Motivational Monday #3

I hope everyone has had a great week working on personal goals! I had a very tough week as far as food goes--I've been having binge urges due to depression, but thankfully, managed to keep my binge-free streak. Since I'm an emotional eater, feeling depressed is practically a surefire bet that I'm going to binge!

Today is the third installment of Motivational Monday, and (again) there were LOTS of awesome goals and accomplishments that people have been proud of this week. Congrats to all of you that posted about your week!

Here are a few I'd like to share:

Desiree and Trinity (9 years old) did a 5K together on Saturday! It was a bit cold for Texas (40 degrees) but they had fun:

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 Amelia started running again, and ran/walked 1.23 miles!

 

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Amy wrote this e-mail about a big non-scale victory regarding her jeans:

You have been a huge inspiration to me.  I started reading your blog early last year when I started my own weightloss journey.  You remind me of me, and when I read about how you became a runner it gave me the confidence to try it myself.  In my old size 20, 250 pound, completely sedentary world, the only time I believed running was necessary would have involved zombies!  

Last September I started a C25K program at my local running store.  It was rough.  I never thought I could run 1 mile let alone 3.1!  But I did it!  I ran my first 5K on Thanksgiving day 2012.

This weekend I ran 5 miles (yes 5!!) around the lake at the local park.   It took me an hour, but I did it!  I came home, showered, and went shopping for some new jeans.  The size 14 I'd been wearing were getting a little baggy, so I went in for a size 12.  I also brought in a size 10 to see how far away I was from those fitting.  I pulled them up and ziiiippp... they fit!!  I couldn't believe it.  I've NEVER been a size 10 in my life, and I honestly never thought I could be.  

I'm not done yet.  I'm down 75 pounds in the last year.  Still have 40 pounds to get to my goal weight, but those size 10's are huge in motivating me to keep going.  

You inspired me to get started, but these size 10's are keeping me going!

--Amy

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Elizabeth wrote this along with her picture: "My proud moment this week was being able to fit into a size 12!  :)  I have been hanging onto this Nautica skirt a family member gave me since the fall hoping to fit into it by spring, and I can!  I have never been in a 12.  The smallest size I wore even in high school was a 14.  I am down 149 pounds (from 325 to 176)."

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Suzanne reached her goal weight this week! "My Motivational Monday this week is making it to goal at Weight Watchers on Thursday. It took almost a year of hard work & sheer determination, but I'm finally in my healthy weight range. I've lost 21.8kg (48 pounds), over 27% of my starting weight, & gone from a size 16 to 10. More important to me though is what I've gained: health, fitness, & self confidence."

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Teggin powered through a long run in the cold: "I signed up for my first ever marathon and then had a really cold long run yesterday.  I wanted to email you a picture of myself with all of my cold weather running gear.  You probably run in weather this cold all the time, but it was a very tough ten miles for me."

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Blanca completed her first race on Saturday: "Saturday I "walked/ran" my very first race--1 mile fun run--and this picture was taken when I crossed the finish line. My daughter was waiting for me and you can see how proud she is of her mommy. She is my only girl and she loves running, but I have never been able to run with her because I was not in a good shape, now this is something that we are going to practice together and most of all, I want to set an example for her of what it is to stay committed to your dreams until you make them true" 

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Here is a small snippet of what was posted on Facebook for Motivational Monday:

  

You can read the whole Facebook post for more inspiration!

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Learning lessons the hard way

I learned a harsh lesson yesterday! Always calculate the nutritional info (or PointsPlus in my case) before eating a treat.

Noah has been begging me for months to make what we named "Sloppy Brownies". In the summer, amidst my marathon training and weight gain, the kids and I were inspired by Pinterest to make an insanely rich dessert. First we spread a layer of cookie dough in a 8x8 pan, then topped that with mini Reese's Cups, and then poured brownie batter over the whole thing and baked it. The result was a very rich, very messy brownie, and we called them Sloppy Brownies.

Noah hasn't stopped talking about them ever since. And the kids have all next week off of school, so I told him maybe we'd make them for a treat then. But yesterday, we had nothing going on, and he was begging, so we went to the store to get the ingredients.

Noah and I put the brownies together and threw them in the oven. When they were done, they looked really good, so I decided to have a small piece. It was extremely rich, and I didn't even want much more than that piece. I estimated it as 10 PP.

