Free Pass Equals Less Ass

As so often happens after travel, I got horribly, horribly sick upon returning home. Oh recycled plane air, how I hate you! Pity me, people. I went on an awesome trip, came home and got sick ;)

I gave myself a bit of a free pass while I was in Ireland. While I didn't go crazy and eat an Ulster Fry for every breakfast, I did have one twice. (Black pudding, white pudding, fried everything? Hells ya!) I might not have had a pint every night of the week, but I did let the two best bartenders in the country serve me multiple pints on multiple nights.

Why do I say this? Because somewhere in my three weeks of enjoying traditional Irish food and debating exactly which bar serves the best Guinness, I actually lost weight. Obviously, I need to travel more often! I'm putting it down to the incredible amount of walking that I did during my time there.

I may have also gotten inspired while I was in Ireland and looked up half- and full marathons in various locations around the island. Of course, the inspiration may have been more about looking for another excuse to visit parts of Ireland in which I don't have family. Say, the beautiful County Donegal, for example.

I'm feeling better so getting back into the swing of regular workouts is goal number one for the upcoming week. In the meantime, the first few days of travel are recapped here and here.

Forever Part of Jackie's Army

For the past two months I've been getting cravings for McDonald's. I've never been a big MickyD's eater so it was really not big deal to stop eating it altogether almost five years ago. Since then I've had it once (because it was that or a 15euro eggs, toast, and bacon at Schiphol Airport at 8:00am). I've occasionally lamented the lack of their no-nutritional-value-probably-laced-with-cocaine fries but then I cut up a potato to make oven fries and I'm just as happy.

Plus, if I eat at McD's too often, Mac tells me I'll remain a fat chicken forever.

This most recent craving, however, kept coming back. About once a week I'd find myself saying "but you'll like the dinner I made for you once you eat it" and like a resigned child, my craving would huff off into a corner until it was ready for the next round. Last night, I finally caved.

That's pretty much how I ate the fries.

I walked to the Raunchy Ronnie's closest to my apartment and ordered a meal. I sat down to eat it, realizing that the burger was so dripping with fat/oil/teenagelinecooksnot/grease that my fingers almost became translucent. Ugh. But I had ordered it and, I have to admit, it tasted good going down. It wasn't the most satisfying meal but it shut up my craving so I'll take it.

Actually, I think my burger had even more grease.

About 20 minutes after I got home my stomach felt awful. I still pretty much felt like ass this morning. Thank you, Golden Armpits, for reminding me why I was never really that big of a fan in the first place. And now I have a blog post for the next time I have a craving and the passage of time leads me to think how bad could one meal there be?

NOTE TO SELF: DON'T EAT THE MCD'S OR YOU WILL FEEL LIKE THIS!

Note to readers: Guess who suddenly realised she can make

her own screen caps when she watches movies on her laptop?

Over on Healthy Tipping Point today, Caitlin asked another round of 10 personal questions. The last question was about your three happiest moments. One of my moments was when Ireland beat Romania in 1990. The funny thing is that I almost didn't include it as a memory because I didn't think a sporting memory from when I was 10 should really be one of my happiest moments. But you know what? It is.

I wrote about the game on its 20th anniversary but I know I've picked up a few new readers since then so while you can find the full post here, I'm reposting a shortened version of it on here. I will fully admit that just reading the post again made me cry.

Italia '90 is the first World Cup I really remember watching. I have vague memories of a World Cup party prior to that, but I couldn't tell you who was playing or what the score was. Italia '90 was so burned in my memory partly because I was 10 and finally able to actually follow sports and partly because it was Ireland's first time at the World Cup. As I have mentioned before, my dad is an Irish immigrant. As much as I love Canada, when it comes to soccer (and rugby), Ireland is my team. Italia '90 made sure of that.

...Ireland made it past the Round Robin stage. They were slated to play against Romania, at that time a dominant force in the soccer world (not so much now) and the general agreement was that 'the boys in green' had had a good run but it would be coming to an end.

My dad had invited a few friends around to watch and to follow it up with a BBQ.[...] It was a tense game, Romania attacking aggressively and Ireland building a defensive wall which rivaled the Berlin wall. Despite Romania's best efforts, not a single shot made it into the net and the teams were forced into extra time. [...] After extra time did nothing to change the result, a penalty shoot-out was inevitable.

Romania was up first. [...] The players would walk from the centre circle were they had to stay between kicks, place the ball where they wanted, and then score. [...] The score stood at 4-4 as Packie Bonner, Ireland's goalie, took his place on the goal line. He dropped his head and said a prayer (I know because he crossed himself when he was done) as Daniel Timofte strode up to the ball and got ready.

