Category Archives: Food

Food Scheduling (or Trying Out New Things)

Posted on May 31, 2018 | Comments Off on Food Scheduling (or Trying Out New Things)

I’ve written about it so many times on here, but food issues are my biggest ones. It’s been a lifelong struggle and I’m guessing that it will be something I struggle with the rest of my life. I do hope that it will get easier for me one day, but I’m realistic in the idea that this will never go away completely.

I’ve struggled with what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat. And when I started taking Vyvnase, the struggle of when to eat became bigger than ever. When I started taking it, I could go a very long time without remembering to eat and then it would backfire. I would realize that it was already dinnertime and I was starving. Forgetting to eat was a new issue for me and I really didn’t expect it to happen. So planning to remember to eat became very important to me.

For the past year or so, I’ve had an alarm to go off to remind me to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it’s been very useful, especially to remember to eat lunch when I’m working. I don’t always eat full meals (especially for breakfast or lunch), but at least getting something into my stomach helps me not feel famished when I do remember to eat.

But when I was sick recently, I was barely eating. For most people, when they are sick and not eating they lose weight. For me, somehow I gain weight. I’ve never been able to explain it, but that’s how my body works. But because of this, I’ve always been fearful of not eating enough in a normal day and causing a weight gain. I know it’s crazy because I’ve done a super low calorie diet before and lost weight, but it’s still a fear in the back of my head.

When I was better, I assumed that I would want to get back to my normal eating schedule. But I was having issues with it. The biggest issue was eating a small breakfast before my morning workouts. I’ve always had a half of a banana or some peanut butter before a workout because I felt like I needed it to keep me from feeling nauseous. Lately even that much food was too much so I had some chocolate milk before a workout and that seemed to be fine. But now even doing that doesn’t feel right to me. So I’ve been doing my morning workouts on an empty stomach.

I know there is a lot of debate on if you should work out on an empty stomach or not. I’m not too worried about the studies because I need to do what is right for me. Some people say they can’t work out as hard if they don’t eat something first, but I’m still working my way back and rebuilding my endurance so there is really no way for me to know if it is affecting me or not. All I know is that I’m not feeling worse without eating right now.

I do try to eat something as soon as I get home from a workout, but I’ll admit that I don’t always do that. But even if I do, I’m basically eating 2 meals a day right now (there have been a few days where it was 1 meal, but I know that I ate too much). I’ve never thought that eating less would be ok with me and not trigger something, but at whatever phase this is of my life it does seem to not cause any issues.

I have friends who do intermittent fasting and love it. I don’t want to commit and say that this is what I’m doing, but I do know that most of my eating is taking place in a 6-8 hour period which does fit into the intermittent fasting plan. I’m starting to do a bit more research on it and how it works with eating disorders because the last thing I want to do is have this backfire soon and make things worse for me than what they were before. If it looks like this will be trouble, then I will go back to making myself eat the 3 meals a day. But I really hate to make myself eat something when I’m not hungry just because of what time it is.

There is a very good chance that this is just a short phase, like all my other food things have been. But I do just have to keep on trying what seems to be more natural and simple for me and hopefully something will work and stick soon. But I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned from all the different things I’ve tried is to not feel like I need to stick 100% to any plan or to feel like I’m stuck doing something. I have to allow myself to be flexible because that is the only way to figure out what I will be able to do and maintain.

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Default ThumbnailFood Plans (or Working From Home Does Have Some Diet Benefits) Default ThumbnailGetting Back To Better Food (or Finding My Own Balance) Default ThumbnailStill Figuring Out Meal Planning (or Will Food Ever Be Easy For Me?) Default ThumbnailGetting Out Of A Food Funk (or I Need To Get Back To My Good Work) Default ThumbnailIt’s Been A Weird Food Week (or Trying Not To Think Too Much About This) Default ThumbnailSplurging In San Diego (or Back To My Boring Food)

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My First Meal In My Instant Pot (or I’m Loving This!)

Posted on May 24, 2018 | Comments Off on My First Meal In My Instant Pot (or I’m Loving This!)

I wrote recently about how I got an Instant Pot. I had seen so many posts about why it is a miracle cooking device and have had friends rave about it. But I really wondered if it was for me since I’m a pretty lazy cook. But right before I got sick I decided to get one and see if it lived up to the hype.

Because I ordered it right before being sick, it spent about a week living in the box it came in and then about another week out of the box stored in my kitchen. But I set a goal that I wanted to try to use it at least once this week. I’m not always good about using new tools and appliances as soon as I get them and I wasn’t going to allow myself to do that this time.

While it did come with a little recipe book, I also know that there are hundreds of cookbooks that are specifically for the Instant Pot. I get cookbooks from the library so I can look at them for free and then scan the recipes that I love. But I was looking at cookbooks late at night and realized that I could get the e-books and make things even easier for me. I got the e-books and instead of loading them on my Kindle I put them on my iPad. Then I could read the cookbooks and take screenshots of any recipes I liked! I don’t know how exactly I will be organizing them or if I will be printing them out, but at least they are available to me now and they look much cleaner as a screenshot than they do when I scan them.

