Optical Illusion

I don't have much to say about this one, I just really liked this outfit from Wednesday.



On the days that I've been skipping (see: Tuesday), my outfits have pretty much been like the one above: straight-leg pant, long cardigan, heeled bootie, layering top and either a long pendant necklace or a scarf. It's a look that covers all the parts I want covered, and gives the optical illusion of making me look leaner than I am right now.

In contrast, we have the outfit I wore on Thursday.



I finally managed to wear the button-down under a dress! (Hrm, the collar appears be tucked under more than it should have been.) I've worn this dress before, but most of the pattern was covered up under a cardigan. I am really in love with the pattern -- up close, the top part makes my shoulder line look stronger than it is -- but looking at the whole thing like gives me pause. Maybe that wasn't the right belt?



On the plus side, it had some really nice flow, and I loved the grey tights and black Vince Camuto boots with it. On the minus side, it is not nearly as slimming as Wednesday's grey pants and gold cardigan combo.

I am trying to make my peace with that -- do all outfits need to be optical illusions, or can I live with the fact that sometimes I just look heavy? I don't know the answer. I see other bloggers wearing their curves and shapes with pride, and I am torn between envying them their freedom, and silently re-dressing them so they look slimmer in the camera. ("Oh, that would be perfect if you lost the belt!") It's a vicious circle; as confident as I am about who I am, I feel more comfortable in my clothes when I think I am fooling the world in an optical illusion outfit. Then I feel bad for copping out like that, that I should be proud of myself no matter what size I am. But I'm not, and I don't want to be this size. So I change back into an optical illusion outfit, and I stop beating myself up.

See what I mean by a vicious circle? Oh, the terrible things we do to ourselves with negative self-talk sometimes!

Anyway, I worked another optical illusion to my advantage yesterday. This was dinner:




We ordered salads and pizza, our weekly too-tired-to-cook meal.  (How do I know it's weekly? The delivery guy complimented the way we redecorated the living room. He has been to our house enough times that he noticed the change. Yep!) So I dumped the salad out of the container and put in a nice big bowl, and I put the pizza on a smaller plate. And it worked; I ate the half the amount of pizza I normally would!

It also occurred that I probably need to stop fighting the weekly pizza ritual so much, and find ways to work it into the Foodstyle so it is a regular indulgence instead. Repeating the trick above will be a good start, and replacing the salad with a healthier one will be a second. I don't like their salad anyway. I bet if I mix up a bag of chopped lettuce and veggies the day before, when I have cooking energy, I could dump it into a bowl just like I would if I bought the bag at the store. Hmmm, that would work!

What tricks do you have for including unbreakable habits into your meals? Any optical illusion outfits you like to wear?

In the Zone

I took this dress to Nordstrom to be altered after my last wearing. It's a fabulous dress, but it was a little too loose around the waist and chest. The tailor kept pulling it in, and I kept telling her I wanted to be able to fit a blouse under it. In the end, she won; when I picked it up a couple of weeks ago, it felt a little too tight, and zipping up under my arm when I was in a blouse was a struggle. I was disappointed, but I didn't want to take it back and have her fix it. I was embarrassed to admit I was too fat for how much she had taken it in.

So it hung in my closet for a bit while I stewed. I finally gave up on the idea of a button-down blouse under it. and wore it again with a layering tee instead. For NOW -- we shall see what the Foodstyle brings in the coming weeks; I may get a button-down under there yet!



I really do love the dress. Next time perhaps I will be brave enough to style it with some color; both times so far have been black-and-white variations. Not that there is anything wrong with that!



The bigger news is, as I have mentioned, the Foodstyle. I am In the Zone, in that moment when dieting/eating right is effortless, your motivation is high, and you're not frantically missing all the "good food" (i.e. junk food) you could be eating. It took me a long while to get here, so I am doing my best to keep myself here. I am eating very well, I'm tracking my foods nightly, I'm getting tons and tons of water in naturally -- my body is craving water so I'm refilling my water bottle at work all day long.

People, I am voluntarily and willingly taking my daily multivitamin. Alert the media!

