Clothes Cow

or, I Have Nothing To Wear

I have a problem with clothes. I like to buy them, but I don't like to try them on. As long as they look good on the rack I can imagine they'll look good on me. And then I get them home and every so often I'll put them on when I'm in a pinch to wear something cute. And then I take them off when I realize they look horrible on me.

Mostly, they just take up space.

I also have way too many work shirts, to the point that if I wait until I'm out of clean shirts to do laundry (which I usually do) I end up spending an entire day on it.

That ends today. Here's what I started with.



Everything I own, laundered and hung. Then I tried everything on. Unless it was a t-shirt, everything got tried on and evaluated. Everything that didn't fit went into a tub. The tub has an expiration date of six months. Anything that doesn't fit in six months is going to Goodwill. I can do a freshness check in three months. A lot of the stuff just barely didn't fit, so if it does when I check again it can be re-added to the wardrobe. Probably seems like a long time, but most of the stuff is jeans and cute slogany t-shirts that I really like and want to be able to wear someday. So that cull gave me this.



Next I went through and culled work shirts. I had 25 work shirts and 18 of them were UPS branded. UPS buys from different t-shirt vendors, so some of the shirts didn't fit well and those went. Almost all of the light colored shirts had general UPS stains and what I call boob dirt, which is two obvious dirt circles on the front. Those went, too. I ended up keeping 10 work shirts, which isn't bad. Two weeks worth. The rest will either be restructured (I like the logos on some of them, just not the fit) or turned into rags. Here is after the work shirt cull.



And here's what I was left with after I removed all the leftover clothes hangers and organized the clothes by type.



Pretty huge difference, huh? Hopefully it will make finding something to wear easier because I won't be pointlessly trying on a bunch of too-small clothes and it'll make laundry day a lot easier. And every time I eyeball that tub full of cute-but-not-on-me-(yet) clothes, it'll remind me of what I'm trying to do here.

The Daily Weigh

One popular dieting tip is that you shouldn't weigh yourself every day. Because you're not going to drop pounds overnight and weighing yourself every day will just depress you. Instead you should weigh once a week.

This doesn't work for me for a lot of reasons, but I'll let Google 15 explain one of them. Google 15 is a Google app on my home page that I plug my weight into every day.

The Google 15 encourages you to get on the scale every day by calculating a moving average from your daily weight. We then plot this average alongside your daily scale weight and a goal weight that you set--this gives you a better idea of your weight trend by masking most of the day to day noise that variances in water weight introduce.

If you've ever tried to lose weight, you've undoubtedly experienced the excitement of getting on the scale to see that you "lost" two pounds since yesterday. Unfortunately, that tends to be followed by the depression that you "gained" three pounds the next day. It's impossible to "lose weight" every day according to your scale weight, so as a result, most people cultivate an irrational (but very real) fear of their scale and only climb on to get feedback on their weight loss efforts every week or two.

Your exact scale weight isn't really important as long as it's "ahead" of the trend you're aiming for. If you're trying to lose weight, you want your day-to-day scale weight to be below your moving average--concentrate on your moving average weight, not your scale weight! In the example on the right, note that on 4/10 it looks like the user "gained" three pounds according to the scale weight, but the moving average merely leveled out. But this is no reason to panic--the next day's weight continued the downward trend.

Of course, the big secret that you never hear is that the hardest part about losing weight is keeping the weight off once you've lost it. The Google 15 generally considers you to be on goal as long as your moving average weight stays within 2.5 pounds of your goal weight. So don't stop using it once you've made your goal weight--enter your weight every day and it will give you an early warning if you start to pack on the pounds!

As you can see, I weighed in at 172 today. I don't think that means I've lost three pounds. I don't consider it a pound lost until I've weighed in under my previous weight for at least a week. But if I only weighed myself once a week, that 172 might give me a little more false hope than if I was weighing every day. The good news is, if this trend continues, it does look like I can officially say I'm losing weight. Yay!

Cinderella dressed in yella....

Remember how much fun jumping rope was when you were a kid?

As an adult, not so much. While my goals are in a state of flux the only way to open an envelope today was to exercise. Also, my head was fuzzy and I thought that would help clear it.

I powered up Dance Dance Revolution but was having a hard time getting into it. So I pulled out the jump rope I bought the last time I decided to lose weight.

