Lord of the Run

Ok, my marathon training has gotten a little behind schedule. Instead of running once every three weeks it's been four weeks since my last attempted run. But I was awesome tonight and ran for 30 minutes straight and walked another 20.

I used to be a runner you know. Not a runner, runner but I "ran" track for six years in high school and college and in spite of the fact that I was only a lazy high jumper I ran my workouts and a few official races including the hurdles a couple times.

After I had my little eight year old, Persistence, I got into running again for a few years. I'm embarrassed to tell you why I stopped but I will tell you anyway because I know you would never judge me, right? I lost my running CD. That's it. That's why I haven't done any real running for several years.

I lost the CD the first time and couldn't live without it so I bought another one. Then I lost that one and gave up after that. I mean, I still tried to run but it just wasn't the same without my inspirational music so eventually I gave up on the running too. I didn't really know why at the time and I thought I was just being lazy but looking back I can see that it was all about the music.

So now I want to start running again and if you thought I was serious about the marathon training, I wasn't. I AM NEVER GOING TO RUN A MARATHON PEOPLE! Not ever! But I would like to get back into shape one of these days, like after this baby is born, so I'm starting now. Even if it's only every three weeks. I bought a new CD, loaded it onto my MP3 player, which I WILL NOT lose, and went for it tonight. I can't move my legs at this point but it felt great at the moment with all that heart pounding music and adrenaline rushing. Don't you just love a good workout? I do!

Do you want to know what the music is? I'm embarrassed to tell you that too but I will anyway just in case it turns you into a marathon runner like me. (Not!) It's Lord of the Dance. I bought a used copy from Amazon. If you have Riverdance and you thought that would work, it won't. It has to be Lord of the Dance. Trust me on this. Buy it and then get yourself into a pair of running shoes because if a sick pregnant lady can do it then so can you!

And do me a favor. If you ever do decide to run a marathon watch your step at the finish line.

Run!

I pray for inspiration every day and I often receive it. I really need it because couldn’t do the things I do all on my own! The last couple weeks I have been thinking about cutting back my workouts from five days a week to three days a week. I feel like I could do more with my kids if we had a couple more evenings together to read and study. We just don’t get to all the books we want to read during our afternoon study time.

So I have been praying about my workouts. I thought that if my Heavenly Father wants me to spend more time with my kids then he will make my workouts more effective so I can cut back. Finally yesterday I got my answer. The answer was, go to the gym three days a week and the days that you don’t go, you can go running outside to make up for it. What? That is not what I wanted to hear!!! Oh well, He knows best so I had better do what I’m told.

I’m worried because when I have to workout at home it is easy for me to find excuses not to do it. I need to find a way to make sure I fit it in. This will be great though. It will save us time driving in to the gym and it will give me a chance to get outside to enjoy this beautiful weather. I just hate running outside. I’m a big baby and I like my treadmill.

Ugh, all this whining is making me sick!

We are so excited today because we are going to go garage sale-ing. I made a list of all the things I will be looking for and I know I will find at least one thing on my list! Remember Lara’s Law? Is there something on your shopping list that you don't want to pay a lot of money for? Don't walk, RUN to your nearest garage sale!

Flourless Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies

Is it my fault that Persistence wanted to make Lovely some peanut butter cookies for her birthday and then somehow we got home with two bags of chocolate kisses to adorn them with and then Persistence spent the night at Grnadma's house and left me alone with the Kissed with Death cookies? *I had to get the evil things out of the house and you know there is only one way to do that right?

As Stranger walked by the office where I was stuffing my face with only one more cookie to go he said, "What are you eating?"

"Nothing."

"What? Didn't you even save me one cookie?"

"Of course I did! See this? I was just getting up to give it to you!"

"I thought you weren't eating sugar?"

"I'm not. But I need to get all the sugar out of the house so it's not tempting me. (Pause) Do you know where any more is? Because we need to get rid of it immediately. (Pause) Seriously, if you know of any you should tell me right now."

I think the wild look in my eye scared him because he just wrenched the cookie from my death grip and backed slowly away .

Flourless Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
Hersheys Kisses

Mix, roll, bake at 350 for about ten minutes. Add the Kiss of Death while hot from the oven. Eat every single one of them before you can even get them to a cooling rack.

