How to eat healthy...

My sweet husband found this great website that figures out all of the things I hate to figure out. "How many calories is this?" "What is Trans fat? " "How much protein do I need?" Spark People even tracks how many calories you burn when you do certain exercises. It is really cool.

In efforts to stay within our range of calories, John and I decided that we would stay in and cook our Tilapia fillets. A while back, John and I went to a French cooking class with my dad and we made Blackened Tilapia. It was fantastic. French, I am not sure, but very tasty.

When I went to visit my dad last August, I made it there with him and it was perfect. I was so excited to make it for John. It requires three ingredients: fish, Old Bay Seasoning, and PAM. The other best part... it takes 3 min on each side.

So to answer the title question of how to eat healthy....

BUY THE WRONG SEASONING! As you can see, the containers look very similar if one was in a hurry and did not know that there were TWO, and YES three kinds of seasoning. :-)

I prepared the recipe as planned, however, the original OLD BAY seasoning is to be used more like salt, not like a coating or a COMPLETE COVERAGE as you would the blackened seasoning.

I watched John put the first bite in his mouth and as every anxious newly married person would be, I asked how it was.

"Good, a little over seasoned, but the fish is cooked well," He said. I put the bite in my mouth and quickly spit it out.

HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE. It felt like I was eating the ocean salt. My amazing husband sweetly scraped off the seasoning and continued to eat. I tried and it was still infused in every bite, well at least the one other bite I ate...and spit out.

So there you go, how to eat healthy, ruin it and eat less.

He's Alive!!!

Well, of course he is. He did great in his surgery and he did great at the follow-up appointment. In fact, he did so great that I thought I would get sick and have him take care of me! I felt so bad but I have had this bad cough for a long time. I haven't had a good nights sleep in three nights. Today, while I planned on taking care of dad, he let me sleep for two hours. Oh well- good thing he was feeling "fine" or I would have really been in trouble.

I guess your parents will always take care of you.

Visiting my Dad

Tomorrow, my dad is having surgery on his nose. He has really bad allergies and they are basically going to clean him out. So here I am in Alabama. I thought it would be fun to take care of my dad for once. I get take him to the hospital and make sure he gets his pain pills, feed him chicken noodle soup and fluff his pillows. Just call me "Nurse Diana."


Tonight, he did everything for me. He cooked dinner, washed the dishes and even made my tea...mmm, I guess he was trying to show me exactly what I would be doing for the next two nights. :-) I might try to find him a little bell to ring.

Swim Coach

I am doing my second triathlon on Oct 5th. Tri For Sight is a sprint distance triathlon which includes an 800 meter swim, an 18 mile bike ride, and a 4 mile run.

I did this last year and I loved it. I was so surprised that I accomplished it. Previously I had never participated in anything that I had to actually "work" for. Anything I ever did with dance always came naturally but running, swimming, AND Biking.....definitely not in my area of expertise.

About 3 weeks ago my friend Kathryn called me up to see if we were going to do it "together" again. I say "together" but really she was so kind to go before me and make sure that the track was safe. Anyway, if it wasn't for her, I would have not done it this year. When I went to get my bike down off the rack, I had to take the race number off from last year... that is the last time I had ridden the bike!

So far the running is slowly coming back, the biking is not as easy as last year and the swimming has had to start all over. BUT- this year I signed up for something called Masters Swim. It is a swim group that meets with a coach and you do certain workouts and receive critiques from the Master Swimmer. The Master Swimming coach of my group happens to be Susan Bradley-Cox. If you click on the Tri link you will see that the event is named after her!

On Friday I went into my second practice and she was there. She looked at me and said, "Okay Diana, let me see you swim." She then proceeded to tell me with each lap every thing I was doing wrong. I swam for an hour non stop repeating drills over and over again. It was awesome and exhausting. I was so excited that I got a private lesson with her but it was completely unexpected.

This lady is amazing. I remember swimming at a local pool this summer and there was a woman wearing a 2 piece SPEEDO. She swam an hour and half longer than me with out stopping. She being Susan B Cox is 71 years old. This is a lady that I did not want to disappoint while she was coaching me.

She will be there tomorrow to see if I have improved on my stroke. I am nervous.

Our dog has been made neutral.

Diesel had the surgery last Wednesday. He did great. They said he was very well behaved. John and I were looking forward to a few calm days around the house. The vet said he would be kinda sluggish and tired so we should take it easy on him and keep him from heavy exercise......THANKS A LOT! Here is what our sweet out patient did with no exercise.

He was definitely aware that he had done something wrong because when we entered the room, he kept his head low and his eyes looking up at us. IT was really cute disappointing.

So he got a new bed and a long walk the next day. :-)

He also got a new toy.

Notice how he has gone from sweet boy puppy to neutral demon dog!