Getting Excited About Vacation!

I’m starting to get really excited about our Gatlinburg vacation! Only 28 more days to go. I have a countdown calender on my google homepage. We paid the last of our money today for our cabin rental. Here are some pictures of where we will be staying.

I love cozy little cabins. I’m super excited about having our own private hottub also. That will be nice after running up in the mountains. I can’t decide if I want to make plans for what I want to do and see each day while we are there or if I want to relax and just do whatever comes up. Knowing me I’ll end up planning out every minute of the time that we will be there.

I just finished up my last workday for this week, and now I’m off for 8 glorious days! I love having an 8 day break every 4 weeks. It just hit me that I have a 5K in 3 days. This one is probably going to be a bit different from the last one I did. The course is suppose to have a few pretty steep hills, so I doubt I’ll be setting any personal records this time, but you never know. I need to get started on working on my playlist. There are certain songs like I like to listen to when I’m running hills.

What are some of your favorite songs to run to?

Callaway Gardens Trip

We got up early yesterday morning to drive to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia to spend the day. It was about a 2 hour drive, but it went by really fast. I haven’t been to Callaway since I was a small kid so I really didn’t remember anything about it, but I saw on the website that they had a 10 mile bike trail that I wanted to try.

It was almost lunch time by the time we got to Callaway, so we decided to eat at one of their restaurants in the gardens. I was really hoping it would be a nice little deli type place, but they only had just a very few items on the menu. Hamburgers, hotdogs, paninis, french fries … things like that. They did have veggie burgers and veggie hotdogs, but I didn’t know what kind they would be. So I ordered what I thought was probably the healthiest thing there.

After lunch we got our bikes all set up and cruised around the park for a while. We never could find the beginning of the bike trail, but we managed to get on it somewhere in the middle and just rode around to the different attractions.

We ended up riding just under 13 miles for the day. It was great! Lincoln was really good riding in his trailer behind my bike and he slept alot of the time. We stopped at the Butterfly Gardens and the Vegetable Gardens. I wanted to go see the chapel, but every time we rode by Lincoln was asleep. My favorite thing was the sundial, I was suprised at how accurate it was.

We left Callaway when they closed and headed back home. I was starving after riding so much on the bike, so we stopped for dinner at Mimi’s Cafe. I went in planning to eat something light and healthy, but somewhere along the line one thing turned into another and I ended up with: a steak, potato, salad, bread, 2 beers, and dessert. For dessert I had the sampler thingy with bread pudding, a brownie and apple crisp.

I literally felt sick. I haven’t felt that bad after I’ve eaten in a really long time. I can’t believe I used to do that to myself pretty much every single day. And why I chose to do it the night before weigh-in is beyond me. Thankfully I was still down this morning when I weighed in, but not as much as I was the other day when I cheated. I weighed in at 159.8, putting me at 100.2 lbs lost!

The Voice Inside My Head

I woke up this morning just before 6:30 with plans of going to Callaway Gardens today. I checked the weather report last night and knew that it was probably going to rain most of the day, but my husband assured me that there would plenty of things to do indoors. I decided to take a look at the weather again while everyone else was still sleeping, and it looked about the same as expected. But tomorrow is suppose to be mostly sunny. So we are going to go tomorrow instead. I just hate to drive all that way and pay $30 for admission and not be able to do the bike trail or walk through the gardens.

I decided to go for a morning run since I was already awake. I drove to my normal parking spot and started my run. I normally do 2 laps around the neighborhood, which is almost exactly 5 miles. But today somewhere along the way I started thinking some crazy thoughts like, “what if I could do 3 laps today instead of just 2?”, “what if I ran 7 miles?”.

After my first lap I was already starting to feel winded, so I nixed the idea of running farther than normal. But for some reason this voice kept saying things to me … “its Saturday, you have plenty of time … the weather is beautiful, just slow down and keep going”. Everytime I seriously wanted to quit I thought about how accomplished I would feel if I was able to run 7 miles. And somehow I pushed through and did it.

As you can see it took me 1 hour and 8 minutes to run the 7 miles. I was trying hard not to concentrate on my time, to just keep putting one foot infront of the other. But I’m a very competitive person so it was hard for me not to race myself.

Mile 1: 9:06
Mile 2: 9:19
Mile 3: 9:35
Mile 4: 9:57
Mile 5: 10:07
Mile 6: 10:09
Mile 7: 10:09

I was pretty sweaty and disgusting by the time I finished, but so happy and proud!

Suprisingly I wasn’t very hungry when I got back home. I had to remind myself that I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. So I made some yogurt with Kashi Crunch and some melon for breakfast. Its my new favorite for the moment.

What is your go-to breakfast food? I’m always up for new ideas.

My Trip

After my run this morning I got ready and headed to Birmingham (my hometown) to see my best friend, Vanessa and her son, Jackson. Its about a 2 hour drive from where we live now. The weather was really nice and Lincoln slept almost the entire way, so it was a peaceful trip.

We hung around at her house for a couple of hours and let the boys play together. They played very sweetly and had a great time. Then we decided they both really needed haircuts and I wanted an excuse to buy a new purse so we headed out to go shopping.

Lincoln did really good for his haircut and afterwards he got a Dum-dum.

