Confessions of a creme-puffaholic

It’s four weeks to go until the wedding and I’m having a hard time keeping on track. Though everything fits and I’m still weighing less on the scale, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s been hard getting my eating habits back on track given that my budget is incredibly strapped. So what this week entails is getting the most out of commitments I’ve already made (like $100 worth of hip hop classes and $20/mo gym memberships) and keeping my butt moving.


This past Saturday was our dance showcase so last weeks’ workouts looked like this: Sunday Zumba, Monday dance rehearsal, Tuesday rest, Wednesday Pilates, Thursday dance rehearsal, Friday rest, Saturday Yoga & dance showcase… Though it was a relatively static workout week, I felt like I had done quite a bit. Saturday’s power yoga kicked my butt and I was still sore yesterday as I labored at making a great vegetarian lasagna. (The recipe is from Joy of Cooking so I don’t have much credit to take there.)

So I didn’t do much working out for a Sunday, but I certainly did a lot of eating at a fundraising event for Hubby’s graduate program. And did I eat a lot of junk…

fried chicken wings (2)
penne pasta with chicken in a cream sauce (1 small spoonful)
a potato roll (1)
sweet boiled carrots (1 hefty serving)
spinach salad with apples, carrots and balsamic (1 heft serving)
smoked salmon (1 oz)
veggie lasagna (1/2 serving)
brownie (1/2)
crème puffs (5)
éclairs (3)
glasses of wine (4)

The list started off well, I was right on track until we got to the dessert table. I’m addicted to sweets, it’s hard to look away!  The creme puffs called to me with pleasant and plump memories from my childhood.  The first one was light to the bite with a delicious creamy filling.  The second was more rich.  I had an eclair to balance with some dark chocolate, but then I had another creme puff and it all went downhill from there.  i knew I had to stop... they were so perfectly shaped to just pop into your mouth... It didn't even cross my mind that all I was consuming was empty calories of buttery pastry and fatted sugary cream!!

I compromised with myself that today would be better, including green tea to help with a detox:

Breakfast:
Oatmeal & Coffee
Small slice of office Carrot Cake (it was for someone’s birthday!)

Lunch:
Green Tea
Veggie Lasagne
Spinach Salad

Snack:
Yogurt
Fruit
Workout:
hip-hop for cardio
a light abs and core workout to tone up my midsection

Cheers to you all and best of luck for a healthful week!

Happy Feat

Hubby and I have been taking dancing lessons now for 4 months in preparation for the wedding. It’s an ample challenge for the both of us; myself with my dance training must learn to resist the urge to lead while Hubby with his martial arts training must learn to be graceful.

After giving our first dance song to our instructor Emily, she helped us identify a dance and several steps that would be appropriate for our wedding. A few weeks back, she asked us to participate in a showcase for the dance studio featuring many of the Dancesport competition team members. One of the competition members even told us that when he started dancing with his daughter for her wedding, he had an easier time performing it at the actual wedding than at the showcase! The pressure was definitely on to perform but Hubby felt we needed as much practice as possible to be comfortable…


We practiced weekly, upping our practices to twice a week before the showcase. I’m happy to report that we got tons of positive feedback. These aren’t exactly action shots, but you can tell we’re pretty happy with the accomplishment.

Get Fit Carlie at the Schlafly Beer Festival

When I say have some fun on the weekends, I really mean to have fun. Lets just say we put the diet on the fritz for this Saturady funday… I spent the weekend with some new St. Louis friends at the Schlafly Repeal of the Prohibition festival, enjoying some fine microbrews and delicious pub fare. Here are some pics from the festival!

Tony, Kelsey, and Sarah outside of Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood, MO

Kristen, Me, Tony and Kelsey

Sarah and Kristen

Bottleworks

Some fine beer making equipment inside

Kristen on discovering that we are both hop fanatics (love the APA & IPAs)

All us girls winding down after 4.5 hours of beer tasting

Kristen demonstrating how little our tasting glasses are...

Incredibly happy with the macro-function on my camera

Days Off... and Goal Pants

I took a few days off to accomplish big things for the wedding.  From my Bachelorette party, to my dress fitting, florist sample and a final food tasting, this past week has been a whirlwind.  I took my time at home to share with my family all the changes I've made in my life from the portion control to using fine ingredients for food and what meaningful exercise looks like.  Though my visit was for six days, it felt more like two.  The big personal validation and highlight to my visit home was finding old dresses and pants from my wardrobe that hadn't fit in more than three years and being able to enjoy wearing them all comfortably.

When it came to my dress fitting, we discovered a lot of work needed to be done.  When I bought the dress over 18 months ago, it was a size 12 and fit my bust perfectly though the waist needed to be taken in.  When I tried on the dress 6 months ago before I moved, the dress fit through the bodice perfectly, not a single alteration needed aside from the length.  And on Monday when I stepped into that dress, it nearly fell to the floor... a victory to be smaller than the dress (and a complete nightmare for my seamstress)!  But knowing now that I've been committed to a small dress and a lot of alterations, I can't let myself off the wagon now!  My final fitting is scheduled for two weeks to the wedding (in four weeks) and I hope that the dress fits perfectly.

