Friday, February 11, 2011

Getting there...

So I’m about a week and a half into my WW experiment and I’m coming around. At first I was all like, why do I have to pay $53 for 3 months to find out what I already know? Calories in – Calories out = Weight. But it’s working, that’s all I can say. The first week was kind of a bust. About 3-4 days in I was like, this is awesome! Then the weekend happened, and soon after, my first weigh-in day. I was back at 181, where I had started. I had a few choice words for WW at that point, and instantly regretted that $53 loss (that’s sweater quantity yarn there!) but I figured it was money already spent and it wouldn’t kill me to keep on. Well, I can tell you why the scale didn’t register a change. It was pulled pork sandwich for lunch Friday. It was Skyline for dinner Friday (though a small 3 way only has 7 points) It was beer not only Friday, but Saturday and Sunday night too. Indian food for lunch Saturday. Mexican for dinner Saturday. Pizza and chips and CRAP for dinner at a superbowl party (whoo hoo Packers!) Duh.
I have realized one thing though – I’m not going to make any difference by eating out and drinking tons of beer all weekend. Even if I starve myself all week if I just kill it on the weekend, what’s the point? The most important thing, I think, is the eating out. Yeah, a meal here and there isn’t going to kill me. But basically I ate out 6 meals over the weekend (and yes, I’m counting the 5th meal of Taco Bell Friday night). TOO MUCH! So yesterday I went to the grocery store to pick up some stuff for dinner tonight - actually, I’m making dinner for my mom for her birthday. I already plugged the food and drinks into my tracker and yeah, it’s like a days’ worth of points in one meal. Wine and cheesecake don’t help much with the points. But I knew that was going to happen and I planned accordingly – I had a lunch that was only 3 points, instead of heading to Skyline with the guys I went to target and stocked up on light soup, fruit packed in water, and 100 calorie packs of popcorn. According to my scale I’m down 3 pounds this week and I hope to hold on to at least 2 at the end of the weekend. My biggest problem is finding fast and easy low point meals. I don’t think ahead about lunch on the weekend and last night my plans changed so my fast and easy dinner was a take and bake pizza. Whoops. If anyone has any ideas let me know!
I did make this Barbacoa Pork last week and OH MY GOD it was good. It took a few days to make, first because I had to thaw the meat (4 pork roasts for $12 at Costco, score) and then marinate and then put it in the crock pot all day but wow, it was delicious. We had it in tacos with these Cuban Style Black Beans and YUM. The beans weren’t as good as the pork, but I might have failed in the prep. The recipe says to put all the stuff in a small food processor. Well, it was crammed and eventually, to get everything chopped, half of it came out like soup. I think if I make it again I’m going to use the full size food processor I have and also put the cilantro in the end. I think cooking cilantro kind of kills the flavor. I had a ton of pork left over, enough for another couple of meals and it went fast. I nuked it at work with a cup of ready rice and it was sooo delicious. This one is definitely getting made again. But yeah, 3 days of prep isn’t really quick and easy, and I can’t make a ton and keep it on hand because it will get eaten (by the roommates who seemingly hate every other leftover). I’m going to making a few of the recipes on this website, all I’ve found is winners so far and I love that there’s a crockpot section!
Anyway I’m going to go off topic for a bit. As some of you know, I work in a union machine shop in the quality department. Today I learned something new about unions that has been bothering me. The company has decided to dissolve a branch of their business and my location will be taking over. So we’ve been talking about reorganizing the shop and moving new machines and work cells in and hiring new people to deal with the new products we’ll be making. Well, in the next few weeks I’ll be heading to the old facility in MO to help with training new people and the other quality aspects of our new product lines. We’re planning on taking some assemblers so they can learn the process and help build up some “moving inventory” for when we won’t be manufacturing. Apparently, in a union shop, the jobs are divvied up by experience and seniority. So that means if you don’t like the job you have, and another becomes available that is inside your experience range, you can take it. The company cannot put someone else in that position with less seniority over you. Now experience, in this case, is a very general term. People have basically 3 different kinds of experience and that’s it – assembly, weld, or machining. The company does get to decide who is ready to obtain a new level of experience (such as an assembler moving into machining. Machining jobs require more skill and are paid higher) but say someone in assembly wants to do a different type of assembly. Well, it doesn’t really matter what the company wants, if they want that job and they have to most seniority all they have to do is file a grievance and they get it. Of course, you can’t just take a job that isn’t open, but we’ll be having a few jobs open up here in a few months and instead of us putting the new guys in there and leaving the guys who know what they’re doing where they are, we may have to train twice as many people. It just seems like, I don’t know, selfish. And like you wouldn’t have to work so hard. Still bothering me.

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