Girl's Night, Grocery Shopping and New Food

So, Tuesday night was one of our first girl's nights in a long time.  My friends and I have been really busy moving, traveling and working so it has been hard to get together, but somehow all 7 of us were able to get together on Tuesday night.  To say that we had a blast is a complete understatement.  We laughed until we cried and laughed some more and drank too much wine (okay not me because I didn't want to waste the calories).  My girlfriends are amazing and I love them all!  Some of them I have known since I was 7 years old!  They are all great in their own unique ways, but we all get along so well as a group.

What is the other great thing about hanging out with my girlfriends?  They are all a healthy weight and for the most part they make healthy decisions, so hanging out with them doesn't leave me with guilt.  In fact I am surprised I have gone on this long with skinny friends and I haven't started losing weight sooner.  Anyway, we made veggie and chicken kabobs and fresh corn on the cob and it was amazing!

This was before cooking, but don't they look great!?

After having this fresh, healthy and satisfying meal on Tuesday I was inspired to pull out all of my healthy cookbooks and do some meal planning.  My fiance and I each took a book and looked for 4 recipes that we wanted to add to our list.  I went out grocery shopping yesterday and I got everything on the list and nothing that wasn't on the list.  This is normally hard for me.  I used to go grocery shopping and buy everything that looked good to me (which was pretty much everything salty, fatty, cheesy and not healthy).  This time I avoided all of the bad foods like a pro. 

I got to the check out and the person in front of me was extreme couponing.  I have seen the show, so I know how it goes, but to actually see it happen in front of your eyes is surreal.  This woman bought $600 worth of groceries and paid $23.42 for them.  I was SHOCKED.  My shocked feeling quickly turned to bitterness after I checked out and spent $143.00  Blah.  I packed up my food and drove home crabby.  I got home and set out all of my food and then it hit me. I got a lot of good food!  I have tons of healthy options.  I remembered some of the woman's order in front of me and it was at least 10 bags of chips, 6 packages of cookie dough, 20 frozen pizzas, frozen fries, donuts and about 10 packs of pop.  So, when I think about it like that it is easier for me to think,

"I would rather spend $143 for healthy food, than $23.42 for WAY more food than I could eat or need to eat that will not help me get to my goal!"

Having said all of this, if you know a way to healthy extreme coupon I am all ears.  I am not knocking couponing in the least, but it just doesn't seem beneficial for me to extreme coupon since I only have two people to feed and healthier options don't seem to be as cheap as the other food.  Check out my haul below. 

I think I did pretty good!  What do you think?  I had to take two seperate photos because I couldn't fit it all in one photo.  A lot of the things that I got are items that I normally buy when I am eating healthy, however there are some new things that I have heard about or that I saw in the store and wanted to try.

Shantal over at My Journey talked about Veggie Straws the other day, so I had to try them.  They were not disappointing and perfect for someone who misses her crunchy salty chips.

A couple of recipes call for this.  I have to admit I am a little scared of it.

A couple of recipes call for this.  The word germ is kinda of gross, but I am willing to give it a shot!

Some fresh herbs and some deliciously hot jalapenos.

Do you have Salsa Lisa by you?  If you do go and get it!  It is a local MN company and I always try to buy local.  Even better than that though it is freshly chopped, with limited preservatives and thus less sodium (only 80mg per serving rather than like 200+ in other salsas.

Hmmm, Ginger.  Will I like eating you?  I like ginger ale, but actually ginger is up for debate. 

Stay tuned to see what I use this in later tonight when I post the first recipe from our weekly meal planning. :)

Sorry I am late with my postings!

*I know I have done a pretty poor job with blogging lately.
*I am sure that some of my followers want to stop following me.
*I promise you, I have NOT fallen off the wagon.
*I feel like the blogs that I read and the people who follow me on my journey have made a huge impact on my life and my success losing weight, so I don't want people to think I am not taking this serious.
*One of my Saturday Sessions goals is to make sure that I am blogging more regularly, since I missed two of my regular topics this week.
*On a lighter note, I have to admit that I have been missing in action for a pretty good reason...


I got engaged on Friday night!!!!!!!!


