Counting Chocolate Chips: How I Lost 40 Pounds in Eight Months

Something happened last July when I got on the scale at my doctor's office.  I think it was seeing a particular number: 160.  The last time I got near 160 pounds, I knew I would either have to get pregnant or buy new (bigger) clothes.  Luckily, I got pregnant, which was the plan anyway.

Not so, last July.  I don't want to have any more babies.  (Are you kidding, I can hardly keep it together with the two I've got?!)

I had been using the mapmyfitness app since 2012 to track and log my workouts (running, walking, the occasional bike ride, and more recently roller skating and roller blading) and my doctor had mentioned a weight loss app a couple of years ago, which I tried for about a week.  I looked around and found a calorie counting app that links to mapmyfitness.  Myfitnesspal (image above is from the website which can be used instead of or along with the app) has been the missing link for me.

I set up a profile with my weight, height, age, activity level, goal, and how many pounds per week I wanted to lose (one).  The app designated how many calories I could eat per day to achieve my goal weight of 120 pounds, and I was off!

There is a huge database of foods that you can browse along with a barcode scanner that can be used to find packaged items.  It is so easy to use!  And calories burned and logged on mapmyfitness are synched so you can see how many more calories you can eat after exercise--just don't eat them all back!

The closer I stuck to my daily caloric intake plan, the more regularly the pounds came off.  There were weeks (December!) where I didn't lose weight, but at least I didn't gain.

I had no idea how many calories I had been eating per day before (probably up to 3000 at times!), or how many I actually needed.  I did go to bed hungry a handful of nights.  I learned that what I eat is extremely important.  I want you to know that I ate whatever I wanted to and still lost weight.  I just had to control the quantity.  And...100 calories of fruit (fiber!) is much better than 100 calories of chocolate at satisfying hunger.  Not that there weren't (many) times I chose the chocolate.  There were.

So, I can't tell anyone what their "particular number" is or how to finally decide to take control and lose weight, but I can say that myfitnesspal absolutely worked for me.  I still use it everyday to track calories so I can maintain my new weight.  I also keep a close eye on my protein, sugar, and fiber consumption.

I have more to say about healthier eating, exercise, and body image, so...more posts to come.

BTW, Traders Joe's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips are approximately 4 calories each.

Watch This! : Ballykissangel

I meant to post this before St. Patrick's Day, but was having computer trouble...

I like to focus a bit on Ireland in March, for the obvious reason.  Plus, I've got Irish blood in me from three grandparents, making me more Irish than any other ethnicity by 1/8.  So, anything Irish catches my attention.  (I'm also Norwegian, Dutch, German, French, and Welsh, but I digress.) 

I don't remember how I found out about Ballykissangel (image above is from this site).  This is a BBC television series that went on for six seasons from 1996-2001.  I have watched through season three, and the first episode of season four.

If you enjoy Game of Thrones, you might want to stop right here.  Let me just say, I watched the very first episode of GOT, and afterwards I felt like I had been doing stomach crunches the whole time (I wish I had), from clenching my gut at all the violence, etc., etc.  I was interested in the story, and considered watching episode two, but decided not to put myself through the experience again.  So, if you can relate (and if you watch GOT, I concede you have a stronger stomach than I, and that is fine by me), please continue on.

BallyK is about life in a small Irish town.  A new priest is sent to the parish, a young English priest, and it goes from there.  The series is delightful.  It can be funny, serious, lighthearted, troublesome.  The storyline moves right along and you come to know the characters (played by actors who look like real people, by the way!) and believe this place might actually exist.

In fact, it does.  Ballykissangel is mostly filmed in Avoca, Ireland, which became quite the tourist destination for fans.  What I like most about the series is that it takes you someplace and immerses you in it--you get to live in a little Irish town for an hour at a time.

What have you been watching?

Book o' the Month: A Little House Christmas Treasury

Happy New Year!  Better late than never!  (Which is my motto for sending out Happy New Year cards this year...just ordered them today...in lieu of Christmas cards, yet again.)

