Weekly Check In (and p90x update!)

I've been doing better since Jared left, but not amazing. I've done P90X four times since Saturday. I missed out Monday since I was exhausted and had a huge headache after getting back from teaching... How DO real elementary school teachers survive? We learned about parts of the human body this week and I got my older kids involved by having them draw a monster (since almost ALL humans have 2 eyes, 2 legs, etc... It gets boring to talk about). Check out the guy and girl monsters done by my CM1 (5th grade) class:



So much fun! I get to do the same lessons again with my last school tomorrow, so it should be a good time. Then, on to Thanksgiving!

Anyway, back to P90X. I've done Core Synergistics, Cardio X, Ab Ripper X, and Yoga X so far and I'm really enjoying it. I'm really taking this week to get the hang of it, but starting the second time around, I think I'll need to pause the DVDs to get in some extra reps since doing what they have right now with only my 3kg hand weights isn't really getting me to feel the burn. Hopefully I'll be able to find a way to get over to Decathlon to buy a heavier set, but until then that'll do. I think one of the assistants (my British friend Sarah) is going to buy my 3kg set from me once I get the new ones. Woo!

So far, the yoga routine has been the most difficult and there are even a few moves I either cannot do at all or have a lot of difficulty with, there's definitely room for improvement, so I like it! Plus, I've been able to revel in that glorious post-workout soreness for a few days, so I'm feeling really good. Sadly, this means that my running has taken a cut, but it's been cold and windy here, and, honestly, I'm kind of hoping P90X will help me slim down a bit so that when I really get back in to running regularly there will be less that jiggles!

Other than that, I've just been trying to eat really healthy when I can. I made a batch of my favorite curried butternut squash soup tonight for my friends Rosie and Sarah. I had to cave and invest in more French fake tupperware to hold it as I think my roommate is getting a bit cross with me for using hers. Hopefully this'll ease the tension a bit! Rosie and Sarah thought the soup was a hit, but for some reason, it wasn't as good as I remembered. I think it has something to do with the squash not being as orange as usual? I don't know. I followed my old recipe (from memory) and I just checked and nothing was missing... Odd. Regardless, it'll help me stay within my points for the rest of the week, which is a must if I want to make at least 1 of my goals!

Sofar the points counts for the week are:
Saturday: 52 (This is why this week has been so difficult staying within WPs!)
Sunday: 22
Monday: 29 (Surprise Chile Con Carne at school for lunch... wasn't planning on eating with them, but I got there early!)
Tuesday: 22
Wednesday: 35.5
Currently, that puts me at -5.5 after using all 10 of my APs I've earned so far, but if I'm good and get in a few more workouts (as already planned), I can end the week with 4 days within my DP allowance AND out of the red, so here it goes! I'm not too proud of the points count so far, but I am proud of the fact that I 'fessed up and tracked it all anyways instead of writing this week off as a loss from the get-go!

In the end, today's been a fabulous day spent doing yoga, checking out a local gym (sadly I think 33€/month is too rich for my poor assistant blood), cooking, and hanging out with friends. See? Here we are at the grocery below my apartment picking up last minute ingredients for dinner:

Bread... my biggest vice. Oh 80 cent authentic French baguette, I love thee...
That's all for now, sorry the post was so sporadic!

The train derailed, but is now back on track.

This weekend I was lucky enough to have my friend Jared, a classmate from OU who is also doing the French teaching assistantship this year, come visit. He studied abroad in Avignon in 2007 (the year before me) and was really excited to get back to town and visit his old stomping grounds and favorite sights.

Since we are both living on the meager assistant's salary as we wait for the housing aid to kick in, instead of going out to eat a lot, we stayed in and cooked instead:





Me, the crazy chef, drinking red wine and working three burners to produce yummy pasta-y goodness
I wish I could say that I ate all balanced meals and didn't indulge while he was here, but that'd be a lie (even if those food items/beverages were not documented via photo). I probably undid any progress I'd made with the veggie soup introduction this past week week since we drank like fish, consumed baguettes, and may have partook in dessert, like the selection below from a cool tapas restaurant in town called Tapaslocas:



I also didn't run or work out for all but one day of his visit, though we did go on quite a few photo excursions while he was here, in an attempt to capture the feel of the city:

One of our local bar hang outs. The patios are so nice when it's not too cold out!
Les Halles, an indoor market where I like to go to buy my produce.


