It's About Time!

I weighed in this morning at 267.5 (my scale only does 1/2 pound incraments, thank GOD), which is half a pound up from yesterday's 267.  BUT - what all of this really means is that I kicked 270 to the curb and will NEVER see it again!!!  HOORAY for teensey tiny milestones!!!

I don't know how I gained a half pound, since I was really, really good yesterday.  I was secretly hoping to get to 265, or at the very least hit the 10 pounds lost mark.  Oh well.  Tomorrow is another day, and who knows, with my wacky scale I could step on tomorrow and see those results, so long as I stay strong today.  (I'm picturing myself as a Rosie the Riveter type, except instead of showing off my guns I'm holding up a carrot.  HA!  I'm weird.)

It was a snow day yesterday, we got about 6" of snow, and Tony worked from home.  After seeing the scale yesterday morning I had a HUGE burst of motivation.  I had another bowl of Kashi Go Lean and my standard 3 cups of coffee.  I managed to not snack in the AM, thanks to the 18g of protein (or whatever the insane amount is) in the cereal, and the caffeine that kept me rolling.  Plus, catching up blogging all morning kept my hands and mind occupied so I wasn't tempted to eat out of boredom.

By the time lunch rolled around I was hungry.  I had a WW Smart Ones Ravioli Florentine meal, and it was really good.  It even resembled the picture on the box!  I don't know if it was just me or the meal was too light or what, but I was hungry all afternoon.  That sucked because it led to snacking, but I tried to keep my snacks healthy.  Around 3 o'clock I had about 10 Roasted Garlic Triscuts, 6 with cheddar cheese.  The cheese pieces weren't huge, they were about half the size of the cracker, but neither was low-fat.  Around 4:30 I was hungry again, and craving something sweet, so I grabbed a 100-Calorie Snack pack of Golden Oreo Mini-Cakesters and OMG were they ever FABOULOUS!!!!!  They tasted like tiny, dry, frosted vanilla cupcakes.  Mmmm.  Totally worth the money and the calories if you have a craving.

I fed the kids a ghetto supper while Tony plowed, so I didn't eat until later.  It was around 8:30 when I finally realised I didn't have dinner.  At least the cakesters kept me full, LOL!  I made a delicious Healthy Choice steam lunch meal, Garlic Herb Shrimp.  Since it was only 260 calories and I was craving spinach, I ate an entire package of frozen chopped spinach with it.  I added 2 tablespoons of butter, which I didn't think was too bad for an entire package, and salt, pepper and garlic powder.  The whole meal was totally filling and satisfying and I was pleasantly surprised by the Healthy Choice meal.  It smelled awesome, and was really yummy.  Very light and colorful and flavorful.  Like most frozen meals with shrimp, I felt the shrimp was overcooked and rubbery but it wasn't too too bad.

Beacause I ate late, and because it kept me nice and full, I didn't have a single snack all night.  It helped that I was watching Heavy, and just like Hoarders, I had no desire to eat while watching it.  The show was outstanding, and I found it as inspiring as I'd hoped.  I didn't like the whiney fat girl on the show, but I liked the trainers, the pace, and the information.  I didn't like the end, because I guess I was expecting more of an update like you get at the end of Intervention or Hoarders, and that wasn't really there.  But the show overall was good enough for me to want to save it on DVR so I could watch it again.  The more motivation I can find, the better, and I'll take every little drop I can!  I CAN do this!

Much love,

Days 5 - Friday

Friday was a good day where I felt like I was getting back on track. I weighed in that morning at 270, the exact same as yesterday. Hey, at least I didn't gain. Heh. It was a standard day at home, in which I did simple chores like scream at my kids, laundry, tidying up, and chasing kids. So all in all, it wasn't a bad day at all.

I started out with a bowl of Special K Blueberry cereal. I love this stuff. It's not as good as Blueberry Morning, but Blueberry Morning's blueberries get stuck in my teeth as they reconstitute, so that's kind of annoying. Plus, the Special K has little chunks of granola, and we all know how I feel about granola at this point. 

