Shannon’s BodyBlog

When I was a kid……

Halloween used to be so different than it is now for my own kids.  Or maybe they’re too young now and will later have SOME of the same kind of memories I do when they’re let off on their own to trick or treat:

1.  Remember the crappy plastic costumes with the crappy plastic masks?  Good luck making it down the concrete steps of someone’s house with that mask on without tripping and falling and blasting holes in your costume.  No way would we flip up the mask to see better.  We weren’t authentic super heroes if you could see our faces.  But we couldn’t really be authentic with those costumes on anyway, and Under Roos didn’t help much because they only had super hero print on the front.  No way could I be a real Wonder Woman with a blank back….not that my parents would’ve let me wear my Under Roos outside anyway….but I tried to convince them.

2.  My mom would forget to buy candy and would give out spare change from a big bowl.  I was mortified that we didn’t have candy to hand out, but kids seemed to love it because then they could go to the deli and buy….candy.

3.  Sorry was the house that handed out anything healthy like apples, or anything homemade like popcorn balls.  We didn’t do anything bad to the people who handed them out, but the communication network made it known from child to child which house not to go to.  We’d take the apples we received oh so graciously with a "Thaaaaank yoooouuu" and proceed to chuck ‘em down the hill and see whose would reach the bottom the furthest.
4.  Anything homemade was a virtual pincushion and we were convinced that even our parents best friends were out to impale our throats from the inside with pins and needles and fish bones….whatever it took, people.
5.  As soon as my brother and I got off the bus, we’d race inside, don our costumes, and make our way from house to house immediately.  By that time it was fruitless because everyone was working, but there was a housewife home here and there and we’d start our candy eating extravaganza.  Then we’d come home, wolf down a shitty dinner, and head out again until 9 p.m.  We took our chances staying out that late because the teenagers came out to mug any child who was carrying bags spilling with candy.  We would hear rumors throughout our travels and nervously made our way home safe and sound with no one to mug us except for our pimp parents………

6.  My brother and I would stash our favorite candy in our coats that our mother made us put on OVER our costumes, but that we’d shed off our backs and stick on someone’s front lawn once we went around the corner out of her line of sight.  Our parents were candy pimps and after us children walked the streets and came home with our earnings, our parents would pick through and take what they claimed looked dangerous because maybe the wrapper was too loose.  But we knew they were just taking what the wanted to EAT from our hard earned loot.  Although we were happy to let them have anything with almonds in them like Almond Joy and Hershey Bars with Almonds.
7.  The biggest downer was not being allowed out the night before Halloween for Mischief Night a.k.a.  Goosey Night or Tic Tac Toe Night.  (Don’t ask me who came up with those names in our town).  I thought I had a chance to get out one night when the Sunday morning before Mischief Night, I saw an episode of Davey and Goliath where Sally and Davey went out for Mischief Night.  Eureka!  If THEY were allowed out, then I would HAVE to be allowed out too!!  They’re super religious and goody-goody, so my mom would have to be convinced that it was OK to let me out.  NOPE.  Dammit.  She never let us go out :S

8.  Us neighborhood kids wanted deeeessssperately to have a spooky witchy kind of neighbor to be afraid of.  We targeted the house across the street from my house because they never handed out candy and they never answered the door.  We were convinced something evil was brewing inside.  My father heard my brother and I talking about it once and he explained that they were out working hard to pay for their mortgage (he always had to explain why people worked hard) and that they weren’t home because of that.  Sorry dad, WRONG.  They were up to hocus pocus shenanigans.  No doubt about it.

9.  Eating candy for weeks on end….or maybe it was for days….you know how childhood memories go.  Eating the favorites first:  Mary Janes, Pixie sticks, Fun Dip, those little dots on the paper that you’d peel off and eventually had a spit wad worth of paper backing in your mouth, etc , etc ,etc ,etc, etc, etc.

Today, I live in a town that imposes a 2 hour trick or treating limit from 6 p.m. to 8.p.m. and my kids have access to the most awesome costumes at Wally World.  I ENVY the authenticity of what they have offered to wear.  I wish they had costumes like that when I was a kid.  AND their parents are eating clean now, so there’s no one to pick through their loot.  AND they get to pick their favorites to eat and trade the rest in for an addition to any collections they have like baseball cards, or they pick out a toy.

