss is portion size - especially if you go out to eat.  They give you so much food that you are stuffed to the gills.  I read that someone recently had a heart-attack while eating a "Triple Bypass Burger" a huge burger loaded with meat, cheese and calories.

We are so accustomed to eating big portions that we don't know what a real serving looks like. Serving sizes are actually much smaller than as served in most restaurants.

Here is the Canada Food Guide for how much of each type of food to eat:

But, how big is a serving?  It turns out that servings are actually quite small.

A serving of cheese for example is only 1.5 ounces.  That's about 4 or 5 small little cubes:

I could eat way more cheese than this!

A serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards or the palm of your hand.

Included a penny for size reference

And a bagel is like having 5 servings of bread !!!

Veggies though you should eat lots of. So go crazy.  I'm not sure, but I think veggies are better than fruit because fruit can be sweet.

Drinking Water

It's Wednesday, so a weight-loss post.  I'm still hesitant to do a weigh-in - afraid that there will be no progress.  They say it is much easier to maintain weight than to lose it.

Years ago, a friend wanted to lose weight and she was always overly pre-occupied with the amount of water she drank.  She thought that the more water you drank the more you weighed.  This is probably true: if you drink 2 litres of water and then weigh yourself, you would likely weigh more - about a small container of milk more.

Fast forward to now and we know that water is good for you and that you should actually drink more rather than less.  I've always been a person who doesn't drink much of any liquid - small bladder.  But I do get dizzy and light-headed a lot which people say is due to dehydration.

Picture from: www.mangosteen-natural-remedies.com

So, I'm trying to drink more water.  It's supposed to help with weight loss if you drink a glass or even two before each meal by making you feel full before you even start to eat. 

Robbie Burns Day

It's weight-loss Wednesday and I thought I'd post about the importance of fibre for example: oatmeal.

But first, here is my nod to Robbie Burns Day:

This is the Dress Stewart Tartan

I have a red turtle neck under the holey pullover.  Still have to wear red for the rest of the week for Chinese New Year.

Now back to fibre: Fibre is very important for weight loss because it makes you feel full.  It's hard to digest, in fact I think we don't really digest it, so it passes through your system keeping you regular and taking along any bad toxins with it.  Also because it fills you up, you don't get hungry as fast and end up eating less.

There are lots of ways to get fibre in your diet:

• Oatmeal (my favourite), but not the instant nuke-it oatmeal, you have to use those big flakes, the ones you need to cook.  I usually add dried fruit to it and have gradually reduced the brown sugar so now I don't need any sugar at all.
• Switch from white bread to a whole grain or "squirelly" bread.  They say white bread is very bad for you, it has almost no nutritional value and makes a lumpy paste in your stomache.  I love white bread so this one is very hard for me to do.
• Use whole wheat pasta instead of plain pasta
• Eat lots of fruits and veggies.  Whenever possible, eat the fruit/veggie instead of drinking it.  More fibre.

One guy at my workplace lost 40 pounds! over the course of several months by having a daily bowl of oatmeal and eating more sensibly the rest of the time.

So, eat your fibre.  Even if you don't want to lose weight, fibre is good for you.

Woe is the Wii :(

The weight-loss project has ground to a screeching halt.  The Wii is dead.  It was working this morning but does not turn on anymore.  No more blue light.  No more Wii-fit.   No more old episodes of Stargate or X-Files on Netflix while using the elliptical trainer.  I can still do the waist exercises, but that's about it. Sigh. Big J will take a look at it tomorrow but it doesn't look good.

It's weight-loss Wednesday, and today's topic is snacking.  You would think that snacking is a bad thing, but it's actually the other way round.  They say you should eat every few hours.  It keeps the edge off and prevents you from eating huge meals.

But, you have to also watch what you eat: raw veggies are good.  They fill you up, are great finger food so you can eat it at your desk (we computer people live at our desks), and they make that satisfying crunch sound.  They are also low-cal as long as you don't cover them in dip.

Yum! A plate of rabbit food!

Believe it or not, my fave is celery sticks.  I could eat them by the ton.  Raw veggies are also good because they are easy to carry.  Just throw some in a plastic baggie and you're done.  They don't leak and don't weigh much.  They also take quite a bit of time to eat because you have to munch and crunch.  You can't just wolf down baby carrots.

I've been reading about people who go on raw food diets and while I don't think I could go for months (or even weeks) eating only raw food, I'd like to try a day or two.   Has anyone tried this? 

Not Fruit Cake !