I have never read any of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.  But I did watch hours and hours of Little House on the Prairie on TV as a child.  Now I want to read them all!

I gave Valerie A Little House Christmas Treasury for Christmas, and then read the kids a chapter each night before New Year's.  What fun!  My favorite aspect of the stories in this darling collection is how the gifts were so simple (mittens, candy, an orange), and so very appreciated and celebrated.

In fact, I'm pondering skipping all the crazy shopping next December in favor of one trip to the grocery store.  Everyone is getting citrus in their stocking next Christmas.  Who's with me?

Positive Body Image/At the Local Pool

The other night we were at a restaurant where there was a life-size figure of a woman in a bikini--a beer ad.  I took the opportunity to talk to Valerie about how people look in media images, and how they look in real life--how the images are Photoshopped to make the models look thinner, etc.  I had recently read an article online about Photoshopped celebrities, which included this image.  I don't know how much impact what I said had on Valerie, but at least the conversation is started.

We never talk about being fat.  We talk about exercising and eating good food to be healthy--and so I can fit into my clothes better.  I never complain about my figure in the mirror.  I make sure my kids hear me say things like, "I like the way I look in this."

I stopped my subscription to Vogue magazine (which I had been reading for about twenty years) when I got pregnant with Valerie.  Hubby and I decided we did not need images of uber-thin models around the house all the time.

Then there's the pool.  The kids take swim lessons at a local indoor pool frequented by people of all ages.  You get to see a very diverse range of bodies in swim suits there!  It takes me back to my life drawing days in college.  What I love most, I think, are the really old ladies--probably in their eighties and nineties even--who come to the water aerobics classes and the warm therapy pool.  Some of them might be hobbling to the pool steps, cane in hand, but there they are in their bathing suits taking care of their bodies.  Those are the role models I like my daughter (and I) to have.

I am celebrating getting back into my smaller belt today--albeit using the very last possible notch!  I am also celebrating that even though I may never want to wear a bikini (gotta love the invention of the tankini, right?), I am at a place where I am taking care of my body.  I aspire to be one of the seniors taking aqua aerobics at the pool one day.

P.S.  We also saw a figure of "The Most Interesting Man in the World" at the restaurant, hawking beer.  Valerie and I both agreed, that's just weird.

Spring-a-ling-a-ling

I have so many thoughtful blog posts winging around in my head and, it seems, no time to actually write them out.  So, rather than continue along in overwhelmed inaction, I will share with you one of those lists us bloggers like to post now and again.  Here goes!

• I have figured out it is not actually the arrival of spring that seems to get me down.  I think it may actually be the abrupt transition from winter to spring brought on by the beginning of Daylight Savings Time.  I truly have been loving spring these past few weeks!
• Would it be motivating or depressing to go from room to room making a list of all the little projects around the house that need tackling?
• How can I tackle anything extra when I can't even keep up with dishes and laundry?
• Enough whining already!  My new mantra:  We just have a messy house.
• "Orderliness is the sign of an untidy mind."
• I just remembered that from a plaque I read as a kid.  What?!
• I suddenly realized today why my childhood home always seemed cluttered.  Many of my friends' parents had housekeepers!  Plus that one who was an obsessive neat freak...
• We (And I mean that loosely.  It was mostly Hubby and the kids.  I was doing dishes.  Which is fine with me.) finally made the most delicious lemon bars with a recipe shared with me by a friend.  This is not an intentional plug for the recipe's author, but geez, these are the best lemon bars ever!
• We are so lucky to have this huge mutant lemon tree in the front yard.  The landlord's gardeners never prune it.  I know nothing about this kind of stuff, should it be pruned?
• Why doesn't Andrew just fess up when it is so obvious he has to go potty?  WHY?!
• I'm SO enjoying running.  I'm still at the walk/run/walk/run/walk phase.  But I run for longer periods all the time.  My goal is to go five miles in an hour and fifteen minutes, walk/run/walk.  That should help me drop the last twenty pounds and fit back into all the cute clothes I bought after being on "the nursing diet," right?  Oh, and I'm getting healthier and stronger, too.  I plan on being a runner into my old age. 
• We have been getting a bit of rain and it has been positively lovely.
• Hubby and I have been watching MI-5 lately, starting with the first season in 2002.  We're getting to what looks like will be one of the last episodes with Matthew Macfadyen.  I am going to miss him.
• Mad Men.  Been watching?  Also, The Big Bang Theory.  Extra funny because Hubby is an engineer.
• I still need to watch my April films this year.
• The kitties (whose names are now "Belly" and "Get Down!").  We are getting on quite well these days.  We all love our cats.  After we install doors to the kitchen and successfully go on vacation for two weeks, kitties in tow, everything should be truly peachy. 
• Crochet.  I'm always working on something.  Right now it is a baby blanket, a bit overdue, for a dear friend.  I started it a few months ago.  Only a few more rounds to go!

