tiny gain.

summer was brought in with style with my dad's annual dive at the pool.

the pool is one of my FAVORITE places to be during the summer. nothing is more relaxing than playing cornhole, taking a dip and having a sip.

and of course. summer means... BBQs!

weighed in this morning... after memorial day weekend... and the new number is 145.2... that is .2 gain.

i am still blaming my gain on my decision to start running again... of course it couldn't be that plate of macaroni salad and coleslaw to go with my loaded hotdog...

or could it...

next weigh-in: Monday, June 6th

hobbies.

every time i get on this weight loss kick (this is my seventh time) i am completely consumed with thoughts about food, exercise, and healthy living. i read article after article about healthy food. i read healthy living blogs every day. the scale is on my mind constantly. my next meal is what i am thinking about the minute i am done eating.

as much as i am obsessed with food. i really need to reflect on other hobbies i have and enjoy. like....

spending time with family.

enjoying time with my favorite kids.

singing.

spending time with friends.

running for fun.

snuggling with sasha.

and last but not least,

spending time with my husband.

Wishing everyone a Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

a filling snack.

i have had a hard time staying focused on eating healthy in the afternoon. that is my most "dangerous" time of day. the time between 5 and 7. the time i wait for tim to get home. the time i wait for tim to get hungry.

so many times, i have walked in the door, and the first place i go is the snack cabinet. on my mind. chips and crackers. not on my mind. carrot sticks and bananas.

my friend told me today that she craves fruit and veggies... when will that happen to me? i crave a cheez-it. i crave a chip. i crave a bag of flavor blasted cheddar goldfish. i have never in my life craved a grape. or a celery stick. (unless that celery stick has a chicken wing and blue cheese to go with it)

i realized that i tend to overeat on goldfish or crackers. one serving is never enough. i am still starving... i have consumed hundreds of calories on these snacks in a sitting.

i have been on a mission to find a filling and satisfying afternoon snack. and today... I FOUND IT!

i grabbed chobani yogurt and Fiber One Caramel Delight Cereal.

i crushed up less than a quarter cup of cereal and mixed it in my yogurt. it was perfect.

this 200 calorie snack filled me up after my twenty-five minute run up and down hills this evening.

and hopefully it keeps me satisfied while i wait patiently for my husband to get hungry...

scrub a tub.

today, i received a text message from my cousin. she wanted to come to my apartment and drop off some books for me to use in my classroom.

our apartment is super small. and i have to be honest. it gets cluttered pretty quickly. so when i received that text message... i went into instant panic. all i could think about was the laundry basket of folded towels sitting in our living room. and the mail that tim so kindly leaves on every table, couch and chair around the apartment.

i hustled through the door, and began a quick clean. i threw away mail, remade our bed with the pretty pillows, vacuumed, scrubbed the bathroom, dusted and took out the trash. all to get ready for our company.

i think i burned about 500 calories in this cleaning craziness.

when my cousin arrived, she carried a bag of books up the steps. chatted for about a minute. then had to go play some volleyball. 47 minutes of sweating and cleaning for her 3 minute stay.

good news though. i have some great books for summer reading...

and my apartment is sparkling on a wednesday night... i have three less chores to do on saturday!! woot! woot!!

happy weight.

have you ever looked at a picture of yourself and thought...

"boy, i look skinny!"

i really am happy in the 140s. this is my "happy" weight.

do you have a "happy" weight?

new goal.

i am a day behind on my weigh-in...because... i am an alternate on a softball team... and well... last night... my fantastic skills at right field were needed (and by fantastic skills, i mean standing in the open field staring at the clouds, swatting bugs, and praying that a ball is not hit in my direction)...

after the game, the team decided to go out and celebrate our victory. we celebrated at wing night. i love chicken wings. they are right up there with a dorito... i turned down the chicken wings...

and decided to get a blackened chicken salad instead.

now for the weigh-in: 145.0. that is a 2.4 pound gain.

i am not a fan of excuses. but i have started to run again. i feel like i always gain weight when i begin exercising... especially when i start running. i am not going to worry about this gain yet. hoping next week, i see a loss again.

i have a new goal for the summer: Click HERE to read about it!

and now back to the Biggest Loser finale...

i've got the blues.

as i sit here, beginning to type this blog, i am getting hit with the SNB's. the sunday night blues.

don't get me wrong. i love teaching. and i will love seeing my 24 smiling faces tomorrow morning at 8:20.... but for some reason, the more fun i have on a weekend. the harder it is to get back into my routine on a monday morning.

tim and i went out to dinner last night with one of our favorite couple friends. they chose the restaurant... one i have NEVER heard of... and i know why. mostly everything on the menu was UNDER 500 calories! the name of the restaurant is called harvest.

