Halloweeeeeennnnn!

Hello All and Happy Monday.  I hope your weekend went by slower than mine did.  I’ll go ahead and jump right in.  I started my new food pyramid based diet last week and in terms of the amount of food I was able to have, it went well.  I was up a bit on the scale.  I wasn’t surprised by this because I didn’t have a good weekend prior to that and I’m currently retaining a bit more water than usual.  I am going to give this diet a real try until the first of the year which I think is a sufficient trial period.  If I don’t see positive results, I will go back to points.  I made some adjustments this week.  Last week I gave myself 2 servings of the “other” category which can be a serving of anything you want.  I changed that to only one “other” serving per day because I felt like I was eating too much.  Also, this upcoming weekend, I’m going to try the diet both days but give myself an opportunity to earn extra “other” servings with exercise.  We’ll see how it goes. I don’t expect change on the scale next week either because of all my Halloween behavior.  I am still steadfast with exercise.  Last week, I tried a boot camp that Cassandra goes to and I absolutely loved it.  It was challenging, they did things in short intervals, it was at a perfect time and it made me realize that I’m in pretty good shape.  The only problem is that it is outrageously expensive.  It’s $180 per month or you can pay over $2000 for the whole year.  If I were ever able to do it, I think I’d save the $2,000 and pay up front.  Oh well, it gave me some good tips and a good workout.

In the spirit of following the food pyramid, I ate WAY more fruits and vegetables than normal last week.  One thing that I’m most excited about is the ability to incorporate protein that I didn’t before because they were too many points.  The protein category includes nuts and eggs and peanut butter so I’ve been pumped to have servings of these foods I considered delicacies before.  You can eat them as long as you only have one serving.  I made a stir fry of sorts that I didn’t have to even cook on the stove.  First, I want to rave over the Oscar Mayer Carving Board Chicken Breast.  Y’all, this stuff is delicious.  It’s a bit over priced but it tastes great, it’s already cooked and it heats up nicely.  Plus, it splits into two servings quite nicely so you don’t have to weigh it.  To make this dish, I microwaved broccoli and green beans then I got out a cookie sheet, added aluminum foil and sprayed it with Pam.   After I did that, I poured the broccoli and green beans onto the pan, added salt, pepper, garlic, W sauce and some of the Carving Board Chicken.  Once it was all on the pan, I put it under the broiler for a few minutes.  I took it out, stirred it around, added more of the spices and then 1/3 cup of almonds.  I stuck it back in the broiler for a few minutes and BAM!  I had a huge plate of yummy green veggies and healthy protein.  I made this a couple times.

The next series of pictures are ridiculous and I wanted to warn you of that.  I only like carrots in certain situations.  If they are cooked in a soup or roast, I’m fine with them.  I will eat them raw but only if I have a dip.  I left the yogurt dip I bought at work one night and I still needed a serving of non-green vegetables and all I had was baby carrots.  I hate eating them alone like that.  It feels like it takes forever to eat and the way they break apart in your mouth disgusts me.  Even though I wasn’t happy about it, I ate them because I wanted to make sure to follow the rules I laid out for myself.  Next time, I will go so far as to drive to the store for a different vegetable.  Just as I suspected, it took me forever to eat them and I wasn’t happy so I took a series of silly pictures.  Sorry if some are gross, lol.

Ok, now that all that is over with, I figured I’d share all of my different Halloween costumes. 

I had so much fun dressing up this year.  Jordan looked great as Ursula and I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to my mom for always working so hard to help me with Halloween.  She made those tentacles all by herself and they were a big hit at the party.  I hated my costume.  My wig was out of control and the cheap costume from Wal-Mart was sloppy but it was a fun concept with me as Little Mermaid and Jordan as Ursula.  Jordan and I already have the wheels turning for next year but we know we want no accessories.  We want to be creative, we want people to know who we are and we don’t want wigs or too many props.  I’m not sure if such a costume exists but we have a whole year to try.  I also went as a flapper and as Fred (Wilma is my roommate Cassandra). I may dress up one more time on Wednesday to hand out candy but we’ll see.

Alabama had an awesome win against Mississippi State this weekend so I was pleased.  They play LSU in Baton Rouge on Saturday so I’m nervous about that one.

To any peeps I know or don’t know that read this leaving on the northern east coast, be careful out there! I’m praying for your safety!

That’s all I got for now!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Happy Halloween Y’all!

“It’s just a jump to the left…” Let’s Do The Time Warp Again-The Rocky Horror Picture Show