Issues: Health and other
Sep. 13th, 2004 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hkellickI promised I'd try to post more than once a week :p
Things have gone.. interesting again.
I don't think I realized just how many issues that I, personally, had with Kristen moving out. On one hand, in my head, I know it's the best thing for both of us. In actuality... simple things.. such as having the corner be empty or planning my own meals all by myself suddenly sounds completely foreign, even though it isn't, really.
Am I crazy? Why am I suddenly afraid of living on my own again? I managed to struggle through that with Kristen NOT living 10 minutes away, so it isn't as if I couldn't do it again.
And yet, I seem to be frighened of the possibility anyways. How... utterly frustratingly STUPID :p
On another tangentially-related issue, we were talking about, among other things, our health and eating habits. Both of us have been considering going to a gym, three or four times a week for a little bit. Personally, I'm thinking half of an hour cardio and half an hour with either the machines or the freeweights, depending on my mood. I can't speak for Kristen since I know one of her goals, but not all of them.
We've discussed doing this together or doing it seperately. Personally, I suggested together since that way we're each other's workout buddies, we can talk to each other while working out and it's something to do other than watch the TV, listen to the music or whatever you choose to do.
We did go to Gold's Gym and there are advantages and disadvantages to going there. The advantage is.. it's a pretty decent gym that has all the type of equipment I would be looking for, and some classes, if I ever chose to do that. It's air conditioned (hallelujah), but more than that, what I did NOT see was alot of machines with Out of Order signs on them. THAT is also important to me.
I know Kristen wants to look into Curves and that's cool too, though we couldn't (obviously) work out together there.
Dunno what other good gyms are in the area either. I haven't really looked that hard yet.
Kristen was trying to convince me this weekend that I'd lost weight and had kept it off, suggesting that she could wrap her arms around me like she couldn't before. Maybe she's right. I still *FEEL* fat. I look in the mirror and I know that I had the opportunity to be 200 lbs. by now and blew it cause I got lazy. I feel my clothes that feel tighter than I'd like (though, admittedly, a part of that is these collars. if anyone tells you that all men's 19 1/2 collars are the same, I will beat him within a inch of his life with... this wiffle bat.). Maybe I have lost some weight, not by exercising, but by just eating generally better. Cooking at home is definately alot healthier for me than going out every night like I used to.
Which leads me to the next topic...
Let me back up. As some of you know, when I lived at home, we ate out or got delivery pretty much every day. We went to the same usual places: Andersons, La Novas, Original Pancake House, Leonardis, China King. Day in and day out and week after week until I got really irritated because it always felt like we always went to the same places over and over again. I swore that when I lived on my own, I would never eat like that again.
My first weeks of living her in D.C., I kept to that promise, more or less.. but, health-wise, what I WAS eating wasn't much better... I was eating instant meals like spaghettios and prepackaged fettucini alfredo with shrimp. I ate mushroom rice with nothing else.
When my stuff arrived and I started buying actual kitchen things, I started very basic cooking. Pasta was a cinch. Pierogies too. I could cut chicken thin, fry it up in a frying pan and then serve it with stuff (such as.. mushroom rice!)
Then I bought a foreman grill and it revolutionized the choices I had because I could grill meat easily and, well, better (I love my foreman grill. I really do. I love how juicy and tender things come off of it.)
Kristen arrived and we started cooking full time. I moved from very simple cooking to slightly more complicate cooking to slightly more complicated than that.
Right now, a usual meal consists of a main course (such as... chicken with a sauce or coating), a side dish (rice or pasta are two things the two of us agree on. I'll add potatoes to that list when she's left), and occasionally rolls or veggies.
We aren't Iron Chefs or anything, but I can find my way through a decent cook book (We now have two, by the way: Saving Dinner and a Weight Watchers book, Cook it Quick!
And so I've joined the ranks of the many people out there who enjoy cooking and vastly prefer it to everything else. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy eating out too. It's nice, once in a while, to NOT be the one cooking. But, on the other hand, it's just that: once in a while. Typically (and ideally), the plan is to go out to dinner once a week and out to lunch once a week.
But there's been one problem with our plans.. and that's been, for me, at least, lunches. I probably spend about as much money in lunches as I do in dinners and, with Kristen leaving, it's about time to look at what I'm doing and see if I can't do better.
