One down, many more to go

Happiness is finishing a craft project ! I finished the lap quilt yesterday, and I am very pleased with the results. It measures 36 by 36 , and the size seems to be optimal for wheel chair use- keeps the legs warm but does not need to be folded over or is so long as to get caught in the wheels. I designed this to include two of my mother in law's collectible things, but never realized how optimistic the over all look of the quilt would be. I am very pleased with the outcome, and now I am beginning to think of my next project. That one is going to be a baby quilt for one of my nieces.

It is snowing here again and last night spaghetti was planned for dinner. Funny how this go to quick easy meal has changed so much since we began weight loss. Before it would be some kind of meat, a jar of sauce and a pound bag of pasta- most of the pasta eaten by my son. It was always plain white pasta because any other texture would cause a sensory melt down. Now it is still some kind of meat and a jar of sauce, but 6 ounces of whole wheat pasta and something to stretch the pasta with. This gets interesting. Last night I decided to try sauteed onions and mushrooms ( take 1 T olive oil, slice up a bunch of mushrooms and onions, cover and steam/saute, then mix with cooked pasta and cover with sauce). It was very tasty and VERY filling. It is surprising how much "nothing" vegetables will fill you up.

Tomorrow is weigh in and I am really hoping the muscle mass gain has turned around ! I stopped weighing myself after Tuesday morning - it was making me crazy to watch the numbers creep up. At that point it said I had gained 3.4 pounds from Saturday, so we shall see.

Save room for desert !

It's Thursday of the first week back to the routine of life, and things are going well. This is a bit of a sigh of relief, as two weeks ago Bob looked at me a bit perplexed, asking me how I was going to be able to get in everything I already do plus work on this quilt project. In usual fashion I shook my head and said don't worry , I will do it. However , the truth was I was a little concerned. There are days that just getting a shower in is still a trick ! Homeschooling takes time, exercise takes time, my reiki work takes time, my own studying takes time and household management takes time , and no matter how loudly I plead, there are only 24 hours in every day and one of me.

Yesterday afternoon I moved to the point of binding the quilt, and I was tickled with myself. The house was clean, I had gotten in a solid 45 minutes of exercise, a good school day had been accomplished and dinner was cooking in the crock pot- along with planing for the next weeks meals, shopping and school taken care of. How did I do it ? The one that really made me wonder about was the exercise. For 3 weeks now I have been being very good in this department, thanks to the aquisition of two Wii games I really love. It is said that half of the battle with exercise is finding something you love. I think the other half is finding time to do it ! What was different now about how I was operating ?

Then I realized the reason was sitting in my hands, with pins and needles coming out of it. As much as I love every aspect of my life, I love creating things more. And as much as I love creating, putting them into a fabric medium is a passion. I love making crafts, quilts and even doing simple garment repairs. Having this quilt project with a deadline meant I not only had to carve out time for this , but I wanted to . I also had to carve out time for all the other things, so it suddenly made me more efficient. I wake up, take care of some "buisness"( planing, bloging, email, study), do some reiki work, get in my exercise, get school going and while Nick works on self directed things I clean house. Then after school is done, I am free to work my passion in fabric till dinner, and then while watching TV in the evenings. It flows for me ! Knowing this, I think I would be wise to come up with a few other projects to do once this quilt is finished, which should be later today. Pictures tomorrow.

I write about this not because I am an expert at time management, but rather because I think one of the hurdles is to find the right reward or carrot for the journey. We all know what we need to do and we all know the reasons why we do not do it. Perhaps if we think in different terms, saving the thing we love the most for the thing we do last , it can make is all a little more efficient . It can help us to go that extra mile with the process and leave us with results that will make us proud. Each of us leads a life that is like a wonderful buffet of choices, and like a buffet they need a bit of management. If we dive right into the fun deserts, we get stuffed with things that appeal to our taste buds but offer little nutrition. If we ate nothing but tossed salad we would be healthier, but also would feel very deprived and bored. Too much of the meat entrees will make us feel really satiated but give us heart burn from the seasonings. The trick is to select sensible portions from each group and allow ourselves a desert at the end for fun. Quilts, it seems, may be the best desert for me.

So THAT'S what I need !

Thanks to watching The Biggest Loser last night, I think I finally figures out what I am doing wrong with weight loss. Two things actually. And it occurred to me that there are probably a lot of us who are struggling that are doing the same wrong things. So in the interest of the betterment of mankind, I will share. Ready ?