In the back of my head is one pair of pants that I keep thinking about squeezing into.   It's a juniors size 7 from 2002, my first nice pair of black pants - obligatory to any woman's wardrobe.  This past week I wore it to work but still couldn't stop the pinch of fitting a little too tight.  I left the pants at home, for the back of my head... in four weeks when I return, I hope to fit so comfortably in those pants... a tangible goal that I don't need to see any numbers on the scale.

For now this weekend has a lot in store.  Aside from ballroom yesterday, I haven't had much of a chance to work out, so tonight I'm going to hit the gym and get a good workout in.  Then tomorrow I'll do the same and take a Piyo class in the morning before heading over to Schlafly Bottleworks to enjoy a beer tasting... and on Sunday I'll take the morning to do another great workout with Zumba and then take care of things around the house before getting a nice long and relaxing massage.  As for my diet this weekend, aside from the beer, I'm going to try to eat pretty clean with lots of fresh fruits and salads, whole grains, and lean meats.  Next week will be full of dancing so I better get some strength training in while I have the chance.

When you hit a wall... my philosophies on beating the weight-loss plateau

This entry was inspired by one of my aunts who reached out to me about hitting a plateau with her diet and exercise.  I've read a lot of this advice before, but a lot of it is also intuition.

Last night's Biggest Loser featured many of the contestants busting their butts, then stepping on the scale to unusually lower numbers of weight-loss (many in the smaller single digits). 

This really hit home for me: I started my weight-loss in the middle of January.  When I stepped on that scale with my trainer next to me, all I saw were the glaring numbers. 147.8.  Holy.   By the end of March, I was maintaining an eight-pound loss.  I changed my diet considerably and I ramped up my physical activity.  But now that we're creeping into April, just 8 weeks from the wedding, I've hit a wall.  I stepped off the elliptical and onto the scale: 139.6.  I am just three and a half pounds away from my short goal!

So it's time for me to revist some principles that my fitness mentor shared with me early in the challenge:
Keep. Mixing. It. Up.  From the dynamic fitness to the dining room table, the easiest and best way to weight-loss is variablity.

Dining Room Table: Don't Cheat Your Caloric Intake!

Think about what you eat.  Dee did this to me everytime we had a training session together.  I'd be burning through squats on an inverted bosu ball and he'd ask me "What did you eat today?"  It takes a second, but you can usually recall what you've eaten by the end of the day.  Now, if you can say that you're eating the same thing for all your meals and snacks for five days out of the week, you might be running into the diet wall.
Metabolism is a tricky thing.  I don't purport to have any special knoweldge about the metabolism, but using some of the knowledge I've gathered about it, I think of my whole body as a machine and my metabolism is the engine and what I'm eating is my fuel source.  Here's another way of thinking about it:  you have a long week of work or school and you're not sleeping enough.  You learn to cope with the exhaustion, you take the bus instead of drive or you drink more coffee.  Your mind isn't as sharp as it would be after a good night's rest, but you manage to get things done at a slower pace. 

Now if you’ve already drastically reduced your calories AND you’re maintaining your intense workout schedule, your metabolism (much like a sleep version of you) may have actually slowed down because it’s learned to keep on working in “starvation” mode... it'll keep you alive, but not in the best capacity.  Jillian Michaels explained it best on last night's Biggest Loser:  Eat a strict diet three days a week, eat moderately two days a week, and give yourself additional wiggle room on the weekends.  Doing this keeps your metabolism burning at a higher rate since you're mixing it up - and it also keeps you motivated & rewarded for working so hard.  This is exactly what my mentor told me and it is nice to know that come Saturday night with friends, I don't have to feel so guilty about french fries.

If you’re working with a nutritionist, you might want to ask about how you can modify your caloric intake to meet your energy needs. For myself, I do mostly portion control and when I do have to have starches I try to go for foods low on the glycemic index (think of these as long lasting fuels that don’t store as fat as quickly). If your diet does allow for some of these foods, look to all the whole grains: bulgur wheat, brown rice, steel cut oats, quinoa are all good starches that keep you full and are relatively low on the glycemic index. Quinoa is my new favorite; if you’re not familiar, it’s a whole grain that has the complex amino acids of a stable protein (such as chicken or fish) and it’s vegan!  Variety is the spice of life and with how many meals you eat in a day, don't let Monday look the same as Friday.


Dynamic Fitness: Muscle Confusion and Kicking Boredom

My philosophy behind my fitness regimen is based on the principles muscle confusion, popularized by  the P90X (tm) workout system & the Dynamic Fitness Method (tm).   Aerobic exercise can get stale - running, ellipticals, even spinning... Zumba classes are great but over time you've seen the routine and you're not sweating.  Cardio is definitely an important part to losing weight and it enhances your endurance, but some people can actually see more results when doing workouts that utilize different parts of the body every day.  You name it, it fits.

Some modules of muscle confusion workouts go on a week by week basis... one week of strength training, another week of stretching and elongating for recovery, etc.  Other modules rely on incorporating strength and weight training into circuits.  Whatever your cup of tea, muscle confusion can be very liberating.  Why?  Because you aren't doing the same darn thing over and over and over again for weeks on end.  Not only are you mixing up your gym routine, you're adding new activities and finding fitness in all new places. 

