This is not a post about body acceptance.

It was going to be.  Trust me.  I'm down about 8 pounds (on my 5'5" frame) on this little challenge and although I think I can see changes in my body, I was still convinced that the damn jeans I posted about here would still not fit.  I was going to blame my jeans on my genes.  Women in my family don't have defined waists, I was going to tell you.  With each passing year, in fact, our torsos grow shorter until we are left with just legs and boobs.  Yep, that's it.  Can't change it, so break out the mom jeans and let's just move the hell on.

And then, well, I tried on the jeans.  And, well, shit.  Turns out, it's not about the f&%$ing genes.  It's about the FUCKING JEANS.  And now, yeah, they fit.

Listen to yo body.

So, I'm sick today.  A whopper of a cold and it's just no fun.  It's also a snowpocalype out there and the kids are home from school.  Yay all around.

This has me baffled.  I took a photo of my backyard...a still photo...and then blogger made it into a snow video.  Huh?

This morning, I woke up after 9am (super rare) and then downed some black coffee.  I wasn't hungry at all until around 10, when I made myself an awesome one-block shake.  Frozen strawberries are brilliant for this I have discovered.  I thaw them a tiny bit in the microwave but keep them cold so that they create a great consistency when blended.

But since then, I haven't really been very hungry.  Perhaps it's the cold medicine diet.  (Do cold pills even contain the good shit anymore?) But around noon I was feeling a little woozy and decided an apple was in order.  But instead of also having some protein and fat with it, I....drum roll....just ate the apple.  All by itself.  And then about an hour later I ate...an orange.  A big, wonderful orange that is spelled either naval or navel and I can't remember which.  Again, no fat and no protein.  I just felt that my body needed those sweet and nutritious fruits and, wouldn't you know it, I've perked up a bit since eating them.  And instead of feeling guilty about eating "outside the zone," I felt proud that I had listened to my body's needs and made good choices based on that.

This got me to thinking about how the rest of my day will play out.  Will I give in to the things I really "want" and that normally comfort me when I am sick?  Like pad thai.  Oh good GOD, I would love some hot, sweet pad thai right about now.  But that is not what my body needs...it's just what my mind wants.  It's not going to build me back up...it's just going to break me down.  My body, in its temporarily weekend condition, needs the best possible nutrition I can give it so that it can tell this cold to go f&%$ itself.

It's kind of like burpees or box jumps or any other of those "you can always do just one more" movements.  If you listen to your mind, it says no...but your body can do so much more than that pesky brain of yours says it can.

So, although I'm not going to be a perfect zone blocker today, I am going to tune in to my body and listen to what it needs.

In less introspective news, I saw this at the grocery store yesterday and just had to laugh:

 
PALEO-DIET SLIM! Now here are some photos of cakes and candy and chocolate cocktails.  Good luck with that paleo diet, y'all!

Sweet nothings.

So, yeah, we're not allowed any sugar on this challenge.  No sugar, no honey, no syrup, no stevia, no artificial sweeteners.  Nada.  Desperate times call for reasonable and creative measure.  I thus present you with my new favorite one-block snack (one block carb, one block fat...you're on your own to add in a protein):

Yum.

That's half a cup of cubed pineapple rolled in 1TB of unsweetened coconut flakes and toasted in the toaster oven (I put it on the little tray and just use the 2-slice toaster cycle.  Like I'm playing with the Easy Bake oven that I NEVER HAD DAMMIT.)

I used this.  And before you go thinking oh that's crap, it's not real food, blah blah blah...this is just dehydrated a bit to remove some of the oil.  Still only one ingredient (and that would be, um, coconut).  1 TB is only one block of fat and it's enough to cover 1/2 cup of pineapple.  Just be careful not to over-toast it because it does dry out and burn pretty quickly and doesn't taste good at all like that.

Happy Friday!  Tomorrow is cheat meal night out...woo-freaking-hoooooo!

Is that a food scale in your pocket or...

My food scale looks exactly like this one, except mine is a lot grimier.  Overuse, I tell ya!  It is well-loved.

 Yes, I brought a food scale to a restaurant today.  Now, in defense of my sanity...it was a pretty casual restaurant (order-at-the counter kind of place).  And, I completely do not trust my ability to gauge how much 3 ounces of grilled chicken is.  I am always SHOCKED at how little it is.  So, I pulled out the food scale, measured the chicken, and then put it away.  No big deal.  And my kid, who was a little bit aghast at the spectacle of it all (and it really wasn't a spectacle at all), was very pleased to eat the extra chicken.  So, all's well that ends well.

Your cheating heart.

Confession: If I have time, I wear makeup to the gym. It makes me feel better. Less gym-androgynous.

