Day One: Food

So taking pictures of everything I ate today, gave me a perspective that I never noticed. You know how I mentioned yesterday that I generally eat pretty healthy? Well, I have noticed how much processed food has creeped into my diet...it's amazing!! Those little bars are my favorite snack - anything in bar form works for me. So the bar habit has got to decrease a tad.

So breakfast was a Cliff Bar and 3 cups of coffee (I drink it black so I figured I didn't need to post it). Breakfast might be a good area to look at changing up, since just eating the Cliff bar and coffee, I got super hungry by snack time.

This is what I ate when I got super hungry at about 10ish:

Then came lunch, when I took a picture of this, I realized - yes everything on my plate was low calorie or "diet" food, but it was missing color. I had Pop chips, a Morning Star burger on 100 calorie bread and Yogurt. I think my lunch needed some veggies or fruit, I think the reason I reached for the pre-made stuff was that I was hungry all of this stuff was already in the fridge. Perhaps I need to pre-wash/chop all of my fruit and veggies to have them more easily accessible.

Afternoon snack....another bar, Fiber Bars are my favorite...you just should not eat more then one within a 24 hour period...bad news...no binging on the Fiber Bars.

And here is where it went all wrong. This is the last of the Goldfish, we will not be purchasing these anymore.

Dinner is where I get all of my vegetable requirements for the day. I love to have a huge salad.

After dinner snack was...guess what? Another bar and Jolly Ranchers - my treat...even though I seemed to have several other treats throughout the day.

Well, that was painful. Apparently, my goal of eating less processed food is not working. Tomorrow, I am going to add more calories to breakfast, more color to lunch and more protein to dinner.

No working out today...just stretching for tomorrow.

High Maintenance Part Dos

It has been about a week since my last post and my choppers are getting pearly white - like I never drank a cup of coffee. I have 2 more white strips to go until I am finished. So success on my teeth transformation!!

This week I really sucked at working out. I was worried about the shin splints and calf pain (in the back of my calves) - so I just took it easy. In addition to taking it easy on the running, I took it easy on the eating better part to. Those two seem to go hand in hand for me...the more I work out, the better I eat. This weekend I went old school and did a Tai Boe workout from back in the days, and the next day I ran a mile on the old mill and then did a Jillian Shred workout. So I am planning on running 2x's this week and doing videos the rest of the week - in hopes the lower impact combo will help my shins go back to normal and still allow me to get cardio+strength in.

I have noticed how wishy washy I have been with my goals and I am realizing, I need to make things a little shorter term (with the exception of races). This week in my mission to becoming more "high maintenance" I am going to post everything I eat, in order to take inventory and cause me to be more thoughtful of what I am putting in my mouth. I think the main problem of me not losing weight at this point is the thoughtless eating and constant snacking. Having a toddler, we have to have little snacks around for him, Goldfish, Wheat Thins, Pop Chips, cereal, etc. Just my luck, I love the toddler snacks - I could probably live off of Goldfish. I generally eat pretty healthy with the exception of toddler snacks and "celebration" food (cake). It's my mom and my birthday this week - so cake on my birthday will happen - just sayin - and I will post my piece.

High Maintenance

One of those things that happens when you have been married for a while is "letting yourself go." What this generally means is you start to decrease all the high maintenance things you would do to yourself when you were dating. After being married for a while, having a baby and working from home, most all of those "high maintenance" things I used to do have gone flying out the window. My PJ/Workout clothes drawer has multiplied into 2 drawers and my fancy clothes from 4 years ago are in the back of my closet. The other day, I stumbled upon a picture of me on my first date with Bill (which I was looking pretty good in) and I began to recall of the things I did to get ready for that day. I did my hair, wore a skirt - actually it was a whole ensemble, polished my nails, did my eyebrows, the list goes on and on. I took a look at my closet and realized that somewhere down the line, I lost my style, lost my high maintenanceness - if you will, I lost my grove. I'm gonna get it back.

