Weigh Ins 4:30-32

Friends, it has been an interesting few weeks, but overall successful.  I finished my run of my evening show, I rehearsed and opened a kid's show, and got through an illness. My knee is still giving me problems, so exercise is severely limited.  I weighed in today at 482.6, which is almost 2 pounds in the last 3 weeks.  This is not great progress, but it is movement in the right direction, at just over half a pound a week.

My focus right now is on healthier eating in regards to my cardiovascular health.  I have new doctor who is going to help me stabilize my blood pressure, but I need to make sure I'm doing my part on the home front.  Losing weight is part of that, but reducing salt and other undesirable nutrients is first on the list.  My hope is that one will lead to the other, and that by reducing the things that give me trouble with blood pressure I will have overall better meals and start losing a bit more weight.

On the exercise front I have to be smart right now.  I need to give my knee at least this week to rest up and get healed and then start working in some moderate movement to keep up the strength.  Mindfulness and building better habits are going to be key moving forward and will set me up for better results through the year end.  I would love to be under 350 for the new year, and I think this is a very reachable goal.

Weigh In 4:29

The thing about yo-yos- what goes up must come down, and vice versa.  I completely erased last week's big gain with a big loss.  The stress and poor meal habits that come with tech week and opening a show took their toll, but a more normalized schedule got me back to exactly where I had been, 384.4. Though I am treading water over the past 2 weeks I still take that as a victory.  No I want to take this big week and tack on another for good measure.

Unfortunately, my ability to exercise outside of the show is now compromised.  Due to my fall and probably some overuse issues as well I have sprained my knee and have a contusion of the patellar tendon as well.  Rest and elevation are indicated as much as is earthly possible for the next month or so.    While it is disappointing to be laid up like that I want to take it as an opportunity to be very precise with my diet.  Once I have a better foundation there I can jump back into workouts when I am ready.

Weigh In 4:28

Oof.  Not a great week.  I came in at 388.2, which is a considerable backtrack.  The combination of tech, bad choices, and some other things definitely put me on the back foot, but there was some good this week too.  My clothes are fitting more loosely and considering how physically demanding the show can be I would like to think I gained a bit of muscle last week.  This is the time of year when football games, get togethers, family visits, and holidays start to conspire against me, so I need to be extra vigilant.  I have made some positive choices already this week, so here's hoping for a nice loss.

Weigh In 4:27

A little late once again, but tech week will do that to you.  I came in at 384.4 this past week, which is a solid loss.  All of the dancing and work we've been doing for the show has given me a bit of leeway the past week, but it is back to mindfulness now that the madness has calmed a bit.  I will of course post a weigh in this coming week, but I have no idea how things will look.  and I'm going to make the choice to be OK with that now.  It will make things much more enjoyable down the road.

Weigh in 4:26 - A Choice Is A Choice...Isn't It?

Halfway through the year.  I'd be lying if I were to say I am where I expected I would be.  This far into my weight loss in 2010 I had lost 112 pounds, which is an unbelievable number.  This time around I have lost just over 30.  I weighed in this morning at 385.6.  I am still learning not to compare the two.  I am on the right track and this time around I feel I am progressing in a much more sustainable way.  As energized and successful as I felt last time I can look back on it and see that I was not buying into the lifelong aspect of this journey.  So, smaller numbers, but slow and steady wins a race like this.

I planned to pen a post this weekend and I did not, but the points I was pondering then are still applicable (Alliteration over). The past couple weeks in my life I have been pointed to not just the power of choice, but the power of positive choice.  It may seem ridiculous, but I feel that one can make the same decision for two different reasons, and because one comes from a positive and one from a negative the results will be vastly different.  In my life the last few years I have made many fantastic choices for terrible reasons:  I eat healthy because I want to avoid health problems, I want to not be fat, I want to avoid being seen as something I do not want to be, I cannot do this because it will cause bad things to happen. Lately I have been trying to focus on positive choice: I eat healthy because it is a gift to my body, I want to achieve certain physical goals, I want to be seen as a collection of positive attributes, I can chose this because in the long run I will be happier.  Until recently I would have said this was "six of one, half dozen of the other".  And I would have been wrong.

