Death by Chocolate

Is Tonight!!!!!!!!
So points are going to be nowhere near friendly and I'm totally o.k with that. I've been careful with breakfast and lunch. Headed out in the rain/drizzle last night to do my 5km. Tomorrow will be low points and another 5km. Can you tell I'm pre-justifiying my actions.

It's been quite sometime since I've gone so it should be interesting.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about:
Death by Chocolate is an abundance of small servings of many, many, many chocolate desserts. There's a chocolate fountain, cookies, tortes, cakes, creme brule and the like. It's all amazing because it's put on by the Fairmont Palliser. The also offer a sort of pasta night. You pick what type of pasta you want (long, short or filled), then choose your sauce base (tomatoe, alfredo, pesto or pesto cream) and then you can choose anything you want to be added to the sauce from about a list of 20 things (ie pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, chorizo sausage-just to name a few). One can get a small order of pasta.

The chocolate alone is $20 but well worth it, due to my self imposed budget for Hawaii I might just be having chocolate for supper. We'll see...the smell of the roasted garlic can definitely sway me towards pasta.

Creative cross training

Yesterday was the first time in a long time that I stayed OP to the point...whoo hoo now I just need to repeat the process :)
Watched an amazing documentary on Katrina/New Orleans on CBC newsworld last night, I love their docs because there never sensational, always interesting and a matter of fact. This one was particularly good because it gave you quite a bit of back history leading up to the devastation as well. I feel so blessed to live where I do, no chance of hurrican or really tornado. The only wicked bad weather thing that can happen here is torrential rain (survived that with no flooding) or an abundance of snow (so far survived over 100cm and no damage...just met all my neighbours as we dug out our houses).

Tonight is a training night and as long as it doesn't decide to pour on our heads we'll be out there. Not that rain would normally derail me but it's a balmy plus 12 with north winds. I'm not interested in getting sick with my world wind plans of painting a fence, window frames and a railing this long weekend.

Last night was cross training...I cleaned like a mad woman for a solid hour and a half. I just kept finding projects. By 8pm I was falling asleep on the couch. So I am counting that.

This morning I saw a bit of infomercial for Turbo Jam...I own this, I have already been sucked in by the merchandising machine. I've done it once. So I sat there thinking to myself...we should dust that off. Then I started to think of all the exercise dvds/vhs I own and realize I never need to join a gym.

Have a great day/night!

Back to civilization

Well I'm well rested and now back into the crazy pace of city life.
Pretty much spent the week sleeping, eating and catching up on all the soaps I watched last summer. It was good :)

Food was a total disaster since but I was only up 0.8 so I was quite happy with that. I didn't even stick to my training schedule. It was all about being relaxed and quiet.

Did get back into the game upon my return to the city. Did a 10k walk on Sunday, was supposed to do 13 but considering I barely moved a muscle the week before I'm not too disappointed. Tonight is 45min so that's very doable. What I really need to do is focus on the strength training.

The only stories I have to tell is of a psycho squirrel who liked to chase away the birds at the bird feeder...yup that was the most exciting thing to happen. Well there was gridlock traffic in the town nearest my Dad's place. No traffic lights so this was due to a large truck trying to make a left turn at a 4 way stop...y'all get the picture.

It's good to be back in the city but I actually started to think that living out there might not be so bad in the years to come. I'm a bit of a hermit normally and have pretty much resolved myself to dying alone (no need for any "I'm sure someone will come along") I'm not dead set on being the crazy lady with 20 cats but I'm not afraid of being alone either. I will attempt the internet dating thing again but I think after the marathon just because it takes up so much time this training business.

:)

Day 7/7 - Counting down the hours

Hello All,
So I was missing in action probably because I was eating. When I'm stressed I eat and I've been mega stressed thanks to work and the craziness that happens when you're trying to get organized before going on vacation. Actually yesterday I was very good points wise not excessive snacking, had to talk myself out of it a few times. Every time I wanted to snack I went and weighed myself...it worked well. Today just due to being busy I'm on plan, no time to snack. Tonight I must mow lawns, water flowers and pack so I won't be snacking either.

I'll be gone next week, I'm off to Dad's so the middle of nowhere with 6 channels well actually 3 but because he's smack in the middle of two major cities you get the locals from both. I'm packing books and my pilates DVD and my portable DVD player plus a few movies.

Training schedule is also going with me to go on his fridge for the week. Not sure if I can do the endurance walk do to location but then I'll just walk every day for shorter distances to make up the mileage for the week. It's early enough in training that I can pull that off plus the endurance distance for this week isn't much. Next week it start to get longer and longer and longer.

