Category Archives: blogging

Meeting Lynn!!

One of the things on my bucket list has been to meet Lynn of Lynn’s Weigh.  She has been blogging for many years and was one of the first bloggers I followed.  Lynn was at maintenance then and I looked to her as inspiration for people who lost weight and kept it off.  There are tons and tons of blogs of people in the midst of losing weight, but not many maintaining blogs.  People either stop blogging when they stop losing or figure they don’t need the blog any more once they get to goal.

Anyway, I remember commenting on Lynn’s blog and then getting all excited because *the* Lynn had commented on mine!  :mrgreen:   Over the years, we have conversed via email and Facebook.

See, Lynn gets it.  She doesn’t sugar coat maintenance or weight loss.  She is also a good writer, much better than I.   I have always wanted to meet her in person.

A couple weeks ago, Lynn contacted me that she was going to be business traveling in my area and asked if I wanted to try to get together.  Heck yeah!  After frantically thinking first about how to drop 10 pounds in a week, I collected myself and we made plans to meet halfway between my house and where she was staying.  We ended up in the quaint town of Ballston Spa.  This is south of Saratoga and really a very cute town.  We met for lunch at The Whistling Kettle.

One of the first things Lynn said was something along the lines of  “Good, you are shorter than me!”   😀

Although, the angle of this picture does make *me* look like the taller one.  Woo Hoo!  I’ll take whatever I can get.

Who says women of a certain age aren’t cool and awesome??

Whistling Kettle was awesome as well.  They specialize in tea and will do any iced.  I had a chai called Night of the Iguana, which had black tea, ginger, white chocolate, black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves.  It was an unsweetened chai, but they do offer it with sugar if you want.

Conversation flowed easily.  Each time I meet another person from the internets, I am amazed at how easy the conversation is!  I don’t know why I expect it to be any other way.  Maybe because I am a shy person and when I meet new people it is much harder for me – although my internet people I have known and talked to for a long time, so it isn’t really like meeting someone new, but an old friend you just haven’t seen for a while.

I have to put in my food, of course.  I had a crepe with turkey, cranberry and brie.

This was excellent!  The whole meal was great.  I am glad we found this place and I will definitely come back down some time.

Thanks for meeting up with me, Lynn!

Hopefully not for the only time.

Meeting a fellow blogger!

Today, John and I had the privilege of meeting Sharon and her husband, Mr. Bill, today for breakfast.  Sharon and her husband are on a road trip up the northeast and when she contacted me back at the end of January that she was going to be near my area for a few days, I was excited!  Not many people come up to our little area (but they should).

Sharon and Bill are quite the hikers and you can read about their adventures at her blog Gains and Losses.  Anyway, we coordinated schedules and Sharon wanted to meet at North Country Cafe, which is in focus pretty much every Wednesday on the blog 😀

We had a great talk.  One of the great things about the internet community is that you really can form friendships online.  It’s surprising when you meet an online person in real life how you can just start talking right away.  John and I are both somewhat shy, but when you meet someone you have corresponded with online – it’s like you already know them and have plenty to talk about.  Not to mention that all 4 of us have a whole bunch in common (music being a common thread).  A couple cups of coffee help me out as well with the chattering  😆

I had to laugh at my hair in this picture.  It looks really red, which it isn’t.  Must be the lovely hue of florescent lights.

I can’t wait to see how Sharon portrays the North Country on her blog!

Blog woes

It’s only Tuesday, right?  It feels later than that. It was soooo cold this morning when I went to the gym. In the 20s!   😯  I had to warm up the car and get my winter coat on.

I increased some reps and weights on a couple moves in workout A today.  I am loving these workouts.  Did I already say that?  Because I will say it again!  I definitely feel like I get a great workout when I finish.  I  will say that I need that protein drink  right when I am finished, too.  I drink it in the car.

Breakfast was the 1-minute muffin today, with pumpkin.  Topped with peanut flour and some lemon curd.  I love the curd!  Not sure if it goes really well with the peanut flour, but I wanted the protein.

