The boy and I have been dieting and working out for a few weeks. We’ve both already lost weight and I’m feeling stronger but that isn’t really making the transition much easier. It’s great to step on the scale and see weight loss or to notice new muscle striations in my arms. It sucks to feel hungry or tired or crave candy.

We work out 5-6 times a week, for me a combination of cardio/weights at Bally’s and classes at Flirty Girl Fitness. Flirty Girl classes are surprisingly hard. I haven’t taken any of the pole/stripper-robics type classes. I have taken classes that involve circuit training, lots of sit ups with medicine balls and step ups onto chairs. (That last one practically killed me.)

On the diet side, I’m aiming for about 1200 calories a day.  At first, that sounded too low so I was eating more around 1500 and not losing. I can go down to about 800 a day but then I’m cranky, hungry and so bored with salad.  I used FitDay to figure out what I could eat in my calorie range. I don’t keep track of my food daily but it was helpful when I was starting to figure out just how much I can eat.

I think the biggest changes have been sweets and liquor. I eat a lot of fruit so I still get sugar but no candy at the movies, funnel cake at the street fair, cupcakes just because it’s someone birthday at work. And I haven’t had a drink since we started. I’m usually a juice and liquor mixed drink person, so my drinks aren’t as fatty as beer but aren’t as low cal as diet coke and liquor. I don’t drink carbonated things so I have to find something I can have other than liquor on the rocks. I’m not that hardcore.

So some foods that have kept me from going crazy with soo many boring salads and wraps:

Chicken salad with tofu herb dressing
I made the dressing seperately and use it like a salad dressing. I’m new to tofu so I don’t know how to cook with it but this recipe just requires food processing or blending. The dressing is creamy like a ranch dressing.

Banana “ice cream”
Peel and freeze a banana. Blend or food process it. Refreeze if its gooey. Add nuts or berries as toppings if you like.

Egg whites
Egg white scrambles for breakfast! Throw in whatever veggies you like.

Sugar free jello
Makes you feel like you’re eating something

Not that those foods completely keep me from going crazy and wanting to eat Zingers but they help :)

I started basic burlesque class at Studio L’Amour last week. Boxing is out, burlesque is in. Hopefully burlesque is a bit more successful. I have high hopes because unlike park district boxing, burlesque class is structured. It feels weird for me to say I want structure but when I am a newbie to something, yes I need an instructor that says “Step 1,2,3 and BOUNCE!” I don’t know how those Montessori kids do it.

As usual, I was just a little bit off for the first class. The instructor said we could wear gym shoes or heels and workout clothes. I figured out this does not mean wear basketball shorts so I wore kind of tight yoga capris. I didn’t figure out that gym shoes would be really bad for the small foot movements sexy walking. Or that a loose fitting tshirt would cover my hips. Hips are the best part of dancing! I kind of suck at being a girl but I will try better next time!

At the end of the month when class is done, the new park district session will start. The boy and I joined the park district fitness center. It’s a pretty small fitness center which leaves no room for me to hide in a corner and sweat over my 20 pound weights without anyone staring at me. The goal is to drop my desired amount of weight by the time I hit 30!

I realize this blog (the interesting parts at least) is kind of turning into a food blog. Eventually it will turn into something like This is why you’re Fat.

This cake actually wasn’t supposed to be very fattening. My friend asked me to make a rainbow cake for a potluck at her house. Most of my creative food stuff is for potlucks. She sent me this recipe from The Omnomicon (love the name and I’m pretty sure the author is a SA goon.) There is no rainbow cake recipe, just a white cake of your choice recipe plus tips on making it rainbowed. This cake just called for soda and cake mix.

It’s all lumpy but I was afraid to use an electric mixer because of the carbonation. It doesn’t matter in the end because you stir it a lot more when you add food coloring.
So I divided out the batter into 6 bowls and used my pretty gel dye. I thought the dye would be brighter with less. I felt like I was using a ton of dye. I was scared to make the red an actual blood red because of the amount of dye I would have to use. Isn’t red dye poisonous to children? Oh well, no kids died at the potluck. That I saw.

