This last week I, too, fell victim to the awful menace of weekends. Normally I don't do too badly on weekends, but this week the weekend teamed up with two other weekend villains: freshly waxed skin (you're not supposed to exercise for 24 hours after a professional wax since it can irritate the skin...or so they told me), and my longtime fitness nemesis, Dragon Age.

The wax was one of a series of recent attempts to have more adventures. Periodically I feel myself stagnating and want to make some drastic change, which is when I usually either chop off my hair or move. Since I don't want to do either of those things, I'm looking for other ways to shake things up. I've been compiling a list of "adventures" I want to have. So far I've thought of:

• Get something waxed
• Go rock climbing
• Train for and complete a half marathon
• Wear bright lipstick...in public
• Take a Web Design class
• Try a martial arts class

Anybody have any other recommendations?

So the first hit to my point total came from an adventure wax. As for the second...what can I say? Dragon Age is awesome! I killed like a million zombies and dark spawn and also got my character to date this guy: 

I know he doesn't look like much, but he's quite charming.

This week isn't off to the most auspicious start, as for my final FHE (got released yesterday!) we decided to do a liquid nitrogen ice cream party. My friend Chris mixed up a bunch of ice cream flavors, and then my friend Todd added liquid nitrogen to them to freeze the ice cream instantly.

It was super cool and delicious and I had to try every flavor, obviously. After today, though, things should go better.

I need to teach my body that Broccoli IS comfort food :-)

I really have to say, which I may have said before is that counting calories really does make me aware of the amount of food I am eating. I wish my calorie cap was up at Brett's level, but I'm not really looking to gain weight :-), my body tries to do that on its own :-). I'm not sure what to say really on the food challenge thing, I'm going to be honest, so I'm just ya know going to ramble on the family blog here :-). So, you should go to Mom's facebook page and see the video we uploaded of Eli riding his trike in the bare kitchen. It was fun to see the progress! Sounds like the floor and maybe even the cabinets (without tops) are going to be going in this week. We're going to have to craigslist or see if we can sell the old sink and dishwasher for scrap.

I was getting really bored at work, I know who would have thought call center work could ever get old? But I found new motivation this week. If I want to ever do anything different, I have to get my handle time under control, so you know new goal new thing to work towards.

I like being out at the beach though, lots easier to get my exercise points in, Eli wants to go to the beach and run on the sand and in and out of the waves everyday :-). Fun times getting exercise. One day I might get used to climbing the stairs at the end of the street here :-)

Fiber and the beach

This past week, Jenna, Eli, and I have been at the beach house as she mentioned in one of her posts. Almost everyday, Eli has wanted to go down to the beach. He has a new game in which he likes to run into the water and wait for the water to reach up to his knees and sometimes up to his hip. Than Eli (and I) will fight the water. The water represents the beagle boys from DuckTales. So we punch and kick the water and runaway. We repeat this over and over again. If Jenna is with us, we first save Jenna from the water and than fight the beagle boys.

Here is an article that talks about the benefits of fiber. We know it is healthy for us, but this just is a good article that summarizes studies done to help find out the benefits of fiber.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.2009.00189.x/pdf

I didn't do very well on the points this week, but I did lose 1 pound.  While we didn't eat Subway every time we ate out, I did try to be sensible. I also didn't snack as much.  I think not having a kitchen made me realize how much I "drive by" snack all day.  I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen usually and it's easy to sort of graze all day.  A good reminder of why it is extremely important to track or write down everything one eats.  Nibbling adds up! This week I am trying the "Cinnamon and Honey" diet.  Claims are that if you drink hot water with a teaspoon of cinnamon and a tablespoon of honey morning and night you will lose weight.  I've also heard the same about raw vinegar, so I think I'll add a tablespoon of raw vinegar to the mix...

Pop Challenge

My pop challenge for this week was eating your fruit on Thursday.

Easy way to get your Veggies

This post is on behalf of Chris, since he has no idea how to blog.  He says:

I don't know why everyone is having a hard time getting in their veggies.  Try my 2 favorite veggies they are plentiful and delicious.  I always make sure I eat plenty of chicken and mayonnaise.

As we all know, chicken's are only one step above a vegetable.  Mayo is made from eggs (remember chickens are veggies) and vegetable oil.  So if you can't eat enough carrots try more chicken and mayo.

Good luck all.

33 and Half Apples.

This week I came out swinging like a champion. I've started a diet plan, I'm tracking all of my calories, and with daily motivated exercise I think I can actually feel myself getting stronger and faster by the day. In this advance of power, however, I have discovered a new weakness: weekends. This week I made 46 point between Monday and Friday! for Saturday and Sunday I managed 3.... any tips on staying motivated during time off? 

Oh, and concerning the apples. My diet plan is a muscle building diet, I'm a small person and I'm working on getting a little bigger. One of the requirements of my newly adopted diet is eating a minimum of 2600 calories a day. This is proving more difficult than I anticipated and results in often feeling full. To put that amount in perspective I averaged out a few different calorie charts and came up with the above example: eating 2600 calories = 33 1/2 apples a day. 

p.s. Triscuts are a tasty and simple way to get fiber that also come in convenient 20 calorie doses that can round out a count quite nicely. 