 
My mom stopped by after a job interview and we had a nice little chat for about an hour before she took off to go grocery shopping, and before all the kids saw her and she had no chance for escape. It was super convenient that I had some of her gluten-free food in the freezer that she left here on Thanksgiving, because I was able to offer her lunch and a cup of hot tea. I had a WW Smart Ones, the tuna casserole, which was fairly great. Besides missing the toasted crumb topping (Well, it wasn't missing, it was stirred in at the half-way-stir-the-entree directive; which leads me to ask, "Why put it on there, only to have to stir it in???" Why not set a tiny cup of breadcrumbs into the dish, that can be removed before cooking and applied to the top afterwards? I don't know how some of these marketing people keep their jobs.), it was just like on the package, and a lot yummier than I anticipated. So lunch was good all around!



MM Stock Photo - Steak & Cheese Pizza



Friday night Tony copped an attitude out of nowhere, which caused us to fight. We fight fairly infrequently, maybe every few months. But when we do it's usually pretty bad. So that had me in a lousy mood, and when I sat down to dinner I did what any pissed off woman would do... I had 2 slices of leftover pizza. I regretted it shortly after eating it, but ah well. I can't beat myself up over it; old habits die hard, and as I find myself in situations where I used to reach for food for comfort or company, it is going to be particularly hard to NOT do what I would have done the last 30 years. SO I cut my losses and went to bed to play Angry Birds in the dark, which left me passed out after about 15 minutes. Not exactly healthy, but it is what happened. ::sigh::

That's it.  Like I said, Friday was pretty boring, but I guess that's a good thing in the diet world.  Heh.

Much love,

Keep On Keepin' On

Yes, I weigh myself every day.  EVERY DAY.  There are many reasons I do this... first off, I find that it helps me see what did and didn't work with what I ate the day or two before.  For instance, after the Great Brownie Disappointment of Tuesday, I weighed in yesterday morning only having lost 1 pound.  Makes sense, right?  Of course it does.  I ate two fucking brownies.  This morning, I weighed in having lost 2 pounds, at 270.  So obviously the brownies really slowed my weight loss.  Also, I find that if I start to notice myself in a slump, the scale shows it.  Before it gets too late to easily fix any gain with just a small diet change, I can see it immediately.  So if over the holidays I was weighing myself every day, I would have been able to say to myself, "Lay off the cordial cherries, fatty." before I gained 10+ pounds and would have had to have undergone a full-on diet, complete with self discouragement and disappointment for not having caught it sooner, and for letting myself eat like a pig.  My dad is a diabetic, and every single day he records his weight, blood sugar, and any other pertinent variable.  For 20 years I saw him maintain his weight and have complete control over his diabetes from this simple chart.  It makes sense, to me, to track your weight daily.  I always have.  In fact, the times when I gained the most weight in my adulthood, are the times I didn't have a scale at home.  A few years ago I saw a study done that said that people who weigh themselves daily are less likely to gain excessive weight, and are more likely to maintain a healthy weight, for the EXACT REASONS I had always thought was just common sense.  (After a quick Google search ((I love Google)) I found these two articles: Pub-Med and MSNBC.)  So it's what I do.  In my honest opinion, I don't think there is a wrong or a right way to track your weight loss, so long as you're tracking it.  What works for some may not work for others.  Kinda like just about everything else in life.  Do I appreciate other people's insight and advice?  You bet your ass.  It's how we learn.  As a mom I love to run around yelling at every other mom that they're doing whatever they're doing wrong, "Trust me!  There's an easier way!  I have triplets!  I know."  So if I can offer my advice to another mom, I will, but I don't push because really, if they wanted my advice or learned a lesson from the sage advice I offered them, they'd be doing it already.  No harm, no foul; I do not take it personally.  Every one is different.  So I DO appreciate advice, and knowledge, but PLEASE don't be upset if I don't take it.  As an opinionated bitch I'm not likely to anyway, LOL!!