if you are interested in checking out the location and menu... click HERE.

i ordered a veggie burger... which i thought tasted better than it looked.

and for dessert i had peanut butter mousse. small, under 500 calories and tasted OUT OF THIS WORLD.

we enjoyed our time together until we got the bill. we were shocked at the amount of food we ate and for the amount of money we were paying. i think we all left feeling hungry both in our stomachs and in our wallets.

we ended our weekend celebrating the baptism of a beautiful baby girl in our family. i ate a piece of cake and enjoyed every bite of it.

shout out to my brother paul! he has lost more than twenty pounds on his weight loss journey too! way to go! i know you have been working hard! (minus the cupcake you just ate today) ;)

friday date night.

a friday night is my favorite time of the week. knowing that i can sleep in on saturday. knowing that i don't have to follow my weekly schedule the next day. knowing that i get a break for two days in a row... makes my friday night so much better.

tim and i usually make friday night our date night. we go to a restaurant that always takes us a couple of hours to decide on... which then causes us to eat dinner late...which then causes me to get a little ornery...because a mix of me being hungry and tired don't blend well.

when i am starving at a restaurant, i try to make time go fast by playing some kind of game with tim. my new favorite is Hang Man Fortune. we typically play on the back of a paper place mat... and tim, about 99% of the time, plays along because he knows it helps my hungry mood as we wait for our food.

obviously, when we were playing last night... i had only two things on my mind. food and bed.

we decided to order something a little different last night. a small white pizza with diced tomatoes. it was a winner and hit the spot. we each ate two slices (i could of easily ate the whole thing)... and now we are looking forward to heating it up for lunch this afternoon.

loving the sunshine! happy saturday!

love.

i have had only one thing on my mind over the past two days... a college friend of mine has passed away.

this person was a person so full of life. very optimistic. always happy. funny. caring. and more.

over the past seven years we have lost touch but we are still connected through facebook. when i heard of his passing. i was devastated and heart broken. although it has been years, i have had memories of him going through my mind constantly over the past two days. and each time i think of him, i get a sad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

it has also made me stop and think of my life.

life is short. i can be gone tomorrow. i need to live each day to the fullest. and love everyone as much as i can while i am here...

and pray that when it is my time to go, that people remember me like i remember my friend. happy, optimistic, and loving.

have a wonderful and blessed weekend.

back on shelves.

fell upon these at the store yesterday.

this means only one thing...

SUMMER IS ALMOST HERE!!

i LOVE a circus peanut...my goal is to only eat 100 circus peanuts this summer... ( i ate about 600 of them last summer)

total circus peanuts consumed: 5

new path.

i lost twenty pounds... i lost twenty pounds in four and a half months.

this is not the first time i have lost twenty pounds. this is my eighth time. which means i have gained twenty pounds, seven times, over the last 10 years.

a friend of mine asked "you lost twenty pounds...what is your new goal?"

my new goal is to learn as much as i can about maintaining my weight loss. my new goal is to never say "twenty pounds to go..."

losing the weight was hard work. but i know that maintaining my weight will be harder...

i am so fortunate to have a strong support system around me. my husband, tim, has been very patient with me. my co-worker, melissa, has been on this path with me. my family and friends, have been reading my blog and holding me accountable.

hoping this support systems sticks with me as i continue on this journey... i am in the fork in the road. i can either gain the weight back in one direction. or maintain my weight in the other.

i am choosing the path that leads me to be more happier... the path that leads me to be more confident. hoping the path stays smooth and has very little bumps.

any suggestions on how to maintain weight loss??!!

a veggie post.

i love dipping a cucumber in ranch dressing. i love dipping carrot sticks in ranch dressing. i can safely say that i love eating any raw vegetable as long as i have ranch dressing.

however, i have never been a big fan of the cooked vegetable. growing up, i was never a fan of the mushy carrot. or the soggy onion. or even the soft broccoli stem. but as i inch towards the big 3-0... my taste buds have changed towards those warm vegetables.

tonight, tim made sauteed zucchini and onion with salt, pepper, garlic powder, crushed red pepper and a little bit of EVOO. it is one of my favorites!

my new favorite vegetable is an onion. i like it on everything! and i am just beginning to like eating it cooked..

one reason i love getting older, is the fact that i am starting to enjoy foods that are healthier... foods that i would of never touched ten years ago (like an onion)... i have gone out of my comfort zone with food. tim has definitely helped with this... otherwise my diet would consist of kraft mac and cheese, hot dogs, and spaghetti o's with toast.

Do you enjoy any foods now that you didn't when you were younger?

weighed in this morning. new number is 142.6... woooo hoooo! down 20.6 pounds since january 3rd. feels amazing...