There were a bunch of recipes that I saved and some of them look amazing. But for my first meal in my Instant Pot I wanted something that seemed simple and didn’t have a ton of ingredients. I was a bit nervous about using it and I didn’t need a weird recipe to add to the stress. But in my saved ones I found a recipe for sausage and peppers that didn’t have a ton of things in it. And it pretty much was a recipe that said to put everything in and turn it on. I know you can brown food in the Instant Pot, but I didn’t need to do that so it seemed easy enough to me. So I got all the ingredients and made it the other day.

I knew that the time on the recipes wasn’t always accurate since it didn’t take into account the time it takes to get to pressure and whatever time it took to release the pressure, so I started making it a bit earlier than I thought I might need to. But it was still awesome to start making dinner at 5:30 and know it would totally be done by 6:30 (unlike my slow cooker which I need to start in the morning to have food at dinner time).

All I had to do to for the recipe was to dump a few cans of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce into the pot along with some water and spices. Then I put the Italian sausage on top and sliced a bunch of peppers and put that on the very top. It looked really pretty before I was put the lid on.

I was a bit nervous putting the lid on because I wasn’t totally sure I was doing everything right. And even though I knew it could take a lot of time to come to pressure I was worried that I did something wrong because it wasn’t switching over to the timer (which is what happens when there is enough pressure to start cooking). But after about 15 minutes it did switch to the timer and I started to relax a bit more.

This had to cook for 25 minutes and while I didn’t watch it the entire time I kept glancing over to it to make sure nothing crazy was happening. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but because there are so many different warnings I figured I should keep a bit of a watchful eye on it. But everything was fine and when the timer was up I was ready to release the steam.

So many of the warnings in the instruction booklet were about steam burns. I had asked a friend about releasing the steam and she said she protected her hand with a towel and used a spatula to turn the dial to release the steam. I did just that and while I jumped at first because the noise scared me, I was fine and everything was working just the way it should.

I was so excited about everything working that I totally forgot to take an after picture. But it looked amazing and like I had it cooking for hours instead of 25 minutes. The only thing I will do differently next time I make it will be to brown the sausages before cooking it. They weren’t bad, but they just didn’t look pretty and they could have used a bit more of a snap to them. But considering this is the first time making this recipe and the first time I used the Instant Pot, I think I did pretty great!

And this was pretty easy to clean too. It is nice with my slow cooker that I can use the liners so there is almost no clean up. I just have to clean the lid. But this has the insert that was really the only thing that needed to be cleaned and it wasn’t that tough to do it. I also wiped down the inside of the lid, but I didn’t scrub it (it doesn’t seem like people do that, unless I’m wrong). There are ways to use silicone liners inside an Instant Pot, but I don’t think I’ll be getting them because it wasn’t that bad.

I’m so glad I got my Instant Pot and I used it pretty soon after getting it. I know that I’ll be using this on a somewhat regular basis and it will totally help me with cooking. I know I’ve said that several times, but I think the convenience factor of not having to start cooking until almost time to eat will help me a lot too. With my slow cooker, if I think about it once I’ve already started work it’s too late to do it. Now, I can go to the store after work to get ingredients and still have time to make it and eat at a decent hour!

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Feeling Like A Fresh Start (or Spring Cleaning and New Toys)

Posted on May 18, 2018 | 1 comment

After being sick for what felt like forever (but in reality about a week and a half), I was ready to feel normal again. I have a feeling it will be a little bit longer before I’m totally better, but I’m about 95% there. I’ve only got some congestion left and it’s so minor that I’m not even taking cold medication for it anymore.

But while physically I was feeling better, mentally I wasn’t in the best place. I had the issues I mentioned yesterday on here that basically gave me a day of just being in a low place. But what was putting me in a worse mood was my house being so messy! While I was sick I didn’t really do any cleaning and in my tiny house it really shows when I’m not doing a little bit of cleaning every day. So I spent an entire afternoon doing a major cleaning of my house.

Mostly I was doing the normal cleaning stuff like dusting, vacuuming, and wiping down the various surfaces in my house. I needed to do this for sure because my place was dirty but I also wanted to rid my house of any germs. Even though I don’t think there were that many germs left since they can’t live on surfaces that long, it was just the feeling that my house was germy that I wanted to get rid of. The cleaning that I did was a serious workout (maybe that was because I’m still a bit sick), but when I was done I just felt a huge sense of relief and normalcy in my life again.

But besides the normal cleaning stuff (which was more like a deep clean), I had so much random organization work to do. I’ve been slacking off on some of that stuff. For example I did a reddit gift exchange last month and I hadn’t put away the books I had gotten. But since I was cleaning my cabinet where I keep my coffee table books, I put the books away. I also had about a week’s worth of mail to go through (and bills to pay) and it felt good to get rid of all the junk mail that was sitting on my table while I was sick.