20 jumps. 20 jumps and I was winded and not able to go on. But man it got my heart rate going, so I'm going to look into incorporating it into my work out. I'm also going to make up an intricate (because I love it that way) chart in my Big Binder to keep up with Operation: Get Healthy Dammit.

I ended up finishing the half hour with DDR. Now to go open an envelope! And also take a shower...

Recap of week ending 10/12

My weeks end on Sunday.

So it's week two and I'm still a little disorganized but still excited. I may have to tweak my goals a bit. I went all week without dairy. It was just easy enough that I knew that I would get an envelope every day, so I didn't really push to do other things for envelopes. Today I even convinced myself that it would be a good thing to have some cheese on my tacos, because then I would have to exercise to open an envelope. That's self-sabotage and it's also bullshit. I should know better. So I think I'm gonna have to do an accumulation thing on the dairy.

Also, every time I made a meal I felt like it didn't count for the "whole meal" goal because I used processed soy milk or fake meat or something. So I might make a new goal about trying new recipes or something. I'll think on it tonight and probably have new goals starting tomorrow.

Previous weight : 175
Current weight : 175 (I was down to 174 during the week, but my official current weight will be whatever I am on Monday.)
Envelopes opened : 8 (seven for no dairy, one for exercise)
Awesome rewards :

• Paper punch! I'm not sure if it's a dinosaur or a monkey in a beret, but I love punches.
• Tags! Which are probably not interesting to non-crafty people, but to me they are tiny little canvases. :)
• Future marble magnets!
  
• Sealing wax! This might be the best thing out of this lot. I've always wanted to play with it, but never really had a reason to so I never bought any. Now I'm going to have to send some letters.
• Fun fur!
  
• Ribbon!
• Stickers! I stuck two of the blue bling things on my phone, to remind me of what I'm trying to do.
• Star brads! Those need to go somewhere in my Big Binder.

Finest moment: Resisting the temptation of Jason's mac & cheese
Worst moment: Realizing that Oreo cookies have no dairy and making myself sick on them. I actually only ate about six, but when I give up dairy I inadvertently give up a lot other stuff like sugar and HFCS. So the Oreos were a total overload and I felt like crap after I ate them.

No mushroom for you.

I think I might be allergic to fungus. Fungi? Things that are like mushroom. I've never liked mushrooms so it hasn't been an issue, but...

Quorn makes an amazing fake chicken nugget. It has a great texture, even better than Morningstar Farms. It's also made of some kind of fungus. Three out of the four times I had it I felt kinda crappy afterwards. A little nauseous and very, very flushed.

Yesterday I used quite a lot of nutritional yeast flakes (also fungus) in the cheeze sauce and afterwards I got the same uncomfortable flushed feeling. So I'm thinking I might be a bit allergic and that sucks. Jason got me a frozen portobello burger, so when I'm feeling up to dealing with possible sickiness I'm gonna give it a try and see how I feel afterwards.

Cheeze sauce

Today Jason made himself some mac & cheese. I WANTED IT SO BADLY. But I've gone all week so far with no dairy and I wanted to keep that up.

For dinner I decided to attempt a non-dairy cheese sauce. I used this recipe.

I put it over some brown rice with some Morningstar Chik'n strips. It was a little bizarre. I was expecting cheese taste and it really wasn't, so even though it wasn't bad I had a hard time reconciling the look of it with the taste of it.

I might have to get out of a cheese frame of mind next time I make it.

Cream of Celery Soup

I had all this celery leftover from the chickpea salad, so I googled a cream of celery soup recipe. I ended up using this one as a frame. I never follow recipes exact, not because I think I'm above it or anything, just because I'm lazy and impatient. I halved it, used kale instead of parsley and changed a few other things based on what I had in the kitchen. I also didn't blend all the potato because I wanted to have a few big chunks in it.

The end result seemed unremarkable at first and the green color didn't do it any favors but I yummed down two bowls of it. It'll be a good alternative to the thin, vegetable stock soups that I normally eat. It wasn't really a meal in itself and I ended up dipping plain toast in it, but it'll be good for the upcoming winter months. One of the few pros to the cold weather: hot soups and teas!

There was plenty leftover, but I have no idea how it will freezer, so I put the majority in the fridge and just a bit in the freezer. I'll thaw it out sometime next week and give it a shot.

I still have quite a bit of celery left though...

