Ummm... No

We were sitting through the meeting today and our leader pointed out the page in the new pocket guide where we can find zero point condiments to add to our foods.

Two of the listed "freebies" were baking soda and baking powder.

When was the last time you thought, "Geez, you know what would be really great on this? A sprinkle of baking powder."

Yeah, me either.

I'll Take It, But I Don't Have to Like It

So, this week I needed to lose one stupid pound to get to 60. And guess what? I didn't. I lost 0.6. Zero Point Six! DANGIT! This sucks!

Yeah, I'm kinda cheesed. I mean, at least I didn't go up, and on the heels of last week's good loss, I kinda thought I'd have less of a loss this week to make up for it, but 0.6!? That's the best my metabolism could do? It couldn't stretch out another lousy four tenths?

Oh well, I'll be celebrating next week instead. This was a hard week--I just read Annette's blog and she said she was hungry this week. Well, so was I. I dipped into the M&Ms on the counter and the Hershey kisses. And I got seriously into oatmeal raisin cookies this week. Why? I dunno, but they tasted really good to me.

Another habit I've noticed that I have is that when I get home and I'm starting to make dinner, I have to eat. I just sit there and snack while I'm cooking. I know full well that dinner will be in x number of minutes, but I'm snacking. So I'm going to try and find something healthy to snack on, since I don't seem able to break that habit--some veggies or something.

Yesterday being in the car so long (I logged 256 miles yesterday--is that ridiculous or what?!), as I was driving home, I was completely exhausted. I stopped over at Sheetz to pick up a caffienated beverage and I got some Sunchips as well, since I hadn't eaten since 11:00 and it was 5:30. I guesstimated correctly the points in the Sunchips, but definitely needed to do more planning, as I wound up with a 0 point soup and salad for dinner. Those soups are actually pretty filling, but watching my husband sink his teeth into a chicken cutlet sandwich made the soup seem like a poor second choice.

Well, we'll see what happens this week. No book club, which should help, as should being able to exercise daily! However, with the 4 day weekend, I'm cooking at least 3 and possibly 4 countries this weekend, so that may well stunt things a bit. We'll see!

WOO HOO!

So, I weighed in yesterday, and didn't get a chance to post until today. I had a very good week last week, dropping 2.8 for a total loss of exactly 59 pounds on the nose. This leaves me with a total of 7.2 pounds to lose before Valentine's Day to reach my mini goal of 10 pounds and only 5 more pounds to hit my secondary goal of 64 pounds lost. After a very slow (but I'm not complaining!) month of December, a bigger drop like this felt great.

Even better, I went shopping at Walmart for our party and decided to grab a cheap pair of jeans while I was in there. On a whim, I bought a pair that was a size smaller than most of my pants and two sizes smaller than what I was wearing at my heaviest weight. I brought them home, put them on, and they fit like a glove!!! I ran downstairs yelling, "I HAVE SKINNY JEANS! I HAVE SKINNY JEANS!" I made the General check 'em out. Wow did that feel good.

I also punched my start numbers and current numbers into the BMI calculator on the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute website. It appears that my BMI has dropped exactly 9 points now. This is also quite exciting.

So, I'm back on the ole horse now full swing into 2009. Things are looking good and feeling great. Today I was running up and down the stairs, hauling boxes of china and Christmas decorations. I didn't notice anything about my ability to do so until my sister stopped me and said, "Last year, you had were out of breath constantly." Wow. Now that's impressive!

Hopefully next week I'll get a nice 5 pound star. My brother-in-law is considering joining up this week, so we talked about it all day today. The General is feeling great too and his pants and shirts are all getting looser every day. I think we're all going to be much, much healthier come the end of 2009!

Mmmmmm-kay

Well, I went to the meeting today with a heavy heart. Confession time: I did not track in December. Oh sure, a day here and there, but mostly I just kind of ate and made best guesses in my head. Not good, but I figured, "Well, it's the holidays."

By and large, my weigh-ins were pretty good. For the month of December, I lost a total of 3.6 pounds. But this week, I even gave up on the guessing. I just wanted to eat me some food. It probably had a lot to do with everyone leaving, the holidays being essentially over, a release of stress, and maybe just a little bit of not giving a damn.

