Fat Tuesday

In my neck of the woods Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gas most places) is called Paczki Day (pronounced Punch-ski; pu=put, not punt). Despite what it looks like it is NOT a donut. It is definitely not a jelly donut. The dough is much more dense than a traditional donut and I would bet that they are more calorific too. The traditional polish paczkis had a prune filling - I've never had one, but I am told they are delicious and nothing like the strawberry or raspberry fillings you find in the grocery stores.

Today I was - 2 on the scale which made me very happy. I pretty much kept to my 1400 calorie limit - I think I went 18 over. But I burned a little over 900 calories with my two workouts. Though, I got the Biggest Loser Cardio Max Weight Loss dvd from my library, because as I said I want to focus on cardio for the next few weeks, only it had alot of weights and pushups in it. It was an awesome work out and I would say that Bob is just about as mean as Jillian is on her dvds, even if he is considered the "nice one" on the show. Wednesday I think I will run instead.

Today's calorie limit is 1200. I worked out all my food today so that I could have a donut and a latte for breakfast. My coworker brought in actual Paczkis though. So, I split one with her since they're bigger and I'm pretty sure about twice the calories of a regular donut. I probably should have skipped it, because I have a feeling they're still made with lard (animal fat) if it's really traditional. But, sometimes one's got to just live life. It's a good thing I split it, it was so heavy I could not have eaten a whole one with out feeling ill. But, I ate it with a fork while working so I ate really slowly. It was filling enough that I will be able to stay on track with the rest of my food plan for today.

Tomorrow begins Lent and I was trying to figure out what to give up. My first thought was candy, my second was pizza. Then I realized that Lent lasts for 46 days this year. If I try to go cold turkey on those things I think I would end up binging. So, instead of giving up a particular food I have decided to give up watching television. Other than work (6 hours + 2 hours commuting) watching tv is my biggest chunk of unproductive time. It is also when I eat the most. It make sense the tv (or hulu.com) goes on when I'm bored and then I start snacking. I plan binge foods to go along with my shows (for example Fringe gets red vines usually or some other candy, Castle has coffee and donuts, movies are pizza nights). Turning off the tv I think is probably the biggest change I can make to curb my weekend binges and make me generally more productive. I will have three exceptions. 1) Biggest Loser which I will watch only while working out until the season finale, 2) Fringe I will try to watch when it airs, if I can't do that then I will watch no more than 2 current episodes that I have not seen before on hulu.com with out snacks. I don't want to wait until after Lent, because if there are more than 2 episodes to watch I will want food to eat with it. 3) Top Chef: All Stars, when the episodes I haven't seen are on hulu (I think there are only two left) I will watch them at work with my co-worker when the boss isn't around.

All my other shows will have to wait for me to catch them on reruns or slowly catch up with them after Lent. After Lent I don't to end up on the couch for 6 hours at a time catching up with them. It sort of defeats the purpose.

Happy Mardi Gras!!