*Not Endorsed by Inutitive Eating

How To Stop Eating Sugar

I know steering clear of sugar is a difficult thing for most people. If you are really serious about going cold turkey I want to tell you how to do it. First I’ll tell you how and then I’ll tell you why.

1. Have a REASON to do it and then DECIDE to do it. Really. Stop saying you’re going to start tomorrow. Start right now!
2. Stop eating sugary foods, soda, juice, everything. Cut it all out of your diet and get it all out of your house.
3. Tell your family what you’re doing and ask them to please not bring any sweets into the house or to eat them in front of you. When we went to a Chinese buffet my family moved to a different table to eat their desserts!
4. The first week will be difficult. All you will think about is dessert. All you can do is just suffer through it.
5. To make it through the first week, make a meal plan. That way you will know what you are going to eat for every meal. Don’t skip meals or you will get overly hungry and vulnerable to falling off the wagon.
6. Next, buy every kind of snack food that you could possibly want that’s not sweet. Chips, crackers, nuts, popcorn etc. You’re not trying to eat healthy the first week. You’re just not eating sugar. If you have other snacks available then it won’t be such a hardship.
7. Buy lots of fruit. I know it’s sweet and it has lots of sugar in it but it’s good for you and for some reason I can eat all the fruit I want and it doesn’t make me crave sugar. It just doesn’t. Buy a box of strawberries and tell your family that this is dessert. They might complain at first but they will secretly like it and get used to it. I go to Sam’s club and buy watermelons, cantaloupe, bananas, boxes of kiwi, strawberries and plums. So, fruit juice, no. Fruit, yes.
8. If someone offers you a brownie say, “No, thank you.” A soda, “no”. A candy bar; “no”. A jelly bean, “NO!!!” “But thanks for asking”.
9. The second week on will be easier. You will have that sweet taste out of your mouth and you will stop craving sugar.
10. You will start yearning for healthier foods. You will stop thinking about eating junk food. If you do eat junk food, it won’t taste as good to you. Go with the flow. If you want to eat salad for three meals a day, do it.
11. Don’t start eating sugar again. Remember how hard it was this time? It will be even harder the next time you try to stop. When you tell your brain you are going to stop eating sugar again it will say, “Ya, I’ve heard this before. I’ll believe it when I see it.” And then you will have visions of sugar plums dancing in your head until you give in and eat one. What is a sugar plum anyway? They sure sound tasty.

I found this about sugar addictions. I haven’t read her book and I don’t know about her methods but I thought her website was interesting reading.

Stop eating sugar for all the obvious reasons. It rots your teeth, it’s bad for you, it will make you fat, etc., etc.. Here is a reason you might not have known about because I sure didn’t. I only found out from my own experience. Once you stop eating sugar your food cravings will stop. Seriously, you will eat less of everything. Even foods that I normally love, I have to force myself to eat. I don’t think about food like I used to. Sometimes I even forget to eat or I have to make myself stop and prepare something to eat when I’m busying doing something. Does this sound depressing? It’s not. It’s liberating. When you’re not eating all the time or thinking about food you are freed for so many other things in life. Ok. This is getting too preachy for me, especially since I’ve eaten a plate full of brownies in the last two days! But all is not lost. I’m still on the wagon. I just plucked a couple sugar plums from an overhanging tree that came a little too close. I’ll do better to steer my wagon away from the sugar plum trees in the future.

Sweet

Yes, I went cold turkey on the sugar thing. But after the first couple weeks I did start eating some sweets again. Some. Usually only in social situations. If I’m at a party and I’m offered a cookie then I will probably eat it. I couldn’t eat three dozen even if I wanted to so that’s a safe situation and it doesn’t get out of hand. I don’t buy sugar for myself though. I don’t buy treats for the kids and I don’t allow them in the house where all H-E-Double Toothpicks can break loose if someone isn’t keeping an eye on me. Let’s face it. I’m an addict and I always will be. It’s especially difficult for me since I haven’t been attending my meetings. And you folks are no help at all. I know you’re at home reading this while you’re shoving peanut M&M’s in your mouth. Snickers? Brownies? Ok, now the truth is out. I’ve been eating brownies tonight too but I only did it for you. See this lovely photo? I made these just for you. Now if only you were here to share them with me so I don't eat myself into a brownie coma. Tomorrow it will be detox all over again.

