Green Tea!

I've read many times that green tea is a magical drink with all sorts of good things in it for you to stay healthy and lose weight. I have no idea if any of that is true or not, but I've always liked Green Tea and I recently purchased some tea and tea accessories (by recently, I mean several months ago, before I started this blog).

I thought about posting yet another workout summary, or to talk about my Medifast order I made yesterday, but those seem boring, so instead I'm going to post about my tea! With pictures!

First, you can't be a proper tea snob unless you have a tea infuser:

Meet Mr. Tea Robot

My infuser came from Think Geek and is a little robot with adjustable arms and the tea goes into his body. You open him up with the little buttons on his head, and he sits in a tiny drip tray.

And of course, if you have a geeky infuser, you really need the right cup... or in my case, mug:

This cup is a triumph.

The front of my stylish black mug has the Aperture Laboratories logo on it.

I'm making a note here, huge success.

And the back has their motto. Who couldn't trust Aperture and GLadOS? I mean honestly. I can't say too many good things about this mug. It's clever and geeky and subtle, and if you don't know anything about Portal, it just looks like a relatively generic company mug that you'd get at a trade show.

So, what goes in the mug? Green tea! I've purchased a sampler pack from the Tao of Tea that I like a lot:

Every time I read the top of this to myself, I sound out 'The Dao of Dea'

This was a good purchase for a number of reasons... it looks nice on my desk, it's got amazing little tins of tea, the box is cool, it's all very aesthetically pleasing. When you open up the tins of tea, there's a second, internal lid, and then the loose tea is in there in the tin:

Jasmine Pearls, with both lids removed. I'm running low.

So you open up your tea, pop open your infuser and drop the tea pearls or leaves in, seal it up, and then hook the robot to the mug and fill with hot water:

Mr. Robot taking a relaxing boiling water bath.

The infuser hangs on to the edges of the cup and sits there, letting the water soak the green tea goodness up.

I have no idea if the tea is helping me lose weight, and I really don't care. All of the accessories look cool on my desk, there's a nice ritual to preparing the tea, and I like the taste. If you like tea (any kind) then I highly recommend getting an infuser and loose leaf tea, it is really a nice way to geek out over tea.

Good bye, Spring! Hello Trivia Night!

Just got back from running an errand to Trader Joe's, and it's cold again... around 30 degrees, after yesterday's 60s. Oh well.

Trivia last night was a lot of fun. The categories were based on superheroes, and while there was too much DC and not enough Marvel, it was a good time. Lots of people in cool costumes, tons of superhero T-shirts, and it was all for the Make-A-Wish foundation, so it was a great cause. We bought raffle tickets and did the balloon pop but didn't win anything this time... we also came in 7th place overall, a few points out of the money, due to musical categories and the Make-A-Wish category that were really hard!

In the past, Trivia nights have been buffet grazing zones with cookies, preserved meats, cheeses, and crackers. Tonight we brought a veggie tray and some Medifast snacks. Watching the rest of the table have Jimmy John's sandwiches and homemade blondies was actually a little bit harder than I expected it to be, but we both managed to avoid either temptation.

This got us thinking about the future of these types of events. Obviously, the key is to not let them be random grazing, but have a plan. Once we're at goal, there's no reason not to have some cheese, some crackers, and a blondie... we just need to track it and be reasonable, and make sure there's something healthy there to go with everything else. So, the veggie tray should be a staple, and then it's that plus a couple of other snacks and we should be good to go.

On the success front, this week has been crazy. Last week I was up .7, down 2.4, up .6, down .2, up 2.2, down 2.4... all that bouncing around and I ended up with a 1.7 lb loss. I realized late in the week I'd been sleeping less and drinking less water and I made an effort to correct both of those things, as well as continuing my exercise.

This week, I've seen losses of .6, 1.6, and 2.6. I'm sleeping better and drinking a ton more water and so far it's been steady drops. I'm not sure I can expect that to stick around, but my theory is that my body is getting used to my exercise intensity and finally letting go of some extra water... and me staying hydrated is probably helping.

In the land of NSV's, my favorite belt is honestly getting to be too big. I need to punch a new hole in it. I've moved 3-4 holes from when I started.