Category Archives: Legit

Day 590: Tuesday Time Stuff

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Why hello!

Well I didn’t see an owl today, but I did help paint the inside of a house! This will be a brief, yet efficient, post.

For breakfast, I just had two servings of Kashi Honey Sunshine. If you haven’t had this cereal, run to the cereal store and get some!

For a snack for work I had a FiberOne bar and then ate a Chicken Suaza Smart one for lunch. It was magical. For a snack I had two fat free Fig Newtons.

As far as SAWS goes today, I helped paint three rooms in Adam and Crystal’s new house! A lot of upper body movement and other fun stuff. It was a good way to get some physical activity in while helping out!

So for most of the day I was good, but instead of eating at home we decided to grab some pizza from Gumby’s. It’s greasy, decadent, but delicious… at least when you’re eating it. Tree hours later, my mouth still tastes salty. That’s not a good sign. We ate there to save time, but in turn ate too many calories. Not the best trade off.

So that was about it for today. I promise tomorrow’s Wordless Wednesday will be better. Count on it. See ya tomorrow.

Day 589: The Time an Owl Flew Over my Head Edition

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More about the title in a bit…

So today was good, but a little more snacky than I wanted it to be. Know what I mean? A few chips here, a few almonds there, not bad by themselves, but together they add up pretty fast. Let’s get to it shall we?

Breakfast: I had two servings of Kashi Honey Sunshine which is super duper filling. Not to mention delicious! 4 points 

Lunch: So the plan was to get Jimmy John’s for lunch which is usually around $9 (you pay for their freaky fast delivery but it’s worth it) but today I figured I would go get a Nature Valley bar from the bookstore across from where I’m working part time. Come to find out, half of the food in the store is 50% off! So I bought some FiberOne bars for 45 cents and Fig Newtons for 38 cents! Awesomeness! So anyway, I had a Nature Valley bar pack and two fat free Fig Newtons. They are delicious! My pseudo (but cheap!) lunch was 8 points. 

Snacking Galore: Like I said, overall today I did about 14 points worth of snacking. I would keep a mental account, but it’s still a dangerous thing because you can overeat pretty easy. I used to be really easy for me to be okay with the counting out what I wanted to eat and that was it. Now, it’s a little hard. It just requires a little more willpower which is still a work in progress!

Dinner: Speaking of cheap meals, we decided to go to Bandidos for dollar tacos which happens every day from 4:20-7:20. They have some of the best tacos in town and for a buck how can you pass that up!?! I had three tacos with cheese lettuce and tomato. That’s it. No sour cream or anything like that. I kept it simple. After doing a little research, we figured they were about three points each so it came out to about a 9 point dinner. 

Owl Time: So there was an awesome thunderhead north of Tallahassee tonight with some really bright lightning shooting around it. Megan and I decided to go out for a walk to watch this awesome storm pass by (it was clear where we were. Don’t worry mom, we weren’t out in the rain or anything.) When we were walking up to our house, a giant winged brown bird with talons flew directly over our heads! It felt like I was at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in the Flights of Wonder show! This creature flew up in to a tree above our car AND IT WAS A FLIPPIN’ BARRED OWL!!!!! It was so cool. It looked down at us and we looked up at it in a stare off like fashion. We stood out there for a good 10 minutes before the owl flew off in to the woods. We have heard owls out there a lot, but we’ve never seen one. Tonight was our lucky night. That dot that looks like a star is actually the owl’s eye! Spooky huh? It’s been a great day with a great night to finish it off. See ya tomorrow.

Day 588: Weigh In Day!

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Hello Dear Readers!

How to you like my new layout? Personally, I’m a HUGE fan! I love it and I hope you do too!

So this week, I was overall pretty good with my points and with my portions (not to mention the gallons of water I drank…) It paid off! I lost 3.2 pounds this week! So that means I am down to 236.6 and I have lost 120.4 pounds so far. Like I said last night, I’m feeling good about the place I’m in right now and I have begun to hit my weight loss stride. I like where this is going!

Breakfast: I just had a litt Special K cereal bar. Nothing special.

Lunch: After church, we went with our friend Julie to this Vietnamese place in town called Pho7. The last time I had pho was in Chinatown in San Francisco so I had some pretty high expectations (he said like a hipster.) We started off with some appetizers like spring rolls and crab rangoon. I ordered the beef pho and it was awesome! I added some sprouts, a squeeze of lime, some cilantro and mint, oh and some jalapenos which made it super hot! Drinking the broth after was a bad choice. Then after that I had a Vietnamese iced coffee which cooled off my mouth which was still on fire. Good call Julie! I can’t wait to go back and order the 100 other things that looked delicious on the menu.

