What A Concept!!

So last week I talked about the new book I discovered called French Women Don’t Get Fat. Today I just got the book and I am VERY excited to get started with reading it. I can’t wait to learn more on how I can eat better. Well after last week’s blog I decided to start in advance the whole “50% solution”. Where you eat only half of whats on your plate and if you are still hungry then you eat half of whats left and so on.

I have practiced this on all my meals and have found it pretty easy. Granted there were a few times that I wanted to gorge myself… but that was at the beginning of it. Now that I’ve gone a week it has gotten way easier.

Just the other day I got some Chinese food take out and got whatever I wanted… then I ate just a 1/4 of it and was full. So I put it away! I was so excited and proud of myself. It has been much easier then I thought it would be.

And going back to my last post about drinking Black coffee has been happening too!  I slowly am weaning myself off of all the sugar and cream I put in my coffee.  Now I ‘m off of the cream and am enjoying just half of the sugar that I used to have… soon I won’t be adding ANY sugar to my coffee.

Even looking back at my calorie intake it has dropped from 2500 (or more) calories a day to about 1700 calories and I’m not even really trying THAT hard. I’m not hungry, or thinking this diet is “SO HARD”. Instead I’m actually surprised that all I’ve consumed in calories has been that little. Guess cutting your portions in half really do add up.

So here is a toot of the horn, a pat on my back and all of the ways I can say Yay!

Becoming French

Its no secret that I am obsessed with Paris, in particular the Eiffel Tower, but the whole city fascinates me!

Yesterday I starting doing some research on the French diet and found some interesting things. There is a book called “French Women Don’t Get Fat” and I remembered that I’ve heard of this book before!

Which got me to do research on this book and I really like it!! It isn’t a “diet” as to the way the Americans view a diet. It is a lifestyle change for your eating habits. Which I know I need anyhow because of the food I eat.

I bought the book today but from the research I’ve done online the basics of this diet are:

1) There is no limit as to what you can eat, its the portions you need to watch.

2) The French enjoy and savor in the food they eat. They take their time and enjoy every bite. This causes them to eat slower and in turn eat less.

3) I’m not sure if this is a French concept but the author of the book talks about the “50 Percent Solution”. Where she says eat half of whats on your plate and stop. Ask yourself if you want to eat the rest or if you are doing it because its in front of you. If you want to eat it then just eat half of whats left and stop and ask the same question again. This is a very interesting concept that I am going to try. She brought out that Americans tend to eat when they are doing something or watching TV and just eat on “auto pilot”. So they just eat everything that is on their plate whether they need it or not. I have to agree with this.

4) Yogurt. This is a staple in the French diet and is highly recommended for all sorts of reasons. She even talks about making your own yogurt which I found is VERY easy!

5) One of my favorite points is that French women generally don’t exercise. They walk. They walk everywhere and take the stairs every time they can. Unfortunately I’m not able to do that at my work (nor walk to work) but I am certainly going to start just walking more often everywhere I can.

Well yesterday I decided, you might want to sit down for this, that I’m going to start drinking…. my coffee black. *gasp* I put a lot of sugar in my coffee and it really is not needed. So today I started with Half of the sugar I usually put in my coffee and sat and relaxed while I drank it and it wasn’t bad at all! I’m going to drink it like this for a week and then cut it in half again, until I’m totally weened off.

I’m pretty excited about this book. Maybe because its about the French, or maybe because what I’ve read so far makes sense to me!

Maybe to complete the transformation, the next book I read will be Learning the French language. :)

The Remodel (lots of pics)

Yes it has been awhile since I told you about our kitchen remodel. I’ve taken lots of pictures of the remodel process but honestly didn’t think of posting it online! So now here I am catching you all up.

Well the very first thing we did was drywall. This was my honey’s first time doing it and he did pretty good. The room that we worked on is Reba’s room. It is a small room that is to the left when you first walk in the house. It probably is considered a closet. But its a walk in closet so we decided to make it into Reba’s room. Its perfect for her to just come in from outside and go straight into her kennel when its muddy and still be with us. Since its a girls room we even painted it pink!!! lol

Drywall needs to be done

My honey done with the drywall

My honey painting it pink

She LOVES it… of course. :)

So for her room My honey got an idea from HGTV to make our own piece of art for Reba. He wanted to cut out of wood her name. So I was the one who drew it out and he cut it out. It was really fun to do it together.

If you look at that A you would see it a bit different. My honey loves The University of Arizona. So his request was that the A would look like the A from their logo.

I think I did a pretty good job.

Then I got better before pictures of my kitchen…

THIS is my pantry cabinet.

Doesn’t it suck?

I HATE this thing… probably the most hated thing in my kitchen. But now its GONE! YAY!

And here how everything looks as of this morning… lots of work done already!

