A Contest! An Unnamed Contest!

You know how people eat too much during the holidays and gain 5-15 pounds in approximately 30-35 days and then find that it takes 3 months to 35 years to lose that extra weight? You know what I'm talking about, right? Well, let's not do that this year. I'm talking to you. Yes, you. You! Tell those visions of sugar plums to stop dancing around your head right now. (now!) I have a proposal. A proposal of the losing kind. I think we (this still includes you, by the way) should not only avoid gaining 5-15 pounds before the year is out, but we should also lose some weight. You heard me. Forget maintenance. Forget the status quo. We're talking about real live weight loss here. As in, pounds of fatty excess gone from your body. 

Rather than have a vague notion of doing this thing (remember "hope is not a plan?"), I propose that we have a little weight loss contest with prizes and everything. We at Diet Cake care about our reader. Oh wait. I'm seeing a problem here...um...I'll get to that in a moment. 

But first, let's talk about the contest itself. 

I think the grand prize should be $100,000. However, I'm a little short on $100,000es today and I think Sara might be in the same boat (please correct me if I'm wrong, Sara). Also, all our major corporate sponsors have either backed out or outsourced their blog weight loss competition sponsorship to India. 

But all is not lost. We will still offer a prize to the person who loses the most weight (as a percentage of starting body weight) during our competition. It will (brace yourselves) be worth dozens of dollars. I can't tell you what it is yet, because I don't know. I promise you will not hate it (unless you are incredibly picky, in which case you probably shouldn't be hanging out with me and my blog because I will undoubtably annoy you a great deal) and that you may or may not be the envy of everyone you know. 

How about some rules?

Weight loss contest rules:

1. Contest is open to anyone, including me and Sara. We only ask that all contestants be real people and over the age of 18. I don't know why they have to be over the age of 18, but it seems like something I should put in contest rules. 
2. Contest will begin on December 5th (there is a reason for this--be patient) and end on January 15th (of course).
3. To enter the competition, all you have to do is leave a comment on December 5th's post with your name and starting weight. If you don't want the internet to know what you weigh, let us know and we can make other arrangements.
4. Contestants must check in at least once a week to let us know they are still participating.
5. Contestants are requested to refrain from using extreme measures (e.g. fasting for the entire month of December, chopping off a limb) to lose weight. Please try to be healthy. If you don't know how to lose weight in a healthy manner, I'm sure there are people who could tell you (don't look at me!) As the restraining order forced us to remove our hidden cameras, the honor system will have to do.  
6. Contestants are also requested to refrain from being contestants if they are already below a healthy weight range for their height. We want to encourage good health!
7. Grand prize will be awarded to the person who loses the highest percentage of his/her body weight. There is a possibility that second and third prizes will be awarded, but don't count on it.
8. Sara and Holly reserve the right to disqualify any contestant who seems fishy, dishonest or non-human. We'll try to be fair, of course. 
9. We also reserve the right to amend these rules at any time during the contest. 

I'm sure I'm missing something...

Oh yes. Back to the fact that we get maybe 10 hits a day (I'm not counting hits from me and Sara) on this blog and many of those hits are from people looking for pictures of Igor (I'm not even kidding). We have a few faithful readers (thanks guys!) and one very faithful reader (thanks Wendi!), but it would be far more exciting if we could recruit others to join in our weight loss fun as well (of course it will be fun! what's not fun about eschewing cookies and pie all month?) Plus, I don't think Wendi needs to lose any weight. 

So, that's why we're not starting officially until December 5th. We need time to find contestants!

Anyway, if you're reading this, and you know of someone (or someones) who might be interested in losing weight over the holidays and possibly winning a not-so-valuable prize, please send them over to Diet Cake. 

Stay tuned for more information! 

Chock Full o' Thanks

Sara has blogging duty (like guard duty, but with fewer weapons) on Thanksgiving day, so I'll have to settle for a pre-Thanksgiving gratitude fest. 

