My body has two responses when I'm stressed: sleep and eat. That's it.
When stressed, it is completely possible for my entire weekend to be: sleep, eat, repeat. (Hmm, I think I missed the chance for an awesome [something,something,something] blog name.) In fact, if I hadn't made dinner plans with a friend on Saturday and family plans on Sunday, that would have been my weekend. As it was, I slept until 1 pm on Saturday and had a two hour nap at about 3:30 pm on Sunday.
Right here. This is a perfect sleeping spot.
And food? When I'm stressed, I want to eat. Not because I'm hungry, not because I need it, but because I just do. And while the juicy ripe BC peach waiting for me at home is delicious, you know what probably tastes even better? The apple strudel at one of the coffee shops I frequent. For the record, the apple strudel (or apfelstrudel because apparently I go full German when ordering it) had additional sponge pastry hiding under the apples. Totally false advertising! So I ate the heavily sugared-and-spiced apple slices in the middle and tossed the rest. If I'm going to waste valuable points on crap food, I want the crap food to be worth it.
Hello heaven!
Neither of these options, as I'm sure you have figured out, are conducive to weight-loss. It is also, in case you missed my last 893 references to it, the start of what will quite possibly be the three most stressful months of my life. How stressful? Well, this happened today:
Given all of this, I figured I could use some motivation to keep me on point. I sat down last night and created a spreadsheet to track my weight loss which then turns my weekly numbers into a chart. Because nothing makes me so happy as watching that chart get a little lower every week. (I'll share it when it's a little more impressive. Four weeks in is kind of *meh*)
I'm also going to spend my few waking hours this weekend meal planning for the week so I can make sure I'm set for healthy snacks. Because I am going to want to snack this week... and the 15 weeks after that.
I can be a very 'go
big or go home' type of person so setting goals, per se, has never been a problem for me.
Setting a goal of losing 125lbs is easy. In fact, it's as easy as typing it:
I'm going to lose 125lbs. Bam. Goal = set.
My challenge (and
the challenge for many people) is in setting up all the route markers that take
me to that goal and holding myself
accountable to them. What do I need to do to achieve that goal? What will I
do if I fall off track of doing those things?
While the big goals
are fun to set, they're not practical without the route markers or smaller
goals. So the first thing I did when I recommitted to becoming healthier was
sit down and set out my road map to how I was going to reach that big goal. I
set three monthly goals. I also
set up some weekly goals, but those change week-to-week as I determine what is
a healthy change I can make that week to see improvement.
I
want to see a 10 lbs loss every month, but I will be happy with 8
I know that 10 lbs
is do-able, especially at my current weight - hell, it wouldn't take too much
effort the first couple of months to push and strive for 12 lbs at the start -
but I also know that the next three months of work are going to consume me. I
want 10 lbs, I will aim for 10 lbs, I expect 10 lbs, but if the best I can do
during this time of massive change in our company is 8 lbs, then I will be
happy with that.
Anything less than 8? Well, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Which we totally won't. Right, Andrea?
How do I keep myself accountable to this? I'm weighing in every week (Wednesday mornings, if you care to know) and then texting certain people. These are all people who will appropriately cheer when I go down but also send the WTF? text when I start heading the wrong direction.
I will commit to at least 4 hours of physical activity every week
Okay, this is a 'weekly' goal but those goals are more 'I ate out every lunch last week so this week, I brown bag it every day'. You know, goals that are small adjustments to get me back on track. Not long-term commitments.
If I go to every kickboxing/bootcamp session, then I've reached this goal - and I want to go to every kickboxing/bootcamp session - but it's busy season at work and there will be times when that just won't be feasible because of deadlines and such. Currently (well, up until last week), if I didn't make it to class then I didn't do anything else. This is kind of ridiculous.
I live in a fantastic walking neighbourhood with a beach a decent distance (and down a sizable hill which is always fun to come up) from me. I have BC's Government House with its wonderful chip trails that I can walk/slowly jog around (also with plenty of inclines). I don't have to do the replacement activity that night I don't make it to the gym, but I have to do it. That's the point.
