Funky High?

I'm in a funk and on top of the world at the same time, my friends. The past two weeks have been utter hell school-wise and my healthy eating/exercising habits have ceased to exist. I honestly barely have the energy to type this at 9 pm, and I still have to study for a quiz AND a skills assessment tomorrow. I guess it's my own fault that I'm so exhausted, I have seriously been burning the candle at both ends for the past two-ish weeks...and it's been GREAT.

First the hell part...we had a huge anatomy exam last Tuesday and I studied for 5 days for it...literally nonstop, 24 hours a day (well maybe not THAT much). Then we had another exam on that Wednesday which I spent the whole of Tuesday studying for. THEN, we had an important quiz on motor programming that week as well. THEN I had a huge exam in physiology on Tuesday of this week, as well as a quiz in neuroanatomy...and that brings us to tomorrow, which I have yet to prepare for. So, I've screwed myself, pretty much, but at least tomorrow is Friday and then its all over for the next few days (I only have one class this coming Monday, so I'm pretending that that is a mini holiday) and THEN we have spring break starting the 23rd...praise Jesus...I need a break.

As far the highs are concerned....last friday was my birthday, so naturally I went out on Thursday, Friday, AND Saturday nights. Thursday, two of my good girl friends and I watched the basketball game on TV at a local bar...I got home at midnight. Friday, I went out dancing and drinking heavily with my teammates and didn't get home until 3 am. I barely left my bed all day Saturday, except to go out with my teammates again that night. We stayed in and drank at someone's house while playing board games, but I still didn't get home until 1 am. 

And YESTERDAY, was the biggest basketball game of my entire life and I didn't get home until 1am. I go to a school where basketball is a way of life and everyone is literally crazy over it. Anyone who has read this blog at all could probably guess which school I go to at this point, but I'm going to pretend that I have the strictest of anonymity so, whatever. Anyway, this week is Rivalry Week for college basketball, and we played ours, which has sometimes been called the BIGGEST RIVALRY IN SPORTS HISTORY (seriously, I didn't make that shit up). People campout for WEEKS to go to this game. As a grad student I only had to campout for a short period of time to get a ticket, but I never in my wildest of dreams thought that I would have been able to snag a FLOOR SEAT to this game...(which I did)...and I was on TV. Literally, people were texting me left and right all night telling me that they saw me on ESPN. And my husband recorded the game so I'm so excited to watch it this weekend and play "Where's Waldo?" to spot myself and all of my friends. AND to top it all off, we won the game! It was so freaking crazy, I can't even describe it. The place was DEAFENING and I couldn't even hear myself think at one point! One of my friends who didn't have a ticket to the game said that she watched it on TV, but that there were times when you couldn't even hear the announcers because the place was so loud..all you could hear were chanting students. CRAZIE! ;) It was the highlight of my life to see that game in that arena...it was on my bucket list for YEARS. I remember being like 11 and wishing for that moment...and last night it came true. That's part of the reason why I chose this school, not just because of the prestige of the school itself or our DPT program, but because of basketball....swoooooon....

Anyway, between studying and having the time of my life with all my amazing friends, I have had very little time (or energy) to exercise or pay attention to eating right. So, I would call this a slump as far as that is concerned, but definitely a HUGE high as far as the rest of the things in my life are concerned. To be honest, I'll take it. I am the happiest I have been in a long time as far as friendships are concerned, and I'm actually doing WELL in school, not just barely passing. I am so happy and content with all that. I just need to someway be able to meld these two aspects of my life together so that I'm happy both socially and health-wise...I'll get there...I'm sure of it. In the mean time, I need to study! 

