Adieu?
I think this is goodbye.
I hate it when blogs don’t have a farewell post, and I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t want to admit that it was over.
But it is. And, I’m happy to report, it’s not over because I gave up. It’s over because it served its purpose. I got the motivation I needed and the help from fellow bloggers and commenters that I needed in order to not only stick with this, but to feel damn good about myself while I did it.
I hit my first goal weight. I was going to wait until the after christmas sales to pick up a new wardrobe, but when you can slide your pants off without unbuttoning them, you know it’s time to get some new pants. Belts were making the pants bunch and twist awkwardly, and my shirts are starting to look like I borrowed them from my larger older sister because I was too lazy to do my own laundry.
I totally do my own laundry.
So obviously, this situation couldn’t remain.
New clothes were purchased. Old clothes are boxed up with a hastily scrawled “Break Glass In Case of Fatness” across the top.
I’m pretty much where I wanted to be. Will I get thinner? Probably – I’m not DONE. Nobody’s ever done, as anyone who has ever lost a lot of weight and then regained it can attest. I’m still exercising and I’m still eating right.
Granted, I’m allowing myself an extra cookie here and there, and not feeling quite as guilty about it being apple crisp season.
I’m letting my body decide where it wants to settle. My maintenance will be my life – I’d better be happy with how I eat and how I live for it.
I’m pleased. And proud, but mostly pleased. Not because pride is an evil emotion, but because I know that I couldn’t have done it alone. Can I be proud of you guys, just as much as myself?
I don’t know if I would or wouldn’t have stuck with it if you guys hadn’t been here. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have given up, that it would have just been harder.
But could haves and might haves don’t matter. The truth of the matter is that this is the BEST blogging community I’ve ever had the pleasure to be a part of. I felt geniuinely welcomed and helped – everyone really cared and understood my situation, everyone gave fabulous advice and shared wonderful stories.
But I don’t need this blog anymore. I think. Probably.
I know how to do this – when I started the blog, I had only very limited knowledge of how I should go about this.
In the end, the solution was to not take it quite so seriously. I never officially “started” my diet, I just got some good cookbooks (the quick and easy south beach diet book and the 15 minute low carb meals book) and started experimenting, trying one new recipe a week. I wanted to build a solid foundation of meals that I liked.
Before I knew it, these new meals dominated my diet – they tasted SO much better than hamburger helper, rice-a-roni, and macaroni and cheese.
The food was an easy swap. The exercise never has been easy for me, and I don’t think it’ll ever become easy. You guys helped me through my knee troubles, giving me great suggestions, and (more importantly) all the support I could ever have hoped for.
So thank you. Every single one of you. Thank you to the people who commented here, and to the people who linked to other blogs who linked to other blogs and somehow managed to point me to an incredible wealth of information.
You guys rock.
But although the Dieting Ninja is dead, I am not. The internet being who and what it is, I don’t want to post my email address here, so if you are interested in knowing the ninja behind the mask, comment here with a valid email address in the form field and I will very happily email you with my new blog address.
If you’ve linked to Dieting Ninja, feel free to remove your links – from this moment forward, with the exception of comments to this post, this blog is dead.
She served her purpose and I will celebrate her death Irish Wake style, with much reminiscing and jubilation.
The Ninja is dead! Long live the Ninja!
Filed under: About | 6 Comments
Zen and The Art of Leg Shaving
Unexpected benefit to doing yoga discovered today while washing away the hard-earned sweat of an elliptical run.
I can now lift and hold my leg at an impossible angle against the back wall of the shower with ease. It’s nice and stretchy and bouncy, and I can totally get that really awkward area under the back of the knee.
That’s right. I am now a proud member of the No-Hair-In-The-Back-Of-My-Knee Club. Fo sho.
And it’s all thanks to yoga. *throw’s a thumbs-up, coupled with a smile and a toothpaste-commercial tooth-sparkle*
Filed under: Diary | 7 Comments
All Growed Up
*sniff* My blog is all growed up.
How do I know this?
Is it pageviews? Commenters? Incoming links?
