I just came across a really cool site that all foodies would absolutely love! It’s called KeyIngredient.com and it’s a digital Food Recipe database where you can find all of your favorite foods made many different ways. I signed up and posted the recipe that I’ve fallen in love with this week. It’s Gillian McKeith’s Shepherd’s Pie. With everyone you post you can pick up a really cool widget to publish it to your blog. I think I’m going to go through my arsenal of recipes and post them all through keyingredient.com so I can easily display them on this blog for all of you.

On a side note, I’d like to say thank you for all of the “Congrats” that I received from my previous post. I didn’t get many comments on the site but I did get quite a few emails asking the “How’d you do it?” question. Eating healthy and stepping up on the exercise are all you really need to do. Dieting is hard but it’s not as evil as everyone thinks it is.

I’ve learned to fall in love with the right foods, and fall out of love with the wrong ones. By cutting out all of the saturated fats, sugars and high carbohydrates - you can really make a difference in not only your physical appearance but how you feel on the inside as well.

I hope to be able to use keyingredient.com to get in touch with many other dieters and food-lovers in general so I can find the best recipes and learn to love the right foods even more.

I’ve only been a member for about a half hour or so (at the time of posting this) but in that time I was able to search for quite a few different tips, tricks and techniques that could really make anyone shine in a healthy kitchen with simple and tasty ingredients.

As I go through the database I’ll share a few more recipes as I try them. This could be a huge addition to the site with just these widgets alone. I’ll still continue to post my own recipes in the regular format though. I’m working on setting up a hack for the blog where you can convert my food related posts to a print-friendly format. That should work out pretty well too.

I don’t like to do a weigh-in every week because the overall progress isn’t too important to me.  I know right now that I’m doing very well on my diet, I’ve changed my life around and now I know that I can handle living this lifestyle.

I started on my diet a little over 1 year ago, since then there have been ups and downs and instances of falling off the wagon.  I’m happy to report that I’ve finally met my  second goal, it took me over a year but I’m now 60 pounds lighter than I was last year.  I’ve hit the 200LB mark and my third goal is to lose another 25 pounds and meet my overall goal-weight of 175.  Now, I know it seems strange to want to stop at a ‘high’ number but I’m not doing this to be super skinny.  I like being curvy - hence the domain name , duh?

I’m doing this to be healthy and I feel that I’ll be at my healthiest by getting down to 175.  Only 25 pounds to go, I figure by the end of the summer I’ll be able to enjoy my 24th birthday with amazing confidence in myself!

I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been working so hard, or if it’s the fact that I haven’t really “cooked” in the past week.  I’ve been loading up on raw-veggies and nuts for the past week.  When you’re on your period you really don’t want to hang out in front of an oven - you know?

Tonight I was feeling pretty well - however - and I stepped up and made dinner for Sean and I.  Now he’s not on the diet so I tend to prepare meals two different ways.  The way I’ll eat and the way he’ll eat.  One thing that we both agree on - however - ROASTED SWEET POTATOES.  It’s like eating candy and when you’re menstruating it’s really the good kind of ’sugar’ to get.  I didn’t leave them in the oven long enough to caramelize but they did soften up enough to eat and that was really all that mattered to me.

I had some roasted chicken stuffed with a home-made pesto and I made a stuffed chicken for Sean as well but it was stuffed with broccoli and cheese, also rolled in some breadcrumbs to give an extra crunch.  Either way we both enjoyed dinner and I got my sugar-fix for the evening.

I have a lot of preparation to do for the weekend.  I don’t see myself having a lot of time to slice and dice my treats for the week so I’m really only popping online quick to post here (sorry for the slacking).  The diet is going very well.  I’ve switched to the detox diet which is basically a vegetarian diet with the addition of white-meat poultry.  I can’t do the Fish addition, it would kill me considering my allergy.  I have enjoyed the random instances of chicken to bulk up on protein but I’m getting almost all of my nutrients from the fruits, veggies and whole grains.

