Month: December 2016

Everyone has their thing.  Some like salt, some like sweet, I like fat.  If you can combine fat with either salt or sweet, I like it even better, but I’m perfectly happy with consuming the garden variety creamy dips, cheesy spreads, puff pastries and deep fried pretty much anything.  Even if it looks deep fried I get curious.  I’m not kidding.  Deep fried butter sounds horrible, but still…  I’m slightly curious, as humiliating as that is for me to confess!  This summer I made a few deep fried pickles, just to see if I liked them and I saw that I liked them a lot.  You get the idea.

{We got out of the house to St. Ed’s for the muddiest, slickest hike we’ve ever been on!}

For Christmas Day at Lj House, we bypass the big meal and simply allow ourselves to make and eat all of the stuff that you want to eat at parties but never eat because you’re saving room for dinner.  This year I made spinach dip, artichoke parmesean dip, my famous smoky cheese ball, deviled eggs, veggies and dip, a cheese platter and more.  During preparation I was salivating madly as I added more sour cream, butter, mayonnaise and more to all of my concoctions.  My fatometer was tilted to the max and my inner fat girl was clapping her hands and jumping for joy!  Bugles!  Hummus!  Ranch!  Baked Brie!  I couldn’t wait for the feast!

Then Christmas came and I dug in!  I took a bite of spinach dip- one of my favorites.  But it didn’t taste as good as it once did.  The same could be said of the artichoke Parmesan, the baked Brie and the myriad of other party foods that I was certain I loved!  I kept digging deeper as I passed by old favorites by, disappointed.  It turns out that my fatometer is a little askew these days and most of my old favorites are not yummy to me anymore.  What did I want to eat?  Celery and carrots.  Yes, with my super-duper-yum-cream-cheese-ranch dip, but still.  I kept returning to things that I just knew I loved in the past only to find disappointment.  And it was legitimately disappointing.  I kind of miss loving food that much.  I miss finding the consumption of rich, fatty foods to be a dance in my mouth.  While my minestrone soup is delish, I was surprised to seek it out over more fleeting food opportunities.

{My nine best from 2016’s Instagram}

But I only missed it for a moment.  On the flip side of feeling sad was deep satisfaction that my palate has shifted.  I think something similar happened last year, too.  I think the artichoke parmesean went to waste and I didn’t even bother with spinach dip.  Today I decided to write about this so I don’t make the same mistake again next year.  I need the written reminder that: TAMARA: DON’T MAKE THE ARTICHOKE DIP, SPINACH DIP, BAKED BRIE OR ANY OTHER STUFF THAT MAKES YOUR FATOMETER ZING!  YOU DON’T LIKE IT ANYMORE!  I just need to move on, eat my minestrone and salad and be thankful that I’ve made a good, healthy shift in my life.

Feel free to ask to be added to my Facebook accountability group.  We are super active right now with all of the goals for 2017 being made!  Friend me (Link here: Tamara), shoot me a message and I’ll add you to the group.  😉

ALSO!  Don’t forget that 12/31 is a super deal on all Orca races!  Sign up with a friend to get $16 off THEN ON TOP OF THAT use my special discount code tamarashazam17 for an extra 10% off.  It’s a one time opportunity and you can bet your bippy I’m taking advantage.  I’m signing up for:            

                                         (All of the links above go to the same place.  The ones below link direct to these races.)

My Better Half 5k & 10k

The Kirkland Shamrock Run 5k

The Iron Horse Half Marathon

If you end up signing up too, please shoot me a message or comment and we can try to high five and selfie or something!  🙂

Yep.  That fat little Blerch cherub talked me into so many things over break.  Another batch of fudge?  Sure.  More fudge is more festive!  More haystacks?  Yes, please!  I need more chocolate covered peanuts and chow mein noodles!  (Seriously- what is with those things?!?!). I could go on, but you get the idea.  Last year I pledged to not gain twenty pounds, and this year I pledged to simply enjoy the holidays.  Holy cow.  I enjoyed it aplenty.  I’d like the blame my Blerch, but I knew what I was doing.  Over and over I kept reciting to myself that weight loss is 20% in the gym and 80% in the kitchen, but it’s Christmas!  Isn’t a little weightgain normal?  Well.  I got down to 199-202 around Thanksgiving and ballooned up to a hefty 213 over the month of December.  If I’m truly honest, I weighed 205 on 12/24 and managed an eight pound gain in three days.  I’m hoping it is water, but I also know myself.  It’s probably bonafide fat that I’ll need to spend some weeks working off.  Frickin’ Blerch.  (And me!  What was I thinking?!?!?)