I'm also not depriving myself; if I want a chocolate covered pretzel, I have one. But I only have one, and I don't let it derail the rest of my day. This change in attitude is the one that most represents being in the zone; when I'm not, that chocolate-covered pretzel is my gateway drug to a whole day of candy-snacking and usually culminates in Taco Bell for dinner. When I am in the zone, the pretzel is a savory treat that I enjoy to its fullest, and then I move on. Yesterday for example, our boss bought us pizza for lunch after our annual gift-wrapping party; I ate two squares of cheese pizza instead of the lunch I had brought, but my afternoon snack of two clementines came from my lunch box, and then I polished off the rest of the lunch (squash soup and a turkey sandwich) when I got home for dinner. It's amazing to realize that; to see in vivid clarity how much power my attitude has over what I eat and therefore what I weigh.

My goal during this month is to keep it going during the holidays, to not use the excuse of traveling or stress or parties to change my attitude. There are plenty of ways to still enjoy myself and yet get 5 fruits and veggies in every day.

Speaking of which:
1. I spotted this recipe for mixing grains with pomegranate seeds over on This Mama Cooks. Doesn't it look and sound amazing? I think I need to make that for next week, right alongside the holiday blossom cookies I will be making for the family Christmas party. Gotta keep that balance going!

2. Is it just me, or are clementines especially tasty right now? I prefer big, thick navel oranges, but they're too tough this early in the season. The clementines are right at their peak -- their more delicate skin tears away easily, and they're so flavorful and soft. Winter citrus is just one of my most favorite things to eat in the world; I still resent the winter I was on Medifast and couldn't have any oranges. Oranges never hurt anyone!

What's your favorite fruit to eat right now?

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it's all a blur of pants

Boy you guys know me too well; pretty much everyone nailed my choice on Thursday. Guess I should try to be more unpredictable in the future.

Nah. :)

Friday:




I called this my "don't mess with me" outfit. The chains, the multiple necklaces and bracelets, the denim jacket, the skinny pants. I was feeling pretty bad-ass.

Then people messed with me! Boo!!

So I had a beer. Heh.






Let's just say it was the kind of day where I accidentally ate pizza twice in one day. Really! It was an accident! I forgot what we ate for lunch until after dinner. Ooops.

Daily Food Tracker
Breakfast: Special K cereal with skim milk
Lunch: mini spinach pizza
Snack: yogurt
Dinner: frozen olive pizza, beer

++++++

Saturday:
I finally figured out why my casual outfits never seem to look as good as they do in real life; I always slump in my pictures! I think I am going for a casual slouch, but it doesn't translate. So I'll be working on breaking that habit.




It was cool on Saturday, so I "bundled" up for my hair appointment and some shopping. Found a gorgeous day dress on sale at Nordstrom; it's a little too big on top so I thought I would take it to a tailor. Then I stopped by a different department to see my friend Marianna from YLF, and she convinced me to have them alter it there! So I'll be picking up next Monday. I'm very excited; it's a nicer dress than the Old Navy/Target ones I have been wearing lately, and it's one I can layer the bejesus out of all winter long.




George likes my Saturday outfit too! I bought the top and sweater at the LOFT Outlet with my friend Jessie earlier this summer, but I don't think I ever wore them together. They're cute, I will have to do it more now that it's cool enough for sweaters again.

Daily Food Tracker: Saturday
Breakfast: I don't remember, yogurt, maybe?
Lunch: 2 McD's cheeseburgers
Dinner: spaghetti squash, mushroom pasta, tomato sauce, chopped up meatloaf, blue cheese crumbles. It sounds awful but it is it seriously delicious.

+++++

Sunday, no outfit photo because I was a bum all day. I didn't do a lot of food prep this weekend, just another batch of broccoli slaw. I tried to bake another spaghetti squash but it was rotten and I put my finger through it. Bought another one and promptly put too much water in the pan so the squash turned into mush when it baked. This is just not my week for spaghetti squash, I guess.

Daily Food Tracker: Sunday
Breakfast: Hubby made scrambled eggs with chopped pepper bacon, spinach and onions. So, so good!
Lunch: Skipped it because I was still full from breakfast
Dinner: Since the spaghetti squash was such a bust, I had just the mushroom pasta with tomato sauce, sauteed spinach and turkey meatballs.
Snack: english toffee ice cream bars

But even though I didn't prep, we've still got lots of easy-to-cook foods available, most especially a giant container of spinach. Guess I was needing the iron, because that was the first veggie I made a beeline for at the store.


