SATW Q&A

I've seen other bloggers do some Q&A's and I really like those posts so I thought I might do some from time to time.  I don't know how many people actually have questions that aren't already answered in the FAQ (but I'm willing to go into more detail if you're wondering about something specific lifestyle wise).  Here are a few questions I've gotten:

I lust for your fruit salads, especially when you have fresh pineapple but I find when I am buying produce I am completely unable to pick a ripe one. How about tips and tricks for selecting top notch produce??

I love my fruit salad baby!  I eat it 5 days a week and I especially love it when I have pineapple as well.  When you've been to Hawaii as many times as we have, you pick up tips and tricks on how to select the perfect pineapple.  Biggest tip?  The whole pulling a leaf out of the crown to see if it's ripe is a myth!  If you can easily pull the leaf out, it's rotten.  You don't want a green pineapple, you want one that is more golden in color but little evidence of light green still left on it is fine.  If you smell it and it smells sweet, get it.  If it has no smell, it's still got some ripening to do which is fine if you don't need it in the next few days. If you have some time to let it ripen at home, store it upside down (maybe in an empty round oatmeal container) so the sugars distribute evenly in the fruit.  If it smells like it's fermenting or like vinegar, bring it to the attention of the produce manager that it's rotten.  It shouldn't be rock hard either.  There should be an ever so slight give to the rind and if you can push it in and its soft or the scales come off, it's rotten.

As far, as other fruit, same goes with the smell.  If you can smell the fruit through the rind slightly and it doesn't have a funky or pungent fruit smell then it should be safe to buy.  For me, it's when fruit is out of season that's the biggest crap shoot.  I love cantaloupe and the best chance I have of getting a sweeter one is going for one that looks a little lumpy and has some decent give to it.  (Not mushy though)  I've still gotten a few hard ones inside despite that but its the only technique that gets me the best results in the off season.  I also suggest keeping your receipt for as long as you have fresh fruit.  We bought strawberries one night and the next night they were completely moldy.  Those puppies went back.  I've bought apples before that have been completely rotten inside after I cut them and I bagged them up and they went back.  We pay far too much for produce to accept rotten or sub par produce and throw our money away.  I hope some of that helped!

How do you find the motivation to keep going? Did you ever get to the point where you were like "I'm ok at xxx pounds. I'll stay here for a while." 

I wish I could say "oh it's easy and I'm motivated and gung ho all the time!"  Oh man that's just so not how it is!  *laughing*  We're kind of on auto pilot right now.  We're on year 4 and we really feel like our bodies are trying to "settle" here.  We've been at these weights before, we've been comfortable here but we're not in this to settle.  I'm tired of getting to this weight range or within 30 lbs of it and the body wants to hang out in the range and I want to get complacent due to lack of results.  I've been there, done that and thats just not my goal.  I want to know what it's like to be at a healthy BMI to not be in double digits size wise and to feel truly normal for my height.  I suppose I could say that's my motivation but it's just so engrained in us right now that the Mr comes home, we workout, we eat healthy (except high cal day) and that's our life now.  I don't know if that is the glamorous answer but it's the honest one.  :-)


What is the single most shocking change you've made to your habits. Something you swore you'd never change but then you just sort of did.


I don't know that this is 'shocking' as much as it is "oh...interesting."  We used to drink a 2 liter over the weekends.  We never set to cut that out but it somehow just happened.  I thought I would always need to have a soda with my burger or pizza on a high cal day but honestly, I don't miss it.  Now maybe twice a year or so we might indulge but I can never finish anything higher than 12 ounces.  The Mr used to get a 12 pack of vanilla soda about 4 or 5x over the summer when it was released but the past 3 years he's made a 12 pack stretch for a year and most of the time it's shared a time or two with friends who like it too.  We never set out to cut soda out but at an average of 150 cals for high octane (we don't like "diet" soda), I'm not going to drink my calories.

I hope that you liked this little feature.  I've got some more questions so I'll be answering those in the coming weeks but if you have any questions you'd like to ask you can either leave them in the comments or you can contact me at mrs{at}successalongtheweigh{dot}com


Hope everyone has a great weekend!


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