This is a lesson I was first exposed to by Audrey Francis at school last summer, and continue to be faced with both artistically and personally.  Avoidance and negative choice is the surest way to create negative consequence.  Rather than working to avoid an undesirable outcome I should chose to work toward something positive.  Looking back it is no wonder I got burned out after spending so much time denying, avoiding, and making saying "I can't" several times a day.  If each meal becomes an opportunity to treat myself well rather than a pitfall to avoid then the habits I want to form will become much easier to live with, and I can create a personal culture of self-worth.  Ultimately I have to accept that I am worth healthy food, strength in my body, and pride in my career.  And self worth is something I have to learn.  Thank God I have so many opportunities to do something right for myself.

Weigh Ins 4:23-25

Well, that was an unplanned break. I didn't really have a good reason for it, I just put the blog low on my priority list.   The last couple weeks have been up and down and I am currently at 386.8.  I hit 30 pounds down last week and jumped up a bit this week, but I am doing the right things for the most part, including pretty strenuous rehearsals at the moment, so the results should come.  This week I definitely need to buckle down a bit on home cooking, so I will be investing time there and hopefully get a nice boost.  I saw a neat recipe on Food Network that I plan to adapt to be a bit healthier.  Things are pretty busy at the moment, so expect a more complete check in this weekend.

Weigh In 4:22

If consistency is the name of the game, then I have that in spades.  I lost another 1.2 pounds this week, taking me down to 386.4.  I am within shouting distance of losing 30 pounds overall, and that is no mean feat.  Are things moving more slowly than I would like?  Absolutely.  But a positive difference I feel this time over three years ago is that I am developing a lifestyle.  I am imperfect and I am allowing myself to be.  But the curve of progress is bending in the right direction.  I am fairly consistently losing about a pound a week.  And if I can do that with what is, lets be honest, very little effort then when I decide to pour it on a bit I can maybe get ahead of the pace.  This week was one of those times where I made steps to maybe gain a little momentum.

I met on Tuesday with a former theater colleague who is a personal trainer.  She and I crafted a game plan of some exercise I can and should do every day to build core strength, balance, and start to build up some muscle.  What effect this will have on the number on the scale is hard to say, but if I replace every pound of fat I lose with a pound of muscle I am ok with that for the time being, because eventually biology will catch up with me and I will start to use up some of that stored fuel.  I have a 1 pound baseline of progress that I have maintained for half a year.  As frustratingly slow as that is it is not all I can do, but rather a foundation to build on.  This week is the first of trying to attack this problem on two fronts.  Anybody familiar with military history knows that defense on two fronts is difficult, and I plan to take the advantage it gives.  Add in the bonus of having considerable movement in some of my rehearsals for my show and I am going to have some pretty good activity in my life.  I expect some good things in the coming month.

Weigh in 4:21

Another late post!  one of these weeks I will get back on the stick and post on time.  Wednesday was actually quite busy for me so not only was I not able to post, but I didn't even weigh myself, so this week's numbers are from Thursday.  I was down 0.8 pounds, which while small is a loss, and consistent with my results to date.  Considering my complete lack of exercise it will have to do.  I weighed in at 387.6 on the new scale.  385 this week would be fantastic, and I feel I am doing pretty well so far.  I had a very vigorous dance rehearsal on Thursday as well as some other intermittent physical activity.  Paired with good good choices so far I think I am on the way to good results.

My appointment with the personal trainer got pushed back a week, so this Tuesday I should get some new strategies for building physical strength and stamina.  Rehearsals for my show should start to be more consistently movement heavy as well, so I feel good about where I will be going forward.  I now need to commit to it.  I hope for a more thoughtful and detailed post (and on time) this Wednesday.