All that said, yesterday was a fair day.  Just eh.  I was bored, and the kids were on my last nerve ALL. DAY. LONG.  So when Tony came home to plow, and the plow broke, and he ended up having to snow blow for hours, and I ended up spending my whole day yelling at the kids to leave me alone for two seconds because they were driving me to drown us all in a car in a lake.  At 8 pm I finally had the triplets to bed, put on some Dino Dan for Gwen and got to cleaning.  Which I needed a boost from a soda to do.  But an hour and a half later and I had everything at least sorted, and mostly put away, and I quit for the night when Tony came in.  I was bored and stressed all day, and it was snowing like a motherfucker, so the day was kind of wacky.

For breakfast I had more delicious Bear Naked Triple Berry granola, 3/4 of a cup, and three cups of coffee.  Yum.  Too bad the coffee should have been TWICE as strong.  I still would have needed three cups of it.  Ha!

Lunch was late, around 3 o'clock thanks to the kids' non-napping malarkey, and consisted of a WW Smart Ones Ricotta and Spinach pasta, which was really yummy.  I wish there was more veggies.  I understand that veggies are kind of expensive, and if they loaded all these frozen meals with veggies all the veggie haters wouldn't eat them, plus they'd be $3 a pop.  But the veggies would really help keep me fuller, longer.

I had 3 celery sticks with peanut butter with the meal, because honestly it was a little small for my head-sized stomach.  One of these days it will shrink and I'll be able to eat just the meal and be satisfied.  =)

I made the kids chicken nuggets and french fries for dinner as everything was hectic with the snow clean-up and me being all alone with them, and I managed to eat about 10 leftover fries.  Of course.  After they ate, and I didn't, I cleaned up, got them ready for bed, and took them up.  I came down and started to clean the family room and kitchen of toys, which took quite a bit more effort and time than I would have liked.  At 9 or so Tony came in and took Gwen to bed (she passed out on the couch at quarter past 8), then asked if I had eaten supper.  Shit.  I had totally forgotten.  I could have had another frozen meal, left over pasta, some eggs, anything.  But I totally forgot.  Man, old habits die HARD.  So instead of making a dinner and eating a full meal at 9:30, I did what any sensible person would do and had a Weight Watchers Ice Cream Candy Bar.  Which was gross, but of course I ate it.  By the end I had forgotten what a real Snickers Ice Cream bar tastes like and was actually enjoying the WW one.  I also had a banana, since I know an ice cream bar is not dinner.  Mom didn't teach me nothing!  I did decide to skip the photograph, since you all probably know what a fucking banana looks like, am I right?

It all worked out alright though when I got on the scale this morning and saw that 270.  That was fucking awesome to see.  That's 6 pounds since Monday, 2 pounds a day on average.

Today is going to be kind of crazy; we actually have to leave the house for an appointment, and I plan on bringing the kids to McDonald's to work off some energy in the Play Place while I blast those smug-ass pigs in Angry Birds.  We'll be eating lunch there but it's my intention to eat a salad, and hopefully I can will myself away from a vanilla milkshake, which is just fucking sad.  All those poor, sad, undrunk milkshakes.

Much love,

Day 2

I have good news!  I am down 3 pounds today already, to 273.  Now, keeping in mind that I weighed myself yesterday at like, 2 PM, and today right after I woke up and took a shit, it's not as impressive.  But it's a start.

I feel really good about this.  I feel like it's not a diet, but more of a change.  And not even one I'm whining about.  Just a change that needs to happen.  Like how we had to move out of our tiny house into a bigger house.  Yeah, it was sad, it was a fucking hassle, but it was AWESOME, and SOOO worth it.  I don't mind making choices that aren't chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter & jellies.  It's like my brain knows that my body needs to eat healthy to be healthy, and the conscious decision to be healthy was all I needed to do it.  Sounds kinda cheesy, sounds kinda stupid, but I don't know how else to describe it.  Ready.  I am ready.  And still optimistic.  For now.  LOL!  I have a very bad habit of seeing new things through for a couple of months until I bore of it, and then look for something else to occupy my ADD.  Even diets.  Even though I can see the scale registering the new number, even though I can wear jeans after a meal without unbuttoning them, I still somehow lose interest.  So I'm really hoping to stay focused, and positive, and get there.

