Hey guys! Just wanted to update quickly so I didn’t leave you hanging. My computer is getting fixed right now, but I should have it back by monday! Just in time to share all my fabulous food at HOME over BREAK! So I will be back then- sorry for the hiatus, but it’s hard to blog without a computer!

1. My tummy went totally cray-cray on Tuesday and refused to get hungry for lunch. Finally around 3:30 I decided to break out a lean cuisine because anything else was too much work for something my stomach didn’t really want. At least I’m clearing my freezer out! I’ve had lean cuisines sitting in there for MONTHS.

2. For dinner, I had spaghetti squash. It was a mini squash (less than 1.5 pounds), so I killed it all myself I had half with salsa and black beans (yummm) and the other half with cinnamon for dessert. And then about 6 cups of tea while watching House. No joke.

3. I made it to the gym by 9 am yesterday! That’s pretty much unheard of for me. I snacked on some Annie’s bunnies on the way out the door. I’m doing the Couch to 5k program with one of my friends, and we have our FIRST 5k coming up a week from Saturday! I’ve never done one before and I’m SO excited! So yesterday’s workout was a sweaty 25 minutes on the treadmill. I bumped my speed up from my usual 6.5 to 7.0, which used to be my sprint when I first started out! It’s awesome when you have real evidence of how far you’ve come!

4. Breakie was oatmeal made with vanilla silk

5. Then I had to shower REALLLLY fast, because I had a hair appointment! I was excited, but now I look 12, so no picture.

6. And then my computer died. WIth a 4 page paper due today. YIKES!! It won’t charge. I am in the library right now, finishing my 4 pager. I should not be writing in my blog. But I wanted to tell you where I’ve been. And how screwed I am. I will be turning in my computer today, and hopefully I will have it back by Monday or Tuesday. I’ll try to steal they boy’s computer this weekend and come say hi. But my laptop is dunzo and I am very, very sad. But I will leave you with this delicious pumpkin pudding I ate yesterday:

ohmygoddd so good!

and now it’s POURING. gah.

I’ll try to check in on my blackberry over the weekend, and if I get this paper done in time you can bet I’ll be reading everyone’s blog before class! Sorry my computer is being so lame!

But I really like it when professors get sick!!

Look at me, blogging in the middle of the day! My first class today got cancelled, so I thought I’d stop in and say hi!

Breakfast this morning was a delicious bowl of pumpkin bulgur!

In the bowl:

1/3 cup bulgur

1/4 cup pumpkin

about 2 tbsp sf maple syrup

pumpkin pie spice!

It was SO good!

I took my time getting ready this morning (since I had so much of it!), but I managed to fit in an ab workout, too. That’s one less thing that i’ll have to do at the gym tonight. I did:

75 regular crunches

50 bicycle crunches (25 on each side)

20 toe drops (5 for each leg, then 10 with both legs)

10 jack-knives

30 twisties (15 on each side)

25 reverse crunches

Hopefully my abs will be sore later! I love that feeling.

And as I mentioned earlier, I was tagged by Jess. As I’m sure you all already know, the rules are:

-link the person that tagged ya and post the rules
-share seven random/weird facts about yourself
-tag seven random(/weird, haha kidding!) people at the end of your post and link them
-let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

So, 7 facts:

1. I can lick my elbow. Supposedly, this is anatomically impossible. Try it!

2. I save any good fortunes I get from fortune cookie and either tape them to my laptop or put them up on my bulletin board. Right now, I have one on my laptop that says “Don’t panic.” It comes in handy during crunch time

3. I always make a wish at 11:11

4. I get really competitive with myself about finding the lowest gas prices. Is that weird??

5. I have split my chin open three times and broken my collarbone twice. I’m a repeat offender

6. I love love love getting pedicures, but the only time I get them is when I’m at home with my mom.

7. I spent 2 months last year picking out a “signature scent.” I was in Sephora almost every day of winter break asking for samples. I finally settled on YSL’s Young Sexy Lovely, and I still love it a year later! I do still want to try the new Chanel No 5 and Tommy Hilfiger’s Dreaming, which I have heard amazing things about but never got to test out.

