Weekly Weigh In and my favorite Oscar Dresses

Ugh. This week's weigh in is disappointing, and I'm blaming it partially on Suzanne and her sugar-filled Oscar's Red Carpet party. I really ate an obscene amount of hot fries, brown butter rice krispie treats and sour patch kids, and consequently, the scale came in at 150.0 lbs this morning. Woof. Although nothing some serious water, green tea, clean eating and a workout can't fix. The lesson here is: an unhealthy night can cause a weight swing of 2-4 lbs, but its nothing to worry about as long as you account for it in the days that follow.

Anyway, the goal of last night's party was to discuss the Red Carpet, and these were my top 2 dresses:

(pics via Just Jared)

I also really loved Kerry Washington's dress, but in retrospect, I do agree with other commenters that the bottom of her dress needed a good steaming.

Any thoughts on Oscar fashions?

Weigh In and Brunching at Cleveland Museum of Art

So when I first posted my weight loss strategies, little did I know that dry January would be the hardest of all. Not surprising I guess, when one is invited to a FABULOUS Blogger Brunch at Provenance at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and such brunch features a heaping table of french pastries and lump crab quiche. Did I mention mimosas?

Lump Crab quiche

Brunch temptations not withstanding, this week I weighed in at 148.6 lbs, finally past the 150 lb barrier!!

Getting back to the brunch: a bunch of my friends (who also happen to be fellow bloggers) were invited to a spend a lovely afternoon at the Cleveland Museum of Art-- brunch was followed by a screening of Mademoiselle C, the oh-so-chic documentary featuring Carine Roitfeld and her foray into publishing her very own CR Fashion Book. 

If you're not familiar with Ms. Roitfeld, she is the former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris, known for her oh-so-casually-perfect-smoky-eye, and unique "burgeois-slut" styling (P.S. I called dibs on using burgeois slut in my recap). Its a fascinating documentary-- a behind the scenes look at what it means to be one of the most respected women in fashion, similar to The September Issue, but different, because, well, Anna Wintour and Carine Roitfeld are very unique people! 

You can watch the first 5 minutes here….

 Documentary insights aside, it was also the first time I had watched a movie at the Cleveland Museum of Art; in fact, until yesterday, I had no idea that the Museum offers regular screenings of some very unique films! You may view the schedule of upcoming films here.  Spring is still a little while away, and an afternoon at the Museum really is the perfect prescription to the winter blues!! Hope I see you there!!!

The first "official' Weigh-In of 2014

Oh hey!! How was your holiday? I had a great holiday season after a rough December work-wise. The holidays were SO great that my weight-loss plan totally fell off the wagon. In early December, I had gotten down to 150.4 lbs, just 0.4 lbs from my first 5 lbs. As of January 1st, I was back up to 153.8 lbs. Not terrible, but not great either.

As of this morning, I am down to 152.4 lbs! Not too shabby, but its time to kick things into high gear. Why? Because this morning, I signed up for this challenge to lose 10 lbs by February 4, 2014. My strategy for achieving this is quite simple:
1. Hit 10,000 steps/day. I am using my fitbit to measure my steps. If you have one, find me under Shibani Faehnle
2. No alcohol. Bye bye wine.
3. Starches (potato/bread/rice/pasta etc) only one meal a day
4. 1 cup of veggies with lunch and dinner, which I eat first.
5. 72 oz of water/day

Here we go….

Weekly Weigh In and a SUPER fun weekend

Moment of Truth:
11/11/13: 153 lbs
11/18/13: 152.8 lbs

I know, this is not very exciting, but considering HOW MANY times I ate out last week, I am VERY excited by this. This was my eating out schedule: Tuesday lunch, Tuesday dinner, Wednesday lunch, Thursday dinner, Friday lunch, Friday dinner, Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, Sunday lunch. And while I made somewhat smart choices, I'm convinced that there is so much salt in restaurant food than the amount I put in my own cooking. How do I know this? My fingers would swell up like fat sausages!!! Hey, a loss is a loss, and while I strive for more, this week, I'll take it.

Friday night, Nick and I went to see Capital Cities and Fitz & The Tantrums at the House of Blues. What an awesome show. Fitz & The Tantrums were absolutely electric-- they had the crowd on their feet dancing and singing!!

In fact, the crowd was so into the show that it was really difficult to get any pictures-- this was the only one I managed to get- the rare quiet moment (ballad) in the show!

Saturday, Nick and I decided to head over to University Circle, and started off our afternoon with a stop at the Cleveland Museum of Art for some lunch. I have to be honest: I absolutely LURVE sitting in that atrium grabbing a bite to eat. It reminds me so much of being in Europe that its honestly a little escape from reality.

Beautiful even on a grey day. Nick staring into the mouth of a dragon. 

