Trying something new

Well tonight I tried a sweet potato...I know..I'm weird..I've never tried one before, but I chose it as one of the things I wanted to try, because I forsee myself eating a lot of baked potatoes, and I wanted to see if I would like one. Nope. I did not. I even put chili all over it, and that did not help haha!

But I tried it. And I ate about half of it before stopping. I just couldn't choke down anymore. I hadn't cooked it all the way, and I am a big texture person when it comes to eating...so yeah..but I tried :0)

I also have been making progress on burning my cd's to the external hard drive. Tonight I got about 50 of them burned. It's really time consuming but it's gonna be worth it when I can declutter my room. Speaking of that, I also started going through the utility closet in my room. That sounds odd to say, but when I had my own apartment at my old house, I had a big closet/cupboard thing in my walk in closet. It used to just hold a lot of junk that I didn't know what to do with but I wanted to keep. Well now it holds all of my toiletries, and well the rest of the junk that I want to keep but I don't know what to do with. I'm still paring it down thought. I emptied it out tonight and I am once again getting rid of stuff that I don't need or want anymore. I'm still pretty sentimental and want to keep a lot of stuff. I guess I'm gonna just have to get used to that fact about myself. So now I just need to come up with more ways to organize all my sentimental stuff and get it properly taken care of and stored away. But I'm getting there..I've found a lot of paper stuff tonight that I am shredding or recycling and a few things for the garbage here or there..but I will feel better once I get it all put back away..Right now my room still looks like a tornado hit it and it's 12:05 am. I've got a bit more to go before I can go to bed tonight haha!

The fun thing about burning all my CD's is that I am rediscovering all the music that I own. I literally haven't listened to any of my CD's in months if not years. The cd player in my car never works and every cd player I would own would skip after a while, so I moved on to whatever I had already put on my computer or Pandora. Even youtube :) So after looking at what I have it will be fun to play my music again...it will be like buying new cd's...except they are all old songs ;)


I'm feeling pretty good so far this year! I feel like I'm getting stuff done, and it's tracking that way too! I can be such a nerd sometimes ;)

Cleaning out life..

Today was one of those days where I wanted to get so much more done than I actually did. I have had the last two weeks off for Christmas Break. Did I do much? Nope. I hardly even got out of my pajamas for most of it. My bed and I have been very friendly. I have taken the word break very literal. That's for sure.

And of course in my life when my room is a mess, I seem to be a mess. So a lot of times when I feel the need to clean out my life it always ends up being a spiritual cleaning as well as a physical one. But today I was focusing on the kitchen during the day. The counter and the stove have been driving me crazy, so I took everything off of the counter and wiped it off really good and put everything away. Then I attacked the stove. I mean took burners off, elements out and lifted the top up and cleaned underneath the stove part. I was scrubbing grease out of that thing for over an hour! It was crazy. But the stove looks much better now :) It was almost like spring cleaning..in the winter haha!

And then tonight I sorted through some of my clothes and finally started burning my cd's to my external hard drive so I can start getting rid of them. I now realize this is going to take forever! Oh my gosh. Of course tonight I had to figure out where I had left off. I started this process before we moved back in May, so it was time to restart. I got the ones burned that didn't want to work last time and then about 15 more..and it took me almost 2 hours. Yikes. I have somewhere around 350 cd's. So this is going to take a while. But I can't wait until it's done and I can make some space in my room and get rid of all the tubs holding cd cases. It kind of saddens me though. I love music. I loved buying cd's and reading all the cover art and stuff..and I don't get that when I buy them on Itunes. So it's not the same kind of feeling for me. I will more than likely have a better chance of listening to all my music when they finally all get on the drive. Click click and I am there :0)

Stayed dairy and gluten free again today. :0) But I'm hungry! I definitely need to get to the store and get some more food I can eat. I'm pretty limited right now because my family loves gluten and dairy. Of course. Breakfast still is a struggle for me. I just have no idea what to eat that early that is easy to prepare and healthy. And doesn't involve dairy, bread, or eggs. Shoot..let's just take away every breakfast item known to mankind and make it off limits for me. Thanks body.

Well I better be getting to bed. I am pretty determined to get to water aerobics at 9 am. Which is still earlier than I would like to be up on my last Saturday of break, but I put it on the workout calendar :) So that must mean I should go!

Day one of gluten and dairy free

Whoah...I've got a lot of work ahead of me.