Breakfast:  1 whole egg, 4 egg whites

vegetable broth

Snack:  apple

cottage cheese

Lunch:  1/2 baked sweet potato

cottage cheese

Snack:  cottage cheese

1/2 pomegranate
Dinner:  2 whole eggs, 3 egg whites

whole wheat toast

3 slices lean ham
romaine salad

I have a cold and I’d really like some comfort food like mac & cheese, or a grilled cheese sammich, or some of Ilovetopump’s mom’s Italian food.  But I can’t have any of that when I’m eating clean.

Sooooo instead, I crawled into bed yesterday afternoon after I dropped off my son at school for Kindergarten and I watched my DVR’d The Hills and Real Housewives of Atlanta.

First of all, like I can’t believe that like Audrina dumped the Australian hottie who had like the AWESOMEST Australian accent for Justin?  Come on!  He like plays her like a fiddle.  And then like he tosses her away when he sees like some other chick he’d rather play with his fiddle bow (or whatever the hell you call it).

And then poor Nene.  Her BFF is tossing her away for the friendship of another snooty BFF who Nene doesn’t like.  How’s that for backstabbing?  Where’s the loyalty in BFFness anymore?  Sure Nene is loud and obnoxious and speaks her mind.  But that’s the CHARM of Nene’s personality.

I didn’t workout at all yesterday because I was feeling like garbage.  And I felt like I hadn’t worked out for weeks, but I wanted to get a session in this morning.

I knew I’d need some major motivation to stay on the elliptical, so I uploaded some songs to my iPod, one of which is AWESOMELY catchy AND SINGABLE.

While my lungs were burning like a mofo because of my chest cold, I listened to a song twice.  I need to learn the words because it would be a crime not to be able to sing this song properly.  I found a video-ish version with scenes from Gossip Girl with Charlie Bass as the "Womanizer".  Ugh.  I couldn’t bear to post it because he’s a nose flaring GEEK.  And doesn’t the guy who plays him realize he’s playing the part of a boy named way too close to Charlie Tuna?  How can you be a womanizer with that kind of name?

Here is like my new favoritest song.

Sick HIIT:  12 minutes, 200 calories

Breakfast:  2 whole eggs, 3 egg whites

whole wheat toast

coffee w/ milk

Lunch:  Vegetable broth

Dinner:  1/2 large sweet potato

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1 large steaming hot cup of tea…without the crumpet.

Snack:  Sweet potato chips…weren’t crispy the way I hoped.  Oh well.

I’d like to have a word with whomever it is that creates dressing rooms for department stores.

Who designs them?

Whose idea is it to make the harsh lighting directly over our heads so that every lump, bump, fold, and wrinkle is highlighted? (Although I have thought that I should take my camera with me to take some good progress pics.  Sometimes I flex and see the muscles the way I can’t at home in my nice soft bathroom lighting).
Whose idea is it to install mirrors that make you look shorter and more squat than we really are.

I look so much different and better in other mirrors, so don’t tell me that’s how I really look, haha.

When I enter a dressing room, there are times when I try on clothes only to be distracted by "Uhhhh…when did THAT show up on me?" as I examine my thighs.

So I shoo the distraction away, try on the clothes and I smile (everybody smiles when they try the clothes on…right?)…and then I get distracted by how deep and heavy my "laugh lines" look.  They’re not lines anymore….they’ve become major cracks in my face.
The clothes that looked amazing on the mannequin and the way they looked on me in my mind wind up looking terrible.

We women want to look like dewey soft goddesses.  Not someone who is in the middle of a meth bender!

Install mirrors that make us look a little taller and thinner.  Create soft, lovely pink lighting that will compliment any skin tone and color.

Make us look awesome so that we want to buy MORE clothes!!

It just occured to me that it’s all men who design them.  It’s like the blue wall of silence (it’s a myth, I know, I know).  They protect each other and create crappy dressing rooms so that wives don’t buy a shitload of clothes.

The loop hole around that is that we wind up buying clothes that we don’t even try on because we don’t want to go in the dressing rooms.  So there’s no saving each other, men.  Make us look good!  Dammit.

I put up progress pics just so ya’ll know.   I used overhead lighting to get the best detail, haha.

