A Day In The Life of My Diet! And July goals, and such :)

Greetings, earthlings!

Wow, today was a 2fer blogging day.  And this one is actually diet/exercise-related, woo-hoo!

I'd love to spend more time gabbing about all these little things, but alas, my time is limited.  So, in the best interest of logging updates to my diet and fitness journey, I leave you with the famous words of Mario from Super Mario Brothers:  "Heeeere we GO!" :D

I was previously eating 7 small meals a day and not being able to figure out why I always felt like I was going to pass out.  Once I was done beating myself with the Stupid Stick, I realized that each of my meals was just too small; it didn't matter that I was eating every 1.5-2 hours if each meal was just not enough to get me out of a blood sugar dip.  D'oh!  So now, I've truncated everything into 6 meals.  Same foods, just more condensed.  

These photos are vaguely pointless, however, because my July goals are to essentially cut 3/4ths of the sugar out of my diet, which means big changes.  Sh*t's gonna get real.  But anyway, this is what I've been eating basically since the last time I posted food pics:

Meal 1

1 cup decaf with 1/2 cup unsweetened organic soymilk, 1 large steamed zucchini, 1/4 avocado and a builder's bar.  Oh and 24 fl. oz. water

Meal 2:

2 peaches, 1 cup berries (blueberry and raspberry, here) and a banana.  I no longer eat oatmeal after I discovered the joys of eating protein in my first meal, so these are some of the only carbs I get in the day.

Meal 3:

I forgot to take a pic before I ate my Meal 3, so I went home and pulled one out of the freezer, lol.  It's 6 oz. boneless skinless chicken breast, 2/3 cup green peas and 2/3 cup brown rice medley

Meal 4:

2 cups red leaf lettuce, a cut up apple, 1 serving raw almonds, and a Trader Joe's Blueberry Fiber Cake Muffin with a cup of green tea and a little soymilk.

My meal 5 is a chocolate Shakeology shake mixed with 1.5 cups unsweetened organic almond milk, and meal 6 is just an egg white, black bean and spinach scramble with garlic and cayenne pepper :) You can see a preview of the "Egg White Burrito" I'll be making for my July breakfasts and dinners in my Mad Science cooking album on my Facebook page, HERE.

All of these meals equate to the following macro-nutrient breakdown (This, being based off of an 1,800 calorie diet composed of 25% fat, 30% protein, and 45% carb.  And 100g sugars):


JULY
July is a big month for me.  When I started my journey, I hoped to have lost all the weight I wanted off, after 6 months of clean eating and exercise.  The end of July will mark my 6th month completed.  I was looking at my stats and realized the weight wasn't coming off fast enough, and though I was seeing results, I still have a substantial amount of fat in my core.  After some honest diet journalling, I discovered the culprit:

SUGAR.

Look at all that fruit - Banana, apple, 2 peaches, berries... peas.... the protein bar.... something's gonna have to change.

My June goal was to ride my bike to work 4 days a week, and that's a trend that will be staying through the end of Daylight Savings (upon which it becomes way too dangerous for me to ride home in the dark.  I got hit by a car last year!).

This month, it's all about diet.  I want to limit myself to 50-75g of sugar a day.  It will be traumatic, but it's my final push.  At the end of next month, I want to be ready to change things up and start putting on muscle mass and "cutting", if you will.  I'm even entertaining the thought of some light natural body building during the volleyball off-season, just to keep me motivated!

Here's a sample of what I think my diet will be looking like:
So this current diet has 81.4g of sugar, which I think is something I can live with.  There are things I can adjust to this, though.  I will very likely substitute in green beans for peas with my lunch, and sweet potatoes for the brown rice.  I am also going to attempt to make my own protein bars following this recipe here, because it is HIGH time I ditch the processed bars.  Not to mentioned it contributes 20% of my daily sugar intake! Umm, hello!

I'm also excited to announce that I found a digestive enzyme complex at Whole Foods that appears to be solving almost all of my digestive issues.  I've been slowly adding in previously troublesome foods with great success! It will cost me an arm and a leg, but you can't put a price tag on good health :) I'll blog about it soon!