We had tons of Chinese food on New Year's Eve. I made a huge ham and scalloped potatoes for New Year's Day, topped off with a Pepperidge Farm coconut cake--the height of celebrating as far as I'm concerned. I made veggie dip, which Jacalyn helped eat, and though I used FF sour cream and light mayo, I still felt like "eh, whatever" and just ate it. I mean, white and creamy is white and creamy, so it's probably not that great for you regardless. I ate candy. I baked scones and ate them with clotted cream. We had pizza for dinner the last two nights--and at Jacalyn's, I ate a piece of deep dish supreme from Papa John's and I used the garlic butter on the crust. The week was a veritable orgy of good eats.

And I only formally exercised twice.

So this morning I trudged into WW with a heavy heart. Oh, I didn't regret what I'd done, but I had a bad feeling. My main goal on WW has always been not to have to repeat an award. For every five pounds you lose, you get a 5 pound star. And I've never had to re-win the stars before. I just got my 55 pound star a few weeks ago.

Well, guess what? The trend holds. By some miracle, I only re-gained 0.2 pounds, giving me a 2008 total of 56.2 pounds gone. (I am resetting the group total for 2009--so we're all back to square one! Let's see what we can lose in 2009!) I came through the holidays with a total loss of 3.4 pounds. This is nothing short of miraculous. The world did not end because I didn't bake cookies. My world did not end when I didn't bake for work.

But to be honest, my daily points allowance is 34 and I couldn't tell you what 34 points worth of food looks like. So this week, I get back to tracking. Back to daily activity. The people at the meeting rave about what a good walk does for you on a bad day, so if I get into a dark mood--which is almost sure to happen on Monday when I return to work from 2 weeks away--I'm going to take a walk. It's so freakin' freezing that I might have to do it at the mall or something, but I'll do it.

At our meeting, we were encouraged to set a goal for Valentine's Day week, which is 6 weeks away. I think I will set a goal of TRACKING and trying to lose 10 pounds. That's less than two pounds per week, so hopefully I'll be able to get it done. I will go back to guesstimating what we have at book club, and being pretty on target for everything else. The big hurdle will be our Three Kings dinner on the 10th, but I am usually so busy I don't get to eat until dinner, so I'm thinking that might not be an issue either. Plus it's on a Saturday after I weigh in, so I'll have the whole week to work it off. And if that doesn't work, I'll head down to the Mediterranean market on the corner where Eyup takes great delight in telling me how much weight I could lose if I ate there regularly and let him take my self esteem down a few pegs.

All in all, a very satisfactory result after a week of prolonged naughtiness. Back on track, onwards!

Momentum Sunday

This weekend we were making out our shopping list and when asking my husband what he wanted for dinner this week, the list read largely like the list a triumphant seven year old with overindulgent parents might put together: hot dogs, pizza, chicken fingers. Not so, thought I! I'm cracking open the new Momentum cookbook and preparing some new and tasty dishes.

I decided to try two different recipes, one for lunch and one for dinner. I was dying to try the "Best Ever BLTs". I haven't had a BLT since long before I joined WW, but I do like them. I was a bit skeptical about trying turkey bacon, but in for a penny, in for a pound, so I bought some on my shopping excursion Sunday morning.

Well, I don't know if it's the best ever BLT, but it is pretty darned good. It should be called an ABLT, as it has avocado included on it. I like avocado, but if I make this again, which I probably will as I have an entire package of turkey bacon looking for a good excuse to be eaten, I might leave off the avocado.

The pesto mayonnaise was a fantastic touch, and very easy to prepare. I really enjoyed it instead of plain mayonnaise, which I am not that crazy about. The turkey bacon was fine, not as good as the real thing, perhaps, but knowing it was a healthier choice kind of pushed me towards it as a certainly viable option.

Overall, I'd give this recipe a B+/A-. I really enjoyed eating a good BLT and this was no exception. The minor quibbles I had with it weren't worth getting too excited about. I used Pepperidge Farm 15 grain bread, which I recommend. As you all remember, when I started eating a lot of fiber and grain bread products, I had a very difficult time. Eventually I switched to Nature's Own Whitewheat on Lauren's suggestion, which has proved very satisfactory. But the picture of that bread in the cookbook made me want to eat something more substantial, so I bought the 15 grain bread and had no problems with it whatsoever.

For dinner, we tried the turkey cutlets milanese. Since joining WW, we have pretty much been on a chicken and turkey diet. We never liked to eat too much beef anyway--it was rare I would make something like beef stroganoff, and we never ate steak or roasts or anything of that nature. The only beef we were big on was ground beef for things like tacos or burgers. However, even that we have mostly supplanted with ground turkey now. I swear, we are going to sprout feathers and either cluck or gobble. Apparently, there is a WW booklet coming called "Beyond chicken" and I am lokoing forward to that.

