An Unintended Consequence: Joy.

Well helloooooo out there, friends! I know I am terrible about blogging. As I've mentioned before. I could blog every day, but it seems boring... "I ate golean cereal again!" "I was on the treadmill for 30 minutes and on the crosstrainer for 30 minutes! I did wall-push-ups!" Except I'd write that every single day and everybody would get bored.

So, of course, today I have something specific to say, which is this: I NEVER thought that I would ever even get to this point, team. I mean, T. Swift style, never ever ever.

Never, ever, everrr!

But yesterday Me and T and my bestie and his bestie did a 5k. People do 5ks all the time. We didn't even run the whole time, but I experienced something completely bizarre-- Joy. With my friends, out in the sunshine, getting splashed with color and just moving around made me so happy.

I have no doubt in my mind that 4 months ago, I  might have enjoyed the color part of it-- but I wouldn't have been able to run with my friends, not even a little bit. I might have even gotten cranky about it. Not so.
I am not in good enough shape yet that I can run a 5k (I just very recently succeeded in running 1/2 a mile without stopping and it nearly killed me, so do with that what you will) but we did run, and dance, and skip and chase each other like little kids and I had a blast.

I've never run around with impunity-- literally not even when I was a little kid. I didn't play tag on the playground-- I knew I would lose, and ever since I was little, it just seemed silly to play a game I knew I would lose. So teensy Liz never liked exercise. Somehow adult-Liz has learned what child-Liz could never quite grasp-- which is sometimes you do things for the pure joy of doing them. (To be fair, teensy-Liz loved swimming with a wild abandon and devoured chapter books, so it's not as though I was sitting there being cold and calculating my whole childhood, I just didn't generally run or move my body for the joy of being able to do so.)

Anyway. It was awesome. We're already hoping they come back next year, but we've already decided we'll be running the whole thing, like a whole crowd of bosses :)

 I've lost 46.5 pounds as of today, the end of my 4th month of this exciting journey. I'm really excited to hit the 50lb mark, but more excited to start hitting milestones I've never seen before, like:

• Weighing Less than My (6'4", Male) Spouse 
• Not Being Obese Anymore, Ever
• I Can Run a Mile and I'm Not Even Dead!
• I Couldn't Even Wear These Pants in High School

I'm sure you all agree these are admirable goals.

How Twitter Finally Became Useful to Me

Hello friends! This is a teensy little post to let you know that if you have a desire to follow my healthiness process in a highly intense way, I started tweeting! By started tweeting, I mean, I've had Twitter for 100 years, but I finally have interesting things to say! Of course, much like the blog, you don't have to read the tweets, but I think they're fun. :) @LizGetsHealthy is my twitter. Yay!

A Lengthy Food-Related Exposition

Hello sweet readers! Welcome! I realize I don't post much anymore and there's a good reason for that: I'm boring. I've lost 35.5 pounds by doing the same thing, day after day after day. My struggles are the same, day after day after day. So I find that I come to my computer to write an entry, and realize-- I have very little to tell you, sweet internets, that you don't know already. However, someone did ask me the other day what I eat. Thusly-- I have a topic for an entry! Warning: This is an incredibly detailed breakdown of the food I eat-- it may be highly boring, but I have tried to make it fun.

Meeps, I didn't even know I had imaginary friends!

So let's start with breakfast, shall we?

Breakfast, Champions!
You may not know it, dear interwebz, but underneath my work-going, master's-degree-having, exercise-doing shell, I am terribly, terribly lazy. When I say this I mean that I require somewhere between like 8-10 hours of sleep a night to feel happy. Others figure life out with less sleep, I understand, with the help of coffee. As, in my opinion, coffee tastes like dirt, I do not drink it.

This is an accurate depiction of me being forced to drink coffee if I had stubble for some reason.

Furthermore, I am approximately 5 years old, and giving me coffee inevitably makes me shake violently and become hyperverbal. I am already kind of a chatterbox, so caffeinating me is really, really a terrible idea.

For the record, I am the double espresso owl.

Anyway. Breakfast. So, my lack of desire to consume caffeine in the mornings means I must sleep my full billion hours a night in order to fulfill my role as the office sunshine-bringer. This means that as I wish to arrive at work at 8AM, Monday through Friday... I wake up at approximately 7AM. For those of you keeping score, this does not leave long for breakfast, with all other morning-y things included.

Breakfast options for me are as follows (~300 Calories):
1. Greek yogurt + Fruit
2. Protein bar + Fruit
3. Breakfast Drink + Soymilk (Recently switched from almond milk after realizing it only had 1g of protein).

That's it. That's pretty much all I ever ever have for breakfast. Even on the weekends I rarely do anything fancier. Weekends I might do a bowl of cereal or think about making oatmeal or eggs. But fancy breakfasts lend themselves to company and my husband and brother are rarely awake at 8AM on Saturdays to have breakfast when I am hungry.

This would be the loneliest, fanciest breakfast ever at my house.