Haha that was kind of hard, since I already told you guys so much a few days ago! I’m not gonna tag anyone, since I think most people have already been tagged, but if you haven’t any you want to do it, go for it!!

Ok, I’m off to class! I will catch up on commenting tonight- sorry I’ve been such a slacker in that department! I promise I’ve been reading.

Yup…that’s me. A LAZY BUM. It’s 7 pm and I hate to admit that I never even made it outside today. Ah, the life of a college student…

Even though I didn’t get around to showering until late afternoon, I did manage to get a lot accomplished today. I watched a movie for one of my final papers, finished off a novel for another class, and sent my resume off to a couple places. I am totally freaked about finding a job once I graduate in May. Stupid economy.

I tried really hard to stick to three solid meals today, since waking up late (10 am) always throws off my eating schedule. But it worked! This is super-surprising for me, the constant grazer, but here’s what I had:

Breakfast: 3 egg whites, scrambled with 1/4 cup mozzarella cheese, plus some slices of turkey and salsa

The book next to my plate is Just Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. It’s Nick Flynn’s memoir, and it’s the novel I had to finish off today. I actually really liked it!

I ate my lunch in front of the tv while watching Across the Universe (also for class). I had a bowl of Quaker Weight Control Cinnamon oatmeal and a chobani with a thin layer of sf maple syrup on the top

That’s my messy living room

I ate this around 2, and by 6:30 I still wasn’t hungry, but my mouth was getting kind of bored so I decided to go ahead and make dinner. It was kind of a random hodgepodge of things: deli turkey slices rolled up with laughing cow, and pumpkin bulgur. I am a huge fan of pumpkin oatmeal, so I decided to try it in my bulgur to switch it up a little bit. No picture (I forgot), but it was DELICIOUS! Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing a LOT of repeats. I also had a yummy pear.

Today was my rest day, so I didn’t go to the gym, but last night I went and did this interval workout, replacing the 9.0s with 8.5s and the 10.0s with 9.0s, because my short legs do NOT move that fast. It was a great, quick workout and I left the gym feeling tired and sweaty.

Ok, I should probably get back to work…I’ve been procrastinating since I finished dinner. There will probably be a dessert-y snack later, which I’ll post tomorrow. AND jess tagged me, so look for that tomorrow, too!

Have a great night!

My food was nothing special today- it’s been go, go, go since 8 am, so most of it was consumed for convenience- so instead of showing you what I ate, I thought I’d share some stuff about me just for fun

My favorite book of all time is The Great Gatsby. I have read it cover to cover at LEAST ten times, and I just can’t get enough of it. I also love Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, Blonde, which is a fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe. It really gets in your head- if you haven’t read it, give it a try.

When I was in middle school, I was a huge *NSYNC fanatic. I was completely convinced JC was my soulmate . I’ve toned it down since then- but Bye, Bye, Bye and Tearin’ Up My Heart are on a few of my workout mixes!

I have recently fallen in love with running. I played tennis and ice hockey and figure skated in high school, so running was never a must- at least not distance running. But I started the couch to 5K plan this semester, and I haven’t looked back. I’m running my first race (a 5k) on November 22, and I can’t wait. There is nothing like the high you get after finishing a good run. I love it.

Occasionally, I eat salsa straight from the jar with a spoon. My roommates make fun of me for it.

I’ve been calling myself 5′3″ since middle school, but I recently found out that I’m actually 5′3.5″. Does that mean I can start calling myself 5′4″??

I have 3 favorite freckles: one on my stomach, one on my toe, and one right above my lip I’ve got plenty of freckles (I’m very Irish), but for some reason I like to play favorites.

I look forward to House every week. I also adore Law and Order: SVU marathons.

and of course, what food blog would be complete with a list of my…

Favorite Foods:

(in no particular order)

1. carrot cake: I think I like it because it’s my dad’s favorite cake, so we used to have it for his birthday every year. We haven’t done that in a while, but maybe I’ll make some this year!

2. guacamole: it used to be “that green stuff,” but then I caved and tried some at Chipotle my senior year of high school- and I’ve been hooked ever since.