"Älskar mig när jag förtjänar det minst, för det är då jag behöver det bäst."

As a preface to this entry, I'd just like to make mention that this has nothing to do with diet and exercise, other than to say that anytime my life looks like an impending nuclear disaster, the gym absolutely MUST be my number one priority.  The second my workouts get infringed upon during a time of change in my life, all hell breaks loose.  We're talking a breakdown of Mt. St. Helen's proportions! ;D

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Have you ever had one of those times where you felt like your life was a complete mess?  Well.  That is precisely where I am at right now.

I wish I could write everything I'm going thru right now, but since this is a public blog, I'll keep it short and sweet:  I am completely stressed out right now.  I am unhappy at my work, so I am taking steps to address my unhappiness with the hope that a positive outcome will result.  But that has immersed me in a lot of anxiety and pressure, and I've been feeling very out-of-control lately.  I am a bit of a control freak; I can handle change and "variability" decently when one of the quadrants of my life is askew, but the second the other facets of my life get involved, I go into what my dear mother so affectionately calls, "Megan Meltdown Mode".

Remember what the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant looked like when it exploded after the Japanese Tsunami of 2011?  Here, let me refresh your memory:

Replace the reactor with my face, and that is kind of what things looked like last night.

On top of work and all that is surrounding it, I am stressed out about my colposcopy that I'm having this Monday, and having to face the discussion with my doctor about requesting a needle biopsy of Clementine (the lump in my left breast) to make certain it is not cancerous.  Plus I have the stress of having to help organize a massive charity volleyball tournament I committed to, that I really want to make happen, but don't really have the time or energy to devote to right now.  And to make things even more difficult, money has been pretty tight for me what with all of these doctors appointments I've had to go thru, so I'm a little stressed out about that.  Oh and then I hurt my mom's feelings because I was so fixated on my own life, that I forgot to wish her a Happy Birthday yesterday! And then the icing on the cake is that there are some serious issues with my relationship with... well.. let's just call him "Guy" for right now.  He and I have never really been on the same page; we are two very different people.  We give and receive very differently.  I'm the sensitive, hands-on, nurturing type; he is the type who doesn't care much for displays of affection or touchy-feely things.  I tend to be affected much more strongly when it comes to mental and physical pain, whereas he doesn't feel it at all - or if he does, he is able to reason his way out of just about anything.  When either of us has something bad going on, I think we both react the same way we wish to be treated - I immediately go into "Mama Bear" mode and offer him an abundance of warmth and affection, a soft shoulder to lean against, a listening ear, or I'll bring him a chocolate chip cookie (his favorite).  I reach out to console him with hugs the way my mom used to when I was a child.  It is how I feel safe and cared for, and how I try to impart that feeling onto others.  On the other hand, when I have things going wrong, Guy seeks to immediately try to change my perspective of things, diminish the threat posed on my life, help me to reason my way out of stress and anxiety, and ultimately try to plot ways to fix the situation to get my mind off of it.

These are both inherently good approaches, but the problem with each is that they aren't received properly by either Guy or I.  When I try to help Guy, he perceives it as me smothering him and he ultimately pushes me away.  And when Guy tries to console me, I perceive it as him being abrasive and insensitive, trivializing my very real emotional distress, and I blow up on him.  The result?  I feel like he doesn't care about me when he pushes me away, and he feels like he can do no good when I get mad at him for trying to help.

Last night was a prime example.  Guy knew from the second I walked in his door, without even seeing my face but rather just hearing the tone in my voice, that something was wrong.  I explained how stressed I was. But what he didn't know (or understand) was that I was at the cusp of a Megan Meltdown.  I should have canceled on our plans that night, but I missed him and wanted to be around him.  The result, however, was an epic fight stemming from my total collapse of reason, his frustration over not knowing how to react, and a general breakdown of communication resulting with him slamming the car door on me at the restaurant and storming off while I sobbed in the driver's seat and drove off.