It may seem that I have teensy little breakfasts, but soon after breakfast is morning snack,

Morning Snack Means ( <200 Calories):
1. 24 Almonds.
2. Greek yogurt (if I didn't have one for breakfast).
3. Banana + 1Tbsp peanut butter.

I am so incredibly boring in this, team. I have morning snack at around 10:30, pretty much rain or shine. My morning snack is almost always at work, of course, and so lots of time I just have to nom some almonds while I'm trying to respond to some emails while my class is on break. Right now I don't have a class so I get to take the time to eat yogurt or a peanut butter banana, yay!

Lunchtime (~350 Calories)
1. A frozen something + Carrots.
2. Leftovers + Carrots.
3. Vegetarian corn dogs + Carrots.

Yes, I may well turn in to this rabbit. I will still eat carrots.

Yes, I always eat carrots with my lunch. I have been assured that though carrots have a high glycemic index, I can still eat a snack-ton of them! Hooray! Lunchtime means I usually have some sort of healthy choice or lean cuisine meal, or if I am a genius and have leftovers (like this week I have homemade chili!) then I eat those. The last like 4 Saturdays I've had 1 or 2 vegetarian corn dogs, because they are delicious. They are probably not particularly good for me, but... sometimes I get to eat them anyway. :)

So much sodium, so little pig butt. They are DELICIOUS.

Around 3 PM, I start getting a little cranky, at least on weekdays. This means that afternoon snack, though it should be something smart, like morning snack, is almost always something sweeter to keep me happy until I can head home and make dinner.

Afternoon Snack (<150 Calories)
1. Rice Cake + Fruit
2. String cheese + Fruit
3. (If I am particularly "hangry") protein bar.

Afternoon snack puts me between 800-1000 calories for the day, most of the time. I eat dinner almost immediately upon arriving at home a little after 5. Dinner is somewhat more varied as I usually share it with the other members of my household.

No, not you Seamus, dinner is for humans.

Dinner Items (~400 Calories)
1. A Frittata (2 Eggs + Mushrooms + Broccoli + shredded carrots + 2 tbsp salsa) + Veggies
2. Tacos (2.5 oz Ground turkey + 1 or 2 tortillas + .5 oz cheese + 2 tbsp Salsa + tomato) + Veggies
3. What I Call Pizza Nowadays (1 English muffin + 1/4 Cup pizza sauce + 1 oz mozzarella) + Veggies
4. Pasta (28g whole wheat pasta + 1/2 cup marinara sauce + 2.5 oz chicken + mushrooms) + Veggies
5. Stir Friday (1/3 Cup Quinoa + 2.5 oz beef or chicken + mushrooms + cauliflower) + Veggies
6. Cereal Option One (Crispix + Berries + 1/2 Cup soymilk)
7. Cereal Option Two (Kashi Golean + 1/2 Cup soymilk)

Veggies are usually carrots, but can be Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, salad, etc. A few posts back I showed a pretty accurate picture of what pasta dinner looked like before I cut my pasta serving in half. Lately I eat a really lot of frittatas, because they are easy, a delicious way to eat a lot of very random vegetables and eggs are good protein. Hooray! Basically I can put whatever vegetables I have in the fridge in a frittata. Here is a picture of a frittata, for your reference:

Mine are only slightly less fancy. I highly suggest making these. They are delicious and easy.

And, for those of you keeping score, yes, sometimes I do have a few extra calories and I eat when I get home from the gym

Night Time Snack (Varies Greatly)
1. Cereal Option One (see above)
2. Cereal Option Two (see above)
3. Greek yogurt
4. Banana + 1 Tbsp peanut butter.
5. Breakfast Drink + 1 Cup soymilk.

Self-explanatory, right? I get back from the gym and I'm a hungrypants. One of my goals in all of this is not to live a life of denial. As I'm nearing my 100th day of this process, it's especially important for me to be conscious of making this a sustainable situation. This means I flat out refuse to go to bed hungry. It makes me unhappy and anything that makes me unhappy is not sustainable. Not eating ice cream? Doable. Going to bed hungry? No snacking way, team.

Snacks is my replacement swear word so I don't sound like a pirate.

Speaking of Snacks, I have one last category!

Desserts/Indulgent Snacks
1. Frozen Yogurt Ice Cream Sandwich (80ish Calories, and so wonderous).
2. GOOD truffles (I buy these from the candy store in the mall. No processed nonsense for me, if I'm only eating one or two a week, yo).
3. 1 Pudding cup (I suggest the oreo kind, full sugar).
4. 16 Wheat thins and 1 Tbsp garden vegetable cream cheese.

On occasion, I believe I get to have something indulgent. I'm not afraid to do this, because it's part of normal eating. I believe in normal eating. Like I said, sustainability. Team, what do you eat to keep you happy and in a normal eating range? What's your most indulgent food choice? What is your healthiest? I really want to know before all of this gets boring :)

If you made it to the bottom of this post, you have some darn good perseverance skills. Yay you!