Hi guys! I just wanted to let you know that I’m still here. Unfortunately, I’m finding it really daunting to keep up two blogs and was neglecting my regular blog. I would love it if you guys would join me over at Inner Monologue of a Madwoman as I’ll still be posting some food photos, but not quite as many as before. There will also be discussions of frugality, simple living, knitting, and the everyday woes of a grad student. And lots of kitty pron.
Yes, you read it right. Joey wanted me to meet one of his friends from high school who invited us to go out with some of his work friends to Wild Wing Cafe. I was already nervous about it because I get that way around large groups of people that I don’t know, but, to top it all off, I’m going to a restaurant that’s DEFINITELY not vegetarian-friendly. The salads, soups, everything had bacon added to it, and, of course, there was the wings. I found a veggie quesadilla on the menu, which wasn’t the healthiest option, but since it was the only vegetarian option, I went with it, and it was GOOD, but I didn’t take a pic, because I was at a table full of people I didn’t know and I didn’t want them to think I was insane;).
Lunch yesterday was a hugh jass salad!!
Yeah, buddy! It was a “southwestern caesar salad” with iceburg mix, spinach, diced tomatoes, black beans, and light caesar dressing. It was divine!
And, better yet, there was nothing to explode this time;).
My mid-morning snack was oatmeal with a banana (that was so green that I had trouble peeling it, but it was super-tart, so I was a happy camper)
I felt better yesterday after re-reading my posts from my other blog, Inner Monologue of a Madwoman. To see that my moods and emotions run in cycles helped some, and I really do think that, once we get through the mid-month point, things will probably even back out and I’ll feel much better!
Today, I’m feeling even better than yesterday, and I’m pretty thrilled about that. Hope you all have a good Wednesday!
I’ll get to that later. Let me do my food pics from the beginning:)
My GM wasn’t that good yesterday, which was a bummer. I ended up pouring the last few ounces down the drain…it was too…chewy, maybe? But I still got most of it in, so I had most of my nutrients:)
How cute is this water bottle? I drank lots of water from it yesterday! My mom donates to the World Wildlife Funds, and this time, they sent her a sweet set of two of these bottles. I’m currently using this one as my “work water.”
I had to hit TJ’s for some tofu and edemame, and I got clearance from Joey to get some lunch too:). I got a Veggie Hummus wrap and a can of TJ’s low sodium minestrone soup:
I planned to eat half the wrap and the soup for lunch yesterday and then have the other half with a salad today. Unfortunately, the soup was nuclear:(. I put it in the microwave for two minutes while I ran to the bathroom at work. Just two minutes, seriously. That’s how long I usually nuke my soups. I came back, and the bowl was overturned and there was soup ALL over the inside of the microwave….and thus, I spent fifteen minutes of my lunch break cleaning out the microwave of delicious-smelling soup:(.
I ended up eating the whole wrap, which was DELISH
It had TJ’s hummus, cabbage, sprouts, cilantro, and carrots. HOLY yum!
Dinner was some leftover multigrain penne with marinara sauce. No dessert, and I finally got to bed by 10 pm. I was so glad…the lack of sleep has been putting me in a rotten mood.
This morning, I continued the healthy trend with this:
coffee and an egg + egg white microwave scramble with 1/4 c black beans and some diced tomatoes. This held me over today for quite a while. No GM this morning, though…I just wasn’t feeling it, really.
OK, off to write some more and then get back to work in cubicle prison!
I’ve recently become Charlotte’s Frugal Living Examiner. Trust me, the articles won’t be entirely Charlotte-specific, and you’ll find lots of hints and tips that’ll help you save a buck in this economy. Below are the articles I’ve done thus far. Subscribe if you like it and help me pay for textbooks!!
Don’t give up on me just yet! It’ll probably take another two weeks, but life will return to normal and so will food blogging. Right now, we’re trying very hard to get in as much time as possible with James because he’s leaving for Iraq soon. On August 14th, we’ll be driving up to Indiana (where he’s based) with him and Shannon to see him off. He’ll actually be leaving on the 17th, so we’ll stay until then and then make the drive back. After that, life should return to fairly normal levels. I must say, I will be very excited when they do, as I’m pretty exhausted.
Tuesday night, James came over and stayed until after 11. Wednesday night, Cory came over at 10 and stayed until 1. Friday night, James and Shannon and Cory and his girlfriend came over and some of them stayed until 2. Saturday night, James and Shannon came over and stayed until 1, and last night, Cory and Julia came over and stayed until 11.
Tonight will be a night at home for us, for which I am very grateful. We’re going to hit the gym and then come home and I’m going to do some cooking and some experimenting with my new food dehydrator! Tomorrow night, we’re hanging out with another friend of Joey’s at the Wild Wing Cafe (I’m pretty concerned about this being vegetarian and all…prospects of a healthy and good dinner are not looking likely). We had to cancel on my parents for Thursday night to go see the Harry Potter movie at the IMAX theater, and I felt pretty guilty for that, but we really need another night at home, because next weekend will likely be a repeat of this weekend.