Well, yesterday Big J, the kids and I all had a lovely dinner out which put me about a day behind in the weight loss fight.  We went to a Greek restaurant and although I had grilled kalamari, we also had Greek salad, fried kalamari, prawns, dessert and wine.

So, in order to get back on track, today would have to be a fewer calories than normal day.  It was going well until I decided I'd better eat some of the fruit cake before it goes bad.  I'm a big fruit cake fan and cut myself a huge slice.  But it is not all bad.

While trying to determine the number of calories in fruit cake, (I decided it was 500), I stumbled on this garage band:

Apparently there is a huge fruit cake festival every year in a small little town in eastern California called Independence, and this band will often play there.  The festival has a different theme each year like "Fruit Cakes in Space".

Fruit cakes are a love 'em or hate 'em kind of food and it's nice that there is a festival to celebrate this holiday food.

Tell Everyone

Yep, wore this today

It's Weight-loss Wednesday again, but I also included an outfit pic.  You can't really tell, but it was so cold, I wore 2 pairs of tights - a greenish one under the brown.  I thought it would be more visible but the pattern on the brown tights must've been too close.

This morning they had a short program about quitting smoking on the morning radio show.  The doctor said when you quit smoking, you have to tell everyone so that you can build up a support network.

Now I don't smoke, but I thought the same could apply to losing weight.  If you tell everyone your goals, you'll automatically have a lot more people helping you.  A guy at work has been trying to lose weight and to eat healthier foods.  And since he's told everyone, we don't pressure him to eat dessert etc at company lunches.

I've been using the Lose It online calorie tracking tool for about a week now and can see right away that I am eating a little too much for weight loss.  The culprit is all the leftover cake and chocolates from Christmas.

So today, I am making a conscious effort to keep my intake below the allowance.

I still few a bit hungry, but am going to ignore it.  I probably could've eaten more except for the high-calorie microwaveable lunch I had which has gone onto my don't buy again list.

It was tasty and convenient but expensive ($4.99 regular price). It was also over-packaged: a plastic basket inside a plastic bowl wrapped in plastic and cardboard.  Never again.  Not very environmentally friendly. 

Losing It

Well it's weekend again, so a post about weight loss.  I just signed up for an on-line calorie tracking site.  You enter how much weight you want to lose and then track your daily calorie consumption.

It was a choice between 1 or 1/2 lb per week.  The others 2, 3 pounds per week were out of the question - too dangerous plus I like food too much.  I chose the 1 lb because the 1/2 pound took me past my end date of March 31, 2013 (see the Layoff Counter on the right side bar).

Then, every day you just enter what you eat and it tracks it for you and tells you how many calories you have left to eat.

Who used up all my calories?

As long as you stay under your calorie budget, you can lose weight.  It also lets you enter your exercise activities, and you can track your weight loss on a chart.

Going nowhere fast!

The only thing is that not all types of foods are in the system, so you might have to guestimate the sizes.  It really makes you think about what you are eating.

You can go back to previous days and see how your eating habits have changed over the months.


They say that logging food intake into these on-line counters is a great addition to the weight loss arsenal so I'm hoping that this will keep me on track.

Wednesday Weigh-In

Well it's Wednesday which is weight loss day.  I'm not expecting much progress what with Christmas, food, chocolates, more food, cookies, still more food and so on.  Here is a mussel/prawn dish from a dinner.  

I'm not sure if I'll make this again. The poor little mussels are alive and get killed by the boiling liquid.  My pot is also not quite big enough, you really need a giant stock pot.  It was tasty though, and the family ate it all.

Anyway, back to Weight-Loss Wednesday:  today's weigh-in was 161, which is down two lbs from last time, but again I think it is due to time of day etc.  I did get in 2 sessions with the elliptical trainer (and 2 episodes of Stargate!).

I don't have a pic of the scale, it's solar, so is very difficult to capture in a photo.  You have to give it enough light to run, and then when you hunch over it to get a photo, it blocks the light, and the display goes.

So instead, since I was dressed already:

It's soggy out, but warm

As you can see by the pic, today is quite mild for winter here. But "Winter is Coming" (a Game of Thrones reference for the sci-fi/fantasy fans).  And here is my scrunchie for today:

This was made from one of those 25 cent pieces of fabric from my favourite notions store.  I made it years ago to pile up wet hair in my swimsuit-wearing days to go with a favourite swimsuit.  Those days are long gone, but the scrunchie is still useful.

Going Up?

