Food Journal day 4

Yay it’s Friday! A lot of my food eaten today is the same as yesterday but if anything new pops up don’t worry I’ll post more pictures.
Thursday breakfast was a hard boiled egg, 1 tbs of brummel and brown yogurt spread, and a whole grain English muffin…213 calories


Lunch was leftoves of the cheesy crockpot chicken, ½ cup brown rice, and ½ cup canned green beans…421 calories
On a side note I did a little research and apparently by draining and rinsing canned vegetables for 2-3 min cuts down the sodium by 40%. I always did but didn’t know how much so I thought I’d share.

Dinner was tuna mixed with 2 tbs of the left over dip from the shower to make a sort of tuna salad, with a serving (counted them out and everything) reduced fat wheat thins and carrots…320 calories

My snacks were the same as they have been this week. Banana and string cheese, and two cups of coffee. Grand total for yesterday was 1297.

It will be interesting to see how this food journaling will go this weekend. I'm really excited about it and committed to keeping it up so hopefully it will keep me on track. Have a great Friday!

Food Journal Day 3

I think this picture taking is really working! I am through three days of keeping my food on point and I peeked at the scale today and it was down 2 lbs. We'll see what it really is on official weigh in day Saturday but I was pretty excited with that.

I had a bit of a rough morning yesterday. I went to reset my alarm and set it completely wrong and woke up late. Anyways I had some Lean Pocket's Egg, Bacon and Cheese in the freezer at work so that was my breakfast. They are pretty good but definitely don't keep me full through the entire morning...Calories 280


Lunch was a salad again, and the only added to the previous salads was some cauliflower. I was a little low on lettuce then I'd like so I added a bit for some extra volume to the salad. Again this was left overs from the baby shower and I've decided I don't *love* cauliflower. I don't hate it like I thought (like I still really don't like celery. I can eat it with peanut butter but otherwise, yuck!) so I guess that is good. On the other hand with these veggies I found out I really really like raw broccoli. The salad...456 calories


Dinner was the Cheesy Crockpot Chicken and oh man was it tasty! I added a half cup of brown rice and half a cup of canned green beans. If I had corn I probably would have added that too. My recipe made 4 servings (I didn't have as much chicken as the recipe called for)...421 calories


My snack between breakfast and lunch was a banana, string cheese and coffee (251 calories) and between lunch and dinner was carrots, broccoli and dip (114 calories). Mmmmmm.




Grand total for the day 1523 calories

Food journal day 2

Had another great eating day yesterday. I was feeling kinda emotional last night and really wanted to snack but I thought about having to portion it out and taking a picture and going over my calories and if I was really hungry and all that. Basically I thought the heck out of it and then got busy doing something else and the urge passed.

Breakfast was the same as yesterday…315 calories
Oh and a cup of coffee between breakfast and lunch….93 calories

Lunch was a salad like dinner the night before…456 calories
Since breakfast and lunch were the same as yesterday I don't have a picture posted.

Dinner was veggies, pita chips and hummus and dip (left overs still from the baby shower)…443 calories. Thankfully I portioned it all out so that even when I wanted to keep eating I had finished what was on my plate and I was done. Otherwise it would have been such a disaster!


Snacks I did not get a picture of because I didn’t have my camera with me to take a picture of it. But I had a small can of pineapple, string cheese, and coffee…292 calories

Total calories...1600

This is what is for dinner tonight. I had to adjust the recipe a bit for what I have on hand but I have made it before and it is tasty! I’m going to have brown rice and some veggies with it as well.