Here's an important lesson I want to share with you all:  Sometimes, when people come to you with their problems, they don't want you to "fix" them.  Often times, they don't even want you to help share or carry the burden.  A lot of times, people seek you out simply for a compassionate ear with which to listen, a gentle shoulder upon which to cry, and nothing else but a silent nod and validation of their feelings simply by hearing you say you understand how difficult it must be for them.  A lot of times our problems can seem so trivial, and our reactions to them so melodramatic and irrational.  Sometimes, our problems aren't even problems at all! They could be fun things like planning a wedding, or applying for a dream job.  But that doesn't diminish the affect of stress on our minds and hearts.  And the person on the outside has to put their judgments aside.  For me, two of the biggest things that finally tipped the scale from me being able to handle all of these "balls in the air" to me completely melting down over them, was the fact that my car windshield was dirty and that my roommate didn't take the trash out.  It's always the little things.  But an accumulation of problems can really put us in a tailspin, and speaking as a female, a good cathartic cry is sometimes something I really need before I can pull myself up by the bootstraps, put on my big girl pants, and address the issues on my own.

Bless Guy's heart, he tried his best to help me in the way he would have wished to have been helped, and I blew up on him.  I harbor a lot of anger over the fact that he KNEW how distressed I was and he abandoned me in a time of need; he should have put compassion first, regardless of how unfairly I was treating him, because he knows me well enough to know I was not in my normal state, and that this would pass and I would profusely apologize afterwards.  But then I realized that perhaps I shouldn't have put him through it to begin with; what good is an apology if I know I am acting improperly, even in the heat of the moment?  It's like committing a sin knowing you can be forgiven of it later. 

There is a Swedish proverb out there that goes as such:

"Älskar mig när jag förtjänar det minst, för det är då jag behöver det bäst."

It translates to "Love me when I deserve it least, for that is when I need it most."

If we were to take a practical approach to things, then absolutely yes I was in the wrong and almost entirely at fault.  But life is not practical.  There are so many qualities that are inherently human - love, sadness, stress, impatience, desire - and while a lot of them are negative, or produce negative scenarios, they are nonetheless HUMAN.  We can do our best to avoid them, or mitigate the damage, but to eliminate them altogether would be far too utopian (and equally hellish) than is possible in this world.  When that's the case, I feel it is important for the strong to be strong for the weak; their time will come when they themselves need someone to be strong for them.  It's best that we strive rather to be the perch upon which a travel-worn gull can rest, than the feeble branch that gives way under the strain of it's weight.

So, that's all I have to say today.  I have a back log of blog entries I need to get on top of  - my July goals, progress photos, new "A Day In the Life Of My Diet" pics, as well as a research article on frozen yogurt joints, eating clean on the cheap, and whether there is truth to saying one should do weights before cardio.  Oh and another one on whether or not ripened fruit has more calories than unripened?  But I'll get to those entries once I have a chance to sort thru the more macro issues in my life.

Upward and onward...

#GymRatProblems

Happy Friday, my loves and darlings!


So, this past week was a heavy week for me with sobering posts on my blog.  But you know what?  I'm moving on :)  I'll deal with the blows as they come, and everything I'm facing seems to be very easily address-able, so HALLELUJAH!  I'm so thankful to be alive and well and injury-free to boot!  Things could always be FAR far worse, in the grand scheme of things.

To lighten things up, I wanted to blog about ridiculous problems that I have encountered along my fitness and clean-eating journey.  I always think it's funny when someone posts a very real (but somewhat ludicrous) pet peeve on Facebook, and then hash-tags it with the #firstworldproblems meme.  Whether politically correct or not, at least they are being honest and recognizing that a lot of the things that truly bother or annoy us, are really nothing in the big picture of life.

I have collected a short list of annoyances that I am sure many of you can sympathize with, below.  What are your top #gymrat, #clean-eating or #fitnessfreak pet peeves?