But the best organization I had to do was something that I was pretty excited about. Before I was sick, I did an order on Amazon for something that I’ve been wanting for a while and it’s just been sitting in a big box near my front door for over a week.

I got an Instant Pot! I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while and I just decided to go for it! While I love my slow cooker, it’s not always the most convenient thing to use. If I don’t think about cooking dinner until I’m done with work, it’s too late to use the slow cooker. But with this, I can cook things so much quicker!

I’ve got a few friends who have one (most have the same model that I do) and they have all raved about it. And I can’t wait to start testing out new recipes in it! I’ve only accomplished getting it unpacked and reading the instruction manual. And I won’t get a chance to cook in it for a few more days because of some meals out I have planned. But that gives me the time to do research online for some good recipes that I want to try.

Having a new way to cook more often feels similar to having my house nice and clean. It’s a fresh start in a way and the start hopefully of a new awesome way to eat healthier and cheaper at home. While I was sick I depended on cans of soup and microwave dinners. I’m craving cooking something again and I love that I have something new and fun to try out. I’m a little worried that I won’t be using my slow cooker anymore again, but I’m sure that even though there is a slow cooker option on my Instant Pot I’ll find some times that I want to use my regular slow cooker.

Even if I’m not totally better from being sick, I just feel so refreshed and ready for whatever comes next for me. It’s just such a good feeling to be moving on from a bad week and a half (that was bad in more ways than one) and feeling like I can take on the world. Who knew that having a clean house and a new cooking gadget could do that to a person?

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Default ThumbnailMy First Meal In My Instant Pot (or I’m Loving This!) Default ThumbnailSpring Cleaning (or Feeling Pampered) Default ThumbnailDoing A Lot Of Spring Cleaning (or Trying To Fill My Day) Default ThumbnailSpring Cleaning (or Needing To Declutter Again) Default ThumbnailIs It Too Early To Be Spring Cleaning? (or Out With The Unused) Default ThumbnailSlowly Spring Cleaning (or Tidying Up My Way)

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Enjoying More Food and Wine Festival (or Enjoying A Hot Day At Disneyland)

Posted on April 12, 2018 | 1 comment

The last time I was at Disneyland, it was during the beginning of the Food and Wine Festival. I got the pass to be able to try different foods at the festival cheaper than they would be on their own because I figured I’d be going at least another time or two before the festival ended. But I forgot about spring break and how long that would block my pass from being good. So since the festival was ending this week my friends and I knew we needed to get to Disneyland. It had been pretty typical spring weather recently, but of course the day we planned on going it ended up being almost as hot as it gets in the summer. But that wasn’t going to stop us from having fun!

I had a few tickets left on my food pass and Dani and Michelle got a pass to split between the two of them. It ended up working pretty great for us each to get to try a few things. When we got to the park, we started with getting some lunch. I had the pork roast which had coleslaw on it and it was really flavorful!

And because it was so hot out, I also got the orange vanilla float. I haven’t had soda in several years so it felt a bit weird having soda in this. But it wasn’t really like drinking soda (more like an ice cream shake). It really was the perfect thing to have to try to feel more comfortable in the heat.

Later in the day I also had the tacos that I had the last time but totally forgot to take photos of it! It was still as good as the last time I had it.

Because of the heat, we had a pretty lazy day. When we got to the park, we had our food first and then started to do some rides. While we were at the California Adventure side we did Toy Story Mania, The Little Mermaid, Soarin’ Around The World, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout.

But we took our time getting from one ride to another. When we were going between The Little Mermaid and Soarin’, we walked through the path behind Grizzly River Run which we usually don’t do. It’s such a nice area back there and we really enjoyed spending a few minutes by the waterfall because the mist from it was cooling us down.

We also took advantage of the Photopass photographers. We found one by the Hyperion Theater that didn’t really have a line so we decided to go for it. The photographer was really fun and was helping us get some cute photos. And she also set it up so we could have a magical photo (where they add things into the photo to make it special) and I think our magical photo with the balloons was my favorite out of all the ones we got.

When we headed over to the Disneyland side, we took our time getting over to our first ride which was Space Mountain.

The ride didn’t break down so we didn’t get to be on it with the lights on, but I am hoping for that to happen now every time I’m on it since it was so cool when it happened! After that ride we were all starting to feel a bit tired so we ended our day at Disneyland with a quick ride on Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters.

I would have loved to have stayed later, but I think the heat really took it out of me. Even though I knew it was going to be a hot day, it really got to me and I probably should have prepared better. I also ended up being sunburnt even though I had sunscreen on and wore a hat. But the tiredness and sunburn was totally worth it because I always have a pretty amazing day when I’m at Disneyland.