I get so tired at his house, I just want to sleep. I'll sleep late, I'll nap and I'll be out before The National. It's all that fresh air and no sounds of traffic. Everything runs in relation to sun up and sun down. I sometimes wonder if I'm running on adrenaline in the city and at his house I can stop and breathe.

He'll be doing all the cooking (he won't let me) so food will be a little hard to control the good thing is he doesn't make too many evil things and I will be stopping at Stupidstore to pick up milk, yogurt, cereal and any other necessity that he wouldn't eat.

I'm not missing any WI so the motivation will still be there that's for sure.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and a great week ahead.

Day 5/7 - Big miscalculation

My Stir fry turned into more of a disaster than too much sauce. I had a nagging feeling about the NI for the steam fried noodles. At first look the NI looked good and then I figured out how many servings were in the bag. OMG I was wrong. The NI is for 25g and there's 15 servings in the bag. So this morning I tossed all of it.

I should have realized it with the word fried in the title but for some reason I thought steam was good.

Oh well it's a learning opportunity. Today has been a weird food day. I know I'm an emotional eater and today was mega stress so this morning I grabbed a raspberry delight (granolaish raspberry things) that I'm pretty sure is equally evil to a scone. So I'm not sure how to calculate that but tonight will be a low point dinner and no snacks whatsoever. I have to go to the library tonight and it takes about 20min to walk home from there. Yoga didn't happen yesterday so I think I'll do it today.

Onwards and hopefully downwards!

Day 4/7 - Gene Simmons is funny

OMG, last night I laughed all the way through two episodes of Gene Simmons Family Jewels. I love this show it's Gene at home with the woman and the kids. 23 years of unmarried bliss he says. Of course his signficant other is Shannon Tweed who is Canadian by the way.
The kids are funny, the dog is funny. Gene is hysterical. I vaguely remember the leaders of a summer camp pretending to be KISS but other than that they were slighltly before my time.
Last night one episode was the son (Nicholas) challenging Dad to a driver's test and another had Dad (a notorious womanizer) freaking out over his daughter dating. It really seems like this how they all are at home. They're sarcastic and you can tell love each other very much.
I highly recommend this.

On to training : tonight is Yoga. Of course when I got home from work I was starving so I made a botched stir fry which now means I have to wait a bit before I can do Yoga because your not supposed to do it on a full stomach. The stir fry is botched because I never get it right, it's either too much sauce or not enough. Tonight too much sauce so I added more steam fried noodles which now means it's going to stir fry for lunch all week. Now I can't stop yawning so if Yoga doesn't happen I did walk home from the mall fast because I was trying to avoid getting soaked in the pending rain.

Point wise still did well today I'm quite happy now it's just 3 days to get through to complete a week. Then I'm off for a week at my Dad's house so no blogging during that time and at the mercy of my Dad's fridge but I will be training and my training schedule is coming with me so it can be on his fridge for the week.

Must go drink copious amounts of water to offset the sodium in the stir fry.

Later

Day 3/7 part 1 - Sonya thinks I'm Inspiring

I'm so incredibly honoured that someone thinks I'm inspiring. Especially someone like Sonya, she's having a bambino that's an amazing thing all in itself.

TP (Training Partner) and myself realize that marathon is not that far away. We are now in week 3 of training. Week 1 was fantastic, Week 2 had a whole lot of rest days with bursts of activity in between. So here at Week 3 we know that goofing around is now over. We're serious, we're committed, we're shopping for hydration packs.

Little did I realize that conversations with a good friend would consist of debates over hydration packs "I think we should go 3L just to be safe and the Bushido from MEC feeds through the shoulder strap".
Discussions over carb consumption "So the sport beans are neat and the exact same carbs as gel so maybe for 6.5 - 7hrs we should have a combination of beans, gels and a mix of bite size pieces of clif bars"
Discussions over potential chafing "We should really try every hydration pack on and see how it feels, 7hrs in heat and humidity could get ugly"

We're on the pathway tonight being the fashion police for technical fabric. "I can't believe that guy is running in a cotton t-shirt, does he not know that cotton is evil".

By golly I think we're turning into the two old guys from the Muppets.

We did well tonight, goal was 45min, we did closer to 50min (it's hard to stop dead at 45min - your're usually at an awkward spot on the pathway, we could have gone 22.5 min out and back but we chose a loop instead). Points have been excellent today, hydration good could be better.

Tomorrow is 30 min of Cross Training so I think I'll do yoga. I need some serious stretching.

See ya tomorrow!

Now I'm excited! - Day 2 out of 7 (Week 1)

So WI was a miracle...I stayed the same. Quite pleased with that.
Saturday turned into a personal last supper, I remember doing that the week before I joined WW in the first place.