I'd say today was pretty successful. Minus 2 bowls of fritos and lay's potato chips to tide me over while food was cooking I'd say I did pretty good. Ok..I had a soda too...but it was only 8 oz ;) But I never said anything about giving up soda did I? Oh no I didn't. That's because I probably can count the number on both my hand on how often I drink it. Well this year? I'm 2 for 2. Haha..I normally don't keep it in the house and the had the cute little 8 oz A&W cans...really the only soda I will choose to drink. So I split it up with ice 2 times and thoroughly enjoyed it :)

I discovered that I can easily wait too long to make food. Especially since it's more real foods..I have to take the time to cook it. Which today meant 45 minutes for some brown rice and later over an hour to bake my potato. Because in my little world potatoes don't get cooked in the microwave ;) And so with trying to take the time to make the food I feel into the oh-my-gosh I am starving and ate a handful of chips before lunch and then again for a snack before dinner. I'll get something figured out..so I won't be starving by the time I eat.

So let's see. Today I had coffee, a banana,some fritos,  a salad with brown rice and a can of chicken (like tuna), then some lays,some applesauce, a baked potato, and a chicken breast, and a can of soda. NO dairy and NO gluten! SO in that way it was quite a successful day. I just need to learn to restructure it a little more and add some healthier choices in. All in all I didn't do horrible. I know for sure that I am not going to be putting food in that I don't love. I'm here to live my life, not hate my food. The goal is to come up with some new foods that I might learn to like, but I'm not throwing everything in all at once. I looked at my plate at dinner and thought it could have used a vegetable, but I was eating an hour past everyone else and wasn't going to make a whole can of green beans for myself ;)  Like I said. I'm getting there :0)

So I know that meal planning is going to be a must for me now. I can't just go rummaging around the kitchen trying to find something to eat. Because at that point it's not going to be gluten or dairy free if I'm trying to eat out of convenience. And that defeats the purpose.

I'm also going to have to be sure that I am watching my salt intake. I noticed that I salted my salad as well as the chicken having a lot of salt. And then of course the chips, and then later I made sure not to salt my potato, even though I wanted it because I felt like I had too much for the day. It's all about finding the balance.

So today was off to a good start :) Now on to tomorrow!

Wednesday Weigh in Week 73

I'm just going to assume right now that my computer won't upload my picture like the last two weeks and just tell you what my weight was. I'm in complete and utter I don't care moments right now. I'm still going back and forth between two houses trying to box up yard sale stuff that didn't sell and get the rest of what we think we want to keep to the new house. I think quite literally for the last two weeks I have eaten out every day for lunch simply because I didn't have time to make lunches during the weekend. I am so extremely sick of fast food right now it's not even funny! Yet I have another super crazy weekend and I don't know if I will have the time or the energy to do it this weekend for the 3 days that I need a lunch next week. I already know one of the days we are going to lunch because we don't have kids that day. School is almost out. We have 8 days left with our kids. It's crazy to think that but we do. Well 9 days I guess. But tomorrow shouldn't count LOL!

239.4. I am exactly 1 pound away from where I started this blog in 2011. Ouch. And still I am in survival mode. I haven't switched out yet, and I'm not sure that I will before school gets out. I know this summer is going to be all about refocusing and getting myself back on track.

So I'm just hoping for the next 3 weeks that I can keep it under 240. That's the goal for right now anyway.

Wednesday Weigh in Week 64

Well, something about getting my vitamins in has been helping me I think. I think I'm not as emotional blah. I lost around another pound again, and really all I have done is started the vitamins back up. I haven't even really been able to get 8 cups of water in a day. I can usually get around 4, so I know that I could improve in that area..but yeah. A pound is a pound I guess :0)

Today I made soup for me! Haha..I had a friend give me a total basic lentil soup recipe. Lentils, chicken broth, water and chicken in the crockpot. So super easy. And it didn't taste too bad. I mean looking at a bag of lentils I'm kind of wondering why I never ate them before? 10 grams of protein in 1/4 cup of dry lentils. Holy Moly! Here I am trying to figure out how to get protein in. Well ok. I need to find stuff to do with lentils for breakfast. I'm trying to figure out how to make a wrap with the soup I made. Because honestly I made it with too much water. So I drained it and ate it like a thick soup. I might change out some ham dices or a friend suggested chicken sausage, which I haven't tried. Although I do like sausage like Jimmy Dean sausage, I am realizing that I don't really care for the patties or links. Plus they are super high in fat. Not that I usually look at that, but when I'm looking at is as a main source of protein I guess I do now :) But I gotta figure out how long I can store lentils after they are cooked. And eat it up :) Yum. I can't wait to experiment with it.