Weigh In 4:20

Decent week.  I am a bit behind in posting due to a combination of things, including booking a show!  I will be performing in Route 66 at Metropolis PAC in Arlington Heights this fall.  I get to sing, dance, and even play a little guitar.  Back to the weigh in, I ended up at 388.4 on the new scale, which is a loss of two pounds.  I was able to get back my small gain and then some, and considering I still have the difficulty of a night shift job I feel pretty good about that.  I did not work out beyond walking on my lunch breaks, so I have lots of room for improvement there.  This week I will have my first meeting with an acquaintance who is a personal trainer, and I hope she can give me some techniques and workouts that will be effective in boosting my metabolism and building a little bit of strength.  Given the difficulty I have had thus far I am hoping this is the missing link between me and some good results.

A new month means new goals.  I am going to keep them ambitious, as there is no reason to be anything but bold when setting goals.  I would like to get to 375 by the end of this month, which gives me about 5 weeks to lose 13+ pounds.  That is big, but very doable.  My friend Sam has given me the extra motivation of a possible theme park trip in Florida next summer, and I want to get back on some roller coasters.  That is going to take big weight loss, and as slowly as things have gone so far this year (less than 30 pounds in 6 months) I know I can do it.

Weigh In 4:19

This was a rough week, folks.  I started a new temp job that has me working early, late, overnight, and everywhere in between.  One necessary evil this week has been a ton of caffeine, and the changing hours have had me struggling to figure out meals.  Add in an inability to exercise as much as I have been in recent weeks and you get a gain.  I feel a little lucky it was only a pound, to be honest.

I weighed in at 385 on my old scale, and 390.4 on the new one.  I weighed myself during the week to measure the difference and about 5 1/2 pounds seems to be the average, so I am going to call it 5.4 and call it a day.

As things stabilize this week my hope is that I can eat a little better and take a few more pounds off.  I am still adjusting, though, and my shifts are still all over the place, so I am not going to kill myself to do it.  I still struggle with thinking of this as my new lifestyle rather than as a temporary inconvenience.  For as slow as it is going this time around I am able to enjoy myself a bit more, and maybe that is a good balance.

Recalibrating

The new scale has arrived!  It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of my old one, but it has a very wide base which will help with accuracy, and it is new and factory calibrated, so I know it is (more) accurate than my current scale.  Here is the old one:

And here is the new one:

An unfortunate reality is that my current scale is inaccurate in the wrong direction.  I opened up the new scale and weighed myself on both and the new scale was 5.4 pounds heavier.  I was 384 on the old and 389.4 on the new.  Now, I have been weighing myself on the same scale the whole time so this does not change how much I have lost, just where I started and where I am now.  I will do a couple more calibrations to get an average difference, and then I will adjust my previous numbers to match.  So far I am break even for the week (though I weighed later today than usual), so that should make things a little easier.

Weigh in 4:18

It finally happened.  My scale has finally shuffled off this electrical coil and stopped working.  I should say I can still get on it and it will still give numbers, but they are so inconsistent and it takes so long to figure out what it wants to do that it is not useful right now.  I had to weigh myself 4 times today.  Once it settled on a pound up, once on a pound or so down, and twice it just kept fluctuating between 370 and 390 and then settling around 384 and then jumping all over the place again.  I took 384 as the number because that seemed to be the consensus number, but I could be a little up or a little down.  Suffice it to say that I had another mediocre week, although probably down just a tick.

This week I was victim to some poor preparation on my part.  I wasn't as strict on myself with food as I was last week, which is OK because I cannot do that every week.  I also was a bit lazy with exercise, though I still got around 35 points worth.  I missed out on monday because I was supposed to have a dance callback but the choreographer is injured so it has been moved to next week.  I did not want to tire myself with a workout or long walk earlier in the day, so a day I had planned to get exercise turned into one I did not get any.  Working exercise into my day to day life is still a new thing, so I must continue to get better at that.

A new challenge starts this week as well.  I have a new temp job to take me through to the start of my kids' shows in the fall.  It is part time, but mostly 3rd shift, so I will need to stay vigilant and work to plan my meals as I will be completely changing my body clock and personal schedule.  This is less than ideal, but I need work, so I will have to learn to work around it.

