I'VE MOVED

Please note that, effective immediately, the Abby's Mental Note posts have moved to a new address:

http://abbysmentalnote.com

Testing My Hand at HTML...

In a nutshell, I'm terrible at this! But, I suppose (like everything else) there is a learning curve here. If anyone has experience in HTML, I will be forever grateful for your expert advice here.

You will notice a number of things on my blog right now:

1) I am using a "borrowed" public blog background and header. Its cute, but not ideal. However, when you first go to my blog, the OLD background loads first, and then changes to the new one. I'm assuming this is due to my faulty coding, but I don't know how to fix it. Suggestions?

2) I've tried to add a menu bar to the top of my site. As you have noticed, my posts are a bit all over the place - I'm enjoying sharing information with my friends and family about my life in general, which is not organized at all but rather sporatic and messy lol - so why not try and give it some order by creating a menu where you can look up relevant posts? However, for the life of me I cannot center the menu at all - I've tried multiple options but its still aligned to the left. Anyone know how to fix this?

3) I read that Blogger does not allow for multiple pages on a blog, but a workaround was to link to various tags (which is what I have done with my current menu bar). However, if anyone knows another (cleaner) option I would very much like to change this.

4) Blogger is nice with its WYSIWYG capability, but I find it to be quite limiting at the same time. Does anyone else have experienc using other sites for blogging? 

Thank you in advance to anyone out there willing to shed some light here!

Diets (Ugh): Part I

To my dear friend Rachel - dieting stinks...

However, after receiving multiple emails from people I am happy to share anything and everything to help my friends succeed in their weight loss goals. It isn't really possible for me to sum up everything in a single post (well, I suppose I COULD, but it would be a long one!) so I'll break it up into a few over the next day or two. 

My experience with dieting did not begin with our Biggest Loser competition. In fact, I didn't even want to do the competition because I was a "happy" camper sitting at my desk with a good ol' bag of chips. Having succeeded, failed, given up and joyously celebrated over diets in the past, I am no fool when it comes to this topic anymore. I have tried multiple things (including many fad diets), and while there are a couple of different methods I used to achieve my current weight loss there is one specific "diet plan" that I will continue to follow for the rest of my life. 

We will call this the Joseph Plan, in dedication to my old personal trainer who endlessly drilled the importance of a proper diet into my brain day in and day out. I assure you, it works (for everyone). 

Step 1 in the Joseph Plan - sign up for a free account at Livestrong.com (specifically due to the free account you will also receive at the Daily Plate, aka MyPlate). YES, there are other websites that track calories, NO I do not believe they are as helpful or as successful (for your reference, the Daily Plate is also available via the Livestrong App for iPhones). 

Step 2 Do not rely on the foods that other people have entered - create your own. I always used my name so it was easy to find the next time (i.e. Abby's Apple). I would gather nutritional data directly from the FDA whenever possible to ensure accuracy (or off labels if available). 

Step 3 If you are able to do so, buy a food scale. You can find inexpensive ones very easily, although I do recommend a digital scale as the manual read ones tend to be a pain in the butt. 

Step 4 Start tracking your calories - make sure you are on a calorie restricted diet (1300-1500 to start) and are eating healthy foods. This is where the Joseph Diet differs from standard "common sense" diets... you want to balance your caloric intake by 1/3 protein, 1/3 carbs and 1/3 fat. 

Please allow me to explain - by carbs I do NOT mean pastas, breads or a Krispy Kreme doughnut... I mean veggies (vegetables are a great sources of healthy carbohydrates). I would also highly recommend cutting out grains for the duration of this diet (all grains, including rice) 

By fats I do NOT mean ice creams, deep fried foods or a delicious Taco Bell burrito (...yummm....), I mean healthy fats like small amounts of olive oil and avocados (be aware... in tablespoon of olive oil has approximately 100 calories and a large sum of your daily allowance of fat). 

Step 5 Balance your meals - have, at a bare minimum, three solid meals per day (breakfast, lunch & dinner) and in each meal, have one protein one fat and one carbohydrate. This will help keep you balanced throughout the day. 

Familiarize yourself with the Daily Nutrition Breakdown pie chart on My Plate, which can be found on the right hand side of your My Plate screen: 

This is a day from my own My Plate account - it isn't ideal, but its close. You want to, ideally, have all percentages be around 33%. 