Breakfast:  2 whole eggs, 4 egg whites

whole wheat toast

coffee w/ milk

Snack:  apple

Lunch:  Pineapple and chicken unfried rice

vegetable broth

tea

Snack:  Protein shake

romaine salad

Dinner:  Chicken

peas

This has nothing to do with fitness but by gosh I can’t wrap my head around the concept of two people being a reverse straight couple where the guy turns into a woman and the woman turns into a guy and it’s like I need to smoke pot or something to become enlightened enough to figure out whether they are gay or straight or gay-straight so this episode I saw on Dr. 90210 was about a woman who wanted to become a man and she already had the hormones to give her a deep voice and chest hair and a beard which was f*ckin’ bizarre to see in the first place but then the doctor shows a sketch of her va-jay-jay and then a sketch of what her penis would look like with balls  and all and the penis was an honest to goodness working penis that got hard and everything even though it was on the small side like a finger but it was fascinatingly disturbing to watch and my husband kept saying "Change the channel, Shannon" but I couldn’t because I was absorbed in trying to figure out the relationship between the woman who was becoming a man and her fiance who looked like a man who became a woman and I’m like "Waaaait a minute let me get this straight (hehe) the man was once a woman and the woman was once a man and the man became a woman because he didn’t like women so that must mean he’s gay and the same for the woman where she became a man because she doesn’t like men and that makes her a lesbian BUT then they got together and now they’re a straight couple so WTF is that about and I wonder if they know whether they’re gay or straight because they have thoroughly confused the hell out of me and I have to go get some paper towel to wipe up my brain from the floor because it just melted and oozed out of my ears

HIIT:  15 minutes, 250 calories (session was crap…I think I’m coming down with a chest cold)

Weight Training:  Legs, calves (got through the basics)
Breakfast:  2 whole eggs, 4 egg whites

whole wheat toast

Snack:  8 almonds and banana

Lunch:  Pineapple chicken unfried rice

Snack:  apple

Dinner:  Vegetable broth and rice

Snack:  1 whole egg, 3 egg whites

grapes

skim milk

If you were on American Idol and were going through auditions, what song would you choose to sing to clinch a spot on the show?  My choice used to be The Rose by Bette Midler.  Now it’s Chasing Pavements by Adele.

ONE of the reasons why I work out on my elliptical in my basement is because I can sing as loud as I want.  I LOVE to sing.  Most of the songs on my iPod are on there because their singable…plus they have a good beat and you can dance to them (Remember American Bandstand, Gen Xer’s and older?).
I can totally understand how people who sing really bad think they sound good to their own ear.

I’m the same way…or was. My step sister once told me I was a bad singer back in 1980-something. I thought she was crazy until she pulled out her boom box, inserted a blank tape and recorded a song I chose to sing (I think it was The Rose by Bette Midler).

When we played it back, I couldn’t believe I was able to hold a note…the one and only note I held while singing the entire song. It was then I realized my singing sucked.

I guess I should’ve been clued in to how lousy I was back in the day when I was a latch-key kid and my neighbor came over to get his screwdriver back that my father borrowed. I was belting out songs from Side A of the Grease soundtrack when he came to the door.

“Hi Shannon.  I came to get the screwdriver back that your dad borrowed.  Is everything OK, here?”

“Yeah.  Everything’s fine.”  Why wouldn’t it be fine?
I later found out he used the screwdriver as an excuse to come over to see if I was OK.  He thought I was being raped.

Another time, during a beautiful summer Saturday, I was singing my heart out in the shower…with the window open. This time I was singing the Star Spangled Banner with vibrato no less.

I soon heard:

“SHANNON!!!  SHANNON!!!!”

I looked out the window and saw my brother and his friends looking up to where I stuck my head out.

“SHANNON…SHUT THE **** UUUUP!!!!”

I was appalled, but soon thankful, for when I looked to the side into our neighbor’s yard, I saw a group of people looking toward the window laughing heartily. There was a BBQ going on and they could hear me!!

I still love to sing and sing out loud!

My kids ask me a million and one questions whenever we’re out driving.  As soon as a singable song comes on, I say “Shh.  Mommy wants to sing this.”  And they let me.  In fact, if I’m not singing, they request that I do so.

“You like when mommy sings?”

“YEAHHHH!”, they cry out in unison.

My heart melted and I said, “You think mommy is a good singer?”

“NOOOOO.  We think it’s fuh-nny.”

