Paleo Lifehacks: Keeping Costs Down

So I did a vlog today instead of writing an article, so you'll get my info from the horses mouth!

I will, however, add my food log for Day 13 below. I ate my chocolate bar that I'd been saving since before Halloween. I'll post a review tomorrow. It was super good. I had no business "treating" myself due to my last few days of behavior on set, but hey. At least it was a Paleo delicacy. More challenges tomorrow.

I'm also not weighing myself because I know eating this way is going to work and I don't want to be so focused on the scale or be a person who weighs themselves every day or every week. I'm in it for the sake of wellness and confidence and I'm gonna hope that this new "system" works out for me. I am curious to know how I'm doing after two weeks, but the results should be telling in how my clothes fit as time goes on. Just gotta sit tight and keep choosing wisely.

Mixed Berry Smoothie
Cashews
Dried Cranberries
Banana

Eggs, Bacon, Pepper, Onion, Mushroom

Apple
Paleo Chocolate Banana Crunch Bar from Hu Kitchen

Chicken
Sweet Potato

10 Tips for a Heathy Mind and Body

So much of weight loss and living healthy is about being mentally strong. Food is food, but your choices determine how healthy it is. You have a whole day in front of you and you could just lay around trying to get a perfect play-through of Mass Effect 2 or you could get out there and sweat (and then get your perfect play-through!). It all comes down to how bad you want to reach your goals and what you're willing to sacrifice in order to get what you want.

We're faced with food every day and it can really wear you out when you constantly have to make good choices despite your body craving things that aren't good for you. Fitting in your fitness routine can seem like a real drag and the more excuses you make, the easier it is to make them. If you don't find a way to get your head on straight it can be a slippery slope to derailing your progress. One bad choice can lead to a "well screw it" attitude and before you know it you've been off your game for a week and your pants don't fit.

So how do you get mentally strong? Here are my top ten tips to help you stay in a healthy mindset and keep you on track to get the body you want.

• Make a list of the reasons you want to change your life and the things you won't miss about being unhealthy so that when you waver, you can look at it to remind yourself why you  need to stick it out.
• Make as many choices as you can in the morning before you've depleted your willpower. If you leave stuff till later in the day, you'll be to tired to make the right choice.
• Don't move too fast when you start out. Pick a few new habits to adopt and then add more as you go. If you overwhelm yourself with a super strict regime in the beginning, then you'll run the risk of burning out.
• Level up your cooking! You won't have to wonder what's going in your food if you make it for yourself a majority of the time. It will give you a measure of control and won't leave you dependent on anyone or anything when it comes to your nutrition.
  
• Have a plan. Waffling about with trying to eat healthy when you haven't done research on the different options or methods that you could use can be exhausting. Obviously the knowledge base you've had so far isn't working. Find something you can get excited about!
• Find balance in your exercise and nutrition routine and make sure it works for you. What works for someone else, might not work for you and vice versa. If you get overwhelmed with counting calories, then find a diet where you don't have to worry about that like Atkins or Paleo. If you feel lost without structure, find a program where you're accountable for logging everything you eat so you can learn what it takes to stay on track. If that's what you want, then Weight Watchers or using Fitbit's nutrition planner might be a good fit.
• Learn to forgive yourself. It takes a strong person to keep going despite setbacks but those who learn how to stay positive and keep moving forward are the only ones who will find lasting success.
• Give yourself a break. Find rewards for doing well at your goals that allow you to relax and decompress. It takes a lot of energy and effort to make good choices all the time despite the presence of cake (even if it is a lie!). You need to find ways to release tension (hopefully not by eating treats) so you can stay strong and keep pushing forward. Get a pedicure, make time to watch your favorite show, read a book, plan a fun night out or a weekend excursion to a place you've always wanted to go. Shop for new clothes! Make it personal and the instant gratification of staying on track will speak for itself.
  
• Find a fitness routine you love. It's a lot harder to convince yourself to go lift weights if you hate every second of it. Would you rather run? Would you rather do yoga? Would you rather take kick boxing? Play in a pick-up ice hockey game? Get passionate and make it happen! There's something out there for everyone.
• Have a support system. It's true that no one can make you get healthy until you're ready to embrace that goal for yourself, but surrounding yourself with people whose values and goals align with yours or just those who love you unconditionally can be your saving grace. There will be days when you need to tell someone how much you miss ice cream or how sore you are from doing squats. You want someone who's going to tell you to keep going and not be an enabler who will help you sabotage your hard work. Surround yourself with people whose healthy outlook you admire.