This coming week I know I can do a better job of working out and managing my food choices.  It sucks that I have to be as vigilant as I need to be, but complaining won't change that.  This weigh in puts me just over 1/3 of a year from my restart on the blog, and about 6 1/2 months to a new year.  In that time I have lost 20 pounds, and 26 for all of my time on weight watchers.  That puts me losing about another 40 or so for the year, and I would love to kick that up a bit.  Shooting for 320-325 by next January is a solid goal, and I would love to be under 300 for next summer.  If I can establish a better rhythm and habits, and keep going on my exercise I know I can blow past that, but purely based on what I have done those goals seem reasonable.

Thin Margins

In the past few weeks I have alternately been frustrated and elated with my results.  The frustration was from doing things right and not getting rewarded.  The elation was from reversing the trend.  One thing that has become frustratingly clear is how thin my margin for error is. This post is not to make excuses, but rather get out some big frustration I have over it.  I feel like I have to be constantly perfect in order to have consistent results, and that is the kind of mindset that leads to burnout and acting out against my diet.  I did not realize at the time, but 3 years ago this came so easily.  I barely got exercise, I frequently indulged in (reasonable) cheats, and I was losing over 3 pounds a week easily.  Now I can only get that eating 6 salads in a week and 5 workouts.

There are always things I can do better, but I would be inhuman if I didn't find it frustrating and see the distance to a healthy weight as very daunting.  Losing a pound a week is quite reasonable for folks looking to lose 20-30 pounds, but I need to lose at least another 130 pounds.  At a minimum.  At a pound a week pace that is two and a half years away.  In the 5 or so months I have been on program I have lost 25 pounds.  25 pounds is a lot and something I am trying to be proud of, but there is so far to go that It can be hard to see the trees for the forest, to corrupt a phrase.

Looking on the bright side I have only been really committed to working out for 3 weeks.  One of the surest ways to increase metabolism is to increase lean muscle mass, and as the work I am doing compounds I should see better results and have more of a margin.  As I have mentioned many times my meds put me on the back foot, but they also make workouts possible without having a heart attack, so I will have to take the good with the bad.  There is room for improvement with my diet, and every little bit helps.  The Weight Watchers Points system is helpful, and a little more user friendly than calorie tracking, but it is not perfect, and some points are better than others.

This is a constant learning process, and it is something I have to live with forever.  Sometimes that takes adjustment.  A little progress is still progress.  The journey can be as valuable as the destination.  I think tomorrow that will feel truer to me.  Today I had to talk it out a bit.

Weigh In 4:17

Now that is more like it!  After last week's debacle I was hoping that my body was merely trying to reset and not that I had made some huge error in my accounting of things.  As I posted earlier in the week the 4th was not a great day for me on my diet, so I am even happier that I managed to have a great week and still have one ridiculous day.  I weighed in this morning at 385.2, which is a loss of 3.2 pounds.  That is the kind of range I would like to be in on a weekly basis.  If I can string together 3 more weeks like this then I can hit about 375 by month's end, which would achieve my most ambitious goal for the month.  Considering how previous weeks have gone this may not be realistic, but I think shooting for somewhere south of 380 is a solid goal.

Considering the fact my diet was not perfect this week I have to look at the other changes I made to see from where the progress came.  The first, and most obvious, is from exercise.  Last week was decent, but this week was great.  I hit the elliptical 3 times for a total of about an hour, and took an hour walk as well.  Unfortunately being a big guy meant that this also meant that by yesterday I had a bit of a chafing issue, so yesterday I also did a few reps with my free weights, and although it probably did not do much in terms of calories it did get my blood pumping just a little bit and couldn't have hurt, especially on a day when a jog or walk was painfully unrealistic.  I have discovered that Netflix is my best friend for working out on the elliptical because it does just enough to take my mind off of how sweaty and tired I am and keep going.  A sitcom episode is perfect because by the time the credits hit I can slow things down and cool off and have about 25 minutes done.  Walks are less of a problem because I am outside with much more pleasant surroundings and it is not nearly as vigorous as my elliptical sessions.