Last night was Saturday and a planned cheat meal out.  A week ago Saturday was also a cheat meal out, but that was with a gaggle of second graders at Acapulco's to celebrate my girl's 8th birthday. Hardly a culinary extravaganza. This week, we planned on Legal Sea Foods (not a typo...that is how they write it - very hard when we had our rehearsal dinner there and my mother-in-law and I couldn't figure out if the invitations should read that way, with people maybe thinking we didn't know that "seafoods" is one word). We were meeting my parents there for a belated family birthday dinner for La Lucy and my mom together.  Jeff and I really looked forward to this...it sounds silly, but I dressed nicely and did my hair and makeup to make it really feel like an event.  Although I had a roll and butter before dinner as well as one glass of wine, for dinner I had grilled scallops plus mushrooms and squash. Totally healthy even though my proportions were off.  I did have dessert...bananas foster that was a bit like banana ice cream soup when it was put together.  But eat it? Yes I did, along with a chocolate bar when I got home (which is what I should have just had for dessert in the first place).

Lucy and the world's most incredible 67-year-old man.  Who's your daddy?  Because this one is MINE!

Did this cheat bonanza set me off the rails?  Nope, not at all.  Zoning gives you an awesome safety net to land into. You get up, you weigh, you measure, you move on. You spend your week eating clean, eating correctly, thinking carefully about your food, and then you go out on occasion and truly enjoy the experience for what it is. Not a bad way to live.

Wanna get stuffed?

Did you know that this is a rude expression in the U.K.?  It totally is...look it up.

 Any-hoo...if you are suffering from the hungry horrors during this little zone experiment, here is the BEST (IMHO) way to fill up on 3 blocks:

(1) Egg salad made with one whole egg plus four egg whites and some chopped pickle: 3 protein
(2) One tsp mayo: 3 fat
(3) One head of iceberg lettuce to wrap the egg salad in: 1 carb (you won't finish all of it!)
(4) Four cups of roasted broccoli (no oil): 2 carb

SO much better than, say, 3 slices of deli turkey + 9 almonds + 6 dates or other ways you could make up 3 blocks and still be totally starvarino after you eat.

In other news, I was down SIX POUNDS as of this morning!  And as Jerry Seinfeld once said: "How about six? Six is good. You got a problem with six?"

Whistle while you work.

Many kinds of tea!  And granola bars which are NOT MINE.

OMG, it's totally spring in my kitchen.

So, I hate the winter.  It's cold and snowy and dark and just downright depressing to me.  I don't ski.  I don't do anything that makes winter "fun."  Except hot tubbing.  I love hot tubbing and, wouldn't you know it, I just so happen to own one:

Hey, baby.  I'll see YOU later.

I also am not super fond of cooking or of cleaning the kitchen.  Or of being hungry.  So right about now, things are kind of bleak in my world what with all the excessive cooking, cleaning and hungriness.  Except not really...my energy is great, I'm at the gym constantly (a happy place!), I am in this challenge with my husband and some friends (hi, Megan!), etc.  It snowed last night but the snow gods decided to have it start at 6pm and end by 11pm so school was ON like Donkey Kong today.  And, well, I decide to be proactive by force-starting spring in my kitchen.  While at Trader Joe's yesterday stocking up on delectable (cough) items such as shredded cabbage, I tossed four bouquets of flowers into my cart.  I just couldn't help it...I knew they would look awesome together and make me happy.  Yellow tulips and purple hyacinth were both at my wedding, which was in early April (almost 9 years ago).  It was a hard winter that year and the snow had melted just two weeks before, so I wanted people to walk in and feel like spring had just totally sprung on them. Sort of a forced "you shall be happy and feel springy."  Nothing like imposing one's own feelings onto others.

And then there was the tea.  I had wanted to get some from Teavana at the mall...you know, the place where you go in intending to buy whatever is in the delicious sample out front and you leave scratching your head wondering how in f&%$ you just spent $80 on tea?  And it TOTALLY would have gone down that way had my kid (the strawberry thief one) not spilled a sample down her dress and started screaming at the top of her lungs right there in the middle of the damn Natick Mall, thus forcing me to put on my "Its all ok!  We are ok!" face and exit the mall as quickly as possible.  So I bought a bunch of boxes at TJ's instead and though not as tasty, I'm still digging them. 

But I still kind of want to sneak back to the mall to spend $80 on tea.

One week down.

This one surprised me.  When I saw the photo from today (right) I thought "Oh, I look the exact same" but when I put it next to last week's (left) I realized there is a difference...a small one, but I can see it.

Same here.  I think I've cut just a tiny bit off my hips.

