day two!

Morning.
Day 2. So I feel like I need to clarify the purpose of this new diet, for me. I am constantly skipping meals, panicking mid-day and eating disgusting things. Then by the time I get to dinner I'm so hungry I eat everything! That is not the recipe to a healthy lifestyle. With Herbalife I am guaranteed two "meals" a day that I don't have to think about. Even if I'm not hungry, I make the shake. Then when it comes time for my one meal it won't seem like I have to eat everything in sight. I am also excited about saving money on going out to eat. This morning I made a coffee shake again, but I didn it a little bit differently this time. I started by putting about 8 ice cubes in the blender, then my two scoops, a tiny bit of natural sugar, and about half a cup of coffee. I normally drink more coffee than that but with the energizers in the powder and the pills it's probably a good thing to slow down a little bit. Today at lunch I think I'm going to reheat some leftover paprika chicken (YUM!) and then do a shake for dinner, see what that does for me. I'm also excited because I'm going grocery shopping to pick up some frozen fruit. I LOVE FROZEN BLUEBERRIES!!!! I hope cost-u-less still has those monster bags for $5... I wonder what a vege vanilla shake would taste like...
Lunch.
I <3 paprika chicken. I was a tad hungry throughout the morning, but not enough to tempt me to do anything other than eat the sample pizza bite at cost-u-less… I resisted the sparkling lemonade and cheese platter though! I think using just a tiny bit of coffee worked for my shake this morning. I didn't feel over energized or cracked out, I wasn't very hungry, and no headaches from not drinking my normal mug of coffee. I was also able to cut out the 1/2 and 1/2 which I'm sure saved me a load of unneccessary calories. As planned I reheated some leftover paprika chicken for lunch. So as not to over eat I only took half a piece of chicken which ended up being a little less than half the size of my hand (which for those of you who know me know that is VERY tiny!). Then I put two scoops of cous cous and chick pea mix with the yogurt, YUM!!!!! Best meal ever, and great for leftovers. If anyone wants it let me know. Or maybe someday I'll post it on here because it is a definite crowd pleaser. A quick note on the late pills yesterday... I was pretty wide awake until around 11, but then I decided to go to sleep and I did. I've never had much trouble falling asleep. I did however wake up in the middle of the night which is strange (after having some very odd dreams) and I had trouble getting back to sleep for about an hour. Apparently this is normal for some people but it doesn't happen to me that often. It could be the pills, who knows. Maybe it's just the change in diet, I don't know! But, it's day 2 and I'm feeling alright, so I'll keep going. My goal, btw, is to stay consistent for two months and then I'l going to re-evaluate and alter as needed.

Evening.
I have to say that dinner is an absolute success! I took about 6 ice cubes, a cup of frozen blueberries (I <3 FROZEN BLUEBERRIES!!!), some cranberry juice, and a little bit of club soda, and my two scoops, and voila! My very own blueberry spritzer, but no rum. Can I add rum? Is that acceptable to the plan? I don't know! Maybe after a really tough day it's ok to throw a thimble or so in :) My ONLY problem tonight is that I think I did too many ice cubes, I ended up with a little bit that fell into the sink as I was pouring it into my cup, but not enough for me to be worried. I think today went really well. The full lunch worked pretty well, I mean who can turn down paprika chicken?! I only had one accident and that was when I gave in to the pizza bite sample at cost-u-less but that was more curiosity than caving in to a craving... I remembered to take the energizing pill earlier this afternoon so hopefully my sleeping pattern won't be so weird tonight. I'm ok with the weird dreams, they were actually pretty pleasantly entertaining, but I don't like being awake in the middle of the night.

like I have an abandoned blog!!!!

I just remembered that I have a blog! A very long time has passed since I last wrote, but now I have a life change that I would like to share.

I just started a new diet, Herbalife, and I have decided to keep a diary of my experiences. I was going to keep it hidden away in a password protected spreadsheet, but I figured since nobody (including myself) reads this blog, I'll put it up here!

So.... Day 1!

I took before pictures, that I am not proud to show, but since nobody's going to see it anyway I'll put one up purely for documentation purposes.

Morning. For breakfast I made a shake with coffee. Drinking coffee is not recommended by the program as it's toxic, but I have to have my coffee. Tomorrow I'll use less coffee and more ice so it's more shakey and less iced coffee-ee. I had to add 2 splendas to make it sweeter, maybe with less coffee the powder will be sweet enough. We'll work up to no sugar. I also added a splash of 1/2 and 1/2. Took the pills about 1 minute ago, nothing yet...

Lunch. So…. After my coffee "shake" and all the vitamins this morning I ended up totally cracked out. Entertaining, but maybe for everyone else's sake I should avoid that in the future… Luckily I brought my sample protein bar when I left the house so I ate that with a bottle of water on the way to C-dub (Coral World) and fixed the crackedness. For lunch I made a pineapple shake, with no added caffein. I put in one huge piece of my frozen pineapple, a few ice cubes, and some water. This actually tastes delicious. I have a very nice dinner planned too. This should shape up to be a decent first day.

