Writing everything down

I've been back and forth on whether or not I wanted to blog about my current weight adventures, mostly because in the past, it has been my goal to just lose weight and be done with it. Around this time last year, I was mildly successful; I lost like 15 pounds on a strict no carb diet. Soon thereafter, I lost my motivation, and then I started losing my hair. And then the weight came back... and to this day, the shower drain reveals that I'm still short a lot of hair!
Gone are the days where I can eat whatever I want and not worry about the health consequences. Add to that being tired of carrying around extra weight, memories of my father's heart related problems, and my current nutrition class, and I've got the perfect motivation to not just lose weight, but most importantly, to be healthy. You know, stick around here for a while.


A week ago, I began keeping track of everything that I eat. Everything. That, in itself, has been the best teacher of all... having the numbers right in front of me really helps me make better food choices. The sad truth is, almost anything that I don't personally prepare is either high in calories, fat or sodium. I cringe at the thought of the things that I ate before without even consulting the nutrition label, or paying attention to serving sizes!
I've been tracking my meals on livestrong.com (for freeeee!) and I've managed to convince Mark to do the same.
So here's the difference: I am not paying attention to my weight. Maybe in a month or so I'll report my weight loss, but for now, my priority is to get my cholesterol and triglycerides down.
I had blood drawn about 2 weeks ago, and I got my results back today. It's a wake up call, for sure. I'm not even into fried foods and I always avoid things that are blatantly terrible, and yet my was cholesterol was 227, and my triglycerides were 363... both on the high side. I'm posting these things here because it makes me more accountable to take control of these numbers and bring them down.
So in the ultimate disregard of my own privacy for the sake of motivation (ha!), you can view what I'm eating and how my little journey is coming along here: Food Diary

And that's the latest in the life of Michelle!
And now... what to eat?

Ready, set... Eat!

Do any of you watch Stylista? It's a reality show that I watched once and keep seeing the commercials for... basically a bunch of trendy kids fighting to the death for a position at Elle magazine. There's one girl on there that has been driving me crazy -- she looks so familiar! Where have I seen her before? Was she on some other show? Ugggh! A google search later, I realized that her name is Kate Gallagher, and I went to middle school with her. No wonder! As a matter of fact, I remember being impressed with her eyeshadow in 7th grade...

Mark and I have decided to go to a Thanksgiving buffet over at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Sacramento. I've managed to completely ruin the prospect of eating turkey by reading about how smart these birds are and how horrible their lives are when raised for food. I recommend educating yourself about it AFTER Thanksgiving. Turkeys get a bad rap, man. I am going to have a pet turkey one day.

With the holidays comes weight gain... so I've been cooking healthier meals for both of us in hopes that we can maybe shed a few pounds rather than gain more. Mark will eat anything as long as it tastes good, so making him eat healthy food has been surprisingly easy. I'm trying to establish good habits for both of us so that when New Year's and it's optimistic resolutions come around, we'll have a fighting chance.

Here are this week's hits:
Spinach Souffle Stuffed Chicken: This is way easy and you can make your own variations; I didn't have the stouffers souffle on hand, so I just made my own souffle and sauteed the chicken breasts instead.

Pistachio Encrusted Chicken Salad with Avocado Dressing: A little more labor intensive, but super duper good. Probably my favorite! Make the people you feed clean up all the dishes afterward and it becomes less of a pain in the ass to make.

Kidney Bean Salad with Mediterranean Dressing: This was a big surprise... Mark loved it and I just tolerated it. It's pretty good, but it screams healthy... I may have to just develop a taste for it. I added Dijon Mustard to the leftover dressing and topped a chicken breast with it to make this a complete dinner.

In other news, we are trying to configure our Christmas plans. So far it looks like we'll be driving to So Cal, with the dogs, to see Mark's family. Then I'll pick up my sister, bring her back with me to Davis, then fly Danielle up to visit for a few days, since she'll be here from Brazil. Mark's staying down south for few days to hang out with friends, then driving up here with them. Hopefully the timing will work out so that we don't have 147 people here at once. This just means that I need to have the place unpacked and looking like a normal house by then. We're probably putting up the tree after dinner tomorrow... so I'd love to finally get pictures of this place up. 3 months to get settled... not too bad, right???

Now... time to find some stretchy pants to accommodate the delicious thanksgiving fare (sans turkey!) that I am going to consume tomorrow.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, folks.