So, it's been a week.  Not a long week, not an arduous week...just, a week of thinking about food a WHOLE lot, being hungry (but not all the time) and working out even when I didn't always feel like it.  It's been a week of feeling better about what I've been eating...better physically and mentally.  I can honestly say that almost everything feels better (I'd say everything if only I were never hungry).  Well, I was very whiny before bed last night because I got it in my head that I really really REALLY wanted a grilled cheese sandwich (which I did not eat) but it was a moment of pain, I tell you.  And then I wanted key lime pie with graham cracker crust (I think that's how it's always made?) and I just kind of fell asleep dreaming about that.

I have lost about 4 pounds.  It's funny because those pounds dropped off within the first few days and now my weight has remained the same.  But they are 4 solid, real pounds, not a fluke...since the scale has been pretty consistent.  I don't have a set goal in mind in terms of weight loss and I'm not going to post my weight here (well, maybe at then end of the challenge...maybe) but it was still cool to drop four.  Also, I think in the above photos I see some slight changes.  Anyway, Rome wasn't built in a day so I'm not going to focus on weekly changes.  The bigger picture will be what the change is like after a month.

In a week, I've learned a lot about how to zone...what works for me and what doesn't, etc.  Here are a few observations:

(1) My white board has to change.  As appealing as the idea was to plan out every snack and meal for the week, that was not realistic.  I guess I underestimated my ability to do this thing successfully without planning everything quite so much.  Today, I will change the board completely.  It will have a few different sections -- common block portions, go-to snacks, etc.  It will also have a place to track my blocks for the day.

(2) Comparing my diet to Jeff's, it seems that 12 blocks for me is a lot harder than 17 blocks for him.  He has trouble eating enough and I am hungry a lot.  But he's the type of person who is not used to eating evenly throughout the day...he typically will work straight through lunch and then be starving for dinner, at which point he can't eat, you know, 10 blocks of food at once.  So there have been days where he has fallen way short of eating 17 blocks but I have always eaten every single one of my 12.

(3) I've said it before and I'll say it again...roasted broccoli.  It's seriously one of my new favorite foods and I don't just mean favorite icky healthy vegetable.  I mean favorite foods, period.  Who knew?

(4) I'm not sure if I'm ready for a cheat meal yet.  I had one on Saturday but I kind of went off the rails...not with the dinner, but after dinner.  I think it sent me down a "bad" path.  I'd rather just have two cheat "foods" in a day rather than a whole meal.  But those cheats would probably take up so many of my much-needed blocks that who knows if it's worth it.   Which teaches me one of the most important lessons of zoning, which is that I'd rather "spend" my blocks (i.e. my calories, nutrient allotment, however you want to think of it) on a larger quantity of quality food than on a small portion of gross food.  It just make sense.  And because so much of food quantity and quality consumption has to do with how we perceive our food, this is a very important lesson.  If you look at a bag of chips and think, wow, I could have this little bag or I could have four cups of roasted broccoli...well, the chips start to become pretty damn unappealing.

That's all for now.  My kids are home today for MLK day...after having been home for over two weeks at Christmas...and only several weeks until February "vacation" and with the possibility of a snow day this week.  I should tear them away from the tv and take them somewhere somewhere intellectually stimulating like Target.

For the love of all things sacred...

The fact that this is on the bottom of my knitting pattern makes my life seem even...quainter.

I had to do ALGEBRA this morning to calculate a block amount. Old school, eighth grade algebra. Remember when you learned this crap and thought, "When will I EVER need to do this?" Well if only your teacher had told you that someday, you'd be 40 and trying to drop fat off your hips and you'd be weighing and measuring everything you ingest...well, you'd probably have just opened up the window to that Catholic middle school building and jumped on out. "Thirteen years...that's a good long life," you'd tell yourself.

Eight.

1D cupcakes, baby!

This girl made me a mom eight years ago today. So I'll be back to blogging tomorrow after the "cheat meal" buzz wears off...

Elvis oatmeal.

I cleaned the cups out of my car this morning.  Pretty indicative of my life...one CF water bottle (um, Mel, we need some DCF bottles,yo), one coffee mug, one triathlon water bottle, one Jeff sippy cup and one child's sippy bottle.

I wanted to post last night but here's the thing: I passed out on the couch watching American Horror Story at around 10pm, maybe sooner.  And then I slept solidly until 7am.  That's 9 hours of great sleep there, folks.  And you know what...that is what is required to keep this shizzle up.  I am now remembering the last (ok, the only previous) time I did a challenge.  It was a paleo challenge through my old gym and, like this one, we got a point for working out.  So I was pretty rigorous about making it to the gym and also eating right.  (Of course, this challenge makes a paleo challenge look like a walk in the park...an apple with, like, 5 TB of almond butter sounds pretty awesome right about now.)  What I noticed then, and I am noticing now, is that my energy is super great throughout the day.  Evenly great.  Not highs and lows like it normally is.  But when it's time for sleep, well, it's lights OUT, baby.  I'm not sure if this is a result of the change in diet or the increase in exercise or a combination of both.