Chickpea salad

In an effort to prove to my boyfriend that life without dairy and meat is not horrible and boring, I went hunting down new (easy) recipes to try, preferably with stuff I already had in the house, and found one for Faux Tuna Salad. I've never liked tuna but didn't figure it would be very tuna-ish and I already had a can of chickpeas, so I gave it a try.

I altered it, used real mayo, celery in addition to onion and no lemon juice, but it was still yummy! I just threw everything in to taste so next time I'll have to measure it out for future reference.

The chickpeas didn't blend very well, so I just mashed them up with a fork. The texture was like that Potted Meat (I can't believe I used to eat and enjoy something called Potted Meat Food Product.) But I'm not going to call it Fake Potted Meat Food Product Salad, so I'm going with Chickpea Salad instead.

I put it on some bread and topped it with fresh kale. The awesome thing is that when I took the first bite I decided Jason needed to try it. I went to the kitchen for a spoonful to offer him and when I came back he had his lips wrapped around my sandwich! He said it was good, guessed that it was supposed to be fake tuna salad. I just had it on some crackers as a post-work snack and that was good, too. So now I'm excited because as simple as this is, it's still one more thing to add to my list of Meals I Can Make.

I bought celery specifically for this and only used one stalk. I think tomorrow I may try to make Cream of Celery soup with the rest.

Mission Statement

I eat crap and I'm overweight. I want to change that.

I don't want to go on a diet, I want to change my diet, make healthier choices on a regular basis and hope that better health and a smaller butt follow behind.

To that end, I have a reward system. Because I am five.

I have a box with 60 small envelopes (about the size of a trading card.) A friend filled them all with tiny goodies and trinkets. (I'm the type who uses all her quarters in gumball toy machines so this is perfect for me.) I also filled 60 envelopes for her and for each little personal goal we reach, we get to open one. Healthy choices! Tiny surprises! Beat that, Weight Watchers!

So here are my goals (subject to change.)

1) Exercise: A 30 minute session gets an envelope. Dog walking doesn't count. In fact, nothing that just happens to be exercise that I'm not doing for the reason of exercise counts. Dance Dance Revolution counts (and it's all I have right now 'cause I can't find my card to get into the apartment gym) but helping someone move boxes out of their attic would not count. Only one envelope a day for this. I can't open two envelopes if I exercise for an hour, or for 30 minutes twice. The most I see for this is three times a week, if that.

2) Dairy Free Days: I'm really trying to get away from dairy. Once I gave it up for three weeks and I lost four pounds. I'm not worrying about milk as an ingredient, just milk as the main ingredient. So any cheese, ranch based dressings, milk, or creams aren't allowed, but things that happen to have a little milk are okay. If I have to pour a big ol' cup of milk in it to make it, like instant potatoes, that counts as dairy (I'll probably be subbing soy or rice milk or something.) So no ice cream, no chocolate! Hopefully more fruits as snacks. I have to go a whole day without dairy to get an envelope. This'll be kinda hard when my boyfriend cooks, but I'm hoping to get at least three days a week out of this.

3) Whole Meals: One thing I really want to do is make more meals out of ingredients, as opposed to canned/frozen/boxed processed crap. So far that only thing I've really done is salads and rice with veggies. I'm trying to branch out, though, so I'm rewarding myself for everyone mostly whole meal I prepare. I'm not really sure how to define what I'll consider too much processed stuff as part of the meal. I'll just kinda know. This one I might be able to do once a day, but it'll probably be closer to three or four times a week. A lot of times I won't want to make something and instead I'll eat Spaghettio's or a frozen dinner that my boyfriend bought me because he thinks I'm starving or something. I'm hoping the idea of a reward will enourage me to suck it up and make a proper meal.

4) New Veggies: Okay, this may sound silly, but I really want to be a good example of a vegetarian. I've always been a boring eater, chicken and a starch with some cheese did me fine for every meal. I NEVER ate vegetables. And I don't want anyone to think I eat broccoli and rice all the time because that's the only meal that exists without meat and being a vegetarian means being totally deprived. Also, I keep seeing vegetarians online talk about the meals they make with all these vegetables I've never tried and they make them sound so good. Plus I figure if I find more vegetables that I like it'll make eating out a lot easier because I'll have more things to choose from. So every new vegetable gets a reward. And it has to be a real bite that's chewed and swallowed, not sticking the end of my tongue on it. I also have a side rule that if I don't like a vegetable on the first try I have to try it again prepared a different way. I doubt this'll happen more than once a week.