Less Lauren

So yea, this week wasn’t quite as good as last week. It certainly wasn’t a bad week, but I had a couple intense splurges. Work has been interesting this week. This whole office transition will invariably be good for my career, and I love my new situation, but the decision by the higher-ups to transition my position from one office to the other was a little sudden and there is quite a bit of tension between the two. As such, I seem to be stuck in the middle of what could best be described as a turf war. I’m trying to just put my head down and do what I’m supposed to do, but I tend to absorb stress from my surroundings pretty easily. So this week has been a pretty random mix of good days and bad days. I’ve been stable enough to maintain, but not quite good enough to lose anything.

After almost a month of beating around the bush, the situation seems to be coming to a head now, which is both good and bad. It means the situation is actively getting resolved, but there also seems to be a pretty substantial rift forming between myself and my former coworkers (West Side Story anyone?). But again, all I can really do is put my head down and keep moving forward. I trust my new bosses completely, and I know that once the dust settles I’ll be in a better place.

This also helped me to realize that I really need to change the way I socialize. I’m a very introverted person so I have a long history of becoming very close to the people I work with, because I see them every day, and it hasn’t always worked out in my favor in the end. I’m now starting to realize that it would be best for me to try to put some distance between my work life and my social life, and to work towards developing friendships that don’t revolve around my job. That’s not to say I can’t be friends with my coworkers, but I really need there to be a stronger divide between my professional life and my home life. Especially because I work in government. (Yes, Mom, I know you’ve been telling me that for years, stop rubbing it in!) So I finally took the plunge and deleted my Foursquare account (which I would use often at work), modified my LinkedIn visibility settings, and un-friended any of my colleagues that I had friended on Facebook. I nearly deleted the account completely, but decided that might be a bit extreme. Hopefully they’ll forgive me, but I don’t think wanting to put a privacy curtain between my work life and home life is unreasonable.

Anywho, I still haven’t mastered the stress eating thing, so my diet became pretty chaotic this week. My days ranged from 1500 calories to 2950 calories, not awful but a far cry from the previous week. I didn’t pack my lunch much this week because I went out a couple times in the evening and was usually quite tired by the time I got home. I did alright today and hopefully tomorrow will be good too, which will set me up well for next week. I have my lunches and dinners planned, and I’m going to try to get to the gym tomorrow because I haven’t been since Monday. Friday is payday and also the August recess starts at the end of the week, which historically has meant that we’ll be getting out early for most of the month of August. With so much to look forward to, I’m hoping I can be strong enough to ride out whatever is going to happen. Wish me luck!

Last night, I took some extra pictures of my lunch-making process and thought I should post them!

You usually pack your rice/grain/carb component first. I pack it down pretty good so it stays in place. I use jasmine rice because it smells and tastes amazing and it’s just sticky enough to form a nice compact little pack. I normally only use 3/4 cup to 1 cup of rice. After the rice is in, I put down a thick bed of leafy greens for some extra nutrition. If you prefer to focus on other veggies, you can just use some parchment paper or a cabbage leaf on the bottom just so your raw food isn’t sitting directly on plastic. I like to use about half a cup of baby spinach because I hearts me some healthful spinach.

I do all my lunch prep and cooking while I’m making my dinner for the evening. It’s important that everything be completely cool before it goes in the box, otherwise you’ll have condensation and gummy wateriness by the time you get to eat it. I let mine sit on a wire rack to cool while I’m eating dinner, then when I go back to do my dishes I finish packing the lunch.

Once you’re ready to pack up, start with your proteins since they’re usually the biggest and are often the focal point. I used two decent sized chicken strips (about half a breast) of chicken katsu which is a super quick recipe that I use frequently when I don’t have leftovers to use.

Then I dig out all my veggies and fillers and start playing! Color and variety are important, which is easier if you go through lots of veggies in the average week, but I try to stick to things that keep a while since I only really eat veggies with my lunches. I have cute little metal cutters that help me do the shapes, and you can also cut interesting shapes out of hot dogs and fruits.

