Exclamation points x 127.2

At first glance, this is just a set of keys laying on a desk.  To me, I see my trophy case.  The tattered bronze keychain is the award I received when I lost 10% of my weight after returning to WW meetings on January 11, 2011.  You can't see the little gold set of hands clapping in the back, but it's the "Stay and Succeed" award members get for attending meetings for 16 consecutive weeks (studies show if you attend meetings for 16 weeks you are more likely to reach your weight loss goal).  The little washers are for each of the 25 pound increments I lost:  25, 50, 75, 100.  And the star I got on May 15, 2012 when  ...

I HIT GOAL!!!!!!!! 

Getting to this point was no easy task the last few weigh ins.  For three weeks, I was .6 to 1.2 pounds from reaching that elusive goal weight. Things were not pretty. I was obsessively weighing myself to the point my leader made me promise to do away with my scale.  My husband's solution was this:

(Not only did he tape down the little love note, but he removed my batteries so

I "couldn't rip the tag off and hop on".  Didn't I tell you he's wonderful? )

Now the downside to having no scale, is that I honestly didn't know where I was at weight-wise going into my meeting each Tuesday.  This was both a blessing and a curse.  I was starting to feel like I was letting down my entire meeting room when I had to sadly shake my head and say "Not this week...". 

On the 15th though, I knew it was my day. I had 1 pound to lose to get to goal.  I walked in and told my leader that if THIS was not my week, it just wasn't going to happen, I'd never get the goal that WW wanted.  I told her I'd done the plan to a T.  I hadn't eaten ANYTHING without tracking. I was a Power Food maniac.  I got my activity.  Then, when I got on the scale, it showed. I'd lost 3.2 bringing my total weight loss to 127.2 pounds.  My jaw nearly hit the floor when I saw the number on the scale. I knew I'd lost the pound, but I was NOT expecting to have lost 3.2 (*insert happy dancing*).

Surprisingly, I held it together long enough to get back to my seat, find my phone and walk outside to call Seth.  As soon as I told him "I hit goal!", I was a puddle of tears.  Now while I know I'm not "done", it sure feels wonderful to be off the uphill climb of losing.  Unlike the terror I used to feel at the thought of attempting maintenance again, I feel like this is totally doable (and in all fairness, I never really attempted maintaining before).  I'm tempted to even go so far as saying  that I'm excited about eating more food! the challenge of  maintaining.  It took me no time to find good use for those extra 6 points a day.

This road was made a little easier by a LOT of people.  My wonderful husband, my super friend Kate who got me up and moving, an endless list of cheerleaders who encouraged me with their kind words and compliments.  The new friends and fellow WW'ers that I met at my meeting and by Kelly, my leader.  In one word, she's incredible.  She's funny, honest, full of great advice and stories and she's MY inspiration.  I couldn't have been more lucky that to walk into her meeting room on that night in January 2011.  I'm so happy I reached my goal with her support! 

So from here, I have 6 weeks of maintenance and then, I will officially be a Lifetime Weight Watchers Member.  This in itself brings new opportunities that I'm EXCITED about. More on that to come though.  For now, I'm focused on my current goal of finishing out these six weeks, getting to lifetime and getting another trophy for my key ring :)

The best blogger in the whole world.

