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

Celebrating Grandma

I know it's been a while since I posted, things got really crazy right before we headed to Europe. I have more light hearted pictures and posts planned but today is a day of remembering and celebrating my Grandma, who passed away at the age of 92 last Sunday.

She had gone into the hospital with a kidney infection before we left for Germany and when we returned, my mom let me know that she had taken a turn for the worse and passed away that afternoon.

I flew to Pittsburgh yesterday and the funeral is this afternoon.

My Grandma was awesome and I know just how fortunate I was to have her as long as we did. I was lucky to have been able to visit her when we were up here for the football game in October. I couldn't have known it was the lat time I'd see her.

Both of my Grandfathers passed away before I was born and my dad's mom passed in 1984. So it's just been Grandma for all those years,

She was always there for every event, every play. every show, choir concert, you name it, she was there. She was our biggest supporter and loved her grand kids unconditionally.

I wish I had something eloquent to say, but I don't.

My Grandma was awesome and I'll miss her every day.

Renaissance Fair!

Last Saturday Kev and I went to the Renaissance Fair and it was awesome. We've both been really busy and needed to have a little road trip. Kev told me a few days ago that we were going on a surprise trip and all I needed to do was get up and get in the car. So I did.

We took off and drove and drove and drove. I really had no idea where we were going even when we made the turn to Charlotte. Mainly because I had no idea the fair was outside of Charlotte. We made the turn, I saw the signs and was super excited. We've said for years we finally wanted to go and finally we did!

Since it was Halloween the attendees were all dressed up. The big costumes were obviously Renaissance and Star Wars. For reals.

We walked in and were hungry. I immediately went to the crepe stand, mainly because William Shakespeare said it was the best deal in the town. At least he said he was Shakespeare...

We ate it and wandered over to a tent where some guy was telling limericks. It was dirty and awesome. I really had no idea that the fair was going to be so... bawdy. Everyone was naughty and told dick jokes. 

There were a bunch of shops that sold vaguely medieval things. There was a cool show that sold hand drawn maps of fantasy lands. I squealed a little when I saw this one. If you know what it is, we can be BFFs

This one too. 

Next to the map store we found a torture museum for $2 per person. I would have apparently been wearing this back in the day for questioning authority. It's a good thing I was born in modern times.

One of the best things I saw was this guy.

He's an insult comic who gets hit with tomatoes. He was hysterical. Kev had to throw some at him and was called Bluto and Pavarotti and other assorted insults. Heh heh heh.

So worth the $4.

Soon it was time for the joust! We didn't get a seat in the bleachers but got a pretty good spot at the end of the row.

This is pre-horse.

This guy had me dying, He was selling flags in the colors of the 3 knights who were jousting. Our guy was max and he was black and gold.

So many poses.

This is Max, he was very... knight-like

So funny

Our guy ended up winning the joust which was pretty cool. I have no idea how the got points but I'm pretty sure it was all staged. But I didn't really care. 

There were so many people dressed up and I found my favorite. 

Ooooo Yeah!

Then we found this guy. For $5 you got  to shoot paint balls at him. I have no idea why he was medieval but we shot him anyways. 

We looked in more shops, Kev watched part of a show while I waited in line for a brat and some mead. Let me tell you, mead is the -ish, A dixie cup was literally $6 and it was strong and fruity and yummy. We ended the day watching the R-rated show of the Tortuga Twins. 

I also learned that just  like in a strip club, people put dollars in the pants of the performers. I don't know why, but it's totally a thing. A performer also set his nipple on fire for $20. I'm sure he's fine but everyone might have been a little dunk. It was like what would happen if drunk, talented carnies had a show and no one complained about what they said. 

Yea, we had a great time and would totally go back!

Have you ever been to a Ren Fair??

GYPO Fall Challenge

It's more than a little embarrassing how long I've had this post planned. Let's put it into perspective. The 3 week challenge is over and we're on round 2, week 2. Then again, the last 3 readers are probably really tired of me talking about how far behind I am on this whole blogging thing. 

Anywho, I put together my capsule wardrobe for the challenge. It actually started my first day in Scotland. I brought some of the outfits with me but when I train, I really prefer to be more dressed up. I figure if I'm going to sand in front of a class, I might as well have on something nice. 

Here's what I put together in the capsule.

Shoes: I have tall brown boots, black booties, brown fringe booties which I actually haven't worn yet because they're a little too tall for me. I can wear a tall shoe but these are just a hair too high, leopard heels, I really need to find a pair of leopard flats I like and gold flats. I only brought the brown tall boots, gold flats and black booties to Scotland. (bad idea).

