amy April 8th, 2007
My goal last week was to get out of the fashion funk I’ve been in and take more interest in my appearance so that I not only look better but feel better. At the end of the week I can definitely say I’ve made major improvements. I’ve started wearing more interesting clothes, jewelry, and the occasional lip gloss; I got my eyebrows waxed and my hair cut (and I’ve even starting using mousse and some texture paste!); and I have a consultation appointment with a plastic surgeon at noon tomorrow to see about getting a couple of moles removed. I feel like my self esteem has taken a big step in the right direction and I am actually proud of the way I look for a change.
This week I’m going to focus on exercise. This might seem like it doesn’t necessarily fit my theme this month of Living for Today, but it does. I’ve been wanting to exercise for a long time because it makes me feel good and also gives me motivation to eat healthier, however I’ve been putting it off because it never seemed convenient. I’m going to exercise this week AND have fun doing it so that it is not a chore.
I went and bought a second dance pad for DDR yesterday, and Jason and I are going to start playing in the evenings after James goes to bed (him on easy since he hasn’t played it much, and me on basic with maybe the occasional attempt at difficult). We had some friends over tonight for dinner and to watch the first episode of the new season of the Sopranos (yea, finally!), and we ended up playing DDR afterwards. I probably played for a good half hour and got a pretty decent workout, but it was so much fun that I didn’t really notice the time flying by. It’s a lot more fun to play with someone else.
I’m also going to try to go for a couple of walks during lunch next week. By incorporating activity into my life now and making it something that is fun, I’ll be living for today instead of waiting for some ideal future when I’ll go to the gym 4 times a week and have a perfect schedule of cardio and weights. Maybe perfectionism is one of my problems; I hold myself to a perfect standard (eating and exercising), and when I can’t fulfill that I adopt an all or nothing attitude and do nothing. Well, I’m not perfect, and I’m tired of doing nothing, so going forward I’ll try to do something when I can. Hopefully all of those somethings will start to add up eventually.
amy April 4th, 2007
Aside from one time in my life, I’ve always been generally lazy about my appearance for as long as I can remember. I preferred guy’s clothes in high school because they fit. I have never been one to wear makeup or style my hair because it seems like too much effort. I go for long periods of time without getting my hair cut or my eyebrows waxed. My typical uniform consists of jeans or plain capris, tennis shoes or flat sandals, and a solid colored t-shirt. I choose the clothes I wear because they are cheap, easy to clean, don’t take any energy (everything goes with everything else), and it is easy to find pieces that fit.
By designing my look about what is easy and convenient, I have neglected to consider what makes me look good and feel good. Part of my neglect has been pure laziness, but it also stems from poor self esteem. I figure that since I am overweight and unattractive as it is, why bother sprucing myself up and trying to look girly? I actually feel silly wearing feminine clothes because I worry that people think I look awkward or overdressed, like a tomboy with braces and a dirty face dressing up in her mother’s frilly dress, bright red lipstick and too-big heels. I recognize that this is ridiculous and that I can look as nice as the next woman, but it is still how I secretly feel.
The one time in my life that I have enjoyed taking care in my appearance was after I had lost a significant amount of weight. I wasn’t exactly a Barbie doll, but still enjoyed shopping for fun clothes and accessories, had my hair cut regularly, and actually wore makeup on occasion.
To feel good about myself, I need to stop being lazy about my appearance and invest some time and money in looking nice, because I am worth it. I’ve already made some progress. Last week I bought a number of (very overdue) new clothing items. These were things that I would not normally buy such as a frilly mesh black and white shirt with a v-neck and ribbon under the bust; a white t-shirt with flowers and rhinestones on the front and rouching at the bottom; and a see-through button down purple shirt with subtle stripes that is gathered at the back. I also got my eyebrows waxed last week and bought some Burt’s Bee’s shimmery lip gloss with a pink tint (I don’t think I can pull off a full makeup routine during my busy morning so this will have to do for now!)
Here are some other things I’m going to do this week to improve my appearance:
- I have an appointment to get my hair cut tonight after work.
- I’ll spend some time shopping at lunch to try to find some more pants or skirts to go with the mostly tops I bought last week.