Not too exciting around here. I am counting down the days until spring break :0) We had conferences this week which meant we didn't have kids. But then I also had to use my trade time this week. I actually ended up taking 18 hours off this week! So it was weird to have two days off and then go in late two days. Hopefully when the kids come back next week everyone will be all rested and cheerful again :) Like I said, we are counting down the days until spring break :0)

Wednesday weigh in week 30

Oh crap really? Week 30? That's a lot! So I've seen this number before. I'm two pounds down from last week. This long weekend of eating soft foods is just about killing me! I'm ready for real food. And apparently I can't have it! Haha. It was interesting after finding out the allergy results, and then getting my teeth pulled and then pretty much only eating foods I was allergic to, and watching my body react. Sure enough, about 2 days after the surgery, my throat is hurting, and my throat is all red and splotchy. So I reluctantly put the pudding and ice cream away and have tried to stay away from the dairy. I was a good girl yesterday and didn't eat the scrambled eggs we had with dinner. Those kinds of things. I did manage to eat some spagetti noodles tonight with a bit of hamburger in the sauce.

I have a feeling this is just gonna be one great lesson on learning how to cook. I mean if I am going to have to modify all my recipes then I better be learning how to make these things right? It takes a lot more time and effort to cook healthy then it does to eat crap that's for sure.

So I don't know if I mentioned it, but I bruised pretty good about the 3rd day after my surgery. It looks like someone clocked me on both sides of my chin. All in all it's not horrible. I'm just surprised it took so long to happen. I'm definitely ready for these stitches to come out and I can eat some more substantial food here. I can only eat so much applesauce, bananas and gluten free waffles!

Overwhelmed!

Can I just say that I'm slightly overwhelmed right now? First thing first, I got my wisdom teeth out yesterday. I laid pretty low all day yesterday and most of today. I did make it out to Fred Meyer today because I was wanting stuff from their organic section. They have a really great gluten free section at Fred Meyer. I am actually impressed. So anyways. My teeth are gone and I have really annoying stitches. Other than that I'm not doing too bad. Not swelling horribly. But all I've been eating is mashed potatoes, pudding, ice cream, applesauce and soup. I think I've "lost" 3 pounds since yesterday. I guess we will see how long that lasts huh? I'm still icing my cheeks. But I'm doing good. :) The pain meds are pretty ridiculous. They didn't knock me out or anything. I would fall asleep for an hour and wake back up. We had the most amazing/scary/awesome thunder and lightning show from about 2:30 to 5 am this morning. I just laid there trying to take videos to get a picture from. It was pretty intense, rattling the house. That's the fun thing about it being so hot these days. We get some pretty cool lightning.

Back to being overwhelmed. I'm still having a hard time with the concept of being allergic to dairy, eggs, beef, wheat, peanuts, and garlic. All of these I eat on a daily basis! So now that I'm not just trying to eliminate them for a season, but for good, I'm freaking out just a little bit. I mean seriously! Do you know how hard it is to find food without wheat or garlic? I can't even have a veggie burger. They have garlic in them as a seasoning. And wheat is used in so much. Dr. Ginger told me I could have eggs that are baked in things, so like a cake or waffles because I'm not eating the entire egg all at once, but not to actually have a whole egg all at once. So no more scrambled, or fried eggs, or omelets. And milk! No more milk, milkshakes, ice cream, or frozen yogurt. Or cottage cheese, or cheese. Or macaroni and cheese. It's like taking my entire diet and doing a 360! Good thing I'm not allergic to turkey or chicken or pork. I can only have beef like 2x a week now. And not back to back. And my beloved peanut butter is no more. I would use it to get protein in, that and cheese. Uh yeah. no more of that!

It's really just crazy. I have no idea that I could be eating things on a daily basis that I am allergic too. No wonder I feel so lethargic and like crap all the time. I would have these rashes that I knew were food related but I didn't know what was causing it. And so I guess I kind of foreshadowed this whole allergy testing earlier this year when I decided to do the candida self testing. I did pretty well for the first almost 3 months of the year and I had lost 25 pounds. This is pretty much the same thing I will be doing. Just without the eggs and peanut butter and garlic. Oy. Little did I know that when I decided to do that it was going to be for life.

But I guess now I have a legitimate reason for saying no to things. I'm allergic to them! I don't want to knowingly put something in my body that I know is going to cause it harm. I mean isn't that the point of avoiding foods because they don't agree with your body?