Step 6 If you are a regular coffee drinker, stop. Yes, this is incredibly painful and if you are anything like me it will result in many many headaches for the first few days while your body goes through withdrawal. However, the caffeine in coffee can and will affect your metabolism - by cutting that out of the equation it will make your dieting experience much more positive. Caffeine free tea can be a decent replacement in the mornings just to make it a bit easier on  yourself. 

Step 7 Don't eat the same foods/meals over and over and over again. Yes, a good salad can contain a protein, carb and fat... but I would not recommend having a salad every day for lunch because after one week you'll probably be ready to quit all together. Mix it up, have veggies that you enjoy. Be cautious of fruits. In fact, other than apples & grapefruits I would advise against any fruit consumption as they are all very high in sugars and can spike your carb intake. 

These tips are enough to get you started, but are just the tip of the ice berg. Dieting really is a science, but its like that class in Highschool that you'd really rather just sleep through or pretend to listen while you're texting your friends. I will post Part II, III...IV, V... etc. soon, but if you have questions as we go please ask. 

I'm no expert, but I do have a lot of experience. This isn't the only diet I've tried, even recently or currently, but it is by far the most successful and healthy diet that I am aware of. 

Happy Dieting :)

Ahh... I Got My Camera Back

Thank you Geek Squad for having my wonderful camera back in only 2 weeks! 

Like I had previously said... I vow to take more family photos from this day forward (GOOD photos, no more of those poor-quality iPhone shots!), starting today. Here are some cute ones from Matthew playing with this stacking toys and a paper towel (lol): 

Pin-spiration!

Ok, so those of you who read my Facebook updates inevitably know that I am hopelessly in love with Pinterest now. In fact, its a little ridiculous when you find yourself playing around on a website late at night pinning random images. But, that is neither here nor there...

I have had a ton of fun finding new craft ideas on Pinterest.com over the last week or so, and as my "Craft Ideas" board continues to grow and grow, I thought to myself "I wonder if anyone actually DOES these crafts, or just has fun trading ideas?" So, I decided that I was going to finally start doing all of the crafts I WANT to do, using Pinterest as my inspiration (hence then name - PIN-spiration!).

A few weeks ago, on one of my most favorite blogs ever, Andrea had posted a photo of some alphabet rocks that sparked my interest in new craft ideas AND Pinterest (thank you Andrea!), so I decided it was only appropriate for that to be my first project.

Here is the Pin from Andrea:

Its been kind of a slow project for me, since I'm still trying to balance all my roles in life, but I must confess that I'm really enjoying my evening "ME" time! The rocks aren't finished yet, but its an in-progress project that should be done in the next day or two.

(yes, that is popcorn... no, that is not part of my diet...)



I'll be sure to post another picture as soon as my rocks are done (then, what to DO with the rocks...?) along with my next project inspiration piece.

Goodbye FAT :)

Today was our final weigh in for the Biggest Loser competition at work. Finally! After 7 months of dieting the contest is OVER (please note I'm saying *contest* and not diet...). Its been fun though, seeing all of us try and win and watching everyone shrink :)

I was the lucky winner (hooray!) - losing a total of 61.2lbs and 12.62% of my body fat. Here's a before picture from early this year and an after picture this morning:

(photos compliments of Bethany O'Donnell Photography :) )

Please don't ask what I'm doing in that before picture - that's a whole story in itself...

So, I suppose now that there is no financial or competitive motivation involved, the rest of my dieting will be solely for the purpose of being healthy. While being on a diet for 7 months has absolutely been terrible, it was very worth it - the energy I have alone is worth all of the crankiness, horrible cravings, ups and downs and the weak moments.  I don't really want to lose too much more weight, but I do want to get in shape now. What I would really love to do is get better at riding my bike, and maybe enter in a race next summer (not to win, just to finish! lol).

In closing, I want to send out a very special thank you to my amazing husband who has been there to knock the Cheetos out of my hand while giving me an encouraging hug and kiss at the same time - thank you honey, I love you.



Oops! Flickr Album Fixed

My apologies to everyone who tried to access the Flickr album yesterday - I accidentally set the album as "private" so no one could see anything! Its fixed now, and you can view the slide show below, or click here to see the album online at Flickr.