(Who am I kidding? I'm happy to spend tomorrow doing nothing but eating simple carbs and watching other people do dishes--there will be no time for writing a Post-It Note, let alone a blog entry.)

I feel like making a numbered list. Please note that the list items are in random order (I don't want you to worry in case I happen to list Cheetos before my children...or something like that.)

Holly is thankful for:

1. Cheetos
2. My children
3. Cinnamon toast
4. Rhinestones
5. Indoor plumbing, especially toilets
6. Finding a good deal on a new furnace (not as good as the furnace not dying in the first place, but still...)
7. A husband and father-in-law who are relatively qualified to install a furnace
8. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
9. Grocery shopping with my sister tonight
10. Eggnog ice cream 
11. Weight Watchers
12. Fresh salsa
13. My best in-state friend: Wendi
14. My best friend: Sara
15. My best friend who is also my husband: Joel
16. Cinnamon toast
17. Books!
18. Jim Dale and his performance of the Harry Potter audiobooks
19. Hot rollers (not to be confused with high rollers)
20. Coupons
21. Thai food
22. Our parakeets
23. My mannequin
24. French doors
25. Office supplies
26. People who know how to sew
27. My mom
28. Your mom
29. All the moms
30. Sunscreen
31. Lockets
32. Clementines
33. Post-it notes
34. Those pens I love (what? I'm not going to get off the couch to find one and look at the brand.)
35. Clifford the Big Red Couch
36. Good haircuts and the people who give them
37. Shop vacs
38. The Hotties
39. My siblings
40. England
41. Footy pajamas on little kids 
42. Hot oil treatment
43. Health insurance
44. The USA
45. New York City
46. 50's dresses and vintage clothes in general 
47. Etsy
48. Apple computers
49. Cupboard space
50. It's a Wonderful Life
51. Shoes
52. People who spend their lives helping other people
53. My mother-in-law's homemade macaroni and cheese
54. Cheese
55. God and all the good stuff that goes with
56. Being free to worship Him
57. Our DVR
58. Jeans that aren't too tight or too loose
59. Lotion
60. Excedrin
61. LASIK
62. Flowers--any kind, but not calla lilies as much as the others
63. Silk
64. Wrap dresses
65. People who are thrifty but aren't snotty about it
66. Savings accounts
67. Player pianos
68. Digital cameras
69. Red
70. Cousins
71. People who like me anyway
72. Anti depressants
73. Teachers who are really patient
74. Tweezers
75. Lysol wipes
76. Heating pads
77. Cetaphil
78. Christmas trees
79. Christmas
80. Scottish accents
81. Dangly earrings
82. People who are smart but would never call themselves intellectuals
83. (Parentheses)
84. Sesame Street
85. Houseplants that just won't quit
86. No-iron fabrics
87. Food banks
88. People who get up early (how do they do it?)
89. People who do jobs I don't want to do
90. Trees
91. Polite children
92. My husband's insane but wonderful Christmas lights
93. Kind neighbors
94. Hotels
95. Hiking (as long as I can stay in a hotel when I'm done)
96. Hot baths
97. Air conditioning
98. Digging in the dirt
99. Gas stoves
100. Google

If I knew you were coming...

Those in my inner circle are aware that when I'm not clubbing, playing high stakes poker or committing random acts of macrame, I dabble in cake decorating. ("Ah ha!" you say. "That must be why she has 45 pounds to lose!" No, not quite, but this hobby may have contributed to the need for others to drop a few pounds.) 

I enjoy cake decorating like I enjoy giving birth: it's a big, messy pain, but the results are pretty great. (Don't go too deep with this analogy--I have yet to consume one of my children.)

I decorate maybe 10-12 cakes per year. That's about all I can handle at this point in my life. Keep in mind that some of these are wedding cakes and take 40-50 hours from start to finish. Also, keep in mind that spending 40-50 hours on anything, ever, goes against my very nature. 