See.. here's my problem. Occasionally, like today, I have leftovers. When I don't have leftovers, I have sandwhiches. These usually get packed in a lunchbox with a number of "Desserts". Today's dessers included yogurt, oreo pudding, an apple, and a granola bar. The yogurt is for about 9:00 because I found I get hungry then and it's nice to have. The granola bar is for approximately 3, for much the same reasons. So.. lunch usually consists of leftovers with a couple of deserts.. or sandwhiches, which is even worse...and a couple of deserts.
Needless to say, it isn't always filling, which means I spend money trying to cram even more food into my lunch cooler and hoping I actually feel full. Of course, most of the deserts mentioned AREN'T terribly filling because they're all simple sugars: Fructose, Lactose and Sucrose. Sandwhiches aren't generally very filling either since it's a couple of pieces of meat on potato bread. A little protein, a little fat, and a lot of carbs.
And then there's the soda... when I was working 50 hours a week, I was having (*quickcalculate*) 64 oz. of pop a day, usually.. two 20 oz. bottles and two 12 oz. cups.
The major point here is.. because of my eating habits, lunch is very expensive for me.
So what to do?
I don't really have a full answer to that. I have a COUPLE of ideas, but I'm not sure how well they'll all work. I don't need to be jacking myself full of sugar that's gonna dissipate out of my body like water over a weir. I DEFINATELY don't need to be spending over $2 a *DAY* on Soda.
So I'm going to see if I can look for some sensible desserts/lunch things. Note, I am not necessarily saying low-fat. Fat, in small quantities, is good. So is fiber.
Potatoes, of some sort, might be good. Potatoes are not only healthy, but very dense. We have a microwave here, so it's not too difficult to bring a potato to work, heat it in the microwave and enjoy it.. or look into homemade mashed or twiced baked potatoes and do the same thing. Nuts and/or Peanut Butter is also a good thing. An idea I had was a small (I don't know the dimensions. A two or so inch diameter glad ware container with peanut butter in it and a baggie of carrot sticks and celery sticks. A daily salad would make sense again, perhaps instead of a sandwhich.. add the meat directly onto the salad, a little cheese, a little dressing... viola. Dinner. Having actual leftovers more often than not wouldn't hurt either.. a container filled with Stew or Chili or some such would definately help fill me up.
And time to wean myself off from having a shit load of soda per day. I don't know if I feel the need to completely wean myself off of soda (especially when I go to restaurants like Plato's dinner and the water with ice they give us is lukewarm and tastes nasty. What the fuck is the point to lukewarm water? Seriously.. was I supposed to make tea with it? I want my water cold.. not necessarily just came out of the freezer going to give you an ice cream headache cold, but at the least bothered to keep the cold tap on long enough so that the water felt cool on my calm cold. )
Uh... yeah. Anyways, my point is.. I don't plan on completely decaffeinating just yet. I do know that water is a shit load healthier for me than Diet Soda.. better on my teeth, better for my body.. and, indeed, I've only had water today. (I was nearly weak and almost bought a 20 oz. of soda with lunch, but the machine was out of diet. Maybe that's for the better.)
So... uh.. wow, I rambled about food a whole lot longer than I intended to *emberassed*
So, in recap... it's not going to be easy for me, but Kristen moving out *IS* good. Going back to the gym would be good, as would continuing to eat better and watching what sort of shit I put in my lunchbox and, ineveitably, my body.
Nuff said for now.
Things have gone.. interesting again.
I don't think I realized just how many issues that I, personally, had with Kristen moving out. On one hand, in my head, I know it's the best thing for both of us. In actuality... simple things.. such as having the corner be empty or planning my own meals all by myself suddenly sounds completely foreign, even though it isn't, really.
Am I crazy? Why am I suddenly afraid of living on my own again? I managed to struggle through that with Kristen NOT living 10 minutes away, so it isn't as if I couldn't do it again.
And yet, I seem to be frighened of the possibility anyways. How... utterly frustratingly STUPID :p
On another tangentially-related issue, we were talking about, among other things, our health and eating habits. Both of us have been considering going to a gym, three or four times a week for a little bit. Personally, I'm thinking half of an hour cardio and half an hour with either the machines or the freeweights, depending on my mood. I can't speak for Kristen since I know one of her goals, but not all of them.
We've discussed doing this together or doing it seperately. Personally, I suggested together since that way we're each other's workout buddies, we can talk to each other while working out and it's something to do other than watch the TV, listen to the music or whatever you choose to do.
