Happy Canada Day!

A belated Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends! I'm glad to report that after the excess of the weekend, I spent the day perfectly on track and in control.

In the morning, I participated in the HBC 3K Walk for Canada. When I saw other people running instead of walking, I decided to run as well! Normally I do run/walk intervals, but this time I thought I'd try to run the whole way. And I did it! I believe I came in fifth, too. At the finish line, we all received a really beautiful silver medal.

If you've never done the HBC walk (or run), I highly recommend it. You get a shirt, a high-quality medal, and a bag full of product samples and other free goodies as part of the registration fee. Visit the official site for more info.

The rest of the day was spent with friends hiking around a lake followed with fireworks in the evening. At the end of the day, I'd earned 10 Activity Points and had eaten on plan. I always love it when that happens.

Lastly, this blog post is brought to you by Local Strawberries! It's strawberry season here now and wow are they ever good. Small, juicy, red through-out, and oh so sweet! Best part is, zero points for a cup. Eaten on their own or with a dollop of light Cool Whip and you'll be in heaven.

Awesome office birthday

I've said before that it's funny what a year's difference makes. Not only in me, but in other's perceptions. Tomorrow being my birthday, today there was a small office get-together with food to celebrate it. Normally we have cake or pastries. Indeed, that's what we had last year.

This year was a complete change of pace. Instead of cake, there was a big bowl of fresh strawberries along with fat-free vanilla yogurt for dipping. Fat-free vanilla yogurt. Strawberries. No pastry, no cake, no icing, just fresh awesome zero-points-for-a-cup strawberries.

Holy wow. Can you say thoughtful, touching, awesome?

Best. Birthday. Treats. Ever!

I have the best husband in the world

My husband is the best darned man in the world. He woke me up this morning with flowers and breakfast in bed. Not only was that sweet, but it was extra awesome because he found a recipe for Weight Watchers Applesauce pancakes, bought the ingredients, got up extra early and made them all by himself.

I sat in bed for a good ten minutes looking at this plate of perfect pancakes in absolute amazement. He doesn't know how to cook. I mean, making cereal, yes. Making spaghetti, yes. But mixing together whole wheat flour, baking powder, and so on? Unheard of.

I was so flabbergasted that I took everything out into the kitchen and took a picture of it in case I was dreaming. And yes, that is no-sugar added pancake syrup. I'm the luckiest gal in the world ♥

Thirty-eighth Weigh-in

I've come out from under my rock to finally post my last weigh-in. There's no two ways about it, I'm embarrassed. I've decided to post it and get it over with despite how sheepish I might feel. I'm up again, another .4 lbs. I know it's just a wee amount, but then I look over the last few months and it's distinctly becoming a trend.

I know I can certainly explain it away to my heart's content – work has been busy/stressful, I'm back on birth control meds, it was that time of the month, etc., etc. – but excuses only cut it so far when you're not really following the plan. I did it before when things were rough, why not now?

This week hasn't been any better. There's been one Halloween festivity after another. I even paid for it dearly the morning after a night of icing/eating Halloween cupcakes with friends. My stomach was in such knots that I took the day off work. Though that wasn't fun at all, I still ate badly on Halloween itself. Needless to say, I'm expecting another gain tomorrow.

So, what to do? I am reminded of a quote from my favourite movie...

When a job went wrong, you went back to the beginning.”
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

And that's what I'm going to do. Back to the beginning with me! Menu plans, tracking every morsel into my mouth, drinking water and exercising. All the good things that got me to where I am today. Because, despite my excesses this week and my hit-and-miss attitude of the last few months, I've still lost over 40lbs and should never lose sight of that.

Snow, snow, snow, and ski pants, too!

I'm super excited! We're going on a ski vacation this Christmas! After being taken for granted by our family for 13 years, my husband and I decided to take care of us instead this year. So, this Christmas we'll be spending four glorious nights on a snowy mountain with three of our closest friends. I booked it yesterday. Whoohoo!

But that's not what I'm excited the most about. I'm more excited because I will finally be able to hold my head up high when shopping for ski pants. It used to be that I'd have to borrow ski pants from my husband's work in the biggest men's size they had and still have them be too tight. I can't tell you how shameful that felt. But now, now I get to shop for my own snow pants and in regular sizes! Yay!

TGIF (night)

Dinner is finally over. My family was a lot more stressful this year than most years. My mom didn't show up, my dad ate and left (leaving my husband to drive my stepmom and brother home which no one was expecting), AND my mother-in-law, by way of greeting, told my husband to shut my music off because she hated it. Though that was enough stress by anyone's count, that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Somebody save me from my family >_<

And save me from myself. I didn't do great food-wise, stress having gotten the better of me. I'm the type of person that eats for comfort. Even knowing the mantra "if it's not hunger, food won't fix it" didn't help. Ah well. It could've been worse. I made some pretty good choices in the middle of it all. For example, I filled half my plate with salad, only had a small amount of mashed potatoes and a thin sliver of pie. That erases all the extra ham, stuffing and bread I ate, right? Right???

But, if there's one silver lining, it's this: before I sat down to write, I was seriously thinking of making myself feel better by digging into the leftovers in the fridge. However, writing it all out has helped immensely. The family is gone and I'm sipping ice cold water from a wine glass. The leftovers might be good, but they won't fix anything.

Preparing for T-Day

If they had an award in high-school for "person most likely to be stuck cooking big family dinners for the rest of her life" I would've won it, hands down. In my family, holidays are important. It's a chance to sit down and be awkward together. In spite of this, or rather, because of this, my husband and I are always the hosts. The family dynamics are too long and complicated to go into, but suffice it to say, the family feels the most comfortable at our place.

This Thanksgiving, I thought I'd be able to dodge hosting duties because of the half-marathon on Sunday. Saturday we're resting and taking it easy, Sunday we're walking, and Monday is recuperation day. And after all these years of hosting, it'd be nice to have a year off.

Unfortunately, every time I try to take a year off, something invariably conspires to keep me from doing so. This year is no different [insert long story here]. So this is where I'm at: planning a last-minute Thanksgiving dinner for Friday night.

This means last-minute mental rehearsals because I didn't think I'd have to deal with eating a big Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings! Fortunately, I still have a couple of days to get into the mindset and have already made great strides towards a hopefully guilt-free dinner. I'm serving ham instead of turkey. I like ham, but I love turkey. Specifically, turkey skin. I could eat the skin off an entire bird if given half the chance. But ham? I like it but not with the unending devotion I have for turkey. And with my weigh-in the very next morning, I have even more reason to be good at dinner.

I'll also be serving a lot more veggies than normal and may even try the WW recipe for Sausage, Apple and Cornbread Stuffing if there's time. I know stuffing isn't supposed to go with ham, but what the heck :)

If you've got any tips for a guilt-free Thanksgiving, please feel free to share!