The Oatmeal Raisin Cookies that Weren't

I do not like oatmeal raisin cookies - primarily because the raisins are not chocolate chips. Which makes it the perfect cookie for me! Let me explain.  I love baking, any kind of baking, cookies, brownies, cakes, you name it.  I also like to eat what I am baking, the dough, the finished product, it doesn't matter. You see where I'm going with this - losing weight and baking things I like, do not mix well.

When a request comes from school, church, wherever, for people to bake for an event, I'm there, no problem, I will bake something. However, as you have just read, there is a problem.  So Rachel suggested to me, which seems so very simple now, to bake something that I don't like to eat.  How simple is that? Yet it never occurred to me.  I guess I just always thought that if I didn't like oatmeal raisin cookies, no body liked oatmeal raisin cookies. And since I just love any dessert with chocolate in it, everyone loves chocolate. Apparently this is not true - although I still have a hard time comprehending how some people just don't like chocolate. I guess it is just one of those great mysteries in life.  And so I baked those oatmeal raisin cookies for church and not once was I tempted to eat the dough or have one after they were baked. It worked, such a simple thing, yet never occurred to me.

It is funny how sometimes the simplest things in life can have the biggest affect on us.  The mere suggestion of baking something you don't like saved me probably 300-400 calories just for that day. There are so many simple things we can do to help ourselves and others. Just telling someone who has been losing weight, even if it's just a little, how good they look, can make all the difference.

And this would have been a great story if it had actually happened that way, but it didn't. You see, I started writing this blog a couple of days before I baked those cookies - writing down what I expected to happen.  After all, I had a plan, a good plan, almost foolproof really...with one major flaw...  Since I don't like raisins, I don't keep them in the house and it was too late to go out and get some.  However, I do of course keep chocolate chips on hand - always. So oatmeal raisin cookies turned into chocolate chip cookies. This simple plan which was going to save me 300-400 calories that day flopped miserably in an instant. Yes, I ate the dough, and yes, I ate the cookies - a perfectly good plan, gone.

So you're probably wondering, "Why is she telling us this story, this is not inspiring, it was a horrible failure." Well, I share it because life is full of failures and setbacks, sometimes they are little and sometimes they are big, but that doesn't mean we give up. It means we learn from our failures and next time hopefully things turn out different.    After all, its often our failures that ultimately put us on the right path. And I think it's important for people to get the whole picture. It"s not always easy, and there will be many more times in my life that I will face failure, but my hope is that with each time, I learn something new that I can use to get me back on track.  

The plan was really good, I just hadn't prepared properly for it. I guess it's not enough to have a plan, you have to make sure you have all the pieces in place to execute it successfully. Needless to say, I will be stocking raisins in my kitchen from now on.  I have learned that.

Just Believe!

The holidays are over, thank goodness. Not that I don't like the Christmas season but boy does it mess with your eating and exercise. However, I did manage to make it through relatively unscathed.

This New Year's Eve, I started thinking about food and excercise and how I was going to continue to maintain my weight this year after I had just had a week of not exactly "following the plan" - not even close. I came to the conclusion that the only way I would be successful was if two things happened. First, I had to realize that I was doing this because it made me feel good, not anyone else, me.  And second, I had to believe - I had to believe in myself that this is something I could do.

We do things in life for different reasons, sometimes we do them because we have to, sometimes we do them because others want us to, and sometimes we do them because it makes us feel good. Those are the best things - the ones that make us feel good. Many times we do things for ourself that make us feel good, sometimes we do things for others that makes them feel good which in-turn makes us feel good, but the important thing is, it makes us feel good. We shouldn't excercise or eat properly because we have to, we should do it because we feel better. I think that is the key to being successful in any "get in shape" program. If we think of it as something we have to do to reach a goal we may succeed, however the probability of us being successful after we reach the goal goes down considerably. But if we excercise and watch what we eat because we know it makes us feel better, it's not a chore anymore, it's a choice - and that can make all the difference!

Weight loss is also a "believing" game. You have to believe that you can do it.  It's funny, as we grow older, we sometimes forget to just "believe".  I think Christmas reminds us of that, is a time for believing. It seems sad to me sometimes, the older we get, the less we believe. Remember, when you were a child and you could hardly wait until Santa put the gifts under the tree, it was magical! And then we grow older, we no longer believe in Santa, sometimes in ourselves, and sometimes in others.

We need to believe in ourselves that we can change the way we eat, we can lose weight, that others will support us in our quest, pick us up when we fall down, give us words of encouragement. They say it takes a village to raise a child, I believe it takes a community of friends to loose weight.  That's what Rachel Ryans Fitness is, a community where you will find support, encouragement and friends who will cheer you on, every step of the way.