Food journal Day 1

I’ve been struggling with food lately. Big time. I have always done really well with working out consistently and the food thing is really hit and miss. Mostly miss, especially these days. I know that is where I fail 90% of the time and I just end up in this vicious cycle. Now that I live alone and am dealing with all the emotions from the last 6 months, my eating has gotten so bad. Lots of eating out, lots of emotional binge eating especially at night, not measuring and just guessing at portions, those sorts of things. So I had an idea that I have seen other people do before and thought it might just work for me. I’ve decided to take pictures of everything I eat in a day and post it. If I have to show everyone I have to be honest about it, will feel compelled to measure everything and in essence hold myself accountable that way. Right now I’m just focusing on keeping the calories in my calorie range. Next I will focus on making sure I’m getting all the other nutrients right. So here is my day in eating yesterday…

Most of the time this is my breakfast. Whole grain English muffin, 1 tbs brummel and brown yogurt spread, 1 oz of 2% cheddar cheese, scrambled egg (1 whole egg and one egg white). Total 315 calories.


Between breakfast and lunch I just had my cup of coffee, with 2 creamers, and 2 cubes of sugar for 93 calories.

Lunch was a left over slice of pepperoni pizza from my take out this weekend from Little Ceaser’s and left over veggies and dip from what I took to a baby shower this weekend. Sorry I took a bite of the pizza before I remembered I was going to take a picture of it :) 330 calories


My snack between lunch and dinner was another cup of coffee (I was so tired and it was one of those days) and a medium banana and reduced fat string cheese. I did not get a chance to take a picture of this though. 251 calories

Dinner was one of my favorite salads I like to make. Lettuce, ¼ cup of sunflower seeds, 1 oz of 2% cheddar cheese, 1 cup of croutons, and 1.5 tbs of light ranch dressing. 489 calories


For a grand total of 1477 calories for the day. And I burned 526 at Zumba and the run home so it was a good day over all for all totals involved. Hoping today will be just as good :)

6 months later and never losing hope

I just re-read some blogs I wrote on sparkpeople.com from around the time my ex left me and it really made me appreciate how far I have come. I went back to the one I wrote two days after and the comments that my sparkfriends had written in response and I could feel the pain I felt and the love they shared with me. The pain and shock scream out in those words and I can feel it again. The heaviness in my chest. The feeling that I couldn’t breath because of the weight of my life falling down around me. How I skipped around in thoughts because I couldn’t get my mind to process them in an orderly fashion. The confusion of how to reconcile the world I knew before he dropped his bomb to the aftermath my life became after. In those memories I can feel it all again.

But this time with distance. This time with pride on how far I came out of that hole he knocked me down into. This time I can look and see what I was then and how completely different I am now. That was a broken version of who I used to be. That girl was a mess and now I see how much less of a mess I am. I think I forgot the extent of the pain until I re-read in my own words how bad I felt. I think I forgot how much better I feel now until I read in my own words soaked with the pain he left behind. I can see it all so clearly now, who that broken girl was and who I am now. I can see the strength it took to keep going in spite of it all. I can see how much courage it took to keep my life going in any direction besides just staying in bed. I dealt with the things I needed to. I moved my life forward and I went on.

I was reading how I couldn’t tell my family about what happened yet because my sister was getting ready to have her baby. She and her husband had tried for so long to get pregnant and finally were. The baby was overdue and she was growing more and more impatient. I did my best to stay interested, sending texts to see how she was feeling, trying to distract her so she didn’t think about being overdue, being as supportive as I could with my world in pieces and them having no idea. Finally a few days after the bomb she was induced. I remember driving down to Des Moines to go visit her after she had the baby and I bawled and bawled on the phone to my friend Joni. I didn’t know how in the world I was going to keep it together enough for them to think I was ok. As Joni always does, she was able to snap me back into what I needed to do and keep my shit together. I look back on the pictures and I can see the pain in my face though. But somehow I plastered on a fake smile and they didn’t seem to notice. I think more then anything they were distracted enough by the happiness of the baby and how much love they had for her and all that. Thank goodness because I didn’t have a lot in me to be real convincing. I guess to me that is the epitome of doing what you have to do when life is crumbling around you. Your life might be over but the rest of the world keeps going. And you can either be dragged behind it or you can get up and go along with it. At some point you decide that you can’t let the pain kill you and you have to get your head above water. And that is just what I did. I can’t tell you how or when but at some point my life wasn’t such a struggle anymore. At some point I was more ok then destroyed. At some point I was optimistic about the future. I didn’t doubt that I would survive anymore. I knew I could do it, it was just going to take time. And here I am 6 months later and doing far better then I ever could imagine. It makes me so hopeful for the future.

