I'm out of Vegetables!

It is weird feeling to feel very scared about not having enough vegetables in the house. We have plenty of fruit right now but I am trying to get more vegetables than fruit, the sugar you know. It's just weird. I have a few stalks of celery around but I'm afraid that won't last. It is also a weird feeling to look forward to the opening of the town's farmers market so that I can get some vegetables and cheap prices. It is all very weird! Feel free to post any advice on here. I am open to suggestions! :)

That's a cute dog

Just wanted to share with you the latest picture of the cutest puppy in the world, Dewey!

Sharing Blogs

I thought that you all might want to read my brilliant sister's blog and some of her wonderful poetry (which is on there). I tried to put a link to it but it doesn't seem to work so I am just going to put it in one of these posts. Here is is: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=jen_fair02.

I hope that link works. Email me or put a post on here if it doesn't. I also set it up so that you all can post comments without actually getting an account. You just have to be anonymous. Anyway, just wanted to say that. If any of you start a blog, I would love to be a regular reader so please send me the link. Thanks!

Adding some relaxation

Relaxing has been a major problem in my life. Everything I have been reading lately has stressed that you must de-stress in order to live a healthy lifestyle. It is also supposed to help with weightloss. Why do I have such a problem with this? I have no idea, except I do know that I think "if I don't do it, who will." So if I don't stay up late and wash the dishes or fold the laundry who will do it. In all reality the answer is "no one." I'm not saying my husband doesn't help out around the house, he does. In fact, I'm sure he loads the dishwasher more than I do but . . . in reality if we had guests over, a dirty disorganized house would reflect badly on me, not on him. Thank you very much American culture (sarcastic if you couldn't tell). So therefore the pressure is on me to keep a clean house. So anyway, part of my plan to add relaxation into my life is to cut back on television viewing time. When I look back at my day and wonder where the time went, of course most of it goes to my job, but then a good hour or two in the evenings goes to television. For my husband that is how he relaxes and that is fine. It just stresses me out to be truthful. I enjoy other relaxing things, such as reading and taking baths, preferably together. So I am going to set a specific limit to how much TV I can watch during the work week and see if that helps. Ok, here is goes: I will only watch one hour of TV a night. That seems pretty reasonable, doesn't it. I think I will start out slowly and the work up to possibly, no TV in the evenings. The only thing is, is that now I am "addicted" (although I don't watch them every week) to certain shows like Super Nanny. Some would say that is educational. Since the show is an hour long I would simply need to budget my time.

I am now budgeting my meals, too. My husband wants to get pizza for supper. Well, thanks dear for helping me out with my diet! :) Anyway, so I am going to really eat well all day (low calorie, high nutrition) so that I can enjoy a little piece of the pizza. Since I have started all of this I have been educating myself on how many calories fast food has in them. One slice of meat lovers stuff crust pizza is over 470 calories. Yikes! I have all of the charts printed and in my food/exercise journal if you ever want to browse the nutritional info of most fast food restaurants. Anyway, this is getting a bit rambly. Thank you to all (especially Mom for the articles and advice and to Andrew for eating all the veggies I put on his plate!!) for the support in this endeavor of becoming healthy. I think it is going to be a long road.

Weight is Weird

Ok, so I want to update you all on my new lifestyle nutrition and exercise. I weighed in this morning and had Andrew measure me so that I can track my progress. I feel as if I am the heaviest that I have ever been but the scale tells me differently. In fact I am about seven pounds less than I have been in the past. Interesting. I am up, however, from last spring. This doesn't hinder my desire to lose weight and get healthy but it was a pleasant surprise. It actually put me in quite a delightful mood this morning. Now, why is it that my mood hinders on what I weigh. It shouldn't, I know. I can't imagine Andrew's fear as I treked up those stairs to the scale. "Will she come down mad as a wet hen?" But I was quite chipper. I'm sure he was relieved. I think this is something that I can really keep up with. Now, if only I could get a natural looking tan without the damaging effects of UV rays.

