Weigh-In

I gained 1.2 pounds. I feel crapy. 

I don't know if I can do this

I am tired. 

I am tired of watching everything that goes into my mouth, and writing it down (which I usually don't do) and counting the points (which I've been doing even less). I am tired of feeling guilty every time I leave a restaurant because I find it impossible to count exactly how many points I've eaten, and if I try, I spend my entire (previously enjoyable) meal doing mental math. 

I want this to be easier. I want to just agree to go to these meetings every week and lose weight. Sounds like a fair deal to me. I'm paying my money. I'm going to the meetings. Its everything else that I'm having a hard time with.

I just want to quit!

Then think about how awful it feels to be overweight - the health problems, the low self-esteem, the lace of energy - and realize that I don't really have a choice. As much as I hate counting every calorie that I consume, I hate feeling fat even more. 

So, I will go to weigh-in today - even though it is not going to be pretty -  and I will vow once again to start over. 

Friday's Weigh-In

Aye, yesterday's weigh-in number is a little misleadin'. Sometimes I think about weight loss like a bankin' system. You can make deposits towards future weight loss and withdraws against future weight loss. 

Let me explain: If I have a verily bad week, but lose weight anyway, Me think o' it as a withdraw. I'm fairly certain that the followin' week will be not as successful. It works the other way as well. 

I weigh in on Friday's at 12:15, and bein' the neurotic person that I am, I ne'er eat lunch before I go t' Ww because I don't want that weight added t' my mighty. Yesterday, I ate lunch before I went. I call this a deposit. 

I didn't gain or lose anythin' this week, but...I made a deposit for next week.

Aye, me parrot concurs.

PS. Today is talk like a pirate day, in case you didn't notice :)

Oops

OK, so I messed up yesterday, but I'm back on track today. 

It was the buffet that did it. I cannot be with-in a 10 mile radius of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Period. I tried to be good, and I wasn't doing too bad until ... the Deserts. I am a sucker for sugar. Oh well. It was fun.

I went shopping yesterday and despite my run-in with the buffet tables, I was able to wear size 12. I've officially lost 2 sizes since I began! Yea me.

Weigh-in tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Inspiration

Is it weird that I am so inspired by stories of other people losing weight? 

Biggest Loser Season 8 premiered tonight, and nothing short of a city wide power outage was going to stop me from watching it. This says a lot about my dedication to watch overweight people push themselves to lose weight because there are MANY things that I despise about that show: Blatant product placement, commercials every 10 seconds, huge stretches of the show that they repeat because they have commercials every 10 seconds and it is hard to remember what was going on when you are constantly being pulled away for a commercial break...I could go on...but I digress.

I watch Biggest Loser because it reminds me why I am on this weight loss journey. I may not have the tragic stories that those contestants share (and there are some really tragic stories this season), but I feel the same shame when I walk into a room and realize that I'm the biggest person there, when I can't run more than a mile without hacking up a lung, when I think about the example that I am setting for my baby girl. 

There are so many reasons why I want to lose this weight - not the least of which being my for my health and confidence - but I tend to lose track of these reasons in my day to day life. Watching a show like Biggest Loser helps me remember and keep myself on track. 

We all have to find our inspiration somewhere.

Blueberry Muffins

In my house, we love everything blueberry. Ilya eats at least 1 cup of blueberries every morning with her oatmeal. We drink blueberry milk. Our favorite book is "Blueberry Girl," so when I ran across this recipe in Hungry Girl 200 under 200 cookbook, I had to try it.

So, so so so so so good. 2 points a muffin (I made 8 out of the batter instead of 6), and they don't have too much sugar in them so I don't feel too bad about feeding them to Ilya.

From: "Hungry Girl 200 under 200"

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup of fresh blueberries
1/2 cup light vanilla soy milk
1/4 cup sugar-free pancake syrup
1/4 cup fat free liquid egg substitute
1/4 cup Splenda No Calorie Sweetener (granulated)
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 Tablespoons light whipped butter or light buttery spread, room temp.
2 Tablespoons no sugar added applesauce (get Mott's Blueberry Delight if you can find it!)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, Splenda, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt, stirring until mixed well.

In a large mixing bowl, combine soy milk, syrup, egg substitute, butter, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Using an electric mixer or a whisk, mix until thoroughly blended. Do not worry if butter bits do not break up completely.

Add dry ingredients in the first mixing bowl to wet ingredients in the large mixing bowl an mix until completely blended. Then fold in blueberries.

Line a 6 cup muffin pan (or half a 12 cup pan) with baking liner (I don't recommend this) or spray (I recommend). Evenly distribute batter among the 6 cups.

Bake in the oven for about 22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Enjoy!

Makes 6 Servings

Per serving (1 muffin): 137 calories, 2.25g fat, 3g fiber

Friday Weigh-In

Before I get into what happened during the week, I will share my number:

169.4 lb - down 0.6 

I'm in the 160's!!!!!

I probably could have done better. I was great all week long until Wednesday. I helped a friend move all the while thinking, "this will be great - I'll earn a ton of activity points and do a good deed." Not quite how it turned out. I ended up watching the kids most of the time (hard work, but didn't really make me break a sweat) which would have been fine except my dear friends did what all good friends do when they move and bought everyone pizza, KFC, and beer. 

