OMG. I'm still frigging sick.

Last month it was the creeping crud of the lungs and I thought I was getting over it except for that crud hacking cough. And now it's moved to my frigging head. I can't breathe my nose. I'M A MOUTH BREATHER. I CAN'T STAND MOUTH BREATHING. IT'S UNNATURAL AND IDIOTIC. See this guy? He's a mouth breather. That is not a look that says, "Hey! I'm quick on my feet! Capable of throwing out the number pi in conversation or even determining my left hand from my other left hand."

And really, mouth breathing sometimes happens such as in the case wherein one's nose is clogged up with god knows what, maybe some oompa loompas. But look at google pictures of this guy. (Corey Haim, for the uninformed.) He's always sitting around with his freaking mouth open. I bet he'd make a great venus fly trap.I'm going to start a reality tv show where he sits in my kitchen in the summer and catches flies for me.

At any point, how does he hang around with his mouth open all day? I've been mouth breathing for about a day now and my lips and tongue are all dried up. Think dried up sponge bob. I woke up this morning with a mouth breather film all over my teeth and a mouth breather tongue coating. And mouth breathing makes me thirsty.

But never mind the mouth breathing. I've stayed down to 15 pounds. I also haven't bothered with eating well since sleeping and, oh, I don't know breathing have been time consuming in between classes and papers and kids and midterms and random job searching.

Today, I thought I'd treat myself to malibu rum chocolate bar because I love chocolate and I love liquor. The only thing I've found greater than that is Southern Comfort ice cream floats. Anyway, I bought the damned chocolate bar because I've tried to make a point of treating myself to a very nice piece of candy once a week or so because it's better to allow some things than to create a forbidden fruit. So I bought my damned chocolate bar (a big one, it cost me two bucks at the pigg) and ate a row trying to determine what in the hell was wrong with my chocolate bar before I realized, "OH! You're a mouth breather now! You can't taste jack shit! You just paid two dollars for a nice tasting chocolate bar that you can't taste! Idiot!"

So I devised a plan. When my 14 year old daughter up from school, I shoved the chocolate bar in her face and said, "HERE! Eat this! And tell me exactly what it tastes like!" I could at least taste by proxy.

R (my daughter): "So do you want me to be completely honest?"

Me: "Yes."

R: "It tastes like shit."

Me: "Uh. Couldn't you have chosen another word?"

R: "But you wanted me to be honest."

Philistine. She obviously has no taste. And really, "It tastes like shit?" Where in the hell does she get that kind of frigging language? I think I'm going to have to talk those little ass friends of hers and tell them to watch their crusty damned little sailor mouths. Gah.

Anyway, I breathe. I breathe.

I have not given up

I was forced to take to my bed for a few days after some crud infected child attended my children's movie night at school and passed it about willy-nilly. I spent a lot of time thinking about those people to "took to their bed" with full intention of wasting away from a broken heart and all that rot during the Victorian era. Dude, those people are completely out of their everloving minds. It seriously hurts to stay in bed very long.

Anyway, the creeping crud pulled me down on Saturday and I'm just now getting over it. Still tired, but breathing. I won't bother with trying to document what I ate because I basically forgot to eat until some time around Monday afternoon. Okay, it wasn't exactly that I forgot to eat, it just required an awful lot of energy to wash a spoon (because every child in this house thinks it's their right to have clean dishes but to not have to wash them), pull down a jar of peanut butter, stick the spoon in there after grappling the lid open and then applying it all to bread. Sometime around Monday afternoon, I did work up the energy to open those wiley wrappers on the clif bars and ate one them then went back to bed. Those wrappers are apparently pretty damned exhausting. Who knew?

On an upnote, I was waiting to lose one more pound before I changed my ticker. (I like to do it in five pound increments for some reason.) I'd been on the verge for a couple of days and was pretty sure I'd be there by today. Well, I did finally lose the pound. So you'll note the change in the ticker. Yaaaaaay. (I'm still tired, so you'll note the lack of exclamation points.)

The thing about that is, I also lost an additional four pounds since saturday because I've been sick and was too meh to bother feeding myself and also because strident coughing and laying about are high calorie burners (who knew?). I'm not officially counting those four pounds because I could gain that back fairly quickly even if I stick to my calorie/fat/protien/whateverelse goals this week. I'm not going to be disappointed if I add those back, but I'd like to go ahead and be done with them and have someone tell me "Here is a lovely consolation prize for having a shitty three days."

