Five Thing Friday

Look at this, I said I was going to blog this week and I did. Small wins folks, small wins.

Might as well take it old school and do a "Five Thing Friday". Heads up, I;m super tired because there was a storm last night and the dog and cats really wanted to come into the bedroom. Between all of their fussing, Lara didn't get much sleep. :(

1. A few weeks ago, my office expanded and we took over the the space on the other side of the hallway. Now the office is in a big 'U' and my team moved onto the other side of the office. They really like it, we have the new desks, I have a shinny new office, it's all good, except for the temperature. 

It is so damn cold on our side, BUT my office is like 10 degrees warmer than everyone else. If I;m OK, they're freezing. I'm hot and they're comfortable. The other day it was crazy cold and I had to send them this. 

I found some old, pre-rebrand gloves in the Marketing closet. I'm saving them for the next time they complain about the cold.

2. Back in the day, my Jenny weigh in was Saturday morning. I'd do my thing all week, hold on Friday night, weigh in the morning and if I was going to have a treat, it was Saturday. Then I had the entire week to be on track. Since my weigh-in week starts on Saturday, so does my work-out tracking (is that even a thing?)
Here's how this week looked
Saturday - Thought really hard about going to the gym. Really, really hard, but we went to the farmer's market instead and I was a little bummed about my weigh-in
Sunday - Went to the Southern Women's Show instead of yoga.
Monday - Boot Camp
Tuesday - Spin
Weds - Planned to go to boot camp but they hungry hit me and I knew I didn't have enough fuel to workout.
Thurs - So flipping tired. I had planned to go to spin though.
Friday - Kev and I have to get some photos taken

Just 2 workouts this week. Not awesome but better than nothing.

3. My brother lives with us now and while he's looking for a job, he's been taking artistic pictures of my animals.

With the light through the trees, she's like the second coming of dog.

I'm pretty sure Luger has a stash of mouse and bird carcasses under the deck 

This is Godiva, I am her person. She talks and says my name and it's creepy AF.

Still waiting for Kev to give the green light for me to get a baby goat. He keeps saying no, something about baby goats not being baby goats forever. Whatever.

You live in the Raleigh Durham area and have pets? My brother can take some super awesome pictures for you. 

4. I've been making  my team taste test things I find. It started with the 3 new peanut M&M flavors. Chili Nut, Honey Nut and Coco Nut. Then we did popcorn and yesterday we started on Oreos. So far the Reeses ones are a hit and the 'filled cupcakes' taste like unicorn tears. Sounds delish. I have partaken of 0. Because weigh-in.

5. Saturday I found the biggest Honey crisp apple I've ever seen in my life. This bad boy weighed 1.5lbs and at $4.99 a pound, that folks, is a $7.50 apple. 

I got this shirt at the last Kappa Delta training academy I went to. One of our platforms is building confidence in women. The shirt says "All I need is coffee and confidence". #GoConfidently

Have a great weekend and wish me luck tomorrow! Fingers crossed I see a decent loss!

Linking up with Amanda - Meet @ the Barre! AND

Jenny Craig Food Hacks

So, I was contemplating what I should blog about today, back in the day, Wednesday was some sort of fashion, (I think) but remember, this is now a weight loss and exercise blog... sure, it's still me though. Oh, before I go on, Jenny Craig has no idea that I'm on their plan, I'm just another person eating some food. Mkay...

So, like I said, I ordered 3 days of Jenny food online then I went to my center and got a week's worth. I even tried to follow the "Week One" planned menu, hey, at least I'll get to try something that I hadn't before. 

For those folks who aren't familiar, on Jenny Craig you eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and 1 snack on them, then you supplement 2 milk servings, 1 1/2 fruit servings and all the vegetables your colon can handle.

Replace the words with, "I ate too much Broccoli. I ate all the broccoli. We're out of broccoli, so much broccoli." and you have me Monday night. Kev loves my songs. 

So, on to some of my Jenny hacks!

1. TOAST EVERYTHING. Really, if it can be toasted or cooked in the oven, do it! I'm thinking about bringing a toaster oven to work and putting it in my office. Well, I'm exaggerating, but now I want one. 

The Turkey Burger is one of my favs and when it was in my surprise box, it was a hella surprise. 

Veggies for DAYS!

2. Embrace your inner OCD. No offense to people who are truly stricken with the disease, but I have a slight twinge of it and it comes out full force when it comes to some things, like not having your food touch. In this stunning plate, I picked the potatoes out of the rest of the meal and cooked them in a pan.

Note the peas in the picture, but not on my plate. F peas. I hate them.

3. Put the food on a plate. Plate food is more like real food. I'll be honest though, this sunshine sandwich is one of my favorites and I'd eat it off a hobo's sock if that was my only option.

Plate food.

 4. Make a big ass pile of veggies. Embrace the volumizing and add all the free veggies you can handle.

We got $2 green beans from the farmer's market. So many...

