My Quest for the perfect (no) Sugar Cookie...

Part of my New Year's resolution was to eat better, right?  And as I began to eat healthier foods that didn't have so much sugar in them, I began to experience a horrible psychological withdrawal from the sugar, right?  I wasn't impressed with the withdrawal symptoms I was experience.  Give me caffeine withdrawal headaches any day of the week.  The constant flip-flop of emotions, not so much.  Since I'm already detoxing from processed sugar, I have decided to cut it out all together.  

On Saturday, the Roommate, the Momma and I stopped in at William Sonoma where, upon entering, I made the most glorious discovery:

Yes, dearies, that is (child sized) Star Wars apron and Star Wars cookie cutters.  The squees of glee and the happy dance I did in the middle of William Sanoma might have embarrassed me if I had any pride.  Thankfully, I don't, so I made quite a spectacle of myself.  

You know what this means, right?  Nerd Cookies!!!!  Damn, you George Lucas...

Armed with my Nerd Baking supplies, I set off on a mission to create the perfect (no) sugar cookie.  I did not know the peril that awaited me. I thought it would be a brilliant idea to use Splenda as a substitute for sugar.  After all, it does say right on the package that it can be substituted cup for cup with sugar.  What they don't tell you is that it is also twice as absorbent as sugar and as such will make your dough extremely dry and unmanageable.  As such, the first batch of dough was crap.  Oy.

After regrouping and having the Roommate research sugar free recipes for me online, we noticed that people who were baking with Splenda were only using 3/4 the amount of Splenda when substituting for sugar.  My recipe called for 1c sugar, so I substituted 3/4c Splenda instead and added 1-2 tbsp warm water to make the dough less dry.  If we're being honest, I probably could have used a 1/2c and it would have been fine.  

Once the dough had been chilled, it was difficult to beat it into submission.  Just ask Jenny.  I coerced her into rolling and cutting so I could play some Dance Central.  The end result (before baking) looked like this:

  

The dough was still a bit dry, but much more manageable than the previous batch.  The taste wasn't terribly bad, either.  However, the icing was an entirely different challenge.  It called for 4 1/2c powdered sugar, so I used 3 1/2 c Splenda, which was not enough.  I'm usually a fan of Splenda, but the taste of the icing was just not...good.  It wasn't horrible and when it on a cookie, it balances out, but as a stand alone icing, not so much.  

After the cookies were baked, the Roommate, Jenny and I put our color theory skills to good use.  You don't know how difficult it is to get Boba Fett green when you're starting with a stark white base!  Bah!  In the end, they turned out pretty well, though:

I will definitely be experimenting with different types of icing.  I just can't get behind the Splenda-fied royal icing.  

In fact, I may go entirely icing free as Jenny suggested dying the dough instead of icing the cookies.  Another thought would be to create a color wash from the food coloring and apply it with a brush.  

The (no) sugar cookies definitely need more exploration, but all-in-all it was not a horrible experience.

   

 

Dance Central Rocks My Bod...

I know my last few post have been on the negative side, so I am going to post something positive:  I LOVE DANCE CENTRAL 2!!!

The best part is that I'm having so much fun dancing that I'm not even aware of the intensity of the workout I'm getting.  And it is intense!  I've been playing for almost three weeks, and I have already seen a change in my body.  My abs are beginning to resurface and I'm losing mass in my lower body, while maintaining my weight.  My calf muscles are gorgeous and for the first time in my life, I might end up with slender ankles!  In just three weeks, the cellulite on my thighs and bum has decreased drastically.  These are things I've struggled with since I stopped dancing for two hours a day when I went off to college.  It feels good to be able to look at myself in the mirror and see and almost dimple free butt!  I'm accomplishing the sculpting and toning I set out to do at a much faster pace than what I expected; and I am stoked!  

