February 8th-February 14th

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!  This week has gone by incredibly fast for me.  I just don't really know where it went.  I am going to try to start blogging on the weekends (hopefully with next week's post).  I think a nice Sunday afternoon blog session won't be too hard.  We'll see though.

This week has been a bit of a rough one for me.  Nothing really to do with food.  My wisdom teeth are giving me grief-really just one of them.  My top two have been up for a while, but it is like the bottom two got stuck or something.  They are about half way up...and the left bottom one is trying like everything to fully meet the rest of my mouth this week.  I have had a fever (off and on), an ear ache, a big swollen face, and (of course) a very achy tooth.  So, I have not been able to eat a ton of anything since about Thursday.  Want the good news? I have a consultation today to schedule the removal of all my teeth of wisdom.  I have been told for a while they all need to come out and by multiple dentists.  So, now is the time!

I do not have many pictures this week because I haven't been terribly excited about even trying to eat, but here are a few.

Meredith made us this Tuscan bean soup with kale earlier this week.  The Tuscan bean part of the soup was really good, but I found that I am not the biggest fan of kale.

Basically this week I have kept to the 4 hour body style of eating.  Veggies and beans, veggies and beans, beans and veggies...

For breakfast on cheat day this week-Saturday- I made vanilla bean scones.

They were yummy!! I also made walnut chocolate chunk brownies.  (Yea, I am really good at taking it easy on the gluten...)  I am bad at this cheat day stuff.  By Friday at lunchtime I am extremely tired of just beans and veggies-extremely!  So, by Friday night, when I head to the grocery store to stock up for cheat day, I want to buy every bad thing in the store. We ended up buying a brownie mix, some chips, M&Ms, small candy coated Cadbury eggs, and some ice cream. You see what I mean? As it stands right now, cheat day is just a day for me to totally pig out and make myself feel sick.  I feel like I eat so much junk on cheat day that I don't really want it through the week that much (until about Friday).  Maybe that is the point.

My tummy is still doing really well throughout the week (when I am only eating veggies and beans).  I am still having a bit of trouble surrounding cheat day...but I am eating a whole bunch of junk, so that could be it.  One day I am going to be strong enough to not go completely insane on cheat day.  I hope.

Also, just this morning Meredith told me that I look like I have lost weight...in my head.  She just kept saying that it was my head that looked thinner.  I laughed quite a bit and then asked her if my big ole head really looked thinner.  She, of course, meant my face. =) I hope she is right. 

I will leave you with this- Happy Valentine's day, rawr!

   

Believe it or not, you can get this little guy at your local Wal-Mart on a shirt in the ladies section.  I thought it was perfect for Valentine's day!

January 27th-February 7th

Hello, all!  Sorry it took me so long to get around to my "once a week" post.  So, remember the post about the two books I was reading-Skinny Bitch  and The 4 Hour Body? The last couple days of January I started the 4 hour way of eating.  I will not reveal everything about the diet because I think you should read it for yourself if you want to start it don't assume what I say about it is all right.  The aspects of the diet that you will see displayed here are as follows: eat meat, veggies, and beans at every meal (for me though, eat A LOT of veggies and some beans at every meal); and you get a cheat day every week!!  It has been weird getting used to not only eating breakfast consistantly, but eating a big breakfast everyday.  I am actually eating 3-4 eggs every morning with veggies and beans on the side.  It is a ton of food!  I think I am getting used to it now, but the very first morning I thought I was going to puke! 

This is a representative breakfast, a 3 egg black bean omlette with sliced tomatoes on top.  I made this bad boy, and it was tasty!

You would be surprised how hard it is to find a restaurant with beans on the menu.

.

I've been eating a lot of Mexican lately.  They always have beans!  It is getting a bit old though.  You can only eat Mexican food so many times before you are sick of it!

I am seeing results already after eating this way for exactly a week and a day, (side note...I am down roughly  15 lbs from December!) but I am really bored! Really, really bored.  This diet isn't supposed to be fun it is supposed to work, but I need variety!  I need it bad.  I think, for me, it is the diet mind-set is the trouble.  Before I started eating this way I was eating salads a majority of the time, but I was never bored.  I think when I start a diet my brain sabotages the rest of me.  I really want to get healthy this time though...so I am going to stick with it for at least a month.

