Emotional & Physical Baggage

I'm an emotional person. That will come as no surprise to those of you that have known me for any period of time. I wear my heart on my sleeve, I care about others, I have a hard time forgetting about things that have happened in the past, I cry very easily, I love deeply, it is who I am....Emotional. It will also come as no surprise that I am an emotional eater. I look to food for comfort. I eat when I'm happy, sad, lonely, bored, celebrating, etc. I thought I'd learned something in the past year about making conscious decisions regarding eating. I thought I was learning to cope with the emotions of eating. I was mistaken. I've realized over the past week how my emotions are making food decisions for me. At least I am aware of it and have the ability to stop it. For the past week I haven't logged my calories and that's when things start to go haywire for me. For some crazy reason if I don't write it down it's like it didn't happen. Huh? Tell that to my hips. I was aware over the past week of poor choices, however it just hit me pretty hard when I realized I ate 2 bowls of Captain Crunch for absolutely NO reason! Well, there is surely an underlying reason...however there is NO GOOD reason! So, I'm writing about it, confessing my cereal sins and moving on.

This morning something happened to make me really see my physical baggage and literally what I have lost! A good friend of our stayed with us the past week and was flying home today. He drove down with friends so had no concerns about the weight of his luggage. However, today he had to think about it. So, he was trying to weigh it on the bathroom scale and it wouldn't register. So, I hopped on the scale without the suitcase, then hopped back on holding the suitcase....all 47 pounds of it. He was fine to fly with it. I was left with the thought of the baggage I have shed. That 47 pound suitcase was heavy and awkward and I couldn't imagine walking around with it. Let's do the math. I've lost about 115 pounds....that's nearly 2.5 of my friend's suitcase that I used to walk around with on my body. It seems nearly impossible to think of carrying around that much baggage, but I did!

The image of holding onto that physical baggage has got to keep me focused to handle my emotional baggage!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Blog friends! It's been a whirlwind of a week and I haven't made the time to blog. We've had friends visiting since last Friday. We are enjoying a quiet Thanksgiving at home. I spent a part of the morning at the gym (go me!) and have been cooking and hanging with the family this afternoon.

I won't lie....food has not been good this week. I have made some not-so-good choices. I have kept up fairly well with my exercise routine. I'm going to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner (including some wine) and do my best not to get carried away.

Tomorrow....back on track!!

Anyone doing any crazy Black Friday shopping? Not me. I'll be at home with the kids and a friend. The hubby is stuck working.

I hope you are all having a wonderful and blessed holiday! More soon...

25 Miles and Cheesecake!

Today was beautiful and my knee felt good. I met up with a friend and we did a 25 mile ride! Woohoo! You may recall that last weekend's ride of 21 was my personal best. Felt great to trump that today. We rode a different path and this one was mostly flat which meant a lot more consistent pedaling. The last couple miles my quads really started to burn, not to mention the sore tushy. My legs were on fire for a bit afterwards and I'm sure I'll feel it tomorrow, however it was and awesome ride and I have been pumped all day!!

After that I met up with a group of women that I only get to see a couple times a year at best. It's an amazing little group...we all met many, many years ago through an infertility support message board. We all live locally and at the time we were all struggling to start our families. Here we are many years later, everyone one of us has at least one child and several have two! We got together at The Cheesecake Factory. I do love me some cheesecake!!! We split an appetizer of all kinds of yummy goodies, for my meal I ordered off the "snacks & small plates" menu and got an beet, goat cheese and arugula salad. It was small, light and yummy! Then there was dessert....oh my cheesecake goodness!!!!!!!!! You will be proud to know that I did NOT order a slice of ooey-gooey goodness. Instead I had a sampling from my friends' slices. Sure, I could have eaten more, I could have gotten the red velvet cheesecake that was quietly calling my name, but I did not. I had a few bites, enjoyed it and moved on. Yay for a little control.

I ended my day out with a little bit of shopping. Pleasantly surprised that I bought a couple sweaters in a size with only one X. I'm still stuck in limbo land between "womans" sizes and "normal" sizes. Soon I hope to never step foot into plus sized land ever again!

Time to love on my boys and put them to bed. I hope you all had a happy and healthy weekend!

A blur of a week...

Where in the world did this week go? It's all a blur in my mind.

