Recipish: Mozmatach pasta salad

A few days ago, I whipped up a quick pasta salad that, quite honestly, turned out to be a whole lot better than I expected. It's simply gemelli pasta, halved grape tomatoes, mozzerella pearls and chopped fresh spinach. I tossed it with a bit of Parmesan Asiago Light Balsamic Vinaigrette by Kraft and voila. An incredibly tasty lunch. I even had another cup of it for dinner. And breakfast the next day. I didn't track the calories or carbs or whatever, but I kept my serving size confined to that cup you see sitting there. It's about the size of a standard coffee mug. 8 oz?

Either way, it was very good. I even managed to get the family to eat some, too. I didn't think they'd ever willingly eat spinach.

Recipish- n. It's like a recipe, but doesn't involve any measurements or health information. In fact, it's essentially a list of ingredients, which is how we roll around here. I leave it to you, the chef, to figure out how much of what is good for you and your tastebuds.

An interesting thing happened to me yesterday. On a whim, I weighed myself. I wasn't due for a weigh in until today, but I thought "Hey, I'm naked. I haven't eaten yet. I've been to the bathroom. Let's check some numbers." I was fully prepared for a small raise, possibly even a small loss. I was not, however, prepared for what I saw on the scale.

I was down 3.2 pounds.

I know, right? Crazy! Considering that was a 2 day loss, I've got two explanations.

1) There was more water weight than I had expected following my Monthlies and, once finished, the rest of the water made its exit. This would mean that during the time I was happy just maintaining, I actually lost weight and couldn't tell for all of the bloating. Love being a girl. Love it. Love. It.

2) The batteries on my scale are going.

So, that's where I'm at. While I know I should be weighing myself today, I think I'm going to just take the numbers from yesterday and use them as unexpected motivation to keep up the good work until the officially official weigh in on Wednesday.

Inertia

I've read several blogs in the past few days that have me really thinking about something. Some of them only relate slightly, but part of the point of reading blogs is to share in other people's experiences and see how their mistakes or triumphs can help me along the way.

The hot topic of the moment in the weight-loss blog-o-sphere is quality v. quantity. I, personally am of the quantity camp. Weight-loss is about calories in and calories out. Period. Bottom line. Can you eat 1500 calories of Reese's cup, exercise three times a week and still lose weight? You betcha. Are you wrecking your body? You betcha. But ultimately-- YOU'LL STILL LOSE WEIGHT!

As with anything, there are a lot of people around pushing their opinions on others as the "right" ones and see any flirting with thinking for yourself as preparations for burning in the Lake of Fire (Love you, Nirvana.) For instance, the Breast V. Bottle debate. Heh... that is one hot topic among mommy forums. I don't even go near it. It seems like, by writing about what you ingest on a blog, you're painting a target on your forehead for people to judge you by what you're eating. "You eat processed foods?! Off with your head!" "That canned food has sodium! SOOOOOODIUM!!!! *dies*" "Fuh-fuh-fuh-frozen... meals?? I hope you've made out your will because you're going to get three kinds of cancer!!! Everyone knows they're chock full of aspartame and turpentine!" Ludicrous nonsense.

The way I see it, what I'm putting into my mouth and my body is my business. As long as the number on the scale is going down at this point, I'm doing just fine. I'm a big girl (really.) and I can make my own decisions. I am looking to be healthier, as is everyone, but I can't just wake up one morning, throw all of my food into the trash and start over following someone else's guide book for what's good and what isn't. What I'm doing is known in the medical world as "too much too fast" (It's Latin.) and I know what happens when I jump through a gigantic hoop before I'm ready. Inertia, because I've got a whole lot of forward momentum going and when it happens that I snag my shoe lace on a rusty piece of emotion, I'm not going to be near anything familiar to help me cope. I won't have any sort of familiarity to help me get back up. Baby steps! Now there may be the people out there who can just throw everything off of the table in one big dramatic cloth-pulling event, but I'm not one of them. And I don't expect everyone else to be, either. We are all unique. We all need different things to get us through in this weight-loss journey and if it's a mother-flippin' 100 calorie pack of Goldfish crackers that gets me over the salt craving then kindly "STFU" and let me have my Goldfish! If, at this stage of my journey, I still need crutches, why on earth would someone take that away from me? There are low calorie alternatives to the high calorie foods I'm familiar with that will carry me through a tough emotional time. Why not be happy that I had enough wherewithall to go for the healthier (-er, that's important) choice than the old fall-back? As long as I don't eat the entire box in one sitting, I'd say that I've done a great job. Who cares that it's not whole wheat, unbleached, free range flour soy-cheddar flavored cracker types, baked for two hours in my own oven? I don't care. Why would someone else? Why is someone else wasting their energy projecting their own preferences onto other people?

While I understand there are healthier choices than some that I might make, there are a whole lot worse choices, as well. I choose not to survive on 100 calorie packages of anything. I also choose, however, not to deny myself anything, which I know will eventually end up in a binge during a weak moment. If I choose to work a caramel mocha into my weekly calorie "budget", but eat healthy for every other ingested morsel, why get down on me? I've had enough discipline and motivation to stay on target and the promise of that one mocha just might be the motivation that got me through the week. One mocha doesn't mean that I'm falling off of the wagon. It might just mean that I've brought a pillow to make the wagon less bumpy on my tushy.