A view from my bedroom window


On the way home from our last photo excursion
We had a great time cooking and hanging out together. It made me remember how much I prefer cooking with/for other people. Jonboy was jealous that he wasn't here for the soup. They're one of my specialties in our relationship (I miss his pancakes, btw). I'm hoping to make it up to Chambéry (where Jared is living) to visit his town at some point as well.

Today I'm back on track after our weekend of indulgences and it feels good. Plus, I've started doing the P90X lean sequence as cross training since I do want to tone up (hopefully in time to look smokin' for NYE?) Jonboy wants to match outfit-wise, so I'm hoping to be able to fit into a fabulous dress in time for the partay! :) So far, I've done Cardio X and Core Synergistics and I am already feeling it. Hurts so good, John Mellencamp style! I'm lovin' it!

The Curiosity of Lauriole (aka "A Day in the Hérault")

So, this past weekend, my cousin took our friend Nolwenn (who's visiting from Corsica) and me on a "mysterious adventure" and refused to tell us where we were going aside from the fact that it was going to require a 2.5 hour road trip over into the Hérault department.

On the way there, we ended up on some tiny backroads (Thanks, TomTom!) that seemed pretty treacherous for Michel's car (which is enormous by French standards), but provided some fun photo-taking opportunities:


I LOVE FALL! While I miss seeing all the beautiful changes at home, it is pretty interesting to see the changes here in France too (exhibit A: vineyards)


Nolwenn :)
Another view from the car.
I guess this is where we're going? Almost there?
Me by the hill.
See, it's a hill. At least a little one, right?Eyes don't lie.
Yep. That's right. He took us to a hill. In the middle of nowhere. We were very confused... until he explained that this "Curiosity" was that things roll UP the hill all on their own. He demonstrated this phenomenon with both the car (we didn't believe him) and then a bottle of water. Why I didn't get this on video, I do not know, but apparently it's an actual phenomenon called "Magnetic Hill" where the an optical illusion makes it look like it's an uphill slope (see the above photo... that looks uphill, right?) but really it's not. Interesting, no?

Instead, we picnicked. This seemed like a good idea until we realized it was cold and windy:

That's Michel on the left. He loathes being in photos, but I'm sneaky sneaky and managed to snap this one before he blocked himself out. tee hee.
On the way home, we took a detour to visit Minèrve, a town with Cathar ancestry that is officially among "The Most Beautiful Cities of France." From the photo below, I'm sure you can see why. It kind of reminds me of the town of Gordes over here in Provence what with it also being built entirely on a hill.




Can you find me?
After stopping in a quaint café for a cuppa to warm up our insides (and our hands), we called it a day and road tripped it all the way home. All in all, quite a successful day trip, if I do say so myself. Oh France, how diverse you are!

Next up on France updates, I finally caved and threw in the towel with "my" beloved iPhone. Sadly, my petit assistant's salary isn't high enough to pay the bills on that sucker, so no more fun Facebooking at the bus stop for me! Instead, Matthieu at The Phone House set me up with a little text/call only phone from Orange. Much more affordable. AND I got out of my second accidental renter's insurance. That said, almost all of my administrative woes are clearing up! All that really remains is to see why they won't give me a checkbook and if all my paperwork for the CAF (housing aid) goes through! Keep your fingers crossed!!!

50 Day Challenge: Week 1 Check-In

(Image from pleaseenjoy.com)
Yesterday was Amber’s and my first weekly check-in for the 50 Day Challenge, and, I must say, I don’t think I did that stellar. I have gone over my points 4 days (though I didn’t eat any APs) and I only exercised 4 times. I’m not thrilled, but I know I’m still getting into the swing of the new plan.

