Turkey Day Recap

My Dad is coming over tomorrow morning to help me bring my Christmas tree up from the basement, so I really need to get moving on this whole distasteful cleaning thing.

But before I do, I thought I’d recap how my Thanksgiving went from an eating standpoint. Below is a recap of my six-point-plan from yesterday’s post, with comments on how I did (or didn’t do) on each one.

1. Cut the pie. I didn’t cut the pie before I left the house, but I did cut it once I got there. I wanted to have just half a slice, but ended up having a whole slice and a small piece of carrot cake. Half-check.
2. Turkey Day workout. I went, I exercised, and today my whole body hurts. Check.
3. Limit pre-dinner snacking. I did a GREAT job at this, compared to previous years. I had a small amount of the Mexican slop dip I love (and feared my aunt would make this year) with some chips, but then stuck to a small amount of M&Ms, and carrots and cucumber from the veggie tray (no dip). Check.
4. Eat calories, don’t drink them. I did a great job with this as well, having just two glasses of wine. Before dinner I drank a TON of water, and then had two cans of diet soda the rest of the night. BIG Check.
5. No leftovers allowed. While I enjoyed a small amount of dessert at my aunt’s house, I did take two pieces of pumpkin pie home with me, and they were gone before I went to sleep. And, truth be told, I didn’t try that hard — well, at all — to get someone else to take them home. Uncheck.
6. Post-dinner walk. It was cold and windy, but I did get my cousin, three aunts and two other gals to go for a short walk around my aunt’s neighborhood. We were probably only gone ten minutes, but it was something. Also, I did the dishes which, while not burning a ton of calories, kept me moving and is something I don’t normally offer to do. Check.

You may remember my goal was to accomplish at least four of these goals and, by my complicated and top-secret check/un-check equation, I count that I completed four-and-a-half of these goals. Add to that the fact that I didn’t go back for seconds on the main meal, and I declare this Thanksgiving a rousing success.

I tried to tally up all my WW points when I got home last night. By those standards, I didn’t do so great of a job. (Let’s just say my 35 weekly allowance points are no longer available to me until they reboot six days from now.) When I put this Thanksgiving up against previous ones, however, I have to say I hit a solid triple.

If you take out the two pieces of pie I ate when I got home, it would have been a home run.

But I’ll take the triple.

Hope everyone who celebrates had a good time spent with family, friends and food. Now off to clean!

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Turkey Day Plan

I’m too ashamed to write here how well I’ve not been following Weight Watchers these last weeks, so I won’t. Suffice to say it’s a miracle I’ve squeaked by with the few small losses I’ve enjoyed the past few weigh-ins.

Motivation has always been a challenge for me, and fortunately the holidays don’t make this problem even worse. Being single and not having in-laws to visit makes life a lot less hectic this time of year. Still, I’ve decided to at least be conscious of the pitfalls of holiday eating and take it one occasion at a time. And when there’s no holiday, one day at a time.

So here is my plan for Thanksgiving, which my Dad and I are spending at my aunt’s house:

1. Cut the pie. I’m baking a pumpkin pie Wednesday night, and am going to cut it into slices before I leave for my aunt’s house so I can control the size of piece I get. If I cut it into 16 slices, it’s four WW points per slice. (Note: I’m already planning to lower the fat content of the pie by using egg substitute and fat free evaporated milk. Can’t do much about the homemade — by request — crust.)
2. Turkey Day Workout. I’m meeting my friend/co-worker Melissa at the Wisconsin Athletic Club at 8 a.m. Thursday for a one-hour strength training class. I’m so glad she wanted to go, because it will virtually guarantee that I drag myself out of bed and get to the gym. Left to my own devices, I know I would hit the snooze (or not set the alarm at all). I suppose my back-up plan if she bails is to try my hardest to go anyway.
3. Limit pre-dinner snacking. Part of our family festivities this year is the Packer game, which starts at 11:30 a.m. We’re not eating until 3 p.m., so that’s a long time and a lot of snack foods.
4. Eat calories, don’t drink them. I will have a glass of wine or two, but then am going to switch to soda and water the rest of the day/evening.
5. No leftovers allowed. I will use the response I use every year when asked if I want to take anything home. “No, because I’ll just eat it.”
6. Post-dinner walk. The plan is to suggest a walk after dinner to settle our stomachs. I don’t think I’ll have trouble getting takers on this, as this is a semi-regular occurrence at our family get togethers. I just don’t usually participate.

Barring some kind of unnatural event, Nos. 1, 2 and 5 will happen, no question. If I can accomplish at least one more of the above goals, I will consider this a successful holiday, foodwise. I’m not planning to track what I eat on Thursday, but having these six goals in mind will go a long way in helping me to be successful, even though I’m not writing down every bite that goes in my mouth.

Happy Thanksgiving, my American friends!

