I went on a hike with Jeanne. It was a great hike, and it sure was a workout.  We were very exciting about getting to the top and being able to eat lunch.

This was the view from the top.  It was very beautiful.  It was also a fantastic day for a hike.  It was about 60 degrees, and sunny!

This last picture was something incredibly weird.  This part of the ground was black, like it had been burned, and crunched when we walked on it.  It was strange.  I took a picture of it, cause it looked like the site of a UFO abduction, where the UFO burned the ground. 

I sure do love cereal, as this picture shows.  Honey Nut Tasteeos are much better than Honey Nut Cheerios.  Seriously.  Cereal diet is going great, cause I love cereal.

I went on a hike with Jeanne today, so I couldn’t have cereal for lunch, so I had another sensible lunch instead.  I made a whole can of tuna with two tablespoons of Miracle Whip, and had half on one half of an English muffin, and the other half on the other half of the English muffin (so it wasn’t really a sandwich, just a slice of bread with tuna on it).  I also had an apple, baby carrots, and water.  Yummy. I figure its more important for me to watch what I eat, rather than just eat certain things.  So that’s what I’m doing.  I’m eating healthy.  And tuna was great for protein!

Happy Halloween!  Yay for a candy Holiday!

I read something today that said “Merry Thanksgivoween!”  which run from Oct 31 - Jan 1st.

Seriously, we’re at holiday season already!!!! Crazy.

Ok, here’s the Morning Banana Diet from Japan:
A banana (or as many as you want) and room temperature water for breakfast (I LOVE room temperature water); eat anything you like for lunch and dinner (by 8 p.m.). A three o’clock snack is okay, but no desserts after meals, and you have to go to bed before midnight.
There are more rules here at bananadiet.com

Ok, well, I would probably eat 3 bananas. That’s about 300 calories. I love bananas. Ok, so let’s say I eat 3 bananas at 9am. At 11am, when I get hungry, can I eat another banana? Then I’d have lunch at 1.
I don’t really understand this diet. Why does it “work”? What’s the deal?  I guess they say you can only drink water, so I bet that’s the key.  Not to drink your calories.  Otherwise, I don’t see how it’s different. Other than the whole “no dessert” thing.

Lame.

When Megan was home, she and I went shopping one day.  I don’t remember what we were shopping for, but when we made a stop at the grocery store, we were so hungry, we bought food to eat in the car!  Megan made a bagel with cream cheese, and I bought raspberry jelly to put on an English muffin!  I took these pictures of us eating in the car.  I love my sister.

This is one of the new dorms at Fitchburg State.  They tore down some houses, and turned one of them into apartment like dorms.  I walk by this dorm every day when I walk to the gym.  I don’t understand all of this unused space.  I have never once seen any students hanging out in this grass.  No playing catch, no reading in the grass, no picnic lunches.  Nothing.

I understand that it’s colder out now, but even in August and September, no one was out in the grass.  It is such beautiful grass, I can’t understand it.  I want the school to put picnic tables there to encourage people to hang out there.

I got my TSH levels back from my blood test.

0.04

Right where it should be.  Dammit.

I’m starting my cereal diet tomorrow, and according to the Special K website, I can “consume fruits and vegetables for additional snacks.”  Yay!  I love fruits and vegetables.  After class tonight, I went to the store and got food to prepare for my two week cereal challenge.  I got my kettle corn 100 calorie bags (cause I ran out).  The last box lasted me over a month.  I usually air pop my popcorn, but sometimes I like kettle corn. I also bought another box of cereal.  I spent a long time in the cereal aisle, looking at the nutrition information on each box of cereal that I considered.  I looked at many different boxes.  Among them:
Multi Grain Cheerios
Bran Flakes (but then I realized that we have some at home already!)
Fiber-One Honey Clusters
Go Lean Crunch
Raisin Bran
Special K
Total
Basic 4

I was stuck between Go Lean Crunch (made by Kashi), and Fiber-One Honey Clusters.  I wanted a cereal high in protein and fiber.  Here are the nutritional information on both.

Ok, Fiber One obviously has more fiber (13g vs 8g), but Go Lean Crunch has more protein (9g vs 5g).  Go Lean Crunch has about 30 more calories, and LOTS more sugar (13g vs 6g), but if you look at the ingredients, they certainly look better in GLC.  It is made by Kashi, which is a healthy living and eating type company. The sugar comes from evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup, and honey.  While Fiber One mentions the word “sugar” six times, and “corn syrup” twice.  It also contains honey.  (The ingredients got cut off on the picture.)