It’s getting closer to when our passes are blacked out for the summer so I’m hoping my friends and I make it once or twice before we can’t go for a while. But being at the parks in the heat reminded me of why I don’t mind my pass not being good for the summer. While there are ways to cool down, it does get uncomfortable for me being that warm and I always have a risk of getting sunburned. But maybe for the next time that I’m there it will be a bit cooler so I can enjoy the last few times in the park before I can’t go back until August.

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Default ThumbnailOne More Disney Day (or Yummy Food and Roller Coasters) Default ThumbnailA Full Summer Day At Disneyland (or Seeing Favorites And Seeing New Stuff) Default ThumbnailA Sunday At Disneyland (or Pin-ups And Food and Wine) Default ThumbnailFestival Of Holidays (or All The Food, Some Of The Rides) Default ThumbnailFinally Back At Disneyland (or Enjoying An Average Day At The Parks) Default ThumbnailEnjoying The Lack Of Rain At Disneyland (or Buzz Lightyear and Electrical Parade)

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Food And Budgeting (or Combining The Two Things I Often Struggle With)

Posted on April 10, 2018 | Comments Off on Food And Budgeting (or Combining The Two Things I Often Struggle With)

I’ve written several posts about my struggles with food. And I’ve also written a lot about issues with working on a budget that is manageable and will help me pay down my debt. Both of these things are things that I struggle with a lot and it seems like whenever I get a handle on things, something changes and I have to start from the beginning again. I know there is a connection between addiction/eating disorders and debt, but the connection for me is just starting to register.

Since food is something I will always need to buy, I have to budget for it. But things change week to week on what I need so I’m much more flexible with my budget in that category. I try to stay within a budget that I set for each week, but if I have to buy food and I’ve already hit what I wanted to spend that week I still have to get food. I know that some of this extra spending is due to lack of planning, and I’m working on that. I also have realized that I’ve been letting food go to waste if I forget to eat it and that adds to my expenses. So I’ve been working on fixing both of these problems at once.

Recently my dermatologist put me on an antibiotic that I took twice a day for 2 weeks. I had to take the medication with food and I couldn’t take it at the same time as my morning medications because of issues with the antibiotic and a multivitamin. So I planned on taking it at lunchtime and dinnertime each day since that would work with taking it with food. At that same time I started working out at the Culver City Orangetheory location, which meant lots of early morning workouts. And I can’t really eat too much before a morning workout, but at the same time I can’t work out on an empty stomach. So I had to start experimenting with what I eat and when I eat.

This can totally change (because like I said, things always change when I think I finally have a handle on it), but right now it’s been working to drink a little bit of chocolate milk before my workout and then having a meal around 11am (brunch?) and then dinner. While I know that I should be eating 3 meals a day at least, this plan has been working for a bit for both my weight loss and my budget. When I only have to think about 2 meals a day, somehow it’s easier for me to meal plan. And it’s almost more like 1 meal a day because I eat pretty much the same thing each day as my mid-day meal.

I know that for some people this is a no-brainer. Eating the same thing every day is a weight loss strategy that works for many people. Having a lack of variety does work for some people, but it’s never really worked for me before. The only exception to this was when I was doing the UCLA diet when there was no variety as I had the same thing 6 times a day. But when I could choose from whatever I wanted, having a lack of variety would lead to me doing last-minute grocery store runs to get something else to eat because I was bored with the plan I had.

I don’t know if it is timing or doing the morning workouts, but the lack of variety is working for me. The number on my scale is slowly going down and I’ve been able to limit how often I need to go to the grocery store. I still have some wasted food, but it’s significantly less than it was before. And I know that if I work on planning things out a bit better, I can improve on the budgeting even more.

Even though I’ve known that my food budget was a bit out of control, things just finally clicked with me recently that I needed to work on this. It’s one of the few areas in my budget that has flexibility and I know that it is possible to eat what I need to while spending less money. Hopefully having this plan will not only keep my budget in a better place but will continue to limit how often I have to confront what I want to eat. If I don’t have to think about it, I can avoid grocery stores when I know that I am just looking for junk food to eat.

Just like every other time I think I have things worked out, I am hopeful that this may work but I am also realistic that this could just be something that is working temporarily. But I hope that whatever skills and tricks I learn while this is working are things that I can keep using even if I can’t keep up the current plan.

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Default ThumbnailTime For Some Planning (or Trying A Challenge Again This Month) Default ThumbnailRoutine Time Again (or Getting Back On Track) Default ThumbnailBudgeting and Spending (or Sharing YNAB With A Cashier) Default ThumbnailFood Scheduling (or Trying Out New Things) Default ThumbnailGetting Back To Better Food (or Finding My Own Balance) Default ThumbnailStill Figuring Out Meal Planning (or Will Food Ever Be Easy For Me?)

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The Henry (or Checking Out A New Restaurant With A Friend)

Posted on March 22, 2018 | Comments Off on The Henry (or Checking Out A New Restaurant With A Friend)

Sometimes because of this blog I get invited to soft openings of new restaurants and I get to write about them. And sometimes a friend of mine is invited and then invites me and it inspires a blog post. This is about the second type of invite.

