TasteSpotting

taAre you familiar with TasteSpotting (http://www.tastespotting.com)? It's a food porn / recipe meta-filter, and I daily get about 70 photos via my RSS reader that look like this, and I don't even like lemons, but they compel me to desire 1. cake 2. moving into my own studio following this lease cycle in order to practice baking, cooking, serving.

Lemon Syrup Cakes

Charcuterie of Death

I noticed this morning that a portmanteau for "cheese" and "meat" is "cheat".

Which is really, cosmically apt, given that since the start of high-protein, deficit eating, charcuteries are my "cheat" of choice - I know that they're calorically dense, and fat-laden, but there's less guilt and terror involved than cheating with Cake, Cookies, and Candies, because:

1. you must share a charcuterie, and adhere to Small Food sharing etiquette. Social shame prevents me from stuffing my face
2. it's fatty, but it's also protein-heavy!
3. it's pricey, especially at places like The Ten Bells (where I ate last night)
4. it feels* like less than a meal. 

The biggest con is that charcuteries are inevitably, must-edly accompanied by wine and bread. I limited it to a small glass of Petite Blanc last night,and tried to fill up on raw oysters before getting into chorizo picante, duck rillette, and a very creamy goat cheese.


*feelings . . . count!

The Weekend Roundup

The weekend roundup:
 -Bad food days on Friday / Saturday evenings, owing to a wonderful, tasty duo of dinner parties featuring French cooking, wine, cheese and cake. -2 deficit days, which sets me back to 15 days to go. Sad face.
-Good lift on Saturday; mini-lift on Sunday.
-Procured a dress! After much scrambling around Midtown - SoHo BarneyDale's, becoming panicked at unbecoming, uneconomical choices, I made an eleventh-hour drop into my favorite little vintage boutique. Miraculously, they pulled out a luscious one-off unlined satin, backless vintage slip dress that fit like a dream - and for $100! It needs a little bling, but it's succulently slinky and quite unique for a black, floor-length dress. It's deliciously clingy also - which is inspiration and threat to be extra-conscientious with regard to deficit this week.

The only problem is the sunburn pattern on my back.

Day 5!

And feeling pretty good! 7 days until my next weigh-in; 8 days until Black Tie Formal Event. I've been just CHUGGING water lately (I reckon on the order of 80+ ounces, daily), which hasn't been two hard, because they've turned on the A/C in the building, and the wretched cold keeps me sipping at warm water all day long. I'm aiming to hit the gym all 7 days this week (I'm four for four, so far), and to take one day off next week. To get my toes done. Or something.

I'd be really stoked if I could get down to sub 137 lbs by the end of next week, and down to 135 by mid-May, but, honestly, I'll be relieved when the weight loss phase is over and I can prioritize trying to FREAKING SQUAT MORE.

The Thighs Have It. . .

Cottage cheese is a fantastic diet snack, because it tastes so truly awful that I can't have more than a couple of spoonfuls before totally losing my appetite.

Onwards!

Yesterday was a good example of a good lift day, with no added weight. I did one slow set of 85 on the bench press, but I probably have at least 2 more lifts before feeling confident about moving on. My bench press is slowly but surely catching up to my LB squat. On that front, 100 is still a fairly challenging set. I had a very solid deadlift at 155; I'm allowing myself to graduate to 160 (huzzah!) next time.

Formals. Are. A reason. To attend graduate school. I'm so, so thrilled to have been invited to Yale's annual Pump & Slipper ball. It's in precisely 10 days, which coincides nicely with Project Deficit (3 successful days down; 15 to go). I popped into Max Azria last night to pre-screen some formal wear, and remembered (from high school prom, a decade since!) how devastatingly I fill out an evening gown.

I can't find a photo of the L'atelier gown online, but these two were both pretty solid affairs. Unfortunately, the black was a little boring, and they didn't carry the one-strap number in my size.

I'll be making a concerted effort to land a killer ball gown + accouterments this weekend, with bride-to-be N in tow.

Caving to Cravings.

I shan't!

I'm hungry!

I'm back on deficit, after eating my face off over the weekend. Beer, soba, ice cream, chocolate, a freaking Monte Cristo brunch plate from Prune. . .

This is day 2. 17 days (an arbitrary number) to go.

I meant to recall, also, that I finally finished all the chocolate protein, and replaced my office stash of ON and my home stash of Muscle Milk with Cookies 'N Cream, and Vanilla "Creme", respectively. Big thumbs up for CnC; haven't gotten around to sampling VC, but I just pulled back the safety seal and got a hefty whiff of nasty pasticky vanilla flavor.

Stalling

. . .used to really, really depress me, but I've realized that it works better for me not to be too aggressive with weight-add. Since weight-adds come in intervals of 5 pounds, and I'd really prefer for them to come in intervals of 2 or 3, I prefer to take a weight from extremely challenging, to quite confident before advancing. This usually takes 2-3 lifts (although I was stuck at 65 on the bench press for an inordinate amount of time); even if I haven't added weight, strength build is still evident between adds, and that's pretty amazing.

That all being said, I'm woefully stalled on the squat at 105 lbs, and it's not even a subtly confident 105. It's been a month.

Exhibitionism

I make a pointed exhibition of getting started on the bench-press. I can't lie flat in a ponytail; I get a sick little pleasure from letting down my now quite-long hair, shaking it loose in a patently suggestive manner, reclining, assuming an aggressively kittenish supine bridge, and then pumping some iron.

Mm-hm.

Some Catch-Up

So, I took myself to New Providence, The Bahamas for the turning of the (p)age, recreational swimwear, protein bars, and a couple of books in hand. I did virtually nothing; ate like eight different kinds of fresh fish, slept, swam, read, kinda half-assed some stretching, and felt like a partial babe because my abs are like 70% to looking pretty babesy.

JetBlue, though really sloppy out of their JFK hub, was fan-freaking-tastic in the islands, escorting me through security and onto a direct to Kennedy flight (I'd booked a long, cheap, layover-laden option) - getting me on the ground in NYC at 2PM EDT, which allowed me to spend my actual birthday in the sun, at the gym, and eating sushi in the East Village, as opposed to lounging at Logan International.**Reminds self to send a note of thanks to Tiffany's boss**

I hit 80 pounds on the benchlift on Wednesday, which I feel great about. Making minimal progress on the squat - still struggling to do a perfect 105. I'd like to be able to, at the end of my 16weekish (Labor Day Weekend), be at:

Benchpress: 100 lbs
HB Squat: 115 lbs
OHP - dumb-bell: 60 lbs
OHP - bar-bell: 65 lbs
Deadlift: 170 (Vanessa Hudgens can do it!)

I've been eating dessert the last couple of days. Treats courtesy of S and C, respectively. I weighed myself on Wednesday and that damage was only 1 pound, and some blotchy sunburn, so we're doin' okay.

Fail (Romper+Sushi)

I took yesterday off, and instead went romping for a romper (unsuccessfully - clothing item not intended for un-average-sized torsos), and then, craving some good Nipponese and sunshine, compromised a rather obstinate moral principle by dining at Sushi Samba to appease S's cocktail appetite. I reminded myself in 2004 never to eat here again - and forgot. And paid dearly. 

Not only was the experience quite monstrous (the server spilled a large quantity from another patron's plate onto my bag, staining the purse, my sunglasses case and gym tote with FISH JUICE), my Topo roll arrived with minimal salmon and maximum rice. To compensate for the former, they comped us a jumbo shrimp ceviche and a mochi ice cream dessert, which I ate, in full violation of all caloric deficit by-laws. Oh, also, the food was comically overpriced - my roll, her 2 slivers of sashimi and cocktail amounted to $65.

The only thing keeping me from Yelping the tarnation out of it was the very awesome head waiter, who knelt at my feet to scrubbed my possessions with baking soda water, put up good-naturedly with S's hassling (which was excessively abrasive last night), and resembled Eric from Entourage.