For those of you who don't know (I am guessing that this is many people) I live in Minnesota and on friday we got a healthy serving of snow.  My boyfriend bought us tickets to the Russian Nutcracker ballet awhile ago and it also happened to land on the same day as another event that my friends and I had been planning to go to called the 12 Bars of Christmas which is a bar crawl that raises money for a local children's hospital.  It is a lot of fun.  Since they are both in Downtown Minneapolis we decided we could squeeze both of them in.


At noon yesterday Ron called me and said, "I booked a hotel room for us at the Hilton downtown because it is going to be such bad weather, so now we don't have to worry about driving."  I was super excited and decided that I would meet him at the hotel. 

I loved the cute Sweet Dreams pillow on the bed of our suite.

When he got to the hotel he told me that we needed to hurry up in order to make our dinner reservations.  So, we went out into the cold, snowy night and walked to dinner.  On the way there we passed Peavey Plaza, a small area that is lighted with an ice rink.  In one of the corner's there is a small patch of evergreen trees that were beautifully dusted with snow and glowing with dazzling lights.  As I stopped to take my camera out to snap a picture, I turned around and found my boyfriend on one knee in the snow.  He said some very sweet, touching, amazing things to me before asking, "Will you marry me?"  To which I ecstatically shouted "YES! YES!" with tears in my eyes.  We both cried and hugged and took pictures. 

I think that my face says it all!

There he is in the snow.  My fiance!

After all of this excitement we went to dinner and then to the Russian Nutcracker ballet.  The ballet was fabulous and the State Theater is gorgeous.  

A view of Hennepin Ave in Downtown Minneapolis on our way to the State Theater.

I LOVE the music from the Nutcracker and going to the ballet was a dream of mine.

The inside of the theater.  Gorgeous.

This was the story of my fairytale proposal followed by my childhood dream of going to the Nutcracker. Friday night was the most amazing night of my life.  After the ballet I was able to go out and tell all of our friends.

Excited friends.

Really excited best friend and my fiance.

After the 12 Bars of Christmas we went back to the hotel and crashed because we has been through so much excitement that day.  I hardly slept because I was so anxious to tell my family at cookie baking.  Every year my sister and my mom and I spend an entire day making cookies.  I planned to tell them by writing in a cookbook that I got for each of them and I wrote them each a personal message and then the P.S. said "We're engaged!!!"  I got to my sisters and quickly handed the book to my sister and mom and then opened them and I watched as they read their messages and then my mom was the first one to read the line.  Both of them had apparently saw it coming and started to say, "I knew it! I knew it!"  We exchanged hugs and started to talk about how it all happened.  I waited for my other sister to come so I could tell her and she was thrilled.  I only had my Grandma and brother left and I called them both up and then made the announcement on my facebook page.  I am so happy at how this all unfolded and could not feel more blessed and loved by my fiance, family and friends.  It was the perfect proposal and best way to share the news with everyone.  We are thrilled to start planning a wedding and I bought some wedding magazines yesterday.  Woo hoo!  Excited for the next chapter!!

After all of the excitement we still managed to make a lot of cookies, which I will show you below.  I promise to get back on track next week when things have settled down a bit.  Hope everyone is doing great on their journey!

My mom and her/our family dog Gabi.

My mom showing my niece how to carefully lift out the cut-outs for cream wafers.

One of my sisters at the cream wafer frosting station.

Piles of cream wafers all in a row.

These cookies are beyond amazing and delicious.

Cut-out cookie station for the kids.

The beautiful cookie creations that the kids made.

Week Long Absence= A lot of Catching Up

Happy Sunday everyone!  How was everyone's Thanksgiving?  If you didn't have Thanksgiving how was your weekend?  At any rate did people stay on track with their weight loss goals and not over-indulge too much?  I am proud to say that I stayed on track very well while I was at home with my Mom for almost a week!  I have not been home that long since I lived at home in high school.

I have to say though... I really missed blogging, reading blogs and having access to a computer.  My mom doesn't have a computer or wi-fi which meant only checking things on my phone which meant no blogging for almost a week.  So, I missed everyone a lot and am going to try to fill you in on my crazy week all in one re-cap post rather than a bunch of smaller ones, so I hope you have a nice warm beverage and are ready to get the details.