It's hard because I'm gonna have to do it alone. My family isn't going to change all their eating habits for me. So it means I'm gonna have to be cooking my own meals all the time. Most of what we eat for dinner has one of those ingredients in it. Well I can have spagetti with my brown rice noodles and sauce, but I will have to leave the cheese out of it.

So I just have an interesting path ahead of me. I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to do the allergy tests. I mean if you don't "see" a reaction you aren't going to think you are allergic to something. But once you know, it should be like their is no going back.

Except after my teeth heal. ;) That's when I'm gonna get serious about this. Because right now the majority of soft foods that I can eat have milk or dairy in them. So give or take a week and I will getting serious here.

What's your choice?

Why does choosing have to be so hard sometimes. I think a lot of life is just based on making choices. Like I could really choose to eat bread, cheese, or milk at any time in my life right now. And let me tell you life would be so much easier!! I seriously had some goldfish crackers staring me down in the face today. But I chose not to eat them. That's not taking me where I want to be. At some point in my life will I be able to eat those foods again? I hope so! I really do. I miss just grabbing a cheese stick because it's easy. Or gosh eating some ice cream. Or having a hamburger with a bun and ketchup. But I have to keep looking at the food that I eat and thinking if it is causing me more harm than good to my body. Because I am not going to put it into my body if it is doing that. You know?

But it really just makes for a lot more preparation. And sometimes that's just so hard! Like I didn't really have time yesterday to cook some chicken for my lunches at school. So I went to the deli, thinking I might save some time and money. Well the thick slices of chicken that I got ended up still being 12.00 which was more than the chicken breast that I could have bought to cook. Now the chicken isn't bad. But I still came home after a full day of church last night and had to cut up the chicken into cubes for my salad and cook my noodles to go into my salad.

The silly thing is, I do really well on a restrictive diet. At least on this one I have. Now have I had frozen yogurt a couple of times and some fritos and gluten free tortilla chips?Yeah. mashed potatoes, and french fries? You betcha. So I'm not necessarily cutting everything out like I probably should be. But I can tell when those foods are affecting my body. So I kinda have this sense of I must be doing something right!

So I ended up paying for my running two days in a row last week! LOL! My upper legs were so stiff and sore the next two days and I still haven't worked out at all since Friday. Today I had an excuse, I got my haircut for the wedding :) SHORT! And I love it! But I did it in place of a workout. Somehow I have to get my workouts to more than just the 3 days of running that I am doing. To lose 100 more pounds it's going to take a little more effort. And me telling people no, that I can't do things because I have to go workout. A little bit more than half hour a day. So I am kinda gearing myself up for that. I am going to hit it pretty hard after the wedding. I am so close to being on track for an average of 10 pounds a month. I just need to hit it a little harder, and I will have more success at it :0)

It's a New Year!

Today marks the official start of my no sugar/no gluten/no dairy mark to figure out if my body is really allergic to yeast or not. And what do I do? Eat sour cream in my dinner. Whoops. I will make sure that doesn't happen again!

I could tell it immediately when I woke up this morning. The difference. So like many diets before I had "my lasts" yesterday. My last glass of milk, my last pizza, my last velveeta dip with tortilla chips and fritos.My last bowl of ice cream. And by the time I went to bed I felt horrible. And still today. I was puffy and bloated this morning when I got up. And then the headache started. Now I know that while you are cutting things out like this that there will be a "die-off" stage. And it's a lot like being sick. So I am expecting to not feel all that hot for the first week or so. So I am determined to push through. But man. I started the no sugar thing earlier in the week. So I could really tell when I had it. And even the creamer that I got for my coffee has been too sweet. I mean for real. My body has decided that it hates the sugar already? Geez that was quick.

It's a lot of work to eat this way. Tonight I had to actually think and prep out what I want for meals for the next week. Since I won't be able to eat at work with the kids anymore unless they are eating salad, I have to start taking my own lunches. And I also had to come up with something to eat for breakfast too. Ugg. That is going to be the hardest meal of the day. The majority of breakfast food is carbs. oh joy.

So I do believe that this is a good change. I am ready for it. I am ready to see my body actually change in a good way. As soon as the die-off stage is done!

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Breakfast: small apple, tsp pb, half of homemade coffee
Lunch: salad, beans and corn, roast beef slices, small handful of fritos
Dinner: Ritz chicken (minus ritz), small handful of fritos
snack, small handful of fritos, , half of iced kicker from dutch bros
*8 cups of water*