But I'll tell you what, it's a change I can live with just fine.  It actually forces a change I have been meaning to make for a while, which is to get ready for bed before bedtime.  I think we can all relate to this...I often delay getting into bed because I am too tired to get ready for bed.  That's just a dumb problem to have now, isn't it?  But it's true.  Before bed, I MUST: (1) wash my face; (2) brush my teeth; (3) take my "vitamins" (we'll go with that); and (4) pee. (Confession: one time in college I peed in the bed.  I may or may not have been alone.  And ever since then I have been convinced it will happen again unless I pee right before bed -- as in, if I read in bed for 10 minutes I need to go pee again -- or if I drink water during the night.  Jeff has assured me that I will not pee in bed and if I do it is ok and that I should drink water at night but, nope, I'm taking this one to my grave. If I die in bed, at least my sheets will be dry.)

With the knowledge that these "tasks" must be completed before getting in bed, I will often lay on the couch going in and out of crappy sleep rather than just going up and settling in.  And then I have to do all that stuff in a haze or, even worse, I come out of my haze and then I'm up for another 1/2 hour when really my body just wanted to go the f&%$ to sleep.  So, yeah, I am going to do all my crap early tonight, like right after the prison guards deliver my final meal for the night I eat my last blocks for the day.

Here's a positive note: I had Elvis oatmeal for breakfast today and it was a hunka hunka burning delicious.

Elvis oatmeal: 1/3 cups steel-cut oatmeal with 1/3 a banana and 2/3 tsp. raw peanut butter.  2 blocks carb, 2 blocks fat.  Oh and that's just my jerky (2 blocks protein) in the background because who doesn't love a little jerky for breakfast?

Roast that broccoli.

I started my day with a HUGE mistake.  Not a point deduction kind of mistake, but the kind that sort of shot me in the foot...I had a four block breakfast by accident instead of three.  I blame it on the fact that I had a smoothie and smoothie is a gross word and that is why.  So I skipped my morning one-block snack to make up for it, which made me hungry for lunch way too early.  Having lunch early made my afternoon pretty dicey because oh wowzers was I hungry by 3pm. My one-block snack didn't help much.  But you know what saved my ass?

Roasted.freaking.broccoli.

I wasn't going to get to the gym until 6:30pm and was super starving at 5 so I decided to have a mini dinner of two blocks.  Reason #1 being that a full dinner pre-rowing-and-burpees did not seem like a good idea and reason #2 being that I wanted to save two full blocks to accommodate my cheat food...allowed because IT'S WEDNESDAY, FOLKS!  Anyway, I needed to have some good bang for my two-block-buck.  And that is when I decided to roast four cups (that's two blocks...four, yes four, cups) of broccoli.  And no, my insides have no exploded.  Yet.

I must say, for the first time in all my forty years I genuinely enjoyed eating broccoli.  I really can't stand it steamed, though I find it ok raw but generally only as a conduit for, say, onion dip.  Oh good Lord, did I just say ONION DIP?  What I wouldn't give, ya know?  Anyway, I added a three ounce turkey burger in for my two-block protein and it was great.  The perfect little mini dinner.  I had energy at the gym and made it through a tough WOD with a good energy level.  All thanks to roasted.freaking.broccoli.

When I got home, it was cheat food time, baby.  I chose a low-fat cookies and cream ice cream (gross, I know) and it was SO F&%$ING AWESOME.  Half a cup of that was two blocks of fat and two blocks of carbs.  I added some Steve's chicken jerky in for protein (that stuff is amazing and it's also a great company so go order some stuff from them).  And that was my day and this might just be the world's most boring blog post!

Amazeballs.

It was actually enough.

I don't care how cute you are, you're not getting near my ice cream even if you sit in my face and stare at me while I eat it.

Some really great positives: Again, no afternoon crash.  One yawn at 5pm when I was in need of dinner but other than that, great energy.  And I weighed myself this morning and was down three pounds...which could totally be a fluke or maybe I was standing on one foot or something but at least it was some good feedback in the right direction.

Also, I discovered that the 1/2 cup of ice cream really was plenty.  Maybe it's because I've been eating nothing but very healthy food for three days and that amount of ice cream felt like such a luxury in comparison...which it did.  I know that is part of it.  But I think it's also a realization that a reasonable portion of something actually feels much better than mindlessly eating ice cream from a container (if you don't put it in a bowl, does it count?).  This whole process is about learning...learning to change what we eat, how we eat and when we eat it.  Tomorrow, I am going to focus on changing how I distribute my blocks throughout the day so that you can stop hearing me bitch about being hungry.

KEEN-WAH.