My Orangetheory friend Lindsay texted me the other night asking if I was free and could meet her in West Hollywood in 30 minutes. She had gotten an invite to the soft opening of The Henry and her boyfriend couldn’t make it and she wanted to know if I was free. She apologized for it being so last minute, but since I was free it was fine and I quickly got dressed and got in my car.

I wasn’t familiar with The Henry, but it turns out that the restaurant has locations in Arizona (when Lindsay is from) and they also own North Italia which is an amazing restaurant that has a location in Santa Monica where I recently had a date. Lindsay was so excited to get to go The Henry and once I took a look at the menu I was pretty excited too. I got there right on time for her reservation and we went inside. It was a bit crowded and people were taking a bit longer enjoying their dinners than I think the staff expected so it was a long wait for a table. But there were 2 seats at the bar left so we grabbed those.

Since this was the soft opening, the meal was complimentary. We were given the full menu as well as the rules for ordering that night.

We each got to pick an entree and we split an appetizer and dessert. That seemed like a good plan to me (I probably would have done that even without the rules) and we had a pretty similar plan on what we wanted. We got the truffle fondue with pretzel bread to start, we both got steak dishes as our entrees (I had the NY strip), and we got a chocolate peanut butter thing for dessert.

Everything was delicious and I was so full at the end of the meal! Also included with the soft opening menu were drinks! Normally alcoholic drinks aren’t included in those sort of things, so it was pretty special that it was. I’m not a big drinker (my last drink was back at my birthday party), but I figured I should at least try one of their drinks. Since it was free, it didn’t matter if I didn’t finish it. So I decided to try a drink with vodka and berries. It was really good and I drank more of it than I expected to!

But of course, with any meal out, the highlight was getting to hang out with a friend. Lindsay and I used to see each other pretty much every week at Orangetheory. But we haven’t been working out together for a long time. So we have made an effort to stay in touch and we try to get together from time to time. We had dinner together a few months ago so to see each other again was nice. Sometimes it can be way longer between seeing each other so I was grateful that I was able to join her for dinner (although I did feel bad that her boyfriend had to be sick so I could be her plus one).

Our conversation was just catching up on lot of randomness. She wanted to hear funny stories from online dating and she was telling me fun stories about her work. And we shared updates about people we both know from Orangetheory. Some people are still people I work out with and others are people that she knows from social media and was able to update me about. We kept getting distracted by how good the food was, but we had a pretty lively conversation too.

We were there for a few hours and then I had to get back to my car to head home. But I really could have spent more time there to hang out more with Lindsay and to maybe try another drink. I know I’ll have to go back to The Henry once they are open (which is this weekend) to try more of the entrees. Plus, they are supposed to have an incredible brunch and I love finding new brunch places!

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Default ThumbnailA Birthday Celebration (or An Orangetheory Reunion) Default ThumbnailBar Food Hangout (or A Quick Friend Catch Up) Default ThumbnailOne More Outing To Bar Food (or A Friend Leaving LA) Default ThumbnailChecking Out A Local Restaurant (or A Birthday and Pizza) Default ThumbnailOverdue Happy Hour (or Trying A Neighborhood Restaurant) Default ThumbnailGrownup Dinner (or Seeing A Gym Friend Outside Of The Gym)

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Another Friend Happy Hour (or We Both Know We Need To Do This More Often)

Posted on March 9, 2018 | Comments Off on Another Friend Happy Hour (or We Both Know We Need To Do This More Often)

I’ve definitely been focusing on trying to have more time with my friends lately. I’m aware how crazy all of our schedules are and when we can figure out a time to meet I make it a priority. My friend Rayshell and I had made a few attempts to have a happy hour dinner, and things just kept happening to make us reschedule our plans. I was probably more at fault because of schedule changes and then being out-of-town. But we both understand that neither of us are rescheduling because we want to. Life just gets in the way. But fortunately, we were able to figure out a time to meet up this week.

I originally offered to drive to the valley because we try to alternate which side of town we meet on. But Rayshell offered to stay on my side of town after work and we went to Westside Tavern. We both were having a craving for the food there so that was fine with me! I had some time after work before meeting her there, but I underestimated how crazy traffic would be in my neighborhood and ended up meeting Rayshell a bit late.

Since I had been craving Westside Tavern I had been checking out the menu and picked out a few things that sounded good to me. And Rayshell had looked at the menu before I got there and picked out some things too. Somehow, we both picked the same things! We ended up splitting the burrata to start, I had a chicken sandwich (Rayshell got a burger which was something else I was thinking about getting), and even though we were a bit full we split apple bread pudding for dessert.

It was a lot of food, but it was so delicious! But as with all our hangouts, even though the food was awesome the company was even better! Both of us have had a lot of things and a lot of nothing happening in our lives. It’s weird, but it made a funny hangout with us each remembering random things to update each other on.

