My newest hobby is taking photos of the beautiful cloud formations from my balcony here in Tulsa, OK.
These were taken with my blackberry pearl phone… still working out the kinks on how to get the clearest shots!
Firstly, here is a pictures of a rainbow that I took sometime on Friday:
And this morning’s cloud formation as yet another thunderstorm was (or rather is at this very moment) rolling in:
Just a quick update… I’ve been very ill for the past few days.
It’s not diet-related, in case anyone was wondering.
In other news, I’m in the process of changing my daily schedule, which will help immensely with my eating plan and help me organize my life a bit better.
And to the person(s) who keep leaving rude comments, why do you bother? Do you not have anything better to do? Also, don’t think I don’t know who you are… 
Anyway, I’ll update more in a few days about how things are going! Happy Monday!
Well, meal 1 went fine today. As mentioned earlier, I had a pear, fiber one yogurt and 2 pieces of low cal bread.
It’s a good thing I had the healthy blend of fiber, protein and carbs that I did… it seemed to be a perfect balance. I ended up getting so busy that it was a full 8 hours before I got home in time to eat my second meal. And I didn’t have any blood sugar crashes.
I spent my afternoon/evening helping someone. Then I went to an AA meeting. So it was all time well spent. I avoided the 1000 fast-food demon temptations along my way home, thankfully, and had a healthy dinner, although a bit too late for my liking. (Midnight!)
Oh well, tomorrow is another day. I’ll try again! And this time I will have some foresight and bring some fruit and healthy portable snacks with me if I know I’ll be gone for several hours at a time, which happens a lot these days. I went and bought some peaches and bananas and Kashi bars tonight. I know I will be out and about a lot tomorrow afternoon, evening and night and I will plan accordingly.
In answer to the person who commented that I should have lean meats - like chicken or fish - for dinner instead of soup, well, I did that for far too long and I’m beyond sick and tired of it! I simply cannot stomach chicken for a while, at least not cooked in a healthy way. I need a healthy yet low-cal variety, and soup fits the bill nicely. Most cans (that I’ve chosen, at least) have around 200 calories, are lower in sodium and have a bit of veggies, meats and sometimes noodles. I need a variety.
Time for bed… I will update again in the next couple of days on how my new super-healthy eating plan is going.
So here is the promised post about my new eating plan!
This plan can be considered a diet, although I’m planning to adopt it permanently into my life. It’s decently healthy and consists of three meals a day with two snacks. I eat my first meal upon waking (which is difficult but I’m getting used to it), then eat each meal 2 or 3 hours apart from each other. The plan consists of a LOT of fiber and at least 2 fruits and 1 vegetable per day. For me, this is good, considering the fact that my normal diet consists of only an occasional fruit and even less often a vegetable.
I am eating every 2 or 3 hours for the simple fact that it will keep my blood sugars stable, which will also help with alcohol cravings which I do still get from time to time. The past couple of weeks - despite my best efforts - I have been back to my old unhealthy patterns of not eating anything much through the day, then at night - being so hungry from NOT eating all day - I way overeat. No wonder the scale has stopped moving.
Anyway, a typical breakfast is a pear, 2 pieces of toast, coffee and a Fiber One yogurt. This is what I had today for my first meal and it consists of a whopping 14 grams of fiber and only 320 calories! You really can’t beat that. My second meal of the day is a snack of 2% cottage cheese and an apple - more fiber and some protein thrown in for good measure, and about 180 calories.
My lunch consists of something like a sandwich made on 45-calorie bread, mustard, 2% cheese and slices of turkey, then some baby carrots and a Quaker popcorn mini delight snack (90 calories). The total calories for that comes to around 320 or so and has a veggie, protein, dairy, grain and a little snack.
My 2nd snack of the day will be something like an egg and another yogurt. The fiber one yogurts have 5 grams of fiber in them and come in a wide variety! I stocked up on several flavors. My dinner will be a can of some sort of low-sodium soup (minestrone, chicken noodle, etc) along with one breadstick and salad, or some other side snack.
All in all, it comes out to around 1400-1500 calories per day of nutritious, fiber-filled foods. Now that my life is sorting out a bit and is more stabilized, I can stick to a plan like this with little problem! I’ll keep you all updated on my progress…
I know I haven’t been updating here very often lately… life has just been getting in the way!
Anyway, I appreciate the people who have left me comments. I do however need to explain something to the people who think that I am obsessed with celebrity weight and that THAT is the reason for my alcoholism.
I started theskinnywebsite.com in Nov 2005 as an experiment, sort of like a joke. This was around the time Janet Jackson had gained a ton of weight and Nicole Richie & Lindsay Lohan were skeletons. I was at lunch with a couple of coworkers and grabbed a tabloid that had a picture of Janet Jackson on it. One of my coworkers said “No way, that isn’t Janet Jackson!!!” Anyway, I bought the tabloid and took it back to work with me. I realized that day that the only time I bought tabloids was when there was a celebrity weight or diet story in it. Otherwise, I could care less. I could care less which celebs were hooking up with who, who was in rehab, who was spotted doing this or that, etc. (This remains true to today except now I am curious about who is in rehab, for obvious reasons!) 
So anyway… around this time, I had been having success with my book site, chicklitbooks.com and had recently been quoted in both The Wall Street Journal and USA Today about it. But I was looking for a new site idea. I had briefly considered starting a diet site and bought the domain name theskinnywebsite.com for that very purpose (but this was a few months before that November). I got bored of the diet site before it was even 5% done.
So I figured… hey… there are no sites devoted to celebrity weight or diets. Why not start one for the heck of it, where I would make fun of the “scary skinnies” and talk about who had gained?
So I did… back in the beginning days, I used to write a lot more than I do in posts now. I would be a bit mean and a lot snarkier than I am now. I did the site completely anonymously for that very reason.
I never knew the site would grow in traffic and popularity to the extent that it did… I remember updating it for a while that November and December, did some advertising, then got involved with other things the following January. However, one day in mid-January 2006, I checked my stats and realized I was getting almost a thousand visitors per day! Wow! Even on some of my busiest days on chicklitbooks.com, I didn’t get that much traffic (except just a couple of times).
So I got a little excited that the idea had “taken off”. I decided to keep updating it. I changed it over to Wordpress into blog format. And it just took off… traffic grew in leaps just by word of mouth. I didn’t have to do any advertising after December 2005.
And as traffic grew, advertisers and profits grew. I toned down my posts. I became an expert and finding information I needed. Just this year I signed up with paparazzi companies to pay them to use their photos legally.
Nowadays, the site is my main source of income. I am very grateful for that. I’ll be honest though - some days, I could care less about celebrities and who is gaining and losing weight. It’s not something on my mind 24/7 unlike what some of you may think. Most days, I do the site and posts within a couple of hours and go about the rest of my day not thinking about it except to check comments and site functionality, etc.
So no, I do not spend very many hours a day thinking about celebrity diets and who is getting skinny, fat, etc. I am in NO WAY obsessed with it! It’s simply a hobby that got translated into a very popular website. These days I strive to keep it fun and light.
To the person who thinks I was being literal with my “hopelessly addicted” paragraph… sorry to disappoint you, but I was being facetious.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a person with a huge amount of interests. Celebrity diets and weight is only a small percentage of it. I think I do a great job at keeping my posts on theskinnywebsite.com light and amusing. So come on… don’t take it all so seriously!
Now about my alcoholism… it’s a very serious matter. I did not become an alcoholic because I wanted to look like a celebrity or was obsessed with dieting, etc. To imply such a thing is seriously preposterous! Both of my parents were hardcore alcoholics and died when I was in my teens. So I am an adult child of alcoholics. (ACOA) Unfortunately, it runs in my family.
Anyway, it’s time for bed… I will update again in the next couple of days about diet stuff. I just wanted to get all of this ridiculousness cleared up!
Just a quick post to say I’m doing fabulous! I’ve forced myself (and yes, some days it has been a literal forcing) to get back up to a 40+ minute workout on both my elliptical and weights.
Excitingly enough, I just zipped up and buttoned a pair of capris that did NOT button up just yesterday. They zipped up, but would not button or clasp no matter how hard I sucked in my stomach.
This is major progress, because I’m sitting here comfortably in front of my computer, wearing the capris now.
(Of course, some of the weight loss was due to TOM bloat going away, which tends to go away overnight).
Anyway…….
I’m really contented and at peace these days. My health and weight are on my mind but I am not obsessing over them. Right now, I feel it is the right thing to do to eat as healthily as possible and exercise regularly. So I am. I have no goal weight or size in mind though, I’d just like to exercise healthy principles in my life and see what results come of them. And I know results WILL come. My body has been working hard to heal the damage I did with alcohol for the past couple of years. It probably isn’t done yet.
I just want to be healthy, vibrant and have lots of energy… and yes, I don’t want to look bloated in pictures.
That’s definitely not too much to ask!
I hope you all have a great weekend! I will update again soon. And don’t forget to add me on Myspace if you already haven’t! http://myspace.com/justrian.
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