I know this doesn’t look big, but with 3 cups of coffee and the 12 grams of fiber, my tummy is full for a few hours!  Way better than the chia mess I made yesterday.

So regarding the blog, I have to say the the comment feed thing with my blog is really bothering me.  I know some of you have no idea what I am talking about, and be glad you don’t. I have never gotten the extra feed, but this morning I did.  I can’t seem to get an answer from anybody. Talking to Google for the reader is like slamming my head a against a brick wall.  My host says there is no problem they can see and it is WordPress or Google.  Wordpress thinks it is my host.  And I am stuck in the middle about ready to tear my hair out!

I personally think it has something to do with wordpress, but I don’t know what.  I know that other wordpress blogs are having difficulty with comments – as in not being able to log in to comment.  I would rather have *that* problem, but I wonder if somehow they aren’t related. I reinstalled the latest version of wordpress and I am hoping and crossing my fingers that this helps.  I guess as a last resort I will move my blog to another hosting service in hopes of stopping that feed, but short of that I am out of options.  I don’t think I have ever wanted to cry about my blog, but this is about going to do it.  I feel really bad about the extra feed in people’s readers.

Plus, I am getting eight million questions about the 1-minute muffin. Someone either pinned it on facebook or something because that specific page got 2000 hits yesterday and is on pace for that again today if not more.  It’s now the most popular page on my blog, which is funny because the recipe is one that has been circulating the net for years, although not with my variations (I don’t think?).  Anyway, some of the emails are crazy and some aren’t very nice.  You definitely need a thick skin to be a blogger, which is also kind of adding to the wanting to cry about the blog.  It would be one thing if blogging was my paying job, but it isn’t.

But, I guess this is a First World problem, right?  Onwards to lunch! I was in a hurry because I spent part of lunchtime talking with support about my blog.  So, I quick scrambled some eggs.  Since it was a cold day, hot sauce was in order!

Work was also really, really busy today.  That’s a good thing, though.  Cannot complain about that.  I was surprised when it came to latte time!

Trying a different view here.  Not sure it works…

One good thing – I’ve still got control of the snacking.  Even with all these issues I haven’t snacked, so I will take that as a victory for now.  I kind of wanted to snack while making dinner, but I decided to get a mint instead.  We cooked up some marinated chicken.

and my food is touching! Oh no!

John looked at my plate and said something to the effect of  “That’s a Lori plate if there ever was one.”  :mrgreen:

Treat tonight?  Going out for coffee!  Here is a picture of what I will be having:

Recycled pics! But, I wanted to be complete and still get this posted before we left.  I need a nice breather and internets break tonight.

Gotta cover up the rose bushes  as it is going to be another freezing night here.  We went from summer back to winter!  Crazy.

Cross all your collective fingers and toes that the comment feed disappears – even if you don’t know what I am talking about!

Fitting in and the peak

I have to say that I am really glad that my lifting posts give everyone ideas or inspire people to lift.  I was thinking a lot about this lately, especially after the brouhaha with the Marie Claire article and the discussions following.  Plus Pubsgal and MizFit had brought up some points about blogger clicques.

I am currently sitting at Starbucks with John as I contemplate this post.

I have sort of wondered where my blog fits into the blogosphere.  It used to be about weight loss, of which there are so many (yay!).  Now that I am not focusing on losing, but maintaining, I don’t really think of it as a weight loss blog anymore.  I don’t quite feel like a healthy living blogger because I am not in my 20s, which most seem to be, and not too many of them have lost much weight (although some have).  I am not a competitive athlete and have no plans for that or even really getting too much faster, so I don’t necessarily fit in there.  I lift weights, but I don’t have any interest in competing, and I can’t really get that lean LOL.  I am not just a food blogger, either.  I guess I feel on the fringes sometimes, but that is really kind of how I felt through high school and some of my adult life anyway.

One point the MC article made and something I have read about on a couple other blogs is about how someone who photographs and posts every meal and workout has disordered eating.  Well, gee – that is my blog.