I know what I was thinking, and because of the deep love I have for this holiday, I’m more than willing to pay the price of a few pounds that I’ll need to shake off. This was a beautiful Christmas for my family. My daughter and I are close, but she’s a teenager and every teenager drifts as they figure out how to navigate life. She has drifted farther away from us than ever. I don’t mean emotionally, necessarily, but she’s adopted a more cynical lens that she views the world through of late and I miss her bright eyed optimism and enthusiasm for all things Lj, lately. Breaks have often been the times when we rekindle our faith in one another as a family unit, and I was afraid that was going away this year, too. But it didn’t. I’m not going to say that everything was like they were ten and six again, but we were a unit once again this year. My kids pitched in around the house, played together, hung out with us, made cookies, made candy, watched holiday shows, listened to music, took walks, ate lots and did all the stuff with us this year. It felt really special. The dusting sand frostings of snow we got only added to the specialness.  

Jude and I got to see the Star Wars Christmas Special together because Bradley was sick and I loved sharing something that would usually be a daddy outing.  It feels especially poingant, now, with Carrie Fisher gone, having marveled at hearing her singing voice for the first time just a few weeks ago.  What a hero of a woman.  She was legitimately tough, soft, cool, kind and sexy all at once and I thought she was just the bees knees when I was little.

Well, clearly I have some work cut out for me if I want to get to 170 this year.  My number has increased from 20 pounds to lose up to 43 pounds to lose.  For goodness sakes.  I always believe that when it comes on fast it gets lost fast, too, so I’ll go ahead and believe that for now and start doing the 80% in the kitchen sooner than later.  New Years is coming and it’s time to make some resolutions!

I’ve been watching people with these cool little planners for about a year now, wanting to get into the game.  The planning game of glamour!  Not really, but somehow owning a planner like this seemed like the way to get things done in 2017.  Forget that I’ve never used a planner much beyond the first two months of any year…  apparently this year will be different.  In fact, I think I know it will be different.  Why?  Let me show you:

I think the primary thing I’m excited about with this planner is that there are pages one can add, at will, anywhere you need.  This means that I have added a couple of goals pages.  One traces my weight from 205, currently, down to 170, hopefully this time this year.  While it may not seem like a terribly motivating thing, a piece of paper in a planner, it is.  Spending the time making that also made me meditate on it, plan for it and consider the level of disappointment I’ll feel if I don’t reach it.  I also decided to include a monthly goals sheet to help me track my progress toward goals.  

Then I spent some time just thinking about what is possible this year.  With my high-needs, intense class this year I know that I don’t have the energy or motivation at the end of most days to incorporate a bonafide run.  I can go for a walk, though.  So I incorporated walking Wednesday as a thing every week in my planner.  I’m hoping to take a walk with a family member every Wednesday.  It will dial back my intensity expectations for myself and hopefully will add a connecting piece, midweek, with my family.  I also realized that it’s easy to incorporate a kitchen jog once a week or so.  Or at least I can write it in my planner as an idea, I can consider it in the moment and decide from there.  My hope is that once the seed is planted that my follow through will be better.  There is something to the power of suggestion, you know.    😉  I realized I can’t strive to be the powerhouse I have been over the past few years, but that doesn’t mean I should let it go altogether.  I realized I need to be forgiving of my sapped energy level and I need to dial back expectations.  I’m still planning to run every weekend.  I’ll run one 5k and another run or hike of undertermined distance the other day, that way I’ll stay in condition for shorter races and will still be able to push for some distance training as the year goes on and my class balances out a bit more.

As I was adding washi tape and stickers to make my planner all adorable and colorful, because that’s necessary when planning, I thought and thought a lot about this little thing.  I realized that just holding it in my hand put me twenty paces ahead of where I was the day before.  Suddenly I have a path I want to follow and an idea of how to get there.  That’s half the battle, right there.

Here’s to planning, health and a successful 2017!