Unfortunately I didn't spend much time in the gym this week. I took a boot camp class on Monday night....first time. It was a good workout and I enjoyed it to an extent, however I apparently pushed myself too hard doing things I probably should not have been doing (burpees, jumping jacks, lunges, to name a few) I did something to my knee. Ouch! I have a history of knee issues from my teen years on the softball field. This is the first time in my year+ of working out pretty darn hard that I had any issues with them so it doesn't take a genius to see that I overdid it. I actually took 3 days off from exercise. A first for me! I was successful at keeping my calories in check and my Friday weigh-in showed me 2.4 pounds LESS than last Friday! Today I did an upper body workout with my trainer and tomorrow I plan on getting in a lil cardio. My focus this week has been getting my knee ready for biking on Sunday. It's supposed to be the first beautiful day all week and I have a bike date to ride the trail that goes through the Valley Forge area. We are hoping for 20+ miles!

I constantly tell myself I want to start blogging regularly, however life is just a little too chaotic, so I'll do my best. I really love connecting with the blog world and hope to connect with more people that have similar healthy lifestyle goals.

Tonight was a fun and special night. We had a night out with my 4 year old son. The 2 yo stayed home with the sitter. We went to dinner at a quaint little Italian place in Wilmington and then took him to see Stomp! He did pretty darn good for a little guy. It was a good time.

I'm beat...tomorrow is another busy one....the entire weekend is packed. The next couple week are going to be challenging for a healthly lifestyle. I am mentally preparing myself...I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, here are a couple good things to click on....

Do you love popcorn? Megan is having a delicious giveaway..go check her out HERE!

Are bodybuilding supplements your thing? Check out my trainer's blog HERE for a big recall that Bodybuilding.com is conducting.

Personal Best!

Today was an absolutely beautiful day here in the PA/DE area. I met up with my biking partner about 9am and we set out on a fabulous ride. I'm happy to report my new personal best ride of nearly 21 miles!!! Yay Me!

After that we spent nearly 4 hours at the zoo, so I am beat.

I just had to share my news before going to curl up in bed.

Shake, Shake, Shake!

Another good day! Yay me! I'm in the groove once again and I've also got my shake back. I have fruit smoothies several days a week for breakfast, yet have not had what I'd deem a "milkshake" in forever. Thanks to HungryGirl my shake has returned.

Calories have been great today and I had plenty for an evening snack. I waited until I got the kids to bed and then contemplated what to make. I was craving the pumpkin cake with cider glaze. That was not a reasonable option. I remembered I had some canned pumpkin in the fridge that needed to be used and I had all the ingredients for the HG pumpkin shake.


I'm sipping on it now and loving it. Also loving the nutritional info. For some reason it never dawned on me I could make such a yummy dessert for so few calories. That is a 16 oz cup. So it made a good sized treat too.

Mine consisted of:
1/3 c. Light Vanilla Soy Milk
1/3 c. Unsweetened Almond Breeze
1/4 c. Breyer's Natural Vanilla Ice Cream
3 T of canned pure pumpkin
2 packets of Splenda
Splash of Vanilla
Dash of Cinnamon
Crushed Ice

Blended it up in the Magic Bullet, topped it with some Cool Whip....and just like that....delicious dessert!!!

Check out the stats....
140 Calories
7 g Fat
15 g Carbs
3 g Fiber
4 g Protein

I'll definately do this again.

Good Day!

My food challenges continued yesterday. I made pumpkin cookies (by request) for the day care teachers and I may have eaten a few too many. Those combined with some silly trips to the Halloween candy stash made for a bad, bad food day. My body repaid me last night with a very upset tummy. Enough is enough...that is behind me, moving on.

Today was great...mentally and physically!

Breakfast....egg white omelet with spinach, onion & feta along with 2 slices of light, wheat toast.

Skipped the am snack because I knew I was going out for lunch.

Lunch....cup of tortilla soup, grilled chicken breast, lots of broccoli. I asked for no rice and double veggies. They brought me the rice by mistake and then brought out more veggies. I didn't touch the rice!

Snack....broccoli slaw, special K bar.

Pre-workout snack....banana, 100 cal pack of cocoa almonds (yum!)

Dinner....big, yummy salad with romaine, ham, craisins, feta, corn, TJ's champagne dressing. Basically I tossed in a bunch of leftovers in the fridge. Worked out to about a 300 calorie dinner.

I did have a handful of goldfish and a mini twix (the rough part of the day that I wish hadn't happened).

Finished off with a sliced apple and cup of herbal tea!

No food pics, however I might start doing more of that. I think it helps me to really see and review what I'm eating, along with my logging.

I hit the gym tonight for an hour of weight lifting and about 30 min of cardio. I actually had another member stop and ask me about my split squats and said she liked how I was doing them. It was strange to have someone else notice what I'm doing.

Anyway...this was a rambling post to say that I've had a good day!

I feel mentally better about things. I'm recommiting to my journey and my goals. We have a tough time of year ahead of us for food junkies. Last year I lost weight during all the major holidays. I'd like to keep that tradition alive this year.

Back to the Phillies....