Don’t forget to use scraps to prop up the top layer of food to get whatever effect you want!

Cucumber flowers don’t always look good flat, so I prop them up with a little piece of carrot.

This is the finished box! I usually stick a small low fat cheddar stick in the lid for some extra protein, but mostly because I loves me some cheddar!

A close-up of the finished box. My boxes aren’t too elaborate (as opposed to this one based on Super Smash Brothers) but they still make me excited to make and eat my lunch every day. It’s been hugely beneficial to my diet this past two weeks. The jasmine rice is about 150 calories, all the veggies and fruits are about 70 calories, the chicken is about 175 calories, and the cheddar stick is 90 calories, so all totaled we’re only looking at 485 calories. Not too different from a garden variety frozen dinner, but much better, with a nice balanced variety of fruits, veggies, proteins, and carbs!

So, up until now, my motivation has mostly just been the desire to get healthy and have a more active lifestyle. But yesterday I discovered a new motivator that is, perhaps, more powerful than all the others because it involves one of my favorite things…SHOPPING! I was out with my friend Stacy and we were tootling around Georgetown before we went to the movies (side note: Toy Story 3…..SOOO fab!) and we decided to duck in to this cute little store that I’ve heard a lot about from many friends but have never been, mostly because they don’t generally cater to the “big boned” or “festively plump.” So I walk in, and I was INSTANTLY in love. Ladies and gents, I now have a new #1 motivation for wanting to lose weight…I want to be able to shop at Anthropologie!!!

Anthropologie is one of those shabby chic sort of places where you’re paying just as much for the experience as you are the clothes, even though the experience is a little costly. It’s definitely a unique place that is focused more on atmosphere, it’s not the kind of store you can get in and out of quickly for sure. Their clothes are super cute, lots of ruffles and shimmer and flowy-ness. And not just clothes by the way. Have you ever bought a $40 cookbook just because you LOVED the way it looked and it totally matched your kitchen? Because I just did! It’s a fabulous little cookbook full of summery Italian recipes and full color photos of the Italian countryside. You could probably furnish your entire house here, and I’m sure plenty of people do. But I digress. Here are a few of the things I found that particularly appeal to me (all available on their online store).

I found a bunch of things that I thought were totally adorable, but looking at them on a hangar is a lot different than actually wearing them. These are the kinds of things that I just love to look at, but who knows what my body will look like when the weight is less of an issue. I’ve been having a bit of a style crisis lately because the realization came to me that I wear plenty of things that look nice on me, but I’m not sure it’s exactly the way I want to look, if that makes any sense. I have this image of future myself as chic with just a bit of quirkiness and fun. So I think the plan is to be really really careful when assembling my post-shrinkage wardrobe. I need to keep an image of the way I want to look in my head, because if I find something that I like and fits alright, I still need to make sure it fits in with my wardrobe and my style too.

So yea, those are my thoughts for today. I didn’t pack a bento for today because I was out kind of late last night and was low on sleep as is, but I just finished some fresh rice and I think I’m going to do some chicken katsu for tomorrow’s lunch. Catch ya on the flip!

Good afternoon ladies and gents! This week has been interesting. I only got one workout in on Monday…it was decent but I definitely feel like I’ve lost a little mojo. I’m going to try really hard to get back in to it this week…I was having a hard time this past week because I was having trouble sleeping. My diet has been changing a lot this past week and my “digestion” is still “adjusting.” So I found myself up in the night several times almost every night for the past week and a half. I’m working under the assumption that my body will adjust eventually, it’s just not used to so many vegetables.