Consistency is something I struggle with.  Whether it be consistency with excercise or blogging, I struggle.   So the reason I've neglected my blog once again this time is because I signed up to be a consultant with The Pampered Chef (PC)  on February 6th.  You will notice that is the day before the very short post which preceeds this post.  Getting my little business up and running not only took my blogging time, but it claimed my excercise time as well. I spent all my free time doing PC stuff and booking shows and and and... making excuses.  So now that I realize I've been making excuses, I can't make them anymore.  While I did lose weight during this activity hiatus (thank you weighing, measuring and food tracking!), I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be more muscle than fat which I'm not super thrilled about.  I can't carry that guilt around with me though, so I just have to get back to the thick of things now that I can't claim PC is completely consuming my life. 
The Gladiator Rock N Run has come and gone. Let me tell you, it really did ROCK! I had a ridiculous amount of fun during this race.  Advertised as a 5K with 17 obstacles, it was big time kicking my ass towards the end. I thought maybe the obstacles were harder than I'd thought, or the trail running in the beginning took more out of me than I anticipated it might. At any rate, I was dragging near the end which was unfortunate becasue T.H.E hardest obstacle was 2nd to last. We'll talk more about the BEAST in a moment though.  As it turns out, everyone was feeling the pain of the Gladiator, but none of us wanted to admit we were struggling. After finishing, we found out the run was actually a 7K! It made me feel a little better about my physical state.  Running with my club was nice because we had photographers along the route that got some action shots for us!

For the record, I didn't walk through this mud. I crawled like everyone else. This is just me exiting the pit!

See that small hole in the ground behind me? Yes, that's a blackout tunnel.  We belly crawled through a very small tunnel from where you see the man in the red shirt to where you see the opening to the tunnel.

 The BEAST.  Appropriately named because this one was HARD.  The two obstacles leading up to this were mud and water so we were soaked and the wall itself was plastered with slipperly mud.

 (While this looks like a great action shot, I'm actually falling here. Shhhhh, don't tell anyone!)

BEAST take II:  I WIN! I kissed that dude in the red shirt on the cheek when I made it to the top becasue I was so happy!

SRC:  Happy, muddy & DONE!!

This group is amazing beyond words. We stuck together the entire race even though there are runners in this group that could have sailed through the course. I'm proud to part of a group that is so encouraging and supportive of one another!

Cleaned up! This is my sister-in-law, Colleen who I duped into ran with our group.  She doesn't give herself enough credit but she did GREAT! 

I never thought I'd enjoy this kind of race nearly as much as I did. I mostly signed up becasue I just wanted to be able to say I COULD do it.  The truth is, I'm addicted. I came home and immediately signed up for FOAM FEST! Honestly, tell me that YOU don't want to do this:

Watch out, May 19th!  We're coming for you! I'm going to have to enjoy this one because after May, it's indoor running for this girl for a big long stretch.  115+ degree Arizona summers are enough to keep me inside the air conditioned gym thankyouverymuch.

So the real reason I've come back to the blog is because when I started putting my feelings into words here, it helped me figure out a lot of things about myself.  Sitting 5 pounds and change from WW's "goal" from me, I'm in turmoil about knowing when I'm done.  It's going to take a fair amount of talking it out with myself.  These tortured posts are forthcoming...

Heading down the stretch.

So as of my WW meeting today, I have 2 things to share: 
 1) The weight on my driver's license is true. Almost 6 years, 2 babies and countless pounds of yoyo nonsense, the weight is 100% correct.

 2) This was my absolute last mini goal to reach before my GOAL goal. There are no more little stepping stones, it's 11.2 pounds to go to get to maintenance land.

When I stepped on the scale and saw the number, I almost cried. Partially because I was just plain happy, but even moreso because there was a time I knew thought I'd never get to this point again. Even though I will forever cringe about the circumstances of which I (re)started (again), I'm glad I realized that I'd run out of excuses NOT to do this. I am happy that I found the last bit of drive I had to believe in myself just one more time.  I'm proud I never gave up on myself.

The Color Run

Today was COLOR RUN day! Because of the setting and the color hazards that the event posed, I was unable (or unwilling?) to bring my nice camera.  En route to the venue, I stopped off and bought a disposible camera that turned out to be a steaming pile of ... trouble. I have yet to have it developed and I don't really even hold high hopes that the pictures will turn out.  I did have several team members that took a plethora of pictures with their cell phones so I'm hoping they're going to be generous enough to share the wealth and I'll be able to update this post with some more pictures. I digress though and we're on to the review...