... Packie guessed right on that last ball and he stopped it. My dad let out a loud yelp of joy as he jumped out of his seat. I remember being on my knees, not fully believing what I was seeing. I was waiting for the referee to call back the penalty shot for some unknown reason, to give Daniel Timofte another crack at it. Thankfully, my imagined doom was just that, imagined.

As David O'Leary walked up the field towards the goal, I got to my feet never once taking my eyes off the screen. This was it. This was our moment. [...] He ran on the ball and kicked it straight into the back of the net. A cheer erupted from our living room, and in the moment of celebration, my dad took his full glass of red wine and threw it at our freshly-painted white wall. There was jumping, screaming, hugging, singing, dancing, yelling, laughing, and a couple of toasts. Ireland had done the impossible. They were going to the quarter-finals.

[...]

June 25, 1990 was the day I became a soccer fan. I had played soccer and I enjoyed soccer, but I had never loved soccer like I did that day and have since. I watched Ireland lose the next game to the host team, Italy. I watched in USA '94 as Ireland lost to Holland in the Round of 16 and as Roberto Baggio (Italy) placed a penalty kick so high above the cross bar I wondered if he needed glasses. I watched the final of France '98 while having lunch with my mom when France beat Brazil. Ireland had failed to qualify so I was cheering for the host country (this, of course, was prior to the Handball Henry debacle which will now ensure I hate France for the rest of my natural life). I watched Manchester United win the Treble on the world's tiniest TV while befriending the front door staff at a hostel in Paris. I watched Thun almost hold Arsenal to a tie in a pub in Thun. I hosted a pancake breakfast for the final game of Germany '06 and felt my jaw drop as Zinedine Zidane did the unthinkable to Marco Materazzi. All these memories in my life, all these important moments, tied into the beautiful game all because Ireland beat Romania in penalty kicks. What would have happened if they had lost?

[...]

I have come to believe that there will never be a sport moment in my life as sweet as Ireland's win over Romania. Soccer, hockey, rugby, there will be no game, no matter how important, that will stay with me the way that game did. Twenty years later, I watch a video about it and I tear up with pride at that moment. I talk about Italia '90 the way older Canadians talk about the '72 series. I reference that game like it was somehow pinnacle to the entire game of soccer and not just the island nation of Ireland. My children will know how important that game was, and likely my grandchild will too, because it really was that important.

Well, That Was a Quick Trip on the Healthy Wagon

My new posting schedule says that I need to post tonight but instead of being all "I went for a run, I was a good girl, I was healthy", I'm going to tell you how I sat on my mom's couch, ate a full turkey dinner, and watched one of the best hockey games I have watched all season. End-to-end, beautiful hockey. Tonight was what the Stanley Cup finals are all about!

You can not fault Thomas for this goal--he and Luongo put on clinics tonight--but when the other team does a

textbook tape-to-tape set play...

[Source]

It did get my heart going so I'm sure that totally counts as a workout, right?

No?

Fine. I'll be better tomorrow.

But right now I'm going to dance around in my underwear* and think about how the Canucks are three wins away from the Stanley Cup.

Then maybe I'll get some sleep.



*what? I didn't want to get cat hair on my dress pants so they came off the minute I walked through the door.

Fit In OHS!

Operation Hot & Sexy (OHS) had its first meeting on Thursday. We set up in the office of one of the members on our lunch break only to find out that the scale had gotten knocked around and was out by roughly 10 lbs. I know what you're thinking: maybe all of you just weighed more than you thought you did. Well, we were all consistently 10 lbs heavier than we thought and I know that if I was actually that weight, I wouldn't need a belt on my current pants. (Not that I use a belt, I just walk around pulling up my pants constantly.)

In trying to pick a gym with a pool for knee friendly exercising, I had completely forgotten that April was Fit in Fitness month. Access to 14 fitness centres for $25? Sign me up! Oh, that's right, I already did. Over all, my knee has been feeling much better with the stiffness and nagging moments of pain coming and further and further apart. Still, I like the idea of sticking to low impact workouts for the moment. Better safe than in pain!

My fitness activity for today is an hour long walk to The Blue Nile for dinner before catching the Salmon Kings' last game of the season. The only down side to tonight's plan is having to say no to a delicious Tusker beer.

Mindful Eating

I went for a 'run' on Sunday and again on Monday evening. I use the term run very, very loosely as I have pretty much lost any sort of cardio I had and found myself struggling after a few minutes. It reminded me very much of my first couple of times out running with THR last January. It was such a struggle and I remember thinking that I would never been a runner. My one saving grace this time around is that I know I can be a runner. I love it now and as much as I struggled, it will get easier and I will be able to push myself further. My hip, which I was worried might be sore after two days, felt fabulous. Running is officially back in my workout regime.