After lunch, we headed over to the Museum of Contemporary Art to check out ARTScape. 

I had originally planned to just buy Christmas presents, and while I did that, I also found a piece for me.  You'll have that :)

Saturday night was dinner at the newly opened outpost of Red, The Steakhouse in downtown Cleveland. The space was really nice: dark wood and red lacquered walls, an the food was INCREDIBLE!!

I ordered the tuna steak (top right), simply seared; it was SO SO SO good. Nick ordered the ribeye, and then we finished up with a gigantic creme brûlée (the crust was slightly thicker than normal, and really gave it a nice crunch and caramelized taste).

And now, you have a glimpse of why I only lost 0.2 lbs this week. LOL.

Either way, it was a great week. This week should be better; I'm only scheduled to eat out Monday dinner and Tuesday lunch…. for now.

Happy week all!!

Weekly Weigh In and I'm Blending Like Crazy

Weight on 11/4/2013: 153 lbs
Weight on 11/11/2013: 153 lbs
Weight loss: 0!!!

UGH! I am really mad that I didn't lose ANY weight this week, but I can pinpoint the exact combination of things I did wrong:
1. I ate WAY too much artificial sugar, mainly in the form of dessert left over from the Divali party we hosted last weekend. This problem has since been fixed: I threw all the dessert in the trash. (If you're curious Divali/Diwali/Deepavali are all the same thing)
2. I didn't work out enough. I normally work out 5x a week, and this week I only did 4 workouts. Zumba, Strength Training, Barre, and a workout DVD. While not bad, I didn't work out at ALL this weekend, which certainly didn't help with..
3. Alcohol. This is my downfall. This Friday we were are at a going-away party, which ended up with late night Taco Bell (I know, I know…) and Saturday, we were at Matt's #GiveMe30 Birthday party. Champers and pudding shots. Tabitha is a pudding shot genius, and unfortunately, I had too many.

So, lessons learned.

On the plus side, I made a life-changing new purchase: a reconditioned Vitamix!! If you're not familiar with the Vitamix, where have you been? Its the absolute gold standard for blenders, and is seriously amazing. It blends everything so so smooth, and can even make soup!! Tonight I made a broccoli-cheddar soup for dinner, but adapted the recipe to make it lower calorie!

1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup 1% organic milk
1/2 cup sharp cheddar
1 head broccoli (from Fresh Fork)
1/4 leftover cauliflower
salt + pepper to taste
And ALL I had to do was blend it!! It made 3 huge cups of soup, so I have lunch for tomorrow too!! I also made a beet and apple smoothie this week, but I loathe beets (they taste like mud) so I just sucked it up and chugged it for the nutrients.

Anyway,  I am committed to doing better as far as food + exercise go this week. I need to lose these 3 lbs ASAP! I am missing out on some really awesome sales!!!

Wardrobe Malfunction

Yesterday, was a normal day at work. I was in a Halloween-y outfit: black skinny pants, black top, orange sweater. Everything was good with the world. And then. It happened. I SPLIT MY PANTS!!! From the crotch, all the way down to the middle of my thighs. BOTH THIGHS!!!! DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!! I pulled my sweater down and took quick but short steps (lest I flash someone some inner thigh) to my desk, put on my knee-length jacket, stuck my laptop in my bag, and got the hell out of there to work the rest of the afternoon from home (with un-split pants).

As funny/disastrous as this was, it has served as a wake up call. Truth is, I have put on some weight. Actually, that's a lie. In the almost 10-years that N and I have been married, I've put on 30 lbs.
30 lbs!!!!!!!! And moved up many dress sizes. And to be honest, I am not comfortable. I love fashion, and while I've learned to camouflage, fashion is not as cute or fun when you're not the weight that you're supposed to be. So, this unpleasant pant-splitting incident has gotten me motivated: motivated to eat right and workout, and set a real goal, and put it out there in the world for you to see. So here's my goal: I want to be 130 lbs by our 10-year anniversary in July. That's a 25 lb loss. Totally achievable.

A few years ago, I saw a dietician when I was in India, and she put me on this great eating plan where I lost 10 lbs. But then I stopped being vigilant, and they creeped back on. So its time to go back on this plan. There's really nothing radical about the plan, its mainly portion control. I will tell you more about it as the weeks progress, but needless to say, I will be checking in with you every Friday to let you know how I'm doing, starting with this Friday.

You will probably see a lot of tweets relating to my workout activities, so if you ever want to join me, just let me know!! Oh and one more thing. I'm not allowing myself to buy any more clothes. Each 5 lb loss gets me a new outfit until I reach my goal, and that's pretty much all the clothes shopping I'm allowing myself.

So, for the sake of my love of fashion, this 130 lb goal weight is an absolute necessity!

Let's do this!!!!