I love thursdays.

I love thursdays because it's almost friday and you can starting thinking about your weekend (without being depressed it doesn't start for 3 more days). Plus my favorite podcasts are all updated so I know work will fly by.

I'm just sort of in a good mood. Though I may be tricking myself into it. it's TOM and I'm also having a struggle with carb cravings lately - and giving in. So the carbs combined with TOM is giving me a gain on the scale. Though I'd like to say that some of that definately is muscular, because seriously folks, it's dumb how much more muscley I look since tuesday. Doesn't even make sense. But I'm hitting the gym again after work today for more of the same. Particularly upper back workout. I did rows on a cable machine and instantly my posture was better and it lasted until now. Plus I love seeing muscles in the upper back when a girl's wearing a dress, so that will be me. (much better than back fat huh?) Plus I've been fake tanning so I'm seeing the muscle definition more. yay!

I'm crazy with my fake tanning. I use a spray (neutragena I think) after I exfoliate in the shower, but I don't do a good exfoliating job usually so it's all nasty at first. Then I shower and exfoliate that off, so it's only very slightly darker, then I use a gradual tanning lotion for a week up to whatever event (in this case a wedding saturday), so that just gets me back to the darkness of the spray stuff, but it's more even and natural looking I think. But it's a ridiculous week long process for me.

So after the gym today, I've got a pedicure at 7:15! hooray! So it's gonna be a busy evening. Probably won 't get through all the exercises I did last time. I'll stick to mostly upper body, with probably just leg presses for lower body (since they sort of work everything anyway).

As I've mentioned the eating hasn't been awesome. Not terrible, starts good. Yesterday for supper I made my stir-fry chicken, but for dessert I ate 2 bananas with peanut butter and a handfull of dino-sours. Ugh. Then this morning I ate a bowl of kashi cereal with some multigrain cheerios mixed in. Then also ate a small bag of dry cheerios (3 handfuls) as soon as I got to work. Boo. It's supposed to be much more proteiny than that.

speaking of protein. I dare you guys to try the protein bar I had yesterday and say it's not awesome. it was a detour I think carmel flavoured protein bar. You can get them at walmart individually, I buy a box at Costco. It has been forever since I had a chocolate bar anyway, though I guess I'll admit that it's probably not as good as Reese's cups (my fav, I think, I don't really remember what they're all like, seriously!). However, there's no way you could think about losing weight if you ate a Mars bar every single day right? However, with a protein bar, you can! my SFL plan recommends a protein bar (granted they also sell a certain brand) as one of your snacks or meals. It's GOOD FOR YOU, and a chocolate bar. I stand by my opinion, why would you eat anything else and feel guilty about it.

Granted I'm also the person who can't taste a difference between brand name and no name products, so why would I spend more money.

Also, here's why eating more protein is good for you (in my likely misunderstood understanding):

3 kinds of things your body uses: carbs, fat and protein. Carbs and protein have the same calories/gram. fat has more, so you eat less fat and get more calories. so while you need some fats, the healthy ones, it's best to not eat too much. Carbs are used for energy, which is why gatorade is full of them. carbs will also be stored as fat cells in your body so you can use them for energy later (if you're over consuming). Protein is used to build muscle. without enough protein when lifting weights etc, you'll do the damage to the muscle, but not be able to build it back stronger. your body can turn protein into carbs and use it for energy if you don't have enough carbs, it can't turn carbs into protein. Also, just the energy required to digest protein is like twice as much as carbs. So like if you eat 100 calories of carbs, you'll burn say 20 calories just digesting it (I totally made all these numbers up ok), but if you eat 100 calories of protein, you burn 40 calories digesting it. I think that's called the termal effect of food or something.

Reasons you don't want to eat too much protein? I guess that it can be damaging to kidneys if you eat too much. But from what I understand that's like way too much, like super atkins, not just like an even split carbs and protein.

Anybody know if I'm wrong on any of that? suprise anybody?