The Scale Demon must leave

I have been trying to lose weight for a little over a year. Being overweight has plagued me for most of my life. I was bigger than other kids when I was a kid, and as a Teen I was in the "too fat to be pretty." club.
I spent from age 12 until about 17 coming up with CRAZY crash diets to drop four or five pounds only to gain them back and then some. I will not post the details of some of the "Diets"...lets simply say they didn't work for the long term.
Last year after several attempts to make weight loss stick after having my son, I finally decided to go with a "eat anything you want, but keep the portions under control" life style. I don't count it as a diet, I simply decided to stop eating a side of beef with a two liter of soda. I also took a bit from my house keeping guru "THE FLYLADY". I have taken weight loss and a healthier life style in baby steps. I want to lose weight, but I want to be healthy for the rest of my life. I can only achieve both through education and behavior modification.
In the past year I have learned some things that might help the rest of the world and hopefully will help me learn more to keep the weight off for good.
1. Skip the Mayonnaise. I realize you can weigh mayonnaise and keep the portions under control but at nearly 100 calories per serving its simply not worth it.

2. Smaller Portions are filling. I think too often we've been served ENORMOUS portions of food and think to ourselves "No way is a Cup of Cereal and Banana going to get me going for Breakfast." and surely it does and then some!

3. 20 minutes can be the difference between Binge, and satisfaction. When I am hungry or my blood sugar drops to where I feel like I might pass out I tend to over eat. A while back I decided to wait twenty minutes after a reasonably sized portion of food (that is weighed on scale) before getting seconds or desert. This rule has helped me realize my body doesn't need to be over stuffed, it needs time to catch up.

4. Working out probably will not help you lose weight, but it will certainly help the shape of the flabby body. This was a hard realization for me. Yes, you do burn calories, but more than likely those Carole's are eaten back. However, where my legs used to be flabby they have some sort of definition and my arms are actually toned. I can actually RUN.

5. Real weight loss and fitness does not happen in 30 days as many diet and exercise gadgets claim. Yes, you can lose weight and get shape fairly quickly, but if you do not learn the skills to maintain the lifestyle for a healthy body in that time then you've done it all for nothing. Its going to take several more years for me to learn everything I need to know to maintain my current life style.

6. You have to have mini goals. Big goals are wonderful but without some small mile stones along the way those larger goals can be nearly impossible to reach. In the past my mini goals have been "Run a Full Mile", "Lose 4lbs before summer," "Work out Three days a week". Each of these goals have gotten me further along in the over all idea. I cannot run a 5K without running a Mile, I cannot lose 40lbs without losing 4 more pounds, my over all fitness and stamina will suffer without working out.


Right now I have been trying to get 5 to 10lbs to move before summer getss here. Its just 25 days a way. No i want havea bikini body or even a swim suit body, but I'll be 5 to 10lbs lighter than I was last summer. I really need the scale to move as its been stuck on the same number for the past 3 weeks.

A rental garden

Every year I am faced with the same problem, gardening season comes a long and I get this "farmer's child itch." With that every year my loving DP reminds me that we are renting and we cannot go digging up the yard for a huge garden that has the potential to feed us year round. This year has been extra tough. We live a wonderful rental with a huge lot, and LOTS of shade. The trees are a welcoming oasis in the summer time, but not so much if I plan on growing anything.


The opening in the Trees right above the deck.

My resolve is growing everything in containers. A month ago I went out into the shed to take stock of everything we had only to find we'd left most of our large containers in the mountains. I was sad, we'd just started making back our initial investment from those containers. At that point I was just going to give up, and spend the rest of the summer hunting down cheap tomatoes, and zucchini.

My DP had other intentions, I came home from a wonderful mother's day picnic to find that he'd bought me all of the plants I needed for a my garden. He knows how much I love growing my own food. (who wouldn't, it tastes a 1000 times better than anything at the grocery store) Then he asked me where the containers were. I had to tell him the news about our old containers. He was disappointed and recommended we ask our land lords if we could plant in the ground. The problem however there's not one spot in our yard the receives a full 6 hours of sun. The only place that meets that condition is our back deck. I told him my plans to do containers again, even though in years past we'd had so so results.

We made a plan and I went shopping, only to have my head explode at the sheer cost of new containers. We bought our first containers using a gift card and some we'd gotten for free from various sources. There was no way I was paying $10 for a 5 gallon plastic "Flower pot" made in China. I told DP while we were looking that I was off to search the store of an "alternative."

My thinking was any large plastic container would do as long as I put enough holes in the bottom, along with a few inches of gravel. I found some 10 gallon rope handle tubs and one large Rubbermaid tub. I took them home and drilled about 15 holes in the Rope tubs and 40 or more holes in the Rubbermaid tub.

Here are a few pictures of the final results.

Zucchini and Peppers in Rubbermaid tub. Tomato in 10 gallon Rope tub

Just a Little Jam

To put it frankly I am back to blogging and I am not stopping this time. Between my Step son moving in, and me going back to school I have been SUPER busy. I am back.

Today I made homemade strawberry Jam. My venture into Jam making started last spring. My DP being very aware of my desire to DYI, bought me twelve diamond pleated Ball Jelly jars and Sure Jell Pectin.

I wanted to make some strawberry jam, but as it was in the Mountains, I couldn't find any U-pick strawberries.
So this year I got the jump on finding strawberries and there happened to be a patch just 5 miles from my home. A HUGE score at $1.25/ pound. After I got my strawberries home I told the kids they could have one basket

they could have one basket the rest were for Jam.

I made my jam using the instructions for Cooked Jam, inside the Sure Jell Box. It took me about two hours total, because my canning pot took a while to boil, but the results so far are 8 gorgeous jars of Strawberry Jam. Made with 100% All natural ingredients.