Rayshell is one of my friends who loves to hear all the craziness going on with online dating. She asked me about a story that I posted on social media about a guy who basically stood me up. He never showed up where we were supposed to meet and when I texted him he told me he was home which was just around the corner from the coffee shop we were supposed to meet at. I told him no and left because I knew something was fishy about the situation. Rayshell and I were joking about how he probably was some sort of weirdo and would wear my skin or something. I know it’s not good to joke about things like that, but I’m pretty careful with my safety so I know I wouldn’t be put in an unsafe situation.

I also have gone out with a few new guys lately and have had some good and some bad stories about them. A lot of it is about self-discovery and me allowing myself to express my opinion and not feel the need to conform to what someone else wants me to be. It’s a weird thing, but I think all of my friends get a kick out of hearing about the random guys I’ve met and the weird profiles I’ve found online.

Rayshell was telling me about the series that she produced that is currently in post-production. I can relate to wanting something to be done in post-production quickly when you don’t have control over it. I just hope that her project is completed soon because I really want to watch it! And Rayshell is also now a regular OTF person (but she works out at the studio by her), so we were talking a lot about our workouts and what we’ve been enjoying about them.

We were at dinner for a good chunk of time before we decided we should head out so she could get back to her side of town. It was just so nice to have a couple of hours to hang out with a friend one on one and be able to focus on them. We both agreed that we will do another happy hour dinner soon, but we also both know that even with the best intentions that doesn’t always happen. But at least we both put in an effort to make it happen and when it does we always have an amazing time!

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Default ThumbnailA Happy Hour Celebration (or Looking Forward To Another Wedding) Default ThumbnailLast Happy Hour Of 2015 (or A Speedy Catch Up) Default ThumbnailOverdue Happy Hour (or Trying A Neighborhood Restaurant) Default ThumbnailNot Quite Happy Hour (or Making Time For My Friends) Default ThumbnailHappy Hour Inspiration (or Just Having Fun After Work) Default ThumbnailHappy Hour Birthday Dinner (or Just Having A Nice Catch Up Chat)

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An Easy Disney Day (or Another Eat All The Foods Adventure)

Posted on March 8, 2018 | 2 comments

I was at Disneyland pretty recently and didn’t really have plans for when I’d be back. But I knew I wanted to be back soon because the Food and Wine Festival was starting up again. So when I was randomly texting with my friend Michelle, I mentioned how we needed to go to have all the delicious foods again. And it turns out that we were both free on Monday (sadly our other Disney buddy Dani was not), so we made plans to have a fun day at the park.

We had our usual mid-day start and got to Disneyland around noon. And there wasn’t a line at the parking garage so we took that as a good sign. We ended up walking over to the park instead of taking the tram, but as soon as we were in California Adventure we immediately headed to a store to get our Sip and Savor Pass for the Food and Wine Festival.

The pass is a pretty great deal since it’s $45 and you get 8 food items for it. Most of the food is between $5-8, so you get your money’s worth. You can’t use it for alcohol, but since I’m not really drinking it’s not a big deal for me.

It was a really gorgeous day out and we were enjoying walking through the park to get to the food booths. And we noticed a PhotoPass photographer by the waterfall from the water ride and we decided to stop to get a photo. Since Michelle’s pass includes PhotoPass photos, we take advantage of these more often. We were both feeling a bit silly so we went with a silly pose.

When we got to the food booths, there were a few things we wanted to share and some things we each wanted. So we settled on us each getting one thing we wanted for ourselves and then 2 things we were going to share. We shared the caesar asparagus and grilled artichoke hearts. And I got the beef slider for myself and Michelle got the poke salad.

Everything was so delicious! I have had the slider before and I thought it was better this time than it was before. But I think my favorite thing we got was the asparagus. It was so good and not that heavy considering it was with a heavier dressing. I might start making caesar salads now with asparagus instead of lettuce occasionally!

After our lunch, we did a quick ride on the Little Mermaid ride since it was right there and then we headed over to Radiator Springs Racers. That’s one of my favorite rides but we hadn’t been on it for a while. So it was nice to get to go on it again!

We then went over to the Animation Academy to do some drawing and this time we were taught how to draw Zero from “Nightmare Before Christmas”. It ended up being the best character I’ve drawn so far and I think that both Michelle and I had drawings that looked pretty good.

Then it was time for our favorite ride at California Adventure: the Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout ride! We are still hoping to get a song on the ride that we haven’t had yet, but this time we weren’t lucky enough for that. But I’ve been experiencing something on that ride for a while that we finally have a photo of. I had my seatbelt on the ride on pretty tight (my friends can verify this). But somehow, when the ride drops I fly so high up! Michelle jokes that she can see me floating toward the ceiling each time. And in this photo, you finally see it. I know it looks like I’m standing up (especially when you compare me to the other people seated in the back row), but I swear I’m not. I’m just floating up while the ride drops.

Even though we had a lot of food to try earlier, since the food isn’t huge portions we were feeling ready for a little dinner and we each got the tacos which they have had in the past. Again, they seemed better this year and I love that this is considered theme park food!

