Food Rant - It's Not That Hard to be Good

 I was going to combine this with my last entry, but I thought better of it. It's long and a bit negative in parts, so I tried not to post it. When that didn't work, I decided to quarantine it to this post right here.

I think the kind of eating that I did today, 400 calories in snacks and a 500+calorie dinner, might seem strange to people who live with food bipolar disorder, a term I just made up to describe my old and a lot of other people's conflicting attitudes toward food. This kind of feeling makes otherwise awesome and reasonable people fear food like eggs (such high cholesterol!) and bananas (such high sugar and calories!) because of the scare tactics used by magazines, the news, and fad diets. These people eschew such food but might later be seen eating something like a massive restaurant Caesar salad (hey, it's a salad!) or a breaded chicken sandwich because chicken is better than a burger, right?

Not to sound like a self-righteous health nut that no one ever wants to hang around, but if you've ever thought any of those things, you probably need a better picture of what you're eating. The best way to get that is by logging your calories. It's a great practice that if you can get into, even if just for a month, will allow you to see the massive dent certain foods make in your available daily calorie goal. When I think that I just ate this yummy and filling meal for less than half of the calories of the restaurant lunch Chris and I had the other day, which we SPLIT, it's kind of mind-boggling. In a good way! Sure, I used to eat piles of junk and spend hundreds of dollars a month eating at fast food and other restaurants, but I don't anymore!

I used to eat all this for one meal! I ate 20 more
calories than this on the entire day of Friday.

And it's so easy to cook for yourself. Almost every recipe I've tried since cooking has been a success, and all so far have been at least edible. It's so much more economical in terms of money and calories, it's just kind of a no brainer these days for all except special occasions. I'm not saying I don't still want to eat the junk, but once I make a good food decision, I generally don't think about the cruddy food any more.

Even when you can't make your food, there are often choices you can make while you're out and about that will be better for you than your old ways of eating. I had eight pieces of brown rice California sushi rolls the other day when I was at the mall with Catherine, and while I could have had a burger, pizza, or evil wonderful evil poutine, I had a filling meal for under 300 calories. Even white rice sushi would have only been 50 calories more. That's less than a medium container of fries at McDonald's. Heck, that's less than a large Coke.

The point is that it's not hard. It's not as easy as a drive-thru meal, but it's kind of close. And it's miles better for you. I don't know what else I can say. Try it. Read some real health advice, take flash news stories about how one type of food is HORRIBLE or AMAZING with a grain of salt, and just try. And then try again. Give it a month. If you don't like what you see, stop. But I don't think that's going to happen.

Tonight's Dinner

We used to regularly make orange juice from concentrate and go through about one of those little tubes a week. Since recommitting to fitness after the New Year, we've had four of the things hanging around in the freezer and one in the fridge and have stuck to drinking water, milk, and tea. Tired of the sullen OJ glaring at me every time I opened the refrigerator, I dug around on the internet and found a recipe that uses the concentrate, egg, and soy sauce to coat chicken breasts that you then dip in bread crumbs and bake. I decided to try my hand at it tonight, though memories of chicken surprise still haunted me and I was a little scared of how it would taste. I also made a spinach salad with Craisens, sunflower seeds, mozzarella cheese, and ranch dressing, and some roasted Brussels sprouts as a side. I shouldn't have worried, it was an awesome dinner! It was filling, flavorful, and nutritious as heck.

This evening's delicious chicken. Click here to learn how to make it yourself, and if you choose
to use boneless breasts like we did, adjust the cooking time to around 30-35 minutes.

Breadcrumbs and sugary juice are by no means a regular part of my diet plan, but for a meal that provided good amounts of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, iron, fiber, and a bunch of other nutrients in smaller amounts, it was worth it. And I can always whip up something similar without the extra ingredients, it was just kind of fun to do something different with our plain old boneless skinless chicken breasts.

I was scared of these guys at first, too, but I promise that this simple recipe for
roasted Brussels sprouts will win you over if you're unsure about this vegetable.

Tracking my calories with MyFitnessPal, the whole meal was around 525 calories. This fit with a breakfast of 124 calories (Kashi GoLean, skim milk, and blackberries), a lunch of 323 calories (leftover broccoli/cabbage/baby corn/water chestnut stir fry with a chicken breast), and some snacks (a whole wheat toaster waffle, peanut butter, skim milk, and dark chocolate) adding up to 400 calories. My calorie intake for the day is around 1,400, give or take a few.