Thanksgiving

I missed Fashion Friday and Saturday Sessions this week and I intend to do a mini version of each of them, but first I am going to tell you all about my time at home with my lovely mother.  We had 50 people at my Mom's house for Thanksgiving, which meant that we cooked, baked, cleaned, decorated and organized our little tushes off.  It was so much fun!  It was a lot a lot of work, but well worth it.  My parents recently got divorced and it has been really hard for my mom and my family because of how messy it was.  It was nice to have a holiday that was drama free and "normal" after having several years of bad holidays.  My mom cried during Grace before we ate dinner and was so thankful that so many people from the family came to celebrate Thanksgiving and to support her.  I had to fight back tears.  It was great to see my family and spend so much time together.  I forgot to take pictures, because we were so busy, but I did get one shot of two people that I love so much.

This is my wonderful GG and our family dog Gabi.

They are basically best friends as my mom drops Gabi off at GG's for "daycare" every morning while she is at work.

Every year before we eat we play a family game of football outside.  This year the crowd was smaller because it was 14 degrees outside with negative 10 degree windchill.  Brrrr.  My family played a heated Girls Vs. Boys game of Trivial Pursuit after dinner.  The boys won for the fifth year in a row.  Shoot!  It was a really close game though and we almost pulled out a win.

My mom and I also took the time to go through her extensive Christmas collection and get the house decorated.  My mom collects Santas and she has hundreds of them.  I am sad that I didn't take pictures, but I will and then I will show you how fabulous they are. She also has a lot of Santa Bears that our dog Gabi really enjoyed :)

Gabi and the Santa Bear collection.

The Feast

Another Thanksgiving tradition that I take part in every year is called the Feast.  It is a friendsgiving that we have had for 8 years.  My high school friends and I get together at my friend Hilary's house the Saturday after Thanksgiving every year to make a meal together and have some fun.  It is something that I look forward to every year and would be lost without it.  It is pretty rare for people to get together with high school friends for the same event every year, but we all try to make it a priority.

This year was our smallest attendance to date with only 10 people attending (we are usually close to 20) but it was still a lot of fun.  We have a strict no significant others can come unless you are engaged or married.  Some people don't like it, but rules are rules and they are not to be broken.  Ron was not allowed to come since we are not engaged or married, but that is okay with me because we see each other all the time and we don't want to break the rules.

My group of girl friends from high school minus Brooke.

Jen, Hilary, me, Stacie and Kelsey.

Our Feast of food. All of the usual Thanksgiving goodness.

10 Feasters ready for some food and fun.

Expressing our thanks for one another, our families and having health and happiness.

Fashion Friday: A Black Friday Fashion Finds Feature

Alright, so I may have gone black friday shopping this year for the second year in a row and loved it.  We didn't go at 3 am, but we did go when we woke up and we did get a lot of good deals. My wonderful boyfriend accompanied me even though we wasn't exactly thrilled with the thought.  So, what did I get you might ask.  Well I got some toys for my nephews and niece, some things for Ron, my Mom, my siblings, my GG and well maybe a couple of things for me :)

I was going to organize it all to show you, but for the sake of time I am just showing you the massive pile that I now get to wrap!

Hello purple my favorite color.  Hello beautiful zipper detail.  Hello flats that are cute and comfortable. I am in love. Kenneth Cole Slip My Mind CK in Passion.

Another view of my new flats and also a peek at my new We Love Colors tights in Maroon.  If you know me you know that I love tights.  I love this pop of color (maybe not with the purple shoes) and these tights come in like 29 colors and are very affordable.  I will say that I am an apple shape meaning that I am bigger in my middle and I have relatively smaller legs and thighs.  I would probably have ordered these a size or two smaller because they kind of gather at points on my legs because there is too much fabric.  If you are bigger in the legs you should probably just follow the guidelines listed on their website. 

Next Up... Hello lover.  My obsession when it comes to shoes it wedges.  I love these slate grey wedges.  They are super comfortable and inexpensive.  They look great with skinny jeans or with We Love Colors tights. They are from Target and are the brand Merona and called Myka.

Hello holiday hotness. You need to get these wedges from Target.

Saturday Sessions

I am once again a day late with this post, my apologies.  This is going to be a very quick, abbreviated version of the SS.  