Guess what else I did today? I installed latches on the kid's secret door so now they can lock each other out of their rooms. I'm having visions of one of them getting mad and kicking the door down. Maybe I shouldn't worry about it. Just because that's something I would have done doesn't mean my kids will do it. The kids and I also cleaned the entire house. I didn't want to do it but they begged so I said, fine, but how come we always have to do what YOU want to do?

Have you visited Mental Tesserae yet? She has an amazing blog. When I grow up I want to be as smart as she is. For now, I'll teach her how to spell words like D'oh, and she can explain to me exactly how to schplake someone.

Sweet As a Peach

Intuitive Eating

This is an issue I don’t really like to talk about anymore. If I don’t talk about my eating disorder then maybe it will go away. I’m tired of facing it and now I just want to turn around and say rude things about it behind it’s back. I’m going to get all my friends to snub it too and maybe it will figure out that it’s never going to belong to the popular crowd and it will run home crying.

What eating disorder you ask? The one where I eat too much food and it makes me fat. The one where I eat too much sugar and it makes me cranky. I might as well admit to everyone that I haven’t eaten sugar for over three weeks now. I don’t count carbs or eat food with pretend sugar in it. I haven't given up fruit or white bread or anything stupid like that. No sugar means no refined sugar. No brownies, no chocolate, no candy, no anything of the sort. Peaches yes, ice cream on the peaches, no.

I talked my kids into doing this with me. I decided that my family should be more supportive of my sugar problem. If they didn’t want to be more supportive then I would “help” them be more supportive. If I were an alcoholic would they be drinking margaritas in front of me? Then why is it ok for them to eat twinkies in front of a sugar addict? It’s not and I have put an end to it. I always thought that this was my problem and I needed to deal with it myself. Well what are families for if they can’t help each other with their problems and be supportive? I’m doing this for them anyway, to be a better Mother. When I was single I could be as depressed and grumpy as I wanted and no one cared but me!

Here are my new rules: I will not be buying or making sweets. There will be no sweets in the house. No one will eat sweets in front of me. Unless it’s something I don’t like. Like soda, suckers and hard candy. That’s basically it since I like everything else. Heck! If it’s got sugar in it, what’s not to like!

Both of the kids were all set to do this with me. We hit our first snag on the morning of the first day when Persistence figured out that not eating sugar meant we weren’t going to be eating any sugar. She spent the next three hours in her room crying.

After she emerged we discussed the whole thing again. I explained that she didn’t have to do this with us but that all the same rules applied. “Well I can’t have treats in front of you but I’m always with you so then you are FORCING me to do it too!” That’s pretty much it little girl! I’m glad we’re all clear on that now.

Victor will do anything to please me. He went sweet-less for five days but that five days was enough to get me going strong and I’ve done well on my own ever since.

When Stranger was here we went to the Chinese Buffet. Everyone took turns getting their desserts and eating them on the other side of the restaurant. Except Persistence who hid behind Stranger, eating her ice cream and giggling. That was as far away from me as she could force herself to go. I appreciated the sentiment.

The most amazing thing is how sweet everything tastes to me now. I don’t like carrots in my pot pie because they make it too sweet. I tried the kids’ Pringles and couldn’t eat them because they were too sweet. We have been eating a LOT of fresh fruit to make up for our deprivation. I picked up a 25 pound box of peaches last Thursday and we ate the whole thing in five days so I bought another box today. We are in peach Heaven!

I don't know if I already told you this but...

I haven’t posted a single thing about my workouts lately. Could that possibly mean I am bored with them? Yes. That’s exactly what that means. I did actually show some improvement in the last couple of weeks though. I’ve been running 2 miles for forever and I managed to force myself to run 2.5 miles the last three times. Are you so impressed? If I can bump it up to 3 miles I may actually feel like a runner again. Well. I’d have to be going faster than a walking pace to be a runner. It’s sad when you stop jogging to walk but you’re going the exact same speed. I think I’ll try for the 3 miles and then work on my speed.

The weights are going fine. I have super big muscles under thick layers of fat. I am one. big. girl. I have been able to raise my tricep press from 65 pounds to 75 pounds. Cool. I have also moved on from the toothpick squats to using a real 45 pound bar. Next week I may even try putting weight on it. Now I’m getting crazy!

