Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Day 9

I'm feeling much better today. Yesterday was just sore and tired, and I think I had some bad meat...sigh. Anyway, I was up and being productive today which made me very happy to not feel like a loser. :)

Okay so on June 14th we planted our first garden. It was surprisingly extremely easy, I'm guessing because we have no idea what we're doing. We have a little 10x10 patch in the corner of our yard that was part of a gravel driveway of sorts put in by the previous owners. We had the area fenced in to increase our backyard's size since we're on a corner lot and we have limitless parking; we didn't need the space. I have no idea how many tons of gravel went there, but Andrew tilled, then we raked, then tilled, then raked, over and over maybe 4 or 5 times. Each time we thought it would be sufficient, more rocks showed their little round faces. We decided enough was enough, and though this will have to do. We spread 3 premixed bags of bone meal, peat moss, manure, and something else over this bumpy top soil which was actually just rocks in dirt to me. Andrew tilled it again back and forth to mix it. I planted a 3 foot row of radishes, 3 feet of beets, 6 feet of cucumbers, and a hill 3 feet of watermelon and 3 feet of pumpkin. We fully expected it to be a bust this year, but what do you know? We have little radish greens sprouting up in their little twisty row, little tiny green hairs where I thought I planted beets, and a few baby green sprigs where the cucumbers were sown!!!! I'm so excited. Even if it doesn't come to full fruition (which I still highly doubt will happen) I'm tickled green!! Yay us and our green thumb nails (because the whole thumb would be asking too much)!

We we went out to dinner tonight to Boston Pizza. It was sooooo yummy. Here's what I would have had on a normal night:
-Start with french onion soup (delish and I'll probably have it next time we go)
-Also start with a starter--tonight was potato skins, 8 pieces, and I would have had 4 shared equally between Andrew and me
-Water with lemon or a Coke no refill if I was feeling in the mood
-Dinner would be a beef dip au jus
-Either fries or a house salad with all the blue cheese in my little cup
-Probably at this point having eaten everything there would be a "full, but I have room" request for dessert. Chocolate lava cake with the scoop of ice cream. I would only eat half because I'd be so stuffed, or I'd finish it off and regret it, waddling all the way to the car and wanting to unbutton my jeans

Holy saturated fat and calories, Batman!

Tonight I had to ask Andrew, "Do I want the french onion soup or just share an appetizer with you?" I really wanted the french onion soup. I remembered how much cheese and salt it has in it and then I saw how my belly nearly reaches the table sitting as far back as possible in the booth, and I decided against it. I thought next time, I'll have it if I want it then. As I'm writing this, I only miss not having it slightly. It would have been good for my tongue, but then I would have spent over $5 for a bite or two and it's hard to justify that, knowing that I wanted to get a main meal full of vegetables as well to try to meet my quota for the day.

Anyway, we did order the potato skins. Out of 8, how many did I eat? ONE! One stinkin' potato skin. It was set in front of us and my hand didn't knock over my glass rushing to fill my gullet as fast as possible. I waited a few minutes looking at it, making sure I wanted one, not just because it was there or it looked so good. I wanted the taste, I had one, I wanted my 3 more, I didn't eat them. I was okay. :)
I ended up ordering the:
Chipotle Chicken and Bacon
BP Favourite
Fresh garden greens, diced tomato, green onion, olives and a blend of pizza mozzarella and cheddar tossed in Santa Fe ranch dressing. Finished with tender pieces of chipotle seasoned chicken breast, smoky bacon and shredded tortilla chips.

I got it without cheese, and let me tell you I almost died hearing that come out of my mouth, and dressing on the side. I did the dip your fork trick in the dressing and used less than half of what I would have used, had I dumped the container on my salad. It came with a yummy smelling piece of perfectly toasted garlic bread that I passed on. I could have devoured it in 2 seconds!

It took my time eating my salad thinking, this is great. If felt good to put better food in my body than what I was used to. This change has given me a sense of empowerment; choosing better for myself making me feel amazing because I'm actively doing something that's going to make me better. Sorry for gushing. I'm just very proud of myself. :) If you haven't tried to lose weight, I don't think you know how hard it is for a foodie and a fatty to say no. It's breaking an addiction almost. It's being very self aware, very reflective. It's something I think that you have to find inside and I really couldn't do it justice to try to explain with words how I'm feeling, and how what I'm learning is impacting my views on just about everything.

It's gradual. It's situation by situation. It's day by day.

Meals
2 slices of left over pizza
1 cup of Coke

2 slices of left over pizza
2 cups of water

3 cups of water

approx 4 cups of salad (Chipotle Chicken and Bacon salad)
1.5 tbsp Santa Fe (creamy, probably mayo based) dressing
1.5 cups of water

2 cups of water


3 Blueberry and Brown sugar with Flax cookies (Peak Freans)
2 cups of water

Exercise
30 minutes on #15 incline treadmill; 2.5 mph (basically walking uphill the whole way)
30 minutes upper body free weights
10 minutes stretching

Notes:
-Okay the pizza was probably not smart. I think we should only order one pizza from now on or else this pizza is going to go to waste. On one hand, it's expensive so we shouldn't waste our food by throwing out what we don't eat. On the other hand, my body is not a garbage can. It's a fine line, and it's future choices on what to order next time in order not to be in this position.
-Exercise was alright. It was good enough, but I started the dishwasher late and had to wait for it (it's a portable so I didn't want the water if I left in case it broke free from the spout and made my kitchen a swimming pool) to finish. So I left late and had to leave by a certain time so only got 30 minutes of cardio. I wanted at least 50 minutes on a good day, but 30 minutes is better than none so I'm okay with that. The shortened amount of time lead me to walking uphill the whole time which was so much easier to do today than just 9 days ago. I was still dripping sweat, but it didn't hurt my back, legs, and feet.