Dinner: After that meal, I was pretty stuffed so I didn’t eat anything until late this evening. It was kind of a potluck night for dinner. I had some leftover chili, a little lentil salad that Julie had made for us (which was awesome!) some gnocchi and some honey nut cheerios. Pretty weird combination, but don’t worry, I didn’t eat them all in one sitting on one plate. That would have been interesting.

As we close tonight, I want to thank my mom for being such an awesome support for me through out my life. Whether it has been helping me with my math homework, listening to my problems or just laughing at my bad jokes, you have always been there for me. Thanks mom. I love you.

 

 

See ya tomorrow.

Day 587: Saturday Stuff

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Tonight, I”m blogging by candlelight on my back porch. It is kind of warm, but the tall trees with hanging Spanish moss remind why I love my place. Florida is not a bad place to be unemployed.

So I didn’t wake up until 11 am this morning. I cannot remember the last time I slept in that late. I think it’s still some residual sleep deprivation from last semester. (Makes sense to me at least…) Anyway, so needless to say I didn’t eat any breakfast. Instead, Megan suggested the Crepevine for lunch! I had the Gooleys which is a smaller portion crepe with bacon, chicken, chicken and romaine. For sauce, instead of ranch. which is what comes on it, I got honey mustard. I was really impressed with it. I usually get the bigger portion, but there is no need to! The smaller one is big enough as it is! It’s weird that our brains crave the bigger portions because it terrified that the smaller portion isn’t going to be big enough. Thankfully, the portion sizes in America are massive, so that’s something we should never have to worry about.

Speaking of massive portions… after Crepevine, we decided to get some froyo at Yogurt Mountian. Sadly, I think froyo places are becoming my enemy. When I started my weight loss, I would be really good with my portion sizes and my toppings. Now, I think it has become a place where I can get away with eating candy since it’s on top of nonfat yogurt. I’m like Newman when he discovers “non-fat yogurt” and then finds out that there is in fact fat in the yogurt. While I am responsible for my actions, I have to give some of the blame to the cups that they give you at the pay per ounce places. They are huge so you don’t really have a grasp on how much yogurt you are getting. I just got a few different flavors, a few scoops of toppings and before I knew it I had 13 ounces of yogurt and toppings! Holy cow! That’s insane! That’s almost a pound of frozen deliciousness! No bueno. I think I need to go back to places that have actual serving sizes so I can measure it out and become the good little weight loser that I know I am! That’s life I guess.

So after that debacle, I knew I needed to go on a run or something so I could undo some of that damage. For those of you who don’t know, a summer day in Florida almost always includes an afternoon shower. It will get overcast and then boom a 20 minute shower. Then it either cools off or get unbearably humid. To me, the best time to run is right before it rains because it will cool off for a few minutes and there is a cool breeze. That’s what I did today. I was planning on just doing a little 5k around the block, but then the running spirits challenged me to go a little further. I am slowly getting my running endurance back to where it was in the fall when I was training for a 10K. I ran around 4 or 5 miles (I didn’t have a pedometer on) with terrain ranging from steep hills to a track around the high school football field by our house. It felt awesome to go running. It helps me think and brainstorm about different problems and ideas. So in about an hour of running, I burned a beastly 668 calories. Ihopethat burned off my yogurt…

 

 

 

For dinner, I made some of Uncle Jim’s famous chili and it was awesome as always. Speaking of portions… again, I used to eat two cups of chili which is only 5 points for my first bowl along with a cup of rice. Then I would usually eat half that much again for seconds. Tonight, I ate two cups of chili and a cup of rice total! And I was stuffed! That’s a really good sign! That’s the ebb and flow of changing your eating habits, your body eventually gets the picture and it adjusts!

 

 

 

 

 
For dessert, I had five little iced oatmeal cookies that we bought from Publix. five of them are only 3 points! Yum! They go perfect with a cup of coffee on the back porch.

So today was good and bad. I am frustrated about the yogurt, but it was a teachable moment for me. I have learned my lesson and I’ll move on from it. Tomorrow is weigh in and I have high hopes for it. I was overall pretty good this week so we’ll see what happens. Either way, I’m in a good place with my weight loss and I have nothing but time. See ya tomorrow.

Day 585b: Thursday Again

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“The Song Remains the Same” Led Zeppelin concert from Madison Square Garden in 1973 is on right now. My life is complete. I was born in the wrong decade.

Anyway, today was one of those days where you drink a lot of water, but your mouth is still dry and salty. That’s no bueno. I have been good pretty much all week, but today I might have veered off a little bit, but momma said there’d be days like this… It’s like what Lenny from The Simpsons always says “everybody makes mistakes. That’s why pencils have erasers.” He is a wise man.

