Dick's Sporting Goods Needs Me! (w/Giveaway Opp)

Disclosure stuff at the bottom of the post

I'm not much on competition. Against other people, that is. I compete against myself all the time. (That way, I always win! :)) But I'm fortunate enough to have been asked by Dick's Sporting Goods to participate in a little online competition to be part of their Starting Line-up. As part of the Starting Line-up, I would have:

• A chance to try out and preview new products
• A spot on an online panel of experts for one season (for approximately 3 months)
• Access to exclusive online surveys
• A chance to sound off on all things sports

Wouldn't that be cool?

Yes, you say, But what's in it for me?

Well, besides knowing someone newly famous for her inclusion in the Starting Line-up, you have the opportunity to win a $50 Dick's Sporting Goods gift card! (And you don't have to be on Twitter to enter!)

Oh, I have your attention now, do I? Good! That was my intention. I'll get to the contest details in a second, but first...

IF you'd like to support me in my bid to win a spot on Dick's Sporting Goods Starting Line-up, here's what you can do:

• Follow http://twitter.com/dickssportcmo.
• Vote for yourself (or someone else, like @tippytoediet) by telling @dickssportcmo who should be on the "Starting Lineup" and why. Sample Tweet: “@dickssportcmo my vote is for @TwitterID because...” Again not to belabor the point, but I'm @tippytoediet on Twitter. :)
• Recruit others to do the same.
• You can only vote for the same person once per day, but you can vote for multiple people in the same day.

*Make sure you're following @dickssportcmo or your vote won't count!

And that's that! I appreciate your consideration, but please know that you do NOT have to vote for me to enter the contest. This is all in fun.

To enter the contest and possibly win a $50 gift card (good in stores OR ONLINE), all you have to do is hop over to Dick's Sporting Goods and do some Windows-shopping (unless you're Linux or Mac, of course). Then come back and leave a comment sharing what YOU would buy from them with your gift card! (I'd buy this: The Wave by The Firm.)


I'll leave the contest open until Sunday night (03/14/10) at 9:00 p.m. Central Time. Contest is open to US residents only. (Sorry, int'l peeps!)


I hope you'll enter the contest, and if you're on twitter, I hope you'll follow @dickssportcmo and let them know how badly they NEED @tippytoediet in their Starting Line-up!  Oh, and feel free to share with your friends! Thanks and Good luck!

Disclosure: The only compensation for this post is the $50 gift card, which I have opted to use as a giveaway opportunity, despite the fact that it breaks my widdle heart to do so since I shop at DSG fairly regularly (Yaay! Asics socks and Life is Good t-shirts!)  I am receiving no other compensation, except perhaps some good Karma points.

5 Weight Loss Habits I Ditched and 6 I Adopted

I was overweight for most of my adult life. After years of habitual dieting, I worked myself into the obese category. Way to go, Cammy!

At some point, I parsed a clue and realized that the customs and habits of "dieting" really weren't working so well for me, and I decided to ditch them. See if any of these habits look familiar to you:

Habit #1 - Changing Everything at Once
I've blogged about this before but it's worth repeating. If I woke up one morning to a to-do list that included painting the house, cleaning out all my closets (*shudder*), washing my car, balancing my checkbook, mowing the lawn, and repaving the driveway, I'd run for the hills. Why I ever thought I could one day wake up and completely overhaul when, what, and how much I ate, add in an hour of heavy exercise, and magically erase all stress from my life with a snap of my fingers, is beyond me.And yet, I did just that. Over and over again. I overcomplicated the process in a big way, and I got bigger as a result.

New habit: Incremental changes. I think of it in terms of layering, or shifting. Smooth and steady progress, with a small jolt or two for kicks and giggles.

Habit #2 - Focusing on weight-based goals only. Y'all know my thoughts on this! But let's go for a refresher in case anyone new is dropping in. I'll be brief(ish). I can't control my weight; it's as simple as that. I can eat healthy, healthy, healthy and gain two pounds. I can sneak in a few treats and lose a pound. Throw in an extra workout, and stay the same. The scale makes no sense sometimes. My previous inability to understand that was frustrating, demoralizing, and ruinous.

New habit: Focus on action-based goals. Ah, these are the goals I have almost 100%.control over. Staying within my calorie range or accomplishing my 6-times-a-week exercise schedule is up to me. It's my choice whether I'll have grilled chicken or fried, one ounce of chocolate or one bar, a 2-mile walk or 3, and so on. Weight loss or maintenance follows eventually, even though it does lag behind sometimes.

