Weighty issues

Since quitting smoking in February, I have gained an unhealthy amount of weight. About 30 lbs. I now weigh more than I did during all of my pregnancies. Wow. Needless to say, I am completely ashamed of myself. Now I have to repair the damage.

On the menu: Weight Watchers and training for the Monument Ave. 10k. The hubs and I are also participating in a research study at the University of Richmond. It's following couples that are trying to lose weight together. More about that later.

Starting weight: 201.5
Total of points available: 28

Food:
Breakfast:
Active Lifestyle oatmeal 3
2/3 c. 1% milk 2
2 tbsp FF 1/2&1/2 0
coffee 0
Sweet n low 0
Total: 5

Lunch:
2 slices of bread 2
1 tbsp peanut butter 2.5
1 tbsp strawberry jam 1
Total: 5.5

Snacks:
rice cake 1
1 tbsp almond butter 3
10 pretzels 2
2 tbsp chocolate chips 4
1/3 c dried cranberries 2
Total: 12

Dinner:
Skinny Taste Brown Fried Rice 4
3 oz. chicken breast 3
1c. broccoli 0
Crystal Light Iced Tea 0
Total: 7

Total for the day: 29.5

Exercise: C25K week 1 as running intervals. 2 miles, 36 min.

To summarize, probably not the best first day. I'm feeling very snacky today.

Decisions, decisions...

I am making big decisions for myself these days. In February, I quit smoking. I can't say that I don't miss it, but I do feel so much healthier. The only downside to this decision was that I gained 25 lbs in the process. This leads me to another decision: I must change the way I eat and exercise.

One of my best friends challenged me to run a 10k with her in April. She trained hard and ran the whole race. I did my best and ran every other mile, for a total of 4.6 miles. She has lost a ton of weight and looks AMAZING. Just by limiting herself to 2000 calories a day and running three times a week! I can totally do that. I NEED to do that...I don't have any pants that fit.

I also think that my blog needs a new direction. First and foremost, I need to actually use it. I know that nobody actually reads it, but that's ok. I like having it here just so I can get stuff off my chest. For the time being, it will primarily function as a food and exercise journal. Maybe someday, I can be like those witty female bloggers whose writing I enjoy so much.

To kick off my new committment to healthy living, the family went out to dinner tonight. I'm slightly embarassed to write about what I ate. Uggghh...I had a cheeseburger, fries and onion rings (we shared), a small peanut butter chocolate milk shake, and a soft pretzel. I think that should cover all the cravings I could possibly have. The cheeseburger did have lettuce, tomato, and onion on it, so at least my meal included a few vegetables.

8. The Cure for Modern Life by Lisa Tucker: Meh...it was ok.
9. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson: I got about a quarter of the way through and realized that I had already read it. I read it all again, it was great.
10. Airframe by Michael Crichton (audiobook): I kept waiting for aliens to come out of the plane or some deadly microorganism to melt everyone's faces. Nope. Just a book about a plane.
11. So Much for That by Lionel Shriver (audiobook): I wasn't sure what to expect since I didn't like the Post Birthday World. I really enjoyed this book, though.

4. Big Boned by Meg Cabot - I think this is part of a series. A little disappointed I didn't read the first one first!
5. Anthropology of an American Girl - I find I have a hard time reading books that don't have a lot of dialogue. This book was prose heavy. It bounced around a little bit and I had a hard time following the story sometimes.
6. The Blind Contessa's New Machine - Cute book. Short, too.
7. Heart & Soul by Frank Conroy - My mother-in-law lent this to me on Sunday and I finished it this morning. I really enjoyed it...I didn't want it to end!

Books 2011

1. Insatiable by Meg Cabot: I enjoyed this. Vampire books are interesting and I almost wish there were a sequel.

2. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: My BFF was listening to this on her ipod the other day when I was on my way to the library. I figured since she liked it so much (it wasn't the first time she'd listened to it), I would probably like it, too. Very right. Excellent read.

3. The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation by Elizabeth Berg: I drive an hour and a half each way for work twice a week and listen to audiobooks while I'm driving. They give me something to concentrate on other than the highway hypnosis I routinely suffer from. Wonderful short stories, but I must admit that I hate short stories. They often leave too much to the imagination. And I REALLY like closure.

Here we go again...

Once again, I have let my blogging lapse. AND I haven't read any of the books that I said I was going to try to read for my New Years resolutions.

I did, however, have another baby.

James Charles IV was born on August 23, just 9 days after his sister, Mary's, 1st birthday.

I thought this was neat. I have read some of these, but a lot of them I'd like to read this year.


a) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
b) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Reprint this list and leave a comment——————————————–

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (haven't read the whole thing, just parts of it)
7. Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37.The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (in French!!)
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (was read to)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I think I'll make reading some of these part of my New Year's Resolutions.