So I’m at school, and I should be studying for next week’s patho midterm, but I have instead decided to blog

Things have been going pretty well.  I’m enjoying my classes, working lots (hooray for $$), I’m looking into another 3 possible jobs (tutoring, giving campus tours, and monitoring a lab a few hours a week), I’ve been doing my best to keep track of my eating, and I’ve been getting a decent amount of exercise.

The only two problems I have right now is an annoying head cold, and my back.  Unfortunately my hectic schedule hasn’t been too kind to it…I’m often lugging around a pretty heavy backpack, and  the exercise seems to only be making it worse.  On the bright side though, I have a dr. appt next week so I’m hoping to get a perscription for some massages

On another ‘healthier me’ topic, I took the bus home from school yesterday and took the time to come up with some healthier me ideas on my palm pilot (I have a Palm TX, and I LOVE it)

NUTRITION IDEAS:

• Have an apple a day
• Have a glass of veggie juice every day
• Have fish, tofu, or beans at lunch
• Watch my supper portions
• Make sure to have veggies at lunch & supper
• Snack on fruits & veggies
• Think HARD before putting anything in my mouth!

Nutrition strategies:

• Plan weekly meals
• Pick one weeknight to make a good, fresh, healthy supper
• Pick one weekend night to make a good, fresh, healthy supper
• Make casseroles on Sunday
• Stock kitchen with healthy food
• Eat what I planned to eat
• Diversify lunches so I don’t eat the same thing every day

FITNESS IDEAS (Diversify my fitness):

• Yoga 60 min 2x per week
• Pilates 15 min 2x per week
• Weights 30 min 2x per week
• Hard cardio 60 min per week

Fitness strategies:

• Make a checklist on my palm pilot
• Keep track of fitness on fitness spreadsheet
• Schedule fitness at the beginning of every week
• Continue to maximize my fitness opportunities by:
  • Walking to bus stop 
  • Walking during lunch hours, class breaks, etc
  • Get up early if I can to make it to the gym before class
  • Walking when I don’t feel well enough to exercise
  • Rembering that the campus gym is always available
  • Rembering there are free swims on the weekend

Ok, so there’s my ideas for now.  Don’t know how many of them I’ll be able to stick with, but like that corney saying goes, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take…right? 

Thanks for listening,

L.L.

Cheesy Tuna Noodle Casserole

I hate having to make a lunch first thing in the morning when I’m trying to get out the door.  So instead I’ve adopted the idea of making a big casserole, portioning it into resealable containers, and freezing it, so I can just grab a lunch and go.  I usually make goulash (a combo of veggie meat, tomatoes, tomato sauce, onions, kidney beans and whole wheat macaroni), but I’m starting to get a little tired of it.  I thought it would be nice if I could come up with something cheezy, and this receipe from kraftcanada looks like it might fit the bill.  I like the fact that it uses tuna (I don’t eat enough fish), and if I’m not ambitous enough to make my own mac and cheese, Kraft Dinner now comes in whole wheat   It looks like a pretty easy recipe to play around with too.  I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll review it once I do.

Prep Time: 10 min

Total Time: 50 min

Makes: 5 servings

3 cups frozen vegetable blend with broccoli, carrots, cauliflower

1 pkg.  (225 g) KRAFT DINNER Macaroni and Cheese

3/4 cup skim milk

1/4 cup  KRAFT CALORIE-WISE Zesty Italian Dressing

2 cans (170 g each) chunk white tuna in water, drained

1 cup  KRAFT Double Cheddar Shredded Cheese Light- Made with 2% Milk, divided

PREHEAT oven to 375°F. Place vegetables in colander in sink. Cook Macaroni as directed on package. Pour cooked Macaroni over frozen vegetables in colander to drain and quickly thaw vegetables.

RETURN macaroni and vegetables to same saucepan. Add Cheese Sauce Mix, milk and dressing; mix well. Add tuna and 1/2 cup of the cheese; mix well. Spoon into 2-L round casserole dish; cover with foil.

BAKE 35 min. or until heated through. Uncover; top with remaining 1/2 cup cheese. Bake an additional 3 to 4 min. or until cheese is melted.