Habit #3 - Setting impossible standards.
I swear, I am a reasonably intelligent person. Smart enough to know that a square peg and a round hole are a mismatch, anyway. Yet time and time again, I tried to force myself to eat foods I didn't like (some I loathed), day in and day out. Anyone who was on one of the early Weight Watchers plans will remember the days when you had to eat liver once a week. *pause for gag reflex to subside*  As weeks of joyless meals passed, I would eventually have something "forbidden", thus breaking my "perfect record."

New habit: Eat foods I enjoy in healthy portions. By no longer trying to follow other people's diets, I've  eliminated the pursuit of perfection, a race I was never going to win no matter how hard I tried.

Habit #4 - Hoping for Success, Looking for Trouble
While there's certainly merit in being aware of potential stumbling blocks, I spent more time worrying about the possibility of failing than I did enjoying my successes. What happened was that small blips were magnified far beyond their importance (with zero credit for even trying), and eventually all I saw were the failures.

New habit: Be on the lookout for successes, and celebrate the small victories every bit as loudly as the greater ones. When troubles arise (and they WILL), look for the reasons for the problem and temporarily move the bar lower, or try something new, but always keep the primary focus on what's going right.

Habit #5 - Being So Serious About It All
I'm a person who likes to laugh. A lot. If I'm not finding the world around me to be entertaining enough, I'll make up reasons to give myself a giggle.  But "dieting" is Serious Business, with no room for fun and games, right? It's not possible to--dare I say it?--enjoy the process of learning about myself, trying new things (even when the results are comical), and discovering what I'm capable (and incapable, sometimes) of accomplishing. Yeah, right: Total Bullshit, if you'll excuse the expression. But that was pretty much my approach in years past. Fun and happiness could wait until I was "at goal".

New Habit: If It's Not Fun, Find a Way to Make it Fun! After all, this a life-transforming endeavor, and there is joy in every single moment! Do a face plant while trying to do a stability ball push-up? Laugh 'til you pee! Getting bored with the same old, same old? Invent something fun, like Cake Day, to push you forward. (Yeah, that's what it was, a motivational tool, NOT just a reason to eat cake.)  My point is that life is so very good, and we deserve to enjoy it NOW, rightthisveryminute, not at some (potentially) far-off time in the future.

I have one new habit that I'd never tried with previous weight loss attempts:
New Habit #6: Find a group of warm, witty, and wise folks with whom to share the process. Whether it's an in-person group like Weight Watchers, etc. or an online community like Sparkpeople, seek out a group of similarly-minded people focused on helping each other succeed. My choice: BLOGGERS ROCK! :)

As I've said before, I don't truly consider my previous, unsuccessful attempts to be complete failures. They might not have worked, but they did serve the invaluable purpose of showing me what didn't work. It was by linking all of those together and developing a new way of approaching the same issues that I dropped the 100 pounds.

Now, some of my new habits might not work for you, us being different people and all, but if you're struggling, I encourage you to take a look at what habits or processes you're repeating today that have proven not to work for you in the past. Can you think of a way that you could turn those habits into something with a greater chance of working? Wouldn't it be worth trying?

You might even get a giggle out of it.

For those of you who are on a strong path of finding your way, were there habits or methods you had to jettison to get here?

As alway, thank you for reading. I hope you found something useful!

Companion Foods...and a Couple of Recipes

Cheeseburger & Fries
Cake & Ice Cream
Peanut Butter & Jelly
Biscuits & Gravy
Chips & Salsa

You get the idea, foods that "go together" so well that it's almost automatic to think of them in pairs. Before I decided to take a healthier trek through life, I ate all of these combinations. Not all at once, but it wouldn't have been unheard of to have all of these in the same week. Now I don't have them all in one year!

With 100 pounds to lose, it was clear to me at the beginning that some of these companion foods needed  adjusting. The infrequent cheeseburger I have is now accompanied by a side salad. If I'm available for a splurge, I choose between cake OR ice cream. (Cake always wins!) I still have peanut butter and jelly, but the layers are much thinner and the jelly is an all-fruit spread. Or I have peanut butter & banana and leave the jelly for another day. Biscuits and gravy are a once-a-year (if that) splurge. There simply IS no acceptable tweak for biscuits and gravy that wouldn't be sacriligious.