That said, I did spend a few days doing a modified “vegetable soup cleanse.” I meant to do the drastic 7-day diet like the one here. I know it is not recommended by the hospital people claim developed it, but a co-worker did it, modified it later and has seen impressive results, so I figured “What the heck!” and away I went. So far, my only problems have been going out with people or specific events here in Avignon, other than that I’m trying to stick to the description, all while tracking my points, since, believe me I could EASILY go over my 22 DPs eating only fruit if you let me eat as much of it as I wanted. This was proven Monday (aka Banana and Milk day) where I could have easily eaten a whole bunch of bananas (5 large ones to be exact) without batting an eyelash. I’m a bananaholic and I admit it. All fruit really, but especially bananas.

I pretty much fell off the semi-strict wagon when I got to the only meat or only meat and tomatoes days… I don't eat a lot of meat and couldn't give up fruits and veggies for a few days. That said, I did make a whole new batch of veggie soup for this week, so at least that part will be sticking around. Really what I’ve noticed so far with these past few days of “cleanse” is that eating at least one meal a day of low-cal soup really helps me stay within my daily points, especially when I go out with the other language assistants at night. With at least one essentially calorie-free, filling meal, I don’t go quite as overboard as I have in the past and I’m never hungry. While I didn't follow this diet 100%, always having homemade veggie soup in reserve for at least one serving a day is from here on out part of the plan. It’ll help me get my veggies in, keep my points down, and (bonus) it’s very economical since fresh (and frozen) produce in France isn’t very expensive. A win all around!

As far as the scale is concerned, I think I may have lost one KG, but I may have gained it back last night when my friend Jared came into town for the weekend. I'm (sort of) okay with that. Note to self: drinking a bottle and a half of rosé each is probably not a great POINTS life choice. Aside from that, with a few days of almost entirely fresh food under my belt (literally), I'm feeling really good and I'm even beginning to reconsider running a half marathon in France in Marseille in April. They have a bus that will come along and pick up anyone who's pacing to hit a time over 2:45:00, but I'm going to try and figure out a way to get my speed up so that a 2:30:00 half is almost certain. Plus, there are a few other assistants who might run it AND, if we can work it out, Jon might even be able to be here to run it too. THAT would be amazing, since (I know it's dorky), but I would really like to have him there for my first half. Anyway, so there you go for the first week update. It feels really good to be back into cooking. I was having a difficult time getting myself to cook my first month here since I missed a) my knives and b) having someone to cook with/for (I miss my Jonboy!). But, since I found two beautiful butternut squash (5lbs for 4€!!) at the market and decided to make curried b-squash soup later this week, I knew that continuing to use my roomie's steak knives to cook was no longer an option. So, one 12€ knife later, I'm back in business! Here's to week 2! :)

ProPOINTS

I know a lot of my readers aren't WW members, but I wanted to talk about this anyway. After getting an email from WW announcing the debut of the new program ProPoints at the end of the month, I went ahead and googled it and found out it was just released in the UK this week. There's a really interesting article on it in the UK Daily Mail. I'm not sure what I think about it yet and it'll be really interesting to see how it gets introduced to us online only members. I think some of the ideas are really cool (ZERO point fruit? YES!), but I'm kind of nervous about having to relearn the points values for everything. Plus, now all my old cookbooks don't have the right points values in them anymore. Ick.

What do you guys think? Perhaps this'll help me get past this plateau (update on the challenge later!).

Vacation in the Ariège!