Today is a cake day. In fact, I'm taking a break from making my 3-year-old nephew's birthday cake to write this post. It's close to midnight, but I still have at least 2 hours of work before I can go to bed, and that's being optimistic. However, I'm grateful that this cake doesn't appear to be an all-night project. 

It helps that I'm making a cake shaped like a rock. (The picture above is of a previous cake I made for the same nephew, which was much more elaborate and large than the planned rock.) One of my nephew's favorite pasttimes is lifting up rocks in his yard in order to unearth the bugs beneath, then smooshing said bugs. So, his cake is going to be a bug-covered rock. It won't be one of my prettier babies, that's for sure. But I hope this cake will teach Ethan that bugs are for eating as well as smooshing.

This post doesn't have much at all to do with dieting. That's OK--we've warned you already that cake will play a part in this blog. At least I'm trying to create an association in your mind between cake and bug smooshing. You're welcome!

 

Honk Honk

That's me, tooting my own horn.

(I guess this could be subtitled, "I Can't Think of Anything to Blog About, So I'm Going to Tell You How Great I Am Instead.")

Today marks 6 weeks of tracking my food. Everything I ate. Every day. 6 weeks. For me, that is huge. I think to this point my record is 3 weeks, maaaaaybe 3 1/2. But probably not. Today is also 3 weeks of drinking 100+ ounces of water everyday. And in 2 days, my 12-week chart will be 3/4ths of the way full. So yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

I will pause whilst you go hurl.

But that's really not my big deal this week. I am so grateful that the tracking and the water and the exercise feels commonplace and that, while I'm pretty pleased with myself about my consistency (usually me and consistency, well, we are not friends), it's almost so normal that it's almost no biggie. (I say "almost" because I'm trying to be better at giving myself credit for the good stuff I do.) No, my big deal this week is that I didn't quit.

I really wanted to. The combination of the scale jump and the abysmal running experience--along with a bunch of other junk going on--really did a number on my head. I would not have been surprised if my period had shown up this week, even though it's a week too soon, that's how bad my brain was. In fact, I was almost hoping for it because then I'd have some explanation other than "Crazy." But alas, it was just me.

Yesterday in particular was really hard. All day long I just wanted to stuff myself with whatever I could find. Yesterday just happened to also be the day I did my weekly grocery shopping. It's truly a miracle I didn't leave the store with nothing but a cart full of Oreos and Pop Tarts. I am so not kidding. But I didn't. Stuff on my list only, thank you (though I did buy a bag of really giant ziploc bags, because you never know when you might need a really giant ziploc bag, and around here if you don't buy something when you see it, you're not likely to ever get the chance again, so that was an impulse buy, though thankfully an inedible one). I spent the evening talking myself out of making cookies, a task made harder when a friend updated her Facebook status to read "is making cookies." Even Facebook was against me!

I didn't quit though. I even exercised 3 times yesterday. And after spending all week higher than last week's weigh-in, the scale was down 1 pound this morning. Still not caught up with last week's gain, but it's in the right direction, and I'm pleased.

I Gave Birth to Muppets

It's the only explanation. When my children (girls, ages 10 and 4) eat, food enters their mouths, but then immediately flies out again in crumb form. There's no point in vacuuming, because the carpet crumb coating will reappear moments after I finish. (My fault for letting them eat over the carpet? Possibly.)

As frustrating as the Muppet-mouthed eating by my offspring is, I think they may be onto something. 

Think of the dieting possibilities. You want cookies but are worried about the calories? Just make sure you eat with your mouth wide open so most of the pieces fall out. 

Want to feel like a wuss while lifting 3 pounds?