A few hours later, instead of making dinner like I'd planned, I had another small piece of the brownie mess. Again, I didn't eat a lot, but it was so rich--I almost immediately had a stomachache. I became extremely nauseous, and I thought for sure I was going to vomit. I laid on the floor for about 20 minutes, just feeling like crap.

I took this picture to remind myself in the future of how crappy I felt, so that I wouldn't make the mistake again--so flattering, right?!


I wanted nothing to do with food after that--I didn't eat dinner, or even have my nightly wine. I just felt sick. Before bed, I decided to see how accurate I was with estimating the PointsPlus. I laid out the ingredients, added up all the nutrition info, divided by the number of servings and all that to calculate how many PP I had actually eaten.

34.

I spent 34 goddamned PP on that crap!! No wonder I felt so sick! There was so much sugar and fat in that dessert, and I've been eating really well for months, that my body just couldn't take it.

So I wasted all of the rest of my weekly PP, and all but 4 of my activity PP for the week. (I was going to count it as 18 until I actually calculated it--I honestly didn't eat much!) I was bummed, but really glad I calculated the PP to see the accuracy. I'll never eat those things again! Totally not worth it, even if I hadn't felt sick from them. Lesson learned.

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This morning was freezing cold outside. When I saw this...

...I decided that I was doing the treadmill. Feels like 1 degree? No thank you. But I started thinking, "It would be pretty cool to say I ran in it!" Hahaha, like anyone but ME really cares?!

I dressed warm--a turtleneck tech shirt underneath a fleece, with an actual hat (not just a headband), and MITTENS. I've never worn mittens on a run! But my fingers have been freezing lately when I run, so I opted for the mittens over gloves.

For the first mile, I thought maybe I made a mistake. My body felt great, but my face was so cold from the wind--I was actually worried about getting frostbite! But I knew once I turned around and had a tailwind, I'd be much better. The sun came out then, and that helped with my face a lot. It was still cold, but having the mittens helped tremendously. My hands were actually sweaty, which I normally can't stand, but I would choose that over frostbite any day. From my shadow, it looked like I was running with boxing gloves on, because my mittens were so huge.

I turned around two mile in, and headed home. The way home was much better than the way out. I finished in a little over 34 minutes and felt great!

Today I've been eating really well to make up for yesterday's disaster to my digestive system. I had bran flakes with blueberries and almond milk for breakfast, and leftover cabbage casserole for lunch. Not sure what I'm making for dinner, but I'm going to keep it light.

I'm a little annoyed with the ActiveLink already, because I discovered that I can't manually add my activity PointsPlus for the next seven days while it's "assessing" my activity. So even though I ran this morning, there is no way to add those PP earned to my total. I'm just going to add them to my paper journal, because there is no way that I'm not going to count them. I rely on the PP that I earn to get me through each week! Where I normally enter my activity on the website, is this message:

Weight Watchers really ought to give the option to add PP manually, even after the assessment phase is over--because what if I forget to wear the ActiveLink one day, and I run 10 miles?

I wish I could see my assessment so far, but it won't show me anything until after the assessment period is over.

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Anxiety run

I went for an unscheduled run today--very unusual! I was actually in the mood to run, even though it was freezing outside, so I just went for a quick 3-miler. I was feeling really anxious this morning. When I started running, I could feel my heart rate jump up, like it does for about the first mile of a race, because of the anxiety.

I tried to just calm myself down while I was running, and after a couple of miles, it was better. But I hate that feeling while it lasts! I pushed myself pretty hard the last mile, and finished it under eight minutes--a great run. And thankfully, it cured my anxiety.

I'm glad I got that done when I did, because it started snowing really hard after that...

We had absolutely zero snow when I ran, and this happened in minutes! It was crazy.

This afternoon, I got a package in the mail from a woman named Sara, a reader of my blog. She had written me and asked if I would like her Active Link (a Weight Watchers product similar to a FitBit), because she didn't want it. That was super generous of her, and I said sure! I'd love to try it out.

Does that box not look like a pregnancy test box?!

My sister has one and loves it, and I've heard good things about them. I've also heard that they give you less activity PointsPlus than the calculator would give, so I'm really curious about that. On today's run, for example, I earned 4 PointsPlus. However, once I am able to use the Active Link, that run may not earn so many PP.

First, I have to wear it for eight days so that it can come up with my "baseline" activity. I'm supposed to wear it at all times, and just go about my normal activities. After the eight days are up, then it will give me a goal to aim toward each day for activity.