Evening. AKA WAITING FOR DINNER! So today was entertaining. Everything tasted good but I'm ending my day a tad bit hungrier than normal and just a little cracked out. It's alright though, I am confident that each day will be easier as my stomach, and mind, adjust to the new lifestyle. I went snorkeling for almost 2 hours so I feel that was sufficient exercise, but swimming always makes me hungry! For dinner I am going to make rosemary and thyme tilapia with halved baby potatoes and yellow squash. Baked, not fried. I would like to eat it now, but it's not dinner time yet. And the food is raw... So I wait while the fish defrosts but when Jason gets home I will be very excited to be eating real food! So concludes Day 1, I'll report tomorrow on how I "react" to the evening pills (that I was supposed to take earlier) that I take with dinner.

like taking a break!

I have been really busy lately adjusting to a new job and figuring out what to do about the old one and it has really added some stress. Thankfully in the past few weeks I have also discovered two amazing websites! I first heard about this site when I was sent HERE! The article is about slowing down your life and how sometimes doing less will help you do more and do it better. LOVE IT!

Shortly after discovering this site they added a sister site, Zen Family Habits. That link will take you to today's article about how to live hassle free. It's really similar to the slow secret, I just love it. I think everyone needs to keep an eye on these two sites and really take what they have to say to heart. We are all so busy and cluttered that we think that's how it has to be! We need to just slow down, enjoy life, and do what we do well.

like writing haikus!

Image by ionushi via Flickr

I'm sure everyone (that's like 6 of you now!) has realized that writing is really important to me. I think that it's crucial for surviving in the professional world, but I also think it's a lot of fun. My favorite thing to write is a haiku.

I think a very important moment for me in my writing of haikus is when I was in school at the University of the Virgin Islands I did a project for one of my creative writing classes and I realized that I could write haikus about anything. I know this sounds silly but in school you learn that haikus are generally nature related so all of my haikus up to that point were about nature. In that class my final project was a collection of unconventional haikus and I've never looked back.My twitter updates, facebook statuses, and most cards I write are all haikus.

So yesterday I was at home doing random housekeeping stuff and throughout the day I think I wrote about 5 haikus about what I was doing and it got me thinking, "Hey, I should actually keep track of all these haikus I write and compile them into a book." So I started writing them down with the title "Haikus for Every Day" in my miniature composition book, I love that thing! I might make it one of those daily calendars or maybe just a 365 page book with a haiku for every day of the year. I feel like I could fill that up pretty easily, I write a lot of haikus.

start writing poems
with a pencil or sharpie
it doesn't matter

like giving props

I would like to commend Smashing Magazine for their article today on improving your writing skills. As I'm sure anyone who has ready any of my blog entries knows, I take writing and grammar very seriously so to see an article like this posted on a very popular blog makes me incredibly happy.

The article has some fantastic resources that I really wish I had known about when I was in school getting my English Degree (not that surprising, eh?). There are sections on grammar, common mistakes, general writing skills, a section on copywriting, tools, and much more!

I encourage all of you (all three of you?) to go and check out some of the resources in this article and see where it can take you!


Happy writing!

online creeping... cha or nah?

So obviously the world is changing. Besides the obvious passing of time and all natural wonders that come with it we are now experiencing the explosion of social networking. Between Facebook, Myspace (if you're 13), LinkedIn, Twitter, and other such networks you can know almost everything about somebody without ever having an actual conversation! So the question this brings to my mind is... online creeping... cha or nah? How much creeping before you become a creep? Where is the line and how many times are we going to cross it?

I think that it is not the "creeper" at fault if they obtain too much information. In all seriousness, people need to think about what they're putting out there for the world to see and realize that no matter the privacy preferences it's still pretty easy to access. So I say creep on creepers! If you don't want somebody to know something, don't put it online! From there it's a free-for-all, take what you will and give what you want.

nobody is very smart.

So new goal, FIND THE SMART PEOPLE!

I've noticed that there is a serious lack of brain power in the world. Growing up I never thought that I was all that smart. Not embarrassing, just average. I guess I can attribute that to having a smart family and smart friends. A fool among fools feels no foolery. I just made that saying up, btw, and I like it. And yes I just said btw. Anyway, so surrounded by all these smart people I felt rather average, then I started to notice the world around me. If I'm not very smart, and I'm smarter than all of these people, then the world is doomed! I know I touched on this in my grammar post, but are you serious? College graduates, "ivy leaguers", and other such personalities missing basic concepts, sounding generally idiotic! Like I said before, I don't consider myself to be all that smart, but I'm going to start asking for IQ scores and administer basic comprehension tests before having a conversation with anyone. If this is how the entire world is then it's no wonder we're destroying the habitats of everything (including ourselves) and wreaking general havoc on the planet.

I don't want everyone to be like the smart people who are so smart that they're terrified to be dumb, because that's no fun. They just end up acting condescending to make sure you know that they're smarter, and if you actually outsmart them they may just start cheating at life (or scrabble) to prove their dominance over your brain.

So, new plan. I'm finding all the smart people.