Not Eating Enough.

I never thought I'd have this problem. Would have never thought it in a million years, but I do now. I think. Since I'm home full time now with really nothing to do. I don't watch TV (who am I?), I don't sit and read, although I could and should. It's so nice up here, I just have to go DO something. Ride a bike, walk, run, yoga, weights, something. Today, I did yoga, run and weights, and now I'm enjoying a protein shake which is SO good, it's like a milkshake. Oh. My. Delicious!

But because I'm spending so much time working out everyday, and I'm trying listen to my hunger signals, I don't eat enough, I don't think. I sleep until like 10am, which I shouldn't, but seriously, I don't have anything else to do. I got up, and made myself breakfast. Today was strawberries w/ 1 tsp sugar, 1 slice of peanut butter toast, and 2 cups of water. I did 25 minutes of yoga, then went for a walk/run with my brother. Got home, drank 2 more cups of water, made my bro lunch, nibbled on some hummus, peppers and pita chips. Not enough for a lunch, but I wasn't hungry. Then I did weights, nothing major, but about 25 minutes worth.

After calculating how many calories I burned (just under 600), and adding that into My Fitness Pal, and deducting how much I ate, I still have 1200 calories to eat today. I'm making burgers, fries and asparagus tonight, but I don't think I can eat 1200 calories worth, unless it's a 5 guys burger or something. I'm making caprese burgers, and I'm super excited about these for tonight.

So what's a girl to do? Continue to listen to hunger signals and it'll eventually even itself out? Start eating when I'm not hungry?

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Have you ever had this problem?

Any advice?

We Moved.

Just a quick post to say that we moved safely over the weekend. Mr. Skinny is off at work today, I had one phone screening this morning for Wells Fargo for a teller, and I have another one this afternoon for an insurance company, but I think it's to learn how to sell insurance, which I want no part of. I'll go anyway, just hoping for some good news, and to get interview experience at least.

I'm lounging around the house, running, biking, yoga-ing, lifting weights, taking care of the dog, cooking and unpacking. Our room still looks like a mess. It's really hard to take 5 rooms and cram it into one room. Sorry the blog will suffer while we get everything organized and I find a good schedule.

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Tell me something exciting that's going on in your life!

Stepping Away From The Scale.

You may or may not have noticed that I haven't been tracking my weight in quite a few weeks. As much as I wish I haven't been weighing myself, I have been. Obsessively, in fact. I weighed myself every morning from last Thursday to this morning. I like what the scale is saying, but I still know I shouldn't be weighing myself every day.

I have a problem with the scale, it's not always my friend. I have read so many blog posts lately about the scale, and I wish I could put the scale away once and for all. However, I do have more weight to loose and I never measured my body, I don't think I would like checking progress that way. Maybe once I loose all my weight and just want to tone up, that would be an ideal way to check progress, but not quite yet.

No, the scale does not accurately tell you what your body looks like, and it is not a measure of how fit or healthy you are. Right now, at about 155 pounds, I might look completely different than someone else at the same weight. Even another woman the same height as me might look completely different. But yet we put so much into the scale and what it reads.

When we move, I think I'm going have Mr. Skinny hide my scale. This has worked in the past to break me of my obsessiveness. I need to focus on how my body feels instead of how the scale tells me to feel. When I gain, even if it's a tiny gain, I feel like a failure, I quickly judge myself on my eating and exercising habits of the past days or the past week, even if it is a fluke. I'm a woman, I have hormonal changes, and they affect what the scale tells me.

For right now, I need to continue weighing myself. Every day is not a good idea, and I realize that, even though I pull the scale out daily to check and make sure I'm on the right track. Weekly worked while I was on Weight Watchers, that's what they recommended and that's what I did, no problem. It was the day you got all new points, if you were in the red, it was forgiven, a brand new day. Now, however, as I'm just tracking calories, there are no "saving points" for a big event. You can exercise that day to have extra calories to eat, but you can't hoard points. For right now, that works for me.

Since I don't have that once a week ritual anymore, I think I'm going to switch to bi-weekly weigh ins, permanently. Or at least until I get to "goal weight" whatever that number may be. I know what's considered healthy for my height, but I don't think that's considered healthy for my body type, so we'll play it by ear and see how it goes. I don't have to worry about it for at least 15 more pounds, and that's if I ever get out of my rut of these stubborn 5 pounds I've been playing with for months. Alas! I did break through on one of my days of weighing myself daily. I don't know if it will stick around, and I'll weight until next Friday to see.

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Do you weigh yourself?
If so, how often and are you planning on "stepping away from the scale"?
If not, when did you stop?

Job Hunting.

We're moving on Saturday, and while I know it's the best opportunity for Mr. Skinny and myself to be closer to our families, not to mention a great job for Mr. Skinny, I can't help but be bummed that I don't have a job lined up. I don't have anything on the horizon even. No, I don't love my job in Maryland, and I have to stay in school to keep it, but it's a job and has pretty good pay.

I've started looking for jobs in our area, but there doesn't really seem to be a lot. It's really hard because we're moving to a small, rural area. There aren't a lot of jobs in the immediate area, no scratch that, there are NO jobs in the immediate area, and the closest "city" is at least 35 minutes away. 35 minutes away is doable, but not for a mediocre $8/hr job at the mall. It's not worth it to put the gas in my car. Not to mention that I'd have to use Mr. Skinny's car, which has transmission problems and I'd like to drive the least distance I could.