I’m so annoyed with the annoying people at the gym. I always sign up for a machine, go do my weights and then come back and do cardio. Almost every single day, someone gets on my machine 5 minutes before I’m going to use it. I’m not nice enough to use a different machine or wait until they’re done. There is a system here people. Please us it! I almost had to take it outside one night with a woman who refused to get off. I waited five minutes (you only get 30 and someone was signed up after me) before I told her I had reserved the machine and she still would not get off! I might have had to pull her hair out but her husband showed up on the scene and she moved her little fanny with the attitude before I had to do it for her.

I ran into someone from Church tonight. He and his wife just joined the gym in January but I don’t see him very often. We had a little conversation and then as I walked away I wondered if I had told him the exact same story that I told him the last time I talked to him. In fact, I have spoken to him about a total of 4 times and now I’m wondering if he has heard this story 4 times. I’m almost positive that he has. Luckily, I probably won’t see him for another month and by that time I’ll forget this whole thing and he’ll get to hear my story for the fifth time. Yay for him!

The Lazy Exerciser

You know you are a lazy exerciser when, after your workout, you think to yourself, “Do I really have to shower tonight? I’m just going to be getting sweaty again in the morning anyway. In fact, if I sleep in these dirty, stinky clothes, then I’m already dressed for my morning workout.

Of course I showered! I just said I thought about skipping it. Washing sweaty sheets tomorrow would be WAY more work than just showering tonight. No, I mean, I would never do anything that gross!

Violators Will Be Prosecuted

I had THE best workout tonight. Daddy was in the shower with the baby and someone needed to be there to get the baby out and dried off. Dinner was in the oven and someone needed to be there to watch it so it didn’t burn. I thought this would be the perfect time to go for a run jog.

It’s been 4 years since I’ve done any serious running jogging. A thoughtful neighbor of mine once informed me, after she quizzed me about how fast I ran, that I wasn’t really running then was I? I was JOGGING. Thanks for clearing that up for me V*&#$)! Of course that wasn’t a swear word! I’m just trying to conceal my sweet neighbor’s identity. I love that woman!

My 6 year old thought her heart would break if she had to be separated from me for 10 whole minutes (the length of time I thought it would take for my lungs to explode from this new activity) and demanded to go with me. I finally said fine but you will not be able to keep up with me and you have to promise not bawl your head off when I leave you. You also have to promise to turn around and walk home instead of throwing your little body into the canal to try to get back at me for abandoning you. She agreed and skipped off to put on her “running” shoes.

We were quickly on our way. It was a beautiful evening and I was deliriously happy to be running, for the first time, down a dirt road sandwiched between our property and the canal. The “No Trespassors”, “Government Property”, “Violators Will Be Prosecuted” signs didn’t deter me in the least. We had to fight off an attacking dog but that didn’t stop us either. Note to self: take a baseball bat next time you go running on a country road. We went further and further and my little darling didn’t seem the slightest bit ready to quit. Five minutes passed and then ten and she was not giving up.

We turned around to come home at this point because we were curious to see what level of burned dinner would be. When we were 5 minutes from home Kate started telling me, “I’m going to walk the rest of the way. You go ahead and keep running.” She said this several times but every time, she started running again. She just couldn’t keep herself from taking off after me to catch up. When we got home I realized that her little legs had run for 20 minutes straight. That was just too unbelievable to me! I know I couldn’t run 7 minutes in a row when I was 16, let alone when I was 6! She is not a quitter when it comes to anything physically challenging. She’s going to be some kind of extreme athlete when she grows up.

I’m really hoping she will go out with me again. I love having adorable little workout partners along to keep me company.

Work Out A Solution

I am a morning person. When I’ve had enough sleep I wake up feeling like I can take on the world. But unlike most people I cannot exercise in the morning. I’m not one of those people who are energized by a good workout. Working out wipes me out, for the rest of the day. But working out in the evening is hard. Other things come up by the time 4:30 rolls around, or sometimes I’m just too tired to drag myself and my three kids to the gym. Luckily I’m a big enough exercise addict that I do it anyway. Between Monday and Saturday I usually get to the gym 5 times. I just can’t live without my workouts.