And that was my weekend. How was yours?

Getting forgetful in my old age

Last night I plugged my camera in to my laptop, and was flummoxed when the camera blinked at me, "No Image". It took me several minutes to realize I had forgotten to take my photos that morning! Whoops.

Anyway, it was a standard Kristen uniform: my new mushroom Clarks wedge sandals, and my purple patterned Target dress, and my long purple Ann Taylor boyfriend cardigan. It's actually getting cool enough to wear cardigans! I also got an order from Gap (35% off sale) of a new pair of their skinny pants; I want to have at least one pants outfit for the fall, and I do tend to have a long of long tunics and sweaters. Plus if I pick up any of the Missoni ones in a couple of weeks!

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Did anyone feel the earthquake where they are? As I said on FB, "No earthquake here, just a couple of idiots I'd like to shake."

We made light because it didn't seem to cause much damage, but I am glad that is how it turned out! Earthquakes are scary enough, but when they happen in places that don't often get them, they seem doubly frightening, don't they?

++++++


Daily Food Tracker: Tuesday
Breakfast: glop (pomegranate yogurt, berries, fiber one cereal squares)
Snack: mini candy bars
Lunch: tuna salad on wheat, chips (another lunch party at work)
Snack: yes, more of that stupid candy
Dinner: 2 ears of corn
Snack: turkey sandwich with LC cheese and muffaletta on whole wheat

Neither Hubby or I have been very hungry or motivated at dinner time the last couple of days, but we've been grazing through the fridge instead of ordering takeout. I am so glad I've been buying foods that we can just grab and go, like the corn last night. I am doubly glad though that I am not in the office today where that giant vat of mini candy keeps pulling me in. It seems like it's no big deal since they are barely even full bites, but clearly they are derailing me. This is the second day where they were my only snack all day.

+++++++




I have some crumbled peppered turkey bacon that I want to use up tonight. Any ideas what to do with it? The laziest one I have so far is to throw it in a salad, but I would rather find a better use...

+++++

San had asked which frozen pizza we liked, so when I stopped at the store to pick up more skim milk and berries I grabbed another one so I could remember the name. :) It's called Red Fork, and we really like the Bianca version best with mushrooms and kalamata olives. The chicken and gouda one is pretty good too! We find them at Whole Foods and Target.

Have a wonderful day, everyone! Stay away from the candy jar! (That advice is just for me.)

Daily Food Tracking: First Month Review

The Daily Food Tracker was supposed to be a one-week experiment, but a month later, it's turned into a habit.

Some changes in my thinking and actions that have come from it:
1. I find myself reviewing it in my head just before each meal, forcing myself to remember if the meal before had any fruits or vegetables, and making sure I get some in if I haven't yet.
2. I look at my daily intake as a whole balance, and I try to make choices about what food group I've had too much of or not enough of already.
3. It's brought to stark relief my pizza and my peanut butter addictions (not that either were a surprise, but to see it written down day after day is another thing entirely).
4. I force myself to 'fess up on the bad days.
5. The turn toward more homecooked meals has begun at last, and I'm starting to enjoy getting creative in the kitchen again. 

Where I want to go next with it:
1. Continue tracking on the blog. I'm glad I named this Low Fat Dressing, and I said from the beginning that this blog would be a mix of fashion, food, dieting, and anything else. For a while there, I stopped talking about dieting as I climbed back up the scale after Medifast, and I'm not really following an official "diet" right now. But I am teaching myself to eat healthier for the long haul. To find a balance between the free-for-alls when I am not dieting and the smart but too strict regimens of Weight Watchers, Medifast, South Beach, etc.
2. To start to lose weight again. Even though it's not an official diet, the goal is to get healthier, in weight and in body. My knees and back are creaking under the weight of me, and I can't let that get worse. Plus, the weight came back so unevenly on my body, and in places it didn't use to be. I am lumpy, not curvy. I want to be curvy again. :) I actually went up a couple of pounds this month -- which isn't that surprising when I look at the trackers and see some the crap and extra food I was still eating -- but over this last week it's started to go down again. That is going to continue.
3. Practice more mindful eating. I need to get back to one of my favorite parts of the old WW Core plan: eating until I am satisfied, not full. I have made great strides in cutting down my portions of the bad stuff -- I eat only 1-2 slices of pizza instead of half the pie now -- but now it's time to eat more mindfully of everything.
4. Keep cooking and prepping foods for the week, but at a reasonable level. The last few times I went on diets I tried to be too ambitious about what I was going to cook each week, and most of my grandiose ideas ended up with the raw products rotting until they went into the trash. This month's plans have been smaller in scope, more in keeping with our work schedules and exhaustion levels; lots of chicken sausages for fast grilling, different salad types to keep me interested, and plenty of frozen pizza for Hubby.
5. Try eating more locally. The influence of Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is sinking into my grocery shopping big-time. This is the time of year in the Chicago area to find fresh local foods everywhere, and I am going to take advantage of it.