Case in point – breakfast this morning.

That is what it is supposed to be.  What is the real difference between someone who writes in journal every day of their foods and exercise and someone who does it in pictorial version?  The first person is not considered to have disordered eating, but taking control.  Difference? None.

I just hope that I can bring across that you can maintain a weight loss by just living life imperfectly.  That means having tough days of snacking.  That means finding enjoyment in being active.  It means not assigning foods as good and bad or feeling guilty for eating.  It means having a cupcake at times or going for a day with no added sugar.  I really don’t know why people feel the need to pigeonhole everything so that they can have a reaction to it.

Anyhoo – that is enough of the sweepings from my mind into the blog!  I just want to say that I appreciate all of you readers (even the lurkers!!) and am really happy that you find some tidbits of anything to pick and think about from my blog.  It’s really just a springboard for living how you need and want to.

Now for something completely different…  My brick today.  It was the peak workout before the duathlon. John accompanied me on the bike portion.  We kicked it pretty good for 16.8 miles.  At the turnaround point, I took some pictures:

It’s the early yellow color right now.  Some dark oranges and reds should be popping soon. Not at its peak.

It was windy.

Gorgeous, though!

After I got back from the 16.8 miles, I put on the sneaks and did 2.5 miles on the hill route.  I was quite tired during the run.  My thighs were burning on the hill, but I kept plodding on.  I had to blow my nose on a leaf, too.  I don’t have the nerve like some people do to just blow their nose out in the air.  I would wear it for sure! 😳

This was the last of the really hard workouts – yay!  Taper starts next week.

How was that for a change up of posts? :mrgreen:

Pink item of the day. This is my gorillapod – which is the flexie tripod for my camera.

The Breast Cancer Site

Running and quilting friends

Yes – I won the week’s football picks!  Thank you Ravens last night 😀  Now John has to take me to dinner this week.  :happydance:

I woke up feeling ready to run.  It was a perfect morning to run.  50 degrees, not windy, cloud cover.  Yes.  I had a date for a wee bit of fuel.

Then I did my hill route.  I have not run hills since before I herniated my disk in April, so it has been a long time!  I just have been at the track or flat routes (or the dreadmill).  I was surprised at how easily I did the hills.  Biking really does make running a lot easier.  Except it seems slower :mrgreen:

I extended my route a little bit and ended up at 3.7 miles today.  It felt great!  I need to start doing bricks to prepare for next month’s duathlon.

I wasn’t sure what to make for breakfast, and John was using the waffle iron, so I decided to do protein pancakes, except I made 1 giant one.

:cough: with a little cream cheese icing on there :cough: That was kind of fun.  Sort of like fair food!

I had a question posed to me about if I lose weight on the long bike rides.  The answer to that is no.  In fact, I always gain about 3 pounds from the long rides.  I think that is a combination of eating different foods on those days, plus water retention from muscle use.  The scale always drops back down over the course of the next couple of days.  I am so used to seeing that now that it doesn’t freak me out.  It did at first, but then I realized the weight would just drop off without me doing anything different.  Maintenance isn’t always staying at the same exact number.

Lunch time today and I tried another protein crepe.  I think I may give up on this recipe.  They just are a little tough with the protein powder.  I was hoping the whey would make a difference, but it did not.

I filled this crepe with chopped cooked chicken, sauteed broccoli and a sun-dried tomato laughing cow wedge.  Flavor good. Texture bad.

One of the best things about blogging has been the wonderful people that I have met virtually.  Sometimes I can’t believe that I actually have not met some of these people in the flesh, because I feel like I have known them for a long time!  Debby is one of those bloggers with whom I feel a real kinship with because she is kind of like a twin of me.  She has lost 100 pounds without surgery and is quite the animal lover.  She is also an incredibly talented lady.  Debby asked for my address last week because she wanted to send me something.   I really had no idea what it was.

When I opened the box, my jaw fell on the floor to find this beautiful quilt inside!