Ok, first, let me get this out of the way.  Blending Progenix chocolate protein powder with cold coffee and ice does NOT mean that you have just become the world's most brilliant girl by creating a zone/paleo version of the Frappucino.  It just means you've made a damn mess in your kitchen that sort of tastes like a wet chocolate ash tray.

Moving on...

Breakfast today was the same as yesterday.  2 eggs, 2 sausages (Applegate Farms chicken and sage) plus 2/3 cup oatmeal with 1/3 of a mashed banana.  Plus loads of black coffee so that I didn't kill anyone.  I like this breakfast...it's 3 blocks...but Jeff does struggle a bit to finish his 5-block version.  We may tweak his breakfast to 4 blocks soon and move a block to dinnertime when he is hungriest.

I had a snack before the gym.  Thank GOD for my new bestie, Progenix.  It has some sugars in it but Mel said it's ok and she's basically like the zone diet rabbi, so I'm using it.  I made a little smoothie, which is honest to God my least favorite word in the English language.  Seriously, it's worse than panties and moist and hubbie and veggie and preggo combined.  And that's saying a lot.  Smoooooothie.  Barf. Anyway,  after ditching the aforementioned wet chocolate ash tray version, I screwed my head on straight and made a "blended beverage" (I didn't say the s-word) with a scoop of chocolate Progenix, 1/3 of a banana and 1/3 tsp. of peanut butter (i.e. baby monkey turd) plus some water and ice.  Now THIS was good.  Super good.  Score one for me and my morning.

I went to the gym at 12:30 and felt really great.  Not hungry and not tired.  I PR'd my deadlift, which made me oh-so-happy because it's the one thing I think I do pretty well.  215 pounds today.  Couldn't get 220# but this is not the Olympics now is it?  I also did my first ever "all by myself" WOD -- well, not exactly all by myself, but I did a different WOD than the rest of the class because they were doing Jackie as a bencmark for this challenge and I did Jackie recently enough for it to count.  If you're not a CrossFitter and you're reading this, know that I'm not a lesbian (well, not entirely) and I don't run around "doing" women unless, you know, they're really worth it.  Like Jackie.

Lunch was a salad with grilled chicken...again, same as yesterday.  But Mt. Vegetables was scaled back a bit and some of the carbs were replaced with quinoa.  For those that don't know, quinoa is pronounced KEEN-WAH.  In addition to being a "species of goosefoot," a "psuedocereal," and a "chenopod," Quinoa is also the name of the "Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler" on Pinterest and you really need to check her out.  Little Quinoa has friends with names like Crostini, Endive and Chevron and a nanny named Fontanelle.  I wish I were as funny as the woman who comes up with this stuff.

So fond was I of the quinoa that I substituted it for all the damn vegetables at dinner.  Not the smartest move, but allowable under our rules and tomorrow my over-vegetabling will resume.  But my shrimp sauteed in grass-fed butter was just calling out for a decent portion of KEEN-WAH, so I went for it.

I mean seriously, right?  SO GOOD.

After dinner, I had an awesome one-block snack.  I chopped the hell out of half an apple in the blender (or, the NINJA as we call it) and then nuked it for a bit to warm it up.  Sprinkled some cinnamon on it and added a tiny bit of almond meal.  It was really delicious and tricked my brain into thinking it was eating apple crisp for a moment.  Of course, I ate the g-damn one ounce piece of turkey meat on the side just to remind myself that at the end of the day, this whole thing really does suck donkey balls more than a tiny bit.

But ok, I am willing to admit something and it's only day two.  I had ZERO afternoon crash today.  Afternoon crash is pretty typical for me.  Around 4 pm, after the kids get home and the sun is starting to set (because winter hates me), I get freaking exhausted.  Sometimes I find myself making another pot of coffee just to make it through the rest of the day.  But today I was running to and fro (home-ballet-home-ballet with my daughter), I realized that I genuinely still felt awake and alert and pretty damn awesome.  Hungry as shit, but otherwise super duper.  It's too early to say if this is a permanent change, but it's something and it sort of makes eating my meals next to a calculator worth it.  Sort of.

One small step.

Today was day one of the challenge.  Just to put the details out there, I will be following a Zone diet (look it up...I'm feeling too lazy to find a link) for the next four weeks.  I am allowed 12 "blocks" per day.  Not only will I be following the Zone requirements but I will also be eating "real" food...so, no processed garbage.  Also, no sugar or sugar substitutes, no gluten and no alcohol.  And I have to work out pretty much every day.  Basically, zero fun will be had by all.

In all seriousness, day one went pretty darn ok.  Breakfast was easy -- eggs and some sausage links as well as a modest amount of steel cut oatmeal mixed with banana (<--really yummy). Totally a normal breakfast for me...bigger than normal, really.  I did notice that while I was cleaning up the kitchen after the kids went to school, I almost reached for a banana on the counter just because it was there.  Pre-Zone Sara would have TOTES eaten that banana.  But yes, I had no banana.