3. my mom’s banana or zucchini bread. You should smell loaves of either of these coming out of the oven. mmmm. For my 21st birthday she frosted her zucchini bread with a light meringue-y frosting and called it my cake. It was DELISH.

4. frozen mango with a drizzle of maple syrup. I love how the frozen fruit makes the syrup crystalize and harden. Yum.

5. pumpkin pie. SO GLAD it’s almost Thanksgiving. I’m always in charge of making the pumpkin pie Actually, I just love anything pumpkin flavored or pumpkin scented. It makes me think of fall.

6. fresh watermelon in the summer!

Just a random sampling of things I like! And now it’s THE WEEKEND!!! What are your weekend plans?

Hello ladies! (and gents?) Thursday is over! I am SO glad it’s almost the weekend- anybody with me?

I apologize in advance for how boring/repetitive today’s food is. I haven’t done a good grocery shop in about 3 weeks, so this is pretty much everything in my fridge (I picked up bread and lunch meat on Tuesday just to get me through the rest of the week, but otherwise I’m workin with the pantry). The GOOD NEWS is that I’m shopping tomorrow! I’m on a little bit of a budget this month (gotta save up for the holidays-lotsa people to get presents for), but hopefully I’ll come home with something exciting.

Breakfast was an egg white sammie on an Arnold’s sandwich thin with laughing cow, and a chobani with a spoonful of pumpkin butter. I would like to point two things out here:

1) I LOVE THESE SANDWICH THINS!!! cheaper than english muffins, sturdier than bread, a HUGE spreadable surface, and DELISH. huge, huge fan.

2) my breakfast had 37 g of protein. HOLY SMOKES. I am LOVIN that greek yogurt- and SO GLAD I snagged some Chobanis from home

Then it was off to class! (I sound so excited…I wasn’t actually that excited this morning. I promise). My protein-filled breakfast kept me full for almost 4 hours, but I brought these snacks to hold me over just in case. I ended up having both in between my 2nd and 3rd classes.

love the name of the bar. TJ, you are a funny guy.

I met up with some friends to chit chat this afternoon- the plan was coffee, but we just ended up talking, so I grabbed a Pria bar at the gym- my stomach was growling, and I don’t run well on an empty stomach!!

After my fabulous, sweaty, tiring run, I ran some errands and then came home for dinner. Turkey sandwich with laughing cow and mustard, and brussel sprouts on the side.

And then my sweet tooth came a-callin. I had some vanilla yogurt with frozen berries…and I was craving PB, so I added that on a spoon. Weird? Maybe. But v. yummy!

That ALMOST did the trick, but not quite, so I smeared a little more pumpkin butter and cream cheese on half a sandwich thin and THEN  I was satisfied.

Tonight, I’m going out for drinks with a couple of my friends, and then calling it a night. I love that I am past the stage of only considering it a successful night if I get smashed. Sure, that’s fun occasionally, but I love going out, sipping a beer, and just chatting. Plus, I have some stuff to do early tomorrow morning, so I know I will regret it if I am out all night!

See you tomorrow!

Yay blogging! I’m so glad to be back at it! I think I just needed a little time off to sort out my thoughts about my recovery and where I am and where I want to be. I’ve made a lot of progress recently and I’m ready to share it with everybody else!

Now onto the food:

For breakfast, I had a vanilla chobani (which I bought at home yesterday and brought back with me! YAY) and a bowl of oatmeal (instant maple & brown sugar…quick and easy). I ate these in front of the TV, watching election stuff. YAY OBAMA! I’m so excited for the next 4 years.

I forgot to take a picture of my oatmeal till I was more than halfway through it. Oops. I guess that’s what a hiatus will do to you!

Since breakfast was at 10:30, I brought this bad boy to snack on in case I got hungry during class. It’s a Fiber One Fulfill bar- a lot like the chewy bars, but with 7 g of protein. And more of a “nutrition” bar instead of a chewy snack bar, I guess.

WOW. This was SO GOOD. It was like eating a snickers bar but without the full chocolate coating on the top. It looked like this when I unwrapped it:

Friggin’ amazing. I highly recommend you try this out.

