Hmmm...A new career path?

Watch out Speilberg! Here comes Stacy Cain! Ha! Anyway, Mike and Steve went on a fishing trip this past weekend and I (nervously) let Steve take our new video camera with them. He took a few minutes of video so I used the software that came with the camera to patch it all together and put a title and some credits. Hope you enjoy it!

WARNING! Fish WERE harmed in the making of this video! However, they were only yummy fish.

Not Too Shabby!

Here is something that makes me feel pretty good. This is my weight loss graph and stats from Evenhealth.com.

This is a really cool website. It has lots of features that I don't take the time to use, but I do track my weight in it. I also do my ticker (that cow on the measuring tape at the top of the page) on this site. It actually even automatically updates my ticker when I enter a new weight which is a real time saver.

On the graph here, you can actually totally ignore all of the up and down before February. I think it just needs to fill in the graph, so it draws in random peaks and valleys.

One of the other cool things is the average weight loss on the bottom right. When I have a "no loss" week or something like that, I just look at my graph and my average weight loss and I feel pretty darn good about myself.

The Tuna Diatribe

Okay....Ladies and Gentlemen....I present for your inspection the source of my current confusion. This picture is of two seemingly identical cans of Bumble Bee Tuna. They are both 6 oz. of Solid White Albacore packed in water. However, my confusion arose when I rolled them over to check their fat and calories so that I could calculate points.

First, check out the serving size. I know it might be hard to read, but I assure you that they both claim that 1/4 cup or 2oz. drained is a serving. Now check out the number of servings. HUH?! One can says that it has 2 servings and the other says 2.5 servings. How does one can have a half-serving more than the other??

Now, I should stop here and tell you that, either way, both of these cans calculated out to 3 points for the can. This, however, still confused the pants off of me because I swore up and down that I had been eating tuna that the whole can was 2 points. Steve said I must have calculated wrong and so we bought these. However, when I got home and looked at the one's we had on hand, here is what I found. We had two cans that were also White Albacore Tuna from two other manufacturers. The Chicken of the Sea was 5oz and the StarKist was 4.5 oz.

GUESS which can calculates out to 2 points for the can???? The 5 oz Chicken of the Sea!

The two new tunas also have the claimed 1/4 cup, 2oz drained serving size. However, despite their size difference (and the fact that they are both at least one ounce lighter than the Bumble Bee tuna) they BOTH claim to have 2 servings. Even more confusing, despite the fact that they should be exactly the same type of fish, one purports to have 50 calories per serving and one supposedly has 60. If you remember, our Bumble Bee has 70.

I guess what really frustrates me is that I consider myself to be an intelligent and reasonable person, but I wanted to forcibly remove my hair after trying to figure out why type of physics manipulations the tuna companies must be performing on their fish when they pack it!

I wouldn't be surprised if you could easily find people who didn't know what a Tuna was (other than something in a can) so how can people make an informed decision when the information is so clearly skewed?

Okay, I got it out of my system....I feel better now. I'm gonna go pet my dog while my blood pressure evens out....

I'm Baaaack!

Sorry for my absence from the Blog-0-sphere. I've been suffering from laptop withdrawal. They don't let me keep my school issued laptop during the summer and I didn't realize how COMPLETELY spoiled I was to that thing! I've barely used a computer since May! Anyway, I am now down a total of 41.6 lbs! Yeah! I actually found a picture of me taken 4 days after I started WW in February and the difference is more than I realized(I'll have to remember to post it later with a current pic for comparison.). My current goal is to lose 11.5 lbs by the cruise. If I don't quite make it it won't be the end of the world, but it would feel good to be under 200 when I plan on wearing a bathing suit much of the time!

Hopefully I'll get over my laptop issues and blog a little more regularly! See you next week!

They like me....they REALLY like me!

At least it felt like the scale was showing preference this week. I really didn't feel like I had done a whole lot right because we had eaten out several times and one night I even had fish and chips. However, it appears that my steadfast motto to stay in my points was able to overcome even the artery clogging powers of a plate of fish and chips! I still want to do better this week. I like weeks where I lose 3 and 4 pounds much better than weeks like this one where I lose 1.2 lbs. I know I need to be happy as long as everything is still going down, but what is the point of gaining my husband's competitive nature if I can't use it to my advantage?!

Oh, a funny thing happened at work today. A co-worker pulled me aside and said that as my friend she needed to tell me something. I was worried that I had made some major faux-pas, but what she told me was something else entirely. She said, "Cain, you've lost too much weight. Can you please buy new pants because you don't have a butt in those anymore!" I couldn't quit laughing because I thought that was an awesome reason to be told to buy new clothes!

How is birthday cake "traditional"?

Okay, I managed to make it through my birthday week without any cake and it left me wondering....at what point did birthday cake become a "tradition"? Why would eggs, butter, sugar, and flour be a necessary part of aging another year? Is it just carry over from our desire to eat anything with disgusting amounts of sugar as children? If that's the case then how do you explain the "tradition" of eating until buttons are flying off and whacking Grandma in the forehead at Thanksgiving? I know I'm as guilty as anyone of these tradition imposters (Just TRY to tell me not to make Sweet Potato Pudding for Thanksgiving!), but the more I contemplate them from a logical standpoint, the less sense they make. My birthday was no less wonderful when we had "Strawberry Delight" (a low-point cake alternative my MIL found) instead of a giant high calorie confection. I think, that if I'm to be successful in my "bovine" weight loss journey, then I'm going to have to challenge my preconceptions. Will Christmas be a tragedy if I don't leave Mom's house bursting at the seams? Of Course Not! Will my brother disown me out if I don't have a heaping spoonful or two of his mashed potatos at Thanksgiving? Well........maybe....... :) Actually, he'll probably like me more because there will be more left for him and everyone else!

Happy Birthday to ME!

It's my party and I can say no to cake if I want to! Actually, fortunately, I didn't even have to turn any cake down. I had previously agreed with Sally that cake wouldn't work this year so she make a "Stawberry Delight" that was quite yummy.

I had a very nice birthday this year because I refused to mess it up by going into work. I woke up, went to the gym, showered, went to lunch with my Mom, went and got a mani/pedi with Mom, then sat on the couch until the husband came home. Then my in-laws came over and took us out to dinner and gave me an AWESOME new digital camera and all the goodies to go with it. My parents had already given me my birthday present early because we were afraid Catelyn (my still-gestating neice) might make an early appearance. They gave me a fancy food scale that I'd been wanting, some nice cookie cutters, and an orange peeler (I'm really tired of breaking my nails peeling oranges).

All in all it was a lovely day of slacking off and to top it off I was 1.6 pounds lighter on Monday!

Today, my a few of my classes sang happy birthday to me and a couple of my kids gave me presents. They really are sweeties most of the time!