Boy, what a list.  Man, it feels good to get that all out.  Though, I could probably, no, definitely write an entire post about each point.  Please feel free to provide answers to any of the above questions in the comments section.

Thank you.

Watch This! : Secrets and Lies

Secrets and Lies is such a good movie. This 1996 British film got lots of nominations and won many awards. IMDb sums it up very succinctly, "Successful black woman traces her birth mother to a lower-class white woman, who denies it; emotions run high as everyone's secrets are exposed."

I went to see this movie based on the interesting title and the fact that it was foreign. I saw it by myself at the neatest little independent cinema. I hope you have one in your area, because they are just the best. And you can often see the best films there. Not necessarily the blockbusters, but definitely ones that will be nominated for prestigious awards.

Case in point: Today I was going to post about Love and Other Drugs (Gyllenhaal/Hathaway eye candy is all you need to know--which is is great when you are in the mood for just that), which I saw at a mainstream movie theater. But I got to thinking and came up with Secrets and Lies which is excellent.

Stepping down off my soapbox now.

September Doily in Spring

While I was on Spring Break, I treated myself to a trip to Michaels and got this book. I tried very hard to buy mint green or lavender crochet thread to make one of the springtime doilies, but I could not get my eyes away from the September pattern (bottom right, above). So, in April, I bought red crochet thread. And that's probably going to turn out okay, because at the rate I've been going (and with these crochet projects officially on the back burner), it may be September before I am finished with it.

It's been probably seven or eight years since I last crocheted a doily (a few more since the crochet-doily-crazy year I made them as Christmas gifts for most of my female relatives, or the crochet-snowflake-crazy year everyone got those). It takes a bit of concentration. Not something you can easily do with a two-year-old and a six-year-old running amok in the living room. So, last night I had to frog (oh, how I love using that word!) four rounds to repair some serious lapses in attention. Ah, well.

So--stepping up onto my soapbox for a moment, if I may--how is it that you can buy doilies for a couple of dollars or less at most craft stores? Who are these poor foreign workers with carpel tunnel syndrome sitting and crocheting perfect doilies day in and day out to make a living? What is wrong with this picture? If I charged an hourly rate of $20 dollars for my "expertise" (and I'm pretty darn good when I'm focused) at crocheting, I would likely be making at least $100 per doily. I doubt my sweat-shop counterparts make so much in a year.

Frog that, I say.

Springtime Resolutions

I had a very nice Spring Break away from sara-sundries and Bloglandia, in general, thanks for asking! But it is good to be back, too. I am feeling recharged about the whole thing, and looking back, I did get around to everything I mentioned I had planned to do. The DVD was delightful, the book was inspiring, and the series has begun. The spring cleaning? Also begun, but that is another story.

I actually did go out-of-town for a week, and when I got back the lilac tree in the front yard had begun to bloom. I'm not a huge fan purple, but seeing a tree fill with blossoms like a slow firework is simply stunning, no matter the color. I am indebted to whomever planted it, for the inspiration it gives me to embrace spring.

This change of season has also inspired a new way of thinking for me about resolutions. So many people make resolutions at the first of the year, and it makes sense, out with old in with the new, etc. But I've been wondering if the vernal equinox isn't a better time for resolutions.

