Grocery Haul

Happy Friday!

In an effort to offset the damage of 1.5 weeks of gluttony before my weigh-in tomorrow morning, I bought some healthy groceries yesterday (it's been awhile!).

I included some "treats" to help motivate me.

Yum, watermelon!

I don't have high hopes for my weigh-in tomorrow morning. I have a strong feeling I will be at least as much as (if not higher than) what I weighed when I started going to meetings in November. Yes, folks, it's that bad. I've regained about 20 pounds!

But it's never too late to get back in the swing of things! Do I spot a pink Green Smoothie in my lunch from today?

Alongside chicken & avocado on a pita and some raw cauliflower. :)

I will report my weigh-in tomorrow morning, no matter how ugly. It's time to start being accountable for my unhealthy ways!

In other news, my dad is home from the hospital! I really have NO EXCUSES to be eating junk.

Have a lovely weekend!

Weigh-In & Back on Track!

Guess what, guys!

This girl has been TRACKING! :D

It all started on Saturday.

I haven't been mentioning my weigh-ins lately... I'm sure you can guess why! But let's come clean. On Saturday, I weighed in at 191.6 lbs, exactly 10 lbs higher than my lowest weight. On May 1, when I got my 10%, I was 181.6. I know I can drop these new 10 pounds really quickly, because I put them on quickly while eating total garbage.

Saturday's meeting topic was falling in love with your tracker! How fitting! I picked up a paper tracker to use this week (I have a 3-month tracker right now, but it has so many empty pages, it depresses me). I told Ashley, my leader, that I would give it to her next week as a little extra incentive.

Off to a good start:

I also rekindled my love affair with my Weight Watchers food scale (I swear, one of these days I'll devote a post to how wonderful it is). And have I mentioned how much I love Silver Hills Little Big Bread? These two slices (they must have been small end-slices) worked out to be 1 point total!

I've been keeping my meals pretty simple. Some PC Blue Menu Encrusted Wild Keta Salmon and a salad with tons o' avocado:

Homemade hummus, Mary's crackers, and tomato soup:

On Sunday, I even managed to sneak in a green smoothie! I'm sure my body was thanking me.

As for exercise? On Sunday morning, I dragged myself out of bed before 8 am for my first run in many weeks. I managed to go for about 25 minutes. I'm quite happy with that. I'm also planning to hit up BodyStep tomorrow morning.

It's good to be back! 100 pounds lost, here I come!

Last Booty Camp Tonight!

Sunday was a bit of a write-off.

I tried to go for a run to take advantage of the beautiful weather, but instead I took a nap in my running clothes (seriously). Then I kind of pigged out during the Oscars.

Thankfully, it was back down to business on Monday! Yesterday, Kate mentioned that she had a sugar hangover... so did I. After I eat a bunch of junk, I feel really gross the next morning. It takes awhile for my stomach to get back to normal.

I never used to feel horrible after eating junk food (back when I would eat it all the time)... unless I did feel horrible, but didn't notice because I felt like that all the time? My body really notices now when I give it junk to eat. I guess it's gotten used to the good stuff!

I had a green smoothie to try and fool my stomach into feeling better, and then I managed to actually get out the door in my running clothes! I ran for half an hour, but I was struggling by the end. I barely made it home. I definitely needed more than a green smoothie before my run... I had slept in, so my blood sugar was running pretty low.

I had a huge pile of marking to contend with when I got home,

so I settled in with a coffee and one of Jess's two-minute flax muffins - you make them in the microwave! It was so easy to make, but I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about them. I'll probably keep making them just because they're so fast and healthy! Here are the ingredients all lined up (as you can see, I do a lot of shopping at bulk food stores):

And mixed up in my mug:

And the final product (I never said it would be pretty!):

I had it with some jam.

I barely made a dent in my marking, so that's what's on the agenda for today (good thing I'm up bright and early!). I also need to do some planning. I will be away from home (mostly in a car, and packing/unpacking) with my mom from Wednesday-Thursday, and I am DETERMINED to stay on-plan! I will let you know how it goes!