When you first come in you see this big beam and we’ve sanded it down and now are going to re-stain it. Its going to be GORGEOUS!

Does that girl in the mirror look fat?

What is body image? From the website http://bodyimagetherapy.com/index.html they said “It is the self-image we have in our mind’s eye. It is affected by relationships we have and have had with our caregivers and peers, all of our life experiences, and how we think others perceive us. It is changeable”
We women go through our lives feeling like we need to look like barbie dolls with just the right curves. With just the right size of breasts and even the right size butt. We are judged at the size we are. Even the non judging type of people, myself included, judge others for their size and especially themselves. I think we are the worse critics on ourselves. We think that the world itself is holding us to certain standards. (I’m not picking on men or leaving them out… but this blog is more about my own self realization.)

Honeslty what comes to mind is the poor battle Jessica Simpson is having. YES she is in the spotlight and yes she makes oogles of money more than all of us put together. But she is still a person. And all the talk about how much weight she has gained is horrible. She is a woman and the truth is, we are our own worse enemy. I feel bad for her having to deal with her own insecurites, which I’m sure she has, as well as the public picking on her. This really got me thinking.

As you all know I’ve been trying to lose weight. I’ve always felt I should be back at what I was at the age of 18. If I were to go back to 125lbs I would have to lose 55lbs. But do I need to lose ALL that weight to feel better about myself? Is it just my body that needs to change or my opinion of my body?

I’m not saying I don’t need to lose weight. I can already tell my body is getting health problems because of my weight. I am hyperglycemic and diabetes does run in the family so just for health concerns I need to lose weight.

But the thing is I’m still pretty fit for my weight. I do compare myself to other my weight and they are 2 or 4 dress sizes larger than me. I have always been curvy with large breasts, butt and smaller waist. (even at 125lbs!!) and a lot of guys like that. But even when I weighed that much I thought I was “fat” and was always on diets trying to lose weight. The problem there was my self image NOT my weight. Now it may be a little of both but I know that no matter what I lose it will not be enough.

These few months have been hard, but also a learning experience. I know what makes me over eat, I know what it is that causes me to gain weight. But the most important lesson so far is I know how to MAINTAIN my weight. I may have not lost all the weight I’ve wanted to lose by now but I’ve learned a lot. This is not a 3 month diet just to go back to what I was doing. It is to start a healthier lifestyle away from the fast food places, learning how to drink more water, more walks and workouts.

I expected to be almost done with my venture by now but I just realize that is will never end. In the end I need to have a healthier lifestyle as well as a healthier body image.

A New Kitchen!

Yay. I get to remodel my kitchen! My kitchen now is a complete mess. I don’t have any storage, no pantry. I have lots of open shelving that just gets cluttered but isn’t useful for storing anything. There are 3 different heights of the base cabinets and even walls missing cabinets that shouldn’t be missing any.  I don’t have a dishwasher and my microwave takes up most of my countertop area.

So for my “real job” I work in a remodeling store and we happen to have cabinets that came out of display. These cabinets so happen to fit almost perfectly in my home. I only have to order a few cabinets and also new countertop. My honey and I approached our landlords and they were happy with the idea of remodeling. So it is going to happen. YAY!

So I thought I’d share with you some of the first set of pictures of the BEFORE part. We will be tearing out the whole kitchen and moving all the furniture in the living room and painting everything. We are going to re trim all the doorways to match a big beautiful beam that we will be re staining too.

You’ll have to forgive me for these photos… they were just in my photos collection so they aren’t true “before” pictures.

I’m SO glad to be getting rid of the cloth door there. That whole wall will be getting cabinets on it. Which will add SO much space.

Yesterday my honey got so excited about this remodel that he wanted to cut off our laminate overhang that we have that we are getting rid of. Again I don’t have a true before picture but I did take one afterwards.

One of my hiding spots (which my honey fondly calls them “the abyss”) is uncovered! I’m supposed to get rid of all the abysses and THAT alone will be a ton of work.

I will be taking better before pictures here and then posting all the updates here so stay tuned. As for what my kitchen WILL look like. Well because I work on the CAD program at my job I was able to generate pictures of what my house will look like. Here it is…

Birds Eye View:

Oh and here are the colors… the cabinet color is the dark brown and then you see the laminate color as well as the paint colors. We haven’t picked out the stain for the beam yet but when we do I’ll be sure to share it too. I have a new respect for homeowners that remodel. I’ve been doing this job for 9 years and I never realized just HOW hard it is to pick out colors. We’ve been trying to decide this for weeks now and we finally did! Aren’t these colors great? :)

The top paint color is going in the kitchen and the bottom paint color is going in the living room/dining room. And of course the laminate chip is on the right.

Yay… (again) :) Remember stay tuned for more updates on my remodel.