Hey guys! How’s everyone today? Sounds like everyone had a great Valentine’s Day! Other than not feeling great the first half, mine was pretty good!
I lunched on some of my leftover bruschetta mixed with some whole-wheat shell pasta: 
And I polished off the remaining 3 of Ashley’s doughballs! They were SO good! I really loved the peanut butter ones…yum 🙂
While I was hard at work folding clothes, working on medical notes, and watching the Olympics, the puppers all passed out on our bed (please excuse the mess):
Apparently they had a very hard weekend 😉 While I was waiting on Nate to get home, I snacked on the Cold Quinoa and Fruit Salad (another one of Ashley’s fabulous recipes) in a little Anthropologie bowl:
I did Level 3 of 30 Day Shred (LOVE) and then did some upper body specific weights after: front & lateral arm raises, shoulder press, bicep curls, tricep extension, standing bent rows, and some more planks. I figure a little extra couldn’t hurt since I only did 20 minutes of exercise.
When Nate called me and told me he was getting in his car at the airport, I started making dinner. He was getting in REALLY late, but I wanted to have a fancy shmancy dinner anyway. I prepped the remainder of the bruschetta for appetizers:
On the menu was Roasted Pork Loin with Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette, Gnocchi with Bacon and Peas (made me think of Jessica, minus the peas), and sauteed asparagus!
And dessert was a chocolate chip cookie baked in a cast iron skillet and vanilla bean ice cream (because I love my husband and I knew that would make him happy) 🙂
This meal wasn’t the epitome of health, but I figured we had small portions and don’t do this a lot! Once Nate was home and we settled down, he built a fire in the fireplace while we watched the DVR’ed Olympics. He’s so cute 😉
Warm, snuggly fire:
We both fell asleep, then woke up and climbed in bed. This morning I did 25 minutes of yoga (warriors, triangles, lots of stretches) and made yet another batch of PB & Jelly Chia Oats. This stuff is so good…and I gotta say, I like peanut butter MUCH more than almond butter. Sorry guys. But almond butter is the best with carrots!
And stopped at Starbucks for some coffee: a tall Espresso Roast hit the spot!
So, a couple of things:
- I won my first contest yesterday! Thanks Janna!
- Nate & some of our friends are going to start home brewing! I’m really excited to try the beers out…I’ll let you know when we get rich off of it 😉
- I came to a realization yesterday.
The third item is what I want to talk about the most. This past weekend was not my best food weekend, and it really left me feeling down and out. I was really bummed, and as a result didn’t eat portions or meals the way that I need to in order to accomplish my goal of losing weight and feeling good about myself. Yesterday, Caitlin planted a little seed of thought into my head with this post. It really made me stop and think about what I consider “failure” and what I consider a “good performance” (both physically and nutritionally). Then, when I was doing 30-Day Shred, Jillian said something like, “If it’s getting hard, focus on the reasons you bought this DVD in the first place.” BAM! This hit me over the head like a ton of bricks! I immediately realized (as oblivious as I am to these things) that by rating my “performance” with eating and exercising, I was secretly looking for ways to sabotage myself. I don’t feel like I deserve to lose this weight because I’m not always doing all the “right” things. And so there, in the middle of my 2 minutes of cardio boxing punches, I started sobbing and yelling, “I DESERVE to feel good. I’M NOT FAT!”
Now, my dogs looked at me like I was a crazy person, but I didn’t care. I came to a huge realization yesterday: if this is going to work, if I’m going to lose this weight, if I’m going to believe in myself, and if I’m going to have my husband take pictures of me in my wedding gown for my birthday, then I need to LOVE MYSELF enough to let me get there. So, from this day forward, I am not going to rate my “performance” and I am going to stop the internal Fat Talk. I deserve this, and I know it, so it starts today!
Do you love yourself? What are some of your goals, and are you allowing yourself to achieve them? This was a huge realization for me; now I feel like my biggest struggle will be keeping it on the forefront of my mind!
What a wonderful post! We all have those days; thanks for the reminder – we all need to love ourselves no matter what.
<3
Heather, I’m just catching up on posts. This is so touching. I’m with you on stopping the fat talk, and feeling good about yourself. I’m working on loving myself and being positive. It’s so hard, but worth it.
