A weekend of self discovery!?

Sorry for not blogging all weekend. This has been a very interesting weekend. *this might get a little wordy so bear with me and there will be plenty of pictures later*

Friday night I was feeling really bad. Not sick but sad and frustrated and lonely.

I have been going to the same barn on Saturdays for over 10 years and the people there are practically my family. When I came back from Colorado I had discovered a lot about myself, who I want to be, weight loss, etc. I tried to explain this to them, they mean so much to me it was only natural to want to share what I learned with them the  same way I did with my mom. But as I was explaining to them how I learned that I don’t feel the need to change the world or write novels (which we have sort of jokingly talked about) but that I just want to help a few people and be happy, I was met with blank eyes. The kind of eyes that say “I can’t relate at all to what you are saying to me but I am going to smile and pretend that I do so I won’t hurt your feelings.” It hurt, not that they didn’t understand that’s not their fault, but that these people who mean so much to me can’t understand this huge and really important thing that happened to me and they can’t relate to the things I learned from it.

In Colorado I discovered this part of myself that really wanted to be more spiritual. I think that it was always there but it just became louder out there. When I say spiritual I don’t mean like going to church on Sunday kind of spiritual (although I have nothing at all against going to church or mosque, or temple) I mean Eat, Pray, Love kind of spiritual. This isn’t the kind of thing most 16 year olds are faced with so I had no idea what to do with this desire to meditate and learn more about the spiritual side of myself.

So there I was 11:00 pm Friday night on the couch with my mom bawling my eyes out. I felt really lonely and bored with my life. I missed backpacking where every day had meaning and I grew as a person. I know that I can’t have that everyday but I wanted to have it sometimes. Then mom mentioned that there is a Buddhist Sangha that met in an Unitarian Church about 20 minutes from my house. At first I thought, “I can’t be a Buddhist” but the idea of being able to really meditate and learn how to do it right with people who were also interested in meditation really stuck in my mind.

Fast forward to Sunday at 7:00 at night. There I was sitting in the basement of this church with a bunch of mis-matched people from all walks of life meditating and reading the Noble Eightfold Path.

It was a new experience and I really know almost nothing about Buddhism but I loved it and should you be in that church next Sunday at 7 you’d probably see me. I don’t know how it will fit into my life when school starts but if I find that it is really something that matters to me I know I can make it work.

So I know that was quite wordy so let’s get onto the food!

Rather than explain everything I’ve eaten since Friday I will simply show you…

Friday

Saturday

My very first Vegan Overnight Oats! With pumpkin, cinnamon, crasins, raisins, and almond butter!

Elementary school lunch! PB&J, sugar snap peas (with nutritional yeast), and applesauce.

Veggies, tomato sauce, and polenta (its hiding under the veggies)

Sunday

My Sunday Tradition: made with white flour and all! Protein powder is the only remotely healthy thing about these beauties!

Today

Bio

Mmmm my favorite standby lunch 🙂

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Oh! By the way, I know I haven’t been updating on my weigh-ins lately what with trips and stuff, but I lost .8 pounds this week. Not to bad. I think I have been gaining major muscle but I am trying to lower my calories a little bit so I can get back into the routine of consistently losing weight!

E 🙂

 

New Camera= I can blog again!!

Yay! I’m back in business! Yesterday my mom and I went camera shopping so I can finally get back to blogging!

After coming home from out somewhat epic camera search my mom and I made biscotti to send to the family I stayed with after backpacking. I wanted to stay so I could do the community service project our group planned. (We talked to a bunch of local 7-10 year old from a local YMCA camp about our trip.They were so freakin’ cute)

I can’t lie, I definitely sampled our creations. They were so delicious, and not at all low calorie! But they are gone now, off to Colorado, so there is no worries about munchies, besides they aren’t mine to munch on!

I had no clue what I wanted for dinner so I decided on an “omlette” which was really more of scrambled eggs with whatever veggies were in the fridge and cinnamon raisin Ezekiel toast with almond butter. I also had some fruit and yogurt.

