Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday night was Thanksgiving dinner.  Over and done with.  I gotta say, holiday dinners have lost their appeal for me.  I think I use to associate those sorts of dinners with eating a lot and eating foods that were a treat.  It's been a long time since I've eatten most of those treats, not so much because of the raw vegan diet, but more because of having to eat gluten free.  Like Nanaimo bars, butter tarts and stuffing, those were my favorites.  The vast majority of treats I really used to love, I can't have anymore or their gluten free substitues just aren't that great.  As I was watching people load up their second helpings, I was remembering myself eating like that, and how sick I used feel afterwards.  Not only from he gluten, but also just from the quantity.  I guess I'm thankful that I don't tend to binge anymore. 

Last night also marked something.  It marked the last time I will be wearing my skinny dress pants.  I have worn them a lot in the last week or two because I knew the end was near.  Last year I stopped wearing them because they were too tight.  Now I won't be wearing them again because they are too big.  I contemplated moving the buttons over, but the legs and butt are too baggy.  So good bye 14, 13, 12 and 11.  Hello size 10.

The rest of the day is spent doing things around the house, I have started making Christmas presents.  I have got some good ones that I have made for myself first and given a good test run.  I have had a busy couple of weeks because I have taken a lot of new things on.  I have enrolled with a mentor at work, and have been accepted for a pilot project at work, I joined a women's wellness coffee discussion group and started physio twice a week in addition to massage therapy.  The end result has been that I have something going on after work nearly every day of the week, so this weekend I'm catching up on some things at home.

This morning I realized that sometime in the last few weeks was my one year anniversary of being raw.  It started out as just a trial, and I felt so good, I saw no reason to stop.  It was so simple, and I thought it would be super difficult.  I have been thinking about doing a juice/smoothie cleanse for a bit.  While I was toying with the idea, I was watching youtube videos of the people I follow.  I was a few days behind, so I had a bit of catching up to do.  Turns out today is the start of a juice/smoothie cleanse.  Seems serendipidous, so I have decided to join.  I have no real goal for how long I'll be on the cleanse, the online cleanse is for 30 days, but I know that I have to stop about a week before I leave on vacation.  So at most 2 weeks.  But I may have no will power and will stop long before that.  Wish me luck, if I stick with it, I'll blog about it.

New keyboard!

So exciting, I've had it for about a week, and I realized that I hadn't blogged at all.  Blogging was the whole reason for buying the keyboard.  So here we are.  I feel like this last week has been rough, I started off the week with a ton of plans, and they all went to shit by the middle of the week.  For some unknown reason my neck has suddenly become a lot worse just when my thereapy was almost finished.  I actually hurt as much as just after the car accident.  Luckily, I have been approved for more therapy, so for the next little bit I'm doing weekly massage therapy and physio.  Hopefully it's going to help.  Finishing my day with tylenol, a drink and a 8:30 bedtime is not a pattern I want to keep for myself.

The original plan for the week was yoga twice a week, and participating in a meetup group.  The week started great, I went to the group for the first time.  Despite beng the youngest person there, I really liked the vibe of the women.  I'm looking forward to going again this week.  Every woman in the group is working towards a goal, and they share what is working for them and what their next steps are.  So the members of the group get support, encouragement and ideas for how to get to the next step- whatever that step is.  Since a good chunk of my goals of late centre around working through my anxiety, the group is just perfect for me.  But my neck was hurting too bad to follow through with the rest of the plan.  Maybe this week.  It's very frustratng that I can't do things because of this neck injury.  However, I have concurred 3 challenges this week, so it wasn't a total bust.   I forced myself to drive at night, I met a large group of total strangers and I took an exit that I was totally afraid of.  Might seem like little things, but for me that's huge.

I got another ergo assessment at work, in hopes that it will also help with the neck pain.  It's too soon to tell, but I'm thinking it should help, since the pain gets worse the further into the workweek.  This weekends goal was to find clearout summer clothes for my upcomming vacation.  I didn't give it too much thought, it's still mid 20's everyday of the week, and it's still shorts weather.  But it is almost October and all the stores have changed their seasons.  I couldn't find anything!  I needed to find something as the 80/10/10 diet shift has made some changes to my tummy and thighs in a rather spectacular way.  This was starting to stress me out, along with the neck pain, I was feeling pretty down. I went off the diet plan a little bit for the weekend, and treated myself at the spa.  I got my nails done, it's been years since I last had nice long nails.  My afternoon at the spa and the extra fatty diet did lift my spirits. I managed to find a few clothes at the thrift store and watched movies while I moved the buttons on my shorts for the second time this summer.  Last year I moved all the buttons out, earlier this summer I moved all the buttons back to where they started, and now they are further in.  I'm not sure I've ever moved buttons in! 