After class and before the gym, I had protein shake and another chobani (unpictured because I forgot) and an unpictured grilled chicken sandwich with a side of fresh fruit for dinner. It wasn’t anything special taste-wise, but I went out to eat with a good friend, so the company made up for the mediocre food.

Since being home, I’ve had the weirdest snacks. A cup of frozen fruit, a cup of hot chocolate, and steamed brussel sprouts. SO random, but really good too!

Well, just a little more homework and then I’m going to call it an early night. I’m exhausted! See you all tomorrow!

Hi guys!

I kind of disappeared on you for a while there, huh? Well, I’m happy to report that I am back AND that I am THREE WEEKS binge and purge FREE. This is a pretty big deal: until now, I hadn’t gone more than 20 days without a binge or purge since the bulimia started in January 07. So there’s good news on that front.

I don’t have much time to write since there are supposedly 3 hour lines at the polls here in DC and I want to get my vote in. I originally planned to be up at 5 to get in line at 6, but my car broke down and I had to take it to the shop . They called back a few hours later to tell me it’s going to cost just short of $1000 to fix and it won’t be done until late this afternoon. So my mom is on her way home from work and we are going to go vote together (and get free Starbucks after!), and then when my car is done, I’ll head back to school. I guess this is what I get for not registering for an absentee ballot.

But I wanted to leave you with a little something. In high school, I took a Writing Seminar, and I just discovered one of my essays on my mom’s laptop. I wrote about the Dairy Queen I went to every summer at the beach. I want to share it with all of you because I think this essay was written by a girl with a healthy relationship with food. This is the kind of mentality I am trying to get back to:

(also, please keep in mind this essay is 4 years old- so it’s not a fantastic writing sample!)

Dairy Queen, Milepost 6.5, Highway 158, Outer Banks NC

The Dairy Queen sign is visible for what seems like miles down the main highway—big, red, and glowing with white letters. Beneath it, an advertisement board displays prices for chicken fingers and sodas, but who gets that anyway? Dairy Queen always has been and always will be a place for desserts.

It’s my 17^th birthday and I’m sitting in the backseat of my dad’s Ford Taurus, squished between my brother and my boyfriend, and as we turn off the road I can see the line of people already reaching out to the benches by the parking lot.

I nudge Sam. “Teehee, DQ!” I whisper, acting like I’m 7. He rolls his eyes, probably embarrassed that his older sister could be such a dork, and gives me one of his I-don’t-know-you-but-I’m-going-to-humor-you smiles.

Dad finds a space by the round picnic tables, and we all spill out of the car, racing for the end of the line. I perch myself on the cobblestone ledge there and try to decide on my order. Up until I was 8, hot fudge sundaes were always my choice. But the summer I turned 9 I discovered a new love—Blizzards. These soft serve-and-candy mix-in concoctions were so incredible that I often forced myself to only eat some and leave the rest in the freezer, ensuring myself the same treat 2 (or 3, if I was lucky) nights in a row.

As we wait impatiently to reach the front of the line, I decide on Mississippi Mudslide, chocolate ice cream with bits of brownies and chocolate chunks mixed in. Sam chooses Strawberry Cheese-Quake, my sister Jo picks Oreo (as always), and Kevin gets a Peanut Extreme Sundae, or something along those lines. My dad, a vegan, just laughs and says he really doesn’t miss eating DQ that much—we all know he must be lying.

The line, which is moving ever so slowly, is a mixture of everything the Outer Banks is about. There are the year-round residents—the girls in the cut-off jean shorts with tans darker than the roots of their sun-bleached hair who discuss how much they would looooove it if Tommy’s locker was within 5 feet of theirs and how they ran into Frank in Food Lion and OMG he cut his hair! There are the church groups from West Virginia with matching red shirts, the retired men and women who spend their summers here to get away from it all, the North Carolinians from the mainland who are just hanging out at the nearest beach, and the people like us. We are part of the renter group—the families from DC, Maryland, Virginia—and hey, there’s a Michigan license plate—who come down for a week each summer, stay in someone’s house, soak up sand, salt, and sun, and then head home to dream about next year.

When I was little, the house we stayed in was a mere 2 blocks from the DQ, and on Wednesday night we would walk to get our ice cream. It was on this short walk, as I skipped along through the sand and grasses that bordered the gravelly roads holding my mom’s hand, that I fell in love with the beach every year. I was 6, 7, 8 years old, and somehow, the breezy, summery nights ingrained themselves in my memory, associated only with the beach. The wooden benches, the stones on the ground, the cheap, yellow lights, and the red, plastic spoons became what I needed to complete my vacation. Being at the beach and not going to Dairy Queen was just like missing the ocean.

We finally make it to the front of the line where Olga, a tall, blond, Norwegian girl, takes our order. For some reason, DQ (as well as other places like Food Lion and CVS) is staffed almost entirely by Scandinavians. It’s one of the things about the Outer Banks that has never made sense to me, but I just take my Blizzard and head for the picnic tables, too lazy to think of the reasons for Olga and friends to be serving everything from ice cream to scotch tape.

The wooden table is splintering a bit more than last year, but I settle down in my usual spot, avoiding the sticky soft serve spill to my left. The air smells like salt and is laced with cigarette smoke. My flip-flops are grazed by the ever-present sand stuck in-between the stones on the ground, and beneath my t-shirt and my bikini top I can feel my sunburn starting to sting. I’ll have to find the aloe when we get back to the house.

In the past year, a Dairy Queen has appeared at Montgomery Mall, right next to the Orange Julius. Every time I walk through the food court I find myself tempted by the pictures of the Blizzards, sundaes, and chocolate-dipped cones. And yet as enticing as these desserts are, I know that if I try one, it will ruin the magic of the Dairy Queen. To me, DQ is about more than sugar and syrup and brownie bits. It’s about no school and trashy summer romance novels and flip-flop tans and white nail polish. It’s about losing track of time, warm beach towels, scalding sand, and the smell of Water Babies sunblock. It ties together being a skinny 6 year old in a flowered two-piece and begging Mom for a triangle top bikini, a request she refused to honor until I was 15. It even goes back to acting out Boxcar Children stories on the deck and digging for sand crabs with my dad. I sigh, chewing through a particularly rich chunk of brownie. Some people eat this stuff for how good it is, but I eat it for the memories.

As we all pile back into the car, a mess of half-eaten ice cream and sweet, sticky smiles, I look back over my shoulder at the still-growing lines (we were on the early side tonight). Next year, they’ll all be back. Next year I’ll get out of the car and smell waves and Marlboro Lights, and maybe Tommy and Frank will be with those girls, and Olga and friends will still be struggling with English. And we’ll still be the renters, pink and sandy and relaxed. At the beach, nothing ever changes. I’ve learned to count on that.

happy election day!!!

I can’t thank you all enough for the kind comments you left on my last post. I still wasn’t feeling 100% when I put that post up, but everything you said to me made me feel so much better. I am so thankful to have such loving, supportive readers who will not think less of me when I try to tell the truth on my blog. I know that a lot of people think that food bloggers with eating disorders are not helping themselves or anyone else, so I want to thank all of you for not thinking poorly of me for admitting to this relapse of my disorder. I am trying very hard to work through it so that I can become a food blogger who has fully recovered from an eating disorder and is an example of a healthy attitude toward food and life. Thanks to you, I have now been binge free since Saturday morning. I am working on bringing back my healthy habits, and it’s so comforting to know that you all are behind me. Seriously. You have no idea how much this means to me.

I didn’t each much on Sunday (mostly because I was still full from Saturday), but since Monday I have returned to a mini-meal schedule, eating roughly every two hours. I often use this method to get back on track, since the promise of food in the near future is often enough to prevent a binge. Here is an example of how a mini-meal day might look:

10:00 – pumpkin oatmeal

12:00 – Kardea nutrition bar

2:00 – pear and yogurt

4:00 – kashi crackers with salsa

6:00 – hummus pita from Pita Pit, followed a small cup of soft serve

9:30 – hot chocolate and half a grilled cheese sandwich

That’s what I had today. No pictures, because for a few days, I’m just trying to eat without over-doing it. I’ll get back to pictures soon- hopefully tomorrow. Or maybe Thursday.