So then my mid-morning snack.  Let's just say that 1/3 teaspoon of peanut butter looks like a little turd on your plate.  I'm so tempted to not even bother with it because of the ridiculousess of it.  I mean, just look at my plate:

Did a baby monkey just crap on my plate?  No, wait, that's just one block of fat.

Which brings me to lunch.  Oy.  Jeff and I decided we would do big salads with grilled chicken all week.  And we kind of had been dreading the damn salad because we knew how large and in charge it would be.  Our fears were realized when the salad became a reality and looked like this:

I'm looking at YOU, Mr. Salad.  Oh, crap...you're looking at ME.

 Good.Lord.  Jeff couldn't finish his.  I finished mine and was really full for a few hours at which point I suddenly became so I hungry that I could have eaten one of my kids.  I e-mailed my friend Megan, who is doing the challenge as well, and she said she was in the process of gnawing her arm off.  I offered to bring her three f*&%ing almonds when I saw her at the gym to round out the fat portion of a one-block snack that would include a Fuel for Fire.  The scene upon arrival at the gym was classic.  I made her hold out her hand in front of the entire class as I carefully doled out 1-2-3 almonds.

3 for me and 3 for Megan.  Go nuts with yer donuts, kids.

I kind of felt like I was going to die while we warmed up for class, but then Mel came over to me like a magic Zone fairy and gifted me with an extra block.  "You should do 12 instead of 11," she pronounced.  Why? Because I am so darn good looking.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Dinner was fine.  Turkey burger plus what we have come to call "ROO" -- rice, sauteed onion and olive oil mixed with salt and pepper and some garlic powder -- which was actually quite good.  But it's 9:30pm now and I am hunnnnnngggggrrrrry.  Ok, maybe just plain hungry.  Ok, no, HUNGRY.  But this is where the magic happens, right?  Hunger is fat leaving my body?  I'm going to go to sleep now, mostly just to avoid eating, and then I will wake up and promptly make love to some blueberries in the morning.

Let's get this party started.

The Zone challenge starts tomorrow.  So, of course, I spent today shoveling all sorts of filth into my mouth.  Here's a highlight:

Purchased at Walmart. Ba-BAM.  We did split this between four of us but, yeah, one Reese's cup is basically the same as a 10-block Zone meal.

So we really got our shit together today.  We started out the morning with a planning session that I think took about 11 hours.  Jeff kept filling in some sort of spreadsheet on his laptop and I kept sneering at him and accusing him of "making it too complicated."  But we got over it and charted out all our meals and snacks for the week.  And to avoid "making it too complicated" we are eating a whole lot of the same stuff.  I feel a bit like we're going to be eating prison nutraloaf all week.  Here is the filled-in whiteboard:

Those squiggly lines?  Oh that's where we are just eating the SAME DAMN THING ALL WEEK LONG.

After filling it in and calculating that we had to buy something like 8,000 eggs and one million pounds of broccoli, we headed to Trader Joe's to stock up.  I had my own cart for our "Mommy and Daddy food" while Jeff filled another one with the girls' supplies for the week.  Our checkout guy thought it was pretty damn curious that we were buying 9 very long cucumbers.  I think Jeff told him that I get lonely sometimes. Which I do.

My cart looked like this and I seriously wanted to cry because of all the non-cookies that were in it:

So.exciting.

When we got home, I prepared some things for the week.  I don't want to eat too much pre-cooked meat, so instead of doing that I focused on cutting up salad stuff and I also made a big pot of oatmeal (we'll be having a bit of that in the morning because we don't want to have 25 cups of cauliflower before 10am).  Jeff went out and got some propane for the grill, so we'll fire that up for the meat.  Our fridge now looks like this:

That black piece of tape down the middle?  Kids on the left, Mommy and Daddy on the right.  Except, um, our meat is kind of in their section.  But that bread and humus?  NOT OURS!

I'd say we're locked and loaded.  Giddyup.

The "Mommy and Daddy" shelf.

First, the good.  My white board made it up onto the wall:

So pretty!  And yet still so blank.

In other good news, Jeff is totally on board with not only trying the Zone out but also researching the heck out of it.  He loves the mathematical aspect of it...you know, the part that makes most of us want to run out and just grab a pizza rather than having to divide anything by 9.  More on math, and how hard it is, later.

In not-so-optimal news, an entire container of the organic strawberries that I bought at Whole Foods last night (in preparation for "trying out" a few zone meals this weekend) suffered a brutal massacre this morning while Mommy was at the gym not-PR'ing her clean and Daddy was "watching the kids".  The carnage:

Nope, that's not wasteful at all.