We did go to Gold's Gym and there are advantages and disadvantages to going there. The advantage is.. it's a pretty decent gym that has all the type of equipment I would be looking for, and some classes, if I ever chose to do that. It's air conditioned (hallelujah), but more than that, what I did NOT see was alot of machines with Out of Order signs on them. THAT is also important to me.
I know Kristen wants to look into Curves and that's cool too, though we couldn't (obviously) work out together there.
Dunno what other good gyms are in the area either. I haven't really looked that hard yet.
Kristen was trying to convince me this weekend that I'd lost weight and had kept it off, suggesting that she could wrap her arms around me like she couldn't before. Maybe she's right. I still *FEEL* fat. I look in the mirror and I know that I had the opportunity to be 200 lbs. by now and blew it cause I got lazy. I feel my clothes that feel tighter than I'd like (though, admittedly, a part of that is these collars. if anyone tells you that all men's 19 1/2 collars are the same, I will beat him within a inch of his life with... this wiffle bat.). Maybe I have lost some weight, not by exercising, but by just eating generally better. Cooking at home is definately alot healthier for me than going out every night like I used to.
Which leads me to the next topic...
Let me back up. As some of you know, when I lived at home, we ate out or got delivery pretty much every day. We went to the same usual places: Andersons, La Novas, Original Pancake House, Leonardis, China King. Day in and day out and week after week until I got really irritated because it always felt like we always went to the same places over and over again. I swore that when I lived on my own, I would never eat like that again.
My first weeks of living her in D.C., I kept to that promise, more or less.. but, health-wise, what I WAS eating wasn't much better... I was eating instant meals like spaghettios and prepackaged fettucini alfredo with shrimp. I ate mushroom rice with nothing else.
When my stuff arrived and I started buying actual kitchen things, I started very basic cooking. Pasta was a cinch. Pierogies too. I could cut chicken thin, fry it up in a frying pan and then serve it with stuff (such as.. mushroom rice!)
Then I bought a foreman grill and it revolutionized the choices I had because I could grill meat easily and, well, better (I love my foreman grill. I really do. I love how juicy and tender things come off of it.)
Kristen arrived and we started cooking full time. I moved from very simple cooking to slightly more complicate cooking to slightly more complicated than that.
Right now, a usual meal consists of a main course (such as... chicken with a sauce or coating), a side dish (rice or pasta are two things the two of us agree on. I'll add potatoes to that list when she's left), and occasionally rolls or veggies.
We aren't Iron Chefs or anything, but I can find my way through a decent cook book (We now have two, by the way: Saving Dinner and a Weight Watchers book, Cook it Quick!
And so I've joined the ranks of the many people out there who enjoy cooking and vastly prefer it to everything else. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy eating out too. It's nice, once in a while, to NOT be the one cooking. But, on the other hand, it's just that: once in a while. Typically (and ideally), the plan is to go out to dinner once a week and out to lunch once a week.
But there's been one problem with our plans.. and that's been, for me, at least, lunches. I probably spend about as much money in lunches as I do in dinners and, with Kristen leaving, it's about time to look at what I'm doing and see if I can't do better.
See.. here's my problem. Occasionally, like today, I have leftovers. When I don't have leftovers, I have sandwhiches. These usually get packed in a lunchbox with a number of "Desserts". Today's dessers included yogurt, oreo pudding, an apple, and a granola bar. The yogurt is for about 9:00 because I found I get hungry then and it's nice to have. The granola bar is for approximately 3, for much the same reasons. So.. lunch usually consists of leftovers with a couple of deserts.. or sandwhiches, which is even worse...and a couple of deserts.
Needless to say, it isn't always filling, which means I spend money trying to cram even more food into my lunch cooler and hoping I actually feel full. Of course, most of the deserts mentioned AREN'T terribly filling because they're all simple sugars: Fructose, Lactose and Sucrose. Sandwhiches aren't generally very filling either since it's a couple of pieces of meat on potato bread. A little protein, a little fat, and a lot of carbs.
And then there's the soda... when I was working 50 hours a week, I was having (*quickcalculate*) 64 oz. of pop a day, usually.. two 20 oz. bottles and two 12 oz. cups.
The major point here is.. because of my eating habits, lunch is very expensive for me.
So what to do?
I don't really have a full answer to that. I have a COUPLE of ideas, but I'm not sure how well they'll all work. I don't need to be jacking myself full of sugar that's gonna dissipate out of my body like water over a weir. I DEFINATELY don't need to be spending over $2 a *DAY* on Soda.