Another strategy that helped this week was my protein buster.  Two days of salads had me craving anything but by the third day, but it really got me back on the right track.  Starting Sunday I pretty much ate as I normally would.  The results speak for themselves, so I think at least every other week a few salad days consecutively are going to become part of my repertoire.

This week I want to keep going with what I achieved this week.  This is a great baseline to shoot for, so I plan to keep up what has worked.  40-50 points worth of exercise, a few salads, and keep it sensible otherwise.

That Escalated Quickly

Oh Holidays. The parties, the fun, the frivolity all create an atmosphere of inattention to making good eating choices.  Compound that with a little booze and the hand to mouth filter gets quite weak.  Yesterday was 2/3rds fantastic, one third nuclear holocaust.  By the time I left for my party I still had about 30 daily points left.  By the time I was done I had used all of that and all of my weekly points.  It is amazing how fast that can happen.

Yesterday was a fantastic reminder of what liquid calories can do to you.  Alcohol and sugary drinks are pretty high in calories and points while offering absolutely nothing in terms of filling you up.  It is the dietary perfect storm.  Now, things like the 4th of July are why you have those weekly discretionary points, but my margin of error for the week is now quite a bit smaller.

On a positive note I have already done one walk and one elliptical session so far and have earned 20 activity points.  Since I start every week with 49 discretionary points that sounds like a good activity goal for me.  Considering an hour walk or a 20-25 elliptical session equals 10 points I just need to get 5 of those in this week.  And that is very doable seeing as I am 40% of the way there already.

The salad kick started today and I am roasting some chicken for homemade salads as I type.  3 days of that should clear away some of the Independence Day excesses.

Weigh In 4:16

OK, this was a pretty terrible week.  It didn't feel that way as I was experiencing it.  In fact, judging by the goals I set last week I did quite well.  I could have cooked more for myself, but I got a little behind on keeping my place clean and couldn't afford to make the problem worse.  I did have alcohol on Sunday at a birthday party, so that goal was not met.  On the positive side I did much better with my water intake, I kept 26 of my discretionary points, and I got 27 activity points, which while short of the 30 point goal I set was still more than I got last week.

And I gained 2 pounds.

I have to think this is just one of those weeks where my body had to reset, or perhaps the added exercise changed things for me and after an adjustment I will be back and better than ever.  Part of the reason I try to maintain so many of my weekly points is to give myself a buffer in case I have under estimated portion sizes and things like that.  If I am eating something I did not make from scratch for myself it can be very difficult to accurately track my points.  Keeping those points gives me a 1-2 point buffer on every meal.  Add in the activity points and I had two large meals worth of points left over this week, and I find it very hard to believe I was off by that much.  So I chalk it up to a fluctuation I can do nothing about and keep going next week.

I do think this week I am going to take a page from the old Quick Weight Loss Center days and do a protein buster.  What that entails is basically eating nothing but salads and white meat chicken for 2-3 days, excepting breakfast.  I can do fruit for snacks, but lightly dressed lettuce with chicken is about it in terms of meals.  On that program It was used to start off with and to bust plateaus.  I have resigned myself to the fact that on my blood pressure meds I may never have big numbers, but I can at least get back this week's stumble and then some.

This week I would like to keep up the strides I have made with exercise.  As I mentioned I was able to get 27 points worth of work in, but all of that was done in only 2 elliptical sessions.  An upside to that was that I was forced to stretch myself out  little bit and go longer than I was comfortable going to get to the point total I needed.  If I can combine the increased stamina from this week with a little more frequency then I think I can set myself up for a good week in that regard.

Ultimately this week is a great reminder that despite all of the scales. systems, diets, gyms, and nutrition advice ultimately our bodies are going to do what they want to do sometimes and we are really making a lot of this up as we go along.