If I had thought about this possibility beforehand, I could have prepared myself for it, but as it was, I began with "just one slice of this delicious pizza so I don't feel deprived" and ended four slices, two pieces of KCF, and a beer later!  

Looking back, I should have just written in down and moved on with my life, but I felt so bad that I decided to pretend like it never happened...which led to Thursday. Since I had already messed up Wednesday, why not go crazy Thursday as well? I actually didn't do too bad Thursday, but I didn't track and I know I went over my points. 

So, really, Friday was a gift. I'm so lucky that I actually lost, but now I'm worried that it was a fluke and it will all catch up with me this week no matter how good I am. 

Let's see, what did I learn this week:

1) Messing up is part of this plan

2) When I mess up, write it down and move on!

My leader said something this week that I think will really help me: Before eating something ask yourself "can I eat this and still lose weight?" 

This really hit home because I think I'm thinking of this like a game. "how much can I get away with and still lose weight?" I forget my goals, and, really, that is all I need in order to make better choices.

Its a soup sort of week

I don't know why, but I've been on a soup kick lately. Maybe it was the sudden shift from beautiful sunny days, to dark rainy days that did it. Whatever the reason, I've made three different soups in the past four days - all of them no more than 2 points a cup. The other great thing I love about soup is that you can make a huge batch and freeze it for ... forever... I guess ... do frozen things really ever go bad? I guess they do, but it does take a reallllly long time. 

Below are the recipes for the three soups I made (keep in mind, I often just use what is laying around the house, so if you want to make these, the ingredients are - shall we say - flexible). 

Butternut Squash Soup 

Points: 2 points per cup

6 cups broth (amount may vary depending on size of butternut squash)

add 1 butternut squash pealed and cubed to broth

add 2 big leaks to broth

Boil until squash is tender

Cool

Blend until smooth and creamy

I love the taste of butternut squash, so I don't add anything extra, but you certainly could add spices and even other veggies if you wanted to get creative.

Lentil Soup

Points: 2 points per cup

4 cups broth

1 cup green lentils (soak for 15 minutes before adding to broth)

Carrots chopped (if you'd like)

1 potato cubed

Other veggies chopped (if you'd like)

1 onion chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

garlic, salt, any other spices that you like

Sauté the oil, onions, and garlic until onions are brown

Add onion mixture to broth

Add other veggies and lentils to both

Add spices to taste

Bring to a boil then simmer for 1 hour until everything is tender

Veggie (aka all my veggies are about to go bad, what do I do) Soup

Points: 0 maybe 1 if  you eat a lot of it

8 cups broth

Any and all veggies you want to include (I used carrots, cabbage, onion, zucchini, peas, corn, and a potato)

Noodles (if you like them)

Garlic and spices to taste (I used rosemary and cilantro from the garden) 

Boil broth will all the veggies, noodles, garlic, and spices

Let simmer for 1 hour

I forgot - I actually made 4 soups! The last one I made was a green chili stew. I found New Mexico green chilies on sale and couldn't resist. 

Green Chili Stew

Points: 1 point per cup

2 cups roasted green chili

2 onions

garlic

1 potato

4 cups broth

Optional: beans, meat, rice...

Saute onion and garlic (if you want to add meat, saute it with onions)

Put onion mixture, and cubed potatoes (and anything else you want to add - beans, rice...) into pot with broth and boil. Simmer for 1 hour. 

Add chili

Heat for 15 min.

All are wonderfully filling and cost practically nothing if you break it down per meal.

Dinner and a Walk

Talk about healthy and cheap. Last night we baby-sat for a friend of ours. Their daughter is Ilya's age and is a real sweetheart...as long as we are doing something. She tends to get antsy when we just stay at home and play. So, Adam and I packed the girls up and a picnic lunch and walked to the mall. 

The walk to the mall is about 1 mile from our house, so total we walked two miles (while pushing strollers so, really, thats more like four miles). The girls loved watching all the people walking around shopping and it was indoors so we had a shelter from the rain. 

What did we bring to eat, you ask? Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches. 1 point for the two slices of bread (thank you Sara Lee Light Bread). 2 points for 1 tablespoon of almond butter, and 1 point for half of a banana. I also had a peach. 

Total cost of the meal per person: something ridiculous like $0.20. 

Total points for the meal: 5

Total fruit and veggie servings: 2 (maybe three)

Total activity points earned: at least 1 (I tend to underestimate)

Its Friday and you know what that means...

Weigh In Day! I guess tracking points and writing stuff down really does help. The number today was...wait for it...

170.0 lbs

Down 1.8 pounds!

I really needed this. I was feeling a little disillusioned with the plan. I kept weighing myself throughout the week without seeing the results that I wanted even though I was being so so so good, so it was so nice to see the loss on the scale today. 

I guess I learned that I really need to stay off the scale during the week. Does that happen to anyone else? I usually weigh myself hoping that the number will make me feel better, but weight varies so much that I invariably feel horrible at some point and then, all I want to do is forget the whole thing.

Goals for the week:

1) write all foods and points down

2) Don't step on the scale until Friday

Week in Review:

Tracking: I tracked perfectly Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday was not so good.

Exercise: BOOT CAMP on Monday and walking Greenlake on Wednesday - its a start.

The Next Day

Wow, was I ever in need of weight training. After boot camp yesterday, I. CANT. MOVE. Everything hurts.