Hi, I'm Sara, and I'm a magazine junkie. If it's geared towards women, chances are good that I'll read it. Well, that's not entirely true. I don't like the fashion magazines, and I can do without the pseudo-fashion/how-to-be-a-sex-object ones, and I stay away from the ones that loudly profess on their covers things like "Lose 40 Pounds by Blinking!" So I guess to make that a more accurate statement I should say, "Hi, I'm Sara, and I'm a magazines-that-I-like junkie."

It just so happens that most of the magazines that I like are diet/health/fitness related. Big surprise I know. I'll give you a minute to recover from the shock. Feel better now? Good.

In this month's Self magazine, there is an arms workout that hurts me. It's by Madonna's and Gwyneth's trainer, Tracy Anderson. We don't get real TV here, so I didn't see Gwyneth on Oprah, but I did read some blog analyses of the interview, more specifically her trainer's assertion that no woman should lift a weight heavier than 3 pounds. Like most of the discussions of it that I read, I basically thought the woman was, er, wrong. But then I saw this workout in Self and decided to give it a try (think what you will about Madonna, Gwyneth, and/or their trainer, you can't deny they all have great arms).

Here it is:

Sculpt A-list Arms Fast!

It says to use 3-pound weights, but all I have at home are 2.5 (they're weight plates for dh's barbells; the smallest hand weights I have are 8-pounders)(yes, I am just that tough)(no, really)(stop laughing, Holly) and the gym's weights are in kilograms, so I can either go with 1 kg (which is 2.20462262 pounds) or 2 kg (which is 4.40924524 pounds). I've used the 2.5 lbs at home and the 2 kgs at the gym and the take on both is this: Ow.

This is a good workout, especially for your shoulders. I don't think it works my triceps all that well, so I've been doing extra sets of tricep exercises as well, and by the end of both, my arms are spent. If I were more concerned with building my biceps more, I might add in some exercises specifically targeting those, too, but right now I'm not.

I'm interested to see what the rest of her workout would be like, considering I was, er, wrong about the arms portion of it. Too bad I'm cheap. I can't bring myself to pay $30 for her DVD.

Go try the workout, and tell me what you think. Be sure to watch the accompanying video, because a couple of the exercises made no sense at all to me until I did.

Sounds too healthy to be good...

and yeah...it wasn't good. 

I'm referring to the 6-Grain Breakfast recipe I tried this week. A few things drew me to the recipe: the aforementioned six grains (there are six grains in the world?!? wonder of wonders) and the potential health benefits of those, the cooking method (Crockpot overnight--wake up to hot breakfast!), and the inclusion of apples and cinnamon in the ingredient list. It sounded like a perfect food--tasty, easy and ridiculously nutritious.  

Here's the recipe as I found it (somewhere online [I like to give credit where credit is due]):

6 Grain Breakfast

2 1/2 TBS bulgur wheat

2 1/2 TBS brown rice

2 TBS barley

2 TBS quinoa

1/4 cup rolled oats

1 cup diced apples

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 cups water

1 TBS vanilla extract

Combine ingredients in slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours. Stir before serving. Serves 4. 

I like most hot cereals, so I thought I would like this. I'm not stupid though, so I tested it on my 10-year-old first. She is very good about trying new things and she likes oatmeal, so I thought she'd love the apple-y goodness of the 6 Grain Breakfast. After a few bites and five minutes of silence, she said, "Um...Momma? This isn't very good. I don't think I can finish it." I gave her permission to stop eating (the kid loves vegetables and would rather eat salad than candy, so I give her a break every now and then when she doesn't like something). 

After she left for school, I tried some too (I added plenty of sweetener). I managed to eat the whole bowl, but I didn't enjoy the experience. 

*Problems with the 6 Grain Breakfast:

1) For the life of me, I can't figure out what the 6th grain is. I only count five. I didn't notice this glaring problem until I typed the recipe just now. I wonder if the missing 6th grain would have made the cereal taste good?

2) Too apple-y. Maybe I shouldn't have used Granny Smith apples. Perhaps a sweeter apple variety would have tasted better. The apples overwhelmed the cereal, and not in a tasty apple pie way. 