There are different levels of what people consider healthy eating. We're all at different places and I think it should be respected that having slightly less healthy diets than the one you might be on doesn't make anyone else less serious or less motivated. It just means that some people are at a different place, going slow, working on the small steps they can manage right then.

Disclaimer: This is, of course, my opinion on the matter. "You" does not mean I'm speaking to any specific "you", but refers to the general "you" of people to whom these points might apply. All conversation has been strictly hypothetical, as no one has said a darn thing about what I, personally, choose to eat. This post is based off of voyeristically watching other people's conversations on their blogs and contemplating how I would feel in certain situations, not as a rebuttal to any one post. In the event of a water landing, your seat may be used as a flotation device. Thank you for flying Air Nicole.

Gack.

I've been up for nearly two hours and the nausea is just now beginning to subside so that I can eat something. Unfortunately, all we have for breakfast is Apple Cinnamon Cheerios or eggs and toast. While I could just scramble an egg quickly and have it on a slice of toast, the eggs are from the neighbor's incredibly free range chickens (and by that, I mean they're usually in my yard, just wandering around and munching on whatever seeds I planted) and I'm not comfortable yet eating something that didn't come from a farmer. K, however, had no problems adding them into the pancakes he and the girls ate a few mornings ago. The Cheerios don't sound very appealing either, so I think I'm going to have a piece of toast with pumpkin butter and a glass of OJ. It's times like this when having those Slim-Fast shakes on hand is beneficial. I know I should eat. I know I have to get my energy kick started so that I can make it through the day without being a lump but just walking into the kitchen turns my stomach.

Maybe I'll just grab an apple and make a break for my office.

Pathetic attempt at a decent introduction

First of all, for the sake of setting the tone, I feel that you should know I nearly named this blog "How many calories are in a booger?" Back when my oldest daughter was still a toddler (with a cold) I pondered this question. I did not ingest any boogers but I'm sure you can put together how this sprang to mind at all.

My history is long and boring, but the Cliff's Notes version is that I was underweight until I was pregnant with my first child. I had a naturally high metabolism that let me eat anything and everything that I wanted and I still stayed under 100 pounds. At the time, I was 5'7''. Since birthing the aforementioned child, I have lost an inch of height, gone up two shoe sizes and put on a bit of weight. I topped off at 172 with my second pregnancy and was mortified when I didn't lose any of it after the birth of my second daughter. I mean, shouldn't I have lost at least an immediate 8 pounds? I ended up in the 168 vicinity until April 2008, when I finally had enough.

My first weight loss step was to cut out meat entirely. I have a history of high cholesterol in my family and I didn't want to be the next "heart attack at 38". My dad survived. My aunt didn't. Removing meat was the easiest and quickest way to make an impact. And it worked. I lost 20 pounds in 2 months while my husband was away on business. When he came home, however, I slowly began regaining weight until October 2008 when a very stressful Autumn took its toll on my eating habits. I was too depressed to exercise during the winter and struggled with SAD ("The Winter Blahs"). I wrote during the time in my paper journal that I was 151.8 pounds and was disgusted with myself. Still, I maintained that general weight until this summer when we bought our first house.

I don't really know what went wrong there, other than maybe I'm having the molasses metabolism that comes with turning 30. I'm more active now than I have been in a long time, despite losing access to the gym, sauna and pool that came with the apartment we were previously living in. Still, my weight has "ballooned" to 158.4, as of yesterday. I can't really complain because I'm still 14 pounds from my "heavier than I've ever been" weight. It's hard for me to write these numbers because I've been checking out other weight-loss blogs for support and camaraderie but I'm finding people who are 200+ pounds. It makes me feel like I don't have a right to be unhappy with my weight. The fact is that I am, I'm still in the overweight BMI and I still have bits o' Nicole sticking out in places I don't care to be sticking out from. (I'm talking to you, Back Boobs.) While I don't have the long journey ahead (or behind) me that a lot of other bloggers do, I'm still in the same boat-- struggling with numbers while trying to find the time and motivation to take control of the situation.

Calories in/Calories out

Let's see if I can explain all of these numbers without screwing everything up.

My BMR (Not to be confused with a BMI), Basic Metabolic Rate, is 1524, meaning that in a coma, I would burn this many calories a day just in the normal function of my body. To figure up how many calories I need to eat to maintain my current weight and exercise level (which I estimate to be moderate), I multiply my BMR by 1.55, for a result of 2362ish.

Now, I can use these numbers to figure out how many calories I need to eat in a day to make my 2 pounds a week goal. You have to burn 3500 calories to lose a pound (or ingest 3500 to gain one) so I need to burn 7000 in a week.

2362 calories x 7 days a week - 7000 calories / 7 days a week = 1362

Or, to put it simply, 2362 - 1000 = 1362

That's not a lot of calories.