I know what you mean about needing to love yourself to have progress. I can get really down about my lack of weight loss due to my poor eating choices. Forgiving myself and moving on is pretty easy but I think respecting ourselves and loving ourselves is essential in making the right choices in the first place. We deserve good choices. We deserve good food. We deserve good health!
Keep at it, H!
I’m so glad you had such an important realization!! Those are the best and I hope it sticks! You are such an amazing person. Just take things 1 day at a time. Everyone has set backs now + again. But you have the determination so keep looking forward. It’s so hard to ever be 100% happy with how you look. It’s such a mind game and really frustrates me a lot of the time. roar!
I love you too Heather–you are beautiful inside and out–and so worthy of loving and being loved!
This was the perfect thing for me to read tonight! After some research on what to eat, I went to the grocery store TONIGHT so that I can start eating healthier. Every time I get frustrated, I’m going to remember WHY I’m doing this! To feel better about myself!
P.S. I bought Quinoa today for the first time… I’m cooking it tomorrow. I’m excited to try it out!
P.P.S. I don’t even know if you remember me… I went to FBC Lubbock and randomly found your blog recently. Check mine out! taracatherine.wordpress.com
Aww Sister! I’m so glad you came to that realization! You just need to love yourself! I love you so much and so do mom, dad, nate and more (too many people to list)!
Awesome $tarbuck$ photo!
i tried your jelly today on top of some quinoa flakes alongside some pb–and it was delicious! i love the chunks of real strawberries. thank you very much.
you absolutely DO deserve to feel good and you ARE beautiful. instead of getting down on yourself for a “bad” weekend, use it as motivation to do an extra 15-30 seconds of cardio boxing punches or to choose a healthy homemade salad over going out for lunch on monday. “bad” weekends are going to come and go and getting down on yourself isn’t going to make the situation any better. exercising and eating healthy most of the time will allow you to FULLY enjoy those times when someone presents you with some HAWT chocolate ;-), without getting down on yourself!
Girl you are awesome – it takes alot of strength and confidence to accept yourself and allow things to happen. Coming from someone who over analyzes everything, I feel ya! You can do it and you will get there. 🙂
And thanks for the bacon shout out!
That is HUGE!!! I try really hard to keep a balanced perspective about my body but some days I love it more than others and likewise sometimes I hate it more than others. I just try to make smart choices and know that the feeling will pass….
You DO deserve to love yourself and meet your goals! It seems like it was an emotional and powerful realization.. I bet it sticks around quite well, good luck 🙂
What an awesome post! I need to hear this too. I have really been stuck in a major rut about exercise and I keep wondering to myself what is holding me back. And I think you have hit the nail on the head. I feel like I don’t deserve it.
But girlfriend, we both deserve it. We are supah stahs!
What a fun meal! I had the best gnocchi this weekend but I have yet to try making it at home. I will have to give it a shot soon. The dish I tried this weekend was gnocchi with goat cheese sauce.
The fruit and nut quinoa looks great as well. Thanks for the link.
You hit it right on the nose about loving ourselves. In order to make a change, we need to accept and love ourselves just the way we are.
This was a great post!
Loving your beautiful heart, mind, and body all the way from France. 🙂
loving yourself can be a struggle but you have such a great outlook on it! you deserve to be the healthiest, happiest you that you can be, whatever weight that lands you at! aww your pups are so cute, beautiful really! how do you make a skillet cookie? looks amazing!
Thanks! basically just take cookie dough (homemade or prepackaged) and spread it in a skillet. bake at 350 for around 20 minutes or so until it’s as done as you want it to be!
Hey! I just found your blog and I’m super-glad I did! This post really speaks to me – about loving yourself. It’s definitely something I need to remind myself of regularly and I’m trying to build up to the point where it’s just natural, but I guess it’s a process, huh?
By the way, your dogs are adorable. Are they labs??
They are…the big brown one (Bunker) is a lab-Chesapeake Bay retriever mix (we think), and Keira’s a black lab mix, but we’re not sure what she’s mixed the with. The vizsla is a friend of ours dog…we were just pet sitting this weekend 🙂