Threat Level Chill

Day One wasn't so bad. I think I like eating 5 small meals a day, you never get a chance to get hungry. Tried a great new recipe called "Pepper of the Ball" (see recipe below). It's super simple and easy to make and tastes really good with hot sauce which if you didn't know (I know I never bothered to check) is 0 calories!!! Drinking 3 liters of water a day is easy too. Use a thermos instead of buying some massive container makes the challenge seem far less daunting. Stuck to my healthy habit and didn't practice the one I was dropping. Now for my exercise...

You need to exercise at least 20min per day, pretty much doing anything that will get your heart rate above normal. The premise being, that to lose weight you need to burn more energy than you take in, or at least some of it. No, you cannot lose weight (at least in a healthy way) by simply changing how you eat, or eating less. Believe me. I've tried. Enter Weight Watchers...

I started doing WW with a friend who was looking to lose weight. If I understood correctly (and perhaps I didn't, but I'm pretty sure I did), the idea behind WW is that when you eat within your points (you're assigned points based on your height/weight), you'll lose weight...without exercising...at all! If you should so happen to exercise, you earn activity points. If you eat your daily points (I had 29) + your weekly allowance (49 points) AND you've earned activity points....you can eat those too!!! In other words, you get to eat all the calories you just burned off. Seems to be a slight flaw in the logic. This is not to say that WW doesn't work for people (although I don't think Jennifer Hudson lost all that weight by eating points alone, just saying), but it seems to be a program designed for someone with a very active lifestyle. If that's not you....good luck, and god speed!

Glitch and Mo!

Now, back to your regularly scheduled
programming: the game! I opted to complete my exercise yesterday playing Dance Central 2. Just like Just Dance but only slightly cooler because you don't have to hold things. Moving on, I've been competing against crews to gain cred, and the chance to rep their crew. Long story short I beat/joined? all the crews and got the chance to battle the Glitterati. Beat them too! Suckas! Anyway, at the beginning of one of my battles with Hi-Def, Glitch (he's in the crew) was all in my "face" talking smack (as these characters are programmed to do) and Mo (he's the other guy in the crew) said "whoa whoa, dial it down to threat level chill." By far, the funniest thing I heard all day. And, also the most profound. I know that sounds odd, getting masterful life advice from a dance game but stick with me.

The SO (military speak for significant other) is active duty here in VA and a lot of the civilian counterparts I have encountered are very wound up about one thing or another. As are a lot of people in the world, for one reason or another. More often than not, people get very upset about things and people that they cannot control and in the grand scheme of things, probably don't even matter. My advice to them, dial it down to THREAT LEVEL CHILL. I can guarantee that the people you are getting all bent out of shape over aren't giving you a second thought, so why exert all that energy on them??? Some people have programmed themselves to be haters, and guess what, you're not going to change that (and I'm pretty sure your Facebook friends don't really care anyway, they're just trying to be nice). Just let it go...and chill :-)

Ingredients
-1 red or green bell pepper
-1 palm-size portion of extra-lean turkey or ground beef
-1/4 cup chopped onion
-1 carrot, chopped
-1 clove garlic, chopped
-1 small tomato, chopped
-Salt, pepper, and spices, to taste
-Fist-size portion of brown rice or cooked beans of choice


Preheat the oven to 350F.
Slice the "lid" off the red or green pepper and shake out the seeds.
In a bowl, mix the meat with the chopped onion, carrot, garlic, tomato, salt, pepper, spices. Add a half a fist-size portion of either cooked rice or beans and mix well.
Stuff the mixture into the bell pepper and bale in the oven for 45 minutes with the lid on the pepper. Then remove the lid and bake the pepper for another 15 minutes.

Presto! Lunch :)

Day One.

Morning Everyone! (or no one, lol). Today I'm starting a new diet called Game On! Twas created by Krista _______ who's the head writer for Grey's Anatomy...season finale on Thursday :'(  Anywho, it's designed so that you form teams and play each other for a prize...ideally. I, unfortunately (or not, that remains to be seen), am playing by myself. The goal is to accumulate points by drinking 3 liters of water daily, eating 5 small meals a day, exercising at least 20 min per day, and working on a new healthy habit and working to get rid of an old one, and getting at least 7 hours of "sleep" per night. All of these things are worth points, as well as making your weight loss goal each week. That earns you bonus points. The team with the most points, obviously, wins the prize. As I am playing myself, you would think I automatically get the prize right... (good plan!) But alas, this is not to be so. If I don't make my weight targets I win nothing! I haven't decided what to get myself if I do make my weight targets each week BUT I am going to buy myself a fantastic Marc Jacobs bag if I make my overall weight goal at the end of the summer. Is it expensive? Of course! Do I need it? Absolutely not! BUT do I deserve it (or will I deserve it)? Darn skipsy! So buy it I shall :-D 


In addition to playing the game, I've decided to take the "Game On" approach to other aspects of life. I spend a lot of time making sure other people are doing OK....which can end up upsetting me. I watched "Red Table Talk" with Jada Pinkett Smith, her daughter Willow, and her mother. In the conversation Jada discusses the way women are programmed in America, to believe that in order to be good girlfriends, and wives, and partners, and mothers, you have to put everyone and everything before you and yourself. The problem becomes, when you do that, you begin looking to other people to find your own happiness. That said, women (and men alike, but mostly women) have to realize that you can't possibly worry about other people and their happiness without first worrying about you and your own. 

All of that was to say I am going to spend more time focusing on me first. If I'm being honest I have no idea how this will work out at all as I am a "fixer" by nature and want things just so. But, in an attempt to start, here are a few things I have planned.


1. Go to San Francisco this summer.
2. Buy my bag at the end of the summer!!!! (assuming of course, I make my goal).
3. Spend Christmas/Holiday Season in Europe as a lovely graduation present to me!


That's all I have for now, but I'll update the list as I think of things. If you haven't already figured it out by now, the healthy habit I adopted for this round of the game is journaling (or blogging since I'm too lazy to sit and write for 15-20 minutes per day) so I shall type. If I don't post everyday, I don't get my points. So, if you see me post about a perfect week....and I didn't post that week...I am a cheater, and you should definitely tell me so. Accountability is very important. In the game. And in life, so start holding yourself accountable to yourself first, then others. Game On People!

*PS: I am way better at grammar and punctuation than this blog would suggest. I am English Teacher for pete's sake but that's the beauty in the Internet. There's really no need...no one really cares!