In the end, I ended up picking GLC, cause I’ve had it before, and I loved it.  Fiber One sounded a lot like HBOO, but with more fiber.  I will continue to have my HBOO for breakfast, and will switch off GLC, Bran Flakes (yeah, right), and High Fiber Trader Joe’s Os.

Megan left a comment on my last entry that said her day would consist of ALL cereal, even snacks!  Cause she just loves cereal so much.  I do, too.  Here’s her “day”:

Breakfast - cereal (and maybe toast if I’m still hungry)
Snack - cereal and/or fruit
Lunch - bagel? really big salad? soup and bread? something lunch-y
Snack - Cereal
Snack - cereal or bagel
snack - fruit
dinner - vegetarian yumminess (like what we cook now, but without the mess) plus ALWAYS homemade pie for dessert… that appears magically
snack - cereal

I like the looks of all that cereal, but why does she have THREE snacks in between lunch and dinner?  That’s a LOT of snacking.  Especially with a morning snack, and a night snack.  Crazy Megan.  But that’s a good point.  At around 200 calories (if its a full cup of cereal, and 1/2 cup milk), cereal might make a good snack.  Especially at night when it’s 9pm, and I’m starving, and want to just munch on stuff.

At 200 calories a bowl, I could eat 10 bowl of cereal if I ate or drank nothing else during the day to reach 2,000 calories.  Now that would definitely be a cereal diet.

Ok, on to the other food I bought!  I bought summer squash and zucchini to grill.  I usually add them to pasta, but I also like just snacking on them.  Yum!

Then, I bought a bunch of fruit to make a fruit salad.  Cantaloupe, pineapple, red grapes, and 1/4 watermelon.  It’s a LOT of fruit salad, but the diet said I can eat as much fruit as I want!  How long does fruit salad keep?  I think it will take me a long time to eat.

I think the key to me eating well is to not have crappy stuff in the house.  I came home from class, and while I was cooking my food, I sampled both fruits and veggies, and then was still hungry and had some chips and salsa.  That’s where a nice bowl of cereal will come in! But seriously, I just can’t have food around without eating it.  I love eating.  I wonder what I was doing back in June/July when I was at my thinnest?  I was eating pretty healthy, but what the crap?  I know for sure that I wasn’t this hungry all the time.  That happened around August, where I just started needing food ALL the time.  I’m looking forward to going back to work at Macy’s for Christmas time, so I won’t be home to just eat!  I’ll only be able to eat the food I bring with me.  I’m also looking forward to being on my feet all the time, and gaining lots of steps on my pedometer!  That will probably be the change in life that I need to drop these extra pounds.  (And yes, Megan, I feel that they are EXTRA pounds.  That appeared out of no where, and my pants don’t fit anymore.  I need to lose the weight.  I can’t buy all new pants.)

Ugh, why am I always so hungry? Stupid food.

I think I’m going to try a modified Special K Diet for two weeks.  I’ve recently given up Diet Coke for two weeks, so I have found that two weeks really isn’t that long of a time.

Here’s how how the diet works:  You eat cereal for breakfast with fruit and skim milk, and then again for lunch.  Then, you have a regular dinner.  The Special K diet says you can drink as you normally would, eat as many fruits and vegetables as you want, and have two Special K bars for snacks (roughly 100 calories each). They do all the work for you!  They give you all their food options, and you tell them which ones you’re interested in.  Of all their cereals, I was only interested in the original.  Here’s the plan they made for my first week:

Here’s what I’m going to do:  I’m NOT going to have Special K.  I like it, it’s a good cereal, but I like Honey Bunches of Oats SOOOO much more. It’s roughly the same in calories (but it has fewer protein. 7 vs 2)

For lunch, I will try a different cereal, one that is better with whole grains, fiber, and protein.  I was thinking about doing Raisin Bran, but it has about 15g of sugar!  HBOO only has 6 per serving.  I’ve heard that cereal should have 5 or less.  I figured with 6, I’m pretty dang close.  I have a Trader Joe’s cereal, High Fiber Joe’s O’s, which is 180 calories for 1.25 cups with 10 grams of fiber, 7 grams of protein, and 9 grams of sugar.  That might be a good cereal because it will keep me full with all the fiber.

