The fire is ignited!

So the fire has been ignited. I have a goal for the next 8 weeks. At least 16 pounds. That will get me 10 the 185, I have been shooting for...for so long. Just in time for my birthday. The big 31. Today was day 1. I ate 25.5 points! I am allowed 25. I packed my lunch, made good choices and feel good about my success. Please help keep me motivated! I need it! I am also going to try and be better about updating my blog. I have been slacking and that has made me less accountable.

Well, I am excited. Do any of you have any goals for the next 8 weeks? Lets do them together!

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

OK...these are so good and they are only 1 point each! They are almost like a personal little cake. You could add cream cheese frosting for a real special treat but that would add another point. Here is the recipe!

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

1 Spice Cake mix

2 egg whites

15 oz pumpkin

1/2 C applesauce

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

(you could use pumpkin pie spice if you have it)

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 C semi sweet chocolate chips

I used my cookie ball scoop and it made 50 cookies. These cookies don't expand much so you can fit quite a few on a sheet. They spread a little bit but they pretty much just turn into little mini muffin tops. The dough is really soft so using the cookie baller what great. You could use a small ice cream scoop too for a larger cookie but then they would be two points. You could also do a lot more chocolate chips but 1/3C makes them have a little treat with out the calories. The cookie is very cakey (if you have ever had pumpkin choc chip cookies from the deli at the grocery store, they are very similar). Make sure to lightly grease the cookie sheet or they will stick. Cook 10-13 minutes until the tops of the cookie feel firm to the touch.

Enjoy! :)

A Bend in the Road, Is not the End of the Road

So these past few weeks have really been a struggle. It is getting harder and harder to stay 100% motivated, to pack lunches, to make time to work out, etc. I have just hovered right under 200 for weeks. It is so frustrating and it makes you want to give up. I am hating to say it but for the first time, I am feeling defeated.

I have to be honest with myself. My diet has not been perfect and even though I have been exercising, my trainer always says "you can't out train a bad diet". However, even though I haven't been blemish free I have still tried hard to stay on track. I can definitely tell you where my downfall is...I am not logging my points. In order to be successful you have to "write it..if you bite it". I know that this is what has been hindering me. I only get 25 points a day now and one slip up can cost you 10 points. Also, I have been eating out way more since returning to work. I have work lunch meetings, my trip to Chicago or forgetting to pack my lunch because I know the hospital cafeteria or atrium cafe will have an option for me. Yet these options are never as good as the option of bringing my own food. I know my pitfalls but for some reason I have been complacent.

I really need something to ignite that spark again. I was so motivated to lose 50 pounds by the time I returned to work. What can I be motivated for in order to lose the last 50. I need to just be motivated within myself but it is so much easier when you have a goal or something to look forward to. I have tried to set little goals but have failed.

My birthday is 9 weeks away. I have been trying to be under 185 which would be my lowest weight in the past 6 years. That is what I am going to try for. I am going to work super hard to do it. I need your help. Are you guys even still reading?? I know I can do it. Also, the new season of biggest loser just started. That will help! I have a few challenges ahead though. I have friends coming into town starting Thursday. The good news is that both of them are also trying to eat healthy; so hopefully we will all be able to hold each other accountable.

Weight Watcher Results: Week 23

So, this is probably the hardest post for my weight since this began. It is a gain. I knew that it would be. At least it is under 200, I swear I will never see that again! Well, a new post is coming to let you know what is going on...more in detail.

Chicago

Well, I had to go to Chicago for a few days. I am the president of the East TN chapter for a professional society, so every year there is a chapter leaders meeting in Chicago. It is a fun meeting, gets you excited and motivated. It was the first time I had been away from Reese over night.

While the conference is good, it is very busy and hard to get a chance to leave the hotel. I got to Chicago Sunday around 3. I got to connect with an old friend that lived across the street from me growing up on Frago Ct. in California. Him and his wife picked me up and took me to a great dinner and for a tour of the city. It was a nice night...but that was my Chicago experience. Starting Monday morning I was in meetings all day and never left the hotel again until I got on the shuttle to head back to the airport. I was really proud of myself. The hotel gym was beautiful and I highly recommend the Intercontinental. I was an amazing hotel. Since I knew that I wasn't in control of my eating (all meals were catered) that I better hit the gym. I worked out Sunday night, Monday morning, Monday night and Tuesday morning. I tried to do cardio and some weights each time.

It was actually fairly easy to be dedicated to working out. I had no distractions. I went to bed early every night, slept good and had time to relax. I actually read a 400 page book in those two days as well. For any of you Nicolas Sparks fans, I recommend "Safe Haven", it was one of his better books because it was suspenseful as well as romantic.