3) Too cinnamon-y. I like cinnamon, but there was too much in this recipe. Yet it still didn't counteract the apple. Rude.  

4) Too vanilla-y. It's rare that I complain about a recipe having too much seasoning of any kind. I like seasoning. But this had too much vanilla. It tasted like a vanilla candle (mixed with an apple and cinnamon candle). 

5) Needed salt. There was a blandness underlying the overly vanilled, cinnamoned and appled flavor. Salt fixes stuff like that. 

6) Nobody washed the Crock Pot for me afterwards. I don't like washing Crock Pots. 

I'm not giving up on the recipe. I liked the texture (mushy--but in a good way). I liked the grains! I liked having breakfast ready with no morning effort!

I think I'll try again next week, but leave out the apples, cinnamon and vanilla; change the name to 5 Grain Breakfast; add salt; add pumpkin puree; and add pumpkin pie spices. (Sara adds pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice to oatmeal--tres good). I hope salad-eating daughter is ready to be my guinea pig again.

Confess and Assess

Weight loss is a constant battle. I know that's not a news flash to most of you--it isn't to me, either-- but the past 12 months or so have been even more strugglish than usual for me on the weight loss front. Last October my weight was in the low 170s after a long stint in the 180s and I anticipated continuing the weight loss and reaching my goal weight (Weight Watchers goal: 155, personal goal: 145) in the next year.

As Sara likes to say, "Hope is not a plan," and I'm afraid I was running more on hope than finely-tuned plans. Throw in some battles with medication difficulties and changes (no, no--I'm not trying to blame all my weight problems on that, but it was a factor) and some holidays that sprang up out of nowhere (Christmas is brand spankin' new, right?), and I was on the bullet train to Chubsville in no time flat.

At first my gain was slow (there goes my bullet train analogy), but I gained momentum rapidly and by late spring I was in the 190s.

Allow me to backtrack a little: when I joined Weight Watchers in February of 2007, my starting weight was 194.5 pounds. I received my 25 pound award in August of that year.

Back to this summer. By mid July, I hit 196.5 pounds, putting me two pounds above my starting weight (WW does not currently offer an award for this). I had given away all my size 14 clothes in the previous year and not only did I need those again, I was fitting into size 16 (and even 18--curse you, Old Navy!) for the first time ever. (Hey plus size friends--I realize you're pulling out your tiny violins at this point, but too much weight isn't good for you, whether it's 50 pounds or 150 pounds, wouldn't you agree? [If you don't agree, I don't want to know.])

I guess you could say in July I was near rock bottom (though my actual bottom was far from rock-like). I don't know exactly what made me stop the weight gain, though if I ever figure it out, I'm totally bottling it and selling it on QVC. Nonetheless, I stopped gaining and lost a few pounds before kind of hovering for a while in the lowish 190s.

Ever since, I've managed to avoid returning to the habits that put me on the gain train in the past, but I haven't really committed to doing anything that will produce steady and continual weight loss. I have lost a few more pounds over the past few months, it's true, and I'm happy about that, but if it's going to stick I need to start trying harder. Effort is a beautiful thing.

I've been working long and hard on my plan. Well, actually, so far my "plan" has consisted of not resisting Sara's efforts to get me to blog about weight loss for NaBloPoMo.

I hereby promise to make a plan. A real live plan for losing weight and doing it soon. And I also promise to post this plan on this blog (this one--right here) by midnight on this coming Monday.

Here's the rundown of how things are with me, weight-loss wise and health wise right now:

*Weight: 186 (yesterday it was 185)

*Height: still 5'9"

*Exercise regimen: none

*Best thing I eat regularly: broccoli

*Worst thing I eat regularly: Arby's mozzarella sticks

*Husbands who weigh less than I do: Joel

*Nights per week I get enough sleep: one or two

*Number of aches and pains: four

*Water consumed daily: around 48-64 oz

*Measurements:

-Upper arm: 14 inches

-Neck: 14 inches (for pity's sake--why is my arm as big around as my neck? Oh yeah. Frequent fried cheese consumption).

