I decided to take Friday night off from Insanity because my sore throat has moved into my chest and it causing much coughing and hacking. Let me tell ya, it's attractive stuff.

I haven't been getting enough sleep this week, my body is tired and I just needed a break. Back to it today though (Saturday!) and ready for it. I've been eating emergen-c like crazy. Josh tells me he used to eat it as candy right out of the packet. Have you tried emergen-c? I'm eating the kind with 500 mg of glucosamine because I'm worried that being so heavy + intense exercise is taking it's toll on my body.

I was going through archives recently and realized that I haven't done a wardrobe remix or anything fashion related in a long, long time. I'll get on that!

What are your plans for the weekend? Here is my tentative to-do list:

• Finish up custom jewelry orders, get those out in the mail
• Organize jewelry area, make jewelry for shop update and upcoming craft show
• Update blog (of course)
• Exercise
• Create a meal plan for next week
• Clean the house and do some packing (!!!) (I desperately need to clean)
• Get all my shipping/packaging supplies together and organized
• Return emails
• And a bunch of other loose ends.

So guess what? My favorite blogger ever (ever ever ever) of all time is adopting and while I've never met her in person and doubt I ever will I am as happy for her as I could be for a close friend. Alicia Paulson from Posie Gets Cozy.

I've been reading her blog for years, I re-read her blog archives at the beginning of every season. She writes memories in such a way that would make you think she has time travel abilities, she draws upon feelings and emotions from childhood, and growing up as if she just watched everything play out in a movie. She is super creative, self-employed, author and all around genuinely special person. She has has hardship in her life; an accident shortly after moving to Portland and yet she has accomplished so much.

She has inspired me, and a lot of what I do has been energized by her own passion and success in blogging and creativity. I could not imagine someone better suited to be a mother. And I just wanted to share because I needed to tell someone how excited I am and what better way than my own blog? I came this close to waking Josh up telling him that "Alicia and her husband are adopting!!!!" but instead I'm telling you guys.

Ever wake up in a panic not knowing what day it is? That happened to me this morning around 7am. We set the alarm for 6am, but it was accidentally set for pm and it was daylight when I woke up. I was convinced it was Saturday until Josh informed me it was Thursday.

We finished up day four of Insanity. Today was a struggle for me...my sore throat from last month seems to be coming back and I'm just tired. Luckily today was 38 minutes of recovering cardio. Which was still hard, but nothing compared to the past couple of days. Want to see my GoWear Fit calorie burn?

Wednesday 2,703 total

Thursday 2,419 (so far)

And there you have it...keepin' on. Did you do anything today even though you didn't want to? Were too tired? Didn't feel well?

Tonights entry is brought to you from my bed via my blackberry. I didn"t want to miss posting, but man I"m pooped! We did day three of insanity tonight which is a double dose of sore. My body is angry : )

Anywhoo, I"ll be back tomorrow with todays calorie burn total. I'm off to dream land, kitty is at my feet!

Ps: happy 27th to fat bridesmaid!!

Sweaty and sore pretty much sum it up. We just finished day two of the Insanity workout and guess what? It was insane. We actually got into the workout today and it was by far the hardest workout I've ever done. Ever. In my whole life. It was like Biggest Loser contestant hard. Grunting included.

For serious. I loved it though. How is it possible to enjoy something that is so hard? For starters when I couldn't do an exercise like say jumping push ups, I modified it and pushed myself. The 45 minutes went by quickly and while the exercises were hard I liked not having to memorize steps. The warm-up was just as hard, if not harder than the actual workout.

Check out my GoWear Fit results:

See that huge spike around 7pm? That was Insanity, I was burning up to 14 calories per minute. I can only imagine what my body is going to feel like tomorrow.

Oh! I (we) got new workout shoes...this is funny to me, but we got his and her's nike air span + 7 running shoes:

I'm still following the "S" plan (no snacks, sweets or seconds except for days that begin with S or special occasions) and it really has cut out a lot of excess eating. I did allow myself to have moderate seconds as lunch today to make up for not having breakfast, but I'm really pleased with how I feel on this plan.

I've moved my weight loss goal up to April to coincide with our trip to Vegas on the first, I really want to be at 265 by then! What goals are you working on?

You know what? I love unintentionally active days. I realize that I can burn a bunch of calories and actually have fun. Well, for the most part.

Saturday started out innocently enough, we were headed out to our neighboring shopping center so that I could get a new phone and have dinner out. But, I naively drove down our very muddy and snowy driveway the night before preparing for a warmer weekend. Bad idea. We got stuck and between me, josh and his sister we finally dug it out after two and a half hours! Shoveling and pushing a car is hard work, my GoWear Fit says so:

See that 12-2:30 chunk of activity? That's me shoveling snow. Burning calories.

