California Dreamin

And other various California-themed songs…. Because….

I BOUGHT MY TICKET AT 2 AM LAST NIGHT/THIS MORNING AND AM LEAVING FOR CALI THURSDAY BEFORE DAWN!!!

Eeeeee!

I’m really, extremely, extra excited. Yay yay yay! So far, there’s talk of an Angel’s game, Disney (In all my childhood and consequential years creating other people’s kid’s childhoods, I’ve NEVER seen either Disney park), and most importantly of all, BEACH. A kid I knew in highschool is gonna try and make it down for a night so we can go to a few bars too, weather/siblings/car/traffic/everything permitting. SO excited!!! I’m 22 and never seen an ocean. And for 4 nights now, I’ll be able to hear it when I’m heading to sleep. Yay! I’ve been getting pretty darn tan in all the beautiful weather we’ve had in Colorado (minus the appx 2 ft of snow from fri night), so that’s good to help fight off a burn. I’m not an idiot about things like sun exposure… I’ve got crystal clear skin somehow by the grace of God, and I’ll be damned if I ruin it over-sunning in my twenties for a tan. SO instead I use jergens gradual daily moisturizer after I work out, before bed, and limit my un-sun-screened time to maybe 30 minutes a day. Not even. I don’t wanna be a wrinkle bag when I get old, and I live a mile closer to the sun then most (any trips to the mountains can mean easily 4x the exposure one would experience at sea level, even with no direct light). I’m a subscriber to lots of it, especially on my face.

Speaking of mountains- I can’t remember if I wrote about this last time or not, my pops and I (and Nugget, naturally) took a trip to the mtns two weekends ago for him to sight in a new pistol and for me to just be in the mountains, and I had a genuinely great time. We quickly learned the Nug has never been around that kind of noise, and it bothers him, so I walked back down the 4wheel trail we’d headed up to the range, and ended up running up a medium sized hill with him. When you’re considered obese, and wearing shoes with no laces, and at easily an elevation of  10,000 feet, that’s HARD. It’s nothing back down here, just gets me slightly winded. Whatever it was about having to pick up my knees so high to dodge brush or trees or just the steep incline at the altitude, the next morning my lower calves stung. It was so weird! The funny thing is Nugget LOVED it and just ran right along with me, sniffing deer and bear poo and just being happy to be with his girl. We found a fresh deer carcass spread up the whole hill and for whatever reason I picked up the hip bone to bring and show my dad cuz I thought it was just so cool. Immediately started him on a tangent about wasting disease and other various maladies experienced by mountain creatures and blah. He’s AWESOME. Nug is AWESOME. And what a good mini workout. We were going to go back this past weekend, but it snowed, and this coming weekend he’s off Friday too, but I’ll be out of town.

We’ve actually been talking the possibility of climbing a 14er in late summer. Since dad’s stubborn and not in shape enough to do it, my little brother will do it with me. Back in his day (read, when he was a bodybuilder/jogger type when I was a toddler/infant) he and my uncle climbed all sorts of them and took to all sorts of trails, back before 4wheeling was this big sport thing out here that it is now. He knows some that we can drive most of the way up to, so that we can putz around the like, 3rd of it and see if we think our lungs can handle the minimum oxygen level. Mine can, trust. We’re doing this. A 14er is NOTHING to lots of serious climbers. It’s almost stupid, but I want to climb at least 1 this summer.  But as I lose weight and get super in shape, any new challenge is a great one and any goal is awesome to have and I realize that.

Weight loss is coming along. I don’t weigh myself enough to know how much specifically, but Wii this am when I checked said I was down .4 lbs since 6 days ago, and ***TMI ALERT*** I as a rule always weigh myself AFTER I take a big poo, because that’s when I feel like my body’s at it’s most true weight. And let’s be honest, I’ve done enough before and afters to know sometimes I can lose TWO lbs to the toilet before I weigh myself again. Anyway the point of this poo talk is that I took a big one after I weighed myself, so I know my weight is actually probably somewhere nearer 1.5 lbs lost last week. This is a good, healthy rate I suppose, if I didn’t have as much to lose as I do. I need to lose 2 lbs a week every week for a year to be under the ‘obese’ category for women my age, TECHNICALLY. Excepting the fact that I’m 5’9, and have the broad shoulders and negative ass of a linebacker (read, I have a lot of muscle mass for a female, a lot more then just a simple calculation from weight vs height could calculate). When I joined Curves back in high school, they did a few different tests and when they did sensor tests, I was MUCH less then what it would otherwise say with the caliper test. Who knows.

