Jillian Michaels, you are so butch.

She is butch, but I want to be her. I hope she never reads my blog because she could totally kick my ass up and down the street and then do a few suicide runs afterwards. I always hated suicide runs so much. They are generally performed during sport practices. You start at one end of a basketball/volleyball court, run to the first line and back, run to mid-court and back, run to the end and back, with no breaks in between. I think it was the stop and go part that I hated. When you're running and you build up momentum, only to have to stop and go the opposite direction...maddening.

I bought Jillian's book entitled, "Making the Cut" a few weeks ago. It's an interesting read so far. She emphasizes that when you work out, you have to really work out. Weightlifting must be slow and concentrated, and cardio must be fast with high resistance. She explains that the theory, "Working out a slow pace burns more calories," is a long outdated myth, and the harder to push and work yourself, the quicker you will lose weight. Well, duh. But it is interesting. She breaks down how calories are lost, what foods make you retain water weight, what foods make you look bloated, how alcohol effects your body and why it makes you look 'puffy' and why you gain from it, etc...basically a book for women to answer all those nagging questions. It's given me insight on lots of areas that I've often wondered.

One thing that bothers me about her book though is the diet plan she puts you on. There are 3 different diet plans depending on your metabolism. I am a balanced oxidizer, meaning that I have medium metabolism. She even supplies you with a grocery list...that is 3 pages long. Yes, true story, 3 pages long, possibly 4, I'm not sure because it's not in front of me. So I'm glad I only spent $4.60 on this book because I was very put off by this. (By the way, this book is normally $22.00 dollars in stores, but due to some Bing.com magic, I was able to buy a used one from some online book company that I assure you I will never find again. Since I was a first time buyer, I got free shipping, just to clarify why her book was so cheap. You won't find it anywhere else for a price like that, I just got lucky.)

The grocery lists are broken down into fine categories. Things such as beans, fruits, veggies, nuts, meats, seafood, etc. Really though Jillian? This is a $400.00 grocery list. Seriously. The seafood group aren't things like cans of tuna, but swordfish filets, Mahi Mahi, and Ursula from the Little Mermaid?...Things that are virtually impossible to find at normal grocery stores. I cannot travel thousands of miles under the sea to Atlantica or wherever that fatso lives to cut pieces of off her mystical cartoon tentacles' to follow my diet plan correctly. Come on Jillian. You know that would be suicide.

Ok, that was obviously made up, but octopus and swordfish were on the menu. I wouldn't know the first thing about preparing a swordfish, and especially an octopus? Seriously, I don't understand why people eat things like that. Would it bother you to just get a little Long John's once in a while? Man.

So even though Jillian has STRONGLY advised you do not skip ANY part of her book, and must follow it word for word, I am disobeying her and skipping through the 30 day diet plan. I figure this will seriously defeat the purpose of the book, but I am sorry, I am not going to drain my bank account on groceries that for 1) I have no room for, 2) Will most likely be pick through by my boyfriend before I get a chance to use them, 3) I 100%, absolutely do not have room for. I believe after viewing this list, that it is designed for yuppie soccer moms that have nothing else to do but sit at home and eat pink wafers, and drink lattes, and cook these recipes in pink polka dotted dress with a Chihuahua named Pierre in the front pouch of their pink frilly apron. I'm buying groceries for two, I live in a small apartment and am making minimum wage. Don't forget the utility bills and putting gas in my SUV. Please Jillian, please tell me how you expect me to buy all these things?

But, I digress. Getting back to what I was saying, I am skipping that portion of the book and moving on to the work outs. I did not get to the work outs last night though because I was trying to watch Wheel of Fortune, and Ben was listening to music on his laptop louder than normal for some reason. The cat was also sitting in the rocker next to the couch, and was just close enough to me to attack my arm with his talons a few dozen times for no apparent reason, so I was a little distracted last night. I could not figure out who I wanted to slap first, so I picked the cat since he was closer.

For dinner last night I ended up making melted Reuben's. I hate to say it, but I cannot find anything nutritiously good about those, and I was reminded again why I don't like sour kraut. It's like eating sour soggy lettuce that's been sitting at the bottom of your fridge soaking in vinegar and pee for two years. But the sandwich itself was tasty, and I did use fat free Swiss cheese. Big whoop though. I had a side dish of a very tiny potato...you know...that last little potato that nobody wanted, so they keep pulling it out and going, 'nah' and just sticking it back into the cabinet? I'm guilty of that. I've pulled something out of the fridge or cabinet before and put it back in hopes that maybe the cabinet will be hungry one day and eat it, and nobody will have to worry about it anymore. Or that one drunk person that stumbles in and blindly dips that last lonely hot dog into some whipped cream one night unknowingly, and you're like, "Yes, someone finally ate that last hot dog...God, that thing has been in there for like 3 months, I thought it would never go away." The mystery of why some people don't throw things away has been boggling scientists for centuries (not really I just made that up). They don't want to waste food, so they leave it sit for years. "Maybe next time Uncle Beatrice and Big Pat come over they will eat those rock hard cookies that have been haunting my cookie jar since October '05, they like cookies..." I kind of hope not though because you know where they'd go after they ate those cookies...ON MY ELLIPTACLE. God I hate them! But yeah, this potato was seriously the size of a golf ball. But I loved it all the same, putting my usual skim milk cottage cheese and pepper on top.

Today, I had a packet of oatmeal for breakfast, and for lunch, a veggie burger again, no condiments on whole wheat with some garlic rice. White rice is frowned upon, but I just can't get over the whole wheat rice's texture, it kind of reminds me of eating...wool or something. It's so chewy and uncomfortable in my mouth, I just don't like it.

For dinner, Ben is ironically making Mahi Mahi.

Bye for now.