cindy's world

Happy Independence Day! May you experience fireworks in your life tonight. 😉 *big salute* to the Veterans, you make us humble yet proud, and free. Something a little more lighthearted, that I was tagged by email with:

SCATTERGORIES – It’s harder than it looks! Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following… they have to be real places, names, things…nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

What is your name…………………………CINDY
Four Letter Word…………………………..CRAP (*shrug* It was the first thing that came to mind…telling, huh?)
Vehicle………………………………………COUPE
City………………………………………….CHARLESTON
Boy Name…………………………………..CHARLES (scraping the bottom of the creativity barrel)
Girl Name……………………………………CHARLOTTA
Alcoholic Drink……………………………..CALIFORNIA (vodka, OJ, grapefruit juice)
Wear………………………………………..CHEMISE
Celebrity……………………………………CHARLIE SHEEN (haha)
Food………………………………………..CORN ON THE COB (I should get extra credit — TWO Cs!)
Something found in a bathroom………….CRA– oh, I’ve used it already. CUP
Reason for Being Late…………………….CONDOM BROKE (I’m impressed with this one myself.)
Cartoon Character………………………..CARTMAN
Something You Shout…………………….CRA– oh, I’ve used it already. CORPORATE SHANANIGANS SUCK! No? Then what about, “CAN IT, BUCKO!”? Or, “C’MERE!”
Animal………………………………………CAT!@#$
Body part…………………………………. CANS! (And I bet you guys didn’t think I could keep this one clean.)

If you read this and you have a blog and happen to be searching for a blog topic to write about, I TAG YOU!

Day 3: Eat all the soup, fruit, and veggies you want. Do not have a baked potato. If you have eaten for three days [as specified], and have not cheated, you will find you have lost 5 to 7 pounds.

Today was hard. Yesterday’s temptations were nothing compared to today’s. It went like this:
Breakfast – red apple
Lunch – Fuji apple
Skipped the noon workout and instead went with Gym Trainee to pick up her son so that he could be with us when we do the rooftop fireworks celebration later in the evening.
Tried not to smell the food as the three of us went to a Mexican restaurant to pick up burritos for Gym Trainee and her son.
Avoided the BBQ some coworkers were sponsoring in the parking lot in honor of Independence Day, altho I couldn’t avoid coworkers talking about how delicious and plentiful the food was.
Tried not to see the burritos that Gym Trainee and her son devoured in front of me while I angrily drank some vegetable water soup.
Afternoon snack – remainder of the baby carrots left over from yesterday, which I shared with Gym Trainee’s son who’s apparently a carrot freak. Thank goodness, cuz I am sick of carrots. And all other veggies. And fruits.
Dinner – Declined coworkers’ invitation to join them at Outback Steakhouse.
Gym Trainee wanted a light dinner of smoothies, and we walked across the street to a smoothie place. As we passed Cold Stone Creamery, however, Gym Trainee’s son decided he wanted ice cream for dinner. So we went in where he got some crazy ice cream concoction and Gym Trainee got a smoothie, and I tried not to drool as I inhaled sweet ice cream and warm waffle cone aromas, noting that the scent molecules I’m inhaling are richer and higher in calories than what I’d eaten all day.
I crankily drank the rest of the soup. At this point Mr. W came by and met up with us, a delicious looking sandwich wrap in hand, and the tortilla looked to be tomato basil. Argh.
In the evening when we attended the rooftop firework celebration, I was confronted by a cupcake cake (bunch of chocolate cupcakes positioned close to each other and frosted together to look like a cake from the top), which I declined. Ate another apple instead.

The firework show was great, but I was exhausted at the end of the evening. In retrospect, it was probably less physical tiredness than starvation. I still think it’s weird that I’m this hungry on the diet, since I’m eating more on this diet than I normally do. I don’t think I lost 5-7 lbs, though. I was right that I don’t have that much stored-up crud in my system that has to be cleansed out. When I got home, I ate a mixed salad but cheated by adding a dollop of blue cheese dressing. Well, I’m not sure if it’s cheating, because the diet instructions don’t say I can’t use salad dressing. Now I’m at the beginning of a long weekend, and I’m still on this diet thing. Guess Mr. W will be having his meals without me. I really didn’t think this through.