It has a coffee theme.  Now how did she know that I love coffee??  Check out that detail!

I laughed when I saw this:

Indeed….

You all need to bug Debby to put up an Etsy shop if you have  seen any of her other quilts on her blog.   She is that talented.  So thank you again Debby!

Pixie does not get to lay on this quilt LOL.

Speaking of coffee – I had a latte with another pumpkin scone.

I am doing good not eating these in multiples.  Sometimes I can do that.

I finished up work right about dinner time today.  John had the grill out and did a couple chicken thighs.  I thought I would have a different veggie since I had broccoli at lunch.

Yum!  It is really hard to cook bone in meat on the grill, I have to say.

Not a terribly exciting evening planned.  Just an evening of garden puttering and some relaxing tonight.

Not to mention a snack plus some decaf.  Seedless grapes were on sale!

Question:  For those of you that blog, what is the most surprising thing you have found?

Am I a role model?

Woke up to a rainy, rainy morning.  That meant no biking for bagels today.  I do have my limits.  😀  We drove to Panera where I had a blueberry bagel.

This is why I don’t like Panera coffee:

Every time this happens to me.  John and I will get coffee from the same urn and my cup will have grounds – his won’t.  What is up with that??

Anyway, my mom called on her way out of church and stopped in to Panera and we chatted for a while.  That was fun!  Then is was grocery shopping and time to work once again.

Stubby was back today.

He looks like a rabbit when he runs.

I did stop for lunch with leftovers of the chickpea masala thing I made on Friday tucked into a wrap and put in the GT express.  Quite tasty.

Mz. Fit wrote a post the other day about whether bloggers are role models.  I really thought a lot about that and why I blog.  I started this blog for myself a few years ago, and never really thought I would get any readers at all.  It has changed quite a bit over the years, from strictly a weight loss blog to more of a lifestyle blog.  One thing that I noticed is that there are a ton of weight loss blogs on the internets, but very few in the maintenance phase.

I think more people who are maintaining need to keep up their blogs so we can see what it is like on a daily basis for someone to keep the weight off.   Not as role models, but as a glimpse into reality.  I know that there are people who look at my blog and see ice cream or cupcakes and think it is not really a healthy living blog or that I might be setting a bad example (like dangling said cupcake in front of someone who is restricting themselves from that).  Honestly, I am just living my life making choices that make me happy and allow me to maintain my weight loss.  I know that I weigh more than I probably *could* weigh if I put my mind to it.  However, I seem to be able to maintain the weight I am at and enjoy eating foods.  I don’t know if I want to bother doing something that would likely cause me to be unhappy to lose more weight (or stay unhappy trying to keep it off).  I have a good relationship with food now and no fear of eating.  That is huge.

I don’t know as I consider myself a role model.  I am not really striving to be one, but I do like to show that you can maintain weight loss.  I don’t know if I would tell someone to do exactly as I do because who knows if they would be successful or not??  Should I not post about eating cupcakes and enjoying them because that is not what a “healthy blogger” does?  Or is it something that a healthy blogger does do?  I read some blogs and they will state “please don’t hate me” and then talk about something they ate like it is a sin or something.  I don’t believe one should apologize for how they live their lives.  Of course if you post it, the whole world has the opportunity to …. shall we say…. critique your style of living, but does owning a blog require you to be a role model or censor yourself for your readers?  And is it different if you have 100 readers versus 10,000 readers?

I look to a lot of other bloggers for inspiration, ideas, and thoughts.  Sometimes just for kinship to know that others go through the same things that I do.  Anyhoo, that is just something I have been chewing on… haha.

Snack time!  John made up lattes with some chocolate syrup on top that he made last night.

I loves a man who cooks….  Granola bar on the side.

Nice ingredient list.

I should just make the darn thing myself – I have all those ingredients.

When work slowed down this afternoon, I set to making some jam for an exchange.  I did a rhubarb ginger to start.