As promised (even if it took awhile), here's a recap from my vacation in France's Ariège department and it's surrounding areas! :) In France, they get about a week and a half off for All Saint's Day, and, since I hadn't seen them since I was in France in 2008, I decided to go visit our family friends Marie-Hélène and Gérard. I always love visiting them because they take me on day trips and Marie is an amazing cook, so we spend a lot of time chatting around delicious food as well. This time, I visited them at their house in Varilhes and we took a day trip to Andorra to pick out Christmas presents and another near the Spanish boarder on the Mediterranean to the cities of Collioure, Port Vendres and Banyuls-sur-Mer to see the see and to pick up some AOC Banyuls apératif wine. Yum. Fun fact: According to Wikipedia, the entire population of Andorra could fit in Jordan-Hare Stadium with around 4,000 seats to spare! That's either a really small principality or a really big stadium. Actually, Jordan-Hare is also bigger than the State de France (the country's biggest soccer stadium). Impressive, eh? War Eagle! Anyway, here's some photo proof of my long weekend with Marie and Gégé:

The Spanish side of the Pyrenees in Andorra
The French side... A view from the gas station
Gérard's (left) and my shadows. I think distance on the right you can see the huge outlet mall-esque shopping area where we were
Gérard and Marie-Hélène in front of the church in Collioure
Collioure... I love Mediterranean villages
Huge Olivier (olive tree) outside the church in Collioure
The beach... I couldn't believe their were actually a few kids swimming!
The back streets of Collioure... so colorful and pretty!

A view of Banyuls-sur-Mer
A view from the car... I swear you see the prettiest things from the car and you can't really get a good photo! No fair!
At the feet of the Montségur château, look at all the beautiful autumn colors!
Montségur château. We didn't attempt the climb.
The medieval city of Mirepoix. I loved all of the arcades!
Fresh mussels for dinner! Yum!
They really did feed me well. All local French food... They spoil me!
Anyway, that's a brief re-cap of my weekend with them. I think it was especially great because it really shows how diverse France is, even though it's such a small country. With just a few hours drive, we got to see both the snowy mountains and the beach!

As far as the 50 day challenge is going, today is Day 42 and I'm attempting to do that vegetable soup cleanse, though so far I haven't had a single day where I stuck to it 100%. That said, by eating the veggie soup for at least one meal a day, I've been better at staying within my points, so we'll see how it goes! First check in is on Wednesday so stay tuned for that! :)

50 Day Challenge Details!

Sneak peak photos from my vacation this past week. Plus, I feel like the Pyrenees are an appropriate metaphor for this challenge and for losing weight... It's like climbing a mountain?

It's official. The 50 Day Challenge has begun and here are the rules:

1. Stay within my DP (daily points) 4 days a week (as in not eating any extra weekly points or APs (activitiy points))*
2. 5 days a week of exercise with at least two of them being running days (6 is ideal with 50/50)
3. 10 pounds down by the end of the challenge, which would break my plateau in a big way
*Unofficial goal to not eat ANY of the APs I earn, just the 35 weekly!

I told my friend Amber about my idea and she's going to hop on board with me as well (only her exercise goals are different). That'll be fun, especially since we'll see each other over Christmas and New Year's! She and I will be checking in with each other on Wednesdays, with the last official day being Dec 21 (50 days from today exactly, even though it's 2 days after I get home). This will allow me to go to a real WW meeting to get weighed in in pounds! As for the -10 goal, we'll see what happens! I think I'm at 166 now based on Marie-Hélène and Gérard's scale this week, so technically the goal is going to be 156, but with my plateau being so intense, I'll be happy with anything under 165 (since 166 has been my lowest weight so far on this teeter-totter of weight loss!)

Regardless of what happens, i just hope that this 50 Day Challenge gets me back in the "lose weight" eating mentality versus the "maintenance' mentality I've slipped into! PLUS, Jon is also doing his own version of a 50 Day Challenge! He's going to start doing P90X and try and get the trailer ready to sell so that we can move once I come home in July! :) Now, we just all need to get down to business! Today I streamed an exercise video from Shape on Netflix (first time doing that!) and, while it wasn't my favorite, I do think I'll keep using these to make sure I get all my exercise in! Not too shabby! PLUS I can get full Pilates workouts online from Pilates on Fifth. I should be all set!

Here I go! I'll try and recap vacation soon and then I'll be back next Wednesday (at the latest) for the analysis of Week 1 of the Challenge! :) Woo!