1.  My underwear don't fit me anymore!!

The situation:  Ever pick out your favorite sexy pair of Vic's Secret panties that you spent $25 bucks on, only to find that they have become frump-tastically saggy and are now slipping off of your new svelte frame?

The problem: To dispose or not to dispose:  that is the question. But what a waste! And it's not like I can donate the undies (that would just be weird), so of course now I have a new storage bin of lovely lingerie that I adore but never want to fit into again.  Safe keeping in case the fat days come again??  Bite your tongue!

On the brighter side.... It's always nice when your 'au naturel' body is sexier than the lace you adorn it with.  Besides, you never know when those suckers could come in handy again; they could perhaps come in very useful during the zombie apocalypse??? :D

2.  Have my boobs shrunk? UUUUGH.

The situation:  Similar to the above case study, have any of you noticed that for each 10-15lbs you lose (approximately), your boobs get smaller too?  According to Livestrong.com (link:  HERE), the body does not discriminate from where it pulls fat cells to burn during the weight loss segment of your fitness program.  Just like we can't simply target fat loss in just the hips, or just the belly, the body loses weight evenly among all parts.  And since a significant portion of a woman's breasts are made up of fat cells, it's no wonder that the Lovely Lady Lumps that Fergie sang so adamantly about, 'take one for the team' in shrinking a bit during your body shape metamorphosis.

The problem:  My army of Vic's Secret bras have joined the Panty Brigade in the space-saver under my bed.  *Sigh* 

On the brighter side... Did somebody say SHOPPING??? :D Plus, there are two bright rays of good hope here - the first is that since your body looses weight proportionately, you'd have to lose a SIGNIFICANT amount of weight for anyone to really notice a smaller bust size.  And even so, since the rest of you is equally smaller, your 'ladies up top' will still appear to be the same size as they were before, in relation to your frame.  Secondly, according to another Livestrong.com article (link:  HERE), this is a great reason to make dear friends with a Barbell (image HERE) and familiarize yourself with a chest press.  Weight loss can change the size and firmness of your breasts, but you can combat that by strengthening your pectoral muscles (your "pecks" - yes, women have them too!!).  These will offer a natural breast lift, and give the appearance and feel of a fuller, firmer breast.  No access to a gym? Have no fears! Simple push-ups do the trick, which you can do at an incline if you have bad shoulders / elbows, or lack upper body strength, until you are capable of doing them on a horizontal surface.

3.  Post-workout Toilet Seat Cover Separation Anxiety Disorder

The situation:  5:30pm.  Just logged an EPIC hour-long elliptical session that, had it occurred on a battlefield, could have rivaled the intensity of a war scene from Braveheart.

The problem:  To prepare for said battle, you hydrated all throughout the day by drinking almost an entire gallon of water.  Your bladder did its best to keep up, but you definitely need to 'drain the pipes' after your ellipti-war.  You run to the john, you throw down a toilet seat cover, you sit down, and immediately you feel the toilet seat cover becoming one with the sweat on your booty / back of legs.  When finished, you stand up and UP comes the toilet seat cover too.  CR*P!  To make matters worse, you try peeling it off, which subsequently turns the situation into one reminiscent of trying to remove tissue remains from a sweater that went into the washer/dryer with a Kleenex in the pocket.  Le' sigh.

On the brighter side.... This is a PRIME example of promoting fitness multi-tasking in your everyday life.  Instead of using a toilet seat cover and risking gaining a new layer of faux flesh on your tushy, pop a squat! No, seriously - squat over the potty in proper form and do your business while also getting in an extra lower body squat rep :) Voila!

4.  My kitchen looks like the Tupperware version of Mr. Roger's Land of Make-Believe

The situation: It all started with needing 7 medium-sized containers into which I could place a carb, a veggie and a protein, and then throw it into the freezer to store until I needed one for lunch each day of the week....