The way it works is that you have to get in a certain amount of activity before your exercise will earn you PP. So if I run first thing in the morning, it might not show that I've earned anything--but then each step I take during the day will "count" toward my goal. This should be very interesting, because other than my running, I'm not a very active person. I (obviously) spend quite a bit of time on the computer. I'm hoping that using this Active Link will push me to get moving some more! I'll continue to write about it as I use it.

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Peanuts

Thank you all for the advice yesterday. I think I'm going to bring the situation up with my leader the next time I go to weigh in, and see what she says about it. I hope that I didn't come across as sounding like the receptionist was outright mean to me, because she wasn't--she just seems annoyed with me whenever I go in there.  I have no idea why she'd be annoyed with me, since I am very quiet when I go there! But after thinking about it all day yesterday, and talking to Jerry about it some more, I'm done letting it bother me.

I had a bad eating day yesterday. Still no binge, but I came really close again. I don't know what is with me lately! My Weight Watchers week just started on Wednesday, and in two days, I blew through 38 of my weekly PP. Yesterday, I kept picking at a can of peanuts, and I ended up eating 3/4 of a cup of them--that's 17 PP!

This morning, my weight was up a couple of pounds since my weigh-in on Wednesday even though I haven't technically gone off plan, so I'm going to be extra careful the rest of the week. I drank a lot of water today to hopefully flush out some of this retained water from all the sodium.

Today was my long run day. Since I've basically been running on a very informal schedule, the definition of "long run" lately has been 8+ miles. Last week, I did 13.1 at a great pace, so I figured I'd take it easy this week and just do 8 miles.

When I looked at my mileage for the month yesterday, I saw that I'd run less than 50 miles so far this month. I didn't state this goal out loud (or in writing), but at the beginning of January, I looked at the previous year's distances per month:

When I saw how close I was to 100 miles each month, I set a little goal for this year to try and run 100+ miles a month. In January, I came in at 107.2 miles. Since February is a short month, and I had less than 50 miles as of yesterday, I figured I'd better get a move on it, and do a little extra here and there.

Today was really cold outside. I should have dressed a little warmer than I did, but I survived. I was running right into the wind for the first half of the run, and it took my breath away at times. My face was freezing, and I tucked my fingers into the palm of my gloves to stay a little warmer. I thought about turning around at mile four, but since I really wanted to get in a little extra, I ran until I'd reached five miles before turning around, to get in an even 10.

I LOVE my Ragnar jacket! So cozy on my run today.

It was a relief to turn around and run with a tail wind, but I still felt like I was struggling. I was thinking maybe the fact that I haven't eaten so well the past couple of days probably had something to do with it. It was too cold to pull up my sleeve and look at my Garmin, so I didn't have a clue what my pace was the entire run. When I got back home, I saw that my pace wasn't terrible, but certainly not as good as it's been lately.

According to the WW app, I earned 13 PP. If I was to divide my calories by 80, like I'd been doing, I'd only get 10 PP. I'm going by what the app says this week, just to see what happens, so 13 it is :)

I've been itching to do another strength training challenge--remember when I did the Wii Active 30-Day Challenge? After that, I pretty much stopped strength training. After I did Pete's Boot Camp class, I tried doing his program for a little bit, but wasn't very disciplined. We have a Kinect for the Xbox now, so I think I may look into getting a game for that, something similar to the Wii Active. Any suggestions for games?

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WW meeting

I had a really bad Weight Watchers experience this morning. I actually left in tears. Remember how I said I was just going to start weighing in once a month, so I didn't have to listen to the commentary, "Well, at least you didn't gain!" or "You're up a little this week, Katie" or whatever while I'm on maintenance? Well, I weighed in last week, so according to WW, I don't have to weigh in again until March.

As a Lifetime Member, weighing in is only necessary once a month to keep your membership, but you can go to as many meetings as you like (assuming your weight is not more than two pounds above goal). So last week, I decided that I would just weigh in the first week of each month, but still attend my Thursday meetings.

Today, I walked in and said to the receptionist, "I already weighed in this month, but I'd like to come to the meeting. I haven't done this before--do you need my book, or my membership card, or anything?" She got the annoyed look on her face that I've gotten used to, and said, "Let me look at your book." So she looked at my weight record and saw that I was, in fact, under my goal weight and a free Lifetime Member. So she waved me toward the meeting, and off I went.