Affirmations aside, I had a great day eating well yesterday.  I started the morning with 3 fried eggs, but only one yolk, a piece of rye toast, and coffee.  Granted, I had 2 really sugary, creamy cups of coffee, but you gotta start somewhere, right?  And I'm not ready to give up my coffee.  Maybe not ever.  LOL  Breakfast wasn't as early as I wanted it to be.  Danielle told me you're supposed to eat within two hours of waking up, which I technically did, but 10 o'clock is still kinda late for your metabolism to jump start.  I do realize that I'm in not in the habit of eating breakfast, or if I do it's not until later, like when I get the low-blood-sugar-shakes and need to stuff a pop tart in my pie hole to stop shaking long enough to make the kids lunch.  SO yeah... I'm working on that too.

Around 11 I had a banana for snack.  I also had a soda while the kids were napping, to get me over the 2 o'clock slump.  With the exception of the HFCS, the caffeine and points are the same no matter if it's coffee or soda, and I wanted something sweet and fizzy.  So a creme soda it was.  I got busy working on the blog while the kids napped and I drank my soda, and I forgot lunch.  So typical of me.  At almost 4 o'clock I had a Smart Ones Artisan Creations flatbread sandwich, of the steak and ranch variety.  Holy shit, it was DELICIOUS.  It tasted like a real steak and cheese, which surprised the shit out of me.  I don't like cooked bell peppers and even the peppers were tasty.  Hm... maybe I was just really hungry.  Ha!  Anyway, 300 calories and 8g of fat, 6 WW points.  Totally worth it for lunch if you're craving steak and cheese.  Or even if you're not.

Not surprisingly, that tided me over until dinner, which - don't fall on the floor - I made.  Oven roasted pork tenderloin marinated in lemon pepper from The Meat House, about a cup of Betty Crocker boxed mashed potatoes, and about a cup of sugar snap peas.  OMG, it was so good.  And it was really weird seeing normal portions on my plate.  Like, there was a HUGE amount of dead space.  I blame the obesity epidemic on the stoneware industry.

The best part about dinner was that I was FULL, full full, not grossly stuffed, just really full until at least 9 o'clock.  It was around then I started having the hankering for a snack.  Damn it.  Or course, if you know me, and you know how I roll, you know I get the munchies on occasion for reasons I can not name.  Dummy.  I held off as long as I could, but my belly started grumbling around 9:40 and I caved.  BUT, I chose wisely.  Two apple-cinnamon rice cakes with a thin coating of peanut butter.  YUMMY!!!!  And I snacked s-l-o-w-l-y while I watched The Wonder Years.  It was just enough to make me feel cozy, good about my choice, end the tummy grumbles, and to give my hands an occupation while watching TV.  Of course, like a true pig, I picked all the crumbs out of the afghan and ate those too.  Hey, I'm dieting.  Every morsel counts.

So it appears that my choices yesterday really paid off!!  That's a good boost to the ol' morale.

This morning after pooping, weighing myself, and taking my probiotics (which you have to take on an empty stomach), I had a half cup of Bear Naked Triple Berry Crunch granola, with milk and coffee.  The recommended serving size is 1/4 cup, but I don't want to starve myself either.  If anything is going to make me pissy, it's being hungry.  So because last week I would have had a whole cup, I decided a half was better than what I'm used to, plus would be enough to not freak my body out, and be a whole lot better than a full cup.  Maybe when I'm 200 pounds I'll eat a 1/4 cup, but not now, that's for damn sure.  Plus, if I haven't told you before, I am a granola WHORE.  I LOVE it.  Love.  Like, pink puffy hearts and fireworks.  So yeah, I splurged.

I ate about a half hour ago and I can ALREADY feel a difference in my body.  My legs are jumpy like I have excess energy, which is good since I have a lot to do today with the storm coming tomorrow and all.  I'm full, and while a little nauseous (eating breakfast does, and always has, made me feel like yakking), I think I can forget about that and focus on all this energy!  Huzzah!  Pair that with a cup of coffee and I'm ready to do great things!  Like laundry.  And dishes.  Yee haw.

I'm off now for another cup of coffee, but may be back later, maybe not until tomorrow.  We shall see.  I have a lot to do!!

Much love,