So, I like to be busy. In fact, the busier I am, the more I seem to get accomplished. So conversely, I HATE to be bored. Having nothing to do takes away all of my ambition to find things to do, and basically makes me depressed.

And since I’ve been about 15, I’ve been pretty solidly busy. During high school I had part-time jobs, participated in extracurriculars, studied hard, and took dance lessons. In University things got even busier…I got more jobs, joined more extracurriculars, and even volunteered for companies I wanted to work for when I graduated. In fact, I was a little bit too busy…I wound up pretty burnt out by graduation, but things picked up once I got settled into my new job and honey and I moved in together. I decided to go back to school for an accellerated Nursing program and figured I wouldn’t have to worry about being bored for a while.

So imagine my surprise that I’ve pretty much had the past 8 weeks off! We went to school straight through the summer, except that they gave us the last three weeks of August off, and the 3 weeks before that were pretty slow. So I was more than ready to get back to school and get busy again. But no, I don’t have anything due, all the assignments are ‘group’ assignments, and even my clinicals haven’t started yet. I’m starting to go nuts!!

Take yesterday for example. I was supposed to start clinical, but there was a scheduling mix-up, so I wound up with the day off. Now, I had gotten myself into a routine during my summer vacation that if I had a day off I’d go to the gym. Except that I’ve been hitting the gym pretty hard, and my back is starting to complain (I have a chronic back problem). So I thought I’d take the day off to try and not make it any worse. But that meant I had absolutly nothing to do. So I snacked. A lot. And when I’m bored, I want sugar. So I went down to the corner store and bought myself some peppermint patties. And then we had to go out with friends last night, and there was drinking (I was semi-good and only had one lite cooler), but on the way home I had a craving for ice cream (my nemesis). So I got dave to stop at McDonalds (a place I NEVER go, but it was the only place open that late) to get a McFlurry. And it was SO good. But of course, now I’m feeling guilty.

*sigh*

Ok, so that was a long rant about a McFlurry. But I’m having a bad go of it. School’s not busy, my back is bothering me, and to top it off, I have a head cold. Waah!!!!

hahaha

Ok, I think I need to get my act together and stop complaining, and get on with my life. I need to be a little stricter with myself about drowning my sorrows in ice-creamy-goodness, and learn to go to bed without a midnight snack. I’m going to try and pretend I’m not sick, and go to yoga this morning because it will make me feel better.

Thanks for listening,

L.L.

So things have been going pretty good.  As I mentioned in one of my posts last week, my pants are starting to feel looser, which I would say is definitely thanks to the crazy exercise I’ve been getting lately.  I got on the scale this morning and I’m still at 165.5lbs, so it’s nice to see that I’m keeping the weight off.

However, I realize things are about to get harder.  School is gearing up, which means less time to get to the gym.  Luckily it looks like I’ll have a pretty flexible schedule, but it means I’ll have to make more of an effort to schedule in those trips to the gym.  And I know I should get to the gym every chance I have because I only signed up for a 4 month membership, which is running out quickly.

So I’m thinking the best thing to do is come up with some goals:

- Attend yoga 1x per week
- Attend aerobics class 1x per week
- Exercise minimum of 60 min every day
- If necessary, one day off per week
- Exercise 90 min 3x per week

So how will I achieve these goals?
- Keep track of exercise on Palm Pilot Excel Spreadsheet
- Plan exercise on whiteboard

Ok, so that’s my plan and I’m sticking to it And that means I should go to the gym…right now! hahaha…Bye!