Puppies

You know, puppies are funny things. We recently got one. The first few weeks were very weird. It was like we had a new baby in the family. We hardly did anything or went anywhere, except to the vet. We had to watch him every second he was out so that he didn't pee on the carpet, or poop. Well, we have had him for about six weeks now and things are looking up. I finally got around to doing a Pilates workout last night, the first time in six weeks (whew that hurt). It is amazing what we sacrifice for our animals. This morning while I was attempting to clean up the kitchen, the poor little pup was whining and trying to get out of our little pen. He was acting funny but for a moment I thought I would just ignore him and keep cleaning the sink. Big mistake! My poor pup was trying to tell me that he had to poop in the worst way. I wasn't paying attention so the little one just crouched under the kitchen table and pooped! At first I was upset, thinking, surely he knows better, but then I thought back to earlier events. He had motioned to the door (even going to far as to jump up on the door), I had hurried him up outside earlier so he didn't have a chance to go, and he was also whining which he doesn't do much inside the house, unless he is in his crate. So, it was my fault. I guess I shouldn't be quite so confident in my puppy being able to hold it, yet!

My Weight

I know the title of this blog may look a bit disturbing and you may be shying away from reading this but I promise it will be ok. I'm not going to list my weight, so it's ok. I had a troubling experience about two weeks ago. My student worker came in and told me (not very sensitive on his part) that someone asked him if I were pregnant! I'm not, of course, but it was very upsetting to me that someone could think that about me because of how I look. Someone might as well have said, "Why is she fat?" Also, I brought out last spring's lovely clothes (spring is my favorite season), capri's, sandels, sleeveless shirts. I now know why I liked this past winter, big clothes, sweaters, turtle necks, etc, to hide . . . well things. I was sad to find out that most of my spring things from last year either didn't fit or just didn't look good. So, I am going to try again. This time the difference will be that I am going to start small and take babysteps. Rome wasn't built in a day and I won't lose 50 lbs in a month either, which is my goal. (A steep goal but there will be smaller ones along the way.) Andrew is going to help me write this all out (I'm sure he will come up with some neat and cool computer based system) so that I can have little rewards along the way. And not food rewards either. My first goal is that I am going to start by eating just one serving of fruits and veggies a day. This is so embarassing for me to say but, yes mom, I wasn't doing that for a while. I have been doing quite well since my last shopping trip, exceeding my goal and eating more like 4 servings a day (on average). In fact I am getting ready to have my mid-afternoon snack of fresh strawberries and I had carrots, cucumber, and broccoli for lunch (along with rice and a piece of yummy roast). I am posting all of this personal private stuff here because I really want to be held accountable. I don't just want to loose weight to look good but I really do want to be healthy. So, hopefully with the help of my husband, family, friends, and my sweet puppy who motivates me to go on walks, I will start to become healthy.

For exercise I am planning on continuing to walk with my puppy. We walk almost two miles in the evenings and we make it out about four to five times a week, depending on what is going on during the weekend. I am also going to start doing a short weight-lifting set that I can do while watching TV or listening to music. I am going to start small with these goals and see where they take me. Before we got the puppy I was doing so well with exercise. I made it for 2 1/2 straight months without missing a week of about 4 to 5 days a week of exercise. Of course, this all came to a halt when the puppy came, not a lot of time. I was doing difficult things to but the problem... I couldn't keep it up. I made it to difficult. I am going to start small and see where it takes me and I am going to focus on eating right and then making sure that I do something to work out several times a week. I don't think the exercise will be a problem now that the dog needs his exercise to burn off that energy.

Ok, this is really long. I need to go. I will try to use this blog to keep you up to date but hopefully not overwhelm you or myself with this issue. I am going to finish out the day strong by going to puppy kindergarten and trying to teach Dewey to sit, stay, and walk nice.

My New Blog

Well, my hubby has convinced me to change to this website to blog. He said it that it looked better. As usual, he is right. *Sigh*. I will resend the link to everyone. My day is going rather well. My butt feels nice and cushy in my new chair. :) I'll keep you posted.