Check-In. I still get to eat Mac and Cheeze, sorta.

Chocolate Cheerios for Breakfast, with Almond Milk, of course.

Almonds for midmorning snack.

Caesar Salad from Wendy's for lunch, only used half the dressing.

Trail mix with organic raisins for my drive time goodies.

Had Amy's Organic Dairy-Free Mac and Cheeze for dinner tonight! Thanks, Josh, for letting me know about Daiya, I found out on their website that Amy's Organic uses their cheddar shreds for mac and cheeze!

Black cherry Whole Fruit bar for snack.

Hippy Tricks! Nair for a Slow Drain.

I heard this from a plumber over the summer, and I tried it today, and it really works really, really well.

Our bathroom drain gets slow from time to time. We live in an old house and shit happens. So I poured a big blog of Nair, yes, NAIR, down the drain and ran some hot water. And it was awesome.

Here's why it works:

The bulk of the clog is hair. And Nair basically dissolves hair. Ta-da! Cleared Drain!

It also works pretty well in the kitchen, too, because a lot of the material that clogs your kitchen drain is protein, and hair is protein.

Weird, right?

Check-In. That was a really bad idea, apparently.

Breakfast was the Florentine Omelet from Nick's Diner. Loads of spinach and tomato, with a little feta cheese.

Mid-morning snack was more almonds, like always.

For a treat after my civil service exam, I got a Chai Latte with Soy milk from Starbucks! Yay for me.

Late lunch was the Biancaneve Pizza at Paese Mio, plus spinach. It's a white pie with tomato, garlic and olive oil. However, apparently I can't handle the mozzarella cheese anymore! I've been sick all night. :-(

I finally felt up to having dinner and I had Chocolate Cheerios with plain Almond milk. Yay!

I also made tons of trial mix tonight for snacks over the course of the week.

The Check-In that Almost Wasn't

Sausage Biscuit for breakfast.

Almonds for my mid-morning snack.

Tofu and almonds (separate) for lunch.

Almonds in the afternoon. (Are you seeing the theme here?)

Pepper Crusted Beef and Roasted Potatoes for dinner.

No Yoga, but with the walk to work this morning, I managed to log 18,796 steps on my pedometer!

Go me!

Gonna have some peanut butter bread for snack.

Tomorrow may be a total wash as far as healthy eating goes, but I'm going to try to not get carried away. I'm driving to Harrisburg tomorrow to take my Clerk 1, 2 exam.

Check-in. I got a pedometer today!

Sausage Biscuit for Breakfast

Almonds for midmorning snack.

Sausage biscuit for lunch. (I forgot to put something together last night.)

Almonds for an afternoon snack.

Pepper-crusted beef and potato wedges for dinner. (yes, I made it at home.) And I polished off the last of the Almond milk we had.

Walked to work again today (2.4) miles and I racked up over 9000 steps on the pedometer which I didn't even get until lunchtime.

Need to give my ankle and back a bit of a rest, gonna watch TV with the cat for a bit and then I'm going to try to get some yoga in.

***Popcorn for a snack while watching TV and tofu when I was craving some protein. Also, I killed a sweet craving with some peanut butter.

Check-in. Walked to work today.

So, I had the usual sausage biscuit for breakfast today.

THEN I WALKED TO WORK (2.4 miles). Partly because I'm pretty sure my car died yesterday, but also because I live close enough to walk and the weather was nice enough that I don't really have any excuse not to.

No midmorning snack, didn't have time.

Lunch was pasta, tossed with Ceasar vinagrette and some grated Romano cheese.

No afternoon snack.

I managed dinner at a much better time tonight and I had a small steak with some grilled bell pepper chunks and some bulgar wheat with just the tiniest bit of butter (like less than a tablespoon on the whole pot) and sprinkled with a bit of Romano again. Also, a glass of almond milk.

Will try to do some Yoga in a bit because I'm feeling very stiff today.

*Got in about 20 minutes of yoga tonight before my knee decided I was done. Munched some popcorn while we watched a movie and now a bit of tofu before I head to bed. Good night all!

MLK & S 12st. Giant Staircase!

I decided that climbing these steps was going to be my way of gauging my get healthy progress.

There are 90 steps that wind their way up a huge hill.

How this is going to work:

I don't believe in tracking progress with just the scale. I don't think that weighing yourself and not tracking anything else does you any good.

Weight can be misleading. If you gain muscle mass while getting leaner, toner, healthier, you can actually gain weight. It's a no-brainer, I know, but it can be really discouraging, too.

So, what we're going to do, is watch our food portions, be more active, and every week we're going to head down to these steps and time ourselves hitting them as hard as we can.

We went down tonight and, while I can't say I'm exactly proud of my time, it's not as bad as I was afraid it might be.

I made up the 90 steps and back down with a time of 3:21.31 and Carl was about 15 seconds ahead of me 3:06 and some change.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as I have a better time than the week before, I'll consider it a victory!