I absolutely LOVE this photo.  Not only do I think it’s a good photo in the artistic sense, but I find it so motivating!  I spent about 12 years taking dance lessons, but I only ever learned the very basics of ballet because my classes focused more on tap and jazz.  Bit I was always so captivated by ballet…the grace,  the flexibility, the ability to do pointe, and even the shoes and leg warmers always seemed so intriguing.  And this picture seems to capture all of these elements into one gorgeous shot.  So I’ve decided to use this photo as some movitation…I’ve set it as my desktop background and plan to print it out the next time I’m at school and stick it on my fridge….as a chunky kid, and now as a slightly overweight adult, I’ve never had the body for ballet, but I’m not dead yet and I’ve always loved the saying “If you can conceive it and you can believe it you can achieve it“…so lets see what happens

How excited am I? My clinical placement this term involves wearing professional clothes instead of scrubs…and I was a little worried that I wouldn’t fit into my dress pants by the end of the summer. My plan was to lose about 10 pounds while I was on vacation so I’ve really been trying to watch what I eat and get some good hardcore exercising in, but I haven’t really seen any great numbers on the scale. Well, I tried on my dress pants today and they fit great! What a motivator to keep eating healthy and keep going to the gym! I absolutely detest the feeling of tight pants, and while the pants aren’t lose, they aren’t tight at all. YAY!

Ok, I seriously love this I just discovered that the computer I’m on has Google Picasa, which has a super neat ‘Collage’ feature. This is basically a cumulation of all my weight loss ideas for the fall…cardio, weight training, isometric training, hiking this fall, skiing this winter, lap swimming, healthy eating, journaling my progress here on my blog (yay!) and even my ‘I wanna be a ballet dancer’, ‘I need to lose weight to help my back heal so I can get back to tap dancing (only the funnest thing EVER), and my ‘I’m getting married!’ motivation

As of this Thursday, my summer vacation is officially over.

*sigh*

I’m going to sound like a major geek here though and say I’m actually glad that school’s getting started again.

I have never before, and will probably never again, have 3 weeks off, and I think it’s a good thing.  I did manage to accomplish some stuff…I worked pretty much the whole first week, and managed to get a serious amount of exercise, I went to some crazy classes at the gym, went for bike rides, walks, swimming, and honey and I even took a trip to a provincial park camping where we spent most of the trip biking/hiking/swimming etc.  We also got to spend some time with his family, which made me SUPER happy since I’ve been MIA pretty much since christmas.

The only bugger is, I had that much time off and I didn’t lose ANY weight.  I’m happy with the exercise, but on the food front I didn’t watch myself as carefully as I should of.  But when you’re home all day, it’s HARD!  And it’s especially hard on the weekends when I sleep in, because if I don’t get going first thing in the morning I get sleepy, and then wind up going back to bed…at least I’m going back to school well rested haha.

Ok, so that’s about it for now…I’m definitely going to come up with a plan for the school year but I’d like to see what my school year will be like first.

Thanks for listening!

L.L.

Ok, so now I’m starting to panic a little bit.

I have 15 days left until I start clinical again.  Now, I’m actually pretty excited for this clinical rotation, it looks like it should be at least somewhat fun, but what I’m really worried about is what I’m going to wear.

Vacation has not worked out as well as I had hoped in the weight loss department.  I made it to the gym every day for about the first two weeks, but then there were exams, and then I worked a full week at the helpdesk.  And there’s the fact that I’m on vacation so I feel like I ‘deserve’ to slack off a little.

SO it turns out that I’m still right where I started at the beginning of my vacation, at 169 lbs.  And what will really REALLY be bad is if I can’t fit into my dress pants by the time August 5th rolls around, because I’d have nothing to wear to clinical!  And I seriously don’t have the money for new pants.

So I’ve got to cut the crap, stop thinking that I ‘deserve’ to eat whatever I want just because I’m on vacation, and instead use every extra minute I have to exercise.  So instead of putting calories in, I’ll be wearing calories off.  I really REALLY wish I could get back into my weight watchers groove, I just can’t stand counting points anymore.  And I know that there’s a lot of weight loss programs out there that suggest keeping a food journal, but I never liked doing that either because it’s hard to remember to do, and it means that I have to say NO to food after I’ve reached my limit, which is SO HARD!

Ok, so there’s my whining for today LOL

What I’m going to do now is get up off my butt and go to the gym for the 9am ‘Body Circuit’ class.  It will be hard (it includes sprinting), but it will be good for me.  And then I’m going to get my hair cut, sign up for a CPR course, run some errands, and get some stuff done around the house today, so that tomorrow I can start stripping the wallpaper.

Ok, here goes

Thanks for listening.

L.L.