HIIT:  28 minutes, 504 calories
Breakfast:  1 whole egg, 4 egg whites

whole wheat toast

Snack:  apple

Lunch:  Mahi mahi

steamed spinach

romaine salad

Snack:  10 almonds

Dinner:  Chicken and pineapple fried rice (homemade…not fried at all…no oil used…absolutely delicious…and CLEAN)

This morning I rolled out of bed, came downstairs and was greeted by my husband who had coffee already brewing (Yay!).

He looks at me seriously, walks up to me, looks searchingly into my eyes and asks, "Honey.  Did you eat the ice cream?"

Damn.  He was looking at me like I was a recovering crack addict and happened to find a pipe in the bathroom.  (I have no clue what crack addicts use and where….is the pipe in the bathroom plausible??).
"No.  I didn’t eat the ice cream", I reply.  How dare he accuse ME of all people of eating the ice cream.

He told me how he found the ice cream scoop with melted ice cream pooled at the bottom of it in the dishwasher this morning and a bowl in the sink with remnants of vanilla ice cream inside.

He’s a friggin Sherlock Holmes over here.

So I blamed it on our oldest son, who denied it, but we know he did it because he has a tendency to use the opportunity to sneak the junk food when everyone else is sleeping in the morning.

Why is there ice cream in my house, you might be asking.  Leftovers from my daughter’s birthday.  Plus, the kids get dessert every Sunday, so I keep a thing or two like that in the house.

And then it got me thinking:  There has been ice cream in the freezer for over a week and I never thought about it a single time.  Pretty cool.

I have a public service announcement:

Please PLEASE respect the workhorse of your grocery shopping experience.  Put the shopping carts back in their corral so they don’t wander off.  They could sustain serious damage.  Please respect the shopping cart.

Breakfast:  1 whole egg, 3 egg whites

whole wheat toast

1-2 cups of coffee w/ milk

Snack:  10 almonds

Lunch:  Ground turkey

1 cup mixed vegetables

spinach salad

Snack:  apple

Dinner:  Mahi mahi

steamed spinach

1.  The word swole.  I’ve written about this word before and thought by now I’d hear it being said by people outside of the internet world.  I’ve seen people comment on other people’s profile page saying they look swole.  The person who’s profile it was on looked pretty awesome (male, mind you), so one would be able to realize that swole was a compliment.  Unlike in the world outside of BB.com where it could be used as an insult.  "Ooh.  Your face is swole.  Did you get stung by a bee?"  or "Uh, how do I put this?  Your butt is swole.  Let’s go to the gym for date night!"

2.   NO HOMO.  I’ve seen this term also used by people who were commenting on other people’s profiles.  Now, let’s analyze this.  Typically it’s a man on man term where a male wants to pay a compliment to another male, and will say "No homo.  You are looking swole.  Keep up the good work."   He wants to make clear that he isn’t a homosexual and isn’t paying the compliment as a pick up line and does NOT want naked penis pics sent to him.  OR now that I think of it, it could mean he wants to make clear that he isn’t a homo sapien.  Hmmm.  Points to ponder.

3.  Pictures of women posing with spoons.  I’ve seen this on a few different pictures in the Photo Gallery and on a couple of profiles.  Is the spoon a symbol of something?  Is it a fetish thing where men get off on seeing women posing with a spoon?  I saw a comment on one photo where the girl was holding a spoon by her face and a guy said "I prefer a fork."  What is UP with this?  Can someone clue me in?  Thanks.

Here’s a sort of scavenger hunt:  Find a woman who has a picture of herself posing with a spoon and ask her why she’s posing with it.  And then come back here and post the answer in the comment section.
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HIIT:  28 minutes, 515

Weight Training:  Legs, calves
Breakfast:  Oatmeal with a spoonful of peanut butter

Snack:  10 almonds

Lunch:  6 oz. ground turkey

1 cup mixed vegetables

Snack:    1 cup grapes

Dinner:  Garden salad w/ tomato vinaigrette

French onion soup without the bread and cheese on top

Snack:  1 whole egg, 4 egg whites

(I’ve gotten about as much sleep as I’m going to get).

Anywho, I burned 700 calories in under 40 minutes and some want to know how I did it.

I start off on a high resistance of 8 on my elliptical during warmup.  That burns a nice little amount.