It is so fitting that my niece that was born in the days following my life falling apart is named Hope. I tried hard to not lose hope in that time but it was hard not to. I even got a tattoo reminding me that “when the world says give up, hope whispers try it one more time”. I heard a really good one by Dave Ramsey today on his show “No one can take your hope, you have to surrender it voluntarily. The only one who can take your hope is you.” It reminds me of that time and how no matter how close to losing hope I was, I still believed that my life would get better. I questioned it a lot but I knew somehow I would find a way to survive it. And now that I’m not just surviving but actually living my life I can appreciate that time for what it taught me. I can appreciate going through hell because I now know what type of person I will never settle for again. I will never allow a person to treat me the way I allowed him to treat me for so long. I will never be that girl again and I only have great things to look forward to. And that feels really good :)

My thoughts on "Comes the Dawn"

I think for far too long I expected someone else to be my everything and be able to fix me. I thought that if I could just get someone to love me, they could heal my broken heart and make me worth something. It’s hard not to revert back to that mindset for me. It’s hard not to think that if someone loves me that makes me somehow more valuable of a person. It’s hard not to think that if someone pays attention to me that he isn’t going to be my knight in shining armor. He is going to make this nightmare go away and make me whole again. That somehow someone else has that power and I do not. I hear it now and realize how unfair and unrealistic that is to put on to someone else. It’s like that love could somehow make me something other then what I am. But the truth is I’m broken. I had my life shatter down around me. I picked up the pieces and its going to take time to put them all back together. And no boy holding my hand or kissing my lips is going to make it any easier. This is something I have to do alone and learn my lessons from. I have to become happy and content with myself before I can bring anything good to a relationship. Otherwise I’m just setting it up for failure.

There are times when the loneliness really gets me and I convince myself that I’m ready for someone to come into my life. And I’m truly convinced at the time. I’m tired of feeling so many negative feelings and trying to sort it out. I guess maybe it’s an escape to an extent. Maybe with someone else I can pretend to not be so broken. Maybe I can become someone else that isn’t so damaged. Someone better. Someone more worthy of loving. It doesn’t take long for me to realize how not ready I am for it though. It’s not easy to process all the feelings I have but in the end it will be worth it. I will be a happier person and maybe someday that will translate into being a happy person with someone else that is happy too. Maybe not but at least I will have a happy me and I’m ok with that.

The truth is I don’t know why I’m in such a rush. I am really enjoying being single. I like being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I like being able to make my own plans and not have to consider anyone else in what I’m doing. I like being able to spend time with all my friends and feeling their unconditional love. I like reconnecting with my family and spending time with them. I like making my lists of all the things I want to do and being able to do them. I like that all the energy I spend on myself is not wasted, like it was when I spent that energy on my ex. Now all my love and attention is on me and it feels good.

All we have is today and tomorrow is not guaranteed. In life, in relationships, in so many things. I love the quote “plan as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow”. You never know when the world as you know it will be gone or when your last day at all will be. I have lots of plans for my life and I know that it will take some time to accomplish it all. But the great thing is I’m working toward it and moving in a forward direction. If I die tomorrow I might not get all my stuff done on my list but I won’t have any regrets. I did what I could, with the time that I had. And when I die and if I never find that special someone I’m ok with that too. I know that I have so many people who love me and the love of some unknown boy isn’t going to make that love or me mean any less. I will know that I loved myself and that I lived the best I could. I will know the people that I do love will know and what I leave behind will be worth far more then I could ever imagine. And that is something that no one can take away from me

"Comes the Dawn"

After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down
in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn...
Author Unknown

A friend of mine shared this with me today. I have a lot of feelings about it and want to nail them down but am having a hard time articulating them right now. Much like a lot of my feelings lately. But I wanted to share, see what kind of feelings it brought up for how. How it spoke to you? Maybe see how that is different from mine.