I have made no secret of the fact that I am a geek (or nerd, dork, dweeb... I'll answer to any variation thereof) both on here and on my other blog. As a result, my RSS reader is filled with both health and fitness blogs as well as science-geeky blogs (that's the technical term). Today in my reader, I found this article about mentally overeating the food you're about to consume so you eat less of it. I, of course, found this fascinating.

When I think about the mental aspects of eating, it's about the choices I have to make. How do I make a salad seem exciting when those fries smell sooo good? How do I convince myself that I'm satisfied when there's still food on the table/plate? Is it possible, however, that I've actually been overlooking a simple step to help control my eating?

I wanted to read more about the study, but the link provided in the article goes to the study and you have to pay to read it. It's $15US just for 24 hours access. Not going to happen. Still, the article has given me a lot of food for thought *rim shot* about how much I may have overlooked the mental aspect of weight loss. It's definitely a self-experiment that I'm going to try out over the next few holiday weeks. At the very least, it can't hurt to try, right?

Question: Do you have any mental tricks you use when it comes to food?

Do As I Blog, Not As I Do

After all my big words about paying closer attention to my eating and being extra healthy because I couldn't really exercise at the moment, I went and had what was arguably the worst eating weekend in six months. It wasn't so much the eating that was bad, it was the drinking. Lots and lots of drinking.

A very good friend of mine, Lisa, recently bought her first home and so we celebrated with a rather raucous housewarming. After living in Tanzania, I stopped drinking. I still have the occasional glass of wine with dinner or the odd beer while watching a hockey game, but I no longer keep alcohol in the apartment 'just in case' nor drop $50 just in alcohol on a Friday night. Living in a conservative country will do that to you.

I made up for my lack of drinking on Saturday, let me tell you. I was asked to open a bottle of wine around 5:30 and pour three glasses. I spent the rest of the night opening bottles and filling any glasses in view including my own. When I left shortly after 10pm, there were six empty bottles of wine and only four people drinking from them. I honestly don't know how much of them I had consumed but I'm going to guesstimate it was around 'a lot'.

My one saving grace in all of this is the knowledge that I wasn't the only one who was that drunk. I won't give details because I'm not that mean, but I think it's safe to say that there will be a lot of people staring at the ground as they walk around work on Monday.

The only healthy thing I did was hang out with healthy people who've run marathons, won Ironmans, and rowed with the Canadian National Rowing Team. Does that count as being healthy? No?

I'll be better this week. Really.

Pray For Mojo*

The whole hip thing has me pretty bummed. I have been writing and rewriting a post for four days about losing my workout mojo as a result but I've even lost my mojo for writing about it. With my knees I had to stop running but other activities were still on the table. With my hip, not only is running off the table, but depending on the day so it walking or dancing or yoga.

There is, however, some good news at the end of all this. I think I may have found the culprit. We got these new ergonomic chairs at work and that's when my hip problem started. I also notice that I find I slump over to my right side when sitting at my desk but I never did with my old chair. Armed with this knowledge, I spent a huge amount of time on Thursday and Friday trying different positions. My hip has felt better but it's still sore. I'm hoping an ergonomic assessment this week will be the end of it. Then hopefully I'll get my mojo back because I need to write about the awesomeness which is Swiss comfort food:

I know it doesn't look like much but it has bacon, potato, onion, apple and pear in it.

It is the sweet and savory stew to end all stews!

For now, however, I'll get my mojo back through material goods. Today's purchase: Leonard Cohen tickets!

*Obligatory Simpson's reference. If you don't get it, watch this.

Focus on the Positives and Recommit

I'm finally back from the dead over the chest/head cold which has been keeping me pretty low key for the last week. It's been a tough two weeks--I was told to stop running, I lost my workout buddy to Vancouver, I was viciously attacked by my own respiratory system--and I have to admit that at one point, I felt like giving up on the getting healthy. Then a few friends were talking about next week's marathon which I will no longer be participating in. That really didn't help the crummy.

As I got over my cold, I also got over my 'oh woe is me' feelings and decided to focus on the positive:

1. Running is temporarily on hold while we sort out what's up with my knees. The doc is very positive that I will be back at it soon and that nothing long term has actually happened to my knees.
2. I'm still allowed to dance and that makes me the happiest when it comes to cardio. I will be plante-tacon-ing and djole-ing once a week for the foreseeable future.
3. Before the attack of the irritated bronchial tubes, I was doing well with the 'at home' workouts. I know what needs tweaking when I start them up again this week.
4. I have a new walking partner.
5. My eating has been very clean throughout my illness and I know I can continue that through the next couple weeks.
6. Beauty and the Beast comes out on DVD on Tuesday!