 5. Save something special for the weekend. I love the breakfast scramble on Sunday morning. Mainly because I like to pick put the potatoes, cook them in a pan with some seasoned salt and pepper and eat them separate from the eggs.

This is mainly because I need a pan, and I can't make it like this at work.

6. Embrace condiments! Know which condiments are free foods, like mustard, and flee from things like mayo, but you should anyways because mayo is gross.

But let me tell you the story of the fish and chips. When I did Jenny the first time, I loved the Fish and Chips and I especially loved the little packet of malt vinegar in there. I was seriously looking forward to this ALL DAY and you know what, the stopped putting in the mail vinegar! AND I didn't have any in the house. Thusly, I had all the sads.

So much broccoli...

So there are some JC hacks a la me.  How everyone is having a great week!

Have you tried the coconut LaCroix? Delicious or tastes like suntan lotion? Discuss.

Time to face the music

Yes, yes, it's been a while since I posted on here. No real excuses, but life got in the way. Now I'm back. I won't make any promises about how long, but I'm here because I have some things to talk about and I need to hold myself accountable.

I know it's on my Instagram and I think somewhere in my bio, about how I lost 50 pounds on Jenny Craig in 2011. My first weigh in was at a whopping 210 pounds. For someone just 5' 3", that's a lot. I don't have a lot of pictures from back then, but Facebook was kind enough to show me this on Halloween.

Obvs I was a witch and I had my black cat. Pretty chunky.

I was on Jenny for almost a year and my goal weight was 160. Here's me about there. The one on the right was taken 2 moths before goal and the one on the left 4 months after wards. I'd put myself at 163ish in both of these.

Call me delusional, but I think my 163 looks different than other people's. I was wearing a size 8 or 10 pant and that color block tunic from the Loft is a small. The striped one on the right is an Express medium.

I maintained my Jenny weight within 5 pounds for a year and in the summer of 2012 I stopped going to the center. Stuff happened, I was on maintenance, I was doing fine. I enjoyed my wine and sushi and it was good. I ran some half marathons and went to a lot of Body Pump and Spin classes.

Slowly but surely, the pounds crept back. The last time I weighed myself was in the summer of 2013 and I was at 170. Not terrible, just 10 pounds over goal, no biggie. First the pants that were super lose got tighter, then they fit well, then I went into the next size up portion of my closet. The medium shirts gave way to larges. And so it goes. #DontGoThreeYearsWithoutWeighingYourself

But I look at myself in the mirror every day and I was pretty sure I'd gained back 20-25ish of the 50 I lost. So I tried several things over the last 2 years. I joined a running club, did a 24 day detox, I did the Whole 30, the 21 Day Sugar Detox (I still haven't had artificial sweeteners in 2.5 years). What else, I had my macros done, tried that, and most recently I had my resting metabolism tested and started seeing a nutritionist. Fun fact, I apparently burn 1627 calories at rest. Really, my metabolism is disgustingly normal.

At the end of last year I was working back from my hip injury and unable to workout. It really messed with my motivation and I felt myself get one step bigger. That's when I went to the nutritionist. I never really got into it and it seemed like every day something happened and I was over my calories or had too many carbs or something.

Last Sunday night I might have had a mini breakdown. I was sick and tired of watching all my hard work backslide. So I called Jenny Craig. One of my biggest fears of going back was that I had developed a soy sensitivity and all foods have soy in them, and could I handle eating the food 3x a day for the next few months.

They had a special, it was 3 days of food, breakfast lunch and dinner, for $40, free shipping, So I ordered it. Worst case, I'm out $40. I talked to one of the phone reps and they renewed  my legacy membership for $0 and made me an appointment at my old center on Saturday morning at 8am. I ate 3 days of Jenny and had 0 pain or intestinal distress.

That morning, I picked out clothes that were light, peed 2x and didn't eat or drink anything. (that's what you have to do for the best results). If you can get up early enough to #2, that's great too. Did you really think I'd do an entire post that didn't include some sort of potty humor?

For the first time in 3 years, I got on the scale. Did I mention that going that long is really, really bad?

I knew it would be bad, but not 42.5  pounds regained bad. That's right, do the math, ouch.

So, back I go to Jenny Craig. Back to weekly weigh-ins and accountability. I also signed up for a 30 day Boot Camp which starts tomorrow. I know my mom is going to comment that I look beautiful regardless of what I weigh and others will say that a number on the scale doesn't define you. I get it.

But what I don't like is that I busted my ass for a YEAR to lose 50 flipping pounds and gained most of it back over 4 years. A fucking year.

So I'll do it again and turn this blog into a weight loss blog. There's going to be a lot of this:

(Everything you ever wanted to know about Jenny Craig food hacks.)

And some of this.

(most recent selfie of me. Mid March)

And some sweaty pictures too.

Hopefully this won't be a year long journey, but it will be the last time I need to lose 40+ pounds.

Linking up with BLoved Boston! AND