xoxoxo

Soul Searching

Alright, so....let's be real. I've been doing a little bit of soul searching over the past few days, wondering why I've been struggling so hard with this new paleo-lite/clean-eating business. And I realized that, when I first started out on this weight loss journey last May, I just wanted to be fit, control my portions and eat as healthy as possible. This time, I'm trying to fit myself into a mold that I'm not only uncomfortable with but that I don't think for me, is sustainable in the long run because I live in reality. That is not to say in any way that those people who can live this kind of "lifestyle" do not live in reality, it's just that my version of reality is slightly to the left (or right, whichever) of theirs. Essentially, what I'm saying is that I can't live someone else's life and pretend to be okay eating tree bark and almond flour everyday. It's just not me. I have cravings, and I give into them (sometimes way too much) and I really prefer to eat the things that I want in moderation instead of trying to make myself eat stuff that I really do not find enjoyable in order to fit into some mold that I think I should be in. I need to free myself up a little bit and do what works for me.

When I started losing weight last May, I ate low-calorie items and relatively clean, but I still ate pasta and potatoes...except instead of eating a giant bowl of pasta, I ate a small bowl of pasta...or instead of an entire baked potato, just 1/2 of a baked potato.  I ate foods with long chemical formula words that no one can pronounce in them, but I balanced that out by also eating fresh fruits and vegetables. I ate dessert and I drank alcohol--IN MODERATION. And for me, this plan worked. I lost 26lbs from May 14th to August 1st. 26!!! That's nothing to sneer at! And I did it my way! So far on this plan, I haven't lost anything, except for the initial weight in the very beginning which I am attributing to shock--my body had no idea what I was doing to it. But the last two weeks, I've lost nothing...actually, I am currently weighing in at 183lbs so I've gained 2lbs. And it's because I've been seriously denying myself the foods I want to eat to the point of crazy overload when eventually give in and eat them any way. See THIS lovely post yesterday. It's crazy! Why am I trying to fix a system that isn't broken? Because I apparently cannot think for myself and am giving into these images that I am bombarde with daily via Pinterest and my own life in PT school. PTs are generally known for being healthy and active, which pretty much everyone in my class is, so I felt like in order to fit in with these people I need to change my own eating habits....WTF? That doesn't even make any sense. My eating habits were fine! I wasn't eating pizza and tacos for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Who the fuck decided that low-fat cottage cheese was bad for you? Or whole wheat pasta? I understand the gluten free stance...but really, for someone without a gluten allergy, what the hell is wrong with whole wheat/grains? Or pasteurized almonds? Seriously?

So, in an effort to retain my own sense of self and stop with the self-loathing, I am reverting back to my previous weight loss habits: eating healthy, controlling portions, getting fit. No more crazy GF, paleo, clean restrictions...just me. Sure, I'll still eat GF, paleo, and clean items, but I'm not going to be all nuts and make those things the only items I consume.

For instance:
B: two hard boiled eggs, 1 piece of honey wheat toast, and 1 laughing cow garlic and herb cheese wedge (245 calories)
L: Fresh Spinach Spaghetti with one small chicken drumstick (654 calories)
D: TBD
Ex: 90 minute Bikram Yoga Session (at 6am I might add)

Super healthy, low-calorie and delicious (according to my currently full tummy and happy taste buds), but GF? nope. Paleo? nope. Clean? nope.

So there you have it. Take it or leave it. Here's to a happier, less hungry me. :)

Fresh Spinach Spaghetti [Recipe]

I whipped this up today for lunch because I have been dying for some pasta and it seemed like it would all go together nicely. It was really easy to do and so refreshing. It definitely hit the spot!

Ingredients

• 6 cloves garlic (or 2 tablespoons minced garlic)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 box whole wheat spaghetti
• 2 tablespoons sea salt
• 4 cups fresh baby spinach

Directions

1. Bring a pot of water with the sea salt to a rolling boil, cook pasta according to directions/taste.
2. Meanwhile, combine olive oil and garlic in a bowl and microwave on high for about 1 minute.
3. Add lemon juice and mix well.
4. When pasta is finished, drain well, add spinach and sauce and toss lightly. Cover and let sit for a few minutes so the spinach can wilt just a tiny bit.
5. Enjoy by itself or sprinkle with parmesan/goat cheese.

