200+ Hot For Halloween!

13.1 miles last night in under 3 hours makes me a happy mama. VERY. HAPPY. MAMA.

I am on family duty today, so I am in and out. My friend's surgery was a success. The tumor is removed and they had to reconstruct a portion of her skull. She is experiencing some paralysis on her right side due to swelling, so your continued prayers for peace and healing are appreciated.

i have read everyone's posts, but I just don't have time to respond to everyone, but there are a few I must say.

Hallie: I can Totally see a difference.

Hosanna: Rock it, sister. the sex is always better when you feel good about yourself.

Kendal: I am going to send you my address and you can send ME the white chocolate covered whatevers...I don't even care what you covered, as long as it's with white chocolate.

Amy: Be safe. Have fun. Check in often.

Rachel: Great job on eating great for a coupla days in a row. I know at my house it is a 5-minutes-at -a time battle.

Lacey: I need pics, please. Especially ones with you and Amy in Paris. I am so excited for you guys.

Nava; i hate the new FB thing. I just created a new "list" to the left of my news feed and added everyone--that gives me a chronological listing of my friend's posts.

ok, now i'm late. gotta go. love you girls.

Amy: Bahhaaa, yeah it's a bit complicated to get a full head/body shot in those pictures. But thank you for your input! I kinda miss my lobster-redness and tanness! boo. I wish I could know what I am doing for the back fat area. Ha. Enjoy your mini trip and seeing Lacey!

Victoria: your answer made me giggle while I was reading it at work. I think the suit is fitting better too but also the elastic in the strap is broke so it's super stretchy. I am going with the I did the improvements instead of the broken elastic making the suit fit better.

Jessi: Thank you! I love swimming! Are you scared to swim or never learned?

Bobbie: Hahahhaa, true those pictures would make anyone's head turn all around. I love face progress!

meerkat: Thank you! I never realized that!

Hosanna: Yayyyy for shrinking! BTW, I freakin' love c25k! I hope you do too! EPIC NSV!

Lacey: Good, I feel like I see myself every single day so I don't see a difference. Hope you are enjoying your trip!

Pam: Thank you! I do not know where I'd be without you ladies!

Annette: :blushing:

Kendal: Gracias!

Crystal: I am so happy it's not midterm yet...so I still have time to pull things up! Thank you in terms of my pictures!

Sarah(wiggle): Good!

Nava: HAHAHAHAHAHA, your description on your FB profile picture made me giggle! :laugh:

Sooooooooooooo, I am going to the hair salon in t-minus 80 minutes. I am going to spice my life up. Hope it looks good! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Hey gals! My busy week continues but I've been lurking. No time to respond individually, but I've been adding you all on Facebook.

So far I've been sticking to my guns of making this week a good one. I did have some M&Ms at the movies last night, but I feel confident thus far.

Nava, I'm sorry to hear about the England drama! Hopefully they find someone to replace you soon and hopefully Joe can go with you. I understand your freak out; long distance relationships are tough. That's great that Joe has already told you that he wants to get married and have babies regardless of how the England thing goes though! I'm crossing my fingers for you...here's hoping that in a month or two you'll be downing a pint in a pub with Joe by your side. Also, I'm right there with ya -- what's up with the new Facebook?

Katheryne, holy cow, you've got an interesting job! People are nuts. The chicken thing is crazy too; companies always seem to add unnecessary things to make stuff "taste better." The amount of chemicals and processed yuckiness in most of the food on the shelves today is mind boggling...have you ever read the ingredients in most ice cream? And yet, as Haagen Dazs proves with their Five ice cream (yum), it really doesn't take all of the chemicals and high fructose to make it taste good.

Sarah (WnT), you ran a half marathon last night?! Just for the heck of it, no race involved? Holy cow, you are hardcore!! And awesome!

Kristina, the scale is my worst enemy. I've been avoiding it since my weigh-in on Monday because I'm afraid that my bad eating from last week is going to catch up with me and I don't want to see it. Ugh.

Victoria, here's a super easy, super basic olive oil dressing recipe I use as a "starting point" to make dressings:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/balsamic-vinegar-and-olive-oil-dressing/detail.aspx

I've altered the spices in it (I like oregano and basil), and I've used yummy fruit-infused balsalmic vinegars or olive oils too. Yum!