Weigh-in, Week 12

Apparently I’m a week behind, as I just weighed in today for Week 12.

Oh well, semantics.

10 percent ticker:

Overall ticker:

I’m pretty pleased with myself, having re-lost 1 pound of the 1.8 I gained last week. It still puts me at losing an average of more than one pound a week, which is in line with what Weight Watchers recommends for long-term weight maintenance.

I worked out quite a bit this week, but wasn’t as attentive to my eating. I really need to be more diligent with my tracking, because it will catch up with me eventually.

Our last at-work meeting is May 7, and according to our office manager (who herself has lost 30 pounds!) we are one person short for being able to re-up for another 15 weeks. I really hope we can either get one more person, or our company will agree to subsidize the cost of that final person. She sent out this great e-mail to the entire agency crowing about how much weight we’ve lost as a group, so hopefully that will spur people on to join us.

I wish I had more interesting things to share with you besides my weight, but I really don’t. This week is Easter, and my Dad is having my Mom’s family over to his condo (for those new to the blog, my Mom passed away in May 2007 at age 56). He’s making ham, I’m responsible for rolls and dessert, and various aunts are bringing the rest of the dishes (including two kinds of potatoes — no self-respecting Irish family has less than that at a family function).

Work is going fine. I’m still struggling with some apathy issues (having things to do, but not wanting to do them). I thought moving into a new position within the company would help, but so far it hasn’t. There’s still time, I guess.

The weekend of April 17 is Trivia 40, a 54-hour trivia contest held in Stevens Point, Wis. every year. I played a couple years while I was in college, and this is my second year playing as an alumnus. It’s run by the campus radio station, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s billed as ‘The World’s Largest Trivia Contest,’ and people from all over the world come to answer trivia questions from 6 p.m. Friday until Midnight Sunday. There was even a movie — creatively called ‘Triviatown’ — that documented the whole experience.

I have some other things I could write about, but the work day is almost over so I will save those things for another time.

So that’s my next couple of weeks in a nutshell. What are you all up to?

Moving News, Holiday Weekend

I’ve finally made more progress on packing. I’ve pretty much finished everything I can do in the living room (TV obviously is still operational, and pics are still on the wall because I want to be able to move a few things that don’t have cat hair all over them). I’ve now moved onto the bedroom.

(Ginger is guarding the boxes from intruders.)

I have had a nice holiday weekend so far. My friend R and I went to South Shore Park in Bay View, which is about two blocks from his apartment, to watch Milwaukee’s lakefront fireworks. It was a beautiful night, though a little on the chilly side. I’d rather have that than be dripping with sweat. The lovely view gave me some opportunities to take photos.

(These are the rocks we sat on by the beach —
the comfort level after my training session of
20 minutes spent on a hard bike seat? About zero.)

R and I like taking “self portraits,” with him taking the pic because his arms are much longer than mine. So we spent our time before the fireworks doing just that.

Yes, the photos were nice at first, but everything pretty much went downhill from here.

(This is R’s “Crazy Serial Killer” face. It works for
him, yes?)

(I look terrible in this one, but it makes me laugh
because R looks like he wants to kill me. This
one made us almost pee our pants when we saw
how it turned out.)

Finally, the fireworks started. They were pretty good, although I was not too impressed by the finale (I guess the economy is hurting every sector, including fireworks displays). We were a ways away from the fireworks themselves, so the majority (well, all) of the pics I took didn’t really turn out too well, but this will give you an idea of what they looked like.

(Those really are fireworks. I swear.)

Friday I went over to my Dad’s house to do laundry and spend the day. We had a traditional midwestern Fourth of July holiday meal of brats, potato salad, and strawberry shortcake.

Today I went to the gym, packed a little (see above) and took a nap. I woke up to see Ginger laying across me on my side, from my shoulder to my hip. She started using my cheek like a scratching post (thank God she doesn’t have claws) and was licking my nose and forehead. I guess it’s no different than early in the morning, when she goes from one side of my bed to the other by walking over me, usually stepping on my boobs so hard I want to scream.

She’s lucky she’s cute.

Weekend Recap

It’s Monday again, which means back to work for many of us, and no mail for anyone in the country because of Veteran’s Day (even though it was actually yesterday — I love getting mail, it’s the highlight of my day).

I had a pretty decent weekend. Am still trying (in vain) to catch up on my DVR watching, I’m now watching last Monday’s programs (this is why the writers’ strike is okay for me). Saturday would have been my mom’s 57th birthday. I went to therapy in the morning, then to the cemetery to see her, my maternal grandpa and my paternal grandparents, then to my aunt’s house in the afternoon to toast my mom and eat lasagna. We had a nice time, it wasn’t depressing or sad at all. Yesterday I did laundry at my Dad’s house and watched the Packers bitch-slap the Vikings. Then he and I watched one of my favorite MST3K episodes, The Starfighters.

All in all, a pretty good weekend.