Workout Victory, and a Mini-Playlist

Just finished a killer workout with EA Sports Active 2 where I tested my, "Don't say anything negative the whole damn time!" plan, which went really, really well. I've gotten into a dumb habit of getting upset and gloomy in the middle of workouts. This has ranged from multiple, "I can't do it!"s to tears to occasionally yelling at Chris for...breathing? But I recognized that habit as one of those things that could probably be easily changed if I just told myself that I was barred from that particular habit. And it worked! I hurt, I had times where I was light-headed or my knees hurt, but I made it, and I didn't look like any more of a goof than absolutely necessary. It felt great. It feels great. This is me. High-fiving myself.

So that's out of the way and it's time to shower, make the bed (I did laundry today!) and go to sleep. My mind's still kind of racing from the workout and I'm winding myself down for the night. That's why I'm blogging and not, you know, doing those things I just said I should be doing.

I've been wanting to share a couple of my favorite feel good/exercise/whatever songs for a while now, and just grabbed their videos from YouTube. Hope they bring a smile to your face, and empower you to do what needs to be done.

Mika - Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)


Bif Naked - Tango Shoes

Weigh-In #3

Hey what's up, weigh-in Thursday? Yes, you should be reading that last sentence in a happy voice, because I'm totally back on track this week after a little disappointment last week. Seriously, whenever I have moments of doubt or worry, I just need to remind myself that if I stick with it, I'll see results. The long view is my friend, it's the day to day silliness that I should try to let roll off my back. Anyway, here's the picture:

That's more like it!

That's a loss of 4.2 pounds from last week's weigh-in, for a total weight loss since the beginning of this challenge of 7.2 pounds. That's really awesome. Like, again, it might be a little water silliness and next week might be another bummer as it goes up a bit, but if the overall trend is down, I'm just so happy. What encouraging news. Now, how did I get here?

How I Ate:

Even though I had a few high-calorie days this week, I also had a few pretty low ones. This resulted in a average daily calorie intake of 1390, with days as high as 1670 and as low as 1081. I remember going over and over what I ate on Monday, my low day, to see if I'd forgotten to log anything and asking myself if I was hungry, but it turns out I apparently just had a dip in what I needed to feel full. Probably the best victory of that day was measuring out the pasta I had for dinner and cutting the portion from a cup to a half cup, telling myself if I wanted more I could come back for it. It turned out with the steamed broccoli, Italian sausage, and pasta sauce, I didn't need more than a cup. Also, that gave me a great portion of leftovers the next day for lunch.

The handful of "bad" meals I had this week were all within or very close to being within my daily calorie goals for the day, from chili fries for dinner one night to pizza with Catherine and Chris the other day to the awesome sandwich, chicken bites, and fries that you've already seen in pictures. I do feel like I could have made an effort to resist temptation, but at this point I'm really excited that so much of my healthy eating has become habitual. It also helps that all but two or three meals a week are eaten at home, and we just don't buy tempting, crappy food.

So yes, in the week ahead I hope to have a more steady amount of calories from day to day and to eat more fruits and vegetables. If I can make the good choices easy (like washing all the spinach or blackberries so they're always ready to be eaten), I'll have a much better time of it, I know.

How I Moved:

This was a good week for exercise. I went a few places, like the mall and the CN Tower, which were a decent distance, and on top of my four EA Sports Active 2 workouts, I did a bit of Wii Fit Plus running, some weight lifting, and dancing/running while washing dishes. Seriously, it's great. You open the cabinets under the sink so your knees don't keep bumping the doors, put on your heart rate strap, and set the heart rate monitor watch somewhere it won't get wet. Play Lady Gaga or the Black Eyed Peas or something, and just move while washing. It's stupid and fun, so I was all over that.

How I Felt:

Nothing new here, I guess. I still have days where I feel like a rock star or at least an up and coming singer/dancer with her own Disney Channel show, but others where I'm in a horrible spiral of depression and moodiness. It sucks for real, but it doesn't seem to last too long, more than four or five hours. Chris is great at snapping me out of it, but I feel like I need to be able to help myself. I'm working on it, I'm working on it.