1. Make it a holiDAY and not a holi-week or longer.
SUCCESS!!  I made it a holiday and not anything more than that.  I made a plan and stuck to it and it paid off.  I didn't over-indulge and I only ate items that I get once a year.  I had one glass of wine which was my first drink in almost 8 weeks and it was wonderful.  I am going to really buckle down for the rest of the year to get some optimal results by New Year's.
2. Start keeping track of my mood more often. 
I did okay with this, but definitely room for improvement.  I need to keep better track of this whether it is mentally or physically on a piece of paper. I stopped myself from buying a candy bar when I was really hungry at the grocery store and realized that I was just really hungry and didn't really want a candy bar.

New Goals

1. Attend an hour long fitness class 6 days this week.

I have mentally said to myself that I was going to do this for the past few weeks, but I have fell short, so I am saying it out loud to all of you in hopes that I keep up with my promise.  I have all of the schedules printed out I just need to make going a HIGH priority.

2. Get all of my holiday decorations out and Christmas presents wrapped.

Not every goal needs to be weight loss/fitness related.  This is something that is important to me this week and I know that my month is jam packed, so getting all of this done sooner than later will be best.

Updates

I have made some new additions to my page.  I have added a Glam section that has glamorous, girly things that I love or have purchased.   I have added progress photos to mark where I am today.  I am going to take new ones every two weeks.  I also added updated some of the other pages if you want to check them out.  Tomorrow I will update some recipes.

Happy Birthday Stacie!

This is me and four of my best friends Stacie, Kelsey, Hilary and Matix if you count the goof ball in the back of the photo.

Stacie, thanks for being a great friend and always supporting me.  I have known you since I was 7 years old and I can say that I would not be who I am today if I didn't know you. You have made me a better person and a better friend and I love you for that!  

Love always, lil rajer

Things I have learned this weekend

1. When going out to lunch with friends one must ask the server about 10 questions about how a dish is prepared before ordering.  Case in point I ordered a bruschetta chicken salad this weekend and the ingredients were: romaine lettuce, spinach, rotisserie chicken, diced tomatoes with a light balsamic glaze and bread.  I asked for the dressing on the side, no bread and wanted to make sure the tomatoes were not drizzled with butter or salt.  The dish came out and it was COVERED in parmesan cheese.  The bread was there, but I gave it to my friends immediately.  It took me about 10 minutes to get the majority of the parmesan cheese off of the dish before I could start eating it. It was very good, but I have learned my lesson that I need to ask more questions about the food that I am ordering.

2. I need to have a better plan in tact for weekends when I have a jam packed schedule.  I am trying to eat every 3 hours or so to keep my metabolism going.  This is generally breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner and occasionally a snack after dinner if I have worked out.  Well this weekend I had a lot going on and I didn't enough snacks with me, so I found myself very hungry and slightly crabby.  I didn't make poor choices, but I need to work on being more prepared and having my snacks on hand at all times.

3. Having support is extremely helpful to lose weight.  I feel like I am standing on the rooftops telling everyone what I am doing and what my plan is so that the people around me understand how important this is to me and so that they can hold me accountable.  Ultimately, I am accountable to myself as this is my journey, but it is nice to let people know so that I don't find myself thinking it is okay to have a cheat day every weekend.

4. I need to re-train myself to cook.  I grew up eating comfort foods. We ate a diet of meat, potatoes and a vegetable, which wasn't totally un-healthy, but it could have been a lot more healthy.  I love to cook and I need to get some new recipes in my collection so that I feel like I have options and am not just eating the same thing over and over again.

5. I need to keep my purse closed at all times.  I lost my digital camera for about a half a day, but it has been found and I am beyond thankful.  I guess Ron was right when he told me about 50 times that I need to start closing my purse, so I don't lose things.

6. I attended an EXCELLENT weight loss seminar and I learned for every 6 grams of carbohydrates you consume it is the equal of 1 tsp of sugar as far as your body is concerned.  YIKES!  So at the beginning of this journey I bought some frozen meals that we all know about and think isn't too bad for us, and while it isn't worse than getting fast food it is still not the best option.  Two of the three that I chose had 71 grams of carbohydrates in them.  That is a lot of sugar!  I will be donating those to someone at work.  I also learned that eating whole foods is better than boxed, processed crap (okay, I already knew that, but I learned just how bad it is for us and I am trying to do everything I can to buy all natural, organic and whole foods when I can.