Day 2: ALL VEGETABLES. Eat until you are stuffed with all the fresh raw or canned vegetables. Try to eat green leafy veggies and stay away from dry beans, peas, and corn. Eat along with soup at dinnertime on this day; reward yourself with a big baked potato and butter. DO NOT EAT ANY FRUITS.

Oops. In typing this, I realized I may have messed up. Today, I had a tomato for breakfast. There’s some to do about whether tomatoes are fruits or veggies, but today for my purpose I’ve decided it’s a vegetable. I munched on raw organic baby carrots all day at work, then hit the gym for a 35-minute cardio session at lunch. For lunch I had a container of the veggie soup I’d brought along. Then more carrot munching. I felt hungry and unenergetic. I felt my skin and poo turn orange. I walked by coworkers’ desks displaying open containers of chocolate chip cookies, M&Ms, and animal crackers drooling but with my head held high and my teeth clamped shut.

Upon my arrival home, I was famished enough to instantly nuke some veggie soup and down it as I cooked some frozen broccoli and carrots in a saucepan. In re-reading the instructions for Day 2 as I’m typing this post, I don’t think I’m supposed to eat cooked veggies except for what’s in the soup. Oh well, goof. Now I’m microwaving my “baked” potato which I’m going to eat with a mixed salad, no dressing because my instructions don’t say I can use any. I’m looking really forward to the baked potato.

I don’t know why I thought this was going to be a walk in the park. I’m having cravings like I’m PMSing. There’s something about things being forbidden that makes you want them more than when they’re allowed, like that one Catholic church incident I’d experienced during a funeral. I stupidly figured I’ll just be home all week so 5 days of dinner on my own and soup drinking would be fine, but tomorrow we’re doing our annual Independence Day fireworks watch on the roof, and the event has been getting bigger and bigger each year. Last year it was more of a potluck with food, margaritas, chips, desserts, wine, etc. This year, I can only eat…*looking at diet instruction sheet*…soup, fruit and veggies! Argh.

Day 1: ALL FRUITS except bananas. Eat only the soup and fruits. For drink — unsweetened tea, cranberry juice, or water.

I had a container of fresh mixed fruit (grapes, canteloupe, apple and orange slices) for breakfast, the veggie soup for brunch, hit the gym at lunch, returned to the rest of the soup, and ate another container of fresh mixed fruit (melon mix of watermelon, canteloupe, honeydew). I was starving all day, and it was weird to walk by the minty rice M&Ms on my reporter’s desk and not be able to have some. But, as I told Mr. W, if I can’t stick to something for just a week of my life, I suck. Strangely, I was hungrier this day than I am when I don’t eat anything at all. So my body must be burning stuff.

Mr. W convinced me to go on a date with him after work. He wanted to test our after-work drive to our new home, catch the new Will Smith movie Hancock on its opening day in our new neighborhood, then watch the sunset in our new view back yard. So I agreed. I met him at his house which was halfway to the new house, and he’d called his daughter on his way home to ask if she wanted to come along and surprisingly, she was game, so we went to pick her up first. Then, because it turned out Hancock didn’t show until sunset, we went to the house first. Even though we couldn’t get into the house as we didn’t have keys yet, we walked around the perimeter and back yard, and Daughter loved it. She even climbed on the low wall to get a better perspective of the dropdown view. She thinks she’ll still be staying with her mother her senior year of school, but expects to visit fairly regularly. She already established where all her local friends are in relation to the house, which she did by text messaging madly on her cell as soon as she found out the cross streets and neighborhood landmarks. Teenagers. Haha.

So since I could eat nothing but fruit and soup that day, and had run out of soup as I didn’t go home after work for a refill, we went to a market so I could buy 3 nectarines. I ate a leftover apple from Mr. W’s lunch as Mr. W and Daughter had delicious looking frozen yogurt from a Cherry On Top near the new house. Then we went to the movie theatre, where I reached a new low sneaking in three nectarines as outside food, which I washed in the bathroom and munched on during the movies while Mr. W and Daughter shared a giant horse bucket of butter popcorn.

Life wasted no time in testing my will on this diet, but I prevailed this day. During the weekend, when I was bloated from PMS, I weighed in at 122.5 lbs. My body released water all day on Tuesday, and when I weighed myself at Mr. W’s house before I left in the morning, I weighed in at 119.4 lbs. I can’t tell if this is water weight, or if I’m actually losing something real.