Day 2, week 4 making a list

My list of 10 things I can do if I'm hungry hasn't been written yet. I guess I'll do it right here and now.

I could:

1. fold laundry (it's always around)
2. clean the kitchen sink
3. brush my teeth
4. empty my "file" box by the computer (it's already sorted, but hasn't made it into the file cabinet)
5. pick a room to dust
6. pick one messy drawer to clean out
7. clean out my photos on the computer
8. scan old photos into the computer
9. post a blog update
10. read a book

That's a manageable list. Now I need to put them into a hat and draw them out as I have hunger pangs.

Less tomorrow :)

Day 1, week 4 part 2

Drum roll please..brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrb...3.8 lbs for a total loss of 11 lbs!!!!

I didn't stay for the meeting, but I did find out what this week's challenge is and I can definitely do it. Write down 10 short activities (fold socks, answer 5 emails, sort mail, etc...) I can do when hunger starts. Put the 10 slips in an envelope and when I'm hungry, pull one and do what it says. If the hunger passes then it wasn't really hunger, but boredom. I like it. It could be a great tool for any habit that needs breaking.

Well, since my main post was earlier, I just thought I'd post the results and tonight's menu...Beef Bourginon, 8 points for 1-1/2 cups. I'll probably put it over whole wheat pasta for another 2 points.

Less later,
Laurie

Day 1, week 4 Pre weigh-in

Mentally, I'm ready. I want to go weigh-in. I'm hoping that I get to 10 lbs. lost today. Of course, the downside of that means that I'm in a different decade of weight and I lose a point of what I'm allowed to eat each day to continue losing. That won't be too bad though, since I haven't been using too many of my "extra" points each week so far.

Did I meet the challenge? Well, some of it. I still didn't get 10 filling meals in, but I made 5 this week, 2 more than last week. I didn't get the extra 10 minutes in every day. I think I got 5 days worth in. I've been getting sick since Sunday. Each day has brought a new symptom. Now I'm feeling awful, stuffy head, watery eyes, an annoying cough. I'm just doing the weigh-in today and not the meeting. I'll weigh-in, collect this week's challenge, and head home to pack my lunch for work.

Great recipes this week? Oh yeah! I cooked 6 of the last 7 nights and they were ALL good. Dinners were:

• Lemon-chicken risotto -5 points
  
• pork loin stuffed with spiced peaches -5 points
  
• balsamic chicken with thyme -6 points
  
• whole roast chicken with garlic -5 points
  
• turkey empinadas -6 points for 6
• stuffed shells -8 points

All got at least 4 stars out of 5 by my personal critics. I'm happy to share with anyone who wants...I just didn't feel the need to post the actual recipes if no one was interested. All of this food preparation has been time consuming, but it's what I love as long as I have time. I'll never go hungry this way, that's for sure.

I'm thinking about doing the WW e-tools. That would allow me to enter my favorite non-WW recipes in and get point calculations for them. Then I could substitute ingredients and lower my high point recipes to healthy point recipes. I get a two-week free trial with my WW membership, but with school, work, and kids activities, I'm worried I wouldn't get the full experience before I decide to buy it. I'm still considering. It has other features, but that's the main one I'd be interested in.

OK, time to go hit the scales!

Less later,
Laurie

Day 3, week 3

Woo hoo! I uncovered and actually used the elliptical this morning...not for long, but at least it's being used. I've also tried today to only eat "filling foods" at meals for a whole day. Anything else will have to be at snack time. Breakfast was actually filling enough that I wasn't interested in lunch for 4 hours, but lunch? I ate 2 hours ago and I'm hungry. Not ravenous yet, but I'm heading that direction. I'll nibble on something after this post.

I shopped at Trader Joe's today for some great chicken. It costs more there, but I'm trying NOT to support the large, industrial chicken corporations and instead, buy as local and cage free as I can. I don't know if my little piece makes any difference at all, but it make me feels better about what we're eating. I digress...Trader Joe's has a lot of healthier options and I previously got some freeze-dried blueberries that were fantastic. I chose a different TJ's today (same distance, opposite direction), and liked it better. It seems to be a little larger, was cleaner, and had a slightly larger variety of goodies. Anyway, they not only had the blueberries, they also had freeze-dried strawberries and bananas. I skipped the bananas, but couldn't resist the strawberries. I'll let you know how they were next post.