That 4pm-6pm is shopping! Who says shopping is a bad idea?

And in the evening we were invited to a dance club thing in Blacksburg, which since moving to Floyd is something we rarely do because, well, we live in Floyd. That started at around 8pm which you can see above and went on well into the morning:

That is from 12-4am. I forget how much I love to go dancing and realize that this is a fun way to get exercise. I'm not particularly good at it, not that that has ever stopped me. Do you guys like to dance? Do you go out dancing, or crank up the music in your home? Seriously fun exercise.

And now, I'm about to tell you something that will totally shock you (insert sarcasm): I saw an infomercial about two weeks ago and pretty much had to try to program. INSANITY. Have you seen the commercial? I mentioned it to Josh with my usual "you have to see the commercial! it will convince you too!" and so we bought it. I have to try new things, it's in my blood. Anyway, the DVD set arrived a few days ago and we started the program today (as recommended on the poster) with the fitness test. It. was. hard. There were a lot of things I simply could not do very well like jumping jack push-ups (how messed up is that?), but I did the best I could and started sweating withing 2 minutes.

Me and Josh were screaming by the end of each round, it put Jillian's 30 day shred to shame and this was just the fitness test that involved about 10-15 minutes of exercise:

We are going to follow the program for the full 60 days and I'm really looking forward to the challenge. I think I've mentioned that we are in the midst of buying our first home and we definitely need the stress relief.

What's your favorite unintentional/intentional exercise?

hoorah! It's Friday night, we made it. I just realized that I'm going to be 27 in less than a month, hello late 20's!

I have few do's and don't's for 27, it's going to be a good one. Everything I've been preparing for and acting on lately is coming to fruition this year... health, weight loss, self-employment, home ownership that is my 27th year plan. Do you ever have the gut wrenching feeling- the one that asks  "what are you waiting for?" Everyday that I don't chase my goals, it gets even louder.

**********

You guys love oatmeal too! And for those of you on the fence about it, give loaded oatmeal a try. It's so good! 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup oatmeal (splash of vanilla if you like) and like cook until it bubbles, turn the heat down and let cook for 3 minutes until your desires consistency. I start watching it when it bubbles because i know there is a short amount of time between two thick and two thin.

Have you guys tried chia seeds yet? The new super food buzz going on around the internet? I was sent a packet of Ruth's Chocolate chia goodness to give a try. I said yes, because I rarely turn down free food and because they said chocolate. Oh and that stats were pretty good:

Chocolate Chia Goodness has five times the calcium of milk, more Omega 3 than salmon or flaxseed, along with protein and a powerful wallop of fiber. It’s also gluten-free, lactose-free, and low glycemic – so just about anyone can partake of its benefits. You can mix Chia Goodness with juice, applesauce, yogurt, or cottage cheese. Use it as a toping on yogurt or fruit. You can even add it to pancake or muffin batter for an extra nutritional punch.

That's great and all, but how does it taste?

I liked it a lot in yogurt and dry straight out of the bag, but when I made it as directed I found it to be too salty. I gave some to my co-worker to try and she really liked it mixed in with other foods, but not alone it was too salty for her too. It has sea salt in it, which frankly I didn't want to taste over chocolate. I really liked the health benefits and the protein boost in my greek yogurt. I also liked the occasional cocoa nib.

I've looked for the chocolate flavor online, but only came up with a few other flavors on amazon that have their own reviews:

Have you tried chia seeds? Thoughts?

Okay, it's the weekend! See you tomorrow!

Can I just say that I'm totally addicted to Lost? We started watching in January and we are now into season 4 and the addiction is epic. We will probably need an intervention soon as our lives have been : eat, sleep, work, lost and not much else. help! It's so good!

Now onto oatmeal...

I'll admit I've hated oatmeal most of my life, but I didn't realize that what I was hating was the wrong sort of oatmeal. Dry and instant is not  as good as the real thing cooked with milk, water and vanilla extract. Woah, it's amazing. I started loving oatmeal after having the "loaded oatmeal" at our local diner. Old fashioned oats, butter, brown sugar, pecans and raisins. There are many healthier ways to eat oatmeal, I'm aware, they could throw in some protein powder or a banana, but this is Floyd and as far as I'm concerned loaded oatmeal is an amazing path to travel down.

Behold:

Sometimes with or without the butter, and always cranberries and pecans. I love it because I am full for hours after eating it and is about 400 calories. Are you guys eating oatmeal? I am really late with the oatmeal love.