I made a conscious decision to make this day 1. So day 1 was the last supper but I stayed up late watching Coyote Ugly on ABC so there were many hours between last food intake and sleep.
Today has been wicked OP. I think part of my problem is not looking at what types of food my body needs. Sundays are long distance training day so I met my training partner for the first time in a few weeks because our schedules finally connected. We did a little over 11km at the right pace. Before heading out I had a home made yogurt fruit parfait and a glass of milk, after workout I had a homemade egg mcmuffin and some ham bacon and a home made cafe mocha. That was at noon, so I had my pre workout carbs and my post workout protein and my stomach hasn't grumbled once and it's now 4pm.

Next weeks lunches will be a balance of protein and veggies. I'm thinking of having yogurt with my morning english muffin instead of waiting until 9am to have the yogurt. It's all about statistics my friends.

My training partner told me something really comforting. I was a bit freaked out about going to Hawaii and her whole family being there...you know odd person out. I guess originally her brother wanted to be in Hawaii the same time I was planning to be and TP told him that there would be no time for family time then because her friend was coming (that's me). So now there in Hawaii a week ahead of my arrival as a family and then everyone except her mom and her goes home the day after the marathon. I'll be temporarily adopted for the marathon support but afterwards I know that her mom, her and I will have a fabulous time for the following week.

Wow now I'm excited... a little curious of what I'll be allowed to bring on the plane. If they ban electronics then I better be allowed to bring a book and a couple of mags. 7 hours is a long time to be staring at the seat in front of you.

Hope everyone had a super great weekend!

4 months exactly

Today is exactly 4 months from me standing on the starting line (well behind 27000 other people) of the Honolulu Marathon...whoo hoo!
Which means 4 months away from my goal date of being at goal.

Lately it's been hard to stay OP and I'm not sure why. I took time to self analyze and these are some of theories.
Long weekend - 3 days of 24/7 access to the fridge and no routine like at work.
Plans that go awry - Bring really healthy lunch to work and then wind up going out for lunch (that only happened yesterday) which then throws off your day.
Meal planning - As in perhaps I should do that
Training plans and weather: Last night was a training night, training partner stuck out of town. Thought about walking home but the sky indicated bad idea. There was a vicious thunderstorm but did I go home and pop in a dvd...no.
Snacking after dinner: Meticulously went through my cupboards for low point options made that but then at 8:30pm had uncontrollable desire for an ice cream sandwich.
Water- As in drink it regularly

A part of all this is probably TOM related but I'm dead serious about the next 4 months. You all will be my inspiration. When you have good days I will be inspired, when you have bad days it will remind me that we are all human and that this is a lifestyle not a diet and more importantly I will know that I'm not alone in all this and do my best to inspire you as well.

I'm back on an OP challenge then, which I'll do in 7 day increments, 121 days sounds a little daunting. Saturday is WI so I will start Day 1 then, but the staying OP starts today.

This was on Ironbelle's blog and technically I was tagged so here it goes.

5 strange habits
1) Can not eat any meat that has bones, it there's not a choice I'll eat around them
2) WI rituals - same scale every time and wear the exact same outfit every Saturday
3) My office is crazy neat, my house not so much
4) When I weigh myself at home, I always step on the scale right foot first
5) I also hate Christmas (too many years in retail) but adore Halloween

Hawaii is a GO!

How things can change in 24 hours. So my friend found a two bedroom condo right behind the Hawaiian Hilton Village. I got my flight for $850, originally priced at $876 then jumped to $1006 and then I checked back a couple of hours later and got my $850. Booked in on expedia, did a quick check on all the other sites for the same flight and I saved at least $150 bucks. There were cheaper flights but with mega layovers. Mine is a direct flight...woohoo. Now all I need to do is sign up for the marathon and this is a done deal.

Now my mind is racing, stay op, train, where the heck can I buy shorts in December. My goal is to be at goal by then, I might be travelling with an empty suitcase and buy warm weather clothes there.

This does put me on a budget for the next few months. I have to give my friend the moolah for the condo before October because that's when they charge her card. My original thinking was technically don't need to pay for the hotel until check out. Oh well it's about $571 for my portion which is still pretty darn good so I just can't go crazy at Walmart and be cautious with my "want it now" habits.

I get a room of my own, because there's a kitchen save some money on not eating out all the time plus that's a wee bit easier to stay on plan.

As far as this weekend went, food was hard only because my routine was tossed off. Didn't get a lot done just did a lot of relaxing :)

Round and round in circles

In my attempt to walk 9.7K for my training program I went in search of the elusive staircase that leads to the pathway. The reason this staircase is elusive is because it's not marked and behind bushes in a park. There's a lot of parks in this neighbourhood. The first time I found it from the pathway itself now I'm going in reverse. Thought I found it but that resulted in hiking a large portion of the Douglas Fir Trail with lots of stairs. These are "natural" stairs so wooden frame filled with dirt and the heights are wicked uneven. I got quite the workout hiking down and the back up. Didn't complete 9.7 but I didn't care that little hike but out way more exertion then I was supposed to do so I call it even.