Claire and I went walking around the adjacent neighborhood to sell Girl Scout cookies. Much better success on one street there than in our whole neighborhood. We'll remember that next year.

Tomorrow, we're checking out a new park in Chandler. It's the first park in the Valley that was built on a defunct landfill. I didn't realize that this was a new concept out in the southwest. I mean, back east we build all sorts of recreational things on old landfills. Golf courses, municipal parks, lakes, you name it. I guess the idea that you might actually run out of space is new here. And the idea that your landfill may actually fill up someday? Unheard of. Anyway, this particular park has walking and bike trails and an archery range. We're going to see if there's a rental archery option and scope it all out.

Great day to all!

Day 2, week 3

Ahhh, the second week slow-down. It was still a success however. This week was a 2.8 pound loss, for a total of 7.2 pounds! I'm happy to say that I'm still feeling great about the experience and am striving on.

So far the biggest lesson for me? I'm repeating myself, but the importance of tracking can't be overstated. At this early stage of the game, I NEED to track it all. Every bite, every nibble...gotta track it all.

This week's goal from WW is to add 10 minutes a day of activity on top of whatever else you're doing. I missed it day 1 and 2, but have uncovered the elliptical in the corner of the t.v. room and will hit it tomorrow morning.

Each week's goal doesn't replace the previous week's; it's cumulative. So now, I should be tracking at least 10 of the meals each week (done), and have 10 meals that qualify as a "filling food" (difficult for me), having an additional 10 minutes of activity every day. What will come next week?

My goal is to not have too many of my points go for non-nutritional items. I mean, I could drink 30 cups of sugar free hot chocolate and stay within the points I'm allowed to have, but that's not exactly a balanced diet. Balance in all things. That's always a struggle for me. I don't seem to have it. I think that there are so many different parts of my life to balance that it's hard to keep the plates spinning. I feel like, if I could do it, so many stresses would mellow and I probably wouldn't be overweight at all. I will try to be more balanced in all things. That will help me more than anything else.

Off topic, this rain is really quite something. When we moved to Arizona, we heard about "the rainy season" and laughed! I mean really, how much rain are they talking about? We're winding up year 5 here and thus far haven't witnessed a real rainy season. We've been below average precipitation every year! This year is only 3 weeks old and I think we're going to hit the entire year's amount in the next 2 days.

OK, I just looked it up and am getting a variety of averages, but they're all under 10 inches a year. We've gotten a third of that in the past 3 days. It is tapering off though and maybe we'll see some sunshine by Sunday or Monday. Then we can have no rain again until the monsoon season this summer :).

The kids are begging to go up to Flagstaff to play in the snow. We'll have to do that this year. In past years, we've gone north and found some snow to play in an turned around and come home. This time I think we'd like to go play, stay the night, and play again the next day. We'll see.

Well I'll sign off for now and post more about being less later.

Day 5, week 2...where'd the week go?

Still on track. The challenges this week were scheduling related. Sometimes even the best plans take a detour, and that was my schedule for the weekend.

Friday night was ladies' night out with my chickie girlfriends. My pick this month, so we went to Applebee's. I had a very nice WW points dinner from their menu. A garlicky chicken dinner with roasted potatoes and steamed broccoli. It didn't taste like the 7 points it was calculated to be. There was a great, but very buttery tasting sauce on it that defied my belief in the 7 points. I'm assuming it was actually more, and skipped dessert. Some of us walked to and from dinner, so that helped keep the damage down if indeed there was some cooking error. We'll see. I've tried to hardly use any of my extra points for the week figuring that even if there was a mistake in preparation, it's not likely to be the whole 35 extra points worth....gosh, I hope anyway.

Saturday was Claire's Kids Rock mile run, and NO, I didn't run with her. I only run if my children are in danger or if tigers are chasing me. Sorry, that's my rule. The challenge Saturday turned out to be scheduling. I was not scheduled to work, so my menu plan including cooking. Then, my second job called and asked if I could switch my Sunday hours for a Saturday shift. I said yes, but then had to cook dinner for lunch AND watch my Cardinals lose at football. Too much pressure. But I stayed on course, and actually got to go get some new walking kicks.

Sunday is a blur to me now. What did we do? Oh yeah, Sunday School, lunch out (Sweet Tomatoes), laundry, homework, cooking a recipe that only one of us (Chip) liked, then assisting in Ted's science fair project from 6 until 10:30 in the cold, dark, desert. Sweet Tomatoes wasn't on the original plan for the day, but we were out and about gathering supplies for the project later and Claire used her great report card reward.

Sweet Tomatoes is a great place for some yummy salads, but it has LOTS of food traps that are easy to fall into. The salad bar has some pre-dressed salads, but they're really point-laden. I didn't know this for a fact until I got home to my point book, but I was fairly certain. So, I got only a little bit of that and added undressed salad fixings to the salad. I was able to stay away from the pastas with not too much effort. Then there's the hot bar area. Man oh man, do I love a good muffin! I was able to have two! Yay! They have a sugar free banana crunch muffin top and a fruit/bran thing that was goooooood. They also had Dreyer's fat free frozen yogurt in the machine so I had a little of that and kept the point total for the meal at 12. Way more than I would've eaten at home, but the damage was minimal.

Overall, a good weekend for WW and a fun one for the Bridges.

The challenge from WW was to have 10 meals that qualify as filling by their definition and so far, I only have 2. I'm thinking that this might be a challenge I don't make, but one I can be conscious of and try again in the future.

Less later.....:)

Day 1, Week 2 - A tremendous start!

I lost 4.4 lbs! Yay for me! Happy dance on the keyboard....

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Anyway, that's enough motivation to keep going for another week. That, and I've already paid for the next 9 weeks. Funny, that's the length of both kids' marking periods and I started when theirs started . Guess we all get graded on something in life.

The family is eating better through osmosis. I'm not about to make separate meals for all of the diners in this house. I just double all of the recipes so that our bottomless pit 12 year old son can eat all he wants. I've prepared 9-can chili, bought rotisserie chicken from Costco, made a chicken stir-fry dish, and added 3 new meals to the cooking repertoire. Tonight was a beef stew from the WW cookbook - family gave it 5 stars, last night I ate Subway veggie sub since I was in class, Tuesday night was honey-mustard pork chops (WW cookbook) - family gave it 4-1/2-5 stars, and Monday night was rosemary chicken and wild rice (WW cookbook) - family gave it 4-5 stars. Chip's a bit stingy with the 5's cause there's always room for improvement. LOL I have great eaters in this house. They'll try more things than I will.

I've felt great all week. Not just physically, but mentally too. The planning ahead means that I've always got something measured out, ready to eat whenever I need or want it. I haven't ever approached an eating plan this way before, and it's keeping me on track. I haven't eaten a nibble that I haven't written down. I haven't been hungry, but I have occasionally wanted to eat something bad for me...like a bunch of Oreos. There's something prohibitive about having to write it down BEFORE you eat it that's helpful. I mean, do I really want to look back at a log and see hot fudge sundae and oreos and have to try to figure out why I'm not losing any weight?

This week's challenge from the meeting was to try to have 10 meals that qualify as filling. That means every ingredient in them has to be from the "approved" list having the right balance of calories, fat, and fiber. That will be a challenge for me. So far, I've eaten lots of filling foods, but at almost every meal, I have some sort of bread or pasta. That negates the whole meal as a filling one. I will try though, just to see what impact a filling meal with no breads on the plate feels like an hour after I eat it. I'll probably stick with breakfasts and a couple of lunches. They seem less intimidating.

My challenge for myself is to add some additional physical exercise to my week. I'm walking with Claire to sell GS cookies this weekend, but that's sporadic and not aerobic, so I don't think it counts as much, but if we stay out long enough, it's still a point. I'll keep you posted.