**Dear Blogger, why is there no spell check for this app?  Sorry readers, you'll just have to suffer with my poor spelling abilities.

Getting down to it.

Tickets are booked! In roughly 40 days I'll be on vacation.  About a year ago when I went raw, I thought it would be nice if I could be in shape enough to wear a bikini.  Don't we all think that?  I'm a long way from that being a reality, but it is still the dream.  I've noticed that I've hit a plateau, maybe because I haven't been working out as often.  Or maybe it was the cheezies.  So now it's the big push to the finish line. I had thought about doing a juice feast (not eating, just drinking a ton of fresh juices) but the thought of cleaning my juicer multiple times a day, and peeing 20 times a day just isn't speaking to me.  If I'm not pumped at the start, I won't last long.  So instead I'm going to try a different version of the raw vegan diet, maybe it'll give my body the jolt it needs.

I'm going to try following a fruitarian diet for a while and see how it goes.  The name is deceiving, fruitarians eat fruits, veg, nuts and seeds, just like other raw vegans. It's just the proportions that make the difference.  The goal is to get 80% of calories from carbs (fruit) 10% from protein and 10% from fat.  I have been doing a modified version of this for a while now.  But today I calculated it. I've been doing 60/20/20.  To compare, a standard American diet is 50% carbs, 35% fat and 15 % protein.  It doesn't sound like I'm that far off, and by American standards I eat a low fat diet.  But upping my carbs by 20% and reducing fat and protein by 10% is really hard!  100 calories of nuts is like 1/4 cup, and 100 calories of watermelon is almost 3 cups.  Eat more to lose more?  Let's see. My morning coffee with soy milk, takes up 1/4 of my fat intake for the day.  My coffee!  16 grams of fat a day is the goal. Can I do it? Who knows, I didn't think I could make the switch to vegan, and it turned out to be a breeze.

If you are worried, it's too little fat, don't worry.  My inner thighs will be able to supply my body with enough fat for a long while :-) Plus in 40 days I'll be falling off the bandwagon.

Worrywart

I'm not too sure how this happened.  But... Hi my name is Hilary and I am a worrywart. I don't think I've always been a worrier.  It just happened.  Someone recently pointed it out to me, and I argued how ridiculous it was because that was not me.  ....And then they proved me wrong.  As I was explaining out what I believed were logical thoughts I had while in a situation, I realized, "oh crap, I really am a worrier."  Now that it's been pointed out to me, it's everywhere!  It's like all of a sudden, I see Waldo, and now I can't stop being able to see him.  It's amazing that I really could not see this in me at all.  Did you know I am a worrier?  Why didn't you tell me?


Eg.  Today I was to drive out after work to the Wack.  I saw that they were calling for thunder and lightening and rain.  I hate driving in heavy rain.  So for like 2 hours at work I worried about it.  Should I cancel?  Should I risk it?  But I went, and while there the skies opened up, thunder storm!  I immediately thought: Oh No! I'm going to have to drive home in this, it's going to be dangerous, I could get in a car accident, etc etc.  I thought about maybe sleeping over if the rain didn't stop, or maybe driving the back road home.  I waited for my take-out dinner to be ready and by then the storm had passed.  So I drove home.  Hardly any traffic, the roads were wet, but fine, and not a single drop of rain fell.  I spent about 4 hours thinking about what might happen, but didn't happen at all.  All that energy spent on worrying, and it was all for nothing. 


So that's the way I think all the freakn time.  So annoying.   


Awareness is the first step to making a change, right?  This is one of the things I'm working on in this: The Best Year Ever.  This is turning into a blog series, things I'm doing to make this the best year ever.  So if you're out and about with me, and I'm doing this, ask me why are you worrying? 

Dentists

For a good chunk of the last ten years I haven't had any dental coverage.  I couldn't afford the dental visits, so I didn't go.  I hated the dentist, so I wasn't too worried about it.  A year and half ago, I got dental coverage, and started to slowly catch up on all the dental work that was overdue.  My coverage wasn't great, so I had to spread out my visits. 


