Stuntin' Like My Daddy

via The Beautiful Struggler - Me, Myself and Eye

My father is nearly 60 years old and he's about to have a six-pack, y'all. That's bananas! Since the mid 1990's, he's been very serious about his eating habits and exercise regimen. Daddy knows pretty much everything you could know about nutrition, he's like a health dictionary. So it pretty much drove him crazy that he couldn't get me to follow all his good advise. For years, he'd say "Toldja, if you just do what I tell you to do, you could be a lean, mean fighting machine." And I kept putting it off until one day, someday, tomorrow.

As you know, "someday" ended up being January of 2008. And even though I've lost a ton of weight, added exercise to my life and drastically improved my eating habits, diet and working out are still a HUGE part of my everyday struggle. Though I've kept off the better part of 50 pounds down from my lifetime high, there have been some missteps. I gained five pounds back on about three occasions, the most recent being last month. Spending some "quality time" with a "special friend" found me eating stuff I know better than to typically mess with and in excessive portions to boot. Plus, when people keep telling you how great you look, it's easy to be like "You know what, I DO look good and I CAN have this ice cream, nom nom nom!"

So, I started picking up Women's Health and Shape magazines and realized that (in addition to the new overeating), I was stuck in a workout rut and needed to switch up my routine so I could shed this last twenty or so pounds. And I know that the bodega egg and cheese sandwiches were not the shake for breakfast, nor were the Dunkin Donuts bagel egg and cheeses for lunch. And the brownies from the Muslim bakery (embarrassingly consumed on the WAY to the gym) had to go.

I found some great stuff on DormBuys.com to help me travel with my breakfast and lunch:

This "Cereal on the go" traveller lets me keep milk cold and separate from my Special K or Fiber One.

I love this shaker that keeps water or milk cold and has a special compartment for powdered shake mix. I use this to drink my Muscle Milk Dark Chocolate shakes, which taste like the real, fattening deal more than any other protein shake on the market!

And this cool salad bowl dispenses a 2-ounce helping of dressing, which can help you prevent over saturating and adding unneeded calories to a healthy lunch.

Oh, and I obsessively hoard Boca and Yves vegetarian products from (name redacted, you can't have them, I won't share)'s 99-Cent Store, where they are sold a few weeks before they expire. Freeze them jawns and they are all to the good.

I want to bite the screen, I love these so much.

Come on, people! It's spring time and you know what comes after that! And while I'm tempted to encourage you other chicks out there to be as sloppy as possible to increase my chances of landing a dreamboat husband, I'm tired of sisters taking up two seats on the bus when my back be hurting and I want to sit down. Plus, this whole diet and exercises thing is too great to keep to myself. It's how some of you people feel about Jesus and church. I just want to spread the word, I may even get a tambourine. I may stand in front of McDonald's (a la Chicago's crazy Old Navy preacher) and say "You won't get out of Lane Bryant eating two Double Cheeseburgers. You won't get in to a size 8 drinking a large shake. A small is fine if you must have one. We are all gluttons."

Picture me preachin!

Godspeed!
Sister Toldja

PS-Question: what's the difference between loving someone and being in love? How do you know? Just a thing to make you go "hmmm". Holler in the comments.

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