I wasn't feeling very good about the way she reacted, but I thought maybe I was just too sensitive and misread the whole thing, so I tried to forget about it. Then I noticed that she hadn't given me the little weekly pamphlet that they hand out when you weigh in. I decided to pick one up on the way out.

I stayed for the meeting, but the whole time, I was just feeling really uneasy. After the meeting was over, I walked out into the lobby area and there were two women at the desk--the receptionist who had checked my card, and a woman who always gives a rude impression (she's the one who I had issues with in the past, years ago). I'm not sure if she's like that with just me, or with everyone, but I think maybe it's just her personality? I don't know. Anyway...

I said, "Excuse me, could I get one of the weekly booklets? I didn't get one when I came in," and the rude-impression woman said, "Did you weigh in when you came in?" and I told her, "No, I weighed in last week, so I just came for the meeting today. But I showed my book to her (meaning the other woman)  and--"

As I was talking, she wouldn't even look at me, or let me finish my sentence. She just kept saying "Okay" over and over while I was trying to talk. Not in a, "Okay, I understand" kind of way, but a "Okay, now stop talking, I got it" kind of way. This is really hard to describe. I was stunned at the tone in her voice, and I didn't know what to say. I stood there for a minute, trying to make sense of it, but then I just thanked her for the book that she handed me, and then I left, tears burning my eyes.

When I got in the car, I called Jerry and started crying as I described what happened. I feel SO unwelcome there, and I don't know what I did to deserve it! All I want is to go to a weekly meeting for accountability, and to really get to know the other people in the meeting.

My leader is the only one there who actually makes me feel comfortable and welcome, out of the 3-4 women working there on Thursday mornings. I'm sure if I told my leader the problem, she'd probably tell me to just go have her weigh me in and then I wouldn't have to deal with anyone else. But I hate that this is a problem in the first place--if I feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, I'm sure the chances of others feeling that way are likely also.

I've realized that this is NOT the norm for WW centers. Most people I've talked to have never had a problem like this, and they love their centers and their leaders. So I keep wondering if I'm just being overly sensitive, or if this really is a problem; after today, I really do think that it's a problem.

A big problem I've noticed there is that nobody seems to know much about maintenance and Lifetime Membership. Members spend so much time, energy, dedication, and money getting to maintenance, and achieving that Lifetime status... but when we get there, it's like we're just forgotten. The meetings are aimed at people who are losing weight (which is totally understandable); but I think it would be awesome to have one or two meetings a month that are just for Lifetime Members, to discuss maintenance.

Another problem I've noticed is that everybody who works there seems to be on a different page for everything. It's very inconsistent when I weigh-in, for example. If I worked there, I would look at the book, see that I'm weighing a Lifetimer who is below goal, and I would congratulate them for maintaining rather than saying something like, "Well, at least you didn't gain." They all seem to think that I should be striving to lose more weight, and I'm not.

After today, I just don't have any desire to go to another meeting. I'll weigh-in once a month to keep my membership active and to keep my free e-tools; and when I go, I'll make sure it's my leader that weighs me, and no one else. I may tell her what happened today, but I don't know what good that will do. I don't feel like the meetings are necessary in my weight maintenance, so I'll be fine without them, but I was excited about them because I finally reached that Lifetime status! I've honestly found all the support I need from SparkPeople and my blog, so not attending meetings isn't that big of a deal.

Another option would be to go to a different WW center. It would be inconvenient, but I'm sure my experience would be better.

I want to make it clear that I'm not ranting about Weight Watchers in general. I really like their new program, and I'm sure that most centers are fantastic--I just feel very unwelcome at the center nearest to my house.

Anyway, I don't want to leave this post on a sour note! Today was obviously Valentine's Day, but Jerry and I never celebrate it, so it was just a normal day for us. He was off work, so we went to the kids' school to volunteer at their classroom parties.

Eli's Valentine's Day project

I can't believe all the junk food that they get! I could understand the candy, but Noah's classroom had a huge ice cream sundae bar, a billion cupcakes, cookies, and candy. Eli's class had pizza (this was after lunch), cookies, and candy. And that's what all of the holiday parties are like! I was totally tempted by the ice cream bar, but it's easy to turn down when kids have their sticky hands all over everything ;)

After school, we came home and spent some quality time with the kids. We played the board game Sorry, and then I read a few chapters of a book out loud to Eli. 