Party Prep

Multitasking and planning ahead.  Two things that are weaknesses for me, and two things I am trying to do today.  One of my friends has a birthday today, and we are grilling on the beach.  Normally I might use this as an excuse to cheat a little bit, but this week I want to buckle down as much as I can.  Since I have the time I decided to prep some good choices to bring with me.  As we speak I am putting together my turkey meatloaf burgers to take along with me.

For those newer to the blog this is a recipe I came up with a couple years ago.  I take about a pound or so of veggies and run them in the food processor to a coarse paste.  Today I used a couple bell peppers, a few mushrooms, a whole onion, and some zucchini.  I cook the paste down to concentrate and dry it out and then I mix that with the ground turkey.  When all is said and done I end up with meatloaf or turkey burger that is about 1/3 veggies before I even top it.  This stretches the meat too so I can fill up on an appropriate serving more easily.  Today I will be using lettuce instead of buns, so I should be able to fill up smartly.  The week has felt mediocre so far, so I hope I can use this as a springboard to a strong finish.

Weigh In 4:15

A solid week.  I weighed in this morning at 386.4, which puts me down another 1.2 pounds.  Still not the kind of numbers I would like, but solid.  I had 2 days where I churned through pretty much all of my regular points and weekly bonus points, and the other 5 I ended up about 3-5 points below my daily target.  A big improvement this week was with exercise.  I got out for a 40 minute walk on Thursday, a 45 Minute walk on Sunday, and a 22 minute elliptical session last night.  That added up to 26 activity points, or a large meal's worth.  I did not include a session of weigh lifting I did, as I still have not quite figured out how to track that at the pace I go.  I usually take about 20- 30 minutes and curl and crunch and lift while watching tv.  I will take a break between reps, and if I get caught up in what I am watching maybe a longer break.  I would rather track conservatively, so I left it out, but that was probably at least another point or two.

I am hoping that though this week's weight loss was modest I have set the table for bigger weeks to come.  I cooked for myself  lot more consistently this week, with only a handful of meals that I did not prepare for myself when I had the chance.  That is a trend I definitely need to keep moving with into this week.  Some of my meals were a bit more rich than is probably advisable for a quick weigh loss plan.  I made a big pot of stew that, though balanced and veggie filled, had beef which I know stalls my weight loss.  That is ok this week.  Getting into the habit of cooking again consistently is more important in the short term.  Some of my meals were excellent, and this week I plan to make better strides in that direction.

So, the plan for the coming week:
-Keep cooking!  The more I make for myself the better.
-No booze.  With a party and a baseball game and the Stanley Cup Finals this past week I definitely drank more than is advisable for weight loss.  This week I will abstain and see what happens.
-Better water intake.  I think this week I was a bit lax in my hydration.  Water keeps things moving and keeps me healthy.
-At least as many points worth of exercise as this week.  The goal is 30
-Keep at least 20 of my weekly discretionary points.

I want a big week and I think this should put me on the right path.

If Some Is Good...

Then more is better.  Or so goes the tale.  I am trying to get back to the kind of results and enthusiasm I had 3 years ago.  Part of that is getting back into the habits that served me so well.  One of them was blogging regularly.  I have been doing my minimum one post a week for a while, but I think a few days of extra attention to myself and to organizing my thoughts should be helpful.  Another positive habit I had previously was cooking for myself with consistency.  I have been a bit lazy about that, so this week I am making the choice to buckle down.

Yesterday I made a trip to Costco and picked up some heavy duty supplies.  Peppers, Broccolini (my new fave veg), potatoes, asparagus, stew meat, wild caught salmon, sweet corn,and a few other goodies.  I have gone now a full day without eating anything pre made, and let me tell you it is a HUGE difference.  It is always nice to know what is going in your body, but the points savings I have been able to make are just as fantastic.  Last night I had 6.5 ounces of salmon, a handful of broccolini, and two ears of corn with a little bit of seasoned butter that I whipped together.  I cooked everything on my cast iron grill pan to get a little bit of summer going.  Altogether it was only 15 points, 13 if you 86ed the butter, but at that low of a total why would you?  It was super filling and super flavorful, and having bought in bulk super cheap.  Even with wild caught salmon if that meal was more than $6.50 I would be shocked.  When cooking for 1 price is a real concern, so finding a good repeatable meal from bulk food is awesome.