Normally we head to the gym at 4:30. Then we come home and eat dinner and get ready for bed. This works great for us. This summer Grey’s tennis lesson has been moved to Thursday morning so I do a workout at the same time. Then we head to the waterslide. It’s a perfect solution. My kids need to swim and I’m too tired to do anything else but sit by the pool with the baby.

When do you feel you’re best? What is your favorite time of day to exercise? If you're having a hard time getting to the gym maybe a different time of day would work better for you. Experiment until you find a time that works. Don't give up on yourself!

Where's Spot?

It's finally happened. I am officially sick of Cheetos! It took a little over two months and I won't tell you how many monster sized bags of Cheetos. I'll tell you I ate a small bowl of Cheetos about every other day and the rest of the family ate them whenever they wanted and shared them with their friends. I think everyone else feels the same way about them that I do now. My daughter won't even go near them. What will my next food project be? Twinkies maybe? I don't think that one will take long at all. Why do I think I like Twinkies so much? Gross, I know!

I'm also ready for a new organizing project. I have kept my van remarkably clean for over a month now and I don't think I could ever go back to living with it messy. The kids and I clean it out every day and I vacuum it at least twice a week. So the focus for my next project is going to be my kitchen floor. I hate cleaning it more than anything! I have to move all the stools and rugs before I sweep and then put them back. I think it just isn't decent that it should get so filthy! What we really need around here is a dog to clean up the crumbs the kids drop. But then I'd have to clean up after the dog so never mind.

I gave the floor a thorough cleaning yesterday. I swept, mopped and scraped up every spot that wouldn't budge on it's own. Starting tonight I will sweep the floor once a day. Anyone want to join my challenge?

A Victim Of The Food Police

I'll admit it. I've been getting a bit cocky about my success with Intuitive Eating. It's getting so easy for me, almost second nature now. Yesterday I was reminded of the delicacy of my new found relationship with food. I have a lot more work to do before it is rock solid.

Cheetos used to be right at the top of my naughty food list for a long time. We go way back. My Mother bought them once in a while when I was a child but with three older siblings there was never enough to go around as far as I was concerned. When I got a little older (11) I took the opportunity of buying them for myself. I was in 7th grade that year and very lonely. We had just moved to a new town. Up until school started I didn't know any other kids and was left to devise my own entertainment. The best that I could come up with was, walking to the corner store for a bag of cheetos and the library for a stack of books. This was my usual outing. Of course I was old enough to know that what I was doing was "wrong". Only a "bad girl" would sit and eat an entire bag of Cheetos in one day! But I was never over-weight as a child so my secret was safe.

I stopped buying them during my latest episode of dieting. I started practicing Intuitive Eating and I hadn't though of them since. Then yesterday I picked some up for the kids and I to snack on. We came home and divided them into baggies so everyone would have their fair share (that's another story). Instead of eating the few that I really wanted, I devoured them all. After eating too many they didn't even taste good but I kept on eating them like I'd trained myself to do as a child. It was a small bag so I didn't even eat that many but all the guilt feelings associated with this food came flooding back. I consoled myself with a bowl of ice-cream. Since there was only a bit of ice-cream left I had another bowl full and went to bed feeling sick.

This morning I was clear headed enough to evaluate my binging episode. I have decided that the only solution for my adiction is to buy five more bags of Cheetos and keep my house stocked with them at all times. Just the thought of force feeding myself Cheetos is enough to keep me eating Intuitively!

Move Away From The Corn Dog

I had a run-in with a box of corn dogs the other day. I've never had corn dogs in the house before. They were one of those "forbidden" foods that weren't allowed across my threshold. It happened innocently enough. I saw them at the store and put them in my cart. No pangs of guilt surfaced. I didn't even give it a thought. I eat anything I want now and I can feed my kids anything I want. I brought them home and put them in the freezer. I cooked some for the kids and decided I'd have one myself. Uh oh. It tasted so good drenched in mustard. It was gone in about 30 seconds. I wanted another one. Then it hit me. Was I really allowed to be doing this? I could feel the fat grams attatching themselves to my thighs. I wanted to know how many of those little suckers I was dealing with. I ate another one but I didn't look. I controlled myself. I ate two corn dogs without even glancing at the nutritional information on the box. Why should I.