7.  I learned that I am not alone in this journey.  Almost everyone who I spoke this weekend about my weight loss journey told me something that they have been working on as well or things that are difficult for them.  This is everyone from my very thin friends to people who also attended the seminar.  It is nice to know that other people are struggling with their weight and body images as well and that I am not alone.

8.  I learned the importance of being more positive and less negative towards myself.  I consider myself a pretty positive person and I think that I come off that way to my family and friends.  I am not so kind to myself and need to work on my relationship with myself a little more during this journey.  As one of the speakers this weekend said, I am so sick of people saying, "I hate my body.  I hate everything about it.  Why is it that you HATE your body?  Does it not function for you?  Does it not let you live another day?  Does it not let you enjoy your senses and breath in and out?  Don't hate your body.  Just have certain things that you want to work on."  So, I am going to try and be my biggest cheerleader.  I am the only one who can control my weight loss journey and it won't help to beat myself up the entire way.

Enjoying the great outdoors

Today was spent in the great outdoors of the beautiful and extremely underrated state of Minnesota.  I spent the morning with girlfriends and the afternoon at a rugby game with friends.  I did a lot of walking today and we played frisbee a bit after the rugby game and it was nice to spend my day off being active with friends.  We went to a bar after the game to hang out and I was able to fend off the free taco bar that was offered, the greasy fried food and the free booze.  It felt great.  It feels so good to wake up every morning and not feel a "fat hangover".  I like waking up with no regrets about what I ate and feeling like my body is clean and healthy.  It seems like the eating well portion of this healthy lifestyle is getting easier everyday.  I am focused on continuing this habit with 3-4 day a week exercises for a few more weeks and then trying to up the workout routine by either increasing the duration or working out more frequently during the week.

Tomorrow morning I will weigh myself and blog the results, so hopefully the numbers continue to prove that my choices are paying off!

The beginning of the end...

Originally Posted 7/13/2010 9:19 PM CDT

Today is the day that I have decided that I can't take looking (or not looking at myself) any longer.  I a 23 years old and I have spent my life avoiding mirrors and living in denial of what I really look like. I have always loved the Picasso photo that is shown in this blog because it shows insecurities that woman see that may not exist.  I however, do not look in mirrors and see imperfections.  Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing something that isn't there I choose not to look in the mirror and pretend that things aren't there.  If I don't look in the mirror that extra belly fat isn't there, right? If I don't look in the mirror I won't see that my face is getting rounder and my waist is getting bigger.  The only mirror that I currently use is a handheld mirror to put make up on.  Let's be honest it is hard to NOT look good when you're looking at only four inches of yourself at a time.

I dread taking pictures with people and I loathe when people take photos of me without my knowledge.  In an age of facebook and picture phones it is hard to avoid the camera's lens and not have pictures taken with people.  I went to a cabin this weekend with my closest high school friends and I can't believe that I even put a swimsuit on.  Luckily, no one got a picture of me in my swim suit, however there were plenty of other pictures that people managed to capture of me that did not paint a pretty picture of my current image.  As soon as the emails started pouring in that I was being tagged in photos from this weekend I logged into facebook and immediately started on a de-tagging spree.  As if that actually helps a whole lot since people will still see the pictures and most of them know who I am.

I have been overweight since I was 5 years old. I lost about 70 pounds almost 4 years ago before embarking on a study abroad trip to Italy.  I kept the weight off for about a year, but italian food is not friendly to the waistline and neither is turning 21.  Needless to say I have gained all of the weight back and probably even more. It saddens me to look at the pictures from my trip and wonder how I could have gotten back to this place. How could I let myself go?

Rather than continuing to go on about my current state of affairs I have decided that I am going to lose the weight once and for all.  I am going to do it for me, because if I don't o it for myself than it isn't much worth doing it. I know that it will be tough and that some days it will seem like I can't go on, but I will try everything in power to succeed in this endeavor so that I can live a healthy lifestyle and cross of some the many goals that I have always wanted to accomplish. 

My plan is to blog the good the bad and the ugly of the weight loss journey in hopes that I inspire myself to keep going and maybe help someone else along the way.  I am going to track my food intake and my daily fitness regime as well as blog about my emotions, goals and feelings during this process.  Here goes nothing and everything at the same time.