So, obviously this isn't rocket science and if you have the time, go ahead and sautee the garlic in the olive oil over the stove. To be honest, I didn't want to have to wash another pot just for the garlic, so this worked for me. Whatever you want to do :)

Nutrition Breakdown:

Makes 4 servings

The sodium content is high because of the salt added to the pot of boiling water. Obviously, not all that salt is going to get absorbed into the pasta, but I add every ingredient to my nutrition calculator just to be on the safe side!

I really hope you enjoy this dish, it made for a great lunch! :)

ATTENTION!

I just devoured an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream in less than 20 minutes!

I am a failure.

That is all. Carry on.

Stress Level Escalating

Today was not exactly my day...some parts were great, others have me unbelievably stressed out.

Started out okay. I was scheduled to go to my school's basketball game at 1. My babysitter was supposed to get here at 10:45 so I could get there early enough to get a good spot. We had a freak ice storm yesterday and she called me at 9:30 to tell me that she could not drive herself because she couldn't get out of her driveway, so could I please come get her. I said I could, but at that point I was still in my pajamas and so was Bubs. I showered quickly, got dressed, dressed Bubs, fed Bubs, fed myself (two hardboiled eggs and a piece of plain wheat toast), got out to my car and spent 20 mother fucking minutes trying to chisel ice off all the windows...fuck. I didn't even get to the babysitter's house until 10:45....so I ended up being 30 minutes later to the game then I had planned, which honestly wasn't too bad. I didn't have to stand out in the cold for very long and I ended up in the third row...and we won! yay! So I guess that's not a terribly good example of why I'm so stressed...read on...

When I got home from the game though, all hell broke loose. Apparently my dear Hubs, unknowingly clogged our downstairs toilet the night before and it had been running all night long, leaking water into our daughter's playroom without anyone noticing. I didn't notice this morning because we were rushing around and Bubs never even went into her playroom. So I spent my entire evening taking all of her toys out of the playroom (her brand new dollhouse that she got for Christmas is ruined by the way), ripping up carpet, and cleaning up gigantic puddles...

I was supposed to have a date with my team, but I ended up being an hour late because after cleaning all that up, I had to feed Bubs and bathe her, and now that I'm home, I have to figure out what to do tomorrow. I am supposed to go to a study group and Hubs was going to take Bubs to a birthday party. But now, he wants to clean the carpet and lay down new padding so we can get everything resituated and fixed, and he doesn't want to take Bubs to the party because this project will take all day. I just found out that our class is throwing a baby shower tomorrow for a classmate's wife who is due in a few weeks and I don't know if I can make it to that or even have the time to buy a gift. I wanted to go running tomorrow, because while I've been active every day this past week except for today, I haven't been running since Tuesday. I ate like shit again today (besides breakfast, I had chipotle for lunch,  a large Blue Moon draught, a french dip sandwich and waffle fries at dinner and a box of butterfinger bites at the movie theatre). Aaaand I have a huge exam on Wednesday and 4 exams the following week. Not to mention, our financials are a god damn mess right now....I just....ugh...

I honestly don't know what to do with myself right now and I'm freaking out about the billions of things that need to get done. And why does a monkey wrench always get thrown into everything I plan? I barely saw Bubs today and I wanted to take her shopping to buy a gift for her friend for her party. I'm so super stressed and it is freaking me out....


wooooo saawwwwwwwwww

I Do Not Like the Cone of Shame

I suck. :(

This week has been terrible, awful, and bad (all rolled into one) as far as eating is concerned. Like REALLY BAD. I think I ate well maybe one day out of this entire week and I am fighting a SERIOUS sugar/chocolate craving onslaught that is just insatiable! I don't know what to do. I literally was eating ganache and almond butter off a spoon less than 10 minutes ago. And not just one spoonful...like 4 spoonfuls. What. The. Fuck? What am I doing with my life right now? Ugh...Am I being too restrictive? Is that the problem? Should I go back to eating low-cal, mostly clean foods instead of entirely clean and low-carb/low-cal? I don't want to sabotage myself. My goal is to lose weight, but I want to be healthy also and I think I'm confused as to how to make all that happen and still eat the foods I want to eat and not crave bad shit all the time. Is that too lofty? Is that even possible or am I living in fairytale land? I think its time for a reevaluation. Let's run through my week:

Monday
Monday was a holiday so I didn't have class and neither did Bubs. We spent the day cooking and playing and when Hubs got home from work I went to the gym and ran a few miles and then did this weird recumbent elliptical thing. Whatev. It did the trick because my ass was definitely sore. I ate protein pancakes with homemade strawberry sauce and a hard boiled egg, kielbasa skillet with a salad, and balsamic pot roast with a little bit of Annie's mac and cheese and some corn. Not too bad. I was under my calorie goal. yay!

Tuesday
Ran two miles/walked two miles after class with a running buddy from my class. I had pancakes with strawberry sauce, pumpkin chili with an avocado, kielbasa skillet and cauliflower fried rice, and no-sugar added vanilla ice cream with sugar-free chocolate syrup (while only 108 calories, definitely NOT clean). I was under my calorie goal though.

Wednesday
This is where the troubles REALLY began. I didn't have any class on Wednesday and miraculously the stars aligned and Hubs had a scheduled day off from work. So we had an entire day to ourselves because Bubs still had school. This week is restaurant week for our city so we decided to go to one of the participating restaurants for lunch! BAD IDEA. First of all, restaurant week lunch is supposed to be $10 prix fixe. Did we order off the prix fixe menu? Of course not. We had...goat cheese and crab dip with about 100 little pita triangles, a grit cake topped with bacon gravy, a calamari caesar salad, and key lime pie (oh and maybe a bottle of cider...maybe). ALL FREAKING AMAZING...but definitely not clean or calorie-friendly (or wallet friendly because we spent like $60). On top of all of that, I had to go home and make cupcakes for one of my team members' birthdays! I made boston cream pie cupcakes that were REALLY good. (Side note: I LOVE to bake--especially cupcakes and I spend a lot of time around my friends' birthdays thinking of new and interesting cupcake flavors...everyone gets a different flavor, every time). But of course, I had to taste test them. So I had two. Also, I had a ton of leftover ganache so I've been eating that for the past two days with random stuff....just wait! Anyway, and I also had some leftover pumpkin chili later in the evening. Definitely not under my calorie goal, even though I did go to yoga in the morning.

Thursday
I thought that Thursday was my day. I had pancakes and strawberry sauce, chili with an avocado, and then came the birthday celebrations. Fuck. I had a cupcake, of course. But I took it a step further and ate like 400 butter snap pretzels. See, the thing is...my teammate eats these fucking pretzels everyday so we decided to get him a really girly piñata and fill it with them. So, after he smashed open said piñata, we sat through a 4 hour lecture just munching away mindlessly. So I vowed that I would not eat anything for the rest of the day after that and that I would skip dinner. Yea, that didn't work. I went to the gym and rode the shit out of a stationary bike for 30 minutes because that's all the time that I had before I had to pick up Bubs from school, and when I got home I snuck two pieces of my husband's pepperoni pizza AND THEN I made chocolate covered strawberries with some of the leftover ganache. Did we save any of the strawberries for a later date? Umm fuck no, we ate the entire god damn pint of strawberries right then and there. And I STILL had leftover ganache. Under the calorie goal? No way in hell.

Friday
Ahhhh today. Today I got my ass up at 5 am and went to bikram. Then I had a gala apple and two tablespoons of almond butter and a hardboiled egg for breakfast, followed by pumpkin chili for lunch. Good, right? I followed my pumpkin chili with some ganache/peanut butter on a spoon...and a glass of WHOLE milk because that's what was in the fridge. Fail. For dinner, I made mushroom cap pizzas (recipe coming), but for good measure I still ate 1.5 slices of the pizza that Hubs and Bubs were sharing and followed all that wonderfulness up with the 4 tablespoons of almond butter/ganache that I mentioned earlier. SO NOT UNDER MY CALORIE GOAL!