-Bust: None of your diggity dang business

-True waist (smallest part): 34 inches

-Waist at belly button: 37 inches

-High hips (at hipbone): 43.5 inches

-Largest hip measurement: 44.5 inches

-Thigh: 27 inches

-Knee (just above kneecap): 17 inches

-Calf: 16 inches

-Ankle (why not?): 8 3/4 inches

Well, that's the scoop. The scoopity scoopy scoop.

Stay tuned for the plan.

Something Else I Have in Common with a Kindergartener

Besides a short attention span and a love of snack time, that is.

I wish I could remember the website I found this idea on, but I can't, and so I totally thought of it on my own! Totally. I am very smart.

One of my biggest problems with getting and keeping weight off has always been consistency. More specifically, my lack thereof. Whether its exercising or eating well, I tend to start off strong and then peter out with a vengeance. See also: August. But about seven weeks ago, I found, er, thought up this really great idea--its called "Don't Break the Chain." It was originally intended as a motivational tool to help kids get their chores done, but I'm finding it's working almost embarrassingly well to keep me exercising. Well, it originally started with exercise and then when that worked so well, I branched out to food tracking (I just added water consumption, too, and I'm hopeful this will work, too).

So here's the dope: I downloaded a 12-week calendar from here. Then, each day that I've exercised, I've X-ed out the day. The idea is to create a "chain" of X's over time, and thus the motivation lies in not wanting to mess up this chain by missing a day. I also like to write in the box what it was I did for exercise that day, just cuz it makes me happy.

Helpful example here:
Don't I look lovely? That's thanks to last night's (when I took the picture) workout, which reads "80 min. walk."
Here's a close-up:
I am now six weeks into the 12 weeks covered by the calendar and feelin' pretty darn good about it. I do take a rest day every week, but I let myself earn an X for it if I use that day to plan out the upcoming week's exercise. So far so good.

About three weeks in, I started keeping track of days that I track my food, too. I use a thin pink (my favorite color) pen and make another X over the day (notice that I didn't say I have to be perfect with my food; I just have to write it down to earn the X). Yesterday I started in with water (if I meet the ounces goal I set, I get me another X), and for that I use a thin blue (cuz that's what color water is, duh) pen. I'm sure I could get quite the rainbow going, but I'm going to stick with those three for the time being, as those are the things I need to be the most consistent about in order to control my weight.

Like I said, I'm almost embarrassed by how well this has motivated me. What's next? Gold stars? Getting to be Line Leader? But as Paul Simon so wisely said, who am I to blow against the wind. It's working, so I'm just going with it.

Please feel free to steal, er, think this idea up entirely on you're own. I hear you are very smart.

We Are Nothing If Not Challenged

So apparently November is NaBloPoMo, or, for those of you who may prefer real words, National Blog Posting Month. This is clearly a spin-off (hee, I wrote that "spin-oof") of NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month. Know what sounds a lot more pleasant than writing an entire novel in a month? Sitting on the couch eating donuts, that's what. And also sleeping. But since Holly's been pestering me about us being more dilligent about our little neglecterino (why, I ask you, doesn't spellcheck have a problem with that word?) of a blog (and by "been pestering me," I mean "mentioned it once or possibly twice")(and since, as far as I know, there's no NaDoEatMo, though there should be), I thought this might be more realistic. Of course I also once thought it would be realistic to organize my whole house in a month, so perhaps my grasp on reality ain't so great. But we'll overlook that for now, and sally forth on the assumption that maybepossiblyperchance we could post every day this month.

Or, as Holly's favorite humor writer and mine, Eric D. Snider once said, perharps perharps perharps.