Beyond Willpower

Blood work. My cholesterol is high, my triglycerides are ridiculous, my sugar (A1C) is 6.1, all as of last October. I have an appointment for my yearly physical on January 26th. I've been doing all I can to improve these numbers. I'm eating between 7-13 servings of fruits and veggies daily. More on days I'm off and can stay home and munch, and less on days I work. I've decided to start prepacking baggiges of fruits, veggies, and nuts, to snack on while I'm at work so that I can get as many servings in a day as I can. I wasn't going to weigh myself for 3 months, but then realized I need to weigh myself NOW so that if what I'm doing isn't working I can adjust it somehow. I've lost 5 lbs so far on this particular Way Of Eating, and I've lost a total of 25 since my high weight. Woot! Nothin' to sneeze at! I feel like my body is so sick, and I am doing what I can to make it well again. That means eating ALL the fruits and veggies, whole grai...

We got a new cookbook ! Eat like you give a fuck is right! This book is amazing! We've already tried 4 different recipes and talk about impressed! So far I've made the spiced chickpea wraps, the biscuit and lentil gravy (which is my absolute fave so far!), Joey made the sriracha cauliflower and peanut dipping sauce and today I made minestrone! Pics below! *Clearly there are pics of the food and plenty of them! Prepping: The delicious finished product!   I'm going to be honest here and say this isn't a 30 minutes or less cookbook (nor does it make any claims as such), and it does take a little work, and you do make everything from scratch. Although I would be sorely disappointed if I bought a cookbook and it said "Now take the chipotle mayo out of your fridge and slap it on that sammie."  BUT to be fair I absolutely love cooking, that means I love all the prep and 'extra' (the meat of the meal if you will) work. So, there...

I spent all week long preparing for this party, cleaning, baking, cooking, buying goodies and snacks and it went off without a hitch! I'd like to thank my husband Joey and my friend Bri who helped so much! I made vegan samoas, buckeyes, mint chip cookies, wedding cookies, and peanut butter blondies. I also made ham for sammiches, vegan chili and vegan buffalo chicken dip, the last two were especially well received, the buffalo dip was pretty much gone by the end of the night, and I had made a GIANT pot of vegan chili, which people were taking home at the end of the night. I'm really happy with how everything turned out. Oh, and I almost forgot, as a last minute thing right before people started showing up, I made roasted brussel sprouts (and added cauliflower), and did them up maple glazed style. Soooo good! Unfortunately I got distracted by entertaining (I haven't had a blog for awhile) and TOTALLY FORGOT to take pictures! :( Either way, it was fun, we drank, and p...

So another on plan day, hurrah. :) Tonight I'm making avocado pesto pasta from a recipe I got from the website: www.chefchloe.com Doesn't it look amazing!: Be sure to check out her website if you haven't already! So I know that my sudden interest in baking is probably not the best thing for my diet. BUT, last night I made peanut butter blondies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar . They are one of my absolute favorite recipes from that book. Anyhow, I somehow managed to eat some and stay within' my calorie range yesterday and I left some for Joey and took the rest to give away at work. There is ONE left. It's for tomorrow. Half of it, the other half is for joey. :) Anyhow, so I'm feeling so into baking ever since I found a flour to gluten free flour conversion chart ! I used it last night for the blondies and it WORKED> Came out far better than the previous method I was using: Guessing! :( So, last night I ordered Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The Wo...

Okay, so, I'm tracking and exercising. Feeling good. I have another study appt in a month, they weigh me. I'm going to try not to weight myself more than once (at the two week mark) and then once at the month mark. I feel like obsessing on the scale is not a good idea for my mental state at the moment. Not that the scale obsession is EVER good. I just want to do the right things regardless. I've come up with a few new recipes since I've been gone. There's a spicy mac n cheese and a pot pie and I will hopefully get my chili recipe up at some point. I wanted to do it in the fall but that didn't work out. I've had a difficult winter. I got mad at my physical therapist, she was not respecting my boundaries on a certain issue, so I quit seeing her and stopped doing my PT altogether.I'm going to start that back up today. I've been struggling with my moods. It's seemed like I've been tweaking my meds every other month. I hate the effect the seas...

Well, this week has gone well. I've done my PT I believe every day for the last week. I'm feeling better, work is still difficult on days longer than 4 hours but it's not killing me. I can do a 6 hour day, but I think going back to an 8 hour day would probably cause serious problems, sleep disturbance, depression, etc. I've finally lost a couple lbs, the past week I've been on plan and feeling great. I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds myself constantly asking, "Why don't I always do this? I feel so much better when I do." EVERYTHING IMPROVES. My mood, my sleep, my overall productivity. I frustrate myself. Why do we all do this to ourselves? Pigging out tastes good but is it really so worth it? I feel gross, bloated, I start to feel down, I get lazy and my life revolves around my next meal and nothing gets done. WHY!? But, I think it's safe to say I'm officially back in the game. Also, I did not complete nano, too many health ...