We also saw a PhotoPass photographer by the big backdrop and decided to do more photos. We got some fun ones, but I think this one is my favorite because it makes me think of a buddy cop movie poster!

After that, we headed over to the Disneyland side where we did a lap on the train. I love the train and it gave us a chance to look at some of the Star Wars land construction. When we finished our ride, we headed toward Space Mountain and saw that there was a pretty nice sunset.

We then had our ride of Space Mountain which went off without any emergency stops. We were kind of hoping it would happen again because it was so amazing to see the ride with the lights on, but we also know that we were just lucky to get to experience that once. Unfortunately you can’t really see us that well in our ride photo, but it’s still a funny one. We are just so used to being in the front of the ride car.

The parks were starting to get a bit more crowded with the after-work crowd, but we were able to do quick rides on Buzz Lightyear and the Haunted Mansion before we were both feeling ready to head back to the car to go back home. We were at Disneyland for about 7 hours and considering we wanted it to be a lazy day we accomplished a lot!

The Food and Wine Festival is going on for another 5 weeks and I know I’ll be back for it at least once more. I’ve got 5 more things I can get with my Sip and Savor pass so I want to make sure that I try some other new things!

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Default ThumbnailOne More Disney Day (or Yummy Food and Roller Coasters) Default ThumbnailCelebrating Villaintine’s Day (or Getting Something Checked Off My Disney Bucket List) Default ThumbnailA Disney Birthday! (or Princesses and Awesome Ears) Default ThumbnailAnother Disney Birthday (or Eating All The Foods Again) Default ThumbnailAnother After Work Disney Adventure (or Holiday Time And Random Fun) Default ThumbnailAnother Disney Day (or Gaston And AP Days)

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A Day In Joshua Tree (or The End Of My Trip To Palm Springs)

Posted on March 2, 2018 | 1 comment

My trip to Palm Springs was 4 days (although the first day was really just getting there in the evening and having dinner) and for the first 3 days we were pretty much just in Palm Springs. But for the last day, my mom really wanted us to go to Joshua Tree and I’m always happy to follow her plans and was excited to end my trip on a fun adventure.

According to my mom, I was at Joshua Tree when I was 7 and when I was 10 but I really don’t remember those trips (and my mom had limited memories and stories from those trips). So in some way, this felt like the first time that I was there. It was about 45 minutes to drive there and after stopping at the visitor center to get a parking pass we were on our way to our first stop.

We wanted to go to a lookout point to see a nice view of the area. And it happened to rain the night before so it was so clear out!

And it was freezing out! It was about 38 degrees outside and while it felt nice in the sun, whenever the wind kicked up it was pretty cold! But my mom and I still took an opportunity to take a photo together since I realized we didn’t have any photos together yet on the trip.

When we were in the car to drive to our next stop, I realized that the photo of my mom and I reminded me of another photo of us. So I found that photo in the cloud and put them together.

The top photo was from when my mom and I were in Paris in January 2005 to celebrate my college graduation. It’s so crazy to think that the top photo is 13 years older than the bottom photo! And I don’t think that we look 13 years older either.

Our next stop was to do a hike around Skull Rock. The hike was about 2 miles and it started at a campground. We were walking to the hike and we already were seeing amazing views of the Joshua Trees all over.

Once we were off the paved road and onto the sand/dirt trail, I’ll admit the hike got tough for me. There was a lot of going up and down which is tough on my hips. But being on an unstable ground was even worse and I was hurting a lot. I tried to limit how many breaks I took but fortunately my mom and her friend were understanding and they didn’t mind stopping when I needed to. But even when we were stopped, we always had something amazing to look at.

We noticed a rainstorm and some ominous looking clouds while we were hiking, but they never reached us. So having those clouds just made the view look even better!

When we got back to the car, we drove to a picnic area to have a quick snack before heading to our final stop in Joshua Tree. My mom was so excited to see the Cholla Garden and once we were there I was so impressed by it!

It was crazy to see these fuzzy looking cacti all over when we didn’t really see them that many other places. They do look like they are teddy bears and would be soft to touch. I’m guessing a lot of people have tried to touch them because there was a first aid kit in the parking lot of the garden in case someone got stuck. I was just careful since there wasn’t that much separation from the cacti and the path we walked on. And there were little broken off pieces very close to the trail and I don’t think my shoes would have protected me much if I accidentally stepped on one.

After that stop, we got back into the car and did the drive back to Palm Springs to go back to the rental house. We had a little time to rest before we all headed out to downtown Palm Springs for dinner. It was getting colder out, but the place we went to had a heated patio so we were able to eat outside and enjoy the people watching on the main street of the downtown area.

After dinner, I quickly got my stuff packed up so I could head home. Originally I wasn’t going to head back until the next day, but I realized that I could avoid traffic (and not miss another day of work) if I went home that night. I think my mom preferred to know I wasn’t going to deal with traffic, plus she still had her friend with her so I didn’t feel like I was ditching her. I said goodbye and thanks to my mom and headed back to LA.