That brings us to chips and salsa. I present to you my favorite new, healthier companion foods:


Yep, that's celery & salsa! Crispy, crunchy, slightly sweet, and delicious tomato spiciness! I highly recommend it as a lovely side dish for...well, just about anything. It's also a really tasty and filling snack!

What were your favorite companion foods before you shifted to a healthier way of eating? Have you been able to tweak them or adjust to make them fit your new way of eating? Or would you rather have the original less frequently? Have you added any new companion combinations?

Here's a new-to-me-combination: Pan-Seared Tilapia
and Wild Rice with Apples and Cranberries

I've been trying to try new foods and/or new recipes every few weeks, and apparently tonight was a two-fer. (The third item is sugar-free bread & butter pickles. Yum.) I followed both recipes as shown in the links above, with the addition of a splash of apple cider vinegar to the rice and dash of Cajun seasoning to the fish coating.

The cranberries and apples in the rice dish give it a lovely sweetness that wasn't offset by my light hand in seasoning the fish. Will add more spice next time. I'm also eager to try the rice with chicken.

But that will be another day. Now I'm off to prepare my other new favorite food combo: vanilla yogurt with a sprinkling of mini-chocolate chips! :)

Danger at Every Turn

Anyone know how many calories are burned while avoiding danger? If not calories, maybe good karma points? In either case, I hope it's plenty.

I decided to take advantage of mild temps and peek-a-boo sunshine to walk down to Subway for a turkey sandwich. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?  Well, look at what jumped out at me on the way:



Oh no! I forgot about the Girl Scouts! Some of ya'll will remember that I narrowly escaped these beasts of Satan little cuties last year. Apparently, word of my avoidance leaked out (perhaps they're spying on me here?), and they escalated their campaign this year by doing this:



They put photos of the cookies on the signs!! How despicable is that! These people have no shame!

But they don't know me very well, do they? I sailed right by, slowing down only to collect pictorial evidence of the crime scene, and continued my trek toward turkey sustenance.

And that's when I spotted this new threat, right next door to my neighborhood Subway:



A Mexican restaurant! Practically in my front yard!! Cheesy, spicy goodness that I have to pass to get to Subway or Kroger. My life is ruined!

Or maybe not. After all, I've avoided (more like delayed) going to the new Mexican restaurant that opened a mile or so away, and they've been open for months. Of course, we're also separated by a few hundred houses, and I don't pass it every time I travel south from my house.

Oh well, I'll just have to map out routes that always take me north. Or work out a whole lot more. :)

Okay, enough Sunday silliness from me. I hope you've had as wonderful a weekend as I have, and that you avoided the dangers of modern life! :)

For the Love of Chocolate

With my various home projects on hold, pending the return of the professional painters for their final final touch-ups, I decided to declare today a Reno-Free Day. The sun was shining, the temps were headed to the high 50s--a perfect day to be out and about!

So what did I do on my free day? Well, after a brief (hah!) stop at the dermatologist's office, it was on to another potential form of torture:

Yep, I spent part of my free day in the belly of the beast, so to speak, exploring the wonderful world of chocolate. Unfortunately, most of the actual chocolate was shown only in pictures. I suppose the risk of broken display cases was too much for them. :)

The exhibit is really interesting. The ecological requirements of our chocolate source, the cacoa tree, are presented:

 

So, if you're not inclined to protect the rainforests for their environmental benefits, do it for the chocolate!

The exhibit also covers the history of chocolate,  where it originated (with the Maya and Aztec of Mexico and Latin America) and how it became a global commodity via the Spanish conquistadors, European society, and then on to North America.  From there we moved to current technologies, including scientific discoveries such as the medicinal virtues of cacoa's components. All thoroughly interesting and without any effect on my waistline. :)

And yet...I still found it necessary to have a chocolate cookie afterward. :)  It seemed fitting...and the safer choice when compared to the frosted jumbo brownie in the museum cafe. But I made a note to go back for one of those brownies on another day. They looked yummy!

My other splurge was purchasing the book, The Emperors of Chocolate:  Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars at the museum gift shop. It looks like a good read, but I'll let you know if it turns out otherwise. 

I closed out the excursion with a 2-mile power walk and now I'm home and preparing for a 20-minute nap. All in all, a most excellent day and a great start to the weekend! We're looking at a couple more days just like this one, weather-wise, and I do NOT plan to be cooped up in this house!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead! Any special plans?