I know why I got fat.

My alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. yesterday and I quickly turned it off.  Shit that’s early.  By 6:10 I knew if I didn’t get my ass out of bed, the gym would just be a thought and not my reality.

But it’s dark out at that time.  And my down comforter was tucked under my chin and my husband had already reached over and snuggled me to him.  I didn’t want to get up.  But I did.  😀

It’s just a short 10 minute drive to the gym, and by the time I got there the sun was starting to rise.

 I ended up doing 45 minutes on the elliptical, and 100 sit-ups.  I brought my work clothes so all I had to do after showering was driving home, scoop up my food for the day (already prepared thank you very much) and grab a travel mug of coffee for the road.  In my haste I forgot my camera, but breakfast was a Biz staple . . . the breakfast sammie (thanks Google images!)  With my cinnamon raisin english muffin as my pre-workout fuel, and the breakfast sammie, breakfast totals 12 points.  I only ate one though. 😀

There were a lot of people out of our office because of Columbus Day, so it was a very productive, albiet quiet, day at work.  The weather was stunning – 72 degrees when I went on my lunch walk.  I went 2.7 miles in 45:34 minutes.  It’s sad to see half the trees without leaves already, still a few pretty ones though!

For lunch I had my grown up spaghettios and meatballs – I need to refigure this recipe in fatsecret.com, because I don’t think it calculated it right – when I put the recipe into eTools it comes out to 5.5 points a serving – I’ll let you know when I redo the calorie calculations.

I had a serving of soup with a dinner roll on the side for 9 points.  My soup was sans the cheese – stealing my picture from yesterday since I didn’t have my camera.

It made a lot so I brought the whole container.  When I asked my boss if she wanted some homemade soup for lunch her response was “I’ll just heat up a frozen dinner.”  What??!!  That’s okay – more for me. 😀

So I have been interested in reading Marisa’s journey on her getting on better terms with food and her constant battle with eating healthy, to binging, to figure it out, and sometimes repeating the same mistakes over and over.

While I know the reason I started to gain weight is that once you stop being an athlete, turns out you can’t eat Suzy-Q’s for breakfast (a daily occurrence) pizza and giant chocolate chip cookies anymore.

But after I had Hannah, and her father basically rejected both of us, I knew if I had a layer of fat around me, no one would want to date me so I couldn’t get hurt again.  It wasn’t until Hannah was 7 that I decided I needed to get healthy for me, and when I lost the 70 pounds and loved myself, was when love found me.  (I love you Tony!)

One of the great things is that Tony always tells me I am beautiful and that if I want to lose weight its only because I want to.  I am pretty sure I could stay 159 pounds the rest of my life and he would love me just as I am.

But I know I’ll feel better in the 130’s, and just have to put one foot in front of the other, day in and day out, and I will get to my goal.  Like yesterday, I didn’t sleep in, I walked at lunch and before 1:30 in the afternoon I’d already exercised 90 minutes.  Now I just need to keep that intensity up this week and see how that reflects on the scale.

I do know my body is getting smaller – a few of my size 12 pants are getting lose – in fact I wore a pair of jeans to work last week that were really form fitting, and someone said “you are getting skinny!”  I’ll take it. 😀  It helps when you wear clothes that fit, right Helen?

Dinner was one of my favs – Chili Mac using my buffalo chicken chili recipe.  Out of the 645,300 pageviews I have so far on this blog, that one recipe accounts for 45,000 pageviews alone!

However, my buffalo chicken chili is a tad on the spicy side, so I decided to tweak the original recipe to fit a general audience (i.e. people who can’t eat hot shit).  The changes I made are in red.

Best Buffalo General Public Chicken Chili by Biz  (printer friendly version here)

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 2 large carrots
• 3 stalks celery
• 1 large red pepper
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 5 tablespoons of chili powder (3 tablespoons of chili powder)
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1/2 cup Frank’s Hot Sauce (left this out completely)
• 2 (15 oz) cans tomato sauce
• 1 (15 oz) diced tomatoes
• 1 (15 oz) black beans, drained
• 1 (15 oz) chili beans in sauce (do not drain) (usually use hot beans, used mild instead)
• salt and pepper to taste

Put chicken breasts in food processor to grind up – if you can find ground chicken breast, you can use that too.  Heat oil and add ground chicken and cook about 10 minutes on medium heat until no longer pink.  Rinse out processor and add carrots, celery, garlic and red pepper and puree.  Add to chicken mixture and cook about 5 minutes until veggies start to soften.

Next add the rest of the ingredients, put stove on simmer and cook for 1 hour.

Nutrition Per Cup: 239 calories, 3.4 fat, 29 carbs, 7.5 fiber and 23.5 protein.

Good points:  low in saturated fat, high in fiber,  niacin, potassium, vitamin A, vitamin B6 and vitamin C!

Tony is my spice barometer, and he loved this – just a tiny bit of heat from the chili powder – this would be great for a crowd because everyone could spice theirs up with sliced jalapenos, hot sauce, etc.

I opted for homemade tortilla chips for dippers with mine instead of the elbow macaroni, and of course added some sliced pickled jalapenos to mine  – dinner comes in at 12 points.

So what kind of eater are you?  Emotional, fly by the seat of your pants, planner or just simply an overeater?  I still think I emotionally eat sometimes 10% of the time, and I don’t eat always because I am upset or anything, sometimes I just am bored, and want a salty crunch, ya know?

I am VERY proud that I haven’t had any salty snacks at bed time in three weeks – go me!

Stats for Monday:

• 45 minutes elliptical, 100 sit ups at the gym
• 45 minute walk at lunch
• 33 points
• average blood sugar 144

Let’s make it a great day!  I am off to . . . walk before work. 😀