I've been a bit busy

Okay, I've been busy and a little stressed so I haven't updated here as I should have. I also haven't kept up with my exercise and have been spotty about cutting back saturated fats.

The good thing, though, is I'm not eating snickers bars for breakfast yet and I'm very pleased with how easy it's been for me to stick with maintaining a healthier menu. It really hasn't been horribly easy this week as far as time constraints. There was drama class for the kids on Tuesday followed up by a math team meeting for the middle heathen right after that and in between I managed to grab some groceries and have some freak touch me arse when I wasn't paying attention. We didn't get home until around 8 so dinner was the regular salad.

Wednesday was shit because of evening classes and then today was more shit because the middle heathen needed a scrip for his eczema which necessitated a trip to the doctor at five followed up by 45 minutes of hanging around Kroger waiting for the medicine so we didn't get home until after 7. But I'm really happy that even though I've resorted to the mundane in pinches that it's been a healthy choice. Its time for me to switch up the salad because, while I really like the salad, it's just time. You can't eat the same damned thing every day.

So I'll go over today's menu:

Breakfast - Strawberry Tortilla (6 large strawberries, 1.5 ounces of melted mozarella and 1 tbsp of raw honey on a tortilla. I really like it.)

Lunch - a crunchy peanut butter Clif bar

Snack - two tablespoons of naturally more peanut butter

dinner - salad

snack - banana

12 cups of water

1 diet coke

So I'm pretty happy with how things have been going even though I haven't exercised like I should have. I did walk three blocks today. This blog needs some pictures. I'm going to take a picture of my salad or something.

Beer will screw you up

I was too lazy to post yesterday much like I was too lazy to bother looking what I was consuming or preparing an actual meal. Blah.

So here I am today. I pulled myself out of it before it went too far and not a bad day in all.
1424 calories/56 fat/26 fiber/102 protein

Calories, fat, fiber and protein are the numbers I look at regularly. The fat count might look high for today, but it falls in the top most part of my allotted range of necessary fat. Fat, like calories, is necessary for the body.

So to honor fat and the fat clumping around my butt, here are a few details on fat:

First, there are different types of fats. There are healthy fats and then there's just crap. The best fats for you are polyunsaturated, monosaturated, and omega-3 fatty acids. Monosaturated fats can be found in olive, peanut and canola oils, avocados and most nuts.

Polyunsaturated fats are in vegetable oils including safflower, corn, sunflower, soy and cottonseed oils.

Omega-3s are in soybean, canola oil, flax seeds and flaxseed oil, and fish oil.

You should avoid or limit saturated fats (found in red meat, poultry, while milk, cheese, coconut and palm oils), trans fats (commonly found in baked goods and often begin withs "hydrogenated" on the ingredients label, fried foods, shortening and margerine), and dietary fats (meat, dairy, seafood, shortening, butter).

• Fat acts as an insulator and helps to maintain body temperature.
• It carries fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, K and E.
• Certain types of fats can include your cholesterol levels.
• maintains cell membranes
• Monosaturated fats help to raise the good HDL levels. People with high HDL levels are at a lower risk for heart disease.
  
• Polyunsaturated fats help lower overall cholesterol levels.

So there's my tiny little facts on fat. Writing this also made me think to track these fats and I see. I'm not very good at avoiding saturated fats because I adore cheese and I'm a little over my limit today. It's something I'll have to work on.

All together today, was a nice day. I cut the grass and that burned over 300 calories.

Here's the "Crap I ate Today" list.

I slept late and didn't eat breakfast.

WW Santa Fe Rice and Beans for lunch.

Pita Banana Sandwich for a snack

A salad for another snack because I was still hungry. Today it was 5 cups of romaine lettuce, one ounce of snow peas, half a cup of alfalfa, four ounces of grilled chicken breasts and 2 ounces of pepperjack cheese. (I could cut the chicken back to 3 ounces and maybe 1.5 ounces of cheese. God. I love cheese.)

Dinner was 3 ounces of chicken and an ounce and a half of pepperjack cheese on a Tortilla Factory low carb tortilla.