Ok…on to my one food pic:(….I promisepromisepromise that I’ll get back to this soon…in the meantime, don’t give up on me just yet;).
This was my “lunch” on Saturday at the flea market. We had a ball this month. I got some awesome stuff, as did both my mom and dad….however, we forgot to pack lunch, so we ended up with a pretzel. I scraped the salt off and tried to blot off as much of the butter as I could, but it still left my tummy feeling pretty rotten.
Other than that, there was pizza, mexican, and italian food, but there were also veggies, so at least there’s that.
Peace and love to you all on this Monday!
EEEwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. 
. That’s how I felt about the coconut water. It had that weird, electrolyte-y flavor to it which grossed me out hightly, and not enough of a coconut flavor to offset it. Did I really just say that something that comes directly from a coconut didn’t have enough coconut flavor. Yes. Maybe I would have liked it better if it was one of the ones with added flavor? For $1.89 for that tiny juice-box thing, I’m thinking that I’ll be sticking with my chemically-enhanced Gatorate G2 stuff for the rare times when I need it.
I got the coconut water at this awesome store in Brevard a couple of weeks ago called Poppie’s. It was like WF or Earthfare, but bigger, two floors, and it had a cafe in it. I wish that there was one closer to us, because I would definitely want to shop in there (probably not buy much, but shop).
So, for my favor:)…..I’ve recently started writing for the Examiner website as their Frugal Living writer for my area. I’d appreciate it if you’d check out my first two articles, “Why Be Frugal,” and “Where to Begin.” Posts definitely will not be limited to Charlotte-area frugality, so go ahead and subscribe and maybe you’ll find a thing or two that you could take away about changing your spending habits.
Anyway, that’s all for now. It’s an uneventful food day…no GM because I wasn’t feeling it. There will be pics tonight or tomorrow:)
Ok, I’m slowly getting myself back together after yesterday’s mini-meltdown (thanks for your patience). I’m looking forward to my doc visit tomorrow because I think that some change in my meds will help a ton on that front.
Yesterday, I did much better with my food, although I did end up staying up waaay too late because we needed to be there for a friend who’d had some major drama and needed to let off a little steam.
Yesterday’s post-GM snack was 1 egg and 1 white and hot sauce and mustard (not rotten this time!). YUM!!! It was so wonderful (except for the part where I was mixing in the mustard and ended up tossing some of it into my lap all over my dress pants:().
Lunch? A HUGE-ERSE salad!!
with nutritionally-devoid iceberg salad mix, beefed up with spinach and diced green peppers with a little Olive Garden dressing.
mmmm….close up goodness. This really filled me up well. I did have 1/2 a bagel later in the day and my carrot sticks. Dinner was brown rice with hot sauce and cheese and a couple of breadsticks from the Hut (tons of carbs, yes)…but no calorie laden beverages and no impulse delivery orders, thankfully.
*fingers crossed*, hopefully, we’ll be getting back to the gym today. That’s a habit that I absolutely must re-establish.
I hope you all are having such a good Thursday.
Well, if you only want to read positive, colorful blogs, you might want to skip over this one and come back tomorrow. I need to get some thoughts down on “paper,” and rather than paint a sun-shiney picture of my life and my attempt at weight loss, I’m going to put down what I’m thinking and feeling. I’m not writing this for comments or compliments, and I’m not tagging it because I really don’t even want it to show up on search engines.
I’m going back to see my psychiatrist on Friday; my next appointment didn’t need to be until October, but I’m getting very panicky for no reason and I’m constantly having to breathe deeply and tell myself that everything is fine. I’ve been receiving treatment for my anxiety/depression problems for about a year now. I’ve been dealing with it for probably twenty years, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even my worst enemy. Being a prisoner to your own mind is terrifying and overwhelming.
Our best friend is being deployed to Iraq and is leaving in two and a half weeks. After spending every weekend hanging out for the past year that he’s been back, the thought of not being able to see him for a year hurts so much. I know it hurts even more for his girlfriend, who’s now facing another year of having to deal with his absence; she’s my other best friend, so it’s hurting me even more to see her trying to figure out how to cope.
As a result, whenever we spend time together, I’m extremely impulsive about food, often to my detriment. Last night, he came over and, after a few “calorie-laden beverages,” there was an impulse purchase of pizza at 10 pm, which was totally unnecessary as I’d had dinner at 7:30. Fourthmeal left me stuffed, and I woke up this morning feeling like shit on a shingle. Today is the first day this week that I’ve actually been “Crap Free” and packed foods that will nourish me without overfilling me and hurting me. I know that I need to not beat myself up and move on, but when the problem is habitual, I don’t really know what to do.
I’ve had no motivation to exercise, clean house, be proactive at work, anything, and it’s affecting me in such a huge way. I feel slovenly, cluttered, stressed, and lazy, and, while I know what I should do to make things better, I can’t even find the motivation to do them.
My thoughts are so scattered these days. Even when I’m praying…I’ll be praying and then I’ll just drift off into what I plan to do for the day or some hypothetical conversation that I plan to have with someone (or wish I would have with someone) or the whole self-loathing thing, or whatever. I feel like God must think I’m such a douchebag, even though He knows what’s really going on.
That’s all for now. Hopefully Friday will help balance things out some. All I know is, something’s gotta give.
Man, it’s funny how you can feel let down after your birthday, even after you’re grown. I didn’t really get that way until the past couple of years…I had some bad birthdays in there, and these last two were just so good that I didn’t want them to be over, you know?
Anyway, I did half/ok with not having crap yesterday. We ended up doing Chinese because we hadn’t had any in a while, but I still just did the broccoli.
So, here’s my after GM snack (I don’t really post pics of my GMs because they’re all in my WW mug and are hard to see)
Looks like almond butter, doesn’t it? It’s actually spicy mustard. The color should have been an indicator to me that it was bad:(. But the egg/egg white were tasty. I have much egg love. I don’t know that I could ever go fully vegan.
My dehydrated-minestrone soup from Nutrisystem wasn’t too bad. There were actual vegetables in there. But it was sooooooooooooo salty. Blech. I’m going to treat these kind of like I do my TJ’s soups…only once during the work week.
I had my usual cottage cheese as a late afternoon snack, but also got to have six of these:
Nomnom….I got these from a teambuilding activity that we did during our monthly meeting. It was a big ego boost, too, because everyone had to pick someone else to give their “kisses” to who really helped them or did something special for them. We’re a relatively small office, so I guess I matter to people more than I think I do;).
And, for the blog unveiling……my birthday present to myself:
This is # 2 for me. I got my first one last year on my birthday with my mom and Mr. PhD. It’s my maiden name, and it’s significant because I’m an only child, and my dad only had a sister, so our family name won’t go on. I wanted to have something on me to always remind me of my heritage and how proud I am of my family history.
Tonight, I’m meeting a VERY old friend (we went to preschool, elementary, and high school together) who’s leaving in a few weeks to teach English in S. Korea for a year. I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to reconnect with him since I might not get another chance for a long time. We’re meeting for coffee, so I’ll have to make sure to make good choices!
Hi! This weekend’s absence was for VERY good reason!!! Saturday was my twenty eighth birthday, so I was living it up and barely even got online at all! I have to say, it was a good weekend, and it made me very happy to have such good friends that celebrated with me and loved on me all weekend:).
First, some eats:
Green Monsters definitely made a reappearance this week; I had one every day last week! I did run out of spinach over the weekend, so today’s “greens” consist of Amazing Grass Pomegranate-Mango Meal. There was one very unfortunate GM last week, though…I added the Amazing Grass Wheatgrass to it and it was sooooo grassy that I had to throw away half of it:(. My other sample, I’ll have to try as a “shot.”
There was lots of “yogurt goo.” I’m really loving the combo of plain yogurt, SF syrup, TJ’s PB, and 1/4 cup oats…it makes for a very chewy, nutty, tangy, slightly sweet snack!
There were a few treats, too…
Almond-Chocolate Biscotti and:
BIRTHDAY CAKE!!! One of the girls at work got me a cake on Friday and we celebrated! Thankfully, the frosting is the “cool-whip” type, and not the buttercream type. I’ll be honest, I don’t really like the former, but it’s more healthy than the latter, so it was probably in my best interest.
However, Saturday and Sunday were COMPLETE derailments, and we’ll just leave it at that; I didn’t freak out, though. It was a special weekend and I lived it up. I won’t say that there wasn’t quite the headache Sunday morning and some nausea. Because there was.
I’m doing a “crap free” week this week to help clean out my system and get myself back on track; there will be (almost) no processed foods all week. I say almost because I didn’t have time to prepare myself a good lunch this morning, so there may be a “nutrisystem” dehydrated soup cup that I’m having for lunch, but everything else will be in its natural state as much as possible.
We’re also back to the gym tonight; my ankle feels much better (thanks Island Girl for asking!!). I’m going to take it easy and stick with the recumbant bike today so I don’t overdo and injure it again.
Oh, and we bought a TENT for my birthday with some of the money I got! I’m thrilled about that, and I absolutely can’t wait to go camping in the mountains again.
I also got something else for my birthday….which I’ll have to have Joey get a good pic of since I can’t “see” it myself………I’ll leave it at that and surprise you tonight or tomorrow:).
Additionally, I’m becoming the Frugal Living expert in my area for the Examiner website. I’ll definitely need you guys to check it out since I’ll get paid by the amount of page views; don’t worry, everything won’t be limited to the Charlotte area…there will be tips and hints, frugal philosophy, discussions surrounding anticonsumerism and sustainability…you name it!
Anyway…wishing you all a fantastic Monday and a day of (frugal) healthy eats.