Post cereals has a similar cereal diet, called Eat 2 Lose 10.  Here are the cereals they say are OK for their diet:

For snacks, I don’t think I’m going to do for their Special K snack bars.  I figure I can make my own snacks that are around 100 calories.  I’ve been eating a lot of air popped pop corn lately, and I don’t add anything to it.  One cup is a out 30 calories.  So I figure I can have about 4.  I’ve also been eating a lot of chips and salsa lately.  I’ve been piling up the salsa, and having few chips.  If I really want to, I’ll figure out the caloric amount per chip, and be very careful.  That’s usually my problem:  I pic at things, and those calories add up. Egg whites are another thing I would eat as a mid morning snack.  I eat 3/4 cup which is 90 calories, and then I add fresh spinach to make an omelet.  I would say the entire thing is under 130 calories.

I’m pretty good about eating fruits and vegetables, but I could use more vegetables to snack on.  I eat bananas and apples for my fruit, but could use some cantalope, or pineapple, or something else (what are some other good fruits??).  I was keeping washed grapes in the fridge in a bowl, but every time I would open the fridge for something, I’d pull out a couple grapes to eat.  I’ve decided it’s not smart to keep grapes in the fridge anymore.  They’re just too delicious.

I was thinking about the calories for this diet, and I’m not sure if it’s close to how many I need per day.  I might have to eat lots of calories from fruit and veggies.

HBOO (1 cup) - 158
1/2 cup skim milk - 40
one banana - 100
one glass of orange juice - 110

Snack - 130

Raisin Bran (or High Fiber Joe’s O’s) - 190
1/2 cup skim milk - 40
Snack - 130

Dinner - 600?  (I’m not sure how much my average dinner would be)

Before dinner, it is only 998 calories.  I have about 1,000 left over for dinner and various fruits and vegetables.

I’m actually not sure if this will work.  Usually for lunch, I have either my egg white omelet with spinach, or a spinach salad with a red pepper, walnuts, craisins and light dressing. I’m not really sure if I will be losing any extra calories.  I think for this to work with me, I would need to continue to eat my healthy lunch, and then skip dinner and replace it with cereal.  But lately, I’ve been cooking really good meals for my family.  I’ve made chicken parmesan, eggplant parmesan, a home made chicken pot pie, lemon honey salmon, and vegetable lasagna.  I don’t want to give up those good foods.

I think the trick is for me is to stop picking at things.  Dylan made brownies today, and of course, I’ve been picking at it.  Taking little slices here and there.  I’ve probably eaten 300 calories just from picking at it!

Oh, and people reading this may be wondering why I’m so concerned with health and calories and all that stuff.  Well, I’ve been eating really well lately (as seen by the egg whites, and the cups of spinach a day), and I’ve also been exercising more than I ever have in my entire life.  I am really quite proud of myself.  However, since the beginning of August, I have gained 10 pounds.  I went on vacation for three weeks to England and to New Mexico, and I thought it was just from being on vacation, and eating too much.  But I came home in the beginning of September, and I continued to put on another 5 pounds, even thought I have been regularly exercising.  I don’t understand how that is happening if I’m being so careful and exercising so much.  It could be 10 pounds of muscle, I understand that, but I do not look 10 pounds leaner and fit and trim than I did two months ago.

Tomorrow I am going to get my blood drawn for a thyroid test to see if my levels are ok (cause your thyroid regulates your metabolism, and I no longer have a thyroid).  Perhaps all my exercising requires a higher thyroid dose.  That’s what I’m hoping for.  Otherwise, I have no way to explain the weight gain, and it simply means that I need to start seriously looking at what I am eating.

Thus, the Special K two week challenge!  I am pretty good at challenges (the buy nothing month, and the no diet Coke, for instance).  So I figured if I said “Ok, only cereal, and specific snacks, blah blah blah,” that I would FORCE myself to follow along with it, simply because it’s a challenge.  I won’t snack on things that I shouldn’t be snacking on (like brownies!)

Friday might at work, a man asked if I had a boyfriend. After I replied that I did not, he asked “why not?” I thought it was an odd question. How was I suppose to respond?

I told my mom that his question bothered me, and she said “because you’re too picky!”
I always thought that mothers are supposed to want the best for their children. Not want them to settle. Her comment bothered me more than the gentleman’s did.

Thoughts?

Someone keeps putting fruit in our yard!  I don’t want to say they’re throwing it… but it gets there somehow.  That is two green apples and an orange.  Yesterday, my dad brought in an orange that my mom threw away (cause she found it on the counter, and started asking questions — I just told her to toss it).

But then last week, there were two other red apples.  One was a Delicious, and the other looked like a Macintosh.

What gives with the fruit?

**click on the picture so the photo gets bigger.  I like how the very middle of the photo is sharp, but all the edges are blurry.  Weird!  I took this with my iPhone on my way to my library meeting (I walked).**