Now, the trick is to keep pushing through even when I reach the inevitable plateau that I reach.  Eventually, my body is going to get used to my current level of activity.  Now, I just have to figure out a way to vary my workout with something I will be able to stick with.  I know I need to add strength training into my routine, but I don't have access to anyone with knowledge of the proper techniques who can keep me motivated.  I don't do well when left to my own devices.  I really need a partner who will keep me motivated and hold me accountable.  Any takers?

Your Shape: Fitness De-evolved

Aaaaannnnnd I'm officially done with Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012.  I simply do not like the way it picks and chooses how it wants to read my body movements.  It is beyond frustrating when I am doing exactly what my "coach" is doing, but I'm still making no progress.

I was correct in my original assumption that there are no tutorials.   I thought, "Surely, surely there is a tutorial hidden away somewhere, and I'm just not looking in the right spot."  Nope.  I looked up several reviews of the game today and that seemed to be a common complaint.  Why, why, why if you have a game that is dependent on the accuracy of a person's movement and completion of specific exercises would you not have a tutorial section for each workout?!  Not every person out there is going to just be able to see a move the couple of times the "coach" does it during the three second countdown and be able to perform the moves effectively.  Some of these exercises could really hurt you if you're not executing them properly.  

Another thing that bothers me is this:  If half of the content has you facing away from the screen to perform the exercises, perhaps you need to have a graphic at the top of the screen that shows what the move is supposed to look like, but keep the person facing the screen.  Or, oh, I don't know...SHOW THE PERSON WHAT THE HECK THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING BEFORE YOU THROW THEM TO THE WOLVES!!!!

And what is with the attitude I get when I walk away to get a glass of water?  I kid you not, the chick says, "Hey!  Where do you think you're going?"  When I've just completed a portion of a workout that I was under-graded for because your system's interface can't  read my body effectively, the last thing I want is sass from some snarky AI.

This could be a really great game once they get the interface figured out, but until then, I'm not going to bother with it anymore.  Unfortunately, it will be going back to GameStop this weekend.

Lesson learned:  Read reviews before investing in a game that might make you want to put a hand weight through your TV.

Your Shape 2012: Out of Shape...

I hate going to the gym.  I feel awkward working on an eliptical machine next to another person and not talking to them.  Working out from home is also preferable, because when I screw up, no one is around to snicker and point.  This is one of the reasons I adore JARVIS (my Kinect).  The Kinect fitness games have the ability to read your body's movements and tell you what you are doing wrong vs a video where you could be doing the entire routine incorrectly and you would never know because you can't see yourself performing the moves.

In my quest for the perfect at home fitness routine, I exchanged Zumba Fitness for Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012, hoping it would be a better fit.  It was.  The first night was a challenge, because I had to figure out how everything worked.  The Roommate got a kick out of it and has already threatened to record one of my workouts for YouTube.  Why?  Because I have taken to bickering and arguing with my "personal trainer" while huffing and puffing through my strength training interval workouts..  I'm sorry but when you say, "Let's do such and such,"  I am automatically going to hate you a little bit because you aren't doing a darned thing.  I'm the one doing all the work, so you can cut that "we" crap right out.

As much as I bellyache about the trainer, it is nice to have her there coaching me on.  She tells me when my arms aren't doing what they're supposed to and when my legs should be closer or further apart.  She also tells me when I've gone out of rhythm with my "coach."

Things I have discovered about myself while playing Your Shape:  1.)  I am more out of shape than I previously thought  2.)  My "personal trainer" is trying to kill me.  3.)  I hate interval workouts!  Don't get me wrong.  I will keep doing them, but I feel myself die a little more with every circuit. 4.)  Push ups and fast mountain climb are the devil.  I can do 12 once, but when I'm doing an interval workout and get to the second set, I need a break in the middle.  I'm sure I've made more discoveries as I've gone along, but those are the ones that stand out the most. 

