Ring toss

My rings have been going through phases during the weight loss journey. They'll be loose, tight or just right, almost as if the fat in my fingers has been shifting around my body trying to find a spot to hide. I did start to wear my engagement ring on my right hand as a precautionary measure but neither it or my wedding ring ever got to the point where they would slide off on their own.

But this morning, just as I was reaching for something on my desk, my wedding ring slid right off. I put it back on and found it stayed on, but just barely. I thought, "Gee, that's cool!" and then I had the idea of moving my engagement ring back over to see how it fits now. Well, my engagement ring falls right off now. Unlike my wedding ring, there's no slight resistance, it slides right off.

It's funny. I was just thinking that I was fortunate not to have lost any of my rings during this year's Thanksgiving preparations. The last time I lost weight two years ago, I lost my wedding ring when I was stuffing the turkey. Fortunately, it didn't fall in the cavity, but it was lost for a good hour before I found it in a kitchen corner.

Lest I lose my rings again, I've moved them both over to my right hand where they're still a bit loose but at least they won't go anywhere!

Thirty-fifth Weigh-in

There's a reason why I took so long to post my weigh-in. Well, aside from the half-marathon, hehe. I'm up .4 lbs. Whoops! But there's a good reason for that. I was eating for fuel last week. And, I had the big old Thanksgiving dinner the night before. So, I'm not entirely upset about it. I'm back at it this week and as I'm always fond of saying, each choice is a new opportunity!

EDIT: Of course, having just re-read what I wrote earlier this week, the gain most certainly was attributed in part to me being pouty and not tracking my food. There's a lesson in this to be sure. Dear Tiny: don't be pouty, track your food!

Medals for the heart, medals for the soul

I did something extra special yesterday. I achieved a goal I set for myself in May. I trained for it all summer. And yesterday was the day it all came together. When I crossed the finish line at the half-marathon and felt the medal placed around my neck, it was all I could do not to burst into tears. It was pouring rain, and my body was numb with cold, but I could feel the warmth of the medal hanging around my neck. My medal.

I was never athletic. I was always the kid who was picked last for teams. And I never had medals or trophies to adorn my wall or make my parents proud. But now, now I have a medal. And it's my medal. I fought for it and I won it. And I am so very proud of it.

When I came home from the event, and placed my medal beside my other two participation medals from other events this past summer, my heart swelled with pride. My soul swelled with pride. Though I am no longer the last, nor even the first, I am still a winner. And I have the medals to prove it.

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.

Thursday confessional

First things first. I'm not sure that my Ham Plan™ is working out as intended. I bought the ham last night and it's the most delicious smelling thing ever. The scent of sweet hickory smoke just ooooooozes out of the package. It smells so gosh darned good that I'm salivating thinking about it. Focus, Tiny my girl, focus!

Second thing, I've been bad. It's embarrassing to say but I might as well get it off my chest: I haven't been tracking consistently this week. And I've been letting food control me instead of the other way around. Why do I do this to myself every time I hit a milestone? You'd think I would've learned from last time! But instead, I'm in a rebellious phase where *pouty look* I don't wanna track. *sticks out bottom lip*

But whining and stubbornness won't get me anywhere. Or at least whining won't. Being stubborn is one of those traits that can work for or against you. I can latch on like a pitbull if I want it bad enough but I can also flat out refuse to latch on though the ground is giving away. Ah, the mindset of a Taurus!

The rest of the week I'm going to work on that stubborn attitude and make myself do the things that I know work and are good for me. And I will track my food for goodness sake! So, enough with the whining, Tiny, and stay outta the ham!!!

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!

Review: Starbucks warm breakfast sandwich

If there's one thing I would love to have every morning, it would be some sort of breakfast sandwich. Egg, bacon, cheese, yum. But, trying to follow this whole eating healthy thing, I wisely do not indulge in this desire. Or, at least not on a daily basis.

However, I still plan for the occasional sandwich. Which is why, when I espied a reduced-fat version of the new Starbucks breakfast sandwiches, I knew I had to have one. I'm happy to report that I found it quite good. Reduced-fat turkey bacon, reduced-fat white cheese, an egg that tasted like an egg but apparently has had its cholesterol magically removed and all served on a whole wheat biscuit bun type thingy. At this point you're either thinking it sounds absolutely horrible* or are desperately wanting to know what the points are.

Surprisingly, it has the same points value as a Bacon n' Egg McMuffinlicious. So I dug a little deeper to see which one was better nutritionally. Here's how they stack up:

	Weight (g)	Calories	Fat	Fibre	Protein
Starbucks†	159	350	11	4	20
McDonalds†	123	310	14	2	16
† Note that this nutritional info is only as accurate as the info provided by the companies and as my fingers can make them. Also note that Starbucks nutritional information varies according to region - and it can vary wildly! You will need to visit the Starbucks web site in order to obtain the appropriate nutritional information sheet for your area.

Disclaimers aside, you get more bang for your points value out of the Starbucks sandwich. Not only is it bigger, it has less fat and twice as much fibre. Still, it's not a low point meal, but if you've got enough to spare, you might want to give it a try!

* After writing my post, I wandered around the blogosphere to see what others thought. There's a number of folks who think poorly of the Starbucks sandwiches, with the reduced-fat version faring the worse. To those people, I say, "What do you expect? It's reduced fat!" And to my readers I say, "Take my recommendations with a grain of salt." Murphys Law says that I'm an anomaly and the only one who actually likes it.