I finally got around to using some of the spices that the fine folks at Swanson Vitamins sent me. They have a full range of organic spices at really good prices. Their organic cinnamon is $2.62 which is considerably lower than the $4+ prices I've seen at the store.

I've been following the "No s" plan (no snacks, sweets or seconds except for s days or special occasions) for almost two weeks now and my morning oatmeal is so helpful.

I decided to jump on the lent bandwagon with my girls Fatbridesmaid and Question for Dessert. I've thought hard about what I would like to sacrifice/accomplish in the next 40 days. I'm not a religious person, which isn't necessary to mention, but I like challenging myself to try something different, to be better.

Instead of announcing my Lent goal, I thought I would let my recorded actions here on the blog do the talking for me and let you guys figure out what my goal is/was. Starting today for the next 40 days I'm going to do one thing everyday that will help me achieve my weight loss goals, for every correct answer left in the comments on any day during Lent will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card (funded by me, not Amazon) and a gift package of local foods/products from my current hometown Floyd, Virginia (USA-only entries please).

Hint: My Lent goal will not be overly obvious.

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day weekend! I know this holiday is bitter sweet for a lot of people, but I have to say even when single, I've always loved this time of year.

Last week was so quick for me, and still seems like a blur. We had so much wind last week that it pushed all of our snow back into the roads making it almost impossible to travel to work. Wednesday night I didn't make it home at all. And today I'm contemplating a grocery trip before the next wave of snow comes in. It's hard to buy produce in the winter because you can't stock up without it going bad.

This is totally unrelated, but I've gotten a lot of emails about my GoWear Fit armband and I want to do a big Q and A post tomorrow for it. One of them involves expanding the armband which I did to mine and will show you how to do (it was very easy!). If you have any questions at all feel free to email them to me or leave a comment and I will get to each one of them!

Okay, the "No S" diet... After my last post about the S diet a very easy plan that I found while reading Food Rules by Michael Pollan. The website explains everything in more detail, but basically the plan is this: no snacks, seconds or sweets except for days that begin with S or special occasions.

It seemed really easy as I never pegged myself as a "snacker" even though as the week progressed I realized that all of my in between eats are considered snacks. I never realized how much I eat outside of a meal. I found myself wanting to eat when things were stressful. When I didn't want to deal with emotions. I didn't worry so much about what I was eating as long as it could fit on a reasonable sized plate, wasn't a sweet and I wasn't eating seconds or between meals.

This is what I found:

1. I have strong desires to mindlessly eat when I'm stressed out or have anxiety.

2. I was able to curb cravings and quell my desire to overeat with the knowledge that I could pick whatever I want for my next meal. For some reason, knowing that I could eat whatever i wanted (as long as it fit on a plate, didn't overeat, or go back for seconds) for my next meal helped me tremendously.

3. This plan prevented me from secret eating.  It wasn't an option to go to the store and buy sweets and eat them secretly, so I didn't do it. Knowing that I was going to have special occasion treats on the weekend, ended all thoughts of overeating or finding a way to have something sweet.

4. I lost 2lbs. Which is showing back up on the scale this morning as a gain from my weekend treat eating, but I know that it is water, and it will balance out as losses over time. This isn't unusual for me. I also know that:

5. I only exercised once this week, which on the s diet is recommended and required daily. I need to do this, no excuses.

6. No day was ruined. I remember on Tuesday morning specifically where my mind was going back to old habits. We had some leftover baguette (locally made) , organic pepperoni (yes, i know that organic does not give me license to eat it in excess) and mozzarella. That is what I wanted to eat and I thought "oh I can't have that right now" and then I thought "well I can always start over tomorrow" . But guess what? that is how I always think! So I realized that I could have the baguette with two slices of pepperoni and the cheese for breakfast as a meal.

7. I ate real food, majority of the time except for Thursday morning. I'm looking at you Hardee's morning biscuit run. That was gross. I hate fast food.

That's all I've got for now, but send your GoWear fit questions my way!

Hi! If you're living in the northeast right now I'll imagine that you're either crazily digging yourself out for work or still in your pj's when you read this. Hopefully like me, you're the latter. I should turn this into the Virginia Snow of 2010 blog because I just can't stop talking about it! We are expecting MORE snow tomorrow and even more this weekend. What's that?

I can sense spring is coming, far off in the distance. I have a weird habit of being able to smell and sense the coming seasons and then craving them. I do this a lot with fall and now I can feel spring. It's coming. Maybe not till May, but it's coming!

I'm hoping that Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules arrives in the mail today (along with season 3,4,5,6 of Lost) so that I can get ready for Lent! Fatbridesmaid got me in the mood to participate in Lent this year. What am I giving up? Processed/convenience foods. This means, buying food without packaging and labels. Making my own bread, eating only local or organic meat/produce/dairy. Basically making everything from scratch. And only eating sweats if they are made by a real person (not in a factory), on the weekends or on special occasions.