I know that God has a plan for us, I truly do, and He's made everything else work out perfectly, I just wish He'd tell me what that plan is. We can live off Mr. Skinny's salary for a little bit, but it's not going to help us pay off any credit cards. I'm going to try my darndest to find a job, but if I can't - I'm going to have to go back to McDonalds. Lord, please have something better in store for me than McDonalds - please!

In the meantime, I'll enjoy my time running, biking, yoga-ing, reading, organizing our new lives and looking for jobs.

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What did you do when you or someone you know couldn't find a job?

Wordless Wednesday.

Nut Butter.

True life: I have a nut butter (mostly peanut) obsession. Seriously, I'm not kidding.

Told you. I currently own 6 different kinds of peanut butter. Let me explain. I've always loved peanut butter, but since focusing on healthy food, my love for peanut butter has increased tenfold. It's the perfect accessory, put it on an apple, toast, banana, celery - the possibilities are endless! My normal was Jif creamy, but once I started paying attention to ingredients I looked and saw that I didn't know what all the ingredients were in that peanut butter, so the hunt for a more natural peanut butter began.

I tried a few organic peanut butters, but I just couldn't get into them. I didn't do good with the stirring the oil back into the butter. It was just weird. A totally different taste to get used to, and I know it was better for me, but it was too different from my beloved Jif. Jif Naturals comes into play here! I found a peanut butter that I didn't have to stir, that had ingredients I can pronounce and didn't taste too different from my original Jif. I was in love. However, Mr. Skinny won't eat my "healthy" peanut butter, so I have to keep regular Jif in the house for him.

Back in January I wrote an ode to Peanut Butter & Co. for their love of peanut butter and dedication to making good, high quality, natural and tasty peanut butter. Since I discovered them, I picked up a few jars and love them all.

Last year sometime, my aunt gave me the jar of PB2 which is an okay sub for peanut butter, but I love putting it in smoothies. It adds a peanut butter taste for not as many calories.

I always scope out the peanut butter aisle when I'm at the store, and occasionally I pick up another jar of something or another. That's how I came across the Skippy Natural Peanut Butter w/ honey, which is delicious. It's just a little bit sweeter than regular peanut butter, and yummy!

This past weekend, Mr. Skinny and I went on a road trip to Gaithersburg to hit up the closest Trader Joe's and this is what I came home with...

It really shouldn't surprise you, but I wanted to venture into other "nut" butters. Call me ignorant, but I didn't realize that you could make butter from other kinds of nuts. Seriously, I had no idea. But thanks to blogs, I realized that they did, and I had to taste them. So I convinced Mr. Skinny to let me get these two jars. I tried both, and they're okay, maybe they taste good with a certain food? I just used a spoon to taste em. I have to keep and eat them, I worked so hard and pulled out my sweet persuasive cards on Mr. Skinny. Maybe I'll try them in a smoothie? Or on toast?

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Do you have a secret food obsession?

What's your favorite kind of peanut butter?

Running Update.

I'm sure some of you have been wondering about my current running status. Well now I'll tell you, just to end your curiosity. Well really, I had 2 great outings this weekend and so now I want to brag about how great they went.

Last week, after finding out we were moving, I just started packing. On Wednesday, I think I'm going to partake in Wordless Wednesday and show you just how crazy our apartment has looked in the last week. So I didn't really have time to run at all last week. On top of that, I had to quit my gym membership since we're moving farther than 15 miles away from an Anytime Fitness. My only option was to run outside, and let me tell you, it hasn't exactly been ideal running weather. I'm such a wimp about running when it's too hot, too cold or too humid.

So Saturday I woke up, Mr. Skinny was working and I almost talked myself out of going for a run, but I laced up and went out anyway. I was still on week 4 of the couch-to-5k training plan, which has you running 1/4 mile, walking 1/8 mile, running 1/2 mile, walking 1/4 mile and repeat. You can also train by time, but after realizing that I didn't fully train for my first 5K back in December, I thought I would do it by distance this time.

Since I track on my Nike+ GPS app on my iPhone, I wanted to not watch my distance or my watch, and run until the app told me to stop. The settings on the app will have a voice feedback every 1/4 mile, so instead of walking that 1/8 mile, I just walked 1/4 mile instead to make it easier. It worked! I completed the whole workout. I was pumped to be finished with week 4. I truly almost didn't finish it, I had to convince myself to finish it, but with a few breaks.

Now onto today. I'm off work since I have some hours of sick leave to use that I wouldn't get paid for and we could use the time off to pack, even though I'm currently sitting on my butt catching up on blogs and watching House Hunters, and errands, which are all finished. Same situation as Saturday, I didn't really want to get up and run, I thought it was going to be too hot and humid, but I got a new part of running shoes yesterday and it'll probably be the last time that I'll get to run on my favorite trail that I just discovered a few months ago. I got my butt out to run.

Todays workout? Run .5, walk .25, run .5, walk .25, run .5 - easy enough to remember and actually it wasn't too bad! I couldn't run the full half mile of the last section, so I split it up and ran .25, walked .25, and ran .25 which was a success. Week 5 of the program is different each day, my next workout should be run .75, walk .5 and run .75. I think I'm going to hold out on that workout until I master the one I should have done today. Hopefully it only takes me one more time, but if it takes 2, then that's fine.

I'm so much more confident this time around. I know my body is more capable than what I thought it was last time. I know I can do it, and I know I can push myself. I may not complete all my workouts the way that I should, but I'll be able to run a 5K this summer hopefully. I haven't signed up for a race yet, but I would really like to. I'm not sure I'd want to in the summer though. All in all, I'm chugging along, slowly making my way to being a "runner" - again.

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When did you consider yourself a "runner"?

What was the coldest/hottest race you've ever done?