I hate my scale. I hate my scale. I hate my scale. Seriously, pre-TOM can SUCK IT SUCK IT SUCK IT. This morning it said 168. I drank 15 glasses of water yesterday. What the bloat batman? I seriously have a crazy belly pooch going. (ok. pausing for a moment to think about how 8 months ago I wouldn't have been able to ***** about this because I wouldn't have known the difference. I was too chubby to notice bloating. So really, it could be worse.... ... ... yeah no, I'm still annoyed).

I know we've talked about this before, but I'm looking for fresh perspective on calorie cycling? My specific reason for asking, is this... let's say my net calories on Sunday are 2500. Do you think that eating 1000 Monday, 1100 Tuesday, 1200 Wednesday, etc, will help balance that out? Is that even possible? I have always looked at this like the fact that you can't actually "catch up on sleep." Once the damage is done, its done. I just want to not be hurting my body, but I would also like to counteract the insanity of my weekend. So anyway, just lookin' for the opinions on this of the wonderful ladies whom I know and trust.

Victoria, I have an olive oil sprayer (which I personally think is the greatest invention ever) that I spritz my salads with... I usually infuse it with some basil or dried peppers or something, and the a lot of times splash some sort of vinegar (balsamic, red wine, whatever I have) to add some tang. Yum!

Pam, obviously I am in the same boat with you and the scale business. I feel your pain.

Kristina, I'm proud of you for facing the music when it comes to the scale. You are going to do this. You know you can, you totally have before. Just get moving! We're here for you!

Hailie, I agree, the change is pretty minimal in the body pics, but it is SO OBVIOUS in your skinny face!

Sarah, HOLY CRAP YOU ARE MY HERO!!!! 1/2 marathon distance! Do you feel amazing and like you can do anything you want?! Seriously, so awesome. Also, just wanted you to know I'm thinking about you and your friend. Happy to hear the surgery was successful and I'm praying for a safe and fast recovering. Hugs to you.

Rachel, I seriously schedule an evening snack/dessert into my calories every day. I don't know what I'd do without a skinny cow ice cream cone or some cereal around 8 or 8:30 or night. Impressive that you've denied yourself dessert for 3 days.

Katheryne, so... I have never bought a whole chicken. Really. I can't believe they pump it full of broth. That is so stupid. I pretty much just eat chicken breasts. That's it.

Nava, all the England/life stuff you are dealing with makes my head spin. That would pretty much suck if you had to live overseas without Joe. But I find it adorable that he is being so supportive and also telling you he wants babies and a house and all that jazz.

Crystal, I'm glad I have you a chuckle.

Lacey, HI! We miss you! Have so much fun! Drink amazing wine and eat amazing cheese for me! And give Amy a big hug too!

Kendal, same to you as to Pam... I feel your scale pain. Want to send some pretzels my way? Yummy!

Amy, holy crap a customer came in to work today with 2 3-month old Bernese Mountain Dog puppies in her shopping cart. They obviously filled the whole cart. CUTEST. PUPPIES. EVER. Their paws are so huge! They're so soft and precious! I have never seen one besides in pictures before today. So now, even more, I want to come snuggle.

Hosanna, your NSV is FREAKING AWESOME. I'm so happy for you, and that was totally not TMI. Not even close. I could totally tell you some TMI stories (including one VERY awesome shower experience... ) thanks to being smaller. Its so fun!

Annette, bread and cheese could very well be the death of me. I love them both so very very much. I hope you find the willpower to get it out of the house!

Megan, HI!

Jessi, WTF, tongue, uterus? We need stories. Those both sound so very very painful.

Ok, caught up! (mostly)

Things here are good, except for the scale. I'm trying to be super duper careful with sodium. And I'm sticking to only water and green tea to drink. I plan on only drinking beer on Saturday this weekend. Friday and Sunday will be all water and green tea also. I gotta get this beer gut thing under control. lol

Oh and just so you know, I can do chair dips like its nobody's business now. Tony Horton, you're my frenemy and I love it.

