The Steel City

It's been over a month since I've written, but it's been filled with a lot of life.

About a month ago mom & I bought a book about the Paleo diet because I have two friends who swear by it/the Crossfit workouts. I honestly couldn't get past the first 30 pages or so, so I started skipping around & didn't like the book at all. I just could not stop getting annoyed by the author & his style of writing/story telling. My mom read most of it (I think?) but she skipped the entire introduction of how he came to find the lifestyle & gave other "success stories" so maybe that was the key to getting through the book. We made a pork roast recipe with a lot of vegetables & it was good but a little bland because basically it's a "cave man" diet: you only eat things that were available to the cave men, because they apparently had low health/diet-related problems, cavities, etc. I'm a pessimist by nature, & I don't know why that is, but it makes me feel like the whole thing is hog wash.

I don't know why it's so complicated, when in reality it should be simple: eat healthy & exercise (& say your prayers!). But there's so much information out there that may or may not be true that it's confusing to people like me who haven't figured out the best permanent life diet (not 'lose-20-pounds-in-4-weeks "diets"). IS diary bad for you? Why is sugar so bad - is any of it good? If meat is supposed to be good for you, should we still not eat it since most animals are injected with hormones & other things on factory farms, and free-range product is a thing of the past? Why is chocolate Silk so deliciously addicting?

So I don't think the Paleo lifestyle is for me since it's primarily about meat & other than chicken, I don't like to eat a lot of meat.

I moved to Pittsburgh. I'm still getting settled in but so far I really like the Anthropologie up here & all of my managers/coworkers have been great. I don't get a lot of hours so I've been looking for a second job & applied to 11 places last week but haven't heard anything back from any of them, which is disheartening. I've spent the majority of my days or nights off of work looking all over the internet for openings since most places are solely online applications these days.

A great thing about the new place is that our house is at the bottom of a hill (though not entirely unexpected since Pittsburgh is basically just a city of hills). So I can get an easy workout just by walking/jogging up & down the hills. I brought my bike but I don't have a helmet or know my way around well so I haven't taken it out. I don't think that I've lost any weight but I feel like I'm in better shape so that's good! My scale broke during the move, it kept coming up at 88.7lbs no matter what I put on it so I had to get rid of it.

Jonathan gave me a free week pass to the Urban Active gym & I like it so far! I basically just stay in the movie room. When I get another paycheck or two I'm signing up at the gym but right now I can't afford it since I didn't work for almost 2 weeks before I moved I haven't had a paycheck in about a month.

A problem I'm having is finding good music to workout to if I'm not at the gym in the movie room. I typically like folk-indie-calm music in general so my ipod doesn't have a lot of upbeat songs on it other than some ABBA (love!), 30 seconds to mars, and a few others. I have some Follie music which is a french girl who sings in english but it's basically dancing music so it works for me but I haven't put it on my ipod yet.

Since I haven't written in so long this just turned into a rambling session but that's basically been my life for the last month! Reading about diets & health, moving, working, looking for jobs, & working out when I can!

Tired of Excuses.

It's truth-telling time. Other than my no-fast food agreement, the last two weeks have had basically no action going on in the fitness & health department but it's been full of stressful drama! I've lost 2 lbs but if you remember my last post about my chemical imbalance of not knowing when to stop eating strawberries & nutella, it turns out I DID gain the 3 lbs I'd lost back. So now I'm up a pound from then. 

I'll start from the beginning:

Throughout the last two weeks of July I was moving out of my apartment back into my parents' house little by little, so I was only staying overnight in the apartment about two or three times a week. One day my landlord called me & asked what belongings I had in the basement because they were cleaning it out before the new tenants moved in upstairs. The basement is set up to be another apartment but it's not fixed up so it's only used for laundry with a lot of spare rooms, & over the years tenants have left everything from computer monitors to armchairs. I told him the only thing that was mine was my laundry in front of the washer & dryer that I was planning on doing when I got back. I had one of those big 3-sectioned laundry hampers. I say HAD because when I got home the next day & went downstairs to do laundry IT WAS GONE. I freaked out & called my landlord & found out they had thrown it away! One section held clothes that were all together worth about $300, including clothes from my job, Anthropologie. (A job that depends on me wearing their latest trends, no less.) The middle section held sheets, two standard shams & King shams that were about $150 & the third section held my duvet cover that was about $200 when I got it. That duvet cover was perfect! It was a pretty nude cream shade that transitioned through all the seasons. But I digress.

It took a couple days to get that all straightened out with the landlord who was ignoring my emails & calls so I had to go there in person & it won't be taken care of until the end of the month when I see how much of my deposit I get back.

Ironically, the stress of this & other situations involving an old roommate, working, & finalizing school made me want to just crawl in bed & sleep. So I did. It didn't make me feel better. I could tell I'd feel better if I did something active, but at the same time I didn't have the energy for it so it was a slothful cycle of laziness. I understand now that it's going to take more than just not eating fast food to get into truly healthy habits & break this cycle of excuses I've been using ever since I started college! Hence...

I HAVE A (FUTURE) PERSONAL TRAINER. The situation is perfect but dangerous. It's perfect because my trainer will always be there for me for support! It's dangerous because the trainer is also my future roommate & I won't have a buffer zone for my consumption of entire packs of Oreos in one sitting.

