Wordless Wednesday: Hopefully, These Are The Last Snow/Ice Photos I Take Until Next Winter
20 Pounds In 20 Weeks: Week 8: Fruits and Veggies
This weigh-in, the scale read 190. This means that I’ve lost 15 pounds in just 8 short weeks. Just five pounds more and I’ll be at my goal. I’m 75% of the way there.
| Starting Weight | 205 |
| Current Weight | 190 |
| Goal Weight | 185 |
| Lost | 15 |
| Left Until Goal | 5 |
When you’re trying to lose weight, one thing people often do is cut back drastically on how much they eat. This, in general, can be good. The average “American portion” is usually double a normal portion size (at least). Take a plate and a pot of cooked pasta. Fill up the plate how you would expect to be served in an Italian restaurant. Now fill up a second, identical plate with a real serving of pasta. The restaurant serving will likely be four times the amount of pasta as the real serving.
So how do you fill up while still slashing the calories? It’s simply really. Add a lot of fruits and vegetables. Making a sandwich? Skip the mayo and add tomatoes, cucumbers, bean sprouts and any other veggie you can think of to add in flavor. Need a side dish for dinner? Slice up some zucchini, place the rounds on a baking sheet, coat with a little cooking spray and add salt, pepper and garlic powder. Next cook at 425 for 8 minutes, flip and cook for another 8 minutes. Want a mid-morning snack? Don’t reach for a chocolate bar, reach for a banana. Or slice up some strawberries and enjoy with a little light whipped cream.
The more fruits and veggies you add to your diet, the fuller you will feel and the healthier you will be. Just don’t drown your fruits/veggies with calorie and fat laden toppings like cheese sauce or heavy salad dressings.
Aloha Friday: Bloggy Writer’s Block
I’m sitting here trying to come up with a topic for my Aloha Friday post, but I’m drawing a blank. So I’ll make that my topic! It can be tricky to come up with post topics day after day. Oftentimes, I’ll find myself not knowing what I’m going to post about right until the very end. Other times, I’ll have so many post ideas that I don’t have enough days to post them all.
My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever had bloggy writer’s block? If so, what did you do to get the creative juices flowing
Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.
Aloha #77
Falling Behind
In my mind, I’m running down a path. I think I’m making good time, covering a lot of ground. Then I look up and see that the path is moving backwards. No matter how fast I pump my legs to run forward, I’m actually slipping backwards. It seems like no matter how much I do nowadays, there’s always more that needs to be done. This applies to much in my life, but especially applies to my Twitter followers.
I never saw the point in auto-following people who followed you on Twitter. Some might consider it rude, but I prefer to look at people’s tweets and evaluate if I’d like their tweets on my Twitter stream. If I would, I follow the person. If the person is just posting astrology readings or giveaway links, I’ll likely pass. I don’t mean to offend (just like I wouldn’t be offended if I followed someone and they didn’t follow me back), it’s just how I manage my Twitter stream.
My process up until recently was to get the new e-mail from Twitter notifying me of a new follower. I’d look at their tweets, decide if I should follow them back and mark that e-mail as read. Rinse and repeat for each new follower. At some point, though, I fell behind and now I fear I’ll never catch up.
As of this writing, I have 184 new follower e-mails to process. Yes, some of those people will be spammers, I’m sure, but many more would be legitimate people. Legitimate people whose tweets I would like to follow. And yet, those e-mails sit there unread. Every time I decide to go through them, the enormity of the task overwhelms me and I decide to do it later. Maybe I’ll just code some sort of “New Follower Processor” page to help me with the task.
In the meantime, please don’t be offended if you followed me and I didn’t follow you back. I’m probably just delayed by this backwards moving path.
Is Winter Over Yet?
On Thursday, I was cleaning off my car when I slipped on some ice. My legs went down under my car while the rest of me fell into the snowbank. I was unhurt (or so I thought at the time) but had trouble getting up due to the slick surface under my feet. I finally got out from under my car, dusted off my pants, and headed into work. Unfortunately, my “unhurt” status changed over the course of the day as my neck/back began to hurt. I realized that I must have wrenched it on the way down.
On Friday, we got at least nine additional inches of snow. The following morning, I took some photos of the beautiful landscape.
Then, we went to B’s parents’ house. Their driveway had been plowed and they had a mountain of snow in their backyard. The boys and I had fun playing in the snow for a couple of hours.
While this was fun, we’ve also had our gutters fall down from the weight of the ice on them and our seasonal snowfall totals are over 77 inches. (Normal snowfall for the entire season is under 49 inches.) The sea of white makes for driving difficulties (narrowed roads, trouble getting out of our driveway, blocked views when going around turns) and blinding reflections. I’m ready for these piles to melt (even though I know we’ll have a flooding/muddy mess for awhile) and for the warmth to begin. It’s March now. Is it Spring yet?