Macro Awesome!

Ok, so we have practically no food in our house. Honestly. Where does all the time go?

I'll tell you what, eating healthy takes time and budget management, so I am floundering right now. I hope to get my kitchen act together.

I have been trying to bring my own lunch, which is wonderful on so many levels, but I had to buy my lunch today and I bought Macro Vegetarian Thai Dumplings at the little store by the post office in Coffman Memorial Union.

Macro Vegetarian Thai Dumplings are not pictured here, but this is what their friends look like.

What a happy plate! Yum! Flavorful, hearty and smells delicious too!

Happy plate decoupage from this etsy shop.

Plus the dish is macro-biotic and vegan with pretty great nutritional value.

Healthy! And I have been weighing myself everyday for the study, it is odd to do.

The drag is that the meal cost $5.99. Not something to get everyday, but perhaps inspiration for meals to prepare at home. I guess that is less than the awesome salad bar at Coffman costs.

One other bonus is that if I took the stairs up and down to the East River Road to get to Coffman I burn some calories and build some muscle. How much money is that worth?

Soon these steps will be closed for the winter and I will watch people try to walk or slide cautiously down them from my office.

Research Kharma, or Facing the Scale for the Benefit of All

As you may have read before, I am not a fan of weighing myself or knowing the actual mass measurement associated with my body. I know I need to lose mass. For my health, and because I cannot afford to buy new clothes! (Ha!)

I am scared of the reality in spite of my intelligence.

When I was younger, I my pants got a little tight once a month, but I always went back down. Then suddenly that changed and I have yet to successfully change my behavior to match my body's needs.

Well, as you may have read before, my friend researches obesity behavior. She has published works (which I have ignored despite my respect for her) that show there is evidence that daily weigh-ins are correlated with people successfully losing weight.

This woman is not my friend and with that attitude she may never be my friend.

Tonight I embark on my second stint in a weight loss research study, this time I will have to weigh myself how ever many times my random selected study group protocol tells me.

Fancy space scale.

I am doing this for participants in studies I recruited for in my years of work in research.
I am doing this for myself.
I will commit to it for my friend! I do not want to botch her study results with poor participation. Plus I get anxious about breaking rules!

I have been eating better, now I will weigh in, and hopefully exercise more from the terror on the scale!

And let me tell you, telling a friend your weight honestly is pretty humbling in itself. My friend was professional and kind. Thanks, friend!

Weighing in with celebrities!

I am thrilled to share that my sister gave me a scale for my birthday!

A celebrity scale!

Instead of numbers, it has various celebrities, so I can see how I size up to icons rather than numbers! Nice.

The scale runs from Baby Jesus to Prince to Chuck Norris to King Kong!

Now I can track my changes in weight without stressing over numbers.

Our cat weighs in between Baby Jesus and Gizmo.




I am somewhere between Dolly Parton and Stone Cold Steve Austin, so I have some work to do!

It's Log! Log! Log!

My Chess Friend suggested this fitness training website to me. You can track you workouts, diet and weight plus enlist friends to motivate you and monitor you.

I know I have used similar sites in the past, mainly to monitor my food choices, and found it helpful just to be able to see what I had been eating and doing.

And here is the Log song from Ren and Stimpy for your enjoyment:

Out with the numbers

My friend researchers how to get people to lose weight and she has a published met analysis that shows that people who weigh themselves on a regular schedule are more likely to lose weight.

HOWEVER, I purposely do not weight myself because the numbers just make me want to eat ice cream.

So, I have been mentally saving a little money and working on a good justification for a scale like this one:
It has no numbers, only markers and affirmations. The one I wanted is no longer in the etsy shop, it just had no numbers. I really just want to know if I am going up or down, the numbers stress me out.

I am not sure if I can justify spending $95 on a scale I could get at Target for $25 and tinker with myself to hide the numbers.

Update:

Here is the scale I wanted, it is available at a different website: