Fry it up in a Pan

Greetings from maintenance-land.  I am starting to get a sense for what a truly new phase this is going to be for me.  My weight this week is down by just over two pounds to 142.8 and, of course, I see that as the new weight to maintain.  At the present moment I still feel like I'm on the "lose weight" train.  Heck, I've been riding on it for 5+ years, if not my whole life.  Not sure how to make the shift.  Well, I do have an idea.  I think it needs to start with me feeling like I am satisfied with my current weight.  And truth be told, I'm not.  In the back of my head I want to see what I'd be like at 135.  I'm not "dieting" to get to that weight, I haven't been dieting for months now. I just eat what feels like a healthy, balanced diet and let the scale numbers fall where they may.  I also know if I got on the scale tomorrow and it said 145 the instinct to eat cleaner would kick in.

And 145 is a real possibility after last night.  I felt a tiny pang of hunger but mostly I felt the psychological urge to eat.  I had some crackers and cream cheese.  And then I had a bowl of the kids cheerios with a healthy sprinkling of sugar, and then more crackers.  This was all hours after dinner of course.  I remembered someone telling me once that these "splurges" every month or two are really not that big of a deal in the big picture (was that you Katie?) and to just live with them as part of normal life.  Since then I've felt much better about the occasional munch-fest evenings, which is nice.  This is normal life, after all.

As far as exercise, I'm cruising right along.  Tuesday I did a 3 mile run on the treadmill, alternating 3 minutes at 6.1mph with two minutes at 7.1mph.  I've decided that every two weeks I'm going to increase the speed by .1mph.  I should figure out where that will put me by the Kaiser Half Marathon in February, somewhere around 6.5/7.5 I imagine. I'd love to get my cruising speed up to 7mph at least.  After the run I did legs/shoulders/core.  My shoulders are starting to really hurt again and I know I should give them a break but that's hard for me - exercise is one of the foundations of my life now and it's very hard for me to cut back.  Though I know I'm going to pay the price and be forced to cut back if I don't give them a little healing time.

Wednesday was a day home with the kids.  We spent the day relaxing and hanging out at home, which was nice.  I made chili in the slow cooker with lean hamburger and pork, black beans and garbanzo beans.  I wanted to serve it with cornbread but that didn't happen so we just had rice instead.  It was yummy.  A good friend of mine, Tessa, asked me how I manage to work, cook, exercise, etc with two kids and working four days a week.  Two tips that came to mind are related to cooking.  One, since I started meal planning I have found my cooking stress has gone way down.  At some point during the weekend I sit down with my cookbooks and a notepad.  I make a plan for dinners for the week and make a grocery list.  I'm learning to plan 4-5 meals and that the remaining meals happen on-the-fly.  We have a couple of staple meals, for example every Thursday is Miguel's night and he makes a typical Honduran meal of beans, avocado, tortillas, etc.  Tuesdays Miguel is not home for dinner so I make pasta with frozen turkey meatballs (from Trader Joes), easy and not much clean-up.  I serve a vegetable with every meal but usually it's only Myra and I eating them.  I can't say enough about how meal planning has helped me feel less scattered.

The second thing is quick meals, ones that can be prepared in under 30 minutes.  I have two cookbooks that I use a lot, Cooking Light's Superfast Suppers and Cook's Illustrated The Best 30-Minute Recipes.  And I also keep old weekly menus to give me ideas.  I try to balance prep-heavy meals with super easy ones.  The Superfast Suppers are  very basic and sometimes rely on prepared foods I would rather not use (like pre-cooked sliced chicken breast) but the 30-minute recipes are sometimes too involved.  I also usually make at least one slow cooker recipe a week. In any case, I go for balance and variety.  Then I try to get to the grocery store so everything is on-hand.  Planning and ease of preparation, that's how I squeeze in the cooking. 

One neat thing that's come out of this is that I am making meals that I might have considered too high-calorie before (i.e. chicken alfredo) but I just have one serving for myself with a salad and veggies and that's plenty.   Something about planning and intention makes this so doable, whereas in my past life I would have scarfed down multiple servings.

That's all the life-solving help I have for you today :)  I hope it helps.