Next weigh-in: Monday, May 23rd

babysitters.

tim and i spent the whole day yesterday babysitting our nephew and niece... friends told us that it would be the best birth control...

when we arrived, i immediately had to feed mckenna. after lunch, it was nap time. both kids... down for a nap... i seriously must of ran up and down the steps ten times to check on them. i couldn't sit longer than five minutes before i felt the need to poke my head into their bedrooms.

mckenna woke up in about 45 minutes... then it was cuddle time and play time. and during this time, i continued running up and down the steps to check on logan.

once logan was awake, tim entertained him and i continued to entertain mckenna. then it was time for a bottle.

when dinner came around. i had one hand on a pizza slice and the other on a baby spoon feeding mckenna, because the little puffs she was eating, was not satisfying her hunger... she wanted the real food. oh and logan. had to beg and trick him into eating his dinner.

after dinner... bath time and pajamas... we entertained a little bit more and finally put them to bed. of course i had to run up the stairs a few more times with two cry outs from logan and one from mckenna.

so good birth control... yes. tim and i were together the whole day in that cozy house and barely even had a second to talk to the other... i can see how it could be VERY easy to lose each other...

but although it was a busy day... we both admit that we enjoyed EVERY SECOND of it.

binge eater.

i never considered myself a binge eater... but i have been doing a lot of thinking about what it means to binge eat.

binge eaters come home after work and eat 1000 calories worth of snacks until they realize what the heck they are doing.

binge eaters go to a party and end up eating the dorito basket.

binge eaters panic at a party if they don't get to the dessert table fast enough so they can eat as many cookies as they can before they are all gone.

binge eaters go back for seconds and thirds.

i guess i am a binge eater.

i am learning how to control myself at parties and buffets. i am learning to blog after work and read other weight loss blogs after work to keep myself out of the snack closet. i am learning to eat only one serving of what is on my plate.

i am trying to learn these habits so they stick. so i don't binge eat. so that i really learn how to live a healthy life style.

so i can be a more confident me.

summer and a smoothie.

i love this time of year.

i love long, warm days. i love the countdown until the end of the school year.

i feel like a kid again every school year as i am counting down the days to the last day of school. i have those butterflies of excitement. i can't wait to swim in my uncle's pool. i can't wait to visit the beach. i can't wait to go back to mexico... and i can't wait to sleep in past six!

i am looking forward to my "summer" schedule. no more lesson planning. observations. report cards. and teaching. just a mental break so i can go back to school refreshed and ready to teach new minds at the end of august.

tonight tim and i did our weekly grocery trip... strawberries, chobani yogurt, and bananas were in our cart to make my new favorite... a strawberry banana smoothie! i have been drinking these for dessert at night... it tastes just like a milkshake!

To make this smoothie:

Ingredients

six strawberries

one banana

1/2 cup of low fat plain yogurt

1/2 cup of low fat milk

1 tablespoon of honey

3 tablespoons of pineapple juice (optional)

Blend all these ingredients together with ice and VIOLA!! Makes enough for two... so share with a friend! :)

after grocery shopping, we went around the corner to chipotle... i ended the night with a chicken bowl...

and it tasted as awesome as it looks!

Happy Wednesday!

small loss.

i had a wonderful day yesterday celebrating mother's day with the family.

i had a few bumps in the road with doritos and onion dip...

and an amazing dessert table with ice cream, cookies and cake...

but i made it through successfully.

thank you for having us dan and amanda!

weighed in this morning at 143.6... another small loss... but i'll take it... almost twenty pounds down...only a teeny .4 pounds to go....

next weigh-in: Monday, May 16th.

road trip.

yesterday, i packed a snack bag of almonds, grabbed a fiber bar and buckled my seat belt for a two hour road trip to see my best friend, jen, from mifflinburg, pennsylvania. tim and i are from a suburb right outside of philadelphia so when we started entering this rural area, it started to feel like we were in a whole new world.

jen lives on top of a hill and her view from her home is spectacular and breathtaking...

we were starving when we arrived, so we went to lunch at a pizza place and i ordered a veggie "sub"... or as people from the philly area call it... a veggie hoagie. the bread was phenominal! i ended up eating the WHOLE hoagie because i didn't want to waste the bread.

we celebrated our time together eating and drinking throughout the day and evening. it was truly a wonderful time and made me realize how important friendships are...

Plans for the day... spending mother's day with one of the most fantastic and beautiful moms out there...

Happy Mother's Day!

the "full" effect.

the other night i went out to dinner with a good friend. we ate our appetizers and when we were finished, my friend sat back in the booth and said "i'm full."