This week also marked the start of implementing fish into my diet.

This was my first fishy meal of the year.  Grilled Salmon, homemade pinto beans, and some over roasted zucchini slices.  I had a bit of tummy trouble after this meal, but in retrospect, I am thinking it was because I hadn't eaten any fish in a while.  This is what Meredith whipped up for dinner tonight:

Steelhead trout rubbed in pesto with a small salad and some english peas.  It was so good I could have kept eating for a decade!  

My stomach has not been acting up at all (save on cheat day) since starting the 4hour way of eating.  Cheat day, oh glorious cheat day!  That is a big bonus on this diet.  I was raised with a bag of chocolate in my hand, so I have trouble taming my sweet tooth.  

This is what I have to walk by a million times a day at work.  Every time I go to the bathroom these chocolatey wonders stare at me from my neighbor's desk and there are multiple jars like this sprinkled throughout my office.  Even the guy who delivers our office's paper also brings a bag of warm Otis Spunkmeyer cookies.  I has been hard.  I look forward to cheat day every day of the week.  

Discoveries of this week: 1) I think my tummy has issues with gluten.  This diet totally nixes all bread, rice, and grains of any kind.  As I said earlier, I have been doing great.  On cheat day, Saturday I ate a big helping of mushrooms in champagne sauce over pasta.  I had a ton of trouble that night. I was miserable.  I was able to further confirm my suspicion of gluten just last night.  Meredith and I hit up a Chinese buffet.  I love shrimp-love it!  Every time I get to eat it (usually at a Chinese buffet or something similar) my stomach goes crazy.  Last night though, being mindful of gluten-I couldn't eat eggrolls anyway-I ate a plate full of peel and eat shrimp.  No trouble AT ALL.  I am going to continue to try and experiment with this gluten issue and I'll let you know.

2) Extra desert Delights gum is amazing.  It tastes like it is straight out of Willy Wonka's workshop.  I recommend the apple pie kind (it tastes like you are eating a big slice of pie) and the orange creme pop kind (just like a dreamcicle).  Every time I want to run around the office, gather up all the candy jars, run into my office, slam the door, dump my booty over my desk, and face plant into it Gimme style (Gimme, the animalistic alter from United State of Tara) I pop a piece of gum.  I almost always feel better.

3) All of a sudden this week I have been having a lot of trouble with cigarette cravings.  I don't know what's up with that, but hopefully I can conquer it!

Day Twenty Seven:

Friday mornings at the Harris/Long house are a little hectic.  I don't know if other people have this issue, but by the end of the week I am drained of just about everything.  It is hard for me to just drag myself out of bed.  This morning was no different.  We woke up late, couldn't get started at a decent pace, and ended up running out the door in a full out tizzy with no breakfast to be seen.  If you have ever been on a breakfast kick (eating breakfast consistently for a while) and then something happens and you don't get it one day you know that it is terrible! This morning was a bit sad because of the no food thing...but! look what I had for lunch!

These nachos were good, but not what the menu said they were going to be.  Hate when that happens.

Dinner was a thrown together salad.

Ok, so on to the changes I was talking about last night. Dun, DUn, DUN!! They really aren't that big.  First of all, it is a bit taxing to formulate a blog post five nights a week.  I know they are not awesome pieces of literature, but it still takes quite a bit of time.  So, to (hopefully) make my blog a little less blah, blah, blah, here's a picture, this is what I ate today, the end, I am going to try and write more like once a week from here on out.  I will take some pictures of my favorites or new things and post them.  Second change-fish!  My tummy has been doing pretty ok, but not 100%.  So, in order to further pin point my specific problem foods I am going to introduce fish for the month of Feburary just to see how it goes.  Beef, pork, chicken, all other meat is still out (at this point it really just a personal preference for me). Also, I am going to drastically cut back my milk and cheese intake.  I was raised in a milk and bread kind of household.  Milk, big tall glasses of milk, and at least one piece of bread with every meal you ate at home.  Instead of trying to cut out all dairy all at once, I am going to try to just focus on milk and cheese.  So, we shall see how all of this goes.  I'll keep you "posted." (Hahaha...I'm a nerd, I know!)

