Mid-week, again...

Well! Our DVR has already pretty much paid for itself in one short week, because being able to record Blue's Clues and then play it over and over and over again to your fussy toddler's delight with the single touch of a button? P-R-I-C-E-L-E-S-S. Seriously. Fan-freaking-tastic.

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I did Leaner Legs on Monday evening for the first time this rotation and man, I am still incredibly sore. It's 50-ish minutes of non-stop leg muscle madness. Let's do eleventeen hundred squats! No rest, now let's do quarter deadlifts. Stand up! Time for calf rasies! Ok, now hover squats. Single-leg squats! PLIE SQUATS! It was killer. I emerged from our bedroom a scary shade of bright red, shaky and absolutely DRENCHED with sweat. Tonight I'll do CTX Upper Body. This rotation I am going to try to do 3 weight workouts each week, instead of my usual 2. Because I'm now doing an upper body/lower body split, I plan on alternating the workouts on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Monday was LL, tonight will be CTX Upper Body, and Friday I'll do LL again. Then next week I'll do upper body twice and LL once, much like the Body-For-LIFE weight regime. I'm thinking that after this 4 weeks I will do the Pure Strength series, which is a 3-day split between Legs & Abs / Chest, Shoulders & Triceps / Back, Biceps & Abs. That's the plan, man.

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In non-dieting news, I found that in the first 2 weeks I sort of wanted to "prove" to myself that I could have, for example, a bowl of ice cream whenever I wanted, and so I did. But now that I'm coming up on a month of non-dieting, the thrill of having the ice cream (or whatever "forbidden" food) has lost it's kick. It's almost depressing. All my life I have loved food, loved to eat, loved sweets. For me, part of craving the junk was thinking that I really wasn't supposed to be eating it. Now that nothing is off-limits, eating less healthy food isn't as exciting. I still indulge, but I know that I'll function and feel much better throughout the day if I opt for berries and cottage cheese instead, for example. Then it becomes more about what will make me feel good, instead of a healthy meal choice being determined by my weight that day or the tightness of my jeans. In other words, food is starting to lose it's power over me for the first time EVER. It's very exciting and actually quite "freeing". I know a ton of women that tell me they would NEVER just let go and eat whatever they wanted, because they would eat donuts and cake and chocolate for every meal. That initial fear was there for me, too, but it really wears off rather quickly and turns out to be simply untrue. I also want to make a huge deal about the fact that I haven't binged (or even had the URGE to binge, at that) since I started my non-diet. This is exactly what I had hoped for. It'll be a work in progress for awhile, because the emotional issues that go along with overeating and dieting and binging still have to be worked out, sorted through, and tucked away for good. But I have made so much progress in the last three and a half weeks, more than I ever could have imagined. 18 years of dieting and binging cannot be "undone" in a month, I know. But it's amazing how normal it all seems to me now. I was almost a different person before.

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Have you seen The Real Wedding Crashers? It rocks. Seriously, I expected it to be another clusterfuck of a reality t.v. show, but it's well worth watching. We even DVR'd it this week. Come on over and watch it with us! (Must bring your own beer, and the password is GOLDIELOCKS.)

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I just made some more of that Splenda box banana bread, but this time I added 2 scoops of EAS 100% chocolate whey protein powder to it. I baked it until it looked done, and much to my surprise it is golden and moist and absolutely delicious! Adding 2 measly servings of protein powder to a recipe that yields 10(ish) servings doesn't bring the protein up tremendously, but it does add a little. Also much to my surprise, the chocolate flavor tastes great against the banana. I figured it would either be really good or really gross. Fortunately, it doesn't taste like ass. And I made it in maybe 7 minutes or less while E was eating a cheese quesadilla and watching Blue's Clues. (We just got a letter, we just got a letter, we just got a letter, wonder who it's from...) (Also, BEST mom ever.)