What I’ve been doing essentially is avoiding white stuff, eating a ton of veggies, fruits, lean protein, and adding things I never used to eat much like beans. This thing I’ve been eating at work is KILLER, it’s maybe a 3 minute prep, has me full for 5 hours, and is so delicious. Essentially, I use 1/3 a can of no-sodium added beans (black, pinto, kidney, I mix it up) with diced up zucchini or squash (PS, I had NO idea you could eat these fresh!!!), with either canned tomatoes or maybe 1/3 cup of salsa which I prefer for the spice. Then I mix it up with other fresh veggies, MAYBE brown rice if I can spare the carbohydrate spike. Essentially, my favorite is salsa, zucchini, a lil bit of diced cucumber for coolness, and 1/3 avocado diced up. Today I sprinkled on a little fresh parm cheese for a new flavor and stirred in 2 teaspoons of ground flax seeds, but it’s really whatever. It’s SO yummy, kind of an urban gazpacho (sp) kind of dish, it was delicious. And good warm or cold.

At work they have two of those little hand blenders, I’ve never used one before and now I MUST own one. I put 8 blackberries (OCD much?), roughly 4 or 5 large strawberries, 1/2 a banana, a scoop of protein powder, and about 1/3 a cup of non-fat yogurt in a cup and blend it up. It comes out bright purple from the berries, and it’s freaking delicious! It tastes so fattening (well, it isn’t terribly low calorie after all) and creamy and I blend extra for a bit of foam. I’ve added a kiwi or blueberries or orange for different tastes, and today I added another cup of spinach and it was amazing. I keep mentioning it because it’s got all those nutrients and it’s a polarizing taste a lot of people taste….when you throw it in the blender, it tears it up so you don’t have to use your teeth to do it, so you’re digesting it, but it’s not getting it’s flavor all over your mouth, you can’t taste it at all, it’s just in there. YUM.

I’ve been eating variations of the veggie bowl lunch and smoothie breakfast almost daily and then winging it for dinner. Dad made burgers yesterday, so I made one and sponged off fat and ate it with a salad instead of on a bun, stuff like that. Enough boring stuff.

HOW I FEEL. Is super amazing. My body feels so lithe and amazing

and energized and I’m not sure what to do with myself! Like, seriously. It took less then a month and I’m up for anything. Yesterday, I got up, went to work, did Taebo with the weight bands (note to self- NOT coordinated enough yet to keep up, also, ouch), then after the next round of awake baby/feeding/changing/burping we went for a 45 minute walk down a street that’s just 4 straight hills, I’d say maybe a medium in hill difficulty, I walked to the end of it and back, jogging up the hill if I had it in me. It was great and I was sweaty and nasty and thirsty when we go back. Most importantly, baby fell asleep a good 3 minutes in! THEN a few hours later, I got home and grabbed the stroller and took baby bro for the mile loop in my neighborhood with Nugget and other brother. It was amazing. I took an extra shift after and went to bed feeling AWESOME. I don’t know who this new girl is, at all. I lost about 50-60 lbs once in highschool, and my energy NEVER spiked the way it is now. It’s much needed and appreciated though. I just feel like I had 3 extra shots of espresso all day every day, and am feeling lazy when I’m not on the go. I think this is the biggest accomplishment. I mean I seriously am feeling great. I’m sure I’ll eat gross and laze in Cali because I won’t have my home gym or my own groceries, but I’ll try and stay active with the kids at the beach and not just LAY.

That’s really the most exciting news in my life. I haven’t really SHOWN massive weightloss yet, but I can’t even believe how amazing I feel. And I walked out of my jeans at work last week (explain next time) which means I need to cut a new hole in my belt to keep pants up now which is perfect. I think the combination of what is essentially a massive detox and overload of antioxidants and nutrients I was lacking, on top of moving my butt for a change, is just putting me in a whole new mindset. Things are looking up.

CALI HERE I COME!!!