After haircuts and shopping we went back to Vanessa’s house to pack up and take a few pictures before heading home.

Lincoln fell asleep in the car and slept about half of the way home, and then the gates of hell broke open and he screamed the rest of the way home. But it was all ok, because when I walked in the door my sweet hubby had this lovely dinner waiting on me.

Melissa D’Arabian’s North African Meatballs, Couscous with chopped dates and steamed baby carrots. I’ve been promising to make this dinner for weeks now, but he knew it would be really late when I got home so he made it for me. Wasn’t that sweet? I really liked the meatballs, but I’m not sure about the couscous. I’ve never eaten it before, and although it tasted good … it had a strange texture that I didn’t much care for.

Tomorrow morning we are getting up early to go to Callaway Gardens. I’ve never been there before but they have a 10 mile bike trail that I would love to ride. Hopefully I’ll get some great pictures of all the flowers and the butterfly garden.

I Cheated.

This morning I woke up at about 6:15 for my morning run. When I was changing clothes I decided to hop on the scale. I really try to only weigh myself once a week, but I was feeling particularly light this morning so I decided to cheat.

The scale read: 158.2!!!

That means I have unofficially lost 101.8 pounds. Of course we won’t know the official results until Monday, but I’m so excited! Lets hope it sticks!

I had a decent 5 mile run this morning. My iPod stopped working right at the halfway point, and I happened to be right beside my car at the time. It would have been easy to just stop right then, but I forced myself to keep going. Its hard for me to run without music…. I just feel heavier, slower, and I concentrate too much on my fast breathing and my pounding heart when I don’t have my music. Also my shorts kept slipping down. I guess thats what I get for running in clothes that are 2 sizes too big.

I’m getting ready to head to Birmingham (2 hour drive) to visit my BFF that I haven’t seen since March (and 58 pounds ago). This should be interesting!

Book Review: Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster

I recently finished reading the book Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster and I was going to write a review of the book for you guys. However, I just ran across this video that sums the book up perfectly.

I had mixed feeling about this book. I really loved Jen and the way she writes. She is hilariously funny and there were several times when I was literally laughing my ass off while reading this book. The thing that I didn’t like about this book was that almost the entire book is about the process of her writing the book. It wasn’t until about 75% through the book when she actually started losing weight. The majority of the book was her writing about why she didn’t want to lose weight but she felt she had to so that she could write this book.

Overall I’m glad I read the book, although I don’t think it was especially motivating as far as a weightloss memoir goes. But it was definitely good for some laughs.

I’m going to give this book 3/5 stars.

My Culinary Mistake

Well, I’m finally off of work for a few days. I can’t write much when I’m working since I work three 12 hour shifts in a row. I pretty much just work and sleep for 3 days straight.

When I woke up this afternoon I got some Parisienne Chicken going in the crockpot for my dinner tonight. I already had all of the ingredients at home except the mushrooms, so it was an easy fix.

I went to the Y this evening and did 15 minutes on the elliptical before my spinning class. Spin class was really good tonight. I’ve been feeling like it was a waste of time lately because I think my body is too used to it. My heart rate doesn’t usually get high enough for me to burn enough calories in spinning anymore. But tonight was different … my heart rate stayed higher than normal and I felt like I got a really good workout.

When I got home the chicken was smelling really good. But when I looked at it I realized something was wrong.

The sauce was all grainy and gross. At first I thought that it was just a bad recipe, but I just re-read it and realized I messed up. I was suppose to mix sour cream into the white wine and cream of mushroom soup mixture, and instead I just put it into the crockpot. Oops!

I tried to make the best of it by serving it with some yummy sauteed green beans and rice. And it wasn’t actually that bad, but it definitely isn’t a keeper. I don’t think it would have been that great if I had done it correctly either, so I probably won’t bother making this one again.

Oh well, lesson learned. What culinary mistakes have you made?

Just a Quick Hello

We had a great night last night in Labor and Delivery. For some reason I didn’t sleep very well today though. I woke up several times during the day and finally decided to get up at 2:45. I usually get up at 4:00. I packed a healthy dinner for work tonight: hummus and sprout sammy, edamame succotash and more cucumber dill salad. I did the Jillian Michaels No More Trouble Zones DVD and now I’m snacking on a pretzel with yellow mustard and honeydew.

I wish I could be home tonight to watch The Biggest Loser. I guess it will have to wait til Thursday night when I’m off work though. That is .. unless someone decides to post the results on Facebook. I hate it when people do that.

Have a great night everyone!

Official Race Results and Weigh-In Day

I can’t believe I forgot to mention in my last post that I got my official race results from the Big Brother/ Big Sister 5K today.

My official time was 28:50. So pretty close to my estimation. And I finished 38th out of 131 runners. Not bad at all for my first race!

I also forgot to mention earlier that today was weigh-in day. I gain 0.2 lbs this week. I don’t know what’s going on with my body. Its just bouncing back and forth right now. But I know that I’m eating well and exercising plenty so I’m ok with it.

How’s That for a 4 Point Lunch?!

Calico Bacon & Corn Pie, Sauteed Green Beans with diced Shallots and cantalope. Yummy!

Now I’m off to bed. I have to work the next 3 nights and help bring some new lives into the world.