Remember this post? The one where I announced that I was cutting out bad habits and going back to the gym to fit into this dress?

Yah. That one.

While I have been Diet Coke, Caffeine, aspartame, and carbonation-free for 4 weeks now, I am sucking a major duck at this working out and weight loss thing.

I think that doing all of those things at once has really been too much to chew.

Granted, I have been struggling with stuff lately, so it seems that everything is a little much to chew.

Not that I haven’t had some progress in the weight loss area, I have.

I have lost almost 6 lbs.

I just…ehem…gained it all back.

(Blush)

Since I had a weight loss deadline, I REALLY should have opted to not try to quell my chain Diet Coke drinking because when I gave it up, my mouth started freaking out with boredom and screeching like the bass-voiced alien plant from Little Shop of Horrors, “FEED ME!”

While I haven’t been horrible about WHAT I eat, I have been bad about how much and how often I eat.

The result is that I have a Diet Coke-free body, but a performance in 18 days and I still don’t fit into my freaking dress.

It called for drastic measures.

My friend, Michelle and I signed up for a month long “Bootcamp” at our gym.

We had our first session this morning at 9am. Which felt like 8am due to daylight savings time. (In case you are wondering? 8 am to a night person like me feels like 3 am to you morning-type people who like to kick the rooster’s ass in the morning for being slovenly and lazy.)

Bootcamp is an hour long session, three days a week and it is HARD.

My friend, Chelle is quite a strong, tough chick and SHE deemed it difficult, so you can imagine what that means for me.

There are lots of people in the class and you can pretty much sort us into three different categories.

First, there is the UBER-fit category. That would be 2 or 3 people that are the type of hard-working, high accomplished people that I look at with a mixture of rabid jealousy and admiration.

Then there are those in the middle. People that are pretty fit but are not sprinting around between sets to keep their heart rate up and doing pushups with their pinkies and one foot suspended in the air like the uber-fit category.

Then?

There is me and Doris.

Doris is a very sweet woman in her 70’s and when we were sent on two “Warm up” laps around the track, we quickly fell behind everyone else. (That may have something to do with me not exercising in a year, but I’m not sure.).

As the uber-fit crowd breezed passed us, Doris just sighed and shook her head.

I decided to take the “Fighting underdog” approach.

“It’s just you and me, Doris! Let’s give them hell!”

Luckily, Doris has a good sense of humor and didn’t grimace overly when I cursed. (Memo to me: Don’t curse around sweet, little, old ladies you have just met. It’s insufferably rude. Sigh.)

Sadly, my tough aspirations didn’t carry much weight with the overall results.

We came in last in everything.

To be frank, a lot of the time Doris was handing my flabby ass to me on a platter. I wouldn’t want to arm wrestle her any time soon. It would probably be a humiliating loss.

Still…I did it.

I made it through the hour.

Even though I came home, ATE A DONUT, and curled up on my bed and slept for FOUR STRAIGHT HOURS in a deep, drooling coma, I still made it through and I am proud of it.

I go back on Wednesday.

I’ll let you know if Doris kicks my ass again.

I’ll try to work on not repeating that whole “Donut and coma” thing.

Sigh…

I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the comments and in emails wondering how abstaining from Diet Coke is going.

It freaking sucks.

However, I truly expected to say “It sucks a duck and I want to lay down every moment of the day and die from the pain”, so I guess  you can say that it is going better than anticipated.  I don’t have headaches anymore, but I am a lot more tired and unfocused and BLAH.

I’m Linus without his blanket and I miss it with the power of a thousand burning suns. In fact, I have a perpetual urge to tackle and make out with anyone carrying a Diet Coke just to leech off a tiny bit of its melodious essence for my poor, deprived taste buds.

Sigh.

As for the rest of it?  The gym and the dieting and thus?

I am not sure how I did it, but I have lost three pounds this week.

You can see my confusion when I show you a break down:

Diet Coke: 0

Caffeine: 0

Gym: 2

Calories: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND+1

As you can  see, the Diet Coke and caffeine are going well. I have not cheated even ONCE and OH, HOW I FRIGGIN’ WANTED TO!   In fact there were two moments in particular where the stress and anxiety of the moment about drove me over the edge, but I didn’t cheat. Yesterday was one of those times, but as I have another post waiting all about it, I’ll hold off. 