So. That's the plan! Eventually exercise is going to become a regular part of my life again, but right now it's more important to me to continue to succeed in this area.

+++++

Daily Food Tracker: Thursday
Breakfast: whole wheat waffle with syrup and strawberries
Lunch: Panera Pick 2: half ham-swiss on rye, broccoli cheese soup
Dinner: No snacks all day, and Hubby was out. I didn't want to cook, and after a stressful day I was so tempted to order delivery or cook a whole pizza and eat it. Instead I decided to let myself graze, as a "treat" to myself. I would just eat, a bit at a time, and not cook one big meal at once. I would eat during the evening at home if and when I felt like it. I ended up eating:
-bite-size chocolate almond granola (Hubby gets a box of them a week from Target. He loves them as a snack.)
-measured out bowl of a new Fiber One cereal (it's really good!) and skim milk
-unmeasured larger bowl of the same, about an hour later (probably not a good idea given how much fiber is in it, lol)
-clementine oranges
-slice of bread with BnPB and skim milk

That's the kind of treating myself I can live with.

+++++

To answer some questions from yesterday, hahaha, no I do not iron all my cardigans! But I do wash them in the machine and let them air dry, so sometimes they get a little misshapen or wrinkly, especially the pure cotton ones. When that happens, I will iron it before I wear it. But it's not often, trust me!

As to how many dresses I have I am probably up to 15 in my current size, mostly all summer varieties. But since I can't fit into any of my pants right now, this is all I have to wear every day. Plus, they're all $20-30 at Target/Kohls/Old Navy; I just can't resist picking another one when I find a style I like!

3-item outfit

Dress, shoes, necklace. Done.

Okay, more detail: kickass Kohls dress, tan Me Too platform heels from DSW, gold hoop necklace from NAS (which really is proving that it goes with everything).



These shoes always knock me out; they're really, really heavy, so every step I take is a workout in itself. By the end of the day, my feet aren't sore, my thighs are tired, like I was doing leg lifts all day. It's kind of cool, to tell you the truth.




You've seen all of these items several times, but never together before. I suppose I could have pretended I am doing some type of blogger-y challenge, like a 30-item 30-day thing, or a remix, but the reality is this is what all of us do every day; we wear our clothes in different combinations. I try not to repeat the same combination from head to toe, and i don't think I did here. In fact I probably won't wear these shoes with this dress again; the dress is a little short for heels this high. I like flashing a little leg, but this felt excessive.


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Daily Food Tracker: Thursday

You have no idea how badly I do not want to write down my food intake. It was really, really, really, really bad. I am actually embarrassed. I didn't think about the cumulative damage until I had polished off the pizza at dinner. (Yeah, that's how bad it was. PIZZA. Sigh.)
Okay, here goes. No judging! I know it was terrible.

Breakfast: Einstein breakfast bacon and cheese thin bagel sandwich
Snack: watermelon
Lunch: Chipotle burrito bowl with fajita peppers, carnitas, rice, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese (that rice is the freakin' devil. I have no willpower against it.)
Snack: shortbread cookies
Dinner: spinach and onion pizza, beers

Good Lord. No wonder I gained all the weight back. This was a pretty common type of day back when I wasn't "dieting". Except I probably wouldn't have even had the watermelon.