On that note, my big success this week has been my eating. I’ve been rocking the bento lunches and my average calorie intake for this week is around 1550 calories…I’ve been under 1700 every day this week which for me is pretty awesome. I’ve also noticed how easy it’s been to keep my diet this week. There are a few different reasons I suppose. The first being that I’ve been moved to a different office at work this month, which aside from being an exciting change, I’ve been so focused on my work and the new environment that I haven’t been snacking hardly at all. I’ve also been started on a new medication by my doctor whose primary side effect is that it’s a mild appetite suppressant (no, it’s not a diet pill nor has anything medical interaction with my digestive system). Third is that I’ve been putting a lot of effort in to packing my lunches so it actually makes me more excited to eat them! Anyways, I weighed in this morning at 239.0 which is a 1.4 pound loss from my Monday weigh in, so despite the lack of workout my diet is still going in the right direction.

To that end, here are a few more of my bento lunches from this week. I’m still working on the proportion of rice/grain to protein and veggies, but I use mostly jasmine rice now because it smells SO good and it keeps better in the fridge. I’m trying to adjust my diet so that I get at least 2 servings of veg and 3-4 servings of fruit a day. Fruit is always easy for me, but veggies are always hard. I was the last of four kids so my mom was so sick of fighting with kids to eat them by the time she got to me that I never developed a taste for any. When I do eat veggies, they’re usually just in the form of a salad. I rarely cook them, and when I do it’s just a quick steam. I’m still experimenting to expand my lunchable protein selections, but I’m hoping for more variety this coming week.

This bento had some panko-fried shrimpies; a salad with cucumbers, carrots, cherry tomatoes, and spinach; strawberries; and tamagoyaki, which is a slightly-sweetened Japanese rolled omelet made with egg, soy sauce, sugar, and water.

This was Friday’s quickie bento. Jasmine rice, more tamagoyaki, salad, strawberries, and grapes with some penguin-shaped hot dogs (squeeee!)

There are a few tricks I’m starting to pick up which help make the lunches faster. I have some stainless steel cutters to help me do the shapes, and I do mine the night before while I’m making my dinner so that I can eat the scraps so that I can still have cute lunches and not have waste. The biggest thing is to have a stockpile of stuff in your freezer that you can pull out quickly. Lunchinabox.net has instructions for freezing anything from shaped rice to sandwiches. I always have fresh fruit on hand but I like to buy veggies that keep for a while so that I don’t waste too much, since I eat so few. Cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, spinach, and other such things work well. I also like to buy the SteamFresh veggies in the individual packs so that I can pull those out if necessary.

Stay tuned for more posts this week. I have some new clothes that I intend to take for a spin, more bento lunches, check-ins, and all that jazz. I’m trying to broaden the subjects of my posts because I feel like my weight loss just isn’t interesting enough to sustain a blog. I’ve been at it for so long I feel like my posts are just “yea, still chugging” and “yea, just keep swimming.” I’m not a particularly powerful motivational speaker, I don’t take exciting road trips, and I’m not orchestrating a nerd fitness rebellion, so I’m trying to figure out what direction or niche I want to start carving out for myself. One thing I do want to do is focus more on clothes and dressing my body. I shop a lot but I also enjoy sewing, and I have some new patterns and prints I’m going to experiment with in the coming weeks. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Good afternoon everyone! I wanted to do a quick weigh-in because, since my slump last month, I haven’t weighed in in quite a while. I’m quite relieved that I didn’t completely destroy my efforts during my aforementioned slump. I weighed in this morning at 240.4 which is a 1.8 pound loss since my last weigh in on May 24th. It’s not a huge loss for 6 weeks, but guess what? It’s not a gain! Which is a pretty substantial accomplishment considering I wasn’t really watching my eating at all. It’s made me more confident that once I get down to my ideal weight I actually have the ability to maintain it without constantly having to think about it.