Okay, so that last one isn't health/fitness related but it's a positive, darn it!

At the start of September I began writing a contract with myself as a guide to keep myself on target with my workouts and eating. Somewhere along the way, it went from being a simple contract with a few guidelines to a fully annotated Encyclopdia AndreaClairicus. The original thought was in the right place and I want to go back to that. I have a rough draft of it done so I plan to do a quick rewrite of it and then it will be up on here for everyone to see... as soon as I'm done watching Beauty and the Beast.

Because Stockholm Syndrome rocks!

My First Foray into Food Porn

I have a love of crazy challenges. Something about the idea that it will just further cement everyone's opinion that I'm nuts makes any options, suggestion, challenge, ultimatum that much more appealing in my eyes. This is how a casual photo taker with a so-so camera that she had never really experimented with decided to embark on the Project 365 just over a week ago. The upside is that all of a sudden, I'm taking pictures of my food because, well, hello, a picture a day! I'm am officially taking photos of my food; I have breached that line between pictures and food porn. Well, it's not true food porn, I didn't take pictures of all my food (I went to my mom's for dinner, not quite ready to explain food porn to her yet) and I didn't really bother making it look nice, I just took them as I cooked. Maybe it's not so much food porn, but more the edible equivalent of those "Baby Blue" movies which used to come on CityTV at midnight. There you go; I'm a soft-core food porn picture taker (or is it soft-corn on the "Baby Blue Cheese" movie?).

Oh, my oven of joy and frying pan of ecstasy... where would I be without you?

I get a lot of gifts tied into Tanzania. I'm not complaining, I know one of the farms that benefits from this.

Paprika is my favourite spice. I wanted to learn Hungarian as a child because a lot of their food contains paprika. I always was an odd duck.

Look at that perfectly cooked 'sunny-side-up' egg! Also, if you've never tried fried tomatoes, I pity the life you must lead.

It might not be the best food porn out there, but for a first time amateur, I'm pretty pleased with myself. Now I'm off to bed because I have an interview tomorrow!

"Beer: The Cause of and Solution to All of Life's Problems" ~Homer J. Simpson

I had plans to blog last night, but then THR just had to twist my arm after our training run to go out to Christie's for dinner and a beer... which turned into two. Upon arriving home with the realisation that I have become an incredible light-weight over the past three years, I tried to write my post then. Thankfully, I never hit 'post' because when I re-read it this morning I noticed two things: 1) It in no way related to post I wanted to write, and 2) I ramble in stories when I'm sober, I really ramble when I'm drunk. Speaking of which...

There's been an increase in these the past two weeks.

I was very thankful for the night out with THR because Friday, quite frankly, was going to end on a downer otherwise (the original title I came up with was 'F#*$ Friday' and after such a great start to the week, who wants the weekend to start like that? Drunk and giggling about challenging a friend to a claw-plach is a much better start.) because work was being, well, work. I don't know why, after seven years, this still surprises me.

Other than the work issues, the week was fine. I have been rocking the water challenge. I haven't always it 64oz, but I'm coming close enough that I'm satisfied with what I've done. I've cut down on my snacking as a result of the increased water intake and it's become second habit to reach for the water bottle while sitting at my desk. That was a good thing from this week. Today, has been a bit of a cramming session to get it all in before bed, but I've still got time, I know I can get it done!

I learned that you really appreciate exactly how far 1 mile is when you have to add one to your run-walk distance. On Monday, I rocked the two miles and felt like I could have kept going. On Friday, the three miles kicked my ass by the end. I could have gone further, but not by much and not without some sort of goal at the end to spur me on (beer, anyone?). The run, though, felt great. Having a set goal always helps spur me on that little bit more so I run a little faster and  a little further than I'd go otherwise.

Today I spent the day wandering the length of Moss St (all 1.9km one way) with a few friends for the annual Moss St. Paint-In (screw you, TD, you're late on this bandwagon so I'm not calling it by your name). Artists from all over lower Vancouver Island partake in this celebration of art in the community complete with beer garden and a large selection of food. It really is a lovely way to spend a Saturday, especially when you live close enough that you don't have to try and find parking!

Tomorrow, I'm having dinner at the Blue Nile with a friend from Ghana. The last two times I ate at the Blue Nile, I had awesome weigh-in weeks at Weight Watchers. I feel the precedent* has been set and therefore, by convention*, I will have another good week which probably means saying 'no' to this at the Blue Nile this time around:

*This is what happens when a poli sci nerd writes a blog.