No, no, and no.
It’s spam. My darling baby blog has spam. I’m big enough to have totally inappropriate links added in comments by robots. *sniffs, dabs at eyes*
They grow so fast.
In other news…there…is no other news. Did I post my recipe for enchilada stir fry? I can’t remember and am too lazy to look. First person to comment asking for it wins…um…twenty seconds of me sending mental happy thoughts in their direction. I am not liable for the happy thoughts after they leave me – if they get lost or take a wrong turn and end up in your ficus instead, that’s not my problem. Though I’ll totally take credit for your ficus doing well over the next few days.
Went for a walk yesterday. My knee aches a bit today but that’s not new. It didn’t ache during or after the walk yesterday, which is fabulous. I MISS walks. They’re the best time to just…think. Excellent for planning, oh, say, a novel to be written in November, for example.
(This entire time, my brain has been demanding that I type out “If this were a movie-” “-which it is.” “-we’d think of a clever plot device!” Even though I have assured it that nobody is going to get the movie reference without the crazy accents to go along with it, sometimes you just have to appease your inner child. Bonus points to whoever guesses the movie!)
Also, I noticed that my mood while at work is HUGELY impacted by the music I put on my iPod (and by whether or not I remember my iPod). I can be incredibly angry and frustrated, and yet…still bouncy and cheerful, given the right soundtrack.
Filed under: About | 1 Comment
NaNoWriMo
Ever said to yourself “Some day I’m going to write a novel!” ?
Well, this is YOUR event!
National Novel Writing Month is when people all around the world hunker down and spend the month of November cranking out a 50,000 word novel. You cannot start before November first, and you must have 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th.
No genre is too obscure – if you think you’re writing a novel, they agree.
The point is to get your creative juices flowing harder, faster, stronger. Quantity is emphasized over quality, and much like the nike slogan, the entire point is to “Just Do It.”
So if you’ve been kicking around the desire to write a book – DO IT. Join NaNoWriMo. We’re all a little crazy, come be crazy with us!
This will be my first year, and I’m going to be writing a fantasy romance. Witches and wizards and fairies and bulging muscles, oh my!
If I disappear for November, you’ll know where I am!
(Also, since this is at least nominally a blog about my health and weight, here’s some relevant stuff)
1) Adding pepperoni to that dish totally saved it. Recipe below.
2) New recipe made, and holy cow is it awesome. It’s basically the base for enchiladas, only…well…sloppy, and less difficult. Loves me some easy recipes.
3) Another new recipe (we’re trying one or two new ones a week) for some italian spinach burgers that was just to DIE for! NOM!
Recipe of the week. I don’t do measurements. Cook from the gut! :
Drunken Italian Turkey
- Turkey Tenderloin or chicken breast, cooked. If you like to marinate things, go for something with lemon, wine, or italian seasonings like garlic and oregano. If you don’t like marinating things, just cook it. Either Turkey or Chicken works, but make sure you’ve got bite sized pieces of cooked meat.
- 1 small/medium onion, cut into forkable bits.
- 1 green pepper (or other peppers, to taste. I’ll bet red peppers would be awesome in this), also cut into forkable bits.
- A dollop of your favorite sautee oil.
- Lemon Juice (More than a splash, less than enough to make your meat swim)
- White Wine – enough to fill the bottom of the pan, but not let things float. (dry. Do not use nasty wine. If you don’t want to drink it, why would you want your food tasting like it? Remember, alcohol cooks off, so you won’t actually get drunk from this recipe. The name is ironic, not accurate.)
- Pepperoni (I used a turkey pepperoni, but I don’t think it matters. Quarter for forkable size.)
- Spices – garlic powder, oregano, basil, whatever you like to add to things that are a non-tomato italian flavor
Sautee the onion and pepper in a large, deep pan until tender crisp. Add in everything else (chicken, lemon juice, white wine, pepperoni, spices) and simmer for a few minutes, so all the flavors meld.
The sauce doesn’t thicken, so make sure you dip each bite in the sauce or use a spoon, so you get a good lemon/wine flavor with each bite.