Food Experimentation

In other news, I’ve been trying to force myself to experiment with new foods lately, and I seem to just be frustrating myself. I feel like I’m wasting a lot of food and a lot of time by trying all these things that I don’t know if I like or not, and then inevitably not liking. Today was pretty iffy for me and I was really getting annoyed. I tried this new recipe for quinoa with green peas and dried sausage which would be good for my bento lunch experiments, but I have since discovered that I don’t much care for quinoa or the particular variety of dried sausage I got, and frozen peas don’t work particularly well in this recipe. I also tried to use some cold cuts in my fridge to make some freezable sandwiches, but it wasn’t until after I used up a tomato, a pack of swiss, and a few other little things and actually made the sammies that I realized the roast beef was a little funky. I don’t think it would’ve killed me but it tasted a little off. It had only been in the fridge a week but I guess that’s long enough. THEN when I tried to make dinner I decided to dig this Bertolli frozen thing of italian sausage stuffed shells from my freezer, but upon opening it (it had been in there a while) it was infected with intense freezer burn and I didn’t feel like chipping away at it with a knife to get all the pieces separated so I could cook it. So yea…cereal for dinner, and a hot dog for my lunch tomorrow.

I guess I need to get over trying to be different and just admit to being a picky eater. I just hate being “that” girl, you know? I hate being the one that everyone has to “worry” about whenever we’re having a family get together. Someone once told me that my (then) 15 year old niece who has Downs Syndrome and essentially is the pickiest eater ever was easier to feed than me. I try not to let it bother me but it hurts my feelings that people feel like they have to worry about me. I’m not really picky per se, I just like food very simple and classic and plain. I can find something to eat almost anywhere really, and I eat a lot of things now that I didn’t used to. My food repertoire definitely isn’t as varied as some peoples, but I still don’t like being seen as the “picky” one. *sigh*

Anyways, maybe I’ll try a few more new things next weekend, but between last Sunday and this Sunday which both consisted of a short series of failed experiments, I’m not sure how much I’m really interested in frustrating myself all over again.

Bento Lunches

Now for the fun part of today’s post, I’ve started packing lunches for myself in the bento style, which is a Japanese cultural thing involving homemade packed lunches focusing on portion control, balance, nutrition, and aesthetic appeal. A “traditional” bento is generally a 4:2:1 ratio of carbs/grain to protein to fruit/veggies. That’s a LOT of rice! I’d like to focus a little more on balance so my ratio is usually a little closer to 1:1:2. My goal is also for my bento lunches to consist of under 600 calories each. It’s one of those things I think that takes a while to get good at. Some people can do a cute bento really quickly each morning, but it’s so new to me that I have to spend about half an hour the night before doing it. It is fun to have a super cute lunch. It makes me actually want to eat it which isn’t always the case when I bring my lunch to work. If you’re interested in more specifics about bento, check out Just Bento’s bento basics page. Here are my first two bento lunches!

This is my first-ever bento! I made it for last Friday at work. I hadn’t received my real bento box yet so I just used an entree-size rubbermaid. It consists of baked chicken katsu (a chicken cutlet coated in panko breadcrumbs), two varieties of rice, some strawberries and a small garden salad. The chicken katsu is just a basic chicken cutlet coated in seasoned panko breadcrumbs…it’s usually fried but (a) baked is healthier and (b) I didn’t have any oil at the time. During this process I discovered that panko doesn’t crisp very well in the oven…oops. If I bake chicken tenders in the future I’ll use regular bread crumbs because they crisp up better.

This is the bento I just finished for tomorrow’s lunch. Since all my cooking experiments went slightly awry, it’s pretty simple. Spanish rice, a hot dog flower, some strawberries, and a salad of veggies and spinach. I also packed a cheddar stick in the lid of my new box for some extra yum. PS – how adorable is that bento box!?!?!?!!

I have my meals planned for this week, so I’ll be posting a few other bentos this week as well. I’m excited to continue working on this! I made a few things today to freeze, including a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the shape of hearts! Freezing sandwiches is actually a pretty common Japanese trick…this Lunch in a Box web site can tell you how to freeze almost anything!

Wish me luck! I hope you all have an awesome week.

