New beginnings, new purpose

Ok, so it’s been, I don’t know, a year and a half since my last post. I’m sure you’ve all slept at night and managed without one… but I’m feeling a renewed sense of purpose… so I give to you the new (and slightly more focused)… SnarkSense!

Drum roll, please….

SnarkSense Gets Fit!!

Highly original, I know, with all the thousands of fitness and weight loss journey blogs out there. I’m leaving my old posts up because I can’t promise I won’t occasionally post a bit of randomness… but for now, the fit journey it is.

Let’s make something clear right now. I am not your standard fitness blogger. I am nowhere NEAR close to reaching anything close to my goal weight, and this is 100% a struggle for me. I am not having an easy go of it (though I have had easier times in the past). At my heaviest, back in high school, I weighed about 220 lbs., and at my lightest, I was about 148 lbs. (though I was pretty sick at the time, and it wasn’t cute.) Now… gulp… I weigh 193.8 lbs. as of my last weigh-in. I am dying a little inside that I just said that publicly where the both of you reading this can see it, but I suppose if I am going to do this to help keep myself accountable, I should probably be honest, right?

me a few years ago, probably about 215 lbs. and me a few weeks ago at around 196 lbs.

I’ve gotten pretty serious about this whole endeavor. I’m on an 8 Week Transformation Challenge right now… with Fitness By Example. Mike, the trainer and owner… is FANTASTIC. I love him. I’m partaking in the challenge virtually because I no longer live close enough to go to boot camp there regularly… so I go to the Fit Body Boot Camp Orlando classes. I love them, too. I also go to the regular gym. Basically… it takes several teams of people to keep me on point. And the Internets. Which means you.

So basically, here’s where I stand on this journey:

-I have been fluctuating within the same 5 lbs. or so FOR MONTHS… which is beyond frustrating.

-I’m in Week 2 of the Challenge… I lost 2 lbs. the first week. While this is good, I can’t help being frustrated that the last time I did this challenge, I lost 10 lbs. the first week (and then stalled out for the 2 weeks after that. So maybe this time I am the tortoise? I WILL WIN!)

-I haven’t had any soda, diet or otherwise, in about 14 months… So I guess we can say, if nothing else, that’s the one healthier habit that has stuck.

-I struggle with being tired all of the time because of some sort of as-yet-diagnosed issue which is challenging, but so far, I manage to push through (some days are better than others) anyway

-My nutrition is the best it’s been in my life… but still, I have a ways to go

-I have a lot of muscle! You can’t see any of it because I have a nice, plush layer of fat hiding it all, but I swear, it’s there!!

So that’s where I’m at, you’re more or less updated. (Captivating, I know).

This brings me to the first thing about this journey I want to share with you.

Boot camp workouts are TOUGH. They may only be 30 minutes, but there’s basically no rest at all. This is good, because right about the time I want to burn the building down, it’s all over. I highly recommend them for people who have short attention spans.

But the point is, some women say “I don’t sweat, I sparkle.”

Let’s get one thing straight– there will be no sparkling. I sweat. And I don’t just sweat. I SWEAT.

Like, four minutes into a workout, I’m dripping off whatever makeup I’m wearing, and spraying sweat when I exhale. There is nothing cute about this. Then, I get home and my dogs think I’m a salt lick. (It’s not out of the ordinary to hear me yelling that ‘we don’t lick armpits in this house’ to the dogs.)

But man, afterwards, after my heart stops beating 165488765 times a minute and I’m certain I won’t die… it feels GOOD.

Because after all, sweat is just fat crying, right?

So thanks for reading… I promise it won’t be another year and a half until my next post… and we’ll see where this takes us!

Jingle all the way

Happy Holidays, Snarklets!

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas… I know here at the Snarkstead, it was eventful. We had a really nice day with family, though we really miss everyone at home and wish we could also celebrate with them.

I hosted my first Christmas dinner… and I didn’t make anyone sick and it was reasonably tasty! SUCCESS!

However… it may very well be my first and last roasted turkey. Seriously, there’s a reason it took me so many years to roast one (outside of the fact that we have so many amazing family members like my mom, who makes a great turkey and so why the hell should I mess with it?).

But no, the bigger issue is… why in the HELL do they leave all that mess inside the turkey? I don’t care what kind of “amazing” stuffing you make (I do NOT like stuffing… the consistency, ugh, everything, it makes me shudder, though I’m sure you personally make really tasty stuffing to those that do enjoy it), you do not need your turkey liver/heart to be in the damn bird. Can’t they do it so people buy it separately? You’re not even “supposed” to cook the stuffing inside the bird anymore, so why must that mess be in there?

Dear Butterball (& Publix and whomever else farms out these turkeys),

Please stop packaging your birds with the internal organs and gross necks inside. They. Are. Nasty. And, if you’re an inexperienced bird roaster (like me), and stupid enough to feel that you can defy the laws of physics and defrost the bird faster than all Googled sites recommend (like me), not only are they absolutely disgusting, they pose a much bigger problem. Frozen projectiles. You see, if the bird only appears to be defrosted because the breast meat is, but the inside of the bird is still frozen (like mine), and you decide it’s  a really good idea to run it under cool water (like me) and then CHIP AWAY AT THE ICE INSIDE (like me), the organs, and the unidentifiable liquid that’s not water, not exactly blood, and so it upsets me to try to even wonder what bodily fluid it could be, goes flying around the kitchen in ice form (You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!!). So as even the most casual of observers note, they actually pose a HUGE threat. They become a weapon, they spread salmonella unwittingly around the food prep area, and are just generally offensive. (Also, what do you do to the turkeys’ necks to make them so curved? Just a little to the left…  I’ve never seen a turkey’s neck look like that in the wild… actually… don’t answer that. I probably don’t want to know.) Then, I can’t actually touch them, because I’m gagging, so I not only have to use a paper towel to pick them up, but Hubby-to-Be is both annoyed and laughing hysterically because I’m wasting paper towels and so ridiculous he can’t even stand it (story of my life.)

So, please, stop. I was too young to get my grandmother’s recipes that would require such parts, and even if I hadn’t been, thinking about them is making my stomach hurt as it is. For those that do use those recipes, separate packaging would work well. They could still be a package deal, just that if you don’t want them, you don’t pick that package up. Work it out.

Sincerely,

A Decidedly Undomestic Future Wife

However, I made a FANTASTIC peppermint-chocolate cheesecake with chocolate ganache topping. That, plus the ridiculous amount of amazing cookies from my mother-in-law-to-be and the 75 chocolate truffles Renegade the dog “got me for Christmas” (yes, this is real and not an exaggeration) is the reason I nearly cried over my Weight Watchers weigh-in today. Only 12 weeks until White Dress Day and not only am I nowhere near my original weight loss goal, I am 14 lbs away from the one I set on a contingency basis when it became clear if I lost 35 lbs between now and then someone would likely hospitalize me (apparently several spin classes and a Pilates class thrown in for good measure doesn’t combat the 17 lbs of chocolate I ate this week. Who knew?!?)

By the way… the lyrics: “Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh”… what happened to the eight reindeer plus Rudolph?!?! Santa’s sleigh isn’t pulled by a HORSE!

Clearly, it’s time for bed.

SnarkSense all day every day

Good news, Snarklets!

I started a Twitter account, for little bits of SnarkSense… of course… my handle is @snarksense.

I’m just getting it off the ground, so bear with me, it’s not all that interesting just yet, but will be. Or at least, I will try to make it interesting.

New full post coming tomorrow!