I had to call the court at 6:00 regarding jury duty. I've gotten lucky so far, in that I haven't had to go in. As of Monday, I've been "on call", which means I have to call every night after 6:00 to find out whether I'll have to go in the next day. I would much rather just have a confirmed date than to wonder each day, but so far, I haven't had to go in. I'm on call until a week from tomorrow.

I'm reeeally hoping that I don't have to go in next week, because my kids are off school for winter break. My mom is on a cruise, and Jerry will be working, so I have no idea what I will do about childcare if I have to go in.

I really need to plan some adventures to do with the kids next week, so they don't drive me crazy with their constant bickering over break. ;)

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Dessert tea

First thing this morning, I got on the scale for my Wednesday Weigh-in. After Monday's brush with bringing my weekly PointsPlus into the negative, I had a great day yesterday and finished the week right on target. The scale didn't really reflect my great day, though:

I was 132 today, which is up a pound from last week. But in all honesty, I'm not worried about it. I know that I did well with eating and exercise this week, so it's probably just a normal fluctuation. When I logged my weight into Weight Watchers, I looked over the last couple of months on maintenance (yesterday marked 2 months since I reached my goal weight of 133), and I'm really happy with how well I've been doing!

The bottom (12/12) is when I reached goal, and I've not once gone over my goal weight in two months. That's pretty damn good!

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For the past 36 hours or so, I've been drinking tons of new tea, thanks to Ellen. She and I talk about tea quite a bit, and we have the same taste preferences for the most part (we like black dessert teas). She wrote a post about David's Tea, and how great it was--after reading that, I just had to try it out.

I certainly didn't need any tea at the moment (I have a lifetime's worth in my cupboard right now), but after reading how great it was, I went on the website and bought a little five different flavors. It arrived yesterday, and I've been trying out all of them. Check out these unique flavors:

 The bottom picture is of three samples they sent. So I had eight new tea flavors to try! The first one I tried was the sample of Banana Dream Pie. It was FANTASTIC. The banana flavor wasn't "fake" tasting at all, and it tasted like a subtle banana cream pie. I tried the Red Velvet Cake next, since that was Ellen's favorite--and it was just as good!

Jerry and I had a cup of the Toasted Marshmallow last night, and I think that was my favorite so far. Today, I had Ceylon Star and Buttered Rum. I've really enjoyed all of them. The Movie Night one looks very interesting, and I'll probably try that tonight.

Anyway, if you're a tea person, you've got to check out this site. I want to try them ALL.

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Today was technically a rest day, but since I didn't run yesterday, and the weather was good today, I decided to run four miles this morning (instead of doing it tomorrow). First, I sat around for a little bit because the cats were being lap-hogs:

It's not uncommon for two of the cats to sit with me, but three is unheard of! Finally I got dressed and headed out to run.

My legs felt really tired today, and I was struggling to keep what has become a "normal" pace for my shorter runs (8:30/mi). I ran out two miles and then turned around, and the way back was a little better (tail wind versus the head wind I had going out). I still finished in good time, but it was a tough run today.

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And now, the moment you've all been waiting for... the winner of the Special K giveaway! Congratulations to:

Please e-mail me ASAP with your full name and mailing address at SlimKatie (at) runsforcookies (dot) com so I can pass it along and you can get your prize. Enjoy!!

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Running it off

Yesterday was day 155 of being binge-free, but it was extremely difficult. I'd been doing so well with having nut butters in the house and not overeating them, but the past few days have been extra hard. Then yesterday, well, I almost ruined my binge-free streak.

I had some fun with InstaCollage, so I made a storyline of what happened... ;)

When I first tried Trader Joe's Cocoa Almond Spread, it was love at first bite. I did great spreading a teaspoon on an English muffin here and there. Then yesterday, I was putting away dishes, when I impulsively grabbed a spoon, went to the pantry, and took a spoonful of it (one serving, 2 Tbsp--which is 6 PP).

Then I thought, "Well, I know I have some extra activity PP, so I'm going to have another." I grabbed another spoon, and took another serving. I planned to be done, but I impulsively took a third spoonful. When I put it all into my tracker, I saw that it totaled 17 PP for 3 servings, and that I'd actually gone OVER on my total PP for the week. I was so mad at myself for doing that!

I texted Andrea (from my Ragnar team) and basically asked her to talk me out of bingeing. Even though I'd only gone 5 PP over, in my mindset, it felt like 100. I had that brief moment of, "Well, I already screwed up, might as well keep eating!" Thankfully, Andrea talked me out of it, and told me to get rid of the almond spread. I knew throwing it away wouldn't work, so I put dish soap in it and then threw it away.

