Weekly Wednesday Pictures

I'm not too pleased with this set... I look bigger this week than I did last week. Maybe it's just the white tank top.. Oh and the first pic, James caught me mid yawn. the second is my annoyance with the yawn picture.

No Zumba = Sad Panda

No Zumba today :( Sad Panda. Our instructor had to run her son to the hospital. Thoughts and prayers go out to Oyuki and her son..

These last few days have been murder on my waistline. Testing season is upon us, and I've been coerced given the privilege of administering the STAAR test for 4th and 5th grade. Tomorrow is my last day (Thank God!), but the dealings for STAAR have thrown my schedule wayyy off. I'm at work at 0730 (normal time for normal teachers, ACE Coordinator gets in around 10) usually without time for breakfast. They serve a snack around 10am and we have lunch at 1130. Unfortunately during the test, I have nothing to do and have caught myself snacking. Also, in lieu of my bowl of Cherrios or fruit I've had Poptarts. Leaving early also means no time to make my lunch :-(. Oh!! Yesterday was my 23rd birthday, so there was cake.. Lots of tasty, icing covered, layer of fat on my ass cake.. Delightful, amazing cake.. Yum.. Needless to say, I ate more cake than necessary.

I'm dragging my James out later tonight to take a walk.. Then yoga or toning. Need to build up my Nexercise points and burn off my morning Poptarts.. I will post pictures tonight after my walk!

Embracing the veggies

I used a ton of veggies when I made lunch today. And what I made was really pretty healthy! I made the spicy southwest chicken (but i doubled the amount of tomato and jalepeño) from the recipe tab and served it over lettuce and cucumber to make a very tasty salad (the leftovers are going to work with me tomorrow). I also made sweet potato fries!! They were so good!! I'll include the recipe under the tab, but I'll share the picture here too. Don't they look divine!?

After the week I've had, it's been very hard for me to do anything but want to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will get me back into my routine!

Shame on me

Weekly Wednesday pictures... A day late.. Oops. It has been a very trying week. A lack of motivation, work stress, and family sickness has really busted my bum this week. Hence the reason behind the late post.

Weekly Wednesday Pictures

It is my goal to post pictures once a week... This is primarily for me to track progress (I'm a very visual person), but hopefully it can help my readers out as well. My wonderful fiancé is helping me out with this task. Here are the first set of snapshots:

Grocery Shopping

Tonight was the night to grocery shop... ICK. I'm not a fan of grocery shopping. I'm especially not a fan of leaving my new car in a parking lot full of buggies and random driving strangers, but anyways.. I learned a very valuable lesson tonight, HEB in Taylor has crap for produce. The tomatoes are gross (fruit flies! EW!) and everything is over priced... There is also a certain time of the month that a woman shouldn't grocery shop... I'll let you get what time of the month that is! Oh well, lesson learned.

I found this awesome recipe at this blog here. It's primarily Weight Watchers based, but the food looks amazing. For dinner tomorrow night I'm making the chicken taquitos that are from her April 11th post. It looks really easy and super tasty. I'll be sure to update tomorrow with how they turned out..

Zumba earlier today and it looks like I'm about to do some Yoga.. Have a good night everyone!

Shame shame shame...

Yes.. Shame on me.. I've neglected you for far too long! How's about an update?

Zumba today.. Oyuki had new music for us, and it busted my bum! It was a lot of fun trying to learn the new moves, but (I'm sad to say) I miss doing squats! I may get the song and do some squats on my own.

Friday I went to the doctor for my yearly wellness check. The only issue they've found is the fact that I'm obese (duh... moving on). The crappy part is, for the first time in my life I've had to have the fasting blood work done to check my thyroid, glucose and cholesterol.. Lame.. Oh well, I knew it was coming eventually. The doctor and medical student that saw me gave me some really good tips on weight loss and have encouraged me to start counting my calories. >.< I'm horrible at counting calories.. They also suggested exercise using some resistance bands (which I bought on Saturday!), and maybe some body weight exercises to start building muscles.The medical student said that I was building muscles, so I should expect little to no change in weight..

My goals/stats haven't changed lately.. I haven't met any of my goals.. I have noticed a difference in the strength of my joints and I think I've lost some inches, but no real weight loss... I'm not feeling super motivated at the moment..

Needs vs Wants

I need to:

Sleep more
Eat better
Exercise daily
Love myself and all that I am

I want to:

Feel better
Look better
Be better able to handle my inner (and outer) demons
See myself in the mirror the way everyone else sees me

After examining this list, I've come to the conclusion that my needs are directly related to my wants. All of my wants can be achieved through fulfilling my needs. The most difficult want I'm facing at the moment is the handling of my demons (both interior and exterior). One of those demons is my cravings for completely horrible food. I'm talking my pizza/pasta cravings. I know that a little bit of anything isn't horrible every now and then, but this is the thing I struggle with the most. Sure, you can tell me all this wonderful/inspirational crap about food.. That's great.. However, it feels different for me... I'm a stress eater, a salt craver, and a binge eater of all things starchy. Unhealthy food is my main demon, I just have to figure out how to keep it from killing me.

Setbacks

The title of today's post is setbacks... I draw the inspiration from a near injury I got from walking tonight. For those that know (and sometimes love) me, know that I have the worst knees of any mid-20 something that you know.

Tonight during my walk, one of my knees decided it wanted to pop, crack and generally hurt like biz-atch. My friend that I walk with was really worried and offered to stop for the night. I refused to stop and we walked one last lap around the school.

No matter what you perceive as a set back, you shouldn't let it stop you. Setbacks are minor, however they lead to something worse... Quitting. And along with quitting, there are excuses. Don't let a small amount of pain, a tv show, or emotional drainage set you back from a goal. Keep pushing ahead. Things will improve.