Hopefully these are helpful to you all! If you have any of your own tips for fellow Slayers here at Project Reroll, please leave them in the comments so we can help each other.

10 Ways to Get Back On Track with Your Diet

So many people fall off the diet wagon and give up completely. 

Think about the first time you were faced with the "Game Over" screen. Did you rage quit and never pick up the controller again? If you're like me, you said to yourself, "Ef this, I'm gonna win this thing!" Then you restarted the level. So why should your diet be any different? Sure, "losing" at your diet can be just so damn DELICIOUS whereas losing in a video game results in rage mode, but in the end it's all the same. You set a goal. You worked hard at it and you fell short. It doesn't mean the goal goes away. It's still there waiting for you. All you have to do is press reset.

For some reason that "reset button" is really hard to push when it comes to diets. Everything is a choice and the more you practice moving back and forth between planned indulgence and healthy choices, the easier it is to return to your diet. Getting back on track is a mental muscle and it's just as important as any that you'll flex in the gym. 

So many people tell me they're "all or nothing," and I definitely struggled with that for a long time. I was either 100% perfect or I utterly fell apart and just destroyed myself with bad choices. It's impossible to keep the "all or nothing" attitude up forever. It's time to accept your humanity. 

Newsflash: YOU ARE IMPERFECT. Le gasp!

At some point you're going to slip or just really want a cupcake. It all comes down to a choice. How you handle what follows that choice that will determine how successful you are with your weight loss. 

So, what I've decided to do is give you my ten tips for getting back on track with your diet. Hopefully this will make that reset button a little easier to push.

1. Assess: Why did you choose to slip? Were you putting too much pressure on yourself? Are there emotional stress factors that are overwhelming you? If you can target the "why," you'll be able to heal whatever is really ailing you. If you don't take time to do this step, then you're shooting yourself in the foot. Cheating on a diet can be symptom of other things that you need to confront and heal in your life so look at it as an opportunity get healthy in other ways.
2. Forgive Yourself: Once you've put your finger on the source of your slip and you've thought about it and how you can improve whatever is ailing you, forgive yourself. If you keep beating yourself up, you're just putting MORE pressure on the situation- pressure that could lead you down the road to other bad decisions. Rest in the knowledge that you've done right by yourself in the "Assess" phase and start putting one foot in front of the other again.
3. Decide: This sounds silly, but you have to DECIDE to get back on track. You can sit around and say "I should do more to fix my health issues" all day long. I gotta tell you, it's not the same as DOING something about it. What day are you re-starting the level? What hour? Right now? Good! Now go! Stop putting it off and making excuses! That is a long slippery slope and do you want to know the worst part? You're smart, so you'll watch yourself making excuses and start hating yourself even more for lying to yourself. What are you waiting for, Player 1? PRESS START!
4. Purge: You've been relaxing. Eating whatever. I'm willing to bet there are half eaten bags of candy by the couch and leftover pizza in the fridge. Cookies in the jar? Do whatever you have to do to get rid of that stuff. I'd say toss it, but if you eat it, you eat it. Invite someone over for a leftover party. Give it to your room mate. Just get it gone and don't buy more.
5. Create A Comfortable Environment: Environment is everything for me. If I'm trying to get back on track and I walk into a house littered with the refuse of my bad behavior, I have a much harder time readopting better habits. After you've purged the house of any leftover bad food, create the best possible environment for your success. Clean your room, wash the dishes in the kitchen. Do you have all the pots and pans you need for cooking? Does your scale have batteries in it? Are your running clothes season-appropriate?
6. Find Other Indulgences: Even if you create the perfect environment for success, you'll still get cravings. They don't just go away. Find stuff other than food that makes you happy. Is there a new video game coming out that you're dying to sink your teeth into? A book you've been waiting to read? A spa treatment that's absolutely to die for? Every time you want all the cupcakes in the land, start doing one of those other things. Nine times out of ten, they'll distract you enough that you'll forget all about what you were craving.
7. Grocery Shopping: You've purged your house of bad foods, now its time to fill your coffers with delicious healthy food. Make sure you have everything you need to cook food for yourself for the next week. When I already have fresh fruits, veggies, plus a list of healthy recipes I want to try and all their ingredients all at my finger tips, I'm way less tempted to run to the corner for Pad Thai. If you're looking for great healthy recipes that you can make easily, quickly and on a budget, I refer you to this Nerd Fitness article written by my Paleo cooking guru, Catspaw. 
8. Track Everything: Get back on the scale. Take your measurements. Track your calories or keep a food journal. Make sure you're getting at least 64 oz of water a day. Just stay accountable. When I fall of the wagon I go off the grid. It's fine, but when it's over it's over. I need to start seeing what I'm eating or I'll go wild and pretend it's not happening. Seeing your choices can be as encouraging as it can be chastening. When you look at your week and see you've kept completely Paleo for four days without realizing it, you'll be so proud of yourself for making all those good choices! 
9. One Week Cleanse: Once you have your diet plan in place and you've prepped your home and your kitchen, it's time to stick to it completely for one week. This is more of a mental cleanse than a physical one, but the idea is to make good choices for a full week after whatever slip you may have had. This is to prove to yourself that, well, that's all it was, "just a slip." It wasn't a derailment. You're still plowing ahead and committed. How do you know? Cause you've been back at it for a week! Good for you! I'd throw confetti if I could. How about another week? Challenge accepted.
10. Recommit to Your Exercise Plan: Diet is only part of health equation. When I eat like crap, it makes me feel lazy and going to the gym seems super lame. I swear it's like magic- or science even! Make sure you get back out there during that one week cleanse period. Don't worry if you've backslid with your fitness, just get yourself back in the habit of going. The rest will follow. 