Breakfast this morning was Kashi Go Lean, my new favorite cereal.

It’s simple with just a little sweetness, but not at all cardboardy like one might expect. And how can I not love the nutrition facts!

I had it with blueberries, some banana, and a little bit of honey to make it sweeter.

And a very green Green Monster! 🙂

All that amazing food gave me some awesome energy for my run. Which was a good thing because it was hot out this morning! But my run went smoothly.

My post-run snack was a banana and peanut butter, a match made in heaven!

This morning seemed to fly by because all of a sudden it was time for lunch!

A flatout wrap with hummus, lettuce, tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, raisins, yellow pepper, and pea sprouts with some cabbage salad on the side.

Now its time to work on things for school. It may still be summer but I still have work! I have tons of reading for AP Bio. I am almost finished the first of 5 chapters I have to read. Each chapter is about 20 pages long so I have to get reading! nAs nerdy as this may sound though I am actually enjoying the bio reading. I really like bio! I can’t explain why but I really loved it when I took it my freshman year so hopefully I feel the same way this year because APBio is far from easy!

It’s been a little weird readjusting to life at home. I learned all these things about who I want to be and what I want to do and it can be hard to explain to the people who you want to explain to. It can be a little lonely feeling when the people closest to you just can’t understand what you are feeling because they didn’t share the experience you did. I know they want to but they just can’t.

It has been so nice getting back into working out again though. I missed kickboxing and running so much!

Last night around 11 or 12 ( I know so late! My internal clock is all whacked out right now!) I caught a major cleaning bug and cleaned out my whole closet! I went through all my shoes and dresses and shelves and got rid of things I will never wear and organized like my life depended on it! I got a good look at the number of shoes I own and was somewhat surprised. It never feels like I have a ton of shoes but I do!

Going through my old dresses was really fun. I tried some stuff on to see if I could still wear it and so many things were too big! I kind of re-realized how much weight I have actually lost! I tried on the jean skirt that I didn’t even know I had and then looked at the tag and it was a size 8! I am starring to wear clothes in 8 and 10 instead of 10 and 12! Whoohoo go single sizes!

I now have 2 giant trash bags filled with clothes and shoes for Goodwill. Cleaning feels good!

*sigh* So now I am off to read Bio and stuff for AP English. hope everyone is having a super fun Monday!

Elli

 

Hello from the Midwest!

Hello everyone!

I’m so excited right now, I’m typing this from my mom’s phone! They have apps for everyrhing now!

Don’t expect a very long post like this because just typing this has taken me forever!

I’m in Minneapolis! We got here wednesday afternoon. We ate dinner that night at this awesome pasta place called Broder’s Pasta Bar. We ate at the “bar” which just looked like a bar but there was no alcohol. From the bar we could watch the kitchen which was pretty cool since being a chef is on my possible career lis

I had lasagna with lamb,mint, and this creamy tomato sauce. It wasn’t what I was initially planning on getting but our waitress said it was out of this world so I had to try it. It was amazing, rich, but awesome.

Yesterday, Thursday, we visited Macalester College in St. Paul. I loved the college and it may be my #1 choice. We ate lunch ate this little Afgani place. They had a $10 lunch buffet which was an awesome deal! I had dahl, this mush of Mung beans and stuff, pita, hummus, and Afgani salad which was onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and some other veggies with lime juice. I LOVED everything there and if I go to Mac it might become my lunch spot 😛

Dinner was nothing special. We couldn’t find anywhere interesting so we ended up a a kind of touristy place called the News Room. We shared an emanada for an appitizer, then I had a really basic salad with walnuts, grilled chicken, and goat cheese. It was ok but nothing special.

Dessert was cool though. Our waitress reccomended their Root Beer cookies so we figured we had to them. They were fresh baked (they bake them when you order them) and so soft you needed a spoon for the middle (not undercooked though) and they really tasted like root beer. Apparently they use root beer extract to get the flavor.

Now we are in th car on our way to see Carleton College which is about 45 minutes from Minneapolis.