So I'm going to see if I can look for some sensible desserts/lunch things. Note, I am not necessarily saying low-fat. Fat, in small quantities, is good. So is fiber.
Potatoes, of some sort, might be good. Potatoes are not only healthy, but very dense. We have a microwave here, so it's not too difficult to bring a potato to work, heat it in the microwave and enjoy it.. or look into homemade mashed or twiced baked potatoes and do the same thing. Nuts and/or Peanut Butter is also a good thing. An idea I had was a small (I don't know the dimensions. A two or so inch diameter glad ware container with peanut butter in it and a baggie of carrot sticks and celery sticks. A daily salad would make sense again, perhaps instead of a sandwhich.. add the meat directly onto the salad, a little cheese, a little dressing... viola. Dinner. Having actual leftovers more often than not wouldn't hurt either.. a container filled with Stew or Chili or some such would definately help fill me up.
And time to wean myself off from having a shit load of soda per day. I don't know if I feel the need to completely wean myself off of soda (especially when I go to restaurants like Plato's dinner and the water with ice they give us is lukewarm and tastes nasty. What the fuck is the point to lukewarm water? Seriously.. was I supposed to make tea with it? I want my water cold.. not necessarily just came out of the freezer going to give you an ice cream headache cold, but at the least bothered to keep the cold tap on long enough so that the water felt cool on my calm cold. )
Uh... yeah. Anyways, my point is.. I don't plan on completely decaffeinating just yet. I do know that water is a shit load healthier for me than Diet Soda.. better on my teeth, better for my body.. and, indeed, I've only had water today. (I was nearly weak and almost bought a 20 oz. of soda with lunch, but the machine was out of diet. Maybe that's for the better.)
So... uh.. wow, I rambled about food a whole lot longer than I intended to *emberassed*
So, in recap... it's not going to be easy for me, but Kristen moving out *IS* good. Going back to the gym would be good, as would continuing to eat better and watching what sort of shit I put in my lunchbox and, ineveitably, my body.
Nuff said for now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-13 10:23 am (UTC)1) Balanced diet. More protein, less carbs. I'm not an atkins guy, but I'll say this: protein better than carbs, just in terms of the energy needed to digest the food.
2) Cut the soda, exercise for a couple of hours, and you WILL lose a pound or two a week. Consider this: A can=180 cal, more or less. You need to get rid of 1000 calories to lose a pound. Excise the soda, exercise 500 cals or so, and BANG. Weight starts going.
3) Try water with lemon. Doesn't taste quite so funky. OH. And also, try vitamin water or something similar. Bigger quantity, less cals, still tastes good.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-13 10:27 am (UTC)How can Vitamin Water have less calories than water? Doesn't water, by nature, have no calories?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-13 10:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-13 10:42 am (UTC)Lime might be an idea too, since you like the lime fizzy water. Or really, any fruit you like.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-13 10:49 am (UTC)I've been abstaining from soda for about a month now, because it really is addicting to me, and soooo not good for the body. It's not been easy, but I think it's helping. Diet wasn't even an option because whatever the sweetener is in them makes me sick to my stomach. I've been substituting with milk, chocolate milk when I'm jonesing for something sweet, and ice water. Very very hard to do, though.
Foodwise, I've been trying things that are low fat and healthier. I've found that certain things, like Jello, pudding, whipped topping and cream cheese, are not bad at all in low fat varieties. I'm open to more suggestions in that area.
Since moving, I've had this nifty opp to do more excersize...the kids' bus stop is at the entrance to our complex, and we live almost all the way in the back. So, I have to walk this 3 times a day, once to get them both on the bus, again at noon to get Brandon off the bus, and again at 4 to retrieve Dakota. It's a good amount of walking everyday. I've made a promise to myself not to drive it unless it's downright nasty outside. There's a Y just not far from us....we'll be checking that out soon as well.
Good luck :) Let me know what's working for you.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-14 08:21 am (UTC)As for saving money, it helps a lot if you buy things on sale in bulk and then freeze them (like chicken/meat). Leftovers are GREAT for saving money. I always cook more than what we're going to eat in one sitting. It gets too expensive buying cold cuts for sandwiches! Plus, a nice warm lunch is much more filling.
Veggies can make great cheap snacks. I like munching on a bunch of snap peas, or some very lightly steamed broccoli. Carrots are great, but you're already eating those.