Ah, there it is, the reset button.

Now press start!

How to Pack for Comic Con

Con packing can be as easy as throwing your favorite geeky t-shirts, convention passes, travel documents, toiletries, and any cash you think you might need into a bag and walking out the door.

If you're a cosplayer, it gets a little more complicated.

If you even have a hope of eating healthy and on a budget, then it's harder still. Sure you're walking around all day, but if you don't want to pack on the pounds or destroy any weight loss progress you've made beforehand, then you are going to want to plan ahead in some capacity.

Let's be honest, con food is hardly ever nutritious and the inflated prices at most convention centers are enough to make me cringe. Personally, I'd rather splurge on one meal a day (usually dinner) and save the rest of my hard earned money (that I haven't spent on assembling/crafting my cosplay!) for the dealers' room. So after three years of experience attending New York Comic Con, PAX East, BlizzCon, etc. and now viewing these events through the eyes of a health conscious cosplayer, here are my tips to help you prepare for successful con.

If you are cosplaying, do your final fitting and test run for your costume. Make sure everything fits and you can move well over an extended period of time without the whole thing falling apart. Then, as you remove your costume, carefully pack it up into your suitcase piece by piece so that you won't forget anything. After all, you just had the whole thing on so you'll be able to keep all the pieces in one place as you remove them. 

Put all the little details, bits, and pieces into a giant bag so they don't get lost in the bottom of your suitcase. Nothing is worse then trying to get ready, freaking out because you forgot something, and then finding out sometime during your stay that you had it the whole time.

Make sure nothing is going to bend or break and that everything is cushioned and in place for the journey. You can lay down a layer of plastic bags to separate your costume from the rest of your stuff if you're afraid of anything ruining it.

Try to get your cosplay finished as early as possible. Set an actual deadline a few days in advance of when you leave to have it finished. That way if there are any emergencies, you can get them fixed in time. It's not a perfect science but it's well worth the effort!

Add in any hair products, styling brushes, etc. that you might need to touch up your 'do.

Make a bag of make-up, SFX accessories you're going to need for your costume, con wear, or party attire. That way it's all in one place and you won't have to go searching your apartment at the last minute for that special blue mascara you bought JUST for this costume.

