Smooth(ie) movies

You know what? Smoothies are awesome. I've been having one every morning for breakfast and I kind of love them. I just make one each night before bed and grab it on my way to the bus stop and by the time I get to work I'm full of fruity (sometimes veggie) goodness - though I still need a coffee.

It's also a great way for me to get more fruit in my life since I'm so hit and miss with my fruit consumption. (The mad apple cravings I was having a month ago have passed.)

I've been fervently collecting smoothie recipes and I'm finally getting brave enough to change them up and add and subtract ingredients as I see fit. One thing I've done is stop making my smoothies with yogurt. While using Greek yogurt gives a smoothie a great protein boost, I'm just not a fan. For liquid, I'll use 1% milk but mostly water is just fine. I guess it depends on how think you like your smoothie; if you want to be able to walk on it, go with yogurt. If you like it a little thinner, milk or water will do that for you.

And that's a big reason why smoothies are so great: customization baby! I've already shared my love of the peanut butter-banana smoothie; here are two more I'm into right now:

Spinach-strawberry-mango-banana smoothie
1 banana
1 cup mango
1/2 cup strawberries
Handful spinach
1 cup liquid (I use milk in this one)
Then blend it up and drink it up!
I also through in one scoop of vanilla protein powder and a tablespoon of flax seed oil.

Spinach and strawberries and mango, oh my!

 Grapefruit-mango-strawberry smoothie
1 medium grapefruit, peeled and sectioned (I cheated and used stuff from a jar)
1/2 cup mango
1/2 cup strawberries
1 cup water (I feel like milk would be weird with grapefruit)
Blend and drink!
Again, I did my protein powder and flax seed additions. I don't eat a lot of citrus fruit so this is a great way for me to get some extra vitamin C.

See those grapefruit chunks in the bottom?

WW hiatus

I have decided to take a brief hiatus from weighing in each week. I'm still part of Weight Watchers and I'm still doing my best to follow the program, but my body has been going through some weird stuff lately.

It may be from our trip to Prince Edward County and all the delicious food we ate, but I've been feeling off recently. To look at me, I don't appear to be any heavier (and have, in fact, been asked if I've lost weight and told that I look really good) but when I get on the scale the number keeps going up.

One culprit, I'm sure, is that I feel backed up, so clearly I need more fibre in my diet. But there are other things I need to change and I need to spend some time focusing on that and not worrying about what the scale will say each week.

So what's my plan? I'm still figuring it all out, but it will involve smoothies, more fruit, more fibre, regular exercise, more weightlifting all while still treating myself when I want. I also want to keep up the good habits I have, like how much water I drink, walking whenever I can, lifting weights while watching TV and eating vegetables/salads every chance I get.

I'm not doing a detox or a cleanse; rather, I see this as a reset, a way to get myself - mind, body and soul - back to a place where I'm happy and comfortable and confident. And knowing that I have to get on the scale each Wednesday has been stressing me out of late so I need to step away and focus more on myself, rather than the numbers.

But I'll still post here, even if it isn't about my weight. And I'll be back with a weigh-in on Wednesday May 22.

Cheers!

WW Weigh-In #32

It was another crazy week with lots of work hours and lots of being busy at home. One of my colleagues is on vacation (in Italy - lucky girl!) which has led to the longer work hours. It's weird, but 14-hour workdays honestly seem to fly by. If/when I'm ever back to a normal 8-hour workday it's going to feel like nothing!

In all this craziness, I did my best to keep up with my good eating habits but there were some slips. That's why, this morning, I weighed myself twice out of disbelief:

Last week: 187.2 lb
This week: 184.0 lb
Total lost this week: 3.2 lb

Weight loss target: 181.8 lb
To reach target: 2.4 lb

I promise you there were no unhealthy tactics used over the past week! I even had wine, pizza and tacos on the weekend. So how does one lose over 3 lb in a week? The short answer is pooping.

Okay, yes, it's kind of gross, but my digestive system has been in revolt the past few weeks but over the last few days I've managed to eat enough fibre and other good stuff to get back on track. My issues have also served as a wonderful reminder to eat lots and lots of fruit and veggies because they help keep one regular.

I've also got to get back to my running. I haven't had a good run in over a week. Being busy is the worst excuse, I know, but at work the only real breaks I've had were when I went to buy lunch. Now that the worst of the busyness is over, though, I'm going to get back on the running. My zombie run is coming up - September 22! - and I've got do to more outside running. But I'll do another post on that - I'm starting to ramble now!

But it's nice to feel back on track right when summer is winding down. Bring on the fall!

My maturing tastes

When I first started WW, I was a little nervous about what I would snack on that would keep my points down. It was great that most vegetables were zero points, but even better that all fruit were zero points - except that I didn't really like fruit when I started.

Ruh-roh.

Until WW, I was never really a big fruit eater. I had chronic ear infections as a kid so I drank a lot of banana-flavoured medicine; I think that turned me off bananas. And then I find most other fruit too acidic. I've always loved melon but they're high GI foods so when I was trying to eat low-GI I stayed away from them.

That didn't leave much for me to eat.

Lately, though, I've been rediscovering my love of melons (zero points > low GI) and finding that I absolutely love strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. I'd much rather eat a bowl of sliced strawberries than a bowl of chips. Seriously. I'm also quickly becoming fond of pineapple oranges (as long as it's a nice sweet orange - not too acidic).

I'm still not a fan of apples or bananas but my tastes have definitely grown up to embrace delicious fruit that's good for me, in all their zero-point glory.

So much fruit!

And not a yogurt commercial in sight.