Photo Post of the Weekend to Distract You From the Fact that It's Monday

Christmas is in a week! ARE YOU READY? No pressure.  

Saturday night was our annual friends Christmas party with a white elephant gift exchange. Here I am, about to open up a talking Christmas tree that was missing a power cord. I ended up sticking my brother with it, because I stole the 6-pack of home-brewed beer he opened. Score! (Sorry, bro. Not. Even though it will probably take me a month to finish it.)

One of the more popular gifts was a cigar-box banjo (on the left, being played by Tiny, who you may have met before). This is not the only time I've gotten a picture of a banjo jam in this garage.

It was also a potluck party, and one of my offerings was pretzel-rolo turtles. So easy, and so yummy. Here, let me get all "Foodie Blogger" on you. Hope you can keep up.

You only need three ingredients: 

Layer of pretzels, one rolo on top of each, into a 300-degree oven for four minutes. 

This is an oven

Remove them and immediately press a pecan on top of each. 

Then let cool completely. I put them outside. 

Once cooled, try not to eat them all. 

Food and Weight Loss and Changing Your Perspective

Last December. I have no good "before and after" photos.
So here I am playing a banjo made from a cookie tin.
In a garage. Happy Holidays!

In my last post, Did I reach my 2011 goals?, I shared that I've lost 25 pounds this year (from 170 in February to 145 in December).

Thank you all for your positive comments on that post by the way! 

For the first couple months (after my weight peaked at 170), I was consciously trying to lose weight. I was running a lot more than I had been in the previous months (training for the Solider Field 10), and also counting calories with help from MyFitnessPal (web site and smartphone app). And I did start losing weight. After a month or so, I got a feel for how much I should be eating, and stopped counting calories. 

But then something else happened. My attitude toward food changed. I was putting all this work into running, and trying to improve my running and achieve my goals, I stopped thinking about dieting and started thinking about fueling properly (and I'm not just talking about electrolytes). (Obligatory link to a clip from Idiocracy.)

It's hard to pass up sweets when The Sailor loves
them as much as I do and makes them from scratch

I don't drink much pop (soda for you non-Chicagoans) anymore, and I've also started scaling back on alcohol. (I know, I know ... the horror.) But portion control has been my biggest struggle. (And sweets. Can't. Pass. Up.)

I'm starting to get a better handle on portion control. (But not so much on skipping the sweets.) I still have a long way to go. I'm definitely the "if I can see it I want to eat it" type of eater. But I need to stop eating like every meal is my last.

Overall though, I think when my attitude toward food stopped being one of diet/restriction and starting being "what will help my performance?" the weight started falling off. Or maybe my mileage went up and stayed up. Or both. (See! There is no secret! Calories in < Calories out!)

Unrelated: I want to buy a domain for my blog. Runforpie.com is taken, but runforpi.com isn't. However, I'm thinking about changing the name of my blog (for the ... third time). Possible domain names, in current order of preference (please don't steal any of my ideas ... borrowing variations of them is fine though): halfcrazyginger.com, halfcrazyrunner.com, pastyrunner.com (that's pasty as in pale, not pastry, although based on the above, that would be appropriate), fauxrunner.com. Thoughts? I guess it's my blog so I'll go with what I think fits me the best, but I'm curious for other people's initial reactions. I do work in public relations & marketing after all. Gotta gauge audience perception.