Make an small emergency kit with scissors, a super glue stick, needle, and thread to carry around with you at the convention. If you have armor of some kind, duct tape is great to keep on you as well. If something breaks, you can fix it up right away and keep enjoying the con without skipping a beat. I also keep a phone charger with me since my phone is my camera and I want to be able to use it all day for photos and finding friends around the con. It's up to you to decide what you specifically need. For instance, in my test runs for Rainbow Dash, I noticed that the white cloud details on my shoes had a tendency to come loose, so I also packed a few extra clouds and the cloud fabric so I could tend to them on the fly or back in the hotel room at night if something really went awry. 

Make a list of anything you can't include in your bag till the morning you leave (phone, iPad, keys, chargers, toothbrush, hairdryer, etc.) and leave that list next to your bag. You can check it before you walk out the door to make sure you didn't miss anything important because you were in a rush.

If you are planning to work out at all during your stay at the convention, then set yourself up for success. Look at the weather. Make sure you're going to be warm if you're going for a morning run. See if your hotel has a gym. Make a plan. If you look into this stuff ahead of time, you're more likely to follow through. Pack up all your appropriate gear once you know what you're goals are. For PAX East, mine is to go for a run Friday morning. I know it will be hard to muster the willpower, but I'm gonna make it happen and once it's done, it will be out of the way!

Make a plan for what you're going to eat. I'm on a tight budget so for PAX East, I decided I'd have one meal "out" a day. The rest I'd be bringing from home and taking with me to the con each morning. I packed a small baggie for each day with a breakfast bar/muffin, some Truvia for my coffee or tea (which I plan to buy each morning in the lobby of my hotel), a morning snack of cashews, an appropriately sized granola bar with high fiber and low sodium for lunch, and an afternoon snack of 1 oz dried cranberries/raisins. That should get me through each day with enough energy until I get to dinner time. Check out the restaurants in the area you're visiting and see if they have menus online. Try to choose what you're going to have ahead of time so that you're not hung out to dry and susceptible to temptation. Be in control. Again, the more you plan, the more likely it is that you will stick to it. I cannot emphasize that enough. You will always make better choices ahead of time than you will in the heat of the moment when you're exhausted from walking around the con and a bacon cheeseburger sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

Have a budget. You've shelled out the money for travel, hotel, and con passes. Think realistically about how much money you will have to spend at the con on food/fun souvenirs and stick to the parameters you set ahead of time when you're in your right mind. Every time I don't do this, I'm really excited about all my new shinies until the moment I check my bank account on Monday and cry. 

See if the convention has an app that lets you create your own schedule of events, panels, and guest appearances. This way you can plan for what you want to do, who you want to see, and even figure when you might have time to eat the food you packed along the way if that helps you with your planning. You won't want to find out later that you missed a panel with someone you really wanted to see!

Last, assemble any passes, after party tickets, hotel confirmations, and travel documents so you can have them all in one place. Like everything else, I like to keep them in their own plastic bag.

These are just my tips based on how I prepared for my trip to PAX East this year. I'm really excited to attend the convention with all my friends and premiere my Rainbow Dash costume after losing over 90 lbs. It's been a long journey to get to this point, and there's more work on the horizon, but this will be a weekend to celebrate how far I've come will all the choices I've been making to pick new stats and slay the fat! 

I certainly do feel a little anxiety when it comes to eating healthy at our dinners out each night, but I really feel like I've given myself the best chance to succeed that I can. I'll let you know how it all goes when I get back! If you have any tips you swear by when it comes to prepping for conventions, leave them in the comments! 

25 lbs Lost: The Suck-It-Corset-Saga

I already wrote about last weekend's trip, but I wanted to post again because as of yesterday, my corset laced all the way up this week! How bananas is that?! I'm actually sort of nervous it won't fit next year since I fully intend on seeing this journey all the way to the end. Anyways! I just wanted to share this "yippee" moment. Only 5 more lbs till my next goal of 30 lbs lost for New York Comic Con in October. I'm gonna kill it! :)

My newest skill set is eating responsibly when I'm straying from the Nutrisystem plan during outings. I definitely spend time preparing myself for the choices I'll have to make. Planning everything ahead of time is really key to being responsible. It means that I make everything from a healthy frame of mind rather than being easily swayed by temptation in the moment.