This is hands down the MOST FUN 5K EVER! I went in with pretty high expectations of the fun and every single one was exceeded. I cannot tell you how much joy it brought me to go from tooth fairy white to this:

So I learned at today's event that cotton shirts seem to hold the color better than the tech dry shirt that I was wearing. Case in point - this shirt pictured washed 100% clean but the cotton portion of the tank top I was wearing as well as the cotton sports bra are still holding rainbow hues despite having washed in the same laundry load.  At next year's event, which YES! I'm already planning AND have a team name for, I will wear defintely be rocking a cotton shirt! I mean, who wants to miss out on a post race festival that looks like THIS:

I miss it already. I'd run this event every weekend!

Now then... I made an important discovery today about running. I've been going back and forth with feelings about running being something I actually ENJOY doing and running being a chore I feel like I SHOULD be doing in order to help promote my weight loss. More and more often, I was leaning towards running being a chore and I think that's where I struggled with my consistency of completing routine runs.  With today's race which boasted a crowd of 6,001 participants, I was forced to slow my normal pace waaaaaaaaaaay down (especially in the color zones!). It wasn't until then it occured to me that I might have these feelings of dislike simply because I was pushing myself too hard. Sometimes I forget I only started running in August and I'm not going to win any prizes for running an 8 minute mile. If I'd just slowed down a long time ago, I would likely enjoy the activity a lot more and be able to increase my mileage beyond the 5k.  So with my re-newed like (working on the love) of running and discovered ability to run better outside with something so simple as RELAXING a hair, my running career enthusiasm is renewed and already thinking about the next time I lace up.

Now with one race down and the Gladiator Rock 'N Run on the horizon in March, a slightly longer race has presented itself and I've made the verbal commitment to sign up to participate in Pat's Run in April. 4.2 miles and a step in the direction of building towards my half marathon dreams!



I hate you Bob Harper.

I don't usually watch The Biggest Loser.  I don't believe in losing weight for cash and prizes and I don't believe in the fairytale setting of the Ranch where nothing is happening other than going to the gym to have someone push you 5 hours a day.  I mean really, once THAT motivation is gone and you're back at home, how do you maintain all the work you did once you get home and back to real life and have to fend not only for yourself, but for your family, co-workers, friends, pets and all the other things that happen in every day life if you haven't learned how to balance them while you were losing the weight?  I hold the firm belief that you shouldn't do anything to lose weight that you aren't willing or able to do for the rest of you life to maintain the loss.

So we're all caught up on my issues with the Biggest Loser - however - I got suckered into it this season for some reason.  I can't remember what it was that got me watching it but almost as soon as Bob opened his mouth and started screaming as his exhausted, sweaty contestants, I loved him.  I can't even tell you why, I just found him wildly entertaining.  So I did what any normal obsessing fan would do and 'liked' him on Facebook. It wasn't long after my LIKE that some of his workout DVDs were on sale for the low low price of just $5 each.  I may or may not have a problem with collecting home workout DVDs.  Every one that looks even remotely interesting I feel I should invest in.  Yes, yes, I have a gym membership, but lately I've been feeling too advanced for the classes that I can work into my schedule and uninspired in the free weights.  Yes, I could hire a trainer but A) they're crazy expensive and B) the ones I've seen in action look like they just might have less knowledge than I do considering every one of their clients has the same workout no matter their age/sex/shape.  All this brings me back to the $5 clearance DVDs.  So I clicked on the link to Bob's videos and after watching this trailer:

(Look at the big dudes struggling! Yes, that is really the selling point

that made me think this DVD would be a good idea)

I plunked down $20 to invest in a set of 4 DVDs which included:

         

Almost immediately after forking over my credit card information, I had  buyer's remorse over having purchased the Beginner's Workout.  At this point in my life, I consider myself in decent shape. I definitely wouldn't say I'm a beginner. There were other videos that looked like they'd be fun, why hadn't I gone withone of those? It was too late to go backwards though and I figured I could always share it with a friend that might be looking to get started and needed some motivation. It was only $5 after all. 