Pants: I had burgundy pants, black, olive and some skinny jeans, the challenge called for boyfriend jeans which I actually found a few days ago, just in time for round 2. Shirts: black and white patterned, white, black and white polka dot and polka dot chambray.

Sweaters: Orange cardigan, neutral cardigan (I found one I liked a lot better in Scotland), grey shirt as a sub for a gray cable sweater (yea, too damn warm for cable sweaters in NC), and a pink sweater.

Instead of a camel blazer, I used my black leather-ish jacket, I also had an orange suede dress and a black and white shirt dress to swap for a plaid dress. Believe me, if I'd been able to find a plaid dress, I would have been so happy. Still looking. 

For the jewelry, I had my chunky pearl and Kendra Scott tassel necklaces, MK watch and some bold earrings. 

I also had a flower scarf and instead of an orange plaid, I found this fabu leopard/lace/orange scarf. Loooove.

For some reason I had a heck of a time finding things I loved for this challenge, I subbed a bunch from my closet and didn't really look for other things, I just ran out of time. Being in Scotland the first week also threw a kink in my fashion plans.

I still had a blast playing along and I've definitely gotten some staples for my wardrobe. Now to wait for the winter challenge. I'm sure I'll be overseas during the challenge too but at least I already found a fur vest that I'm pretty sure will be in the challenge. :)

Scenes from the Weekend

Ahhh It's the first of November! So many awesome things happening this month. Mainly, my birthday and our trip! My other favorite thin about November is the deluge of birthday coupons I'm about to get. There's a 50% off Kendra Scott that I'm anxiously awaiting. Oh yes....

Well, on to the weekend! Friday at work we had a costume contest. In usual fashion I waited until the last minute to decide on a costume. Thankfully Pinterest is there for me when I need help. Wednesday night I went to the Halloween store and scored me a hat, mask and a cape. Thursday afternoon I went to Michaels and got some felt and voila!

Yea, I was the Hamburgler. Stripped dress and there you go. All I really did as make the tie out of red foam and then I free drew some burgers and hot glued them onto the tie. I added some yellow ribbon to the hat and I was done. Making the tie really took all of an hour and I was pretty pleased with it. 

At work we had all of the people in the office go trick or treating at the manager's offices. But they didn't and now I have a giant pumpkin full of candy. Not as awesome as you might think....

The costumes!

I do have this awesome horse head mask now. I was doing a mob-tober contest with my team and the person with the fewest calls would get the head on their desk.

He eventually got a hat too. 

After work I changed out of my costume and headed over to NC State to get my bib for the City of Oaks 10K that I was running on Sunday morning. Yes, I was planning on running the half marathon and didn't. I'm grudgingly admitting that I need to go to PT for my hip because no matter what I do, it's no bueno. 

At the expo I really, really wanted to change to the half but knew I wouldn't be happy. Foreshadowing... I'm really glad I didn't. 

Saturday morning Kev had a surprise planned. He wouldn't tell me where we were going, just that I had to be up at a certain time and that I could bring my costume if I wanted. I decided not to because I wasn't able to get a costume put together for Kevin and I didn't want to be the only one of us dressed. 

I really had no idea where we were going and we drove and drove and drove until we ended up at... The Renaissance Fair! 

I need to put the Ren Fair into its own post but it was awesome and we had a blast. It was a lot more adult than we expected which was fantastic. I'll leave you with a few pictures....

Since it was Halloween people were encouraged to dress up. I found my favorite!

The fair is out by Charlotte, it ended at 530pm and by the time we got back it was pushing 8pm, We grabbed some sandwiches and headed over to our friend's house for some bonfire, candy and to pick up Cleo who stayed over there. 

Sunday came bright and early and the race started at 7am. The marathon, half and 10k all took off from in front of the bell tower at NC State but the 10k finished at Cameron Village. Raleigh friends, let me tell you, this was the easiest parking and in and out of any race I've ever done.  I drove down Oberlin, parked at Cameron Village and when it was time to leave, I was out in minutes, no traffic. It was glorious. 

I was definitely glad to be finished at 6.2 and not running another 7 miles. 

While I've been working through this injury I've been doing walk/ run intervals and I ran most of this race with 3 short walk breaks. Considering my hip was bothering me most of the race, I'm OK with the time.

Lemme tell you though. The 10k is half the price of the half, you get the same shirt, hat AND a medal. I'm good with that.

When I got home I found my cat in the fire pit....

Shower, breakfast and coffee then I took Cleo to Unleashed to get a bath and some dog food. Then grocery shopping, a nap, laundry folding (so much), my first experience with Plated (another post) and baked a pie for Kev. Phew! Now some blog time!

It was a jam packed but fun weekend! How was yours?? Linking up with BLoved Boston! AND