In other news, I'm working on a project for this fitness challenge some friends and I have been doing that's not so focused on weight-loss and that emphasizes mini-goals of the user's choice to help motivate them toward a balanced and healthy lifestyle. It sounds like a bit of work, but it also sounds fun. This is all in the pre- pre- pre- planning stage, so it's all just bouncing ideas back and forth, but it's going to happen, really!

Bonus CN Tower Videos!

I got two videos that turned out pretty well on Sunday. The first is from when you just enter the CN Tower and you're downstairs, heading toward the elevators, and the second is a shot from the Observation deck as I look out over the massive Greater Toronto Area below. 5.6 million people live down there, and while Jacksonville is 885 square miles, the GTA is 2,751 square miles, which is pretty intense. The city itself is only 243.2 square miles, though, so take that, Jacksonville's still the hugest.

I had no idea how I could take pictures that conveyed the awesomeness
of this wall, so Chris suggested a video. That guy's always thinking.

This is what you would see if you were on the Observation Deck with us.

Finally, a CN Recap!

Sorry for the delay, I've had a couple busy days, but here we go with the massive CN Tower Day picture post!


These chairs are in front of a shawarma place I've been wanting to go to, but recently found out is closed. That's okay, there are about a thousand others around the city left to try. It's one of those food types you don't hear about in Jacksonville, but are all over the darn place here in Toronto. Another one: Korean BBQ. Nine times out of ten when you see "BBQ" on a sign, it means Korean food. What a change from Florida!


A path through Queen's park that has been almost totally snowed in. Sometimes it's better to walk off the path on the snow, because you're less likely to slip on the sometimes icy path.

Some statues embedded in the Canadiana Gallery, a building that's part of the University of Toronto and is also on the way to the CN Tower. Chris suspects that this building exists solely to be the location of terribly inconvenient midterm exams.

A curvey building on the way to the CN Tower.

I really like this building we saw as we walked to the CN Tower. It's pretty! Maybe my camera battery would have lasted longer if I hadn't taken a hundred pictures on the way there. Oh well!

Another fancy building, this one with three distinct styles. I had to scamper right after taking pictures, because a security guard with an "I mean business" face started walking my way when I took this picture. Chill out, bro!

The meal from the restaurant! The boyfriend and I shared this, so the total calories for the sandwich and fries was only 760. Yes, that's a lot (half my calories for the day!), but we shared the sandwich and fries, drank water, did our EASA2 workout that night, and walked two and a half miles to and then from the CN Tower. Overall, it was one of those fun splurges I don't really regret at all. You have to live a little, and I think keeping about 90% on the plan is a way to make it work. I'll keep you posted on how I feel about that when I weigh in tomorrow!

The light thingy (aperature?) on my digital camera hates vast expanses of snow or sky. Seriously, a lot of white or even light colors really gets my camera in an uncooperative mood. I've since learned how to deal with it through a method I call "holding my finger in front of the camera until the second before I take the shot," but this was one of the pics I shot before I came up with that. It looks an awful lot spookier than it really is, but I kind of like it all menacing like this.

But this is what the CN Tower really looked like on Saturday. Did I mention it's TALL?

Well, did I? The stripey part there is the elevator shaft, where a bank of elevators zip visitors up and down. They're partially glass, which is great, if slightly terrifying.

We made it inside and are posing with a replica! That or we're outside and about to fight Godzilla, one of the two.


The Mountie moose! Apparently Toronto has fancily-decorated moose around the city just like Jacksonville has our manatees. This one was inside the Tower as we headed toward the elevators.

Annnnnd, we're up! This is the first shot I took once we arrived at the Observation Deck, and all that crazy white stuff isn't snow, it's ice from the frozen Lake Ontario. The lines in all that mess are from ice breakers used to keep the ferry running between the Toronto Islands to the mainland. Cars aren't allowed there, and there's no grocery store there, so keeping the ferry running is pretty darn critical.

Pretty buildings viewed from above!

We can see our house from here! I couldn't find us if you gave me a map and binoculars, but Chris says that, if you follow the trail of smoke, we're in the clump of white-gray buildings, in the middle. To the left of the big black building. See it? Good, because I don't!