I also have my LAST Booty Camp session tonight. Wow, I can't believe it's been 8 weeks since I started. I really want to sign up again (and probably will). I'm pretty curious as to what my measurements will be tonight... hopefully I won't have gained weight again like I had at the 4-week mark! At any rate, I feel MUCH stronger and fitter than I did 8 weeks ago. I will let you know how the measurements go... probably. ;)

Last night was my last Pilates class, too... what will I do without these pre-paid classes to keep me motivated?!

Obligation-Free Day!

Today I had no obligations! No work! No anything!

This morning, I was tempted to "give up" on trying to eat well because I've "failed" this week already and will surely gain weight on Saturday. I devoured a granola bar just to have something sweet with my coffee, which is what triggered my near-derailment. I came very close to eating the pizza pockets I have in my freezer (why do I have pizza pockets in my freezer????), but I didn't!

I haven't yet made the list of ways to avoid emotional eating that was suggested at my weight watchers meeting last Saturday. But I can share with you the things I did with this day off to avoid eating everything in the cupboard!

I decided to really have a good start to my day by trying some yoga (I do not have much yoga experience). I found a free beginner video on yogadownload.com, moved my coffee table, and got my mat out. But then I didn't really like it (um, well actually, it was more strenuous than I was expecting and I didn't want to "use up" my strength before boot camp haha) so I stopped after a few minutes and just did some stretching on my own.

Then I went for a walk around the block! Do I look refreshed?

(I took four pictures and that was the best one...)

I came home with a plan to make some chocolate chip banana muffins from one of my fave cookbooks: Rose Reisman's The Complete Light Kitchen.

But to my shock and dismay, I had no white flour! I was not in the mood for substituting whole wheat flour (I'm not a pro baker, and I didn't really want to experiment today), so the muffins went on hold. I had intended on making a green smoothie while the muffins were in the oven. I had to go straight to the smoothie:

It featured cooked spinach, half a banana, pomegranate juice, orange juice, and frozen strawberries. Yum!

I phoned my mom to see if she wanted to go to Canadian Tire with me to get an immersion blender and coffee pot (my coffee pot works, but each time I use it I risk electrocution. My mom says I'm not allowed to use it anymore). She was free, and also had some white flour to bring me! While I was waiting for her to show up, I watched some clips of Say Yes to the Dress online and had another snack.

It just looked so delicious I had to take a picture! Plain yogurt with an orange. Lately I've been having fruit mixed in plain yogurt a LOT. It feels like such a treat!

After going to TWO Canadian Tires and a Zellers (and a Home Depot, but they didn't even have small appliances), I ended up with zero coffee pots. I did however, get this:

I am SO SO SO excited about this. It's still in the box though, because when I finally got home from the shopping expedition, it was time to get to Booty Camp! I went early to get my measurements taken again. The muffins will have to wait until tomorrow.

Booty Camp was great tonight! I really pushed myself. Also, I was particularly happy about one of my measurements - they used calipers to measure the body fat on my upper arm, and it had gone down by 5... units... I don't really know what those numbers mean, and I feel like my original measurement may have been inaccurate (because that seems like an impossibly big difference), but I feel good about it all the same. My weight was higher though, haha.

Holy Antioxidants, Batman!

For the past couple of weeks, I've been having green smoothies everyday... on Thursday, I ventured out to the grocery store for some new, nutritious smoothie ingredients.

Behold:

Yes, that's KALE you see. Also strawberries, blueberries, pomegranate juice (which I tried for the first time), ground flaxseed, and a banana. In the blender they go:
Every now and then I had to shake things around in there so it would all blend... but I persevered... and blend it did:
It was delicious!! The amounts I used were:

• 1 banana
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• 1/2 cup strawberries
• 1 tablespoon flaxseed
• 1/4 cup pomegranate juice
• 1/4 cup orange juice (not pictured)
• 2-3 kale leaves

I didn't taste the kale AT ALL. Also, I'm not a fan of eating fresh blueberries, but I really enjoyed them in the smoothie. I also didn't taste the flaxseed.

I always feel so smug when I'm drinking my green smoothies! I LOVE the fact that I can get so many healthy things into one delicious beverage.

Do you drink green smoothies? What do you put in them?