A quick heads up: Monday and Tuesday of next week is our “fall break.” I will be visiting my boyfriend starting Friday evening and will probably get back Wednesday morning. I am not bringing my computer with me, so I doubt I will have internet access, but my REAL food blogging (complete with pictures, etc) will resume next Wednesday. I apologize in advance for the mini-hiatus (I seem to be taking a lot of those), but I hope to come back fully refreshed and back to normal. Yay!

Also: I want to thank Rob at Kardea Nutrition for sending me Kardea bars to sample!! As a college student, I am a huge fan of bars- they are the perfect fuel to get me through long days of class, and super easy to snack on. On Thursday, I tried the Chai flavored bar, and today I tried the Cranberry Almond. The Chai bar smelled DELICOUS. A tall skim chai latte is my fall beverage of choice at Starbucks, and this bar smelled just like it!! The taste wasn’t very strong, but I did really enjoy the texture. I loved the chewy oats and the soft bar. The cranberry almond has been my favorite so far. You can definitely taste the almond- and you can smell it, too. So good! It reminds me of a detective story (about ducks?) that I read when I was little- the inspector catches the culprit because he works in a bakery and smells like almonds from the almond cakes he makes!! …sorry, that was kind of strange. But the bar was amazing and the cranberries and oats were super chewy. I loved it!! And it did a great job of getting me through my Film in the 1960s class. SO, I am definitely a fan of these bars! I also like that they don’t leave my mouth dry, like some Luna bars have been known to do to me. Yum. Again, a HUGE THANKS to Rob for sending me these great bars to try! Thanks, Rob!!!

And one last special thanks (again) to all you amazing readers. You gals really are “da bomb.” <3

First, I want to start with the good news.

The Good: Yesterday, while walking home from the library, I noticed that a Pita Pit just opened about two blocks from my apartment. I haven’t had a hummus pita from Pita Pit in about 2 years, and I can’t WAIT to try it out.

The Bad: During my run on Sunday night, the arch of my right foot started to hurt. I finished off the run, but decided to take a rest day on Monday to give my foot a break. Well, by Monday afternoon my foot felt fine, so I bought arch support inserts for my sneakers and decided to do a double workout on Tuesday: an easy two-mile run in the morning, followed by my usual Triple Training class in the afternoon. Just after I hit the one-mile mark on my Tuesday run, my foot started to hurt again, and by Triple Training, I realized I had no business trying to exercise on this foot. I didn’t want it to get worse!! Add that to a massive pulled muscle in my back that occurred on Wednesday night (no idea how that one happened…all of a sudden I just couldn’t move) and I haven’t been able to work out since Tuesday, and won’t be able to start again until next Wednesday. This girl is NOT a happy camper.

The Ugly Honest: This is my blog, and I realized that the only way that it is going to be at all therapeutic for me is if I tell the truth when I write in it. So, I will warn all of you: this is not going to be happy or upbeat or pretty, but it is going to be the truth, and I need to let it out.

I have not had a good week. You may have noticed that I’ve been missing for a few days- it’s mostly because I’ve been too ashamed to come back and post what happened. I was so down in the dumps about my foot and back that I lost all self-control on Wednesday night. I honestly can’t show you pictures of what I ate because I don’t remember all of it- that’s how bad it was. When I binge, my mind and body are in two different places. There is a switch that flips, and even though my brain is saying, you don’t want to eat this. It doesn’t even taste good and you’re not even the slightest bit hungry, my body won’t let me stop eating. Hand to mouth, hand to mouth. Until I am past the bursting point.

I no longer let myself purge after I binge, so I spent three days like this: eating until nausea, then lying uncomfortably on my bed, waiting for the feeling to pass. I haven’t had a relapse this bad in about three months. It’s like everything that has happened since then all piled up and came pouring out this weekend- and I took it out on my food. But I am sick of being like this. I refuse to lose another day to this eating disorder. So today, I am back on the bandwagon. And I am back to my blog. I am committing myself to getting better completely. This was a step back, but I’m ready to take a couple leaps forward.

I will be back soon- Rob at Kardea Nutrition was nice enough to send my some bars to sample, so I will be writing reviews soon!!