Which leads me to the No S Diet. That sounds gimmicky. While reading the reviews of Food Rules on Amazon, I saw mention of something called the No S Diet which piqued my curiosity. After a quick google search I came to the official No S Diet website. And holy moly, I loved every word! This couldn't be more anti-diet, dieting if it tried.

I read and reread, I emailed, I read the discussion boards and thought "I'll try that!" because you know me, I'll pretty much try anything once. What is the no S diet? Easy...

No sweets

No Snacks

No Seconds

Except for days that start with S or special occasions.

I had a lot of questions at first like- how big should my plate be? What should be on my plate? And then I realized that my brain was asking all of the confusing yet obviously answerable questons from my dieting past.

No sweets. What does that mean? Anything that gets most of it's calories from sugar. Anything that is obviously dessert. This doesn't mean NO SUGAR it means...no desserts. Sugar in oatmeal, coffee etc. is fine. Save desserts for the weekend or special occasion and preferably ones that are not processed.

No snacks. This means eating three meals a day. When I first read this I thought "well I don't snack". And then I really thought about it and yes, indeed I do snack. I just never think of it as snacking. A snack is anything you eat outside of a meal.

No seconds. Eat what is on your plate and that's it. He mentioned at first people tend to put way too much on their plate or too little until they realize that A) this meal needs to tide me over until the next one and B) this meal is not for stuffing myself. If you think about eating in front of other people and putting all of the food on your plate the first time, chances are you would realize this is a lot of food. But, instead we go back and it looks like less for to us and everyone else.

There are no other rules. No food rules, no nutrtion rules, no counting calories. I think this is scary for people (myself included) we like structure, we like being told what is "bad" and "good". We are scared to trust ourselves, our hunger or knowing what we even want to eat. Do any of us really know what we like to eat anymore?

My favorite quotes from the website?

make you sick.

Most diets today can be divided into two categories:

1. Pseudoscientific forbidden foods diets that pretend that you can go on being a glutton as long as you confine your gluttony to a particular class of foods while completely excluding others (no agreement on what these particular kinds of foods are, of course).
2. Diets that require you to be a full time calorie accountant.

The forbidden foods diets are patent nonsense. They contradict one another, go in and out of fashion every ten years, and never seem to gather any serious scientific support. You won't stick with one of these because not being able to eat whole categories of food is a real drag. At the outset, it might seem worth it to trade pasta for unlimited steaks (or vice versa), but it gets old fast. And it might even

not any delicious thing. No pleasure is denied, just unobtrusively delayed and contained. Served up on the platter of limited opportunity, each pleasure becomes even more enjoyable than it was before.

Because it is simple, sustainable, and you aren't really depriving yourself of anything. You don't have to sacrifice anything -- not time, not health, not

There are no magic potions and there are no poisons. You are targeting just the culprit, just the bad habit of overeating itself.

Ask yourself if you can imagine staying on a particular diet for the rest of your life. If not, don't bother starting, it's a waste of time and will.

It's not the carrots, it's the carrot cake (etc.). More to the point, it's youeating so damn much of the carrot cake. People refuse to look at the obvious suspects because the implications are so unflattering to themselves -- that they simply eat too much and that there is no "stab in the back" substance to blame. The forbidden food diets pander to this suicidal vanity. They are not just harmless (if unmaintainable) games. They are dangerous distractions. They are blinkers. They keep you from seeing and confronting the real problem. This isn't "murder she wrote." It's not the mousy schoolmarm whom no one suspected who winds up having "dunnit." It's a brazen attack in broad daylight. Take a look in the mirror. The guilty party is staring right at you.

That said, I find that having a limited number of limited quantity meals makes me take them more seriously, both from a gastronomic and a nutritional point of view. Pretty much every meal I eat is delicious or healthy or both.

The no S diet isn't for overthinking, and he suggests taking 21 days to get accustom to eating this way. I like that this plan eliminates everything that makes me obese. The option to overeat.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not fat from the meals I choose to eat. I'm not fat from a nice plate of really delicious food. I'm fat because I eat too many seconds. I'm fat from eating too much in private (snacking) and I'm fat from too many calorie dense sweets.

I'm giving it a try! I have a really hard time tracking what I eat and posting it, mostly because I'm lazy, and I won't require that I do this unless I want to. I do know that this helps me to stay accountable, but also know that I sometimes get drained from dieting advice. Either way, I'll keep you posted!

Oh and this is coming in the mail too...more on that later.

CLICK HERE TO COMMENT ON THIS ENTRY