1. My scale does not make beeping sounds while it weighs. This part seems critical. Unless the scale beeps it does not know if it should stop on those bigger or smaller numbers, and therfore gets stuck. I think this Saturday I should have the guys either beep, hum or whistle to our scale while we weigh in. It will help.

2. I do not own a colored sports bra. It seems to be an important bit of equipment in the process. Notice the eliminated team last night were men, and neither of which wore a sports bra. Note to self- buy a florescent yellow one.

Needless to say I watched The Biggest Loser last night. I found myself cheering when I learned that the heaviest contestant to date was not only from my home town of Chicago, but an Italian American like my husband and son. Ah, the power of pasta and pizzas !!!!

I worked on my quilt as I watched and found myself talking back to the screen with some of the contestants. (Note- I have been overweight all my life, and not only have had several boyfriends but married . Your weight is NOT what is keeping you from meeting someone. Your belief in yourself is). I also made sarcastic comments about the opening challenge ( contestants will race on indoor stationary bikes because after last seasons fiasco we are afraid of potential lawsuits and want to save near death experiences for later in the season).

I am asking myself if you sit and heckle The Biggest Loser , is this a sign of weight loss burn out ???

Sure. Make me nervous !

One word can sum up yesterday - busy !

Between back to school and my reiki work it felt like someone placed the day in a blender and turned it on high ! Seems that back to routines do that to us all. However, I managed to get in 45 minutes of exercise (rowing, Pilates and walking) , and stayed true to my food plan during it all. Breakfast was a yogert bluberry smoothie( plain nonfat yogert, frozen blueberries and a scoop of whey powder). A blue monster, made at my son's request. Lunch was a flat bread pizza with cut veggies ( I remebered to snap a picture this time)

Dinner was turkey basil meat loaf , roast root veggies and a salad of baby greens. It seems the muscle gain affect is still going on and it is making me more than a little nervous. I have been stepping on the scale every morning in an attempt to manage things, and so far I am UP 3.4 pounds from Saturday, which was up 1.2 from last week. Am I really THAT much of a wimp ??? When is it going to hit the point of turn around ???

Which makes me think about one of the reasons I really dislike The Biggest Loser and other weight loss shows. What if ou have a condition that, in spite of your very best efforts, will not allow you to lose weight ? They do indeed exist ( kidney malfunctions, Insulin resistance, different cortizol medications and so forth). And what if you are not "miserable because I am fat" ??? What if you are perfectly content with who you are and what you are, but have determined your physical self would preform at a more optimum capacity if you weighed a little less ( because your insurance company is threatening to raise your rates or your Doctor determines everything that you experience from the shattered knee in the car accident to H1N1 is a direct result of your weight)??? What service does it do ANYONE to have a program that screams "Happiness only comes through weight loss that is archived through a lifestyle that compromises everything else in your life ". Why ? Because we all still want something to blame . Very few of us have come to realize that no matter where you go or what you do, you bring you with you. External things are meaningless unless there is a solid internal make up. If you disbelieve in yourself at 200 pounds, you will still disbelieve in yourself at 120 if you do not work on the root cause. Now if Biggest Loser would spend a lot more time on that process and a lot less time on showcasing Jillian being verbally abusive and how the players figure the best way to point fingers at fellow cast members, I think it could do some real and lasting good !

In the meantime, I will continue to do what I am doing and watch the scale in amusement and fear.

Salad and hoops and cold...Oh My !!!

Woke up yesterday to absolutely bone chilling cold in the apartment. We have heat and it is working, but when the tempurature drops down to below zero and the wind hits from the north, this normally toasty apartment becomes a refrigerator. I was so cold my bones hurt ! So we worked as a team to take emergency steps to heat up the house ( hang blankets on the wall, fill crockpots with water and run them on high and take hot showers) , and soon it became bearable and I could move. It worked hard all day and acchived the grand tempirature of 3 degrees by later in the day. Today proves to be a heat wave- it is a whopping 8 degrees at 7 am so far !

So what is the logical thing to do on such a cold day ? Why go out shopping and for a salad lunch of course ! Desire would have had me stay home and quilt in the warm, but there were things that were needed, and Nick was really stir crazy, so it's out in the cold we go. Strangely enough, I was really craving a good salad, so we went to Sweet Tomatoes. They always have great offerings!

romaine, broccoli, butternut squash, cherry tomatoes, raw beets, sunflower seeds, red onions, red cabbage, peas , mushrooms wih a fat free french dressing

classic spinach salad, citrus arugula whole wheat pasta salad, Asian noodle salad with whole wheat pasta and Chicken Wonton Salad. All very yummy !