Day 7, week 1 - Planning does pay....I hope

Well, I'm getting ready to go to bed at the end of the first week. Tomorrow the scale will tell if my diligence has paid off in any measurable way. I've stepped on the home scale a couple of times and need to break myself of that particular habit. Once a week weighing is enough and their scale never changes. My scale allows me to get on before I eat in the morning or before or after any other number of slightly weight changing activities. On the WW scale, I'll be going at the same time, on the same day, after following the same routine each and every week. That type of consistency will give me more accurate results.

I'm prepared for the slow and steady losses of less than a pound a week. I'm older than the last time I did this, less active, more menopausal, and therefore slower to metabolize even the air that I breathe. I swear, there are days when I feel like celery could lead to weight gain. But I'd really like a big number to start off the program and keep that energetic honeymoon phase going!

I haven't been any hungrier than before I started this, and I'm certainly eating better food. My planning has allowed me the freedom to munch a little, and satisfy the different food cravings we all get from time to time...something salty, or crunchy, or crispy. I've had it all.

I'll post the results of week 1 tomorrow!

Day 5 of Week 1

The biggest hurdle of yesterday was football! Gosh do I love to munch and watch. My strategy this time around is write down the points I KNOW I will consume during the day. In other words, extensive menu planning. That means that I know exactly what my meals are going to be and I know how many points I'll have left for "incidental eating". Notice I didn't say accidental eating. That's another of my tripping spots. Accidental eating happens in the Costco aisles, or while making the kids' lunches, or licking the beaters, or nibbling on the new recipe to see what else it needs; you didn't plan for it, and often don't realize you've done it until it's too late. You have to account for those too, but incidental eating is what I'm calling anything outside of a regularly planned meal.

So after I meal planned the day Sunday, I saw what I had left and decided to pre-package some snacks and had stuff I could munch on during the game. It worked really well. I didn't feel left out of the munching, and I stayed on my plan. I ate pretzel slims, cherries, popcorn, carrot sticks, and seltzer with lime. Plus dinner was my awesome 1 point chili. I can eat lots of that without penalty so I stayed satisfied all afternoon.

Lesson of the day is planning does pay.

The new personal adventure

Day 4 of week 1:

We're not on another traveling adventure (YET), but I have embarked on my own personal new journey. I guess it's not a totally new journey, as I have been here many times before, but I seize it this time with hopefully more vigor! The journey is weight loss.

In the past, I've been temporarily successful (25 lbs) with Jenny Craig (prepare for our wedding), gained it back, plus some extra. Then Atkins (post baby #1), VERY successful (over 60 lbs.), loved the food, but thought I could maintain and modify it...I couldn't, but I haven't ever gained ALL of it back. Most of it, but not all. As it crept back on after baby #2, I decided to try Weight Watchers...again very successful (20 lbs), but when we moved I fell off of the wagon...and gained that 20 back. Got settled in the new place and lived with the 20 for a while. Tried to just "eat well and exercise", and that didn't work for me. Decided when I cleaned out a drawer and found some unused Weight Watchers meeting certificates that I'd give it a try again. Stuck with it for 6 months, lost a bit of weight, but got frustrated that I couldn't find a meeting that fit my schedule and let it lapse. Now, 18 months later and 20 lbs shy of my all time high, I'm back with WW again. I find comfort in the meetings, and accountability. I like the camaraderie and support, and there's almost always a great recipe.

Another reason it has worked for me in the past is that I am a foodie. I enjoy everything about food. I like meal planning, recipe searching, shopping, preparing, cooking, the smells, tastes, and textures. Weight Watchers allows me to do all of this and uses real food, so my family is eating it (in larger portions) right along with me and I don't have to prepare two different meals for each sitting.

Why will this time be different? Hmm...I'm approaching it with the goal of getting to the weight I want (30-40 lbs away from where I am now), not just "let's see what happens". I'm looking at it like when I finally quit smoking---I got mad and determined and dug in my heels that this was it. I'm never going back to that place again.

And that is why I'm blogging. I mentioned accountability before and posting about weight loss on the internet might be the highest level of accountability there is. If I get really brave, I might post an unflattering photo and the actual weight I'm starting at, but for now, that's really not necessary is it? Besides you can see photos of me in other places on the blog. I've gained 10 since the trip, you work it out ;).

Please feel free to pepper me with questions and atta-boys! That will keep me engaged and thinking about what I'm doing.