Sports - specifically, weight lifting

Rinny asked when I became a basketball fan and my answer was when I married Kevin. Truthfully, I've had an interest in sports but generally never more than Superbowl Sunday, the final game of Final Four, the Olympics and the Stanley Cup. I really didn't know a whole lot about each sport but I could pick a team to cheer for. That's all I needed to know. Sports weren't big in my house when I grew up. I remember my brother playing some football but that didn't mean diddly to me at the time. The important thing about football games was walking laps around the field and doing your best to look cool while staying warm. He also did something with the basketball team but I think he was the team manager? I don't know - I don't think he played. As for me, I was on the swim team. I tell you how important it was to me, I can't even recall if I was on the team for 2 or 3 years. The closest to team sports I got was playing floor hockey with Doug Zmolek in high school. In a moment I'll never forget, he passed the puck to me and I shot it in the net. He never talked to me again, nor did he pass the puck to me again. I guess we both knew then and there that it was only a lucky shot. I went on to talk to parents about child support, he went on to play for San Jose Sharks and marry Jenny Bennett - one of the most popular and pretty girls in high school and she was honest to goodness nice to everyone. Kevin grew up in a sports house. They played it all and they knew everything about anything. Even his mom can break down a game for a quick review if you need it. I was amazed. Then I started watching and learning the intricacies of the game. It really was more than swinging a log of wood at a ball with red stripes on it. I started asking questions and I'm still asking questions. I don't think there's a single game that I watch where I'm not saying, "Okay, another question....how come so and so got in trouble for doing whatchamacallit to the other guy? What's wrong with that?" So far my favorite stupid rule (for baseball) is that you can't run or slide past second or third base. I don't like that rule. If you can run your buns off to get to first, why can't you do the same for the other bases? The answer, I'm told, is that if you pass the base then you're in the outfield. So? At least you got to the next one. And a rule I think they should make? If you hit a fly ball but make it to first base before it lands in the glove, you get to stay there. I'm still rallying for that one. So on to weight lifting. I'm just referring to myself and the weight I'm lifting everyday. I'm still at the same weight I was before when I starting bragging about how fat I am. I've started using the stair climber every day and doing some Pilates. My problem, however, is food. I can't have extra stuff laying around the house or I guarantee you by 10:33 it's going to be in my mouth. To overcome this, I asked Kevin if he'd be fine with a planned out week of food. He agreed which helped my mood greatly. I had a list to create and put down and make a shopping list out of. You'd think that would be pretty easy. Right? Not so much for the girl that doesn't like a whole lot of vegetables but is now trying to create and make healthy choices for herself and her family. Let me tell you, it took me 5 hours to plot out breakfast and lunch menus for JT and dinner menus for us for 6 days. My goal is an easy 20 pounds by the end of August. I proclaimed my intent to my coworkers and gave them the aok to scold me if they saw me eating (a lot of ) bad food. I put "a lot of" in parentheses because I know I"m going to have some bad stuff. I just need to make sure I don't have to have ALL of the bad stuff at once. Of course, being the end of the month, our department brought in food from the grocery store. I did really well for the first 8 hours of my shift. I ate more carrots and celery than Peter Rabbit - limiting myself to two teaspoons of the vegetable dressing stuff to dip in. My sandwich was a super thin smearing of peanut butter and a dab of no sugar added Strawberry Smuckers on one piece of bread. I topped the sandwich with about 10 barbeque chips and headed back to my desk. I ate slowly and deliberately and felt great. I didn't feel gross or uncomfortable other than my intestines wondering what the heck I was doing with all the ruffage. Here's my piece of wisdom to anyone else battling the bulge. I'm no weight loss expert *jiggle jiggle* but what I have learned from my years of yo yo dieting is this - go to bed hungry. Don't eat late at night. If you can get by without eating after 7 o'clock more power to you. My schedule however is tapered to say don't eat after 8:30. Here's how I understand it - if you go to bed hungry, your body burns off the stored fat you have. You wake up hungry, you eat breakfast, you're good to go. Grazing every few hours helps to combat the "oh my goodness, I'm starving" syndrome where you consume more than you need. Grazing+healthy choices = steady fullness = no bingeing. So, if you chow down before laying down, your body just burns what you put in it and more likely than not, you just snacked on more calories than you really needed. I leave you with this. How did I end my work day? I polished off 5 chips ahoy and the rest of the bag of cool ranch doritos. Someone had to do it. And besides, my diet didn't officially start until May 1st.