This was my first experience of not feeling pain at the dentist.  I'm not sure what the deal is, but growing up, I felt every second of the dental drill when I got fillings.  I seriously thought that was normal.  I was so happy when I switched to a new dentist, I didn't feel anything!  But then I switched jobs, and didn't get dental coverage for the first 6 months.  Now I live too far away from that magical dentist- she moved back to Montreal :(


It took me a couple months to find another dentist here.  I had a couple of criteria.  Must have TV's in the ceiling and must do zoom whitening.  Tv's in the ceiling, because I want to watch TV with the volume up, so I'm distracted.  My childhood dentist had wood paneling, a bad sailboat painting on the wall and Kiss FM playing on the radio.  I have had way too much dental work done while listening to the BeeGee's and ABBA.  I am not a fan.  The deal I made with myself was that I would reward myself with zoom whitening after all my required dental work was done. 


I found a great dentist that met all of my criteria and didn't hurt at all.  Plus last time I was there, he gave me a review of the movie review of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.  Added bonus, my coverage is now really great, most things are covered 100%.  So strange to not owe anything!  I've had everything done that needed to be done, except getting 2 wisdom teeth pulled.  I went for a consult last week.  The dentist said I would be knocked out, and only 2 need to come out.  What a relief.  But I'm still totally dreading it.  Since I don't feel any pain at the dentist, it's not so bad being there.  Now I'm taking advantage of the great dental coverage by having my old fillings removed and replaced with white fillings (no mercury).   Unfortunately, I will still have a few silver ones at the very back.


I really wish I'd known way back when that trips to the dentist don't have to be painful.  Maybe I would feel differently about the BeeGee's and ABBA today.

New skinny clothes

So!  I am currently wearing my "skinny clothes."  Basically, these are just the smallest clothes I own from when I was a bit thinner.  Or they are clothes that I bought, only to find that they were too small, and the skinny mirrors at the store lied to me.  Very exciting, but also a bit of a pain in the ass.  Currently, the clothes I wore last summer fall off (literally).  The clothes that were too small last summer are bordering on too loose to wear anymore.  I was starting to not be able to see the weight loss anymore, because I was just used to it.  It was a nice to see a major difference when I switched over to my summer clothes.


Interestingly, back when I was wearing my skinny jeans they were too small for me.  I had an ugly muffin top situation going on.  Not anymore!  They fit better now, than they did back then.  So I'm actually smaller now, which means this is the smallest I've been since some time in grade 8 or 9.  Is that right?  Too bad I don't have any clothes from that time to be sure, but I'm pretty sure it's true.  I do have a dress that I wore when I was 11 or 12.  I'm not too sure that it'll fit, but I'll see if I can remember which box it is in and try it on.  Pictures of course! 


I don't own a scale, so I have been more or less measuring weight loss by how clothes were fitting. This started to become a less useful measure now that everything is too big. I'm too cheap to buy clothes that I know won't fit me when I could really use clothes that do fit.  So I asked Sarah to bring me some of her clothes that are too big for her.  I tried them on, all of them are too small.  Normally I might have been gutted, but I'm actually pretty happy about it.  I now have new skinny clothes.  Yea!  I'll let you know when they do fit

Rock Climbing!

This really isn't the best picture is it?  I can't fix it.  I'm on the far right.  Oh well, I'm glad someone thought to take a picture at all.  So after my disastrous experience with meetup.com, I decided to give it another shot.  It was really fun, but really hard.  I learned that I have a bit of an issue with heights.  I climbed all the way to the top once, and then looked down to tell the instructor I was coming down, OMG.  Lesson learned, Hilary does not look down.  Today is the day after, and I am so sore!  Mostly my arms and whatever the muscles are that are under my armpits.  It's a whole body work out, there are not many parts of me that are not at least a little sore.  My neck is okay, but I'm dying to get to massage therapy tomorrow.  My hands were so sore when I left that I was having a hard time holding the steering wheel!  Next time I think I might tape my hands up a bit. 


Verdict?  Rock climbing is highly recommended.


(note I am scheduling blog posts into the future,  as I had a back log of things to post about.  This actually happened over a week ago.  My massage therapist put me back to rights.)