So yesterday, Keegan came running in from the mailbox excitedly waving a package at me. Bob had arrived in my mailbox! I opened it up and again grimmaced at the Beginner's Workout. I put aside the regret and the videos and went about our nightly routine knowing I'd be skipping the gym to do one of the new workouts.  So after bed time, I set my weights down on the floor (5's, 8's and 10's) and decided as a means to get myself familiar with Bob's style of instructing, the Beginner video wouldn't be so awful. I hit play and away we went.

And now, the review of the hardest workout I've ever done.

People. Bob is NO JOKE.  He misleads his beginning audience with a peaceful little warm up which includes basic stretching and then he launches into 40 minutes of NON STOP action which included pushing my muscles to do things I've never thought they were capable of doing. It's everything I've ever seen at a boot camp but was afraid to try:  jumping jacks, burpees, side jumps, lunges with prisoner arms - ooooh those lunges with prisoner arms - this especially masochistic move where you go from standing to walking your hands out and into a push up OR FIVE and then hold a plank for a minute before lowering from your palms to your elbows and back up to your palms again all while holding your plank.... So all the while I'm grunting and groaning (and secretly loving every minute albeit, literally cursing at Bob as he barked out the next move), Bob is reminding us this is, in fact, his BEGINNING WORKOUT.  At the end of the 45 minutes, I was exhausted and drenched in sweat.  But not only was *I* struggling, there was a dramatic difference in the appearance of Bob's own work out compadres. Their perfect, perky jacks that had such great form and high arms in the beginning were now a little more sluggish and their hands didn't quite touch over their heads like they had 30 minutes prior. You could see legitimate pain and wobble in their legs when we were told to hold the sumo squat for a good 90 seconds or more at the END of a already squat-laden workout. In fact, it's possible they hate Bob like I do (in the nicest way possible).

So my review in a nutshell:  LOVED IT! I'm actually hurtin' today in muscles that I've tried to unsuccessfully make sore myself previously (hello, glutes and quads!).   If you're looking to do a lot of work in a short amount of time at your convenience, you should have this video.

We can do better than that.

I was sitting at a Pampered Chef party this weekend watching the most lovely host make what looked to be a super fabulous dish. The whole time I was sitting there I couldn't help but think two things:

1)  I WANT THAT! Every tool she had, I immediately justified needing and could see myself using at my own house

and

2) We need to make that more Point friendly.

So the dish being made was called a chicken broccoli braid.  The short explanation is that it was a beautiful, mayo filled chicken salad that was then rolled between the sweet confines of two cans of Pillsbury crescent rolls. If you know your PPV's then you see two high Point words here:  mayo & crescent rolls. When it was done baking and sitting on my sampling plate, I can tell you without hesitation that it was beyond delicious.  I knew I could do better though and have it be just as wonderful for less than 9 points a slice though!

So on Sunday, I added the goodies to make the heathified braid to my grocery shopping list. As soon as we got home, I set to work and the results were STUNNING if I do say so myself.  I loved the new version even more than I'd loved the original because instead of  the skinny sliver for 9 points I inhaled at the soiree, I got a fat slice of heaven for 6 PPV! For my visually motivated friends, here is my end result:

And in case you're wondering, 1/6th of this tasty beast would be a serving size - oh yah!

Now then, in my quest to lower the points on this sucker, I made a discovery. The chicken salad filling is delicious beyond description and needs to be devoured on it's own.  It was so good in fact that I gobbled down the contents left in the bowl after stuffing the braid and called super-sister Jeane to tell her about my salad of grandeur.  After reviewing the contents of my updated recipe and doing a couple tweaks, we made a couple more little changes subbing FF sour cream for LF mayo and FF cheese for LF cheese since it wouldn't need it melted (FF cheese does not melt for anyone who doesn't know) and THEN, then I went back to the grocery store to get more red bell peppers and broccoli so I could make a batch to bring with me for lunch this week. En route to the store it dawned on me that some ranch dressing mix wouldn't be too shabby tossed into the mix either! 

