I could get used to this
Apr 29, 2009 Amy in the Morning
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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Tags: video
Amy in the (yesterday) morning
Apr 28, 2009 Amy in the Morning
Originally posted by Selfish Mom
Tags: video
A little time to breathe
Apr 26, 2009 Amy in the Morning
I’m playing catch up. It’s been a rough few days. All’s good now though.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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So tired I forgot to snooze the alarm
Apr 22, 2009 Amy in the Morning
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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Amy whenever the hell she gets around to it
Apr 21, 2009 Amy in the Morning
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: video
A typical, 1,180 calorie day
Apr 21, 2009 Weight Loss
1,200 calories a day
It’s been almost six weeks since I started limiting myself to 1,200 calories a day in an attempt to lose some more weight. I’ve changed my mind a few times about what my latest goal is, but at the rate I’m going I could be at exactly the weight I was when I first got pregnant (more than eight years ago) sometime in July. Now, by the time I got pregnant, I was already about 20 pounds more than I wanted to be, but I was still a heck of a lot smaller than I am now. So I think that’s good for my next goal.
In this latest round of what I’ve decided to call the “Get your ass off of the couch and stop eating like a pig” plan, there were seven days when I ate more than 1,500 calories, and three of those were over 2,500. The rest of the days were very close to 1,200 calories. I’ve lost just shy of 11 pounds. I even managed to lose one pound during my recent trip to Buffalo, which has never ever happened (I usually gain a couple of pounds just by getting on the Thruway and pointing the car west).
My Food Diary
I’ve written and talked several times about a “typical” day for me food-wise, and since yesterday was in most ways a typical day, I thought I’d give you a snapshot of what yesterday was like. I keep track of what I eat with an online food diary, MyFoodDiary.com. (I have absolutely no connection to them, except that they’ve been charging $9 a month to my Visa for the past few years.) Even when I wasn’t actually limiting my calories, I swear to you that just keeping track of it all kept me from gaining more.
So here’s what yesterday looked like. The green shaded squares mean I did something good. The red shaded squares, not so much.
At the end of the day I only ended up with two red squares. One was for going under 1,200 calories. I seriously doubt that missing by 20 calories is going to damage my health. The other red square was for sodium. In all the years I’ve been using MyFoodDiary, that square has never been anything but red. I eat a lot of frozen and packaged foods, and they’re all chock full of sodium. I don’t care. I have absolutely no problem with my blood pressure. It’s in the “excellent” range, even though I’ve done nothing to earn this. I can also eat as much cholesterol as I want. The crappy genes that made me hairy threw me a bone with salt and cholesterol.
So, that’s how I do it. Yesterday’s calories were a bit heavier in the afternoon than usual (more often than not I make it to dinner with more than half of my calories still available), since I put over 100 calories worth of croutons on my salad. I was just in the mood.
The challenges ahead
This week will be hard, because I’m supposed to get my period at the end of the week, so I’ll be saving up water. (I don’t really understand why this happens. I’m guessing that eating less sodium would help the situation, but I really don’t care what my ankles look like under my jeans.) I weigh myself every morning, and I get very motivated seeing the numbers go steadily down. This week, they won’t. So I have to keep reminding myself that I’ll get a big drop towards the end of next week.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: My Food Diary, Weight Loss
When a bratty force meets a stubborn object
Apr 20, 2009 Kids
Man, did this afternoon go in an ugly direction fast. I’m in the middle of a stand-off with my son.
The rest of the day was uneventful, even pleasant. The kids got ready for school fast and we got there on time. Jake was a little grumpy that he had to go back to school after a week and a half of spring break, but he was being good. After school, same thing.
When dinner was almost ready, I asked the kids to set the table. Fiona’s in the middle of a “great helper” phase, so she jumped to it. Jake was a little slower, but was doing it. I noticed that they hadn’t cleaned up the foil wrappers from some chocolate Easter eggs they had eaten earlier, so I asked Jake to put them in the garbage. He turned around and asked Fiona to do it. I stayed quiet, curious how it would play out (yes, it’s true, sometimes I look at them as little mice in an experiment).
Since her helpfullness isn’t specific to me, she did it, but she missed a couple of pieces. I asked Jake to grab them. Realizing that his sister hadn’t done as perfect a job as I wanted, he reached out and scratched her hand. WTF? She was doing his work without complaint AND getting hurt for not doing it right?
I said (calmy – I’m convinced his main goal when he’s in this mood is to get me to lose my shit) “Jake, get in the corner, seven minutes please.” That’s the first step when he’s in this mood. It’s not a punishment exactly, the purpose is just to get him to slow down and think about what he’s doing before he does something really bad. Like what he did on the way to the corner. As he was passing by me, he muttered “Shut up, dummy.”
With steely calm, I told him that he had lost TV, computer and video games for the rest of the night (tragic, really, because he had gotten his homework done quickly and would have had a couple of hours to play). He stomped over to the corner, where he proceeded to whistle, tap the wall, and hum – all against the “corner” rules. After telling him a couple of times to be quiet and still, I sent him upstairs. I told him that he could come down when he was ready to stand in the corner quietly, and then after that he could have his dinner.
After he was upstairs for about ten minutes, I started to think that maybe he didn’t understand. I repeated that he could come down when he was ready. He yelled down “I know.” And stayed up there.
It’s been about half an hour. His dinner is cold and it won’t be reheated. I’m not sure what he thinks he can gain from this, but I damn well know what I could lose. This is the kind of stand-off that can define a relationship. If I back down, it will come back to bite me in the ass over and over again. Unluckily for him, I’m just about the stubbornest person I know.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: behavior, discipline, Kids