Well it's Wednesday, so it should be Weight Loss Wednesday but as you can see by the pic, the weight loss is still not going very well.  Here is the weight right now:

Perhaps the weight loss project will have to wait until after Christmas.  There are just too many things going on!   Now it looks like I've gained since the weight is higher than in the last weigh-in, but I don't think that's actually the case.  I am usually very steady (same weight for years). This weigh-in is right after dinner wearing my regular work clothes and clunky nuk-nuks, whereas the last one was in the morning while wearing PJs.

Here is a shot of the clothes:

Lots of layers today - it was around zero degrees - everything was frozen.  See the polka-dot top?  I have in mind a possible refashion of sorts for it.  The top is two layers: navy blue with sheer dots over a beige-y under layer which makes up the dots.  It's the beige-y under layer which I think can be replaced with an under layer of a different colour.  Just wondering how to do it without wrecking the top as it's flimsy.

New Old Exercises

In my younger years, I would do only 2 exercises every day.  The first was sit-ups - I tried to do 23 because I read in a magazine that models did 23 every day.

Since those days, sit-ups have changed a lot.  The sit-ups used to be done like this:

Someone would hold down your legs and you would lock your hands behind your head and pull yourself all the way up using your neck muscles. 

Now, they are called crunches and you are supposed to do them in a controlled manner, while concentrating on your abdominal muscles.

You don't even hold your head anymore, but just place your hands by your ears or across your chest!  I've seen people adding all sorts of fancy twists and turns, bicycling their legs or holding their legs straight up in the air. 

So, what is the proper way to do a sit-up?

• Lie down.
• Put you feet flat on the floor with your legs bent at 90 degrees
• Hold your hands at your ears/temples
• Squeeze your abs and gently pull yourself up
• Lower yourself just until your shoulder blades touch the floor.

• 15 reps = fair
• 30 reps = good
• 40 reps = excellent

I can no longer even do 23, more like 4!  So I have a ways to go before reaching fair!

The other exercise I liked was a "waist" exercise which I just enjoyed doing because it was so easy.  All you do is:

• Stand with legs slightly bent
• Bend to the left as far as you can, trying not to move your torso
• Go back up to centre
• Then bend to the right as far as you can without moving your torso
• For more stretch you can move the "upper" arm over your head.

I have great faith in these waist exercises, not only are they easy to do, they are almost fun.  So, I'm going to log my waist measurement today:  34 inches (that's about 86 cm), and again when the countdown timer hits zero.

1st Week - Weight Loss

It's been a week and as it is the weekend, it's time for a weight loss update.  I think it's a bit early to have lost anything so I'll just do a review/recap of the exercise, and what went right or wrong this week.

It started off well with the walk from the dentist and I did the elliptical machine after work but only on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  Forty minutes, so a good chance to catch some episodes of Stargate.  I must have a pinched nerve or something because after about 10 or 15 minutes, I lost feeling in my foot!  The wii was a complete write-off, but there is still tomorrow.

The other thing is the healthy eating.  I've been eating more mandarin oranges this week and that's about it.

 Quite tasty, but by week's end, am starting to get that water-bubble reaction from too much citrus.  Breakfast has been peanut butter on toast, but next week I'm switching to oatmeal with cranberries.  To top it off, we had fried chicken today.  I only had one piece though.  Must drink more water too.

Not the most auspicious start, but a start nonetheless.

A Weighty Issue

One of my other "interests" if you can call it that is trying to get back to what I consider a normal weight.  My doctor would love it if I lost about 30 pounds and I would too.  I'm currently at a hefty 158 pounds !!!! (almost 72 kilos or 11 stone).  This is way too much for my height and frame, so, I've set myself a goal that by the time I'm laid off (see the layoff counter above my pic) I'll be back to a svelte 128 pounds (58 kilos or 9 stone).

This sounds easy, because there's more than a year's time to do it, but what with goodie days at work, too few hours in the day and lack of willpower it's going to be a challenge.

Here's my weight loss plan:

• Walk as much as possible.
• Do wii-fit on the weekends.
• Do a daily 40 minute workout on the elliptical trainer.
• Healthier eating

So today, I had a dental appointment and instead of getting a ride home from my husband Big J, I walked for 30 minutes at a fast clip. 

The hard part for me will be the time to do the workouts and the healthy eating.  While I love fruit and veggies, I also love breads, cheeses, chips and other calorie-laden foods.

I'm hoping to record my progress on the weekends, so that by the time Spring 2013 rolls around I'll be back to a slim-trim me.

Benefits for me:

• Better health, increased vitality
• Clothes will fit and look better
• Easier to run away from bad-guys!

Wish me luck!