Tuesday night I was home and hit the pavement running. I had to work Wednesday and Thursday, Thursday night has a meeting, Friday had a CPR class, Saturday a garage sale...in a nutshell its been nuts! I have friends from California flying in on Thursday and will be visiting for almost a week. It will be great to see them both. So, I have slacked on my blog posts but more will be coming soon. My next post will be an actual update on how this journey is going.

It's "The Climb"

So, I am not a huge Miley Cyrus fan, however the lyrics to her song "The Climb" really hit home about my journey. Just thought I would share them...

The Climb lyrics
Songwriters: Alexander, J; Mabe, J;

I can almost see it
That dream I am dreaming
But there's a voice inside my head saying
"You'll never reach it"

Every step I'm taking
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking

But I gotta keep trying
Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing
The chances I'm taking
Sometimes might knock me down
But no, I'm not breaking

I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I'm gonna remember most, yeah
Just gotta keep going

And I, I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on

'Cause there's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb, yeah!

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Somebody's gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb, yeah!

Keep on moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It's all about, it's all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa

Food Inc.

So, since I finished season 4 of Biggest Loser, I didn't have anything to watch, so I downloaded Food Inc. to the iPad. The netflix app is pretty sweet! The movie is definitely one sided. It presents all the negative impacts of the way our food is mass produced today but it sure does open your eyes to things you didn't know. I was going to try and be Siskel and Ebert and do a movie review but I am too tired . I read a pretty good synopsis on NPR though. Here it is...

Food, Inc. is a documentary, but the film it reminds me of most is The Matrix — the movie where humans find out they're living in a simulacrum, a virtual world they mistake for reality. It's the stuff of the most paranoid science fiction.

Author and co-producer Eric Schlosser strolls through a supermarket and explains that most of these colorful foodstuffs, this so-called variety, comes from five corporations that now control 80 percent of the market.

Those company names like Farmland, and the little pictures of family farms? They're fantasy. That red tomato? It is, says Schlosser, a "notional" tomato, flavorless, gassed to be red, ready to be consumed year-round.

That plump chicken? Grown in a factory, never saw daylight, bred to be almost all breast meat so its feet couldn't carry it and its organs barely worked.

And us? The way we eat, says Schlosser, has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000. And the reality has been deliberately hidden from view.

The material of Food, Inc. will be familiar if you've read Schlosser's Fast Food Nation or Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma — and Pollan's in the film, too.

But hearing family farmers sued into bankruptcy by giant corporations and seeing chicken factories and hidden-camera slaughterhouse footage — that's gut-wrenching, literally.

Director Robert Kenner lucidly lays out the reasoning of Schlosser, Pollan, scientists and nutritionists; he moves from facts about how we eat now to unintended consequences and hidden costs.

Every line, every frame makes you choke on your popcorn, if for no other reason than that popcorn is a big part of the problem. Thanks to government subsidies, corn is 30 percent of our national crop. It goes into everything, from the high-fructose corn syrup in that soda you're drinking to unlodge the popcorn to the Midol you take for the headache the movie gives you to the e. coli-ridden bellies of factory-farmed cows.

Kenner introduces us to a low-income family buying burgers from a fast-food drive-up, which makes perfect economic sense. Thanks to subsidized corn, it's cheaper to go for the double burger and soda instead of the nonsubsidized head of broccoli. But there is that hidden cost: childhood obesity and mushrooming incidences of diabetes.

The sheer scale of Food, Inc. is mind-blowing: It touches on every aspect of modern life — and death, as in the case of Barbara Kowalcyk's 2-year-old son Kevin, who died from e. coli. She's now an activist, and she carries a picture of Kevin with her as she lobbies on Capitol Hill.

"He went from that," she says, passing the photo of her smiling son to a legislator, "to being dead in 12 days."

Here's one of my favorite bits in Food, Inc., because it's about an insane philosophy. Pollan says you could reduce the e. coli in the guts of cows by 80 percent just by putting them on grass for five days, which sounds like a good deal all around — nature working its magic!

But no, the industry wants a high-tech solution. So supplier Eldon Roth demonstrates his new e. coli-killing meat mix-in, a tasty blend of ammonia and ammonia hydroxide. Bon appetit! (Points to Roth for talking on camera. Perdue, Smithfield, Monsanto and the others declined to give their side.)

The film makes Monsanto out as the scariest. The former manufacturer of DDT and Agent Orange patented a gene that's in 90 percent of the nation's soybean seeds. You'll be driven out of business if you re-use them, as farmers have for thousands of years. You'll even be sued if some of the seed blows onto your land and you wind up with Monsanto-patented soy.

Food, Inc. doesn't end on a down note, though: The music goes from minor to major key. Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farms makes the case that every food purchase we make is a political act. Wal-Mart sells his organic products because people want to buy them, not because it's morally enlightened.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105152916