- I’ll call and make an appointment to meet with a plastic surgeon to see about getting a mole on my face removed. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but have just put off.
amy April 4th, 2007
I’ve struggled a bit to find a “theme” for my weekly goals for this month. I’ve had a vague feeling for what I want to focus on, things that will help me to feel better about myself and my body now, but nothing to really tie them together. I just came up with the theme during a short walking break from work: Living for Today.
For many years now I have been guilty of focusing on what was “wrong” with me and using that as an excuse to feel bad and not enjoy life as fully as I could. I was too fat, too plain, too reserved, had too many physical problems, etc. I thought that if I could lose weight and be “normal” that I would feel good about myself and be happy. I realize now that weight loss isn’t the key to happiness. Even when I weighed 176 and could fit into a size 12, I still constantly examined my “flaws” in the mirror and felt like I still had a long way to go until I was happy with my body, when in fact that was a good weight for me.
I’ve come to realize that in order to change my attitudes about food, health, and my body, I need to learn to be happy with the way I am now. I need to stop yearning for an unrealistic future where I will look like the airbrushed photos in magazines and start living for today. By improving my self esteem, hopefully I can begin to loosen the hold that food has on my emotions.
amy March 27th, 2007
This has been an odd week for me. I haven’t been feeling so great the last few days due to a sinus infection that just won’t end and some bouts of nausea and light-headedness that my doctor claims are due to dehydration. I haven’t been in the mood to cook much. I won’t be spending much time in the kitchen for the rest of this week either because I’ll be busy getting ready to leave for Arizona on Thursday. Jason and I are taking our son James to visit his great-grandparents for the first time. Twelve hours there and back in the car with a 13 month old should be interesting!
I’ve lined up some new veggie recipes to try when we get back, however, so I haven’t been a complete slacker:
amy March 25th, 2007
Eating extra vegetables the last two weeks hasn’t been difficult for me. I generally like veggies, so I haven’t been eating them just for the sake of eating them. The problem, however, is that my husband is a bit pickier about the kinds of veggies he will eat. I generally cook stuff that he likes so that he can eat healthier too, but I’m getting a bit tired of broccoli, salad, corn, asparagus, onions and peppers, and the same old techniques I have always used to cook them. My goal for this week is to try some different vegetable recipes to make things more interesting. Maybe Jason will even learn to like some different veggies.
Yesterday I picked up two bunches of asparagus on sale for $1 a pound, so I tried a new method of preparing them tonight. Normally I steam asparagus and add some garlic and herb seasoning, salt and pepper. It’s ok, but a bit boring. Tonight I roasted it instead. I definitely liked the roasted asparagus much more than my usual steamed, and Jason liked it as well. James (my son) didn’t eat a lot of it, but he has been getting picky about veggies recently. Here’s the recipe:
Roasted Asparagus
Ingredients:
2 bunches of asparagus, washed and stems trimmed
1 Tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Spread asparagus out on a baking sheet. Drizzle the asparagus with olive oil and toss to coat, then spread it out in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and fresh ground pepper. Place the baking sheet in the oven and roast for 10 - 12 minutes until parts of the asparagus begin to get slightly browned and it is tender but not mushy.
amy March 25th, 2007
It’s the end of my second week of blogging and setting healthy goals, and so far it is going well. My goal this week was to make half of my lunch and dinner either fruits or veggies. I missed a few meals, but most of the time I did make an effort to eat extra vegetables, both when eating at home and when eating out. I’ve gotten in the habit of eating two different vegetables with lunch and dinner, so I’m also getting more variety.
My focus right now is trying to eat healthy and more like a “normal” person rather than losing weight, so I’m trying to stay off of the scale. I know that if I can learn to eat when I am hungry, stop when I am full, and eat more healthy food than junk, my weight will eventually go down. My fruit and veggie goals have been a good start so far. I try to eat most of the vegetables on my plate first, so I have been successful with filling up more on veggies first and have thus been eating smaller, more normal sized portions of other foods.
amy March 20th, 2007
I’m now 3 days in to my healthy goal for this week: making at least half of my lunch and dinner plate fruits and/or veggies. So far this week is going great! Here’s how I’ve been doing:
- Sunday lunch: Homemade chicken and dumplings with peas and raw carrot sticks dipped in ranch dressing. Skim milk.