On the plus side, the MOTHER FUCKING ganache is gone!!!! Praise Jesus.

So that's my week. Yay me. I suck. I need to change some shit for next week. I can't keep eating like this or I'm going to gain some serious weight. Why do I have no self control? I think next week I'm going to give myself a little bit of room on the "clean eating" front and just eat healthy and smaller portions to see if I can get myself back into the groove. I'm going to add back in some whole wheat pasta, and I'm planning on making that pumpkin chili again, only this time with black beans instead of chickpeas and I won't be eating any avocados this week because they are really heavy on calories (yes, I know they are good for me, but WAY too many calories to justify eating them every single day). I put the remaining pancakes in my freezer for a later date because I'm getting bored of them, so I plan on having fruit and hardboiled eggs (and maybe some whole grain toast) for breakfast this next week. Hopefully I can change it up enough to get my ass back into gear. My only question is what do I do if I get a craving for sweets/chocolate? I'm looking into buying PB2 at Whole Foods tomorrow. I wonder if I can make that banana shake with PB2 instead to lighten the calories for when I have a sugar craving...just a thought.

I will say that my one shining star from this week is that I exercised every single day. Even if I didn't have time, I squeezed it in, and I made the effort to do something each day. So I will give myself THAT. Hopefully it means something.

Anyway, this all starts tomorrow, of course. The sooner the better. I have tickets to a huge basketball game tomorrow! My school is playing one of our conference rivals and we just lost BAD this week, so I'm sure there will be a crazy crowd trying to help them get their shit together. Should be fun! The game is early in the afternoon so I'm hoping to get a run in immediately afterward! We shall see!

Please send some positive vibes that I will get over this madness sooner rather than later and start inching closer to my goals. I am afraid to weigh myself at this point and I probably won't even do so until late next week....

sigh....here's to a NEW start...immediately.

Crock Pot Balsamic and Onion Pot Roast [Recipe]

So, usually I make my pot roasts with cream of mushroom soup and french onion soup mix just like my mom always did. NOT CLEAN. But I LOVE LOVE LOVE pot roast. It is a staple of my childhood, and since I absolutely loathe cooked carrots (don't ask me why--I have always picked them out of any dish), I always make mine with mushrooms and onions and serve over mashed potatoes. So, the comfort food of my childhood was definitely not going to cut it when I started craving some good ol' fashioned pot roast the other day. I searched Pinterest (oh how I love that site) and came across this recipe that uses all clean ingredients! It can be found at A Cook's Quest. It is delicious and tangy! So good and with minimal effort!

picture courtesy of A Cook's Quest

Ingredients

• 3-4 lb boneless chuck tender roast
• Onion powder
• Garlic powder
• Black pepper
• 1-2T olive oil
• 1/4 cup water
• 2-3 large yellow onions, peeled and sliced thick
• 1 small basket of pre-sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup low-sodium vegetable broth, reduced to 1/2 cup
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup tomato sauce (or 1/4 cup tomato paste and 1/4 cup water)

Directions

1. Rub meat well with onion powder, garlic powder and pepper.
2. Heat pan and coat with olive oil. Brown the roast really well on both sides.
3. Reduce your vegetable broth, let cool and add balsamic vinegar and tomato sauce.
4. Place onions and mushrooms in bottom of slow cooker, top with roast.
5. Deglaze the roasting pan with 1/4 cup water and add drippings to balsamic mixture. Mix well and pour over roast and onions in crock pot.
6. Cook on low for 6-8 hours until roast falls apart.
7. After roast is finished, remove from crock pot along with mushrooms/onions and cover to keep warm. (Note: you can also broil for a few minutes to caramelize the onions and get a nice crisp finish to the meat) 
8. Cook down the liquid by about 1/3 to get a nice "gravy" -- add cornstarch or flour if you want to thicken it. Serve over mashed potatoes or with baked/mashed sweet potatoes.

Makes approx. 6 servings