The rest of it is not going so spectacularly.

I have only been to the gym twice.  My neck is out and I need to go to the chiropractor. I’m not proud of it, but it’s better than nothing.

The eating has been the WORST. 

Not only have I had activity after activity that is food oriented this week, I am also dealing with how not having soda is impacting my eating.  I was a “Chain Diet Coke Drinker”.  I almost always had one one me sipping all the live long day.  My mouth is lonely without Diet Coke.  It feels like it has nothing to do. I have never felt so snacky and hungry in my life.  My husband swears this will go away in time, but I’m not so sure. 

Granted, I have tried to not snack on bad things, but I have gone over in calories a lot this week.

It didn’t help that I think I pretty much consumed an entire week of calorie alotment in one meal because of “Food Day” with my brother.  I love Food Day. We bring the whole family and cook for a crowd. Even though it usually wipes us out, the bro and I always have the best time.

For those who don’t know, I love to cook and so does my eldest brother.  We’re acutally pretty darn good at it as well. A couple of years ago we started having Food Day, which pretty much entails us picking a theme (like Thai, Italian, Japanese, and Indian) and creating really challenging dishes together. 

The theme this time was “Country French” and I have to say that it was probably one of the best we have ever done. Wanna see?

We started with Baked Brie en Croute: (A wheel of brie cheese smothered with thick raspberry compote (Jam) and buttered pecans and wrapped and baked in puff pastery and eaten with crackers.

It’s pretty much a party for your mouth, people.)

Whenever we make dishes, we often play around with the recipe and make it our own.  Usually, we end up majorly increasing the fat content which puts me in 7th heavan because, like Ina Garten, I am a firm believer in the awesomeness of cream, butter and heavy cream.

Mmm…

The main dish was my brother’s own recipe of Cassoulet. Cassoulet is a bean cassarole with a breaded stuffing top. This dish takes forever to make because you have to roast a duck before hand and soak the beans a long time. There are a lot of steps that make it complicated, but it is so worth it. 

 With this, we added roasted duck, sausage, bacon and pork to the beans and also sauteed the bread lightly in duck fat.  We then decided that the dish wasn’t heart attack worthy enough so as an added topper, we took the duck skin and crisp fried them into cracklings, which we broke up and added to the stuffing.

I think it must have had eleventyhundred calories per tablespoon, but it was sooooo yummy.

To close off the dinner we served chocolate souffles.

My brother was afraid of making them, and it was a wonderful opportunity to show him how easy they are to make.

 There are some easy tricks to making a good chocolate souflee.

Bake individual souffle’s instead of a big one. It’s much easier to tell when it’s done. Also, triple coat your ramikens. Butter them then refrigerate. Butter them again and then coat the inside with sugar.  The batter adheres to the sugar and helps it climb to puffiness perfection.

Since most of the rise of the souffle depends on egg whites, fold them in gently. Don’t beat your batter to death. It needs to be fluffy and light.

Buy the best ingredients you can get your hands on. There are few ingredients in a souffle, so it is important that they are top quality. Splurge on a vanilla bean and use high quality bittersweet chocolate. It is worth it.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN TO PEAK.  You could collapse the whole thing.

And last?

Serve right out of the oven. As in, pronto. The more time the souffles have in the open air, the more they deflate. It doesn’t make it any less tasty, though.  If it should happen, just say that you are having individual molton chocolate cakes. No one will know the difference.

I also recommend trying your hand at a Creme Anglaise sauce.  (Again, best of ingrediants! Use a vanilla bean. You will never go back.) When your soufflees are done, make a deep hole in the middle with your spoon and pour it in. I would have loved to put some fresh berries on here, too.

It’s to die for.

As you can tell, Saturday was a load of delicious fun. 

Sunday ended up being a big, fat headache. 

THAT is a story for another day.

There are a couple of things going on in my life that are huge.

I can’t talk about the life-changing thing.

(Sorry, I hate it when people bring up things they can’t talk about on their blogs, but I needed to say something about it because I need to talk about it in SOME fashion or I would explode. This blog is also the journal of my life and I need to record it in some small way. Let’s just say that it is both necessary and sucks a duck, ok?)

I CAN talk about a couple of things that I am starting TODAY that are making me freak, though.