I’ve only been on this particular ‘detox diet’ for the past week and I don’t see it as a fad diet, I really am enjoying the food and the excess energy.  My skin is clearing up as well, it’s not as uneven as it’s been over the last couple of years.  I have to say that the 5LB weight loss this week wasn’t bad either.  I needed something to get me over the wall that I hit a few weeks ago and this certainly has done the trick.  With that wall I unfortunately gained a few pounds so the 5 pound weight loss is really only a 3pound considering the 2 I put back on but that’s OK.  I’m not concerned about a pound or two, I’m more concerned when it gets up to double digits - heh.

The past couple of days have been absolutely gorgeous. Since Wednesday we’ve averaged around 75° and for me that has to be the best weather in the world.  I typically like things to be chilly, I’m someone who likes to bundle up so going over 85° is very uncomfortable for me - as it is for many people.  Around here when it’s in the 70’s, everyone is outside.  I’ve spent the last few days working on my base tan while I do some gardening.  I’m just itching to redo the garden with fresh flowers and a nice new border so I can separate the icky sod from the dirt hole that we call a garden (at the moment).  I did some planting last year but I made the mistake of placing seeds into sandy soil so it really didn’t work out too well.  When things finally did start to grow in, it was chopped down by the landscapers.  They can easily avoid the grass (which they’re being paid to cut by the way) but they can easily run down someone’s flowers without a care in the world.  Either way it will be corrected and sectioned off within the next couple of weeks and I can’t wait for it.

While I didn’t hear back from a company I interviewed with this past month, I have been accepted as a new out-sourcer for a web design company located in New Jersey.  I’ve already completed a project or two and they look really promising.  It’s my hope to be able to bring in enough money so I can stay on top of my bills.  I haven’t been slacking off on work but I haven’t been able to get much on my own either.  I need to bring in $1800 a month in order to cover my bills and I’ve been pretty short for the past couple of months, Sean has graciously been picking up the slack for me.  I hope to be able to get back to the point where I’m working solid 8 hour days again.  It sucks having a small project here and there to complete, is it so wrong that I’d kill for a 9-5?  I’ve applied at every single business in the area, both retail and desk jobs and I haven’t gotten a call back on any of them.  It’s a shock to me considering every business is hiring for summer positions.  I’ll even take something part-time as long as it doesn’t require having to lift anything more than 50 pounds.  While my health has been improving with my on-going weight loss, a bad back is a bad back no matter what weight you are.  I’ve removed over 50 pounds from my frame and I’m still unable to lift anything over 30 pounds without feeling a painful twinge in my back.  This is the reason I only bring minimal weight-training in with my daily routines.

I’m fine running, walking, spinning, and swimming.  I typically have 5 pound weights on my arms or legs when I’m jogging (for that extra push) and I try as hard as I can to stretch myself whenever I get the chance (typically after a work out) just so I can regain some strength in my back but it’s just not there.  A few have told me that a visit to the doctor to find out if I have a slipped disk or not would do the trick but when you have no medical insurance, and are unable to afford it - there’s really nothing that can be done.  This is another reason why I’ve been so persistant on getting the job with the company I interviewed for.  They offer up a pretty amazing benefits package and I’d kill to get myself into a doctors office.

Sean has been poking around the Internet in hopes to find out some more information about Medicare.  I just don’t think I’d like to have to depend on the Government to get by.  I know I pay my taxes so that everyone else can get a free ride but at the same time I think PRIDE has a lot to do with it.  Yes, I’d love to be covered by Medicare and Food Stamps - I put out a lot of money every month on healthy foods to maintain my diet - BUT, I’m perfectly capable of getting a job - I’m just unable to be accepted for one (for some god forsaken reason).  It’s the same story, every single time.  “You interviewed very well, we’ve just taken a different route”.  Now, in terms of Web Design work, that means “We found someone with a degree”.  When it comes to Retail that means “We found someone who’ll work for less than minimum wage and not bitch about it - ie: immigrant”.  I don’t mean Mexican, there’s an over-abundance of Russians in the area and they all work 3-4 jobs for a few months while they’re here for college and head back to Russia to take their few thousand dollars and be able to go through the rest of their year until they repeat the process down here.