Oh, and I drank 64 ounces of water and kept it down to one diet coke.

So here is tomorrow's plan. (Pretty much the same verse as before.)

• drink 64 ounces of water
• try to hold down the cheese to 2 ounces a day
• keep within range
• get in at least 20 minutes of exercise
  

Hello.

I would post, but I've had four beers and that's a lot of beer for me. The small ones. In the can. I'm so happy I can type. I hope it looks like English tomorrow. The spellcheck is very helpful.

I did fine. Had a hamburger and chips and dip so I'm sure that besides the beer that I am not in calorie range. But that's okay because I'm taking today off.

KAR

1204 Calories/40 minutes of exercise

Okay. So I'm apparently really not going to worry about posting on Wednesdays until this class is over. But I'll review my goals for Wednesday.

• one diet coke Fail. I had two. I also had two today.
  
• bring a slimfast for dinner. Check
  
• exercise for at least 20 minutes. Fail. Had too much going on.
  
• drink my water. Check
  
• log food in sparkpeople. Check

As a very short update to Wednesday - I did stay in calorie range, but I had too much going on to get around to the exercise.

Today was a good day, although I'm seemingly up to two diet cokes today.

Walked three blocks to school and back then came home and did a 20 minutes Leslie Sansone one mile.

• Breakfast: 1 cup of low fat yogurt and one cup of kashi cereal. A diet coke
• Lunch: a slim fast shake
• Snack: slim fast milk chocolate peanut bar
• snack: pita banana sandwich (I linked the recipe in a previous post.)
• Dinner: salad with 4 ounces of grilled chicken breast and two ounces of pepper jack cheese.

I'm happy to report that I have over 200 calories left if I wanted to have something else. That's a pretty good sign for me considering that I've stayed satisfied throughout the day and means I'm learning how to eat healthy again. Oh, and I've even pulled out the scale a couple of days ago so I can be sure to record everything.

Also, in case I haven't mentioned it, the valerian root does seem to finally be doing it's job so I'm getting more sleep. Today is the first day in a long time where I've been gone all day and am not dragging ass by three o'clock.

Tomorrow we are planning a neighborhood cook out so I don't have plans to stay within range, but to enjoy myself without going so far overboard that I make myself miserable.

So, Goals for Tomorrow:

• Head off to the gym and hang out on the elliptical machine for 30 minutes
• drink at least 64 ounces of water
• log everything into sparkpeople

Pudding for dinner, y'all.

Goals set yesterday:

• keep it down to one diet coke Check
  
• remember to bring my slimfast to class with me so I won't stare at snickers bars in desperation. Check
  
• at least 20 minutes of exercise. Check
  
• park three blocks from class and walk. Check.
  
• log everything I eat on sparkpeople. Fail.
  

The days started off really well and I was all prepped. Brought my slimfast, parked three blocks away, was prepared for class. All that good stuff.

Today was one of those weird days when you spend half the evening running, though, and I never actually got around to eating dinner. Someone called again to borrow money like I have this mother fucking secret money stashed away in an offshore account somewhere that I can just pull at will and that I only wear the trappings of relative poorness to throw the not-so-smart-ones off the trail. That aggravated the hell out me. BUT! I did not go the with a pissed off binge route. I stayed the course and had a banana and a cup of cheerios in the afternoon.

But then there were afterschool activities, a visit to my grandparents house and right when I was pulling up the recipe for supper a friend came by to get some advice on some family issues so by then my schedule was all off track and I never got back to it. I don't think I went over, but I didn't stick with my plan.

My daughter ended up cooking spaghetti for dinner (because they really weren't all that enthused with what I had planned) and by the time I got through, I sure as hell didn't feel like spaghetti. So I had half a cup of chocolate pudding for dinner. *hiding under the desk right now*

I'm not going to put what I ate today. Nothing spectacular and a little weird in general considering I didn't even have dinner.

I have class on Wednesday evenings, so dinner is pretty well out for tomorrow. I also may not be posting tomorrow evening or for very many Wednesday evening thereafter.

So here are to goals for tomorrow:

• one diet coke
• bring a slimfast for dinner
  
• exercise for at least 20 minutes
• drink my water
• log food in sparkpeople