Then I poured the batter in to the pan, one color on top of the next. One of my friends commented that the batter looks like fake food in the movie Hook.

And then I baked it according to the box instructions plus a few more minutes like the rainbow cake directions say. Its a very squishy cake because of the soda. I took the cake out when the yellow started to look dark.
I let the cake cool while I tried my new dino muffin tins with the leftover cake batter. I set up my cooling rack and tried to get the cake out with disastrous results. The entire middle of the cake stuck, one of the sides started to slide off the rack and I started to make howling noises. No way to repair with frosting. Oh the agony of a broken cake.
No pictures of the broken cake, it was too hard to look at. The dino cakes didn’t turn out well either. The cake didn’t want to come out of the tins. It was the first time I used the muffin pan so I may not have properly greased it.
So I didn’t want to make a new cake and I didn’t want to waste the already made cake. So I made some pudding, used the whipped cream my boy made the night before for dessert, some leftover berries and made a rainbow parfait.

And it was good! It was tasty and still rainbow and kind of pretty.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions but my boxing class at the park district just happened to start the 2nd week of January so that means I will just happen to learn boxing this year.
It only took one class for me to realize that the boxing boot camp class I took at Bally’s was good for making me sweat but not so good for technique. But that’s why it was boxing boot camp, not boxing training.
The park district is boxing training. Some of these guys (it’s mostly guys) will go on to fight in amateur matches. Some already have. As it is with most athletic things, I am the suckiest one in the group. Everyone seems to tolerate this pretty well. People will stop me and correct my stance or press on my fist to remind me to tighten it up. A girl helped me turn in circles and jab today. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. So far I just punch bags and shadow box so I haven’t interacted much with others.
During my first class 2 guys were sparring and there was some blood. It seems like the blood part is optional. The instructor asked a girl if she wanted to spar today and she said no, she doesn’t want to hit people. So I guess I can train and not worry about my pretty lil face.

I just got a bag and I am devouring it. It’s bad enough the intern brought a candy dish to work but now I have to bring some home, too?
I am going to be jiggling in all of the wrong places when burlesque class starts.
Speaking of jiggling, I posted my picture in the yearbook of a forum I like. Then I forgot about the page for about a month. I recently check it and I have a bunch of comments from random other users. Most of the comments are calling me fat. I know I shouldn’t care because it’s not like people from this forum know me in real life or matter and their kind of known for being mean. But I think I look good in the picture! I am sticking my hip out at an odd angle but that’s just me trying to make excuses. So I let the internet upset me.

All of my clients bailed on me this week. One called a few days ahead of time with a valid excuse to reschedule, one no called/no showed and I still haven’t heard from her, one canceled right before her appointment but then later rescheduled. One of my rescheduled clients said I’m too young! I pouted about it in supervision today. He was reassuring that I’m not horrible and helped me figure out what to do with my obviously resistant clients. He kept asking questions that I had no answer to but then when he told me what he thought the answer was, it was something so basic. I forgot how easy this counseling thing is.

One thing I’m a huge nerd about is Halloween. My coworkers have already started asking when I am going to decorate my office. I hate early decorating (go away Xmas decs!) so I usually wait until October has arrived to decorate for Halloween. This year I am decorating a day early because I am working with an intern that is possibly as geeky as I am about Halloween and she is only in on Tuesdays. So I went shopping for decorations today and I’m going to pull out old decs tonight. I keep my work decs non-ghouly and leave the skulls and monsters for home.

I’ve been thinking about the fall things I like (birthday, Apple Fest, Halloween) and trying not to think about the scary darkness of winter. Winter has things I like too (Germanfest, glugg, oddly colored gingerbread houses, drinking myself to death on New Years Eve) but always has some extra sadness that isn’t there with other times of the year.

I think I found a boxing gym that I can afford. It’s a lot cheaper than the other boxing gyms, maybe because it sucks or maybe because it’s small and newer.

I didn’t see clients this weekend, I’m going in this week to get an overview of the whole client intake/scheduling process. So I will call my clients and see if they want to meet with me this weekend or next. I’m happy to be seeing clients because work has been terribly boring lately but so nervous!

