Step To It

Posted: December 8, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

 

 

There is always one day during the season that seems to be more packed with holiday get togethers than any other and yesterday was it.  Not only were there parties galore but it was also Carter’s birthday so Christmas and birthday celebrations had to be entwined together.

 

After Carter passed the driver’s test and was dropped off at school for a basketball ball game I was able to enjoy one of my favorite annual traditions, my friend Morgan’s annual wreath making party.  Morgan is a queen of flower arrangements and loves to bring out women’s inner crafter by providing everything necessary to make a beautiful wreath from scratch.  I love this party and have made some great wreaths over the years, but my real talent at this party is the bow making part of the craft.

 

Since I normally spend half my time making my own wreath and half making bows for other people I decided this year to just make bows.  My friend Christy is also a bow princess herself so she and I set up shop in the bow room, which was an oriental rug covered room with a garage door that opened to the outside where the wreath making tables spanned the length of the driveway.  Inside our room were tables and shelves covered in hundreds of different rolls of every kind of ribbon one could want; burlap, silk, sheer and sparkly.  Martha Stewart would be jealous.

 

As we whipped up many different ribbon adornments for our friends beautiful creations Christy, who is also a Fit Bit wearer said to me, “I don’t think we are getting many steps in making these bows.”  That’s when I started marching in place while looping the ribbon back and forth to create a pompom number.

 

Later that night while at my neighbor’s holiday cocktail party my friend Lee tapped her Nike Fuel band step counter on her wrist to see how many steps away from goal she was.  That prompted us to take a spin around the host’s house to help us get closer to goal and visit the bar at the same time.  I looked around the room and noticed that many of us middle aged women types had on our step counting bracelets with our cocktail dresses.  I had not yet met my goal before going to that party so I needed to keep mine on.

 

I am happy to report that since I started wearing my Fit Bit I have lost five pounds.  It is not all because of the steps I am taking but I have really cracked down on my portion control so that the holidays do not get the better of me.  But the step counting is responsible for keeping me on track and acts as a constant reminder.  Why would I want to put in all this work to get 10,000 steps a day and then blow it by eating too much?

 

I ended the day hosting Carter’s birthday get together by taking four girls to the Harris Teeter at midnight in their PJ’s to get some sleepover junk food.  I was happy I had gotten all my steps in by then so I did not have to traipse through the store in my flannel nightgown.  I’m fairly sure that no one at the grocery store at midnight had on a step counting bracelet anyway.

And Yet Another Diet Trick

Posted: November 2, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: | 1 Comment

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There is a reason so many people write baking blogs and I found out yesterday when I posted the obscenely bad for you Halloween candy peanut butter pie recipe; people love sweets.   I got so many messages about that pie.  When I was out walking today I ran into my friend Cliff who has lost a boat-load of weight in the last two years and he said that he was so tempted by my recipe that he actually contemplated buying four bags of Kit Kats at the grocery today so he could make that pie and put it in the freezer.

Now the point of that recipe was to repurpose Halloween candy so that it was not just hanging around to get nibbled on here and there.  Thankfully Cliff did not fall prey to the Kit Kats.  I promise not to post something like that again, even if it does get me tons of readers.  It goes against the point of this blog as a diet comedy.

Halloween is the beginning of the eating season.  Not that there is ever a non-eating season for me.  I spent last weekend eating what I wanted at Jon and Alli’s wedding and that is not something that worked out for me.

Knowing that this is the dangerous time of year and that I have been less than vigilant in the last month I was searching for what my next “Trick” for dieting was going to be.  It was exactly one year ago on November first that my weight-loss challenge for the Food Bank ended.  Yes I did raise $53,000 and loose 53 pounds, which worked great for the Food Bank, and me but I can’t keep asking people to pay me to lose weight and I would like to go on and lose the last of it.

I know in my heart and my brain what all the basics are to losing weight.  They don’t change and I have memorized them all.  I also know there are no magic pills so I never bother to listen to those infomercials on the latest herb or extract guaranteed to help you drop those unwanted pounds.  But I still like a gadget or two that will keep me focused on the fundamentals.

My friend Jan is an early adaptor and likes to try out the new and shinny so I was ripe to listen to her talk about her Fit Bit this week.  Fit Bit is a tiny device you wear to track steps and activity.  It is one of many of these devices to help us sedentary yet completive types get up and move around more. This was the “Trick” I treated myself to post Halloween.  So now I have a bracelet on tracking my every move.

Moving more and tracking it is good, but logging every bite of food I eat is better.  As wonderful as exercise is, eating right is the only way I really can lose weight.  To my luck Fit Bit can be tied into the Losing It App I already have on my phone, but have not used in a while as my logging system for everything I put in my mouth.  I don’t bite it until I write it.

I will keep you posted as to the progress of these back to basics tricks I am trying.  If you are also a Fit Bit user friend me or invite me or whatever it is called so we can track each other.  I am always better if I have people keeping an eye on me and a little competition never hurts.