It seems to me that winter is such a season of quiet, introspection, and reflection. I think I'd rather spend the cooler months contemplating and planning for change. Also, it is a time of coming down from the string of holidays we tend to spend so much energy on. And as a generally inclement time of year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), winter is hardly the time to begin a new exercise routine without your own equipment or a gym membership--and I would venture it is easier to make excuses for not going to the gym in winter, like not wanting to drive in the rain or snow when unnecessary.

As the weather warms, I feel my senses and my body energizing, getting ready for action. To me, this seems like a better time for change. And I'm not the only one. If you Google spring resolutions, you'll gets lots of entries. But I think what I'm getting at is taking the pressure off the New Year's Resolution. Make it realistic for the season. Save the bigger ideas for springtime, the time when some realize they have forgotten their previous resolutions, anyway.

I'm sure I'll continue to make (and keep??) New Year's Resolutions. This year's is going pretty well, so far, after all. But as part of my embracing spring, I am going to resolve each year to set some goals at this time of year which can be inspired by this season of warmth, new growth, and life.

Extra to Give

The devastating earthquake shook Haiti last Tuesday. Tom had been away on business the first half of the week, so I had been flying solo with the kids. I didn't sit down and take the time to read the story or face the images of death and destruction until Friday. And I wept.

When Tom got home from work, I asked if he would like to give to the relief effort. He replied that on Monday his office would be collecting money for the American Red Cross International Relief Fund, and that his company would match employee donations up to a total of $50,000. Perfect timing. The check has been written, and is on it's way to help.

There is nothing like disaster to shake you up out of your everyday comfortable frame of mind. I am so thankful for all that I have. And I am thankful that I have extra to give.

Rated G

Valerie has never been to the movies. She has only seen two feature length animated films that I can think of: Dumbo and (not all of) The Jungle Book.

Make that three. Sunday we watched The Little Mermaid, sitting side by side on the couch. I told her that Ursula the part-octopus-sea-witch might be a little scary when she cast the spell on Ariel. That's the only scary part I remembered from back when I last saw the film in 1989. I should have done my research. Near the end of the movie--when Ursula is big and even meaner and then gets killed--Valerie had train wreck syndrome. It was so horrible she couldn't look away. I know this because I asked her a number of times if I should turn it off. And she said no. Then she cried for the duration of the credits at the end of the movie, I think out of the shock of it all, being the most violent thing she has ever seen. I felt awful.

My Valerie, just this holiday season, has been able to enjoy Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Frosty the Snowman for the first time, without my having to turn them off when the "scary" parts started. (Though for some reason The Grinch, whom she could not get enough of when she was three, was too scary this year.)

So, when she asked to see the movie about that "princess" from a deck of Ariel playing cards given to her as a gift, I said, OK. Well, no more princess movies for a while. Though I can't think of anything violent or very scary in Cinderella. But I will be sure to look into it before I let her watch.

Not that she needs those kinds of movies right now at 5 years old, anyhow, what with all the romantic love and sexual innuendo. Please. What age is that appropriate for anyway? Ten? Twelve? Eighteen? Back in the day, my own parents (along with countless others, so no offense, guys) took me to see Star Wars and James Bond movies as a young child. Darth Vader scared me into having nightmares, and James, well, James...

I've found two sites that offer reviews and information about movies to help parents make informed decisions: kids in mind and common sense media. I'm not very familiar with them, but it is a starting point for me. Yikes.

Note: Image is Microsoft Clip Art.

Chai

Last week I tried chai for the first time. I know, I am way behind the times. And I just recently started branching out from chocolate. Chai is so delicious, no? Spicy and creamy and sweet, just right for fall.

But then, last weekend, Tom and I watched Slumdog Millionaire. Without posting any spoilers for those of you even more behind the times than I when it comes to seeing this film, I will say that I can never drink chai again without thinking of the central character Jamal, the chai wallah.