I will keep a food journal and will follow an informal WW plan
I did WW once and was very successful. Then I did WW and only stuck with it long enough to get all the intro material before I bolted because the only meeting I could commit to going to every week was a who's who of SNL characters. I just couldn't take sitting through those meetings anymore and not being allowed to laugh when certain people started talking.
I dusted off the old (no-longer-in-vogue) program booklets, made a few notes of the recipes listed in them that I liked, and have been mentally tallying up points at the end of each day. I haven't been totally amazing at keeping on top of this so far because GISHWHES! WORK! LAZY! I did honestly give myself until after GISHWHES to start actively keeping a food journal, but this week has really just been laziness (although I have actually been eating very well and keeping portions in control so yay me for eating like an adult) but that changes tomorrow. What? I forgot my snazzy journal cheap notebook at home this morning!
Accountability:
The accountability for all of these also comes in the form of a monthly blog post. I would do weekly, but I get bored when other bloggers post weekly weigh-in numbers. There's a good chance you'd get bored if I did that. I do plan to do weekly posts under The Reluctant Athlete tag, but I'll only make a point of talking about these items once a month.
Otherwise, this blog will continue to be a centre of random useless posts.
If you made it all the way through that wall of text, have a dancing baby Groot (which is kind of, sort of spoiler-y but whatever. WHY HAVEN'T YOU SEEN GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY YET?):
I know all none of you are anxiously awaiting to find out how my very first macaron making session went. Well, I'm admitting that it occurred so that's a good sign. The taste was right, the look was good, but the texture was off. Still, they photographed nicely.
I knew what I did wrong as I did it so while I didn't share these with anyone, I will definitely give it another go. I learned an important lesson that everyone should know about making macarons, and I really can't stress this enough, make sure you have a Frenchman on speed dial. Honestly. It will make your macaron-making life so much easier.
Also, for someone who hates the French as much as I do (it's a soccer thing), I am racking up a fair number of French friends.
I did something else exciting last weekend, I booked plane tickets!
At the Giant's Causeway in 2011
I was very, very lucky growing up. My dad is an Irish immigrant so every couple of years we'd go there for the summer to visit the family. Sadly, I can't go for an entire summer like we used to, but I'll be back for a couple of weeks. Besides, at this age a couple of weeks is probably all my liver can take!
After my January of illness and crap workouts, February has been going much better. Lunchtime runs are back on and my attendance at the gym has been as regular as a Metamucil user. You're welcome for that lovely mental image, by the way.
Question: How about you? Any travel plans for 2014?
Being the anniversary of Elaine's disappearance, I took Thursday off work. The last place I wanted to be was surrounded by people who a) didn't know about her and b) I didn't want to get emotional in front of. It turned out to be the right choice as I cried twice before 10:00am.
I spent some time with my dad, went blackberry picking with my mom, and then baked a blackberry pie with said berries. All in all, it was a much better way to spend a day remembering Elaine then feeling alone and weepy in a soul-crushing cubicle. (This is not a commentary on my work place specifically, all cubicles are designed to be soul-crushing. In fact, I'm pretty sure the word 'cubicle' means 'four wall soul destroyer' in Sanskrit.)
Say hello to my mom, the woman who taught me how to bake. Home Ec Teacher Moms for the win!
I love to bake but living alone (and not having a dishwasher), I don't do it very often. When I do bake, I tend to keep one or two pieces of the baking for myself and then give the rest away to family, friends, co-workers and the employees of my favourite coffee shops and restaurants.
If you are a proprietor of such an establishment and you see me coming, you want to befriend me. So far this year, I have given out Sansa's Lemon Cakes, Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Bailey's Cream Cheese Icing, Zopfe (a type of Swiss bread), and Blackberry Pie. Plus, there's another round of the cupcakes already in the works thanks to a certain beloved employee's imminent return to Dublin. I pay you to serve me and I give you food... not a bad deal.