As much as I pretend to hate the Your Shape, there are really only two problems I've found with it so far:  1.) There doesn't seem to be a tutorial where you can get the moves down before you have to perform them in an actual workout.  2.) The game isn't geared towards midget people who want to get in shape.  One of the warm up activities is called "Wall Breaker."  I love this!  It's exactly what it sounds like.  You break blocks to burn calories and earn points.  On the medium setting, however, it want you to break the lower blocks by raising your knee across your body at a 45 degree angle.  At 4'10", the game doesn't read my knee raises.  This is easily corrected by just kicking out with my foot much like an Oompa Loompa or a member of the Lollipop Guild, but I feel I am missing out on what could be a decent workout for my oblique muscles.  That is somewhat disappointing, but all of the other features make up for it.

My schedule has been insane this week, so I haven't been able to explore Your Fitness nearly as much as I would have liked, but that is the plan for this weekend.  I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with JARVIS. 

Neil Gaiman is my anti-drug

Unfortunately, with huge life changes, things left unsaid and feelings you buried beneath a layer of whatever begin to rise to the surface like zombies.  You thought they were dead and gone and BAM!  You are running for your life, trying to decide the best way to defend yourself...from yourself or how from how badly someone else has hurt you.  Machete, sawed-off shotgun or both?  I think my metaphor got away from me.  Zombies tend to do that...In any case, I read this last night and found that it resonated with me.  

  

"Have you ever been in love?  Horrible isn't it?  It makes you so vulnerable.  It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.  You build up all these defenses.  You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you.  They didn't ask for it.  They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.  Love takes hostages.  It gets inside you.  It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.  It hurts.  Not just in the imagination.  Not just in the mind.  It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.  Nothing should be able to do that.  Especially not love.  I hate love." --Neil Gaiman

The article I read on sugar withdrawal equated it with drug addiction.  We eat sugary things because they give us a sense of euphoria.  They're comfort foods.  What woman hasn't indulged in a carton of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia after a breakup?  It's all well and good when you have a steady supply of sugar.  You don't even think about, because it's just food you enjoy.  Once you take refined sugar out of the equation, you are left without that emotional safety net.  It sends you into a spiral of crazy.  Trust me.  Been there.  Without it, you are left to process through the feelings that you covered with a pint...or two...of ice cream or a bag full of Godiva Milk Chocolate and Caramel Gems.  Those feelings never went away.  They were waiting like sneaky, hateful ninjas so they can sabotage any attempt you have made to get yourself together.  

I'm not sure what emotions I'm processing, but since the Neil Gaiman quote struck a nerve, I can make an educated guess about one of them.  My last breakup was just the icing on the huge-layer cake of suck that my life was for the last three years.  With everything else that was going on in my life, I didn't have time to have a mental breakdown, so everything got squished down and compartmentalized.  But you know what?  I'm really angry about it.  Furious.  And that's okay.  It's okay to be angry because the situation warranted a certain amount of righteous anger.  There is also hurt.  A terrible hurt.  A hurt that would be crippling if I let it.  But I am made of sterner stuff.  I will soldier on as I always have.  He was just a boy.  A stupid, beautiful, wonderful boy who carved out a place in my heart and soul, and thoughtlessly left those places raw and bleeding when he went.

Thank you, Neil Gaiman, for living in my head.  

Dancing Queen

I bought myself a Christmas present this year.  It was Xbox Kinect.  I honestly don't know how I ever lived without it.  1.) It makes me feel like Tony Stark 2.) Kinect games are the most fun games on the planet!!!

     

The first order of business after purchasing my Kinect (which I have since named JARVIS) was to pop in to GameStop for a couple of games.  I have always wanted to try a Zumba class, so I picked up a pre-owned copy of the game and a copy of Dance Central.

     

I got home and popped in Zumba Fitness, thinking I was going to have fun bopping and shimmying my way to an effective cardio workout.  Unfortunately, I didn't make it past the tutorials, because I realized the game wasn't reading my body movement at all.  The chick in the tutorial kept telling me "Great arms!" and "Great legs!" but in some cases, I was just flailing around trying to keep up with the faster portions.  This is a problem for me, because if I am going to dance, I want to be able to perform the steps correctly.  