- Sunday dinner: Outback Steak House. I ordered the salmon with steamed vegetables, a dinner salad with honey mustard dressing on the side, some bread and a Blue Moon beer. The salad came with a ton of cheese on top so I took most of that off. I ate all of the salad, half of the veggies, and half of the salmon.
- Monday lunch: Leftovers from Outback Steak House. My leftover salmon and veggies, plus my son’s leftover veggies, and a small piece of bread.
- Monday dinner: Homemade chicken and dumplings, roasted asparagus, steamed broccoli with ranch dressing. Skim milk.
- Tuesday lunch: Tokyo Joe’s regular size chicken bowl with brown rice, veggies AND broccoli, and spicyaki sauce. Getting double veggies definitely helped; I only ate three quarters of the bowl instead of finishing it like I would normally have done.
- Tuesday dinner: A homemade chicken taco with black beans, corn and skim milk. I added sauteed onions and bell pepper to the chicken.
Tonight’s dinner wasn’t quite half veggies, but all of my other lunches and dinners so far this week have been. I love veggies, so I’m finding that as long as I plan well and have plenty of options on hand it is easy to eat a lot of them (and therefore less other stuff!)
amy March 18th, 2007
This week I’ll be continuing to strive for goal one, and adding a second goal: making half of my lunch and dinner plate either fruits or vegetables. There are many different sources that suggest this approach for weight loss or maintenance, including the American Institute for Cancer Research and Sparkpeople.com’s Bikini Diet. By making fruits and veggies the biggest focus of my meal instead of protein or starches, I’ll achieve the higher end of the recommended five to nine servings a day. It’s also an easy way to limit the total number of Calories I eat for these meals without counting. I think the biggest challenge will be coming up with a variety of different veggies and ways to prepare them, because it will get boring quickly if I always eat the same things for half of my meals. I’m going to aim for two different fruits and veggies for each meal to keep things interesting.
amy March 18th, 2007
My healthy goal for last week was to have at least one fruit or vegetable serving with every meal. I was already in the habit of eating veggies with lunch or dinner, so the biggest change involved breakfast and my afternoon snack. The first half of the week went well. I added a piece of fruit to the instant oatmeal I usually eat for breakfast at work. I brought extra veggies to eat with the leftovers I had for lunch. I ate raw veggies with hummus for a snack. I ate veggies with dinner.
The second half of the week didn’t go as smoothly, for a couple of reasons. For one, I attended a conference for work down in Denver for two days. Breakfast and lunch were catered each day, so I didn’t have much control over the options there, and honestly I could have made better decisions with the options I did have. I still had a good serving of fruit with breakfast both days and an apple for a snack one of the days, but the only veggies I had were the lettuce and tomato on the turkey sandwich and turkey wrap I had for lunch each day. The other issue was that, because I was so busy during the second half of the week between commuting to the conference (it was an hour drive each way) and trying to keep up with work somewhat in the evenings, I didn’t have the time to properly plan for healthy eating. We ran low on fresh produce during the middle of the week and I didn’t have time to go shopping, first because of the conference and work, and then yesterday because I was busy trying to get the house cleaned up before our babysitter came so that Jason and I could go to a St. Patrick’s Day party. Because of this, my fruit and veggie consumption was spotty on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Things are much more laid back today, so I’m going to spend some time preparing for next week so that it goes much more smoothly. I’m going to find some healthy slow cooker recipes online to fix next week so that dinner is ready (or mostly ready) when we get home and I have more time spend with my son before he goes to bed and then clean up so that the house (hopefully) doesn’t get as bad as it did last week. I’m also going to stock up on produce and prep it so that it will be more convenient and therefore I’ll be more likely to eat it.
amy March 12th, 2007
Today went pretty well as far as my healthy goal for this week (including at least one fruit or veggie in every meal):
- For breakfast, I replaced my usual second packet of instant oatmeal with a banana
- For lunch, there were lots of veggies in my leftover (homemade) chicken fried rice, plus I also had an apple
- For a mid day snack, I traded in my typical granola bar for red pepper strips and hummus
- For dinner, I had corn with my chicken and stuffing bake
- For dessert, I had a toffee ice cream bar (see, here’s where “about 80% of the time” comes in!)
All in all I’d estimate I had about 6 fruit and veggie servings, not too shabby!