Tomorrow we fly to Colorado! I can’t believe that in less than a week I will be backpacking! I’m getting nervous but trying not to think about it too much!

So that about all I have for you guys right now! I promise lots of pictures when I get back! I will try to update you guys on how Boulder is before I venture off into the wilderness!

Hope all is well with everyone!

Elli 🙂

 

A Trip to Princeton and a 30 pound celebration!

Hello Everyone!

Happy Belated 4th of July to everyone from the USA!!

For those of you who don’t know, my official weigh-in day is Sunday. I weigh myself right after I get up so that I don’t eat or drink anything before. Also for any who don’t know, I have been stuck between 161 and 156 (25 and 30 pounds lost) for about 7 or 8 months. Yeah it’s been beyond frustrating! Well yesterday I got up and weighed myself like I do every Sunday. I have been eating well and working out really hard as you can probably see, but after so many good weeks with bad weigh-ins I wasn’t expecting much. I lost 2.4 pounds! Whoohoo! I normally lose about .5 to 1 pound a week but in the last 3 weeks I have lost over 2 pounds twice! And I was 156.6!!!! I HAVE OFFICIALLY LOST 30 POUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have been waiting 7 months to see that number and I honestly couldn’t even believe it when I saw it, I still don’t think it has really hit me. I am so happy!

In other news, yesterday my mom and I took a trip up to Princeton, NJ (home of the Ivy League University) to go hiking with this girl who is a member of a group of girls I will be going backpacking in Colorado with at the end of July. We are the only girls going who are not from Colorado so we thought we should meet since it just so happened we only lived about an hour apart. We went for a gorgeous hike in the woods outside of Princeton, although it was over 90 degrees even in the shade I still had fun!

We passed by this yucky little green pond with the funniest “No Swimming” sign I have ever seen

Why anyone would even want to swim in there is beyond me! Other than heat stroke 😛 the only danger came from some geese who thought we were a little to close to their babies for our own good. They didn’t attack but they were hissing at us!

After our run in with the geese My new friend Lissy (short for Elisabeth), our moms, and I went into Princeton for some lunch. We went to Panera Bread where I had the Strawberry and Poppyseed chicken salad which was only 280 calories and so delicious! It had strawberries, pineapple, blueberries, oranges, and pecans! ( I forgot my camera back in the car so this is not y picture, this is the link from where I got the picture: http://cookingwithkate.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/cimg5792.jpg just making sure I don’t credit for it)

After the salad we got some amazing artisan ice cream, I had vanilla and dark chocolate sorbet it was soooo good. Certainly not low calorie but I didn’t feel guilty I had decided that I was celebrating my 30 pound loss!

After lunch our little group split up and my mom and I walked around Princeton’s campus together. The campus is so beautiful, and very Ivy League.

With some pretty cool study spots!

After some major walking we came upon this really cool frozen yogurt place (grrr I can’t remember its name). It had tons of flavors of frozen yogurt that were all made from fat-freee yogurt that was really low calorie! You got to pick as many flavors you wanted ( I had plain tart and yucca whichI had never heard of but it was really good, and purple :P) then they had tons of toppings to choose from including fresh fruit! I had blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, pineapple, kiwi, cookie dough, brownie bits, mini reese’s peanut butter cups, and crushed Oreo cookie.

I only had a small amount of the unhealthy stuff but I figured how often to I get to have that stuff in my yogurt? Never! So why not right?

It was so delicious! I wish there was a place like that near my house it was such great healthy treat!

I love little day trips like that with my mom! We can get along really well if we are both in a good mood, and Princeton is such a nice town, even in 95 degree heat! It was a great way to spend the 4th, normally we are camping on the 4th but we couldn’t get our camping spot until later this year.

Speaking of camping… I leave tomorrow! I will try to post if I can but I highly doubt I will be able to post until I get back 😦 I’ll have a huge post when I gat back though with pictures of Milwaukee, Beloit, and our campsite with all the amazing and plentiful food!! I will miss you guys!

Hope you are all enjoying your summer! Anyone have any super cool plans?

Elli