I was still feeling mad about having my PP be in the negative, though. At around 7:00 pm, I decided to earn my 5 activity PP by running on the treadmill. It could have waited until today, but I just wanted to be able to go to sleep last night NOT having my PP in the negative. So I hopped on the treadmill and ran until I'd earned 5 PP--enough to take me back to 0. It was a rough run, so I definitely learned a lesson (and as a bonus, I got to take a rest day today since I got the run done last night instead).

And because of my issue with the nut butters, I've decided to give up sweetened nut butters for Lent. I'm not Catholic, but I do like to challenge myself to give something up if it's a problem for me. I've been getting too "spoon happy" with the White Chocolate Wonderful peanut butter, the Biscoff Spread (not technically a "nut" butter), and the Nutella-like spreads, so I'm going to stick to unsweetened spreads at least until after Lent!

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Today, I got a very exciting package in the mail. A jacket that I ordered from Ragnar--I wanted one SO badly in Florida, but they were sold out by the time we got to the finish line :(  So when I got an e-mail saying that they were offering free shipping, I took advantage of it and ordered the jacket.

I'm so glad I did--It's SUPER cozy and perfect for running!

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Jessica told me about a recipe a couple of days ago, and I was very skeptical to try it, but I'm so glad I did. It is this recipe for Two-Ingredient Cookies. The two ingredients are just quick-cooking oats and bananas!

I'm not a huge banana fan (I like them, but I don't love them, and I really have to be in the mood for them). People always tell me to try making "banana ice cream", and I've tried it, but I don't care for it. Banana has this overpowering flavor, so when you use it as an ingredient, it makes everything taste like bananas.

I made the cookies into a single serving, and here is what I used:

3/4 of a medium banana (roughly 80 grams)
1/3 cup (33 grams) dry quick-cooking oats
1.5 tsp. mini chocolate chips
1.5 tsp. shredded coconut
1 packet of stevia (the recipe doesn't call for sweetener, so you could certainly leave it out, but I wanted my cookies to be as cookie-like as possible, so I threw it in).

I just mashed the banana, and added the rest of the ingredients, stirring until it came together. I formed 2 cookie shaped patties and put them on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray. I baked them for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees, and to my surprise, they turned out like actual cookies! I guess I expected them to be mushy and not hold together, but that wasn't the case at all.

Even though I'm not a huge banana-person, I really liked them! They definitely tasted very banana-y, but in a good way. Kind of like mini loaves of banana bread. Today, I tried them with Craisins instead of the chocolate chips, and I liked that even better! If you read the comments on the original recipe post, there are tons of ideas for mix-ins to change it up. (I didn't calculate the calories, because it totally varies by what you mix in to the cookies).

With coconut and Craisins... so good!

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If you haven't entered the Special K giveaway, make sure you check out yesterday's post. I'll be randomly picking a winner tomorrow. A quick update--I just learned that the gift card is going to be a $100 Visa gift card (not Wal-Mart card, as I wrote yesterday). Good luck!

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Motivational Monday #2 and a "special" giveaway

It's Motivational Monday! Once again, I was wowed by the accomplishments that you've all done over the past week--way to go!

Here is a small peek at what some of you are proud of this week:

 

Reader Angie completed a Mardi Gras Color Run, and said she had a blast doing it (with great photos to prove it!):

For more motivation, you can check out the full Facebook conversation here, and the Twitter conversation here.

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I have a very "special" giveaway today...

With the academy awards coming up on February 24, how fun would it be to have a viewing party with your girlfriends, courtesy of Special K?! I received this package:

That includes a couple of boxes of Special K Popcorn Chips, four beautiful beaded coasters, a bottle of OPI nail polish, some Oscar Predictions voting ballots, a red carpet (?!) and... a $100 Visa gift card to buy the party supplies! (After the party, I'll of course write my thoughts on the chips--but I'll spill the beans now and say that I've bought them more than a couple of times in the past, so it's not a secret that I like them).

Having an awards party sounded like so much fun--I'm super excited for it :) And one of you lucky readers will be able to host your very own party with a box of the same goodies! To enter a random drawing, just leave ONE comment on this post, telling me something you did in the past week that you are proud of. I will use Random.org to choose a winner on Wednesday, Feb. 13th at 7:00 pm EST. CONTEST HAS NOW ENDED. (Click here for official rules). I'll announce the winner on Feb. 13th.

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