Another reason for my weight gain from our vacation

One of many reasons for my weight gain over vacation

Post Holiday Catch Up

I hope everyone had a good Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice or other holiday of your choice 😉 The last few weeks have been insanely busy with work projects, and various holiday projects.

I was able to do the Hanukkah presentation for Rachel’s class with minimal problems. My plan to talk “off-the-cuff” as little as possible worked. I read a book. We sang a few songs (many of them the students already knew from previous years of my coming in there), I had the kids play dreidel, and then I brought in latkes. That was probably the biggest challenge. Due to health laws – I’m not allowed to bring in homemade food, so the latkes had to be store-bought. So the first challenge was finding a store that would make them. I convinced the local Harmon’s grocery store to make them for me in their deli department, but then at the last minute they decided they were too busy to actually do it. (I can’t even tell you how pissed I still am at them for pulling that stunt). The one good thing that came out of it was that they told me that they thought that Whole Foods might make them. Which was true – and I didn’t even have to twist their arm and beg. In fact, when I explained what I needed the latkes for, they offered to make up a special batch for me of “smaller” latkes for the kids (their “normal” size was HUGE – their “smaller” size is closer to what I would have considered “normal”). But the the problem was that they refused to give them to me heated up. And I wasn’t given access to the school’s cafeteria, so I had to heat them up on warming platters in the class. They were still on the “cooler” side, but they still tasted good. All the kids seemed really excited to try them.

Christmas went well too. The kids were spoiled rotten, although there were a fair share of present fails – I think Santa is beginning to look like an idiot. (Well, at least he’ll take the blame for a few more years until the kids figure it out). Rachel got a “designer nail” kit – which apparently was only an “add on” to a larger (more expensive) kit – which she doesn’t have. Oops. Zachary got a Wii game which is totally too difficult for him to play. He also got a computer game which doesn’t work on his computer. Oops. There were other presents that didn’t suck, thankfully – Rachel got a few Harumika sets, a Miley Cyrus CD (which she has been playing over and over and over and over again. Ugh.) Zachary got a few Bakugans and a marble tower building thing.

And me? Between Hanukkah and Christmas (and Thanksgiving) – basically a month+ of holidays and food… I am sitting at a good 5lbs heavier than when the holidays started. I know I’ve been “bad” – but the holidays are difficult on a diet. I wanted to enjoy them without worrying so much about every calorie. I knew I would gain, but the deal I made with myself was that as quickly as I could afterwards I would get it back together again. So here I am. Again. For the millionth time. But that’s what it’s all about.

I tried the LoseIt! iPhone app before – but I do like being able to enter stuff into the computer as well as the iPhone. Sometimes, if I have A LOT of stuff to enter, the iPhone’s interface becomes a real hurdle. So I end up skipping an entry… and one thing leads to another… and you get the idea. So I’ve signed up again with MyFoodDiary. It’s still a little overkill for what I want, and some things I still find annoying and wish I could turn off, but it has the main important features I want – iphone accessible (they have a mobile version of their site) and the ability to enter via computer as well. It’s too bad I don’t get a “referral kick-back” for the number of times I mention them on this site, but I don’t. I just like their service.

Our New Year’s is always quiet, so I shouldn’t have too much to worry about there – so today is my first day back on track.

Tracking Calories. Again.

F

I still think MyFoodDiary.com is great, but I want something more simple. I know that fats and carbs play a role, but what I found to be the most significant issue was plain old calories. (It’s important to note this will be different for different people – and even for me, there was a time I was more concerned with carbs than anything else. Right now I think I have the carbs under control – but really just want some help watching the straight calories). So I’m going to give that “Lose It” (free) iPhone app a try. I’ve heard people rave about it – and if just watching calories is what you need to do – then this program seems pretty good. For the foods that it has in the database, it does include additional nutritional info (Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Carbs, Protein). But entering in your own custom foods doesn’t entail a long form to fill out. Just enter the name of the food, the serving size, and the number of calories. Done. This is perfect for what I want to do right now. (An additional note: For those people that want to track those other items, the simplicity of Lose It probably isn’t a good thing as I could not see a way to enter that additional nutritional data in for custom foods if I wanted to) figured it out: you can track these other nutrients, you have to just turn that feature on if you want it.

Anyway. Back on the wagon…

If you’d like to try Lose It too, here’s the link on iTunes. (It’s free)

Running on empty

I‘m sure this post is going to come with a fair amount of “I told you so!!”s but here I go. I haven’t been able to run for about two months now. I kept putting it off, work was extremely hectic and my knees had started to bother me. At first I thought the knee pain was related to a new migraine-prevention medicine I had recently started taking, but as far as I can tell, it’s unrelated. I kept waiting for my knees to feel better, I took motrin, it didn’t help. After a few weeks I finally caved in and called the doctor.

So it would seem I have tendinitis in my knees. She gave me some kind of anti-inflamatory cream (?!), a print-out of hard to read, hard to understand (the point of) “exercises”, told me to put some heat on it and sent me on my way. The cream you’re supposed to put on 4x a day. Which is ridiculous. Who remembers to do something 4x a day?? And a cream?? How is a cream I put on my skin going to penetrate through the cartilage of my knee and make this better?? And the exercises? Aside from the fact that I can barely read the print-out, I really don’t see how they’re going to make my knees feel better. From what I can tell in the picture (which is easier to see than the writing) it has you do things like: Sit in a chair, kick your leg forward and then back. Repeat 3 sets of 75 reps. (I’m not exaggerating on the repetitions – and that’s just ONE of the exercises!! There’s 6 more on the page like it.). As far as heat goes… do you realize how difficult it is to keep a SQUARE flat heating pad on a bent knee? WHY don’t they make a heating pad specifically designed for your knee?? I know they have those Therma-care heating pads for knees, but I think they work out to be $4 each and I would need two of them for both of my knees, every day for who-knows-how long.

So the short story is that I’m thinking I’m going to be dealing with knee pain for awhile. We’re also suspicious that the running probably had something to do with this in the first place. So… yeah. No more running for me for a good long while. If ever. I’m happy that the pain is only when I bend it so I can keep doing my other exercise classes (like Hip Hop Hustle and was going to start Turbo Kick this week too). And the bonus is that since I can’t bend down so easily anymore, I’ve had to get Zach to learn how to put his shoes on by himself… which really isn’t such a bad thing!!

(Ironic how I was running to be healthy and instead it caused me to be injured. I think I’ve mentioned before my love-hate (well, more hate) relationship with exercise? This is a good example of why that is… Something that is good for you shouldn’t cause you PAIN! At least Hip Hop Hustle is still fun and hasn’t killed me yet! LOL!)