I was up .8 at WI which is fine because it's TOM related, I've been up as much as 2lbs that week so my water was on track. I even had potatoe salad for dinner the night before.

I'm focusing on activity this week for sure and I'll head out for another walk tomorrow and yoga might be in future tonight just to stretch out some muscles a bit better.

Hawaii might be going better. I picked up a Frommer's guide yesterday and have started looking at like I'm going solo. Found a few jewels that they recommended that fit my budget. The tricky part is availability now. There's quite a few that I looked at that are booked solid for the first 4 days of my trip. I've also embraced the fact that if it's not meant to be this year, there's always next year.

I'm supposed to meet up with TP and her Mom tomorrow. A part of me is thinking this is me against them and I'm the third wheel. I've gotten over the fact that if we do two room I'll be paying more by looking for rooms that would be the same price as my half of the original hotel I booked which was a pricier one right on the beach. I found a very promising one and emailed them for info on availability last night...so we'll see.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Food Kleptomaniac

It's not that I'm stealing other peoples food (I do know some people who do this), it's that whatever my intention is this week I wind up with more.
For example this morning - I go to get a cup of coffee and I come back with coffee and raisin toast.
I just don't get my behaviour this week, I know it's partially due to the on coming of TOM but come on you'd think I could talk myself out of it. It will be interesting to see my WI results on Saturday. I'm not working tomorrow, took the day off to spend with my Dad. My Dad is not exactly the healthiest eater on the planet. We're German so at his house every day around 3pm some sort of pastry is consumed. Typically it doesn't happen at my house, plus I don't have any pastry in the house.

I'm a bit bummed today, probably helping the behaviour above.

The Honolulu marathon plans are going up in smoke. I was going with my training partner (TP) and her Mom. A little weird for me since the last time I was in Honolulu was with my Mom before she got ill. Then it started to turn into sort of a family vacation for TP with multiple family members, I totally think that's great for her but I'm not so keen on it...call me difficult. My family isn't close and I have no siblings so I'm fairly independant and not so sure how to interact in a multi family member environment. Technically this is my winter vacation and I can't get my head around spending it with someone else's family, it would be different if I was visiting them but it's the going en masse sort of thing plus they were to be there a week ahead of me. I know their great but it's not the picture I had in my head. It's the feeling of being the third wheel.
Way back at the beginning of this marathon plan, I reserved a room for TP, Mom and me and sort of had a budget layed out. Now TP is suggesting a two room condo or two hotel rooms because we're all used to living on our own and we don't want to drive each other bananas. Valid point but that would double my costs for hotel. She has a point that if we had a condo then we could buy groceries, but yet again it would me and her family.
At the end of the day I'd be looking at roughly $2500 for one week holiday and that is just soooooo much too me and that's not including spending money.
So now I think she and her family should go to Hawaii and have a fantastic time. I'll find a marathon closer to home or wait for the Calgary Marathon in July.

I'm not totally giving up on Hawaii but it seems like it's getting further and further away.

I'll be back over the weekend with a much better outlook...I promise.

The Adventures of Walking Home

Death By Chocolate has been post poned. Which is probably for the best...I think I have some Light Dr Oetker Chocolate Mousse mix at home...I might need to go there with all the thoughts of chocolate dancing in my head.

So I being intrepid and somewhat intelligent decided to walk home after work yesterday. My walking buddy bailed on me and we're off kilter as to training plan. She's a day behind me. I'm a little sketchy on the pathway up by hood. There's an elusive staircase on the side of the cliff completely surrounded by trees that leads from the path up to the neighbourhoods so I went on a quest to find it. Part of this walk is a little spooky because it gets very woodsy and no people around except for the stray abandoned shopping cart. Hats off to the people who push them all the way up there because that's far and not so easy.

I started off my trek with my loaded backpack and at a good pace. Got past the last major bridge which is where my knowledge of the path gets sketchy. Stepped off the main path on to a side one that I thought was the one I needed. After climbing up on a gravel pathway for roughly 2k, I realized nope this isn't it. I knew I would surface in an area I was familiar with I just didn't quite know where. I surface in the neighbourhood 3 over from mine. Which was o.k, the end result just over 7km with mega hill work. I got home exhausted probably slightly dehyrdrated...fuel belt can not go on due to backpack and like an idiot I didn't stop to drink.

Lesson learned: make sure to take a sip of water every 15min and stay on the main path longer to find the elusive staircase.

There will be another attempt probably next week :)