It’s extremely frustrating to watch my bank account dwindle and my application pile reach the ceiling with “rejected” stamps on them. I keep meticulous records of just about every aspect of my life so if I apply somewhere I tend to keep a copy of the application and mark it down on a list so I know where I applied and their reason for rejection.  The reasons of “taking a different route” is the running theme.

I know that I need to go back to school and I desperately need a car of my own (Sean’s is about to kick the bucket and we’ve been sharing it due to my lack of a car).  It’s impossible for me to complete this process if I can’t find a job.  I’ve purchased a book on grant writing “The Everything Grant Writing Book” and I’m going to take some personal time to setup a work area (on any clean surface in the house) so I can start writing up a formal grant application to submit to different companies.  I’m going for anything that will help me, a federal grant, a state grant or even a corporate grant.  It’s going to be put towards my business.  Not only will it enroll me in school to further-advance me in my trade but it will also be used to push advertising and maybe purchase a new computer so I’m able to work more efficiently.  I love the iMac Sean gave me for Christmas, don’t get me wrong, but I also need silence when I’m trying to concentrate and that’s something I can’t get when I’m working in the same office as Sean (we share one).  Having a laptop is a god-send for me, and while I’m just looking to pick up a cheap $800 model that is Intel based (so I can install Mac OS X on it), it’s still $800 that I don’t have.

It’s a whole serious of financial issues right now and I really wish I could figure out what to do.

I finally got around to updating to Wordpress 2.5.  I was hesistant at first because I’m using it on a few of my other domains and I really don’t like it very much at all.  But since there are a lot of security fixes with it, I figured it was worth putting in the effort so I logged into my control panel and went through with the automatic upgrade.  While I was initially against using Fantastico on my servers, I’m kind of happy that it’s there now.  It takes a lot of stress off me for having to do manual upgrades for clients.  I can point them into the direction of their control panel and the rest is history.

I went out tonight to just have some alone time.  I wondered into Dollar Tree and landed some great deals on some items I use regularly.  I picked up a few boxes of tissues (2 for $1) and I loaded up on some carpet fresh too.  I also am in a decorating mood so I bought to small mirrors to hang up above the bed, I’m going to throw a picture up in between them and that will add some visual interest to the room.  The walls are so bland right now, it’s just a blue-grey wall color that’s got quite a few holes because the room I’m in used to be Sean’s office.  So when he took the shelves out of there he kind of just left the holes.  One of these days I’m going to get in there and fill in the holes, throw some paint over the spackle and then hang a few things up.  The rest is history really.  It’ll give me something to do, that always counts for something - right?

I’m still doing pretty well on my diet, I’m not losing that much weight anymore but I think I’ve hit the point where it’s getting harder to lose weight.  I did cheat one night but I don’t think a small slice of cake would really stop me from losing weight over the course of the next few weeks considering I burned off those calories that night at the gym.  I didn’t hit a brick wall - per say - but I have hit a wall and I need to figure out how to change things up a bit.

I’ve been looking into Gillian McKeith Detox Vegetarian Diet, where for 8 weeks you only eat vegetables and then slowly reintroduce good proteins such as chicken and fish.  I can’t do the fish aspect of things, I have a horrible allergy to it.  But I think the detox would work out pretty well.  I’ll pick up her book eventually, right now I really can’t afford it.  But, I already have a good balance of fruits, vegetables and whole grains as well as fiber in my diet, but her “detox diet” is nothing but all natural organic living.  It’s an idea that I threw Sean’s way but I think he’d only jump on board when it comes time to introduce grilled chicken salad into the mix.  I also don’t have the best of storage in the kitchen to house all of these veggies so I may hold off on it until after Sean and I have our own place.

For now I’ll stick to what I’m doing, I’ll just work out a bit more and introduce a 5th “meal” to my day to jump start my metabolism a little.  I typically have breakfast, a piece of fruit before lunch, a small lunch, another piece of fruit and then dinner.  Maybe if I introduce another slice of fruit into the day (probably as a dessert) I should be able to jump things up a bit more.

Worth a shot, right?