Today I start going to the gym.

This means that I am also on a 1,200 to 1,400 calorie a day regime.

Why?

I DO need to do it for my health. I always feel better when I’m working out.

BUT.

My primary motivations boils down to vanity and necessity, my friends.

I put back on some of the pounds that I lost last year to fit into this gorgeous (And custom-tailored) concert dress for my solo performance in “The Messiah”.

I am reprising that role again this year and if I don’t lose those pounds before the end of March I will be singing in front of an orchestra and audience buck nekkid.

(And I would really not like the audience’s eyes to start bleeding, so it really is best for all that I just lose the weight.)

My dress used to fit like THIS:

Currently, my dress fits like this.

I’m not shelling out hundreds of bucks for a new dress, so I suppose the only thing to do is get my heiny to the gym. Don’t worry, I will be safe and responsible. This is not extreme dieting. I still have a lot habits from doing this last year that have stuck, so I am hoping that it is easier.

AND!!!

As of today, I am also taking a break from Diet Coke.

(Yes, those were the sounds of Satan making ice cubes down in the formerly fiery pits of hell.)

No, I have not been abducted by aliens and given a mind transplant and an anal probe. No, my blog has not been hacked. No, this is not a vast right-wing conspiracy.

I.am.doing.this.

For the next 47 days I will attempt to be “Diet Coke Free”. (I can’t bring myself to say “I am giving it up forever”, so I’m just saying I am going to abstain until after my performances are over.)

I don’t know if I am completely crazy or totally brave.

To quote Victoria Beckham, “This is MAJOR.”

I love Diet Coke.

I drink a LOT OF IT A DAY. So much that it is both nauseating to normal people and embarrassing to me. So much that I can’t talk about exact amounts. It is my security, my friend, and my constant companion. I can always rely on it to be there.

It is probably my #2 obsession and addiction and I am going to feel like I’m missing a limb without it in my life.

Not that you need any convincing but just in case you are not grasping the “Bigness” of this decision, see photographic evidence:

Sigh.

Diet Coke, how I shall MISS THEE!

The next few days are not going to be pretty my friends, no not at ALL. I’m giving up Diet Coke, junk food, a lot of my non-junky-but-still-really-not-conducive-to-weight-loss-foods and there’s other stuff going on in my life.

I feel like Linus from Charlie Brown and I am giving up my blankie, but it isn’t just one blankie, it feels more like ELEVENTYHUNDRED BLANKIES.

I hope I don’t totally fall on my ass in front of you all. If I do, I will fess up. While I want to succeed, I’m sure there will be some falling off the wagon, but I need to be accountable to someone.

I have taken measurements and before shots, but I am just too wiped out tonight to post them.

Wish me luck.

Better than luck, if any of you have any low-calorie foods, recipes, snacks or work out tips, let me know.

I am going to need all the help I can get.

P.S.

I know that there are many of you who have significant weight struggles and are probably going ‘Oh, WAH for her, the big whiner!” I get that, I really do. Think of it more this way…I am more frightened about giving up the biggest obsessions/addictions in my life than any amount of weight I have to lose or exercise I have to go through. I need to be accountable to someone. I am not meaning to seem like a whiner or seem like my plight sucks because I have 6 weeks to drop a small amount of weight, really I don’t.

Thank you for understanding.

**Edit-Or shall I say “Tons of edits”. This post has changed quite a bit from the original. I MUST call attention to the fact that I am also wearing my NEW GLASSES in this posts photo. Yup. I went with the “Naughty Librarian” pair. They rule. Now, I really must work on not tinkering with posts once they are up. You poor, pestered, feed readers! What I must do to you! I can’t help it, it’s like picking at a scab. Walk away from the keyboard, Loralee. Now. You can do it!

I know many of you will run shrieking from the length of this post. For those less drama-infused, you will just scroll down and let your eye take in a few of the more pertinent words in each paragraph. This is more a post written for me to look back on in future years and (Hopefully) measure my progress. You could just skip it, but you will be missing a ROCKING photo of me in sweats and tiara.

Don’t let the title of this post scare you. I’m not going to stand up on a desk and go all “O, Captain! My Captain!” on y’all, but I do want to talk about the phrase made famous by cardigan-clad Robin Williams. Continue reading →