Why should I spend my days figuring out fat grams and calories when it's all done for me. All I have to do is eat the food. It's my body's job to figure out the details. I eat the food and my body digests it. Then I listen for my body to tell me what I should do next. Am I still hungry or am I full. Do I crave corn dogs at my next meal or do I want salad. I go with it. It's the simplest plan ever created, put into play the moment I was conceived. It worked perfectly until my environment started messing with it.

As I got older my brain was picking up messages that my body had never conceived of before. My Grandparents forced me to "clean my plate". Why did I have to eat when I wasn't hungry anymore? When I was eight I heard some teenagers talk about "pigging out". You mean you just keep eating even when you are full? I'll have to try that. I heard older women saying they were fat. Was I fat? My legs are wider than all my friend's so I must be fat too. It didn't occur to me that I was a foot taller than them so of course I would be bigger. On and on it went. I noticed that when I looked in the mirror, I didn't look like the girls in the magazines and on television. My body was flawed. If it was going to disappoint me like this then I would have to start disappointing it. I stopped eating what it wanted me to. I looked for clues outside myself on what I "should" be eating and what I "shouldn't". I learned from my friends how to tell if I had been "bad" or "good" that day. I needed help. I obviously couldn't make these decisions on my own. Dairy products will kill you. Cheesecake will make you fat. The television said so. Now what should I be eating? Grapefruit, carbs, protein?

Wow! Why couldn't I see how crazy that was? How did I live like that for so many years? Starving or binging and always miserable. Always out of control. Never trusting myself. It's seems like a long nightmare that is finally over. Hello! I'm awake now! I eat corn dogs without adding up the little numbers printed on the box!

Intuitive Eating

I'm announcing to everyone that I will never go on another diet, ever. I've been dieting for as long as I can remember and the only thing it has done for me is made me fat! The more I starve myself, the more I eat and the fatter I get. Does that sound familiar to any of you? A very brave friend gave me a book a year ago for Christmas called "Intuitive Eating". (You have to be truly brave to give someone a diet/non-diet book!) Should I feel insulted? I decided not to think about it and just read the book. I loved it, but I decided I would lose weight first and then I would fully embrace intuitive eating. This translates into me wanting to, but not really believing this could work for me. So I did my little WW diet and I killed myself working out twice a day for four months and lost 35 pounds. I was the master! Until, I got tired of it all and stopped completely. I gained a few pounds and then I went on a cruise and gained 10 pounds (that's mandatory for crusing). Then I gained a few more pounds. Eventually I went right back up to where I started from a year ago. Then the thought hit me. I should try Intuitive Eating!

I wish I had thought of that a year ago before my latest roller coaster ride. I already knew I would never diet again. I couldn't force it upon myself. Not even one more time. The whole process is pure misery and guaranteed to fail. Isn't it? Do you know anyone who has gone on a diet and kept the weight off? Some people claim to but how long do they keep it off? I kept my weight off for two years after doing WW the first time. I thought I was the greatest success story ever told. I preached my WW doctorine to anyone who would listen and dozens of people joined in my footsteps. Was I some kind of goddess? Maybe, until that fateful day. The day I had surgery on my tonsils. The ultimate in starvation. I couldn't eat anything for days. I couldn't eat normal food for weeks. I was wasting away and loving it. The skinnier the better, right? I didn't care that everyone told me how sick I looked. My dream of becoming anorexic had finally come true! (That was the "sick" part.) Until I started feeling better. I couldn't help but make up for lost time. I started eating foods in quantities that I hadn't eaten for three years. The ultimate in binging. I gained a few pounds but, no harm done. I would just start doing Weight Watchers again after the Holidays. I had done it before and it was easy. Except that it wasn't easy. It was really, really hard. I didn't want to diet again. I was above dieting wasn't I? I was the queen of fitness and health. Instead of losing those few pounds I gained a little more. Up and up the scales went without stopping. That brings us up to a year ago when I was given the answer but I was too blind to follow.

So now I'm an Intuitive Eater. My lastest in health and fitness crazes. Or is it? Can I really do this for the rest of my life? Can Lara Gallagher really stick with something for more than a few months or a year? Let's see...I eat anything I want. I eat whenever I want. I exercise if I feel like it. I lose weight. Yep. I most definately can!