So, every time now that I want to enjoy a nice cup of chai, I will be reminded of the plight of the poor in India. This, as I purchase a cup of overpriced beverage from a (local or) corporate-run coffee shop. Oh my.

It is quite the dilemma for me. I often wonder if I really should be off in a third world country, or inner-city or poor-rural America for that matter, helping others less fortunate than I. At least when I was teaching I felt good about giving of myself to my students, some of whom came from struggling families. Now what?

I do go in for the "think globally, act locally" mantra. I do. It comes to mind quite often. Buying organic, buying local, recycling, giving to Salvation Army and Goodwill, donating food and toys at the holidays, being an example to my children of human kindness and compassion towards others. Kind of a ripple effect. All the small yet meaningful, and comfortable ways to help.

But I wonder if I have the capacity to be doing more. Living it, sacrificing, out of my comfort zone. What would that be like? Would I feel fulfilled? Would I be miserable? Would it matter how I felt as long as I was helping others?

Ultimately, since having my own kids, I want to help create a wonderful life for them right now, right where we are. My world view looks outward from them now. And at the same time, since becoming a mother, I feel community with all mothers, everywhere. I see suffering with new eyes, and sometimes it seems too much for me to bear, even though I'm only the observer...

Why, oh why did I have to try chai and watch Slumdog all in the same week? At least when I make it at home I'm not throwing $4 out the window, because can you imagine how far $4 could go in the slums of India?

Did Sisyphus Have Kids?

Whenever my kiddos hit a transition or a particular routine has run its course and I have to figure out how to make things work again, I think that sometime, somewhere, somehow, someone has been through this before. It makes me feel that motherhood--parenting, really--is like the myth of Sisyphus. I keep pushing that boulder uphill, only to have it come rolling down again.

For example, the same week Valerie started school, Andrew figured out how to climb out of the playard (which is what the Co-Sleeper is called when it is no longer being used as a bassinet). I used put him in the playard when I needed him to be in a safe confined space while I unloaded the groceries from the car, or did the dishes, etc. Not anymore. It might not seem like a big deal, but I had a system in place that worked for me and now I have to figure out a new solution.

There is example after example. Bedtime routines, weaning, room cleaning, you name it. Parents make the same kinds of decisions over and over and over. Maybe if we all still lived in villages surrounded by extended family, friends, and neighbors we had known our whole lives we would have so much help and advice it would be easier. But many young families like mine don't live like that these days. We don't live near family or even in the same city where we grew up. We have to go searching for new community. We have to actively seek out and build the relationships we need to support us.

One of the reasons I began writing this blog was to put my voice and experiences out there for other mothers--other parents--who might identify with aspects of my own life. Blogging and reading other blogs (and reaching out to old and new friends on Facebook) are part of my attempt to create connections with others facing some of the same situations and challenges as I do in my daily life. It's nice to have my internet community at my fingertips when I need support and also when I'm in the mood to celebrate motherhood...and here I'd like to send out a collective thank you!

But the way it feels sometimes, I wonder if Atlas had kids.

Do It Now

As we walked back to the car after the internment service for my great aunt, I said to my father, "Another one's gone, Dad." And he reminded me that I'd better ask him all my questions now, while he's still here. There are still questions he never asked my grandfather (who died in '99), like why the family moved out west.

At the reception following the internment, my great aunt's daughter, my second cousin, told story after story. It was wonderful. She really is the historian for that branch of my family tree. My great aunt had been quite the storyteller. And she had always been kind to me. She loved to laugh, and she had the sweetest giggle. I'll miss her.


So, this is a short blog entry today, but a poignant one. Do it now. Really. Ask all your questions, and record the stories, the histories. Don't wait.

And another thing. Take some time to tell your loved ones--all of them, not just the elders--why you love them. Recall for them the stories that make you smile when you think of them. Thank them for what they have taught you. Explain why you admire them.

You might feel a little embarrassed at first, but don't let that stop you. Just pick up the phone, or the pen. Make the call, mail the letter. Type the email and click "SEND". It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be well-written. It can be a list, a top ten. It can be an "I love you."

Really, do it NOW.