     

If the tutorial had a way to slow the faster combinations down, it might have helped; however, the steps started out slowly (Great!  Perfect!), but when they sped the tempo up, the steps changed completely.  I want to know what step I'm going to be doing during the game.  Show me that slowly and we're good, but don't add a ball-change and extra steps and call it the same thing.  

     

 Another thing I didn't like was the graphics.  They're very generic, almost non-descript.  When you are trying to copy an instructor's dance moves in a game that scores you on how well you are performing the moves, it helps if you can distinguish body parts!

     

While writing this entry, I thought that perhaps I was just being hyper critical.  I got curious and checked out the review for Zumba Fitness at 123kinect.com.  They had about the same things to say about the tutorial mode that I do.  After reading this, I thought perhaps I would give it another try and just jump straight into the Zumba Party portion of the game, and just pick things up as I went.  However, the review went on to say, "Zumba Party is very intimidating because it's a very long session and it quickly jumps from one routine to another with somewhat abrupt transitions.  If you don't know the steps, it can quickly become frustrating and makes it feel like you're flailing."  This would drive me batty!  

     

If Zumba Fitness would revamp their shoddy graphics and give their tutorial section a makeover, I would try it again.  As it stands, however, I won't be Zumba will not be a part of my cardio routine. You can read the full review for Zumba Fitness here.

After being so thoroughly disappointed by Zumba Fitness, I looked to Dance Central to fill the blanks on my dance card.  I was not disappointed.  Everything Zumba lacked, Dance Central had in spades.  The tutorials rocked my socks!  Not only do they break the steps down, they also have a feature that allows you to slow the movement down until you have mastered it and then you can speed it back up and continue the tutorial.

The graphics for the game are fantastic.  I haven't found it difficult to replicate the moves at all.

I like that there is a Fitness section that puts together song based on the type of workout you are looking for.  My favorite part of the Fitness section is that is calculates the number of calories you burn while you're dancing.  For someone with a nature as competitive as mine, this keeps me going and gives me a sense of accomplishment even when I don't make it to that fifth star--which I am proud to say is not that often!

On the downside of the Fitness portion, it is not continuous play.  There is a pause after every song that evaluates your performance.  I could do without that bit, but beggars can't be choosers, yeah?

The best part about Dance Central is that I get a dance class in my living room, and I don't have to deal with other people unless I invite them over to play!  I can start up the game when I want to and stop when I want to and there was only a one-time cost.  Beats the hell out of any recreational dance class I've ever had ;)

 

  

  

Light Bulb!

I had a total meltdown on the phone with my mother last night.  I was crabby and having violent outbursts all weekend.  If I'm being honest, it's been for the last four or five days.  I felt like a crazy person.  Mom was very concerned when I started sobbing uncontrollably and babbling about how I didn't feel like myself and how I was scared that I was legitimately going round the bend.  


This got us talking about what it could be.  Mom thinks that my fitness plan and my "new diet" is what is causing it.  The thing is, I'm not dieting.  I'm just choosing to put better foods into my body.  I am taking in the amount of calories that is needed to maintain weight for someone my size.  I'm being very careful about not depriving myself of food.  I don't need to lose weight.  I just don't want to keep putting crap into my body.  I couldn't keep eating the way I was eating and expect my metabolism to keep up as it always had.  


Frankly, I like the way I look.  However, since I've crossed the threshold into my 30s, I know I am going to have to work harder to keep myself the way I am.  Once you cross that threshold your metabolism slows and will continue to slow unless you take preventive measures.  Mom doesn't understand this.  She just thinks I'm dieting and obsessed with my weight.  She tells me constantly that I'm too skinny.  This coming from the woman who weighed 90lbs while she was pregnant with me!  