A man a plan

A Canal

Panama

I'm getting better at this. I got all motivated this weekend and formed a meal plan. I implemented this new device today - tracking calories and watching what I eat. I'm working on some basic google research and trying to stick to a muscle building diet. Eating enough calories has so far proven difficult, I'm sure it would be easy if I just went and bought a pizza or two but off of veggies, yogurt and almonds I find I have to eat past full for most meals.... I'm hoping extra food = extra energy which will help me stay alert in class. 

We had really good weather this last week and running outside with sunshine is the bomb!

Life up date, since I'm not good at calling people, I got in trouble last week because I stored a propane tank in my room after the camping trip to Yosemite (totally forgot this was against barracks regs -- but it makes sense, a building crammed full of people and flammables is a bad match) and then while I was not in my room this tank started to leak and someone thought they smelt a gas leak from the building and THEN we all got evacuated while the fire department came and looked through my things....

everything considered I got off really light for it: a few different sergeants yelled at me, I have a written note of it on my record, and I had to give the company formation a detailed brief on our official barracks policy last Friday.

Other than that tests have finally calmed down, I'm trying to stay focused on learning, and I want to book a flight to go camping in August. 

p.s. more of you all need to post every week because even if it's only a few words, I like hearing from you!

p.p.s Stick With It!

To the Beach with You!

So, I'm thinking I'm going to do even better with my exercise points. All of the kitchen construction is making Eli go crazy, as he does not like change, so Mom and Dad sent us down to the beach. I know I was saying "please, please anything but that! Don't make us go and enjoy the beach house for a week while you all live with a make-shift kitchen on the patio, eating off paper plates and trying not to step on anything sharp as you walk across the now under construction kitchen! Don't make me go out to the coast during a week of sun before school gets out so it's not even crowded!" A nice side effect of all of this "suffering" is that playing with Eli and walking to the beach and walking around the mall gets me exercise points :-). Today was the first day of actual contractor construction, though I think there was more destruction today before construction could begin. I hope it's all going well :-)

Ok, so the first week I did the "Lemon cleanse" diet and lost 3 pounds, the next week I was all about Atkins and lost two pounds. Last week I was at Nikki's house and thought I'd just do her every other day thing.  I gained back two pounds as I kept resisting having an on day!. Also the frantic pace of  life with the boys kept me reaching for chocolate on the many off days! I have been looking for a chocolate diet, but that's too much to ask I think.  This week I have no kitchen so I think I'll try the "Subway Diet"    Some guy named Jared lost lots of weight on that one..  Also I did not exercise last week.  Again I'll shoot for 3 days this week. Thanks for all your posts-I like reading them.  After this we should just do a family blog for fun.

Food for thought?

I found a website about food and likely excuses people may have:

	But the doughnut was calling my name.
	But it was my birthday, so I had to eat the whole cake.
	I had to get the bitter taste out of my mouth from eating the so-called dish, so I had an ice cream.
	If you eat something and no one sees you eat it, it has no calories.
	If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are canceled out by the diet soda.
	If you fatten up everyone else around you, then you look thinner.
	Cookie pieces contain no fat -- the process of breaking causes fat leakage.
	Things licked off knives and spoons have no calories if you are in the process of preparing something. Examples are peanut butter on a knife making a sandwich and ice cream on a spoon making a sundae.
	Only eat things that have been broken into pieces; that way, all the calories fall out.
	Chocolate is a vegetable. How, you ask? Chocolate is derived from cacao beans. Bean = vegetable. Sugar is derived from either sugar CANE or sugar BEETS. Both are plants, which places them in the vegetable category. Thus, chocolate is a vegetable.

Website: http://www.butlerwebs.com/jokes/diet.htm

Here are some websites that they more about the benefits of eating oranges and apples. These are not necessarily academic sites, but still do contain useful information:

http://www.besthealthmag.ca/eat-well/nutrition/15-health-benefits-of-eating-apples

http://www.healthonlinezine.info/health-benefits-of-oranges-nutritional-value-of-orange.html

 I think we know that eating fruits and vegetables are good, but it is nice to know how they can benefit us.

Here are two sites that talk about broccoli. I admit I like broccoli. I grew up eating broccoli a lot, so I got used to them, and again, I still like them.

http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/oct/health-benefits-broccoli-require-whole-food-not-supplements

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=9

Philosophy of Dodge

No joke, today I listened to an 11 minute podcast about philosophy and running. It was the nerdiest thing ever and I enjoyed it very much.

Afterward I tried to track my afternoon run through the "embodiment," "cerebral," "Cartesian," and "I can't remember what they called the last one" stages, but I was listening to Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me at the same time so I lost track. They had Steve Martin as the guest on Wait Wait, so it's not like you can blame me.

Tonight we're playing dodgeball for FHE, but I think I'll just sit back and construct a philosophy of dodge. It will be deep. I don't need the exercise points anyway.