More of buildings and the city and prettiness!

That's me, in front of a window, through which I swear is the city, but the camera was being characteristically difficult, and this is what you get.

That's more like it! Let's dwell on the spectacular achievement of human will, imagination, and engineering that made this great picture possible. Namely, let's focus on how smartly my headband goes with that hoodie. It's a triumph.

I'm standing with the world's tallest mail box as well as a commemorative oversized Barenaked Ladies stamp.

And then we headed to the glass floor and took the picture from the other day with my feet and the horrifying look all the way to the ground, rode the elevator down, and checked out the gift shop. We decided to take the PATH part of the way back home, and had a lot of fun and only got lost about three times.

Most of the PATH is underground, but the first part next to the CN Tower is above ground - and so pretty! We ended up going through this part, the Skywalk, then Union Station, then a number of big downtown buildings and even through a mall. It was interesting, and something I never see, as it's always just seemed so strange and daunting to figure out. It wasn't so bad with Chris to help navigate, though, and when we came out of it, it was snowing.

This was a really great day, and I'm excited to share it with you. Sorry that I didn't get more or better pictures, but hopefully you like what you see. Thanks for reading!

Quick Note About Comments

I just opened up comments to anyone, so you don't have to have a Google or Windows Live or any other special account to post here. I know some people have wanted to comment but didn't want to sign up for all that mess, so it's open! Just identify yourself, and comment like mad! Questions, observations, heaping praise, I like it all. Thanks to Courtney for letting me know this was an issue, I didn't realize my comment settings were so strict.

Here's a bonus video of me exercising with the EA Sports Active 2. This time, I'm shooting baskets, which involve a side lunge to one of the two trainers followed by jumping to shoot the basketball at the right moment. Also, this is the first appearance of a pony tail on my head in a year! It's not much now, but the little fella's growing every day.

Today's Trip to the CN Tower

I pass this statue all the time and just now found out that it's King Edward VII.

It's late and I have a workout to do, but I will update tomorrow with a recap of today's excellent adventure to, at, and from the CN Tower today. Spoiler alert: it was awesome, and yes we did see our house (erm, apartment) from up there.

In the mean time, here's a series of pictures from our day, at least until my camera's battery died.

We picked up lunch on the way at Casey's Bar and Grill. Chris and
I shared some sweet and spicy chicken bites, as well as a far less
photogenic but no less delicious "stacked" sandwich.

A snowman statue near the base of the CN Tower. I can understand why Florida
might have a snowman statue, but aren't these one of Canada's
most renewable of resources? Can't they just build one anew each season?

Yep.

One of the views from the observation deck.
You can click the image to view more detail.

Those are my feet! And that's the ground, 1,122 feet below me.

That's all for now, but I'll be typing a lot more about this great adventure tomorrow!

The Best is Yet to Come

It's been a somewhat boring week with housey, diety, and worky-outy stuff, but there have been some high points. I got to go to the mall with my friend Cat who's in town to train for her upcoming role of Ariel (among others!) on the Disney Cruise Line. She's such a fun and friendly person to be around, and I'm really glad she's in Toronto for a few months. We got boots for her and Lush bath products for me, and I got to meet her friend, who's playing Cinderella on the boat and who is also from Florida. She seemed incredulous when I said that it was pretty warm that day, but I told her I'd had since October to adjust to the weather, whereas she'd just gotten in town a few weeks before.

Another snowy day in Toronto.

So it was a good but somewhat pedestrian after the last couple weeks. The excitement will come tomorrow, though. That's when we're finally doing it. Chris and I are going to the CN Tower. Oh, you know about the CN Tower, right? It was the world's tallest free-standing structure when it was built, and though it's lost that distinction in the years since, it's still the world's tallest tower. It has six elevators inside it that send you up at 15 miles per hour, and when you get up to the top (well, not the tippy top, but the top for tourists), you can stand on and look through its glass floor! Of course, it also has a pretty neat series of lights that run up its length at night, and one of those crazy revolving restaurants, too. Mostly I'm excited because it's such a significant feature of the Toronto skyline, it's really really tall, and I'm going to try really hard not to throw up on the way up there.

Exciting stuff. Workouts are going well, eating is going okay. Monte's being pretty great, and all is well. I look forward to sharing my experiences and pictures from our adventure really soon.