I hurried home with my ingredients excited to get chopping.  I was temporarily deterred with a quick trip to urgent care for Kenne (who is 100% fine, we'll talk about that another day). When I finally made it to my cutting board to test the further slimmed broccoli chicken goodness, the end results proved not only to be delicious, but it's also beautiful to look at. Really, check it out:

Keeping in mind that I obsess about food, this salad was my first thought when I woke up this morning. I've been looking forward to lunch all day! I've made co-workers admire it.  I have plans to throw parties and serve it to guests! I don't know what we're celebrating just yet at this party in my head, perhaps it will just be this chicken salad? Or perhaps I'm just being silly. Always a distinct possibility with me. 

I know, I know, everyone is thinking "We get it, it's good. Tell us how to make the damn salad so we can get our fork on it already."  I'm always willing and happy to oblige:

Heathified Broccoli Chicken Salad

12 oz. cooked chicken breast, finely chopped
4 oz. shredded fat free cheese
8 oz. broccoli, finely chopped
1 large bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 c. fat free sour cream
3 T slivered almonds
1 1/2 T ranch dressing powder
Salt to taste (I used bacon salt to add some smokey flavor, but I know that's not a staple at most people's homes :) )

Mix it up and then DEVOUR! 4 points per cup AND it's all power food except for the slivered almonds which would only cost you 3 PPV for a week of eating this yum if you were following Simply Filling. Really, it doesn't get better than this.

If you wanted to add the crescent roll version as pictured above, preheat your oven to 375 and remember to also buy yourself a roll of RF Pillsbury crescent roll dough.  Lay the dough on a baking sheet and place half of the chicken salad you made down the center of the dough. 

Bring the crescents up on the sides of the salad and twist or pinch at the top to secure.

Bake for 25 minutes. Makes 6 servings @ 6 points each. Who's hungry??

Almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

This is my refrigerator right now and it's making me ridiculously happy:

But now you're asking yourself, what IS that anyway? I'm glad you asked. My super sister, Jeane (lifetime WW member with a 90+ weight loss!)  ran across this idea on a food blog. You get 32 oz. mason jars and layer in: dressing, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, quinoa, salad green of your choice (or really, any combination of tastiness that you like so long as the salad green is not touching the dressing at the bottom). They hold for up to 3 days in your fridgie. As you walk out your door in the morning, your salad is already made. But nevermind that, it's just so darn pretty to look at! I'm in L♥VE AND I'm already ahead of the game for the week. Oh yes, life is GOOD!

In creating these little beauties, I've also ticked off the first of the new foods I wanted to try in 2012.  Sadly, there are a number of things I really should have eaten by this point in my life, but just never got around to. I'm getting more adventurous as I get older though. Adventure must come with wisdom and beauty (HAH!A). But back to the new food... it's true, before today I'd never eaten quinoa.  I've heard people talk about it but I was never moved to actually find and cook it.  If Jeane hadn't gifted me a box along with the mason jars to make the salads, I probably would have just omitted it from the containers all together and called it a day.  I was a little scared of it at first. I knew it was a grain and I'd heard it described as similar to brown rice. That's probably why I didn't get excited about trying it as I really don't like brown rice (bad WW member! I know, I know.) .  I was more than pleasantly surprised with the quinoa though.  I don't find it at all like brown rice in taste or texture.  It's much nuttier, cooks up softer and is a nice change of pace in general. The texture is more comparable to a cous cous than rice, so if you have an issue with texture, this one might be a problem for you.  I also learned today that 1 cup of dry quinoa TRIPLES in size once cooked so I will learn tomorrow how it re-heats and if it makes a nice breakfast cereal of any sort.  Reviews to come...