It was actually fun.  I’ve made jam before, but never actually canned it.  I hope it preserves okay 😯  Tastes pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.  (toast and jam picture not available…)

Dinner time included a ground pork burger.

I think I will just stick to this over ground beef.  It is very moist, and usually cheaper at the smokehouse as well.  Gotta love a bargain…

Since it rained out today and no biking, I am going to hit it old school with a DVD for exercise tonight!  It’s been months since I have done that.  Gotta dust of the Firm workouts 😀

Question:  Do you censor your blog (or twitter, facebook, etc) at all?

The broken glass theory.

Hello blogland!  I had a nice night’s sleep last night and woke up hungry! Still no running for me, and I wanted to wait to bike later, so I made up some brekkie.  I was still on a Cream of Wheat thing today, so I made them pumpkin custard oat style.  Topped with 5 toasted pecans and some jam.

This bowl was so filling and huge, and only about 275 calories for the whole thing!  Love it when life works out like that 😀

I was thinking about it being 5 weeks ago today when I did my last run.  I will be honest and say that I really don’t miss running all that much.  I more miss the idea of running.  I miss the calorie burn and the good workout feeling when finishing.  Of course, I miss being able to actually run, because not doing it means something is still wrong.  So – that’s all in the open now LOL!

Fast and furious and work today.  Lunch break:

Lots o’ fiber in this bowl!

Miz Fit made a comment on my post yesterday about showing that I broke a glass.  I thought a little bit about why I actually put that on the blog.  It was more of an attempt to show that my life is far from perfect and that a lot of little things go wrong.  I get asked if I am really as happy as I seem, and I would say that I am.  Annoyingly so, from John’s perspective, I’m sure  :mrgreen: .  I read a ton of blogs, or at least they are in my reader.  I know that sometimes when I read blogs, I wonder if that is really how their life is.  Sometimes people come across as so (to me) perfect or incredibly lucky.  Sometimes it looks that way on the surface to me, but I sense there is something lying underneath that isn’t right.  That could always just be me seeing that when it isn’t really there, either, but I am pretty intuitive with people. Other times you can really tell a blogger is very real.

It’s also a reminder that blogs are just a snippet of someone’s life.  Obviously unless there is a webcam, one couldn’t possibly put their whole life on the internet, and who would want to, really?? (Or more importantly, who would want to watch??)  So our opinions of someone’s life are just based on what we are allowed to see.

Anyhoo, I finished up work early.  Clap your hands for productivity!!  It was 56 degrees out, so I decided on a bike ride.  I fueled up with a Kind bar.

These seriously are really good.  I wish I did not know that.  This was also my first real ride with the new bike clips!

I did 19.6 miles today with an average pace of 12 mph.  Feeling good!  I like the clips.  It took some getting used to starting and stopping.  Each time I had to stop I kept saying to myself, “Don’t forget your clips!”  Okay, I actually said it out loud, too….. I was totally paranoid that I was going to forget and just fall over.  The hardest part is reclipping into the pedal after getting going again because it spins around (since I have the dual pedal).  On the longer sections of the path, I just practiced clipping and unclipping while riding to get the hang of it.  I do realize now that I moved my legs around a lot before.  Especially my feet.  Now they stay in place and I am more efficient (I think).  Cool.  I need to adjust them a little, though.

I was hungry when I got back, bottom’s up!

Protein drink and helmet hair – awesome combo 😀

Then some good foam rolling and stretching.  I was also pretty chilled at this point.  56 degrees isn’t really cold, but when you get sweaty in that temp, it’s easy to get chilled.  I decided I needed to incorporate hot sauce into dinner somehow to warm up.  :mrgreen:

I sliced a cooked chicken piece in half and heated it up, then spread it with laughing cow and the hot sauce.  This was very good!  I wish the laughing cow melted a bit better, but still tasty.

New visitor at the feeder:

Such impudence!

We are off for some coffee tonight, since neither of us had a latte today.  The day wouldn’t be complete without it!

Question:  Do you use a blog reader or do you just bookmark sites?