Breakfast: I just had three strips of bacon and a Special K bar. No… really. I was in a rush this morning so that was all I could get as I was running out the door. Yum.

Lunch: So today, I got a lunch break and while I was talking to my friend Andrea, we both realized that she had a lunch break too! So we went to Pitaria for some Greek awesomeness. I had the gyro with the pita fries. It was magical. Somewhere in there, I had two Dove Chocolates at work which were a point a piece.

Snack: I had a little peanut butter on a toasted hamburger bun.

Dinner: Megan has been doing her comprehensive exams all week (they are like her O.W.L.S. or N.E.W.T.S. but on steroids) so we decided to  go to Mr. Roboto’s for dinner. Last time I went there, I lost nine pounds in 24 from an incredibly bad stomach bug. While I don’t know if the two were related, they curry that I ate last time did not help the situation. Anyway, I had a California roll and some rice. Megan got a side of veggies and she shared some of them with me too! Yum!

Snack: Later on, we both wanted some TCBY but to save a little money, we decided to stay home and eat some of the low fat ice cream that we had in our freezer. I just had plain vanilla with a little sugar free chocolate syrup. Good stuff.

So that’s about it for tonight. Like I said, I wasn’t perfect, but I’ll definitely be better tomorrow. Maybe even get a run in there somewhere too. See ya tomorrow.

 

Oh, and one more thing…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWAN!!!!!!

Day 583: Tuesday Stuff!

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This week, the Institute of Medicine has addressed the issue of The Weight of the Nation in Washington. I have been keeping track of it as much as I can and while there are some really good suggestions being made like making school lunches better and encouraging mayors to create healthy initiatives for their cities, some of the rational behind this conference is a bit skewed. Here is a quote that kind of bothered me.

“The traditional view that blames obesity on a failure of personal responsibility and individual willpower “has been used as the basis for resisting government efforts – legislative and regulatory – to address the problem,” says the report. But the IOM panel argues that people cannot truly exercise “personal choice” because their options are severely limited, and “biased toward the unhealthy end of the continuum.”

This is ridiculous. MacDonald’s, Burger King, or the Government doesn’t force feed people the last time I checked. Everyone is responsible for what they put in their bodies. You cannot blame others for these kinds of things! The issue is that people don’t want to take the extra steps to become healthy. It requires work to count calories, to buy fresh ingredients, heck to even exercise. Some people act like they want to lose weight, but they want to eat exactly the same things and not sacrifice taste. Losing weight does take work and it is absolutely worth the extra steps. Read the article and let me know what you think!

Alright, so although I didn’t post last night, I can tell you that Day One of Nathan cooking went really well! Our friends Stacy and Emma came over and they brought some Spanish Mackerel that Emma’s family caught while deep sea fishing in Destin. I fired up the grill and cooked up it. It was the first time I have grilled fish and it turned out really well!

So today I did pretty well. I didn’t bring a lunch to my work which leads to late afternoon snacking.

Breakfast: I had two servings of Kashi Honey Sunshine. It was filling and fantastic! I had a banana and a Special K bar for my morning snack.

Lunch? I had a massive bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. It was a few servings…

Snack: I was doing some freelance work so I decided to go to Starbucks for some iced coffee. As I went to sit down, there were no spots left. Since when are coffee shops so popular? Anyway, so I drove over to Panera which had plenty of seating. I sat in there with my iced coffee from Starbucks. I felt like I was loitering. Awe well.

Dinner: So for Night Two of Nathan making dinner, I made some burgers out of the grass fed beef that we bought from the farmers market on Saturday. I grilled up a chopped up jalapeno and put it on top of the burgers along with some of the mustard cheese that we bought a while back from Earth Fare. I also got some fries from Wingstop. They actually aren’t bad when you split them.

Dessert: I cut up some strawberries from the farmers market and put them on my Breyer’s ice cream. It was magical.

So overall today wasn’t bad, but it definitely could have been better. Tomorrow, I’m going to finally try to run at some point. I feel like I haven’t worked out in weeks (probably because I haven’t.) See ya tomorrow.

Day 581: Weigh in Day!

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What is up yo!?!

I don’t understand how Tallahassee doesn’t have a normal coffee place. There have been numerous times that we have traipsed around the city to find a place that isn’t too crowded or too loud or too cold or closing too early! Even though college is officially out this summer, we had to leave a Starbucks because there weren’t any tables available. It was like all of the non-college residents of Tallahassee realized it was finally safe to come outside. So Anyway, our internet is down because of the storm so we are at a coffee shop by Lake Ella. I’m trying to blog and Megan is trying to study for her comprehensive exams that are this week. We got a prime table, my chai latte was heavenly, then like clockwork a duet of old people start to play the guitar and a harmonica directly perpendicular to our table. Usually this kind of thing isn’t an issue, but this place is smaller than my house so I might as well be on the stage of this coffee shop concert. Sometimes our lives are some much like a sitcom. I can hear the laugh track playing in the background. Either that or I’m having a stroke.