Here are some of the activities that litter my workout schedule:

Walking the 4 mile trail by my house
Hip-Hop Dance Class

Ballroom Lessons
Hitting the bag (90 lb punching bag in our basement)
Gym routines in any combination of duration but no less than 30 minutes:

• Elliptical
• Running
• Biking
• Weight training

Power Vinyasa Yoga
Pilates
Zumba
Turbo-kick
Rock Climbing (bouldering and top-roping at the rock gym)
Home circuit training with 5 lb weights or 10 lb paint cans

Also, because of my knee problems I try to keep high-impact days spaced out to ensure my knee has rest in between.  For example, I'll run one day and the next day I'll ride the bike... or if I have an exceptionally hard dance class, I'll take a walk the next day.  Formulate it however you want to, or stack two activities (sometimes after our Ballroom lessons, Hubby and I will go straight to the rock gym for two hours of top-roping).  Number one rule to muscle confusion: make sure you're giving your body ample recovery so that you aren't working one section repeatedly.  Some of those low-impact activities I've listed have become my favorite part beucase I can do some of these activities with Hubby and it keeps us in shape together.  The built in recovery time and the variety to this workout strategy allow me to incorporate all kinds of activities into my fitness routine so that it doesn't become mundane.

Pushing Past the Plateau: My Strategy for the Three Pounds

I'm five days away from my first dress fitting.  Though I'm finally back into a shape that I'm happy with, I want to make sure I'm also striving to meet my goal.  Hubby and I will be travelling seperately for the next week which means a lot of eating out.  When I fly, I look for all sorts of comforts - fried foods, wine, etc.  To get myself ready for the onslaught of restaruant food and alcohol I'll have over my bachelorette party weekend, I'm opting to eat light and clean until I get on that airplane.  I'm also making sure to get a work out in every day - Monday I danced, Tuesday I went to the gym, Wednesday I'll do pilates, and Thursday morning I'll try to get to the bike, even if for 30 minutes... it's better than nothing!  When I get to my destination, I'll squeeze in a light run and maybe even some Yoga.  With all the variety that travel can bring, it doesn't hurt to think out of the box to find fresh meals and fitness.

Roasted Veg Head: Asparagus

It’s recommended by nutritionists and doctors alike that Americans should consume more vegetables – at least five servings a day! I admit that vegetables are not my favorite produce item. Years of seeing iceberg lettuce go brown or tomatoes turn blue in my mother’s fridge created a rift between myself and that healthy section of the grocery store. I still gag at the thought of something composting in the vegetable bin.

It wasn’t until I started dating my fiancée that I discovered the other great and simple ways to prepare vegetables. Put aside steaming and poaching and gnawing like a rabbit – I have a series of roasted vegetable ideas that will fill your tummy and make you think differently about vegetables, including Brussels sprouts.

We love roasted Asparagus with almost everything.  For the best results, select firm "snappy" asparagus that are on the skinnier side (as skinny as your pinky!)  You'll know if the asparagus isn't great if it feels rubbery and wilty.  Keep asparagus fresh in your fridge for up to 5 days by cutting off parts of the ends and then standing them upright in a container of water (about 1" deep).
 
What you need from your kitchen:
 
Sharp knife, cutting board, baking or broiling pan
 
 
Ingredients:
 
1 bunch of asparagus
1/4 c olive oil
Pine Nuts (optional)
Lemon Wedge (optional)
 
Preheat oven to 400 - 425 degrees (broil also works for this, just be sure to position the rack about 4 or 5 inches below the heat sources)
 
Wash the asparagus and prep by snapping of the cut end of the stem.  It will naturally break where it is supposed to.  Line that piece up with the rest of the bunch and trip the remainder of the stems off.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Place the asparagus in a single layer on a baking sheet or broiler pan.  Drizzle the olive oil over the asparagus and toss lightly to coat.  If you have pine nuts, sprinkle them on top.  Slivered almonds also work well.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Broil/Bake for 12 - 15 minutes depending on asparagus thickness.  They're done whenever the tips are crunchy and the bodies are lightly charred and wilted. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
For extra flavor, squeeze lemon on the roasted vegetables.  Serve with virtually any meat or entree - left over asapargus are great when cut into 1 inch pieces and tossed in a pasta salad with italian dressing and herbs.
 
Enjoy!

Looking for some input... about protein shakes!

In the past, I've used Slim-Fast(tm) shakes to supplement my diet, especially in the morning when I'm on the go.  Now I have the opposite problem: in the evening after my workout, I tend to get a little hungry but it isn't time to have dinner yet.  I'll sometimes eat a half-sandwhich of peanut butter and bread, but I'd like to try some protein shakes that aren't ridiculoulsy high in sugar (if it's one of the top 3 or 4 ingredients, I'm not interested). 

I was going to start down the path of the SF High-Protein blends, but sugar was the 2nd ingredient on the list...  I might also just keep chocolate soy milk around and enjoy a glass of that whenever I'm done with a workout. 

What do you drink?