My younger brother is significantly younger than me. This means that for the releases of 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz', he had to patiently wait until they were available on DVD. With the release of 'The World's End' this past weekend, we finally got to a Cornetto Trilogy movie in the theatres together. We decided to forego a sunny afternoon outside for the confines of a darkened theatre in which we proceeded to laugh our asses off. According to my text messages, we made our plans to see this together on June 21st. It makes me happy to know I'm not the only geek in the family.
You know those weeks where it feels like it should already be Friday but it isn't? In fact, if you're really unlucky, it's only Monday? At least I made it to Tuesday before I started ugly-crying about my desire for it to be the weekend already. During one of my meetings, we were talking about setting up review sessions for next week. Plans for next week?!? It must be Friday!!!
Lying bastards.
For my next (and last) meeting of the day, however, my coworker brought each of us one of these:
I totally stole this picture from Bon Macaron's Facebook page without asking. So, if you're in the Victoria area, please visit them and tell them Andrea sent you so they don't get mad at me when they find out. Or Jennifer. Or Claire. Any of those names should work.
I raved to my coworker about the awesome blackberry not-really-a-macaron creation from Bon Macaron during a meeting on Monday (my picture here). Obviously, my powers of persuasion are amazing if she bought three of the blueberry ones today! Best. Meeting. EVER!
(Just to be really clear, I'm getting diddly squat for raving about the macarons so when I say this is my honest opinion, this is my honest opinion.)
***
Once upon a time, I attended university in Freiburg, Germany and lived in a student residence called Ulrich Zasius Haus or UZH. The UZH had a magical Pepsi machine in the foyer/mailbox area. What was so magical about it, you ask? Well, two buttons dispensed Pepsi but the other six buttons dispensed beer! BEER, PEOPLE! Even more magical? It was cheap beer. Our building became the meeting place for nights out... which often became nights in.
My older brother and two friends came to visit.
They were also amazed by the magic Pepsi machine.
I was reminded of this fact while I stared at the Coke machine in my current apartment building. Sadly, all its buttons are for non-alcoholic beverages and no amount of fake spell casting would change that.
*sigh*
As much as I made fun of the UZH and called it 'the ghetto', I do miss some things about it.
***
I try to remain vague about my job for various reasons (not least of which because it's the professional thing to do when you work in my field and have a personal but public blog) which means that it's hard to explain why finding this picture online today made me so damn happy. Just know that it put a huge, goofy grin on my face for the rest of the day.
If you don't get this poster, click this link.
And then ask to borrow my DVD so you can watch the whole movie.
Now to figure out where I can put it up in my cubicle without it being noticed...
Question: Any work pet peeves of your own to share?
Now that I've officially been blogging for a week, it seems only fitting that I'm already asking for help. That's how blogging works, right? "Look at me! I'm typing words, now give me ideas and shit!"
(If you haven't seen Despicable Me 2 yet, we have to have words.)
Around the same time that I stopped blogging, I was working on an idea for a (semi) regular series that combined a historical event with food. As clear as the difference between the Etruscans and the Romans? Example: a post about an event or period in Ireland's history could be combined with a recipe for Irish soda bread... and a comment that no one's soda bread is as good as my mammy's because every Irish offspring says that on a monthly basis, it's written in our genetic code.
I love this idea because I love history, I love food, and let's be honest, I love being a know-it-all. It's a match made in ego-heaven! While it was always my intent to use this idea on this blog, I decided to expand it to include politics because a) most historical events are political and b) of this exchange on Twitter:
And that, my dear readers, is where you come in. I've got a few topics already written down that I'm starting to do research on, but is there a historical event or a political question you've ever wondered about? Let me know in the comments or send me an email, text, tweet, dm, telegram, smoke signals, whatever. I'm hoping to do this roughly once a month and I want to get ahead of the game because the last half of my 2014 work year looks like this:
Need to have a few posts in the pocket before the jelly hits the floor! (2014 is not a typo. I don't normally know my workload this far in advance, but I know next year's because we have a massive project launch.)
I'm also currently playing around with possible titles for the series so feel free to pass along any suggestions. I'm not above letting you do all my blogging work for me.
And just because it makes me laugh, one more gif for good measure.