The problem:  Unbeknownst to the general population, Tupperware is much like Gizmo from the movie Gremlins: get it wet, and it uncontrollably multiples!  And don't even get me started with the fact that Tupperware lids, much like socks in the dryer, fall victim to spontaneous combustion.  It's my only explanation for why I incessantly have more containers than matching lids.  This ranks about just as high as running out of Conditioner quicker than Shampoo.  I mean, really?? UUUGH.  [cue #firstworldproblems hash tag ;)]


On the brighter side... Tupperware is amazing, and there are ways to use up old containers if you have too many but don't want to throw them away.  You can pretty much use them anywhere - to hold rubber bands in the cabinet of your home office, to hold pens/pencils in your children's rooms (or for that matter, make them into piggy banks!)  My personal favorite is using up my old cottage cheese containers from back when I used to eat dairy, by cutting a couple holes in the base, filling them with potting soil, and growing individual herbs in my carport.  My apartment doesn't allow us to grow plants in the garden, so I put together my own Tupperware Garden of Eden alongside the back of the complex (affectionately named TupperEden by yours truly!).  And I put a sign up saying people could contribute as they wish, and to feel free to pick a few leaves or sprigs at will :)

If you are of a more OCD nature (I can sympathize!), there are ways to bring your Tupperware collection to maturity if you feel like you need a new system of organization.  I recently purchased 7 of these Sterilite Segmented Tupperware containers (link:  HERE) so that I can have my lunch in one (protein and carb in the small sections, veggies in the large one), and then my other snacks which I used to put in individual containers in the other (fruits, nuts, veggies, you name it!)  It's a great space saver :)

5.  Ear buds:  The bane of my existence.

The situation:  Ear buds:  The most unholy of holies in my gym bag.  What would I do without them?  A workout is absolutely impossible without having Britney Spears coo her sinful thoughts directly into my brain ;)  [Great, now I have the Womanizer reel stuck in my head!]

The problem:  How frustrating are these little snakes??? They get tangled into knots an Eagle Scout couldn't even manage, not to mention that apparently my ears sweat more than the average bear because I tend to short circuit at least one of the buds after the first couple months and then all of the sudden I am left with listening to Britney in one ear and some woman on the other speaking to "Deloris" about the audacity of what Paula said last night during book club while she is only working out on like a LEVEL TWO intensity on the elliptical next to me (not judging, but seriously? You'd get a better workout gabbing on the phone while walking around the block outside.)

On the brighter side.... Well, the bright side is that we have music AT ALL.  I could no less spend an hour on the step mill listening to the heavy breathing of a man-beast next me than I could spend an equal amount of time watching water boil.  I will take my one-sided ear buds ANYDAY over that misery!  But anyway, when it comes to having sweaty ears, I have a GREAT solution - YURBUDS!  Yurbuds (website HERE) are custom-designed for athletes.  They are this rubber thing (that's a technical term, mind you) that squeezes over a traditional ear bud, which does one a several things:  First of all, being rubber, it protects any sweat from getting into your ear bud and breaking it.  The rubber also offers a form of friction which keeps your ear bud in place instead of sliding out during your vicious hill-running HIIT cardio days.

I recently purchased these Ironman ear buds with built in Yurbud covers for only $29.99 at Target (Link to product HERE) which have the added benefit of having a component to the ear wrap-around feature that is customize-able to the fit of your ear by bending them similar to how we used to contort those new age Barbie Doll legs into unnatural positions back in the 80's so that Ken could come and "un-break" Dolphin-Trainer Barbie's leg from the boating accident she was in while trying to rescue Flipper.  (Not sure what I'm talking about?  Well, not all of us were born creative geniuses....) ;) Suffice it to say the soft rubber ear wrap-around has a strong, pliable wire on the inside that allows you to make the fit snug or loose depending on your ear shape, and contributing to comfort and reliability.

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While there are several other fiascos we fitness junkies must deal with (ever lose the scoop to your protein powder mix?  Or have a Blender Bottle erupt on you while shaking it cuz you didn't close the lid all the way?), I feel like the above challenges have been the most unforgettably forgettable "problems" I've encountered thus far.  I'm sure there will be more to come.  Perhaps I will consider putting a support group together for us "victims".  :D