Day Twenty Six:

Today started out with what Meredith calls a frittata.

It was like an egg pie with mushrooms, spinach, and (of course) some cheese!

I had left over kryptonite for lunch.  I have been eating lunch in my office's break room this week and people are giving weird looks when I take pictures of my food. So, I didn't today.  *see last night's dinner for picture*

Dinner was on the fly tonight because Meredith and I went to our favorite hair guy, Jason, to get our heer did!  He is amazing.  Jason Henderson at the Buzz hair salon in Hendersonville, TN (615) 824-4338.  Call him!  Get him to do your hair.  You will never go back to anyone else. Period.  Anyway, I had a cheese quesadilla from taco bell and a "beans and cheesus" as the cashier so aptly called my pintos and cheese. :D


Just so you know, changes are a-foot.  Hopefully I will have time to go into more detail with tomorrow's post-and maybe I'll have everything laid out better in my head by then!

 

 

Day Twenty Five:

I've been wanting a good smoothie ever since I tried and failed miserably the other day.  I still haven't bought the true necessary ingredients, but I gave it another go this morning. It was a bit more successful. I could actually drink it this morning, so that's a plus!

  Lunch was a little frustrating, but only because it took so long in coming. Puckett's is a restaurant on the first floor of my building.  The food is usually pretty good.  It is good ole country food.  The problem with this place is that it takes f o r e v e r for your food to come.  I get an hour for lunch, and as I said, the place is in the bottom of my building (just an elevator ride away), but I have had to take a long lunch before because they are so slow.  Today was no different.  I was so rushed when I finally got my food (a veggie plate with a side salad) that I didn't snap a picture of it.

Dinner is what Meredith so fondly calls "kryptonite."

It is a white bean chili of her own creation.  It has all kinds of white beans, green chilies, jalapenos, tomatoes, artichokes, cheese, and some other things.  I don't know she has ever revealed the entire recipe to me, but it is amazing!

Day Twenty four:

Breakfast today looks suspiciously like yesterday's...

I'm telling you though, this is the best cantaloupe I have ever eaten and I could always-at any point in the day-eat some eggs.

Lunch was a bit small, but I just wasn't feeling it today.  I wasn't that hungry, so I just picked up some chips and salsa.

and...don't tell my boss, but I illegally ate it in my office :/

Dinner was also Mexican inspired.

a nice big bowl of Chipotle rice, beans, veggies, sour cream, and cheese!

Day Twenty three:

First, I hope that everyone is safe after last night's round of crazy storms here in Tennessee.  I had trouble sleeping through all of the insane booming and flashing.  Finally, around 1:30 AM, the biggest clap of thunder I've ever heard woke me up good enough that I headed to the living room to look for some weather.  Meredith was already up and watching diligently.  Needless to say, I think I'll be going to bed pretty early tonight.

I started out today trying something a bit different.  I found it on Pintrest a while back, but I did not pin it at the time.  I thought I could make it work though...I was wrong.

The eggs and cantaloupe are not what I'm talking about. The "smoothie" was the bad stuff.  I heard if you throw a handful of spinach into a fruit smoothie you can't even taste it.  This is false.  Well, maybe not if you do it correctly, but I figured out this morning that I don't even know how to make a plain ole smoothie.  Our blender was broken-it started squirting juice out everywhere-and we didn't have any yogurt to put in it.  I'm going to try again when I get a few necessary ingredients.

Lunch was so good.

This was my first go at a "Black Bean Patty" sandwich at Which Wich (my favorite sandwich place in downtown).  It was so yummy!  I have never had a black bean burger or anything, so I was intrested to try a form of black bean meat alternative.  If they are all as good as this...I am sold!  Which Wich is awesome.  They have a few different vegetarian options.  I'm excited to try all of them!


Meredith spoiled me yet again for dinner!

Eggplant Parmesan with a tasty side salad.  I don't know how she did it...I was working on some laundry...I just know it was delicious!

She also whipped up some homemade mango ice cream in our food processor somehow.  She is the kitchen Queen and my belly is fat and happy to have her!