 Thank God organic strawberries are only, like, $45 a pint.

The real victim in all this is me and my deviated septum and non-Botoxed forehead (I'm growing old with grace here, kids) and our truly horrendous selfie. Or perhaps it is you, for having to look at it.

Ok, but it's hard to get really mad when the perp looks like this:

She's almost 6 years old and weighs in at a whopping 35 pounds (but only when she hasn't taken a crap in about 2 days).  Her t-shirt says "Everyone Loves a German Girl"...in case you were wondering.

Anyway, I of course want my girls eating lots of beautiful organic fruit, especially that peanut right there because it's one of the only things she actually does eat.  But when I am planning on eating a specific thing for every meal and snack of the entire week, I don't need my strawberries highjacked by a blonde wood sprite who eats one bite of each one before tossing it for the next one.  That will leave me going off the rails faster than you can say "spoon in the peanut butter jar."

You might be tempted to say that I should just tell them not to do that.  Well, if you think that way then you've never met a child so please go away.  Taking care of young kids can best be described thusly:

So it looks like there is going to have to be a special "Mommy and Daddy ONLY" shelf (or shelves) in the fridge.  You know, sort of like the special "Mommy and Daddy ONLY" drawer in the bedroom...only, you know, more organic.  I hate to be this way, but its what's gonna work so I have to make it happen.

Right now, by the way, my fridge looks like this:

That empty ginger ale bottle and Coke can are really the secrets to my success.

I'd better get to work.

We're not "organized people."

(No pictures of my midsection today.  You're welcome.)

My husband Jeff and I often have this response to anything that requires us to have our ducks in a row.  We didn't get the form in to summer camp on time...don't they know we're not "organized people"? We didn't schedule a parent-teacher conference...oh well, better that the teacher learn early in the year that we're not "organized people."  And so on and so forth.  It's partially a joke and partially a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The joke part being that, yes, when it comes down to it we do get the things done that are required of us, especially when it come to our kids.  For instance, we picked up our daughter's renewed passport the day before we left for France.  From the passport office in Boston. After we payed the expedited fee.  Because we forgot to renew it by mail in advance.  But she went to France with a passport, dammit.

The self-fulfilling prophecy part is the hardest.  That is the mental block that prevents us from doing things that require a great deal of organization.  In fact, it prevents us from even creating a system that will help us be organized.  It's just so much easier to rely on the old "we're not organized people" mantra.  But you know what, when you are 40 and you own a house and two kids, it's not so cute anymore.  The 90s were fun but I threw out my thrift-store flannels and thigh-high tights long ago.

The fact is, I do WANT to be organized.  I came to the realization recently that I am a neat freak trapped in the body of a sort-of-messy person.  I love things to be clean and organized around me.  Looooove it.  I don't have a "bless this mess" attitude whatsoever and I am absolutely not at peace with dishes in the sink, clothes on the floor or piles of mail on the counter.  I firmly believe that type of clutter and mess in the home creates a sense of clutter and mess in the brain.  An overall sense of unease...at least it does for me. Still, I do live with those things everyday.  Mind you, I'm not near "Hoarders" status. In about 10 minutes I could throw things into drawers and closets and you'd come into my house and think I'm smoking crack for claiming to be messy.  But, whoa, just don't look behind the shower curtain.

But here's the thing: doing the Zone Diet requires a great deal of organization.  And this gets to the core of my "I don't wanna" attitude.  However, I've committed to giving this a try and, with that, comes the necessity of being very organized about it indeed.  One cannot simply do a Zone diet by just randomly chucking "healthy" options into the cart at Trader Joe's and then just magically expecting that the Zone fairy will figure out what one should eat every day.  Nah, this is going to take a LOT more planning than that.  Jeff tells me that he'd do great if someone would just tell him what to eat and prepare it for him.  Sorry, sweetie, but you're not Oprah:

[Oprah.]

[Jeff. It looks like I am naked in his sunglasses but I assure you I am only almost naked.]

Not even close.

So, instead of employing personal assistants and meal planners and chefs, I bought a white board.  Only slightly less expensive and far more fun.  Shit's about to get real:

[Isn't she pretty?]

That's right, a box for each meal and each day of the week.  Written in wet erase marker (like dry erase, but to erase it you need...wetness...ew).  The meals and snacks will be written in dry erase with Jeff on the left (oh, did I mention he's doing this with me????) in a manyly man color like blue and me on the right in a girly girl color like black.  I even added an extra box at the end to track some extra goals: water consumption, fish oil and sleep.  More on all that later.

Next step: filling it in.  If we make it past this step, we might just have a fighting chance.

Jean therapy.