The Yoyo Pound

I know, I haven't posted a blog in a while and many of you have been asking when the next one is coming. So here it is.  I can sum up the last 3 weeks in pretty much one sentence.  Up a pound, down a pound, up a pound and a half, down a half pound, up a half pound, down a pound. Let's see, where does that put me?  I believe I'm still up, but never do I allow myself to be up more than 2 pounds above my goal weight. Through my yoyo weeks, I have discovered something very important within this whole process.  It takes one weekend to gain a pound and about 5-7 days to loose a pound.  Anyone else see a problem here besides me?


This is a very tough time of year. Lots of goodies, parties, and stress. Put them all together and voilà, you have just gained yourself about 5 extra pounds. So what do you do? Well you have a plan, that part is key.  Rachel and I have devised a plan for me so that each day it is minimal effort to form and follow the plan. We have created menus for each day of the week. Breakfast is pretty much the same everyday for me and I'm okay with that.  Lunch varies depending on what dinner is going to be. We try to stay away from both lunch and dinner having too many carbs. Then we have a "pool" of snacks that are thrown in there.  So if you create 10 of these meals you can just keep rotating them every other week. The plans for the day include everything you will have to eat that day - breakfast, lunch, dinner and all snacks. It's quite helpful in many ways. First, you know what you are going to have for dinner every day of the week (I exclude weekends from this system - hence the weight gain on the weekends, we'll talk about that later...). Second, you know exactly what you need to get at the grocery store for that week - the shopping list is done. And third, you don't ever have to decide what to eat, just look at what's next on the list. Of course, you have some flexibity in there too, its not written in stone, but it is a good base.  


I do have to admit, although we have the system pretty much automated, I still do like checking in with Rachel daily about the plan, somehow it makes me feel not so alone in the process even though I know Rachel's not following the plan with me - she has her own plan, but somehow if we talk about it, I feel like she is following it with me. That is the nice part about having a personal trainer, you're not alone. Excercise and weight loss are just easier when you have someone to go through it with. Its like working out with a buddy, cardio goes so much faster when you have someone right next to you doing it with you, not to mention the fact that just having a buddy may have gotten you down to the gym in the first place to do the cardio.


So the weekdays usually go okay, most of the time...The weekends are a different story.  I don't like to cook on the weekends so that leads to either going out to dinner, getting takeout or just having quick - not so healthy - meals.  This apparently is where the extra calories are sneaking in. But its still hard for me to believe that 3500 extra calories are sneaking in to create that extra pound. It just doesn't seem possible.  Granted, I don't keep track of my calories quite as closely on the weekends, but I don't go crazy either. Unfortunately, the scale doesn't lie.  There is no magical fix, I just have to keep better track of what I am eating on the weekends, monitor my weight, and perhaps devise a better weekend plan.


I hope as the new year approaches, all of you who have said, "I really need to loose weight", or "I need to start exercising" are able to find the time, ambition and desire to do that for yourself.  Actually, if you just find the ambition and desire, you will find the time. And once you start, it's addictive because it changes your life in a way that you will never want to go back to where you were. I am probably in the best shape I've been in since high school and I feel fantastic. But it is a lot of work, every day.

I wish all of you a safe, happy and healthy holiday season. May your dreams be many, your wishes be fulfilled, your hearts be happy and your food be healthy - after all, you are what you eat - which in my case would make me a chocolate covered almond!


Merry Christmas!


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"Slippery-Slope" Territory

Well I'm back on my "new" closely watched maintenance plan per my recent "slippery-slope" episode. That's what Rachel calls it when you go into maintenance mode, "slippery-slope territory", and combine that with the holidays coming up - it can be a recipe for disaster if you're not careful.  

Rachel keeps close tabs on me these days which I have to say does keep me marching in the right direction. Every day we talk about food and what I will be consuming that day. Now mind you, these are not general conversations about food, they are pretty specific.  "What did you have for breakfast, What did you have for a snack, What will you be having for lunch?", and so on. And if she doesn't like my answers, she modifies it. We often plan out the day's meals in the morning, calories and all. Now you might think this is a little over the top, but for me, it's really helpful. I just look at what's on the list next and eat it - usually keeps me on target.  This is not to say that I never vary from the plan, because believe me, I do. Sometimes, after we've planned out an entire day's food, Rachel will text me and ask how lunch or snack was and low and behold, I've already varied from the plan. Within a few minutes, the phone rings with the voice on the other end saying, "It's only been an hour, how could you have varied from the plan already???" I don't know how it happens, it just does.