Hosanna - I have no clue how I tore it, but there was a tear across the top edge along the inside, and I was stuck in bed (well, on couch) for several weeks, which sucked. Glad you had a good night with Isaac Yay for feeling a little more confidence.

Katheryne - Cervix pain, in my opinion, is way worse than uterus pain. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, too (like, being in full-on labor didn't really bother me), so I'm pretty fortunate there. Sounds like you get some interesting calls at work. O.o What kind of work do you do? Also, I knew the answer was Brussels Sprouts, but I love them too - especially in cheese sauce, or with butter and nutmeg.

Pam - Somehow, I didn't notice the ear infection at all. Just the tongue thing, which hurt because talking/drinking/eating/etc ALL uses your tongue. Blech.

Kendal - You're seriously making me want chips and dip! :P Mainly the dip... and I have fresh veggies.

Nava - Also hating the FB news feed, but I do like that pictures show up bigger now.

Hailie - I in theory know how to swim. I understand the logistics and coordination. I have a serious fear of putting my face in water, so floating on my back is as close as I can get.

Victoria - I have pretty high cholesterol as well. I don't remember what it was last I checked, but when I donate blood, within a week I get a new number, and I'm donating next time they're in town. Hoping it's going down since I'm being good (usually). I'm at work right now, but if you remind me later, I'll find lots of dressing recipes for you. I love to cook, and I have all sorts of homemade dressing that is awesome.

Kerry - I've always been of the "damage is done, start over tomorrow" school as well. Calorie cycling sounds like what I need since I'm doing ball games and eat terribly every Friday as a result of super-tight scheduling.

I'm way over on sodium, both yesterday and today, courtesy of turkey... but at $0.10 a pound, I'll take it.

I'm also pretty seriously hating on my coworker. She drives EVERYONE nuts and is such a b i t c h to people all the time, and today when I went to the back of the office for our live hour (I'm our photographer, among other things, so I snap pictures of our guests visiting) a bunch of paperwork off MY desk, that has NOTHING to do with her job, was "hidden" but sticking out enough I noticed it (oh, and it's almost an inch tall pile of paperwork!). WTF?! At one point I had left a note on my desk in the middle of paperwork telling her "This is my stuff, not yours. Keep your hands off it, don't mess with it, don't move it, don't look at it. If you need to be aware of something, I'll make you an effing photocopy." She stopped for a while, but apparently she's back at it. My boss is aware of it, dislikes her as much as anyone else does, and is fully supportive of my going out of my way to dish it right back to her when it gets to be a bit much. (Also, moving things/rearranging things/taking things from my desk causes me to have a mini-meltdown because of my Asperger's... not that she cares.)

Oh, haha, I like the Vicodin. No fuzziness. No icky side effects. I just talk a lot. :P

Jessie - I will remind you later for the recipes. I figure if I'm cooking, I should start doing stuff to lower my sodium intake as well.

Victoria - I probably have a recipe for just about anything you could want. I, very seriously, have only 2 actual cookbooks (one was a gift from Nerd, it's called Food Porn Daily and has beautiful pictures); I do, on the other hand, have an entire picture album (the 6 slots/each side of the page kind) full of recipes, plus the entire back of it stuffed full of recipes and probably another 300 that are waiting to be put on cards.

Rachel - Yay for 10 miles!

Kerry, It's not just whole chickens. If you look on your pack of chicken breast, usually right under the label it will say something like "enhanced with all natural chicken broth" or "freshness preserved with 15% chicken broth" or something like that. It jacks the sodium content of the chicken way up. I didn't use to read the nutrition label on the packages because when I would enter them in to here or Spark i would just use the ounces of chicken, or ounces of ground beef, and i couldn't understand why the food loggers said my sodium was low, but my body felt like I had had too much salt. I actually found out by reading an article last winter in a Food Network Magazine. When I looked I couldn't believe that a serving of boneless skinless chicken could have 150 to 200+ mg of sodium depending upon the brand.

sorry for the ramble, this is a major peeve for me. if i go over on salt in the least little bit my bp skyrockets.

-Katheryne

I've recently found this out too, and it pisses me off! If I wasn't so lazy about shopping, I'd go to the Mexican market near work and get all my meats there. Walmart is just so damn convenient!