"i'm full" this is a sentence i don't say often. i think the reason i can pack on twenty five pounds in no time is because i can honestly say that i do not get "full."

i was kind of jealous of her "full" feeling... we ate the same thing and i couldn't keep my mind off my grilled chicken panini coming to my table at any second. i couldn't wait to sink my teeth and savor that sandwich... i was no where near "full." i was still starving!!

i ate half of my sandwich. and i was still not "full." it took all my willpower to get the second half of it wrapped up so i could eat it for lunch the next day. because i was still starving!

i think this is why i have such a problem at parties... i never get "full" so i just keep stuffing my face. i never get an upset stomach. i never get a "i feel gross" feeling.

i read so many articles that say to pay attention to your hunger. if you're hungry, eat. if you are full, stop eating. well, if that was the case, i would never stop. i am always hungry!

maybe i don't know what it feels like... maybe i am missing it. and not paying attention to it. but "full" to me means that my stomach doesn't want more food, and there is no more room for it.

and let me tell you... there is ALWAYS room for more.

i think this is why i am on this constant weight gain/weight loss journey...

five days in a row.

it has been a few days since i have blogged... i have been super busy lately... i think it is because the weather has been getting nicer and the days have been getting longer... and i feel more up to going out with friends and family after a long day with my kids at school.

and because of this...

i have gone out to eat for five days in a row. not sure how it happened... but it did.

i have been trying to figure out how to attack a restaurant. one strategy i use is checking menus online... another one is to eat a healthy snack before i go into a restaurant so that i am not STARVING when i walk in...

i have been ordering myself a healthy meal on the menu and "cheating" with an appetizer to share with tim. tonight i ate buffalo chicken dip and chips.

last night i ate crab dip with guacamole and mango salsa with chips. it was out of this world!

(can you tell that i have a chips and dip addiction)

going out to eat is one my favorite things to do with tim. and one of the hardest things i do with tim. i am getting really good at ordering healthy choices... but tim. well... he still orders french fries. it is so hard to watch him eat my favorite meal... i just wish he would jump on this band wagon with me... that would eliminate so much temptation.

so after eating dinner out all week, i decided to do an emergency weigh-in this afternoon... and the number is 143.8....

so far... so good.

have a wonderful weekend!

breakfast buffet.

this morning was teacher appreciation day at school. we were given a wonderful breakfast with pancakes, eggs, cakes and fruit.

i have been given myself little "tests" lately. could i handle a buffet breakfast without overdoing it?

with losing weight, one of the most important strategies i use is following a routine.

i know what i am eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner...

but a breakfast buffet... that would throw off my routine!

i want to start easing myself into these food situations... because in my life, i am put into these situations ALL THE TIME. i don't want to turn down food that other people have worked hard to prepare and make... i just want to learn how to eat in moderation. and chose healthier choices.

this morning i ate some eggs and fruit. made a cup of coffee. and then walked away.

it threw off my routine. but i am happy that i did it. it made me see that i can eat at a buffet...and succeed!

any other ideas on how to handle buffets?

birthday in the house!

i have been in a little bit of a funk over the past 24 hours(poor tim)... and i needed tonight to get rid of it...

today is my grandmother's 82nd birthday. for those of you don't her, she is a wonderful person and has a great sense of humor!

i sometimes wonder what is like being alive over the past 82 years. she has been through the great depression and world war II. she has seen the world change with music, television, telephones and internet. she truly is a person with experience, knowledge and wisdom.

tonight we went to dinner with mom and dad to celebrate her big day... it was nice to change our routine and go to dinner with my family. it made monday so much more enjoyable!

Weighed in this morning... new number is 144.0... i am happy with that... it's a loss!

next weigh-in: Monday, May 9th

thoughts on exercise.

here are some of my thoughts on exercise...

i have many friends who work out for hours a day. i have oodles of friends who are joined to a gym and go there after work every day to burn calories... i have read so many blogs about people who have workout schedules and routines.

i have been on this weight journey for 10 years... and if it is one thing i have learned...i have learned that losing weight has more to do with what you eat than how much working out you do.

i understand that working out is great for your mind. i totally agree! i understand that working out is fantastic for your heart... and i can't agree more...

but do i need to KILL myself for my mind and heart to be healthy. my mind hurts sometimes at the thought of getting off the couch and going for a run!

i have never had a gym membership and i don't think i ever will... it seems easy to go for a walk somewhere whether it be a neighborhood, a park or the building i work in...and these new workout dvd's are awesome! i don't need to join a class... i have my instructor right on the television... money saved!

motivation is what seems to hold me back though. my friends have a gym bag packed and head right to the gym from work... i head home, sit on the couch, and take a nap... hoping with the weather getting nicer that i can feel a little more motivated to get moving a little more...

so to wrap up this jumble on my thoughts on exercise:

*i would rather eat healthy during the day than do a work out.
*joining a gym would waste my money.
*a nap comes before anything else in my life.
what are some of your thoughts on exercise?