Over the past few years whenever I have ranted a bit about the number on the scale (BUT OH MY GOD I'M AT THE GYM ALL THE TIME) I have so often heard, "Don't worry about the number on the scale.  How do your jeans fit?"  To which I always want to respond:

PRETTY F*&%ING HORRIBLE, THANKS.

I get that people are well-intentioned.  What they mean to point out is the fact that one's weight does not in fact matter as much one's measurements do because muscle weighs more than fat and blah blah blah.  But when your jeans STILL don't fit well, you should start to question your diet, right?  Orrrrr, nope, you look for more excuses.  I have relied for a while on the fact we CrossFit girls don't really wear jeans because they don't fit because we have big quads because OH MY GOD WE SQUAT SO MUCH.  Yes, that is true.  But you see, that should mean that once you find a pair that does fit your quads, they should be swimming around your waist.  Then, and only then, should one have a right to "blame" CrossFit for the lack of suitable jeans and thus resort to wearing only leggings every.single.day.

And then there is me.  Sure, my jeans are tight in the quads.  But they are also really tight in the waist. I have gone so far as to tell myself that the fabric has to stretch so much for my awesomely toned quads (<---sarcasm...I'm gonna blame fit quads for everything...) that the waist has lost some of its fabric in exchange.  Me likey that kinda voodoo magic reasoning.  But, yeah, this is how I look in jeans that really ought to fit me:

 [That line that you think is the underside of my boob?  Oh, that's just the underside of my boob.]

 [Wow.  Muffin top, anyone?]

Ok, so you might ask...why not just get a bigger size of jeans?  Stop beating yourself up and go get some damn new jeans.  But the thing is, these jeans ought to fit me.  They really ought to. And fitting into these jeans well is pretty much as lean as I ever want to get.  I don't want to be a stick figure.  I want to be me, minus about 10 pounds of stomach and hips.  And then I can wear these jeans.  So this is my true challenge and my true reward.  If I am successful in this challenge, my reward isn't a cupcake (ha! the irony!) or even a new pair of jeans.  It's THIS pair, worn proudly without Spanx and without feeling like I'm walking around in a damn sausage casing.

Until then, I'll keep rocking the leggings:

[Yes, the lighting makes it look like I am wearing a leotard over tights, which would be funny if it were true.]

I don't wanna.

When it comes down to it, this is my only real excuse for not changing my diet and not participating in a food challenge.  I don't wanna.  I don't wanna take the 2 hours or so of effort it takes to learn a bit about how to weigh and measure my food or to make a meal plan for the week.  I don't wanna step on a scale at the gym or have my measurements taken.  I just don't wanna.  Well, shut up.  You gotta, sister.

Now, I don't gotta because I am fat or unfit.  I am neither.  These are my "before" pictures and they are not TOO terrible:

 [I want to lose that junk on my hips.]

 [That tummy...please go away!]

I'm 40 years old and I've had two kids.  I have no stretch marks (thanks to, I dunno, luck and cocoa butter?).  I've been avidly CrossFitting (ew, is that a verb?) for almost two years.  I can deadlift over 200 pounds and can get over 100 pounds over my head a variety of ways.  I can do pull ups and push ups.  I run 5K races and I've even done a triathlon.  All this thanks to CF, which has made my body fit and my mind capable of believing I can be an athlete after thinking for 38+ years that I could not.  Here is me finishing my tri (sprint distance...but it's a start) in September, displaying what my friends have come to call my "victory arms."  Like I just won a friggin' gold medal at the Olympics.  But for me, it was sort of like that:

Look familiar?  Oh, yeah, I'm Bruce Jenner:

But not as pretty.

Anyway, I digress.  The point is, I am proud of how far I have come from the girl two years ago who was afraid to break a sweat and who had never touched a barbell before in her life.  It feels awesome.  And, for the most part, I think I can make myself look pretty good if I highlight my best features (arms and legs) and hide what I hate the most (my midsection).  So why should I change anything?

Well, I want to be better.  Or, I want to see if I can be better.  Can I finally cut that fat from my abdomen?  Can I maintain my muscle mass but also drop weight so that I can cruise through pull ups and other bodyweight movements faster?  Can I get back into a pair of tight jeans that show off my awesome quads without worrying about the "muffin top" spilling over the top?

So, here I go.  Even though I don't wanna, I feel like the time is here to try.  Starting Monday, I will be embarking on a 4-week Zone diet challenge through my awesome CrossFit gym, Daybreak CrossFit at the helm of my amazing and supportive coach Mel:

 [That's Mel.  She's a stone cold fox and a super duper human being.]

I'll be charting my progress here as well as my ups and downs, my questions and answers (feel free to post questions in the comments and I will try to seek answers for you!) as well as any tips/recipes/etc. that I learn along the way.  Wish me luck :)