We talked a little more and Mom suggested that I might just have some hormones that are out of whack.  I  normally have out of whack hormones.  This is nothing new.  Once a month, I'm a basket case.  That's just how it is and how it always has been.  After acknowledging that yes, this is similar, yet vastly different, Mom suggested that I go to the lady doctor and have them do some sort of hormone panel.  She told me that she had gone as she was becoming pre-menopausal and they were able to identify which hormone she was low on which was causing her symptoms.  Horrified, I asked if she thought I might be getting ready to go through menopause. She said she thought it was quite a bit early, but stranger things had happened.  Now, I don't really think I am getting ready to go through menopause, but one can always hope.


This morning, I decided to do some research on mood swings and exercise.   I'm not taking steroids, so I could rule out Roid Rage.  Everything I found suggested that I am supposed to be high on those lovely endorphines my pituitary glad is releasing during my fitness routine.  


Finding nothing indicating that the exercise would be adversely affecting my mood, I began a search into changes in diet and mood swings.  Mom had also suggested that since I was eating better, I might be going through some sort of withdrawal.  I explained that I wasn't having any headaches or flu-like symptoms and dismissed the suggestion.  Oh, my smart Momma!  


Typing in the key words "change in diet crazy mood swings" I came across an article on WiseGeek on the symptoms of sugar withdrawal.  Bingo!  I hadn't even considered it, because cutting out excess and processed sugars was not a conscious decision on my part.  Upon reading the article, I went back through my food diary, and what do you know?  I have eliminated about 75% of the added and processed sugars from my diet!  Ding, ding, ding!  We have a winner!  


The article says, "In the psychological sense, sugar withdrawal can be a very real and painful process, replete with cravings, anxiety or depression, and a general sense of loss when the addictive substance is not used."  Well, yeah.  That's exactly what I'm going through!  I just didn't realize it was withdrawal because the symptoms aren't like when you're going through caffeine withdrawal.  These symptoms are sneaky like a ninja and strike when you least expect it.


While I am celebrating the fact that I'm not headed toward life in a mental ward, you can read the article, "What are Symptoms of Sugar Withdrawal?"       

Fitness Rage?!

I was under the impression that exercise and eating properly was supposed to put you in a better mindset.  I thought exercise released endorphins that helped relieve stress and gave you a sense of euphoria. 

Why, then, am I so angry all the time?  I am completely, uncharacteristically full of rage.  It's been persistent for the last four days, at least. 

I don't even feel a sense of accomplishment that I've made it a week without skipping a workout.  I haven't stepped outside the parameters of my Not a Diet, either!  I even ate piece of carrot cake on Friday and a piece of pumpkin pie today, while still meeting the expectations of my nutrition plan.  That should make me happy, right?!

I feel like a total basketcase.  What the frell is wrong with me?

Intro

My name is Libbie, and this is my "Not a Weight Loss" blog.  I had only two New Year's Resolutions this year (as opposed to none in previous years):  1.) Create a financially stable platform by taking care of my outstanding debts and 2.)  Develop a healthier lifestyle.  


This looks pretty on paper, but will take far more effort than anything else I've ever had to do in my life.  I have to eliminate bad spending and eating habits - habits that I've spent years building - and create new ones in their place.  I am horrible about not following through with things I start, so this is my effort to hold myself accountable.

  

I come from a family of tiny women who love food.  We are excellent bakers and frankly, culinary geniuses.  It is this love of food leads to us resembling tiny, perfectly round beach balls in our later years.  I have seen into my future, and I will damned if I let myself get that way.

I would like to make it clear that this is NOT an attempt to lose weight.  Most women would kill to weigh what I weigh (a number which I will not divulge).  However, I have lost a great deal of muscle mass, which has made me a little flabby, while keeping me at a steady weight.  Just because I am trying to be healthier and in better shape does not mean that I perceive myself as being fat or overweight.  Are we clear?  Good.  

Here, you will find a collection of articles and reviews from anything from fitness to psychology.  My goal is to build an all-around healthy lifestyle - financially, physically and psychologically - and this is my toolbox.