Thursday, April 7, 2011

Inventing an Award

So awhile back when I had officially lost 25 lbs I created myself this award to celebrate.  I've got awards for larger weight loss goals that I am just dying to earn for myself too.  It occurred to me that, although there are a lot of nifty blog awards out there for everything from being stylish to being honest ... I've yet to see any awards for those of us using blogging to lose weight and find a community of like-minded individuals and supporters.

But we deserve awards more than most don't we?!  We're taking on one of the hardest challenges life can throw at most people.  So since there aren't any weight-loss specific blog awards I am going to share mine.

My original goal was to go through all of your blogs and officially give this award to those of you that have lost more than 25 lbs but I ran into a bit of a snag.  Some of you don't post a ticker or chart of some kind on your home page and with over 50 + followers, 30 blogs in the PR list, and a slew of you who read and comment on my posts but aren't officially following I realized that to go through each and every blog might be time consuming.  Then there are those of you who have your blogs set to be private or to not show up in your profile and I just don't want to miss anyone so ... this is an honor-system award.  You know whether or not you've lost 25 lbs so, if you have, take this award and display it on your blog if you so desire.  Feel free to pass it on like other awards but there are no rules other than whomever you pass it to has to have lost 25 lbs.or more.  Be sure to respond and let me know if you're claiming the award so we can all congratulate you and if you've lost more than 50 lbs stay tuned because I'll be sharing that award with everyone as soon as I earn it!

In other news, I think I'm addicted to peanut butter!  I'm out of pickles and yet I still find myself craving a spoonful of peanut butter almost daily.  My mom once told me that sometimes we have cravings because our bodies are deficient in a specific nutrient that is found in the food we're craving.  I'm not sure if that's true or not but I've never really been a big fan of peanut butter in the past; in fact just a month or so ago I went to use some peanut butter to make hummus and discovered that the jar we had in the cupboard had actually gone bad.  Who knew peanut butter goes bad?!  So this sudden new interest in it is surprising; I had thought it was just the combination of PB and pickles but now that I'm out of pickles and still craving pb that can't be it ... though it is a lot better with pickles than without I will admit.



Food:
8 glasses of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 tsp peanut butter
1 serving leftover margarita chicken
1 foot long chicken sub
>>the usual, no cheese, no mayo etc.
1 cookie (I know, I know but it looked so good!)
-----------------------------------------
Daily Caloric Intake: 1,245



Activity:
Wii Walking: 1 hour = 4.25 miles (8,500 + steps)

7 comments:

  1. I love that award! I am definitely going to use it. :) It's a great motivational tool, love it! Thanks! (You aren't the only person I watch who has a love for peanut butter! This peanut butter thing is starting to get weird, lol!)

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  2. First I have to say it's no big deal that you had one cookie. It looks like you felt a bit guilty to have it because you wrote "I know I know". You shouldn't feel guilty; it was JUST ONE. Celebrate that you were able to eat just one cookie and then walk away. Some of us can't do that. :)

    Peanut butter has good fats and protein. Maybe your body is craving protein ... that tends to help you feel full for longer and maybe that's why you're enjoying it so much. Not only that but it takes time to eat one spoonful because it's so sticky so you feel like you're eating much more. I prefer almond butter but only because it reminds me of a Puerto Rican Christmas treat we used to eat that was made with almonds. :-D

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  3. Good idea -- and great award!

    The award would work better if you cropped-out the black surrounding it so that people could put it on other backgrounds and it would mesh with their site better.

    If you need help, let me know and I'll do it for you.

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  4. Congrats on the 25 lbs Ashley!

    Laryssa: I was kind of thinking that same thing about the protein and good fats last night. I mean I'm not on a low protein diet but with the lower than usual caloric intake and working out it is highly possible that my muscles need even more protein than what I'm eating. I tried protein shakes but I couldn't find one that I liked, they all taste like chalk and felt like wasted calories. I'd rather just ingest a 0 calorie protein pill or something lol.

    Brandon - ode to Photoshop, how I miss it; let me count the ways. I have PhotoImpact and not even the good version, I have the el' cheapo $24 version. I'm gradually learning how to do various things with it but I miss CS3 SOOOO MUCH! One thing I haven't figured out how to do with PhotoImpact is impart a transparent background on a gif. It does have a tool for that but it doesn't go by color so you literally have to outline the entire image pixel by pixel whereas with CS3 I could literally just use the eraser and wipe out color wherever I wanted. If you've got better software and the time to create a transparent background I would definitely be grateful and I will send you the other weight awards I have so you can do them too, if you're willing. :)

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  5. Sadly, I made a premature-promise. I'm swamped at work and the extra time I had out of work just got consumed (as of this past Saturday) by a new business deal I've been offered by a local e-commerce broker; so my free-time at nights/weekends is going to be consumed by that.

    But have you ever played around with Gimp? Gimp is *horrible* from a user-interface perspective, but I've always found it can do most anything you need it to. Pretty positive you can remove pixels based on their color; but b/c the UI is so crappy, you'd want to save yourself a lot of time and google for a tutorial showing how to actually go about it. Gimp is free: http://www.gimp.org and runs on just about every platform out there.

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  6. No worries. I'm sure the time it would take me to learn a horrible UI would probably be equal to or less than the time it would take me to outline the ribbon in PhotoImpact and use their transparency tool. Just let this be a hint I suppose ... if the family decides to band together to get me a graduation gift like we did for you ... PhotoShop would be at the top of my software wish list. ;)

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  7. haha... and, if I'm still working at the U, I may be able to get it for a pretty good deal too!
    :)

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