Where was I?

Oh yeah…

So this week, even though I didn’t blog that much, was pretty good food wise. I stayed within my points four days out of the week which isn’t too bad. I ended up losing 1.4 pounds! I’m back in the 230’s (239.8 so barely) and I’m ready to finally break in to the 220’s, which hasn’t happened yet. I’m ready to get in there!

I’m also going to exercise more this week. I’m going to start running again. It has been a while and it’s not too hot in the mornings or evenings yet. Not to mention Tallahassee is beautiful so trail running is just awesome.

Another fun thing about this week, I’m going to cook all week! Megan is defending her thesis tomorrow and then will be doing her comprehensive exams all week so I’m going to help out in the kitchen. If you see smoke coming from Tallahassee, that’s all me. We’ll see how that goes.

Alright, let’s talk about today.

Breakfast: I had two pieces of toast with two tablespoons of peanut butter and a banana. The whole wheat bread from Target is only 50 calories a slice so it’s only 1 point for two slices! Score! Breakfast was 6 points. 

Lunch: So today for lunch I wanted some comfort food for lunch. I think the term “comfort food” is used frivolously nowadays thanks to certain chefs and such. I’m okay with comfort food every once in a while, but my issue with people like Paula Deen who is gung-ho about comfort food is that they are okay with having it every meal. (Am I alone in that?)  Anyway, my comfort food is BBQ. Always has been, always will be. So we went to Sonny’s for lunch after church. I had the lunch portion brisket plate. I know the turkey would have been only 4 points for the meat, but I was craving brisket at that point. I also had the baked beans (which are only 2 points) and the baked sweet potato for my sides. What really got me was the two pieces of garlic bread, which were 4 points apiece. All in all, I know it was bad, but at least I’m counting the points and recognizing my mistakes instead of just saying “hi-ho” and not caring. Plus, that’s why we have flex points. 24 points

 

Snack: Yesterday, we made our way down to the farmer’s market on Market Square and one of the vendors had strawberries that had been picked on Friday. They are delicious. So I put them on top of my Breyer’s ice cream that is only a point for a few scoops. I also put a little honey on top, which made it even better. Fantasticness.
Dinner: While we were down at the farmer’s market, we also bought some grass fed beef from the same Georgia farmers that we bought it from a few weeks ago. Tonight was my first attempt at cooking dinner this week. I made tacos with beef and they rocked! Earlier this afternoon, we made a batch of salsa so we used that and I even made some guacamole. They turned out great and they passed Megan’s taste test. So now I’m one for one on the week. Dinner was about 10 points.

Latte: As I mentioned earlier, part of this post was written at Black Dog Cafe. I always get their chai latte, which is hands down the best in town. 4 points.

 So today I racked up my share of points, but like I said earlier, at least I am actually counting now which is a step in the right direction. Can’t wait to see how this week goes. See ya tomorrow.

Day 580: A Special Afternoon Post!

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I have always been a huge fan of the show Frasier. His high class arrogance and antics always cracks me up, but the one thing about Frasier that I have always loved is his belief that people are inherently good. There is an episode where his identity is stolen by a character played by Nathan Lane, when Frasier catches him at a bar, Frasier gives him the opportunity to turn himself in. This goes south immediately, as you can imagine, which lands the real Frasier Crane in jail. Comical as it may be, I can relate to Frasier in this regard. I have always done my best to remember that people deep down inside (heck, even The Grinch had a heart even before the Whoville caper!) That belief was challenged last month when someone stole my Vibram Fivefingers instead of taking them to the lost and found in Leach. It hurt me, because they were something that I had been saving up for for a long time. I’m in no way materialistic, or at least I don’t try to be, but when they were stolen, it was like they were stealing something a part of my weight loss journey. I spent a lot of time and burned a lot of calories in those shoes. To have them taken from me really hurt.

So fast forward to about a week ago. I got a message in my Fotographing Fat Kid Facebook message box from a stranger named Heather. She empathized with me about how people could be so selfish. She told me that it bothered her so much that she couldn’t get it out of her head, so she wanted to buy me a new pair of Fivefingers. I was floored. I sat in front of my computer speechless. I re-read the message I don’t how many times to make sure I had read the message right. So this morning, I got a visit from our postwoman and she was carrying a shoebox. I now have a new pair of gorgeous yellow Fivefingers once again. They are just as comfortable as I remember. Thank you Heather. You have shown that there are still good people in the world.