The pepperoni adds the perfect “filler” to this, and makes it even more italian. The original recipe was Mediterranean something or other, so if you actually know what Mediterranean means, in terms of spices and stuff, feel free to tweak it so that you get more of that feel. “Oregano” says “Italian” to me, so I moved the recipe in that direction.
Filed under: Diary, Diet | 7 Comments
Right. Silence again. Seriously though, it’s because nothing fitness related is happening in my life right now, aside from LIFE.
The podcasts I was listening to while doing the elliptical were awesome…until they stopped. Most of them haven’t done a new podcast in over a year, which is tragic (and not just because I’m out of exercise material, they were very good podcasts).
So I started trying to rent TV shows and watch those. Turns out I don’t like most popular TV. Bear in mind, I haven’t had “television” for almost a decade now. All the shows I watch are on DVD. I love House. Loved Scrubs. Loved some of the “specialty channel” shows, like Firefly and Carnivale.
But apparently mainstream TV and I don’t click most of the time. Sex and the City was a HUGE bust for me, and it turns out Bones is as well. I dropped my Netflix subscription, so I don’t have as many choices available to me (I began to feel pressured to watch as much as I could as quickly as I could, to offset the cost, and that wasn’t my original intention when I got the service).
Lucky for me, my husband got the entire box set of M*A*S*H for Christmas last year (a gift from his loving wife. That’s me, in case you’re not keeping score) and was flabbergasted* to learn that I have never even seen one entire episode of it.
Thus far, it seems to be fitting the bill, keeping me entertained on the elliptical. I’m actually thinking I can do an entire episode, instead of cutting it off at 20 minutes. Hoo boy!
Also, we finally got some little 5lb weights (dumbbells?) and I can do the arms workout from the :08 minute DVD. I used to have incredible arms, back when I had a horse. I’m gonna get them again. You know, as soon as I am no longer capable of pinpointing every muscle group in my arm based on pain.
On the food front, Green Peppers would totally take Yellow Peppers in a cage match. No contest. Even if Yellow Peppers had a handicap bonus, and could tag in Yellow Onions when things got dicey.
Also, turns out I like broccoli. Who knew? Certainly not me.
But that rounds out a new “fallback meal” for the household. Steak and mushrooms and broccoli. Holy mother of monkeys, that is a meal worth eating. Mm! Just the steak and mushrooms was good, but something was missing. With the broccoli, it’s fanTABulous.
We’re still trying to find the missing ingredient in our green pepper/onion/chicken/lemon juice/wine/oregano concoction. Right now it’s just…not…quite…right. We’re going to try adding pepperoni, and maybe some tomato and basil. *taps finger against lips pensively* I don’t know. It’s soooo close to being awesome. It can see awesome from where it’s sitting.
Also, turns out I can give in to my chinese food cravings without guilt. I can make a single two-person order last for three meals (for two people, of course). Small pork lo mein, small beef and broccoli, small fried rice (for the hubby, I use the lo mein as a bed), and a fried dumpling appetizer. Living above a chinese food restaurant like I do, the smells are often OVERWHELMINGLY delicious, and I’ve proven over the last three weeks that I can do the order once a week, be sensible with my portions, and still lose weight. Which is exactly what I like to hear, because a life without fried dumplings is a life I do not wish to partake of, my friends. Beautiful.
The trick is the portion control. Chinese buffets are right off the okay list for me, I always feel like I need to make up for all the money I spent, since I can’t take leftovers. No dice. Plus, I avoid the really heavy sauces, like General’s and Sesame Chicken.
Also, my lunch could totally kick your lunch’s patooty. I have the aforementioned steak and mushrooms and broccoli AND a ripe peach with fresh raspberries.
The fruit may actually turn into a snack before I head for home, depending on whether the other fills me up, but it totally counts. And I can TASTE the chin-drippin peach now. MmmmMmMmMmMmm.
* Flabbergasted is now the word of the week.
Filed under: Diary, Diet, Exercise, Recipes and Food | 12 Comments
The Dieting Ninja 
Recent Comments