And then for the duration of the workout, I set it to a medium resistance of 5, and I alternate 1 minute sprints with 1-2 minutes at a slower pace to get my heartrate down (but the resistance stays at 5) so that I can last for the next sprint.
And then at the last 5 or less minutes, I set the resistance to 8 again for the cool down.

Most importantly, I use a scoop and a half of Superpump so that I can keep up with that.  Otherwise, I burn 550 at the most.

I’ve been awake since 1:38 a.m. this morning.  I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I got up out of bed around 3:30 a.m., checked emails, read some blogs, got up and weighed myself, sat down at the computer and surfed the net some more.

I thought I might as well stay up because I didn’t want to oversleep and not get cardio in today.  It occured to me at 4:30 a.m. that all this time I was awake, I could’ve gotten cardio done.  But instead, my brilliant mind told me to stay up and get it done at 5 a.m. so I could get it done earlier than I normally do.  Sometimes I’m soooo stoopid.
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HIIT:  38 minutes, 713 calories

Weight Training:  Shoulders, bi’s, tri’s

Breakfast:  Oatmeal with 10 almonds and 8 dried apricots

Snack:  Melon

Lunch:  7 oz. of mahi mahi

1 cup vegetables

Snack 1:  The other 3 oz. of mahi mahi
Snack 2:  2 carrots and hummus dip

Dinner:  Greek salad w/ grilled chicken and balsamic vinaigrette

The WW leader I saw on Saturday mornings was pure evil.   I switched from one crazy WW leader to him.  They were the only two I could see based on my husband’s work schedule, so I had no choice.  And I wasn’t about to go back to the other one.

The last fateful morning he was talking about trigger foods….the food item you eat that makes you go ape shit and causes you to eat non-stop.

So he’s asking people what their trigger foods are and a guy says peanut butter. He goes through an entire jar in 3 days. Now that’s the way to pull an Elvis. Dying on the toilet because you’re all plugged up.

A woman speaks up and says she loves to dig into peanut butter with a spoon and dip it into a bag of chocolate chips.

Thanks bitch….I hadn’t eaten breakfast by the way….I didn’t want to mess up my weigh-in, but with all of this trigger talk, I’m about to go ape shit and tear through the member’s pocketbooks to see who’s hiding the candy bars or whatever WW brand goodies they’ve got stashed that they bought while weighing in.

So, I’m really wanting this session to be over, or for the leader to change the subject, but no. He elaborates on the peanut butter and chocolate chip thing.

He says real slowly and seductively, “The mouths of the peanut butter jars got bigger over the years, so you don’t just dip the spoon in, you take a WOODEN spoon and dip it in real slow and then you pull it out real slow so that you have it coated with peanut butter.”

It’s sounding a little erotic, dontcha think?  I SWEAR he was going to bust a (pea)nut.

He continues, “You don’t just stop there. You take that yellow bag you have and open it wide and then you dip the peanut butter laden spoon into it and you get all of those chocolate chips coating the whole thing, and then you start licking it off and you get the chips up your nose and it’s all over your face.

And then you’re scraping the inside of the peanut butter jar and you know that lip under the mouth of the jar where you can’t get the spoon? You have to take your pinky and swirl it around to get the rest. But you know what I do?

I run the water until it’s warm and I fill the jar about a quarter of the way, put the lid back on and I shake it until all the peanut butter is cleaned off the sides. And then I drink the water.”

Now THAT’S the way to promote healthy eating habits.

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I used to go on the Weight Watchers message boards to ask questions about counting points and low point recipes because things could get tricky.  Sometimes we’d get goofy and post funny threads and get funny replies.

Nevermind that the fugliest woman on the board would gross us out with her stories of her and her husband’s swinging couples exploits.  This is what got ME banned for life.  I asked the question:

When did you lose your virginity?

Ironically, it got about 50 replies from various people.  A couple of days later, I went to log in and found that I was banned.  Oh well.

Cardio:  35 minutes, 665 calories

Breakfast:  2 whole eggs

1/2 cup cooked oatmeal

coffee w/ milk

Snack:  10 almonds

Lunch:  Chicken w/ black beans and salsa

Snack:  Protein shake w/ tbs peanut butter

Dinner:  Oatmeal with 10 almonds and 5 dried apricots, chopped and mixed together