So yes, planning food for me is helpful because most of the time I do pretty much stay on target. It's kind of like having your meals planned out for the week. It's so much easier when you already know what you are going to have and don't really have to think about it.  It's the same concept but instead of week by week, it's day by day, meal by meal. Like I said in my last blog, I'm still in the "I've reached my goal - time to celebrate" mode so food planning is a very necessary part of my life right now.

This brings me back to my last blog, maintenance really is hard, way harder than I thought it would be. It makes me think about what my my father always said to us growing up whenever we said something was hard, "Nobody said it was going to be easy, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it." He had alot of profound words of wisdom for us during our formative years. And interestingly, I find myself repeating them to my own children now. But I guess it is true, people often don't do things or quit things because they are hard. But it's conquering those "hard" things in life that give us the most satisfaction. So I march forward hoping that some day this all will become "easy" and just second nature. I don't know if it ever will, but I hope it does, because it is hard!


So I have an unfortunate story to share with you. The other night I decided I was going to make these "healthy" mini muffins that I like (see the picture to the left, you'll see shortly why they look that way). They actually are relatively healthy as chocolate treats go (whole wheat flour, egg whites only etc.) and pretty low in calories. We recently finished a major kitchen renovation (2 months without a kitchen) so I've been wanting to bake some things that I haven't had for a long time. I mixed up the batter, put it in the mini cupcake tins, and baked them in my new convection oven. Ahhh... what could be better than to bake a chocolate dessert in your brand new kitchen! I checked the muffins often, since I am still getting used to the new oven, and finally decided they were done. First pan comes out, no problem, they look perfect! And then it happened...I pulled the second pan out and as I lifted the tray out of the oven I hit the edge of it on a bit of an overhang where all the control buttons are. The tray falls to the floor and lands upside down! And there, splattered on my new floor are my precious, healthy, relatively low calorie, chocolate mini muffins. As I stood there looking at those muffins splattered all over the floor I thought to myself "5 second rule" (which according to Myth Busters, is actually more like a 60 second rule).  Normally, I would have scooped them right up and put them directly into my mouth. Unfortunately, like I said, the kitchen is really newly renovated to the point where the new wood floor had not been vacuumed or mopped thoroughly yet. So I did scoop those chocolate mini muffins off the floor and sadly threw them into the garbage. It wasn't the fact that I had to clean every little crevice between the floor boards where the chocolate managed to seep into that made me so sad, it was the fact that I had to throw chocolate away! It can be a cruel world out there sometimes, but as we all know, life is not fair.

And I thought losing weight was hard...

"Now that you're at a good weight, its time to maintain." - Aahhh, the words I've been waiting to hear for a long time. It was one of the thoughts that kept me going during my weight loss, "just get to the weight you want, then it will be smooth sailing to just maintain." Unfortunately, how we often imagine things to be, and how they actually are, can be very different.

Throughout your whole weight loss you watched what you ate and you finally reached your goal, so it only seems natural that it would be time to splurge a bit, doesn't it? You start to eat all those things you couldn't have for so long, and they are good! And then you get on the scale and it starts to read maybe a pound higher. No big deal, it's just a pound. No eating changes necessary for a pound as far as I'm concerned. Next week you hop on the scale, another pound up, hmmm... might want to start addressing this. After all, you did just throw out all your "fat" clothes (yes, you did!) and just supplied yourself with a nice new wardrobe that you want to continue to be able to wear. So you call your personal trainer (or training buddy) and tell them that perhaps you may have splurged just a tad too much and maybe it would be a good idea to revisit the "maintenance program". Now in my case, Rachel is all over this, and immediately puts me back on "the plan" - checking calories, food plans for the week, weighins - the works. As she said to me, "You are not gaining this weight back on on my watch." And so the splurging party is over and the "maintenance plan" gets put into place...for real.

But somehow it just doesn't seem fair. You made it, you reached your goal and there should be a big prize at the end because it was alot of work! And I guess there is a big prize to some extent. You get to buy new clothes in sizes you never thought you would see yourself in and you get compliments from people on how good you look. It's all good. But like all great accomplishments, the excitement wears off, from yourself and people around you. You don't get the satisfaction of stepping on that scale and seeing the numbers go down anymore. There isn't that constant encourgement anymore from people saying, "Wow, another pound, good job, you look great" or seeing your number change on the "Pounds Lost" board at the gym. You'd be surprised how much those seemingly small things can motivate someone. But once you reach your goal weight you don't really feel like you are accomplishing anything anymore, it's just maintenance. "Hey everyone, guess what? I maintained my weight this week! Woo-hoo!" It's just not the same...