Last night I also threw some ingredients in the crock pot and I have been feasting on beef stew all day.  I used a generous amount of Guinness in the sauce, and potatoes aren't the best health food, but it is a good balance of veggies, meat, and carbs and is very filling.  Again a large bowl is in the 15-20 point range.  If those are the kind of meals I can stick with then I am going to have very positive results.

Last night I got out for a 2 mile walk, and that is another habit I need to get back into.  I need to be gatting out for at least 45 minutes of aerobic activity 3 times a week, and 3 sessions with at least a little bit of isometric exercise weekly would be good too.  Aerobic exercise is going to strengthen my heart and increase my stamina.  Isometric exercise is going to build muscle mass therefore increasing my resting metabolic rate and helping me burn more calories with less effort.  You can't really lose large amounts of weight solely through exercise, but paired with diet it should help me get much more impressive results, and more importantly feel and be more healthy.

I often forget, but this blog is also about my life as an actor.  It has been a really slow 6 months, and I think I need a bit of a kick in the pants.  The only person who can do that effectively is me, so I am taking steps to be more active.  I am shopping around to get my voiceover demo reel done, I just picked up a new box of headshots (same pic, but it was a feeling of accomplishment to get through an order).  Today I received the next weapon in my marketing arsenal: business cards.  The website I used is a little pricey, but the results are hard to argue with.  Two sided, full color, well designed cards for less than $0.50 a piece is a small price to pay, and if they are a hit I will order in bulk next time.  I also included a QR contact code, which seems to be the new wave in actor marketing.  I can have my info uploaded directly to their phone, direct them to a URL with my resume, website, or reel.  It should be a powerful tool.

The weekend has begun and it is going to be a busy one, so I am making the decision to be mindful now.  I'd love this to be a 5lb week, and that requires 7 straight good days and a little luck.  I can control the first part, and here's hoping for the second.

Pickles

This is more exciting than it probably has any right to be. Last week I went to dinner at an amazing farm to table Lowcountry style restaurant not far from my apartment. One of the appetizer plates they had was a selection of homemade pickles. In addition to a bread-and-butter pickles they had fennel fronds, okra, and onions and all kinds of different vegetables on the plate. Pickles have always been one of my favorite better for you snacks, and I figured: if this restaurant can do it why can't I? So this week I set out to make my own bread-and-butter pickles at home.

Part of the inspiration was seeing canning sets at Target last week, so I picked one up on a quick trip over there and set about to making my pickles. I found pickling cucumbers at the grocery store, and most of the other ingredients I already had on hand. Since I was making a refrigerator pickle it was pretty easy. I didn't have to waterseal the jars or do any of the other really difficult and time-consuming stuff that goes along with true preservation. Also, since I was making a bread and butter pickle there is far less sodium since sugar is used in the brine far more than salt. I did salt the cucumbers and onions before covering them in the pickle juice, but this was just draw excess moisture and I quickly rinsed off the salty leavings. This means these particular snacks, though a little higher in calories than the traditional pickle, are far better for me in terms of my blood pressure. 

Here is a photo journal of the process:

This is the canning apparatus after a 10 minute sterilization in my oven.

Here is my brine containing apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, mustard seeds, sugar, celery seeds, turmeric, garlic, red pepper flakes, cloves, and a little water so that it didn't get too concentrated as I boiled it.

Here are the salted cucumbers and Vedalia onion. Also my foot is in the picture.

There are the veggies in the jar, and then after I poured the pickle over them. I let them cool and then threw them in the refrigerator to set.

According to the recipe these are best after about a week, but I did open a jar last night to give one a quick try and they already taste fantastic. I can't wait to see how they develop and have 6 pints worth for snacks over the next few weeks.