The bacon chocolate chip cookies were a success!
The texture was kind of off when they were still warm but the next day when the cookie hardened a little it was better. Tiny pieces of bacon work best, bits not pieces. I had to experiment with the thickness of the maple glaze. It looked thick enough until I put it on the cookies and it spilled all over.

I took some cookies to a potluck last night and warned everyone of the cookie contents so I wouldn’t have any angry vegetarians. This led to everyone asking me about the cookies, where I found the recipe (roommate/Internets) and why the hell I would want to make such a cookie (why not?) so much of my evening was dominated by cookie talk. I’m building quite a reputation in this group. I brought Krispy Kreme bread pudding to the last potluck. There is a block party coming up and I think it’s time to make meatloaf cupcakes.

I finally showed my parents my newest tattoo. My mom kept asking why it has to be so big and took a picture of it to send to my grandma. She tried to pull the “but what about work?” question but I pointed out I can’t wear tank tops to work so no one will see it!
My family gobbled up the cookies, too. Later she poked my abdomen and suggested I get a girdle. When I came home, control top panties were in my laundry bag. Thanks mom!

I went to Buddhism class tonight and there was no teacher. Was this a lesson in self sufficiency? My classmate and I snooped through the temple office and found our teacher’s number. We were concerned since he is in his 80′s and drives from the suburbs to teach. His wife answered and cheerily handed the phone off to our teacher. It was his birthday yesterday and he had forgot..or was running late..or was celebrating. My theory is that he was drunk. I like my theory because I like the idea of an 80+ guy rockin out for his birthday and I like the idea that I can drink and still follow Buddha.

So that wasted about an hour but gave me a little more time to make cookies. I keep forgetting to photograph my cookie making but this one would have really done better with scratch n sniff than pictures. I’m making bacon chocolate chip cookies with maple glaze I had to run to the store to get more bacon because I underestimated the amount of bacon this recipe calls for. After I dumped in my mounds of bacon bits, it looked like too much. But who knows, the dough tastes pretty good even though its hard to get the bacon and chocolate flavor with uncooked dough.

The dough is chilling in the fridge right now and then will get cooked tonight and the glaze will have to wait until tomorrow probably. I’m not sure how all of this will work since my kitchen is super hot and the glaze probably won’t harden.
I will let you know how it turns out.

How can I not like boxing? Look how cool I look with my hands wrapped.

I started boxing boot camp today. So I’m not actually boxing, I’m learning techniques necessary to punch people in the face. My class is small and all women and our instructor is very supportive. My drill partner cheered me on as I tried to put my whole body into uppercuts and hooks. I’m sure I looked ridiculous. I don’t care. This is the most fun I’ve ever had in a gym

And I’m exhausted.

So I said I would check my weight regularly now and change my diet/exercise if I wasn’t losing weight. 10 days ago, I had weighed myself at work and only lost 2 lbs. I weighed myself today and I’ve lost 9 lbs (total)! So I am doing something right.

I’m having trouble finding a scale that doesn’t suck. Just for the record, Newline Well Balance scale sucks. It worked once then died. But Amazon appears to have a friendly return policy. I bought a 2nd scale, a Conair Weight Watchers scale and it hasn’t died yet. It told me the same weight that the Newline scale said before it died so I’m hoping it’s somewhere near accurate. The psychiatrist at work said don’t trust the Bally’s scale because it uses weight (it’s like a doctor’s office scale) and needs to be calibrated to be accurate and usually gyms don’t keep up with that sort of thing.

So the things I have been doing differently: actually eating more to keep my calories above 1200/day. Eating more protein. I started using FitDay to keep track of my food again and I like when the pie chart shows that my calories are equally coming from fat, carbs and protein. Using the elliptical just to warm up, not as my main form of exercise. I’ve been doing more time with weight machines lately. I work out my upper body harder than my lower body because my knees suck and if I do a lot of exercise involving them, I’m too sore to workout the next day. So my back has been getting stronger which will improve my meditation attempts. Oh, it’s lovely when things fit together.