Weigh-In #2

It's Thursday, which means it's weigh-in day. I'm a little disappointed, if not surprised with my number today. I'd love to blame it on water weight or the fact that I've been lifting a bit and maybe it's muscle, but what I'd bet it comes down to is a couple pounds of water weight lost on the first weigh-in correcting itself today. I'm not concerned, really, because I know I'm doing everything right.

It could be worse!

According to the scale today, I'm 1.8 pounds heavier than last week, for an overall weight loss of three pounds since I've started, which is really normal, healthy, and what I'd hoped for. I'm in this for the long haul, and I know that a pound and a half of weight loss a week is healthy and great.

Here's my plan to deal with the numbers on the scale each week:

• If I lose weight, obviously my hard work is paying off and I'm officially the coolest person in the world.
• If I gain or maintain, obviously the body does some funny things sometimes and I'm just a victim of water-weight or other random fluctuations, which will make next week even better.

No getting sad about a number, especially if I've been doing everything I can and it's still not cooperating, and especially especially if it's only gone up one week in a row. I have no regrets about this week, other than a single shortbread cookie I ate in a moment of weakness. I have to remember that in the old days I'd eat ten Oreos or a McFlurry or something. One shortbread cookie did not make me fat. One shortbread cookie will not make me fat, either, if it's rare. Okay, okay, on to the weekly breakdown.

How I Ate:

According to MyFitnessPal, I ate an average of 1451 calories a day. That's one more calorie a day than last week, so that's consistent. We ate out twice this week, which is unusual, but the first time I opted for a six inch subway with turkey, cheddar, and honey mustard on wheat, and the second time Chris and I split a chicken/veggies/fried rice combo at Manchu Wok, keeping both lunches well under 500 calories. Dinners were all over the map in terms of calories depending on whether we ate the standard boneless skinless chicken breast + veggies or more caloric dishes of pasta and sauce. I've been snacking on fruits, veggies, nuts, and dark chocolate.

Today's lunch: a cheesy tuna and spinach tortilla, anise, baby carrots,
chickpeas, light sour cream, Yoplait Source yogurt, red grapes, and water.

How I Moved:

This was a pretty great week for exercise. Chris and I stuck with EA Sports Active 2 and did all four workouts we had scheduled. I wore my Polar heart rate monitor when I worked out to see how accurate the EASA2's calorie estimations were, and found myself to be consistantly burning over 200 more calories per workout than were measured by the game. I chalk it up to the game not counting calories between workouts, when your heart rate remains elevated, and just a more accurate measurement than the arm-strap the game uses. I still love the fact that there's an in-game calories burned measurement and would rather under- than overestimate the calories, but this is a little extra positive news.

Additionally, I challenged myself to use the barbell and weights we have in our apartment, and have been doing basic compound exercises a couple times a week. I got a lot of walking done on the day I took all those pictures for Mom's present, too, since we left the house around 1:30 and came back sometime after 5:00.

The ankle pain is almost completely gone after several days of icing it after working out. This week I've been experiencing a bit of knee pain after workouts. I've been icing it whenever I notice it, and just hoping that if I can jump in with the icing that I can avoid the really scary pain I had with my ankle. It's a bit worrisome to get weird pains like these, but it kind of makes me feel like an athlete, which is awesome.

How I Felt:

This week was good. I had the normal bouts of the blues, but I also had a lot of great times with Chris, a friend of ours who's in Toronto for a few months, Chris's family, and my family. I feel totally capable of handling this weight thing, and though I'm still struggling with the housework, I feel like I'm never moving backwards, just stalling a bit. The snowpocalypse was kind of disappointing, and our bowl we set on the balcony to collect snow never got a tenth full, so no snow ice cream. I don't know how well it would have turned out with skim milk, anyway.

This week I tried two new vegetables (anise and Brussels sprouts) and they both tasted great, so that was really encouraging, and I felt a lot more confident doing the intense exercises called for by the fitness video game. It was a nice week. I slipped up here and there and I got frustrated from time to time, but those are quickly being forgotten while the great times and special moments are rising to the top. I hope this week is just as positive, and that my good choices and good attitude are reflected more clearly in the scale's numbers.