I'm going away this weekend, and I probably won't be eating that great while we are gone, but I feel pretty sure it won't be as bad as this. Maybe. :)

Weekly Food Prep

Daily food Tracker: Sunday
Breakfast: yogurt, watermelon
Brunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwich, skim milk
Snack: blackberries and strawberries (during food prep time)
Dinner: green salad with peppers, gorgonzola and honey mustard dressing, slice of pizza, beer
Snack: WW ice cream bar

For the week, I have:


Blackberries and strawberries. Mouth-watering, right?


Watermelon. It's on its last legs; I may have to buy a new one mid-week.




Colored bell pepper and sliced crimini mushrooms for salads. (The larger container didn't work out well last week, but I need some grab-and-go veggies.)


Pan-steamed broccolini and mushrooms, which went into...


Fritatta. I added skim sharp cheddar and some of that peppered turkey bacon. Cut up into 6 pieces, it reheats in 30 seconds; perfect for breakfast with a big side of fruit. I WILL beat that breakfast sandwich monster! :)

I also have sweet Italian chicken sausage, a loaf of seeduction bread, crab meat, plenty of romaine lettuce, and yogurt. If the temps stay reasonable (i.e. less than 100 degrees), I have spaghetti squash and turkey meatballs. The WW ice cream bars are almost gone, but there are two boxes of sugar free popsicles. They do the job just as well!

Here are two things I will not be consuming this week: pizza and alcohol. 

What are you planning on eating this week?

13-in-13 Challenge: Week 1 complete

I don't really follow football. I understand the basic rules of the game, but I don't follow any teams or know how long a whole season lasts or spend my Sundays watching games with friends. That said, I adore Friday Night Lights. It's a terrific, nuanced, beautifully-acted show about the complicated lives of a town who lives and dies by their high-school football team. I can't wait for it to start again on NBC this January (don't have DirectTV).

Anyway, on FNL they occasionally have a "bye" week, when they don't have a game that Friday and they spend the week taking it a little easier and recharging their batteries for the game the following week.

I think I should have had a bye week between my (self-imposed!) challenges.

I wasn't super-horrible, going on some crazy binge ordering pizza** and eating pints of ice cream or anything close to that. I just didn't TRY to do any of the 4 goals I set. I didn't even feel guilty for not trying. By about Thursday I started asking myself what I was doing and why, and the best I could come up with was that I just didn't feel like it this week. That's when the "bye week" phrase popped into my head, and I realized what I had done.

Well, I wish I had tried more, but hopefully my total procrastination -- and that I have to confess said procrastination publicly right here and now -- will spur me on to getting it right this week. I am so tired of not fitting in all my cute dresses!

For posterity's sake, here is the review of my goals.

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
Weight: 180.2
GAIN: 1.2

Dang. DAAAAAAAANG.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
This was the one thing that I did most consistently; I think there were only 2 days out of 7 where I did not have at least one veggie-based meal per day.


3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
Oh, hahahahaha! Heeheeheehee! Oh, I crack myself up with my grand plans!
But my new running shoes arrive this week, and I truly am looking forward to getting to use them again. I miss running a lot.


4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
I think I was acting like this week was a farewell tour to cookies; I ate some of all of my favorites! And Thursday we had our division holiday luncheon, and there were sugar cookies galore. I love Christmas sugar cookies, the shaped ones with sprinkles, and especially the colored ones you make with the form-shooter thing. It was four hours of listening to people drone on and on about project plans, and platters of sparkly sugar cookies in front of me. Guess how I chose to keep myself awake?

There are 2 more parties this week; I won't be falling into the same trap. But I will save up my treat days for those, so I can have something delicious at each.


**Hubby and I made a promise earlier this fall that we were going to not order pizza for the rest of the year, in a reverse New Year's resolution. This was a huge shift for us; pizza is our default "I'm too lazy to do anything, we deserve a treat" meal, and we often order it once a week. We've stuck to our vow, though, and it's actually getting easier over time. We've come up with quick meals to replace it at home, and now when we want a treat we go out to a nice dinner. Even there at that "treat" moment, I am getting better about making smarter choices. We also often select Sweet Tomatoes as our "treat" restaurant, and we pile on the salad fixin's.

I am looking forward to a nice thin-crust pizza with onions, spinach and sausage on New Year's Eve, I will admit, but I think after that I'm going back to the No-Pizza Promise. It's really been a great help in not careening completely out of control.