I’m so glad that my mom invites me to travel with her. I really couldn’t afford it without her right now and she really is one of my best travel buddies. We are already talking about a potential trip for next year (we are thinking maybe a spa vacation) so I’m getting excited to start the planning for that!

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Default ThumbnailA Weekend With My Mom (or An Adventure In Palm Springs) Default ThumbnailDress Fitting (or The Reason I Took This Trip) Default ThumbnailTrip Prep (or Guess I’ll Find Out Who Reads My Blog Soon) Default ThumbnailAnother San Diego Day Trip (or 3 Generations and A Dog) Default ThumbnailFull Thanksgiving Trip (or Being With My Family In San Diego) Default ThumbnailTrip Planning (or Keeping Panic To A Minimum)

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An Easy Therapist Check-In (or Virtual Appointments Make Things Easier)

Posted on February 8, 2018 | 1 comment

Yesterday I had a check-in with my new therapist. This check-in was mainly to see how I was doing with the new medication dosage. I explained how I had been taking the increases slowly and that I am still adjusting to the new dosage, and she seemed to be pretty happy with the plan. It’s hard to tell what the correct dosage will be, so it will be a lot of trial and error. This is a different process than what I was doing with my old therapist, but I do like this new plan. I feel like it is more collaborative and that we are more of a team than a doctor telling me what to do.

This appointment was so much easier than what I’m used to because it was a phone call appointment. Yesterday morning, we had a time that my therapist was going to call me and we were going to talk over how things went. Of course, if I felt like I needed to meet in person I could have done that. But my therapist suggested a phone appointment for a check-in because it is easier to schedule and wouldn’t take up as much of my time. It was nice not having to drive to and from the appointments and being able to get it done early in the morning before I started work. I felt much more relaxed while talking because it didn’t feel as formal.

I don’t know why my old therapist never suggested phone appointments. I know that with him, he was much more into seeing if there was any more talk therapy that I wanted to do. Even though we came to the conclusion that I don’t really have issues to work through, I just have some sucky circumstances that I need to not rule my life. But those circumstances aren’t things I need to figure out, we know what they are and what they are doing to my mind. But he still liked to talk things through much more than this new therapist. This new therapist understands that in a way I only go in for appointments because I’m on a medication that requires it. She understands that talk therapy might be something I want in the future, but right now it’s not the priority in getting me into recovery. It’s a very different mindset, but I’m glad I had my old therapist in the beginning and this new therapist now.

In my phone call, I did discuss my issues with my workouts. It is frustrating to not be able to do cardio the way I want to, but I also need to give myself a decent amount of time to adjust to things. We did discuss brining my medication back down to a lower dosage (either what I started on or the middle dosage I was doing), but we both agreed that I haven’t had enough time yet on this new dosage to see if it will allow my workouts to get back to normal. I do like how I am feeling on this new dose and I feel like the medication is working much better, so I want to give it as much of a chance as possible. And I do have options if I need them and those won’t be going away so I can take my time.

My next medication refill will be in about 2 months. I will need to call or email my therapist to request the refill due to the restrictions on the medication. And at that point I think I will know what dosage I want to be on. And my therapist seems to agree that the timeline sounds good to her too. Of course, if in 2 weeks I feel like I need to step down to a lower dose, I can call in and she can write me a new prescription. But my plan is to try to take the next 2 months to see how I feel in all aspects of my life. If my eating disorder is significantly better but I can’t run, that might be a sacrifice I want to make. While my workouts are important, my recovery is more important and the priority in my life.

For my first phone appointment, I think it went really well and it reinforced the idea in my head that this is the therapist that I need now. She is much more scientific about things and that is really what works for me right now. My next appointment with my therapist (not counting in 2 months when I get my medication refill) will be in 6 months. I’m on the same appointment timeline as I was in the past, which is nice since I wasn’t sure it would be that way with a new doctor. But the next appointment is going to be unique because it’s going to be my first time ever doing a video chat appointment with a doctor! I’m actually pretty excited to have that option too because again it will save me the time of driving back and forth!

I know that not everyone likes technology, but I love that I have options to do virtual appointments with my therapist! It really helps to make appointments fit into my schedule better and I think that it will give me more options for when I can make appointments in the future. All of these things are good things and make me really hopeful that I’m on the right path toward recovery!

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Default ThumbnailAnother Quick Therapy Appointment (or Video Appointments Make Things Easy) Default ThumbnailAnother Virtual Doctor Appointment (or Planning Some Next Steps) Default ThumbnailSome More Virtual Therapy (or Trying Another Medication) Default ThumbnailAnother Therapist Check In (or Showing Off My Happiness Checklist) Default ThumbnailAnother Therapy Check In (or Someone Sees Progress) Default ThumbnailA Super Easy Therapy Appointment (or Just Doing A Check-In)

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