I have been really good about finding the time to work out and get my runs in and finding the cash to finance my races, shoes, and other gadgets...along with that I need to find the money and time to get out of my sweats and my official hair-do of a ponytail and into something a little less...homeless looking. I realize we just don't have the moola for an overnight transformation and I definitely do not need to be a "Swan" contestant, but I need to learn how to be a tad more high maintenance on a budget. I graduated from cosmetology school for goodness sake, I should be all up on the makeover bandwagon.

This week I bought Crest Whitestrips (Advanced Vivid) from Target, I think they were around 35 bucks or so. They are the first step to my high maintenance lifestyle.

Yes, I am wearing the strips for the picture, they are just hard to see.

I also painted the nails and toenails, since mani-pedis are not in the budget. I really believe that manicures and pedicures can be done at home...but an occasional pedicure is necessary. No feet pics, since I am sporting my compression socks and it is too much of an effort to get them on and off.

There will be up and coming posts on this self transformation.

As far as running, last week I didn't wear my compression socks and my calves/shin splints were on the rise...so I ran less miles and did a couple Jillian Shred workouts (I am up to level 2). I think the issue might be with my new shoes, but I am trying to ignore it since I spent lots of money on them. I am going to wear my old shoes next week and if I do better in them, I might just have to suck it up and get another pair. I plan on getting back to my mileage schedule tomorrow which is 4/2/4/R/6. I still have not selected a race for May...but I do plan on picking one!!

Crazy Day

The day started off very, very bad...

In case you are wondering, yes, my car got broken into. I just bought the car and installed a brand new stereo less then a month ago. The same thing happened to me 3 years ago right after I bought my VW Passat. I guess it is tradition that whenever I get a new car, it will get broken into.

On the flip side, I still had the original stereo, so we just stuck it in and presto chango, everything is better.

I got contacted by a recruiter this afternoon - it was an interesting opportunity and I am noodling around.

Then I ran and my shin splints acted up...so I stopped. I'll try again tomorrow morning.

Best part of my day was finishing this...

Life is soooooo...goooooooood.......

Fashion Show

So my day started out with my own personal photo shoot....

Then my Bill came by and caught me being a nerd in the garage....

And then he decided to take the pictures for me...

Then Jesse busted us...

And decided he would rather run on old Bessie...

I love having a nosey family, I swear, there is nothing private in our house. I also love how we got all dressed up for our fashion shoot - we are super flashy.

I decided to run outside today, it was perfect weather...99% of the time it is perfect weather here. I think I did pretty good all things considering. I would like to get to a 9 minute mile (or better), but since this is week #2 of CONSISTENTLY running, I am pretty proud of those numbers


Yay me!!

Face Lift

I did a little face lift on my blog. I think it needed a little TLC. I have been so lazy with posts, so I am making up with it by having tabs up with the information behind them - go me!

I learned how to get the tabs up with this website. After trying several different methods of messing around with the HTML, I found out that Blogger has a widget to do it through their system...that is more my style. Again, if you want to put them up, read this site first, it will not dissapoint.

Also, I changed the URL to http://balancemoderation.blogspot.com/ from the mom Barnes one. When I set up the blog, I wasn't sure where I was going with it...so now that I am all fixed up - I am good to go!

Back in Business

So ok it has been like forever since my last post. I know, I suck. I had some work things to straighten out - I am good now, back to working (and getting paid), then the family got the flu, and this week I concentrated on getting back on track with running. I ran 3 miles 3 times and then 5 on Saturday - all using the rickety old treadmill from the 90's.



Our garage is messy right now - I just block it out when I run (we are in garage sale mode so don't judge). I have really been into the whole treadmill thing - I have been choosing it over running outside lately. I like watching my time and all the numbers - plus I can run while Jesse naps and at night. The only major issue with the old TM is the noise it makes, it is super loud when you turn it on, thank God my headphones drowned it out, I just worry about what my neighbors are hearing, so I try to be respectful and only run before 8pm.

This week has been better nutrition-wise - I am back to watching what I eat (I fell off the wagon over the holidays and have been sucking ever since).

I leave you with this cute little face: