March 11th-April 15th

Regrettably, I must again start out with an apology. 8/ Turns out I am not quite as disciplined as I would like to think...remember the days in January when I blogged every day? I have no clue what happened to them. I am not that busy-not any more than I was in January. I guess I could make excuses all day, but I won't. I apologize for the absence. I'm here now, and I'm going to try to be better! Promise.

On the diet/weight loss front it has been a win/lose situation here recently. On a happy note, this morning's weigh in unveiled that I've lost over 40 lbs(!), but today is the first time in three days I've been able to really eat anything substantial-and even then it's been a little touch and go. The slow carb thing that I am doing throughout the week seems to be working wonderfully for my tummy all except for cheat day. I feel great until about Sunday afternoon. Saturday is cheat day-the day of bread, ice cream, and chocolate!! Those three make weekly appearances on cheat day for me. They are my weaknesses. Not too bad, right? A little chocolate, a biscuit or two, or maybe a sandwich, and a bit of ice cream. Yes, these are all fine things to eat...for normal people. I know that being allergic to gluten, or having a gluten sensitivity is all the rage right now, but I really do think gluten dislikes me with great intensity! I also (recently) have been wondering if I have a dairy weirdness too.

I was doing pretty well with the exception of Sunday and sometimes Monday. I was just about ready to decide that I was going to just start skipping cheat day all together and just always do the veggies and beans (and sometimes fish and chicken) route since it was working so well. Then Easter came and with it came a family potluck...dun, Dun, DUUUUNNN!! My mom made all these yummy foods and I even, upon the request of the men in my family, made a yellow layer cake with homemade chocolate icing. I went to their house Friday night to help my mom get her taxes together-which is always a beast because my dad is self-employed. We worked all through the night Friday then got up and finished them around 2 o'clock on Saturday. Since no one can handle getting food on their own in my family, after the taxes were done we went out to get some food. Pizza was chosen (not by me). Pizza always hates me :C I also had a little bit of cake on Sunday. I have had the worst week of my life this week! Lots of liquid...not much real food.  As a result of the Easter belly badness though, I made an appointment with my normal doctor for Monday night to talk to her about all of this. And hopefully she will send me on to a GI doctor who will at least be able to tell me what I'm up against! Hopefully! Keep your fingers crossed for me!

February 15th-March10th

Ok, so...it has been a while! My computer crapped out on me the week after my last post and then Meredith, my roommate (aka the person who owns the only other computer in our house) had mid-terms the next week.  She is doing a distance learning program through UTK, so she had to have her computer for mid-terms, of course.  Then, last week, I had all four wisdom teeth yanked out of my head.  I am still in a bit of pain...and I've had a bit of trouble this week.  Meredith has gone home this weekend for her mom's birthday and she left her computer.  So, I am finally felling a bit better (no hurting so bad) and I have been left home alone with a computer.  Here goes!

Up until getting my teeth out these are the kinds of things I was eating:

Basically sticking to the four hour body way of eating (beans!) while implementing fish in the month of February. These are the only pics I have, but they are pretty representative of what I was doing.

**Gross picture alert**

After getting these things yanked out (I totally asked to see them after the "operation" and they bagged 'em up and gave 'em to me!) this has been my diet-for a WEEK! :C

Don't get me wrong.  I love eating things like ice cream and pudding, but after a week of eating this and this alone-hardly anything solid-it gets really old!!

The good news is I had an awesome cat nurse:

My wonderful roommate made me a really cool basket of things to do while I was out:

I got a free shirt out of the deal!

And! Last, but not least...I stole an illegal pic of my teeth!

Getting this picture was quite the experience...This was after my consultation-the dentist (who's name is...are you ready?...Harry Joe Mack...His real name is Harry, but everyone calls him Joe) had already turned the light off and walked out of the room.  I was free to go, but I saw my chance and I took it!  The reason it is weird and not straight on is because I thought I was going to get caught at any second!  I actually had to turn the light back on and then snap the pic...I got it though and I didn't even get caught!

I have actually been eating real food today!!  See...

I feel like I have been starving for a week solid, but today after eating things like this I feel stuffed!!  I think it may take me a while to work up to eating right again.  

Updates on the food front: Starting in March I am going to give chicken and turkey a go.  That is turkey bacon on my egg sandwich, by the way!  Fish went really well in February, so I thought I would give chicken a chance!  I really think that my problem is gluten, I really do.  Hopefully birds won't give me any grief!  

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.

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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!