That's right, one of my future roommates Jonathan is a personal trainer at the Urban Active gym I was already planning on joining since it's so close to Anthropologie! I figure by making this commitment to not only myself but publicly with a blog, my family, & my roommates, I'm sure to succeed in making some life long changes. Not to mention getting a rockin' bod by my 23rd birthday in December.

A chubby girl can dream, right?

Moving Trucks & Meat-Eating Vegetarians

First, in unrelated news:  I have something dreadful to share. The Youtube channel Goinggoldenagain, which housed every episode of the Golden Girls in order of their seasons, was terminated a few days ago. I'm not exaggerating when I say I watched that show every day, though it mostly plays in the background while I get ready for work or while I'm getting ready for bed at night. I don't have regular T.V., only DVDs, so it was the one part of my day in Cincinnati I watched "normal" T.V. I even timed my workout "stations" in relation to the clips of the show (3 clips for each episode)! I guess this means I have to break down & buy those witty gems on DVD & find a new show to play in the background of my day-to-day activities. 

& Life Goes On.

This week I've been moving back into my parent's house an hour away from Cincinnati because I have to stay there for a month before my house is available in Pittsburgh. In Ohio, like other places, the weather's been in the mid-to-high 90's with high humidity for the last week or two - meaning after I pack one box up in my car I'm exhausted. There's nothing like moving an entire apartment to make you realize how out of shape you truly are, & the excessive heat doesn't make it any easier. Tomorrow morning my brother & Dad are coming down at 7am to pack up as much furniture as possible, & it'll probably be around 80 degrees by then. 

I got Nicki Minaj's cd Pink Friday & it's a good one to work out to, but I keep leaving my iPod in the opposite place I'm staying (apartment/parents' house) so I haven't put it to use except for when doing sit-ups & push-ups when I can play it on my laptop. 

I lost another 3lbs but I think I gained it all back today. If I ever get married I'm adding something about monitoring my strawberry/nutella intake somewhere in the vows. Once I start I can't stop. Also, the "Summer of No Fast Food" has been surprisingly easy... a little too easy after the first week or so. I need something else to work at. Coke is the next logical step... but I don't know if I can go there yet.

The other day I took Nissa to Target because she needed to get new flip flops but they didn't have ANY that weren't for kids. I didn't really need anything except a lint roller but to make the trip/gas usage worth it I walked around the store & walked by a book called "The Beauty Detox" that I ended up buying because it's an easy read & I was curious. It's made me think about some things:

• I'm fairly certain being vegetarian is the best route anyone can take with their diet. Humans don't seem to be able to naturally obtain meat like other animals: we don't have true claws or sharp teeth & have always needed to rely on man-made tools to hunt (the "sharp" teeth we have are best used for hard nuts/veggies/fruits). Plus humans are one of the only mammals that don't have the enzyme uricase, which breaks down uric acid/purine (a muscle protein). So from what I understand, every time we meat it means our kidneys & intestines have to work double time to excrete the uric acid, which produces excessive toxins in our bodies. Again, I don't know everything there is to know about this, just things i've picked up while reading various magazines/books/the trustful internet. There's also the fact to consider that our DNA is most similar to the chimpanzee, an omnivore... however, the gorilla is an herbivore & I like them better, anyway so let's just all agree that the gorilla has the right idea about this vegetarian thing.
• Even though I've been thinking about it, I don't know how to act on it. I love me some turkey club sandwiches & chicken... but as far as meat eating goes, that's about the extent of it for me. Every few months I have a cheeseburger or steak but it's pretty rare. Is it too much of a stretch to cut out all meat & dairy products? Will I make exceptions like on holidays? Vegetarian except "once a month" like I did with Coke? After my "Summer of No Fast Food" should it be "Meat-Free Autumn"? Remind me to ask Betty, Kelsey & Alana how they get through the holidays without honey-baked ham. 

I'm not done with the book yet so I won't discuss it too much, I'll just mention that it goes into the topic of gravity-centered colonics but it's currently 1:30am, moving starts again at 7am, I'm in desperate need of a shower, & I don't feel like getting into that uncomfortable scenario tonight. 

the beauty detox solution by kimberly snyder, as brought

to you by my photobooth & cynical yet intrigued glance.

yes, that's a pilot precise v5 pen clipped to my collar.

 nutella & strawberries: my downfall 

The End of an Era

Last night I went to the Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2 midnight premiere - it was amazing. Beforehand Nissa & I celebrated with a Harry Potter party consisting of watching the movies while eating goodies. In an attempt to mimic a Hogwarts Feast both cheaply & quickly, I made a pot roast & bought a cheesecake to decorate. Nissa bought ingredients for butterbeer & pumpkin juice but we only made the butterbeer which was delicious! Just cream soda with butterscotch syrup. I guess what I'm trying to say is... yesterday my diet went out the window & I won't be weighing myself for quite a while. I'm back on track today, but mostly just because we ate so much yesterday Nissa & I both had Harry Potter Hangovers.

"butterbeer"

"deathly hallows cheesecake"