Then we headed off to WalMart to buy the things we were questing after. And amongst the goodies was my hula hoop and a new sewing machine. I bought a Singer Pixie because a. it looks like it will do everything I require out of a machine and b. it is very affordable. I have sewn many items for over 25 years and NEVER had I needed, wanted or used 99 percent of the fancy stitch capability of most modern sewing machines. Straight stitch, zig zag stitch, button hole stitch and automatic bobbin feed is all you really ever need to do anything under the sun. The more stitches it is capable of, the more prone to break down and wiggy stitching it is. Don't need it !

Once back home I warmed up by working more on my quilt, which is getting close to being done, and then played with my hula hoop. As a kid I never could do them , but with the Wii Fit I was able to do it and figure out the movement, so hopefully I could do it now. Well, guess again ! I tried and tried and tried, but I cannot get the silly thing to work around my hips ! I can get the motion with my neck...almost... but not the hips ! I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but I will keep trying. As Bob pointed out , even if I cannot get the thing to work I will be getting a lot of exercise from the constand bending down to pick the darned thing up !

It is back to school for us today, and my goal is to do school, get the housework done, get in exercise and get more done on the quilt . All that movement will help me to keep warm !

That Saturday Thing

First the good- one of you asked for the recipe for the pizza we made on New Year Eve. It is very easy, very healthy and very tasty

Wrap Pizza ( 260 calories, depending on brands used)

1 La Tortilla high fiber tortilla( or comparable brand)
2 T hummus ( I use red pepper hummus or plain)
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella
2 large mushrooms, sliced

optional toppings - 1 T bacon pits, cooked sausage, leftover turkey or chicken ( calories will go up according)

Place tortilla on a cookie sheet, spread with hummus, sliced mushrooms and cheese. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes( till cheese is melted and the tortilla is the level of crisp you want). We serve these with either a tossed salad or raw veggies

Now on to the not so good- weigh in. Monitoring what I eat, doing 30 minutes of rowing and 20 minutes of Pilates 20 minutes 6 times this week, and the results are

Me- UP 1.2 lbs ( I seem to do better not exercising)
Hubby - DOWN 3.0 lbs
Son ( who also exercised with me) - UP 1.6

Seriously I am thinking the gain is muscle mass gain . I intend to do the same pattern this week, because I honestly believe it is muscle mass gain, and if I am right it should turn around this coming week as the muscle starts to increase the metabolism. At least hubby lost- and it is always nice when one of us is in a disgustingly chipper mood because of the scale.

Cold here today, and it was cold last night as well. I went to sleep and had strange dreams about making quilts for Somalia ( would they need them ?) and going to a pot luck where a woman baked a cake that looked like a beehive hair style and discovering that the cake included actual human hair. Gross, but I winder what my brain was trying to tell me in that dream. I don't eat cake, crave cake, think about hair or any such thing. Bizzare !

Plans for today's eats are oatmeal for breakfast, minestrone soup and salad for lunch and leftover ham baked with cauliflower and cheese. Plans are for shopping, chopping and more applique work on the quilt, another session of rowing and pilates. Have a good one !

Happy New...you get the drill !

Sorry for the late post, but I have been having fun with a non weight loss related project today !
Yesterday I went to the shrine of creativity(aka Hobby Lobby) to buy the fabric for the lap quilt I am making. Got it home, cut out the pieces, began to work the appliques , only to discover that MY SEWING MACHINE IS DEAD ! ( que the sound of taps in the distance...) It lived a long and productive life for 25 years. In that time it had made 55 jumpers, 13 full sized quilts, 20 wall quilts, about 500 soft toys, 2 bridal gowns, hundreds of pairs of toddler pants, 4 kilts, 2 coats, a zillion Christmas ornaments, place mats, napkins, washable moon rags and lots more. It actually died about 2 years ago , but I forgot about it ( When weight loss began, crafting ended it seems). The machine will be replaced, but in the mean time I have to have this quilt ready by the 17th of January. No machine + a time deadline means Diane Hand Sews.

At first I cringed and panicked. Then I sat down to begin to stitch, and I remembered that I actually LOVE hand sewing. So for much of las night and today I have been sewing, taking some breaks to exercise and cook ( tortilla pizzas last night, eggs and turkey bacon this morning and ham with broccoli and sweet potatoes tonight), and sewing some more. And I am LOVING what is being created. Yes, pictures will follow once I get this done.

Tomorrow morning is weigh in. I am curious to see what a week of 20 minutes of Pilates and 30 minutes of rowing 6 x this week will result in.