So yea, I’m trying to get back on the proverbial “wagon.” And surprise, surprise, it keeps getting pulled out from under me it seems. I’m really struggling trying to keep the everyday stresses of my life out of my diet routine. I’m going through a bit of in-air turbulence at work this week which will eventually produce excellent things but for now unknowns tend to scare me, but I’m trying to (a) not stress about it and (b) not let it effect my eating. I keep telling myself “the gym relieves stress more than bacon pizza and chocolate” and “you’ll feel better if you eat better” but it never seems to translate in to what my hands put in my mouth. Not much progress with my bento project yet, I made a bunch of experimental dishes on Monday and not a one turned out edible. I swear I can cook but Monday just wasn’t my day.

So yea, second reboot in one week. Tomorrow I’m having lunch with a friend at a deli (yay for healthy sammies!) and I have all my meals planned out for the next week and a half, including yummy bento lunches! Chicken Katsu, Onigiri, Quinoa with Green Peas and Dried Sausage, Tamagoyaki, steamed veggies…OMFG! So excited! Stay tuned for photos and recipes!

I am NOT GIVING UP, dagnabbit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good evening everyone! First off, let me apologize for my more than noticeable absence over the past month. I’ve been struggling with a lot of things mentally over the past few weeks and I sort of had to just step back from it for a bit. Not just this, a lot of other things too. I’ve been trying to bring my life back towards myself, if that makes any sense. But that’s enough of that. I’ve had enough of this slackitude. I’ve decided it’s time to get back to real life.

Where I’m At

So here’s where I’m at. I haven’t counted calories or been to the gym in three and a half weeks. I’ve been attempting to at least be cognizant of what I’m eating, but in general I haven’t really been making any effort in that area. I’ve just been eating naturally, which has surprised me because my “natural” state of eating is much better than it used to be. I didn’t instantly revert back to eating fast food four times a week and downing a whole box of Swiss Cake Rolls in one sitting. As such, my weight and body condition haven’t suffered that much as a result. I’m still hovering around the same number that I was before my brain crash, so I’m pretty proud of that. As far as physical conditioning, I’m sure I’ve lost a little, but I’ve been walking every day and I don’t doubt that I’ll be able to get myself back to where I was reasonably quickly.

The Plan

For once, I’m not sure I really have much of a plan. I tried to make a plan, and “get my ass back in gear” was all I could come up with. I think now that my passion for the weight loss battle has been reignited, the rest will come back to me pretty easily. Tomorrow I’m going to go back to the gym for the first time in a month. I’ll probably start slow and just go for a longer duration, with maybe a few sprints to see how much my cardiovascular fitness has been affected by my hiatus. I’m also going to go back to planning my meals. Summer is the BEST time for fresh and local stuff, so my fridge is stocked with fruits and veggies and all sorts of yum. Also, I have a few ideas for some fun new projects that I think will make my weight loss adventure more interesting!

The Bento Project

This super tasty-looking bento is published on one of my favorite new blogs, Just Bento.

So, obviously I’m not Japanese, but during my college years I built relationships with several people who are from Japan, have visited Japan, or are just really in to the Japanese culture. One of my favorite little Japanese sub-cultures is that of the bento. A bento is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. But there’s a whole sub-culture surrounding this particular Japanese tradition that incorporates what is in the bento and how it is presented. Bento boxes aren’t just a garden variety boxed lunch. Bentos are often decoratively or ornately arranged to create an experience beyond just the taste of the food. While many a bento is all about practicality, there’s almost always an element of design involved in the packing. Another benefit to bento is that they are all about portion control, balance, and a truly enjoyable dining experience.

It’s something I’ve been anxious to experiment with for a while. So I decided that this would be the perfect time to give it a go and see what I can come up with. I ordered my first bento box and a few supplies to play with, and tomorrow I’m going to take an hour or so and plan out my meals for the week! Look for my first post on Tuesday (I’m off on Monday for Independence Day) with more detail about what goes in to a bento, how its packed, how to make things not take forever, and more!

Well, I think that’s all for now. Wish me luck everyone! I’m totally back in the game.