So what does it all mean? I'm not really sure. But I do know that the work is not over once you hit your goal weight and that is a very important thing to remember. It is not a 3 month, 6 month, or year commitment - it is a lifetime commitment. Know that going in, and know that you will probably always need some type of support to get you through bumps you will face - because you will face bumps.

SOS - Dunkin Donuts Again...

It was a cold, rainy morning. I had just sat down at my desk at work, had my warm cup of coffee, and was thinking about a warm cinnamon roll...Yummm. So I mentioned to my co-worker how much I wanted a cinnamon roll and she agreed! Problem number 1 - it's never good when you throw an idea out there like that and someone else agrees with you...

So here we were, contemplating first where we could get a cinnamon roll, and second, if we couldn't find one, what would be a good substitiute. Dunkin Donuts came to mind. We've both been working out and losing weight so we knew this was probably not a smart choice but we still wanted it. But before one of us so readily hopped in the car, I heard a voice in my head tell me to do two things. First, text Rachel (my personal trainer, and I believe she was the voice in my head) to see if she had any "thoughts" on the subject - which I knew she would. And second, I decided I would go onto the Dunkin Donuts website to see exactly what they had that was similar to a cinnamon roll that might be good. That was a good move because in doing so, I navigated my way to the nutrition page, and there they were, the calorie count of every yummy tasting treat they had. After browsing through there for a while and seeing the calorie count of each item, we both decided it just wasn't worth the calories. I figured I would save those calories for a different time when I was out with a friend and we wanted to stop for a treat. And just about that time, I received a call from Rachel that she sensed I was having a "SOS - Dunkin Donuts" moment. We received the reassurance we needed that going forward with the cinnamon roll craving was not the best idea.

I wish I could eat all those yummy things everytime I thought about them, but the reality is you can't if you want to loose weight or even maintain your weight. If I had just said to myself, "it's just one ______" everytime I wanted a treat, I wouldn't have lost the weight that I did. You do have to pick and choose when you are going to have those things, so I choose to have them on special occasions or when I'm out with friends. But don't get me wrong, I still do have chocolate every day!

Wow! Big Pants

The other day I went for my Saturday morning workout at the gym in Chester. I came home and was ready to start my chores for the day. It was a cool day so it was time to pull out the long pants. I have 2 pairs of favorite jeans. I don't know how many years I've had them, but it has been a while. They are worn out in all the right spots (and some of the wrong spots) - so soft and so comfortable.

Now I knew when I went to put my favorite "doing chores" jeans on, they would be a bit large because I had lost some weight - but I figured I could just put on a belt and enjoy the comfort of my favorite jeans I hadn't seen since before summer. So I proceeded to dig them out of the closet and put them on...it didn't take long before I realized a belt was not going to help. Not only were they too big in the waist, they were just too big everywhere! You know how little kids in diapers have that "diaper look" to them, that's what I looked like. For a brief moment I did think to myself, "I'm just kicking around the house, maybe I'll just wear them." But then I thought, "You just lost a lot of weight and now you're going to wear 'diaper pants'?? What are you thinking?" So out came every pair of pants I had in the closet. I tried them all on and each time, the same result, some worse than others but all basically unwearable. I do have one pair of jeans that pretty much fit (I had bought them early in the summer). That was it, one pair.

Most woman would probably be happy with the prospect of having to go shopping because they have nothing to wear. I however, am not like most women in that category. I do not like shopping for clothes but it's going to have to be done because one can not go around town in 'diaper pants.' It's just not right.

But here is a cool thing. I had bought a few pairs of pants from Eddie Bauer back in June. I only wore them a few times before summer finally set in. I went to put those pants on last week and they didn't fit either. They weren't horribly big but about a size too big. Since I had barely worn them and spent a fair amount of money on them I decided to contact Eddie Bauer and tell them my story. Do you know what they said, "Send them back and tell us what size you want. If we don't carry them any more, we'll refund your money." Eddie Bauer is awesome!

Despite the fact that I have basically made my wardrobe unwearable (mind you, it wasn't much of a wardrobe to begin with), I do love going to the gym - losing the weight and building the muscle. It's fun go to class and see my friends and people that have become my "gym" friends. Rachel Ryans Fitness in a very unique place, everyone there is so supportive of everyone else. Rachel herself is so 'in tune' with the needs of each person. It make me think of the bar "Cheers" - where everyone knows your name, but of course at Cheers they're just sitting around drinking beer - a little different than what happens at the gym, but everyone does know your name there.