So, I am on the prowl for new poultry recipes to jazz up our menu of fowl. (Nyuk nyuk) I found this turkey cutlets Milanese and decided that it sounded like a good Sunday dinner kind of thing. I have never made turkey cutlets before, but I do make chicken cutlets, which Michael and I both LOVE to eat, and I figured turkey cutlets would be pretty similar.

The recipe was easy enough to follow, dipping the cutlets in a mixture of egg and lemon juice and then into a mixture of corn meal and parmesan cheese before sauteeing them in some olive oil. The result is a very nice, crisp cutlet that is quite flavorful. It does taste like turkey, and I don't know why that surprised me, but when I bit into it, I thought, "Wow, this actually tastes like turkey!" I guess I expected a milder kind of chickeny taste. I dunno.

Anyway, the recipe was quite good and garnered rave reviews from my other half. The cutlet is topped with a salad of greens and halved cherry tomatoes covered in a balsamic vinaigrette dressing, which I left off his portion. I served mine over a bed of Barilla Plus pasta and his with a side of mashed potatoes, and we were both most satisfied at the results. It was very filling and a nice twist on what could have been another ho hum poultry dinner. I will say that I didn't taste the lemon in it at all. If it was there, it was so subtle as to be overpowered by the parmesan and salad dressing, which is fine with me as I am not a big lemon fan anyway. I don't hate it, I just don't love it. I would give this one a grade of A. We both really enjoyed it.

So thus endeth Momentum Sunday. I plan to try the Thai shrimp salad this weekend when I have company around to help me eat it, as I don't think The General will stand for it. He can have hot dogs or something! Hope everyone is having a good week out there!

Weekly Report

Well, since I had a loss today, I am reporting in early :-) I credit this week's 2 pound loss to the new DVD. That thing makes me work it, while at the same time having fun. The added bonus is that it's exactly the same amount of time as the General is on the treadmill, so we start and finish at the same time and can sit on the couch and groan together. Fun!

I am now down 54.8, so it maybe sucks just a little bit that I didn't hit 55 this week, but oh well! Next week.

I can hardly believe it's December and I'm actually losing. It has helped tremendously that I'm not baking yet--this is often my baking weekend. No Christmas goodies or snacks around, though, so that's been helpful.

I'm trying to think of a goal that I want to hit after I hit my 60 pound goal, which was my post-10% goal. 75 is the next logical step. I just need a deadline. Maybe by our anniversary in April, but that seems a bit far in the future. Still, one never knows what will happen, so it might be good to plan it like that.

I want to put in a plug for those new Progresso soups which have WW points values on the label. Yesterday I got home, and I knew I was short on points, but I wanted a snack, so I grabbed a zero point soup and ate half the can (one serving). It did a great job of a) filling me up and b) warming me up. I'm stocking up on them--lots of coupons, so we can get lots of soup!

Till next week...

A Slight Uptick on the Scale

This week, I am late in posting. I always hate posting on the weeks I have a slight gain, or any gain, for that matter, not that this one was anything worth crying over. I went up 0.2, which in WW land is akin to maintaining.

I suspect it happened on account of the fact that last week was so nuts. There were 3 days I didn't get to do any exercise at all apart from the day-to-day stuff of shopping and wandering around per my usual routine. This has been drastically remedied this week, however.

After a long time of Sweatin' to the Oldies, I decided it was time to trade it in on a newer model, so I pulled out my DVD of 60's Blast Off. I could about fall asleep while I was "Sweatin'" and I figured it wasn't giving me as good of a work out as it could any more. When I started Sweatin' 53 pounds ago, it was a struggle. I couldn't even do the entire DVD, fast forwarding through the Wipe Out section, which involved a lot of running and hopping and skipping. 53 pounds later, however, not only can I do the entire DVD, but I'm not breaking a sweat doing it.

Enter 60's Blast Off. Richard has traded in his Yale wifebeater and candy cane striped shorts for hot pink and sparkles. And he's taken the exercise up a notch. This DVD is much shorter--only about 30 minutes. But it is an intense 30 minutes. By the time it's over, I am sweating and am really out of breath. However, it is actually FUN and I feel like I'm a coordinated dancer type when I do it. I think it's probably giving me good results, though I won't know till Saturday. So I'm excited to do that.

I'm also excited to note that this week, the General has been consistently breaking 1 mile on his treadmill. Yesterday was his personal best at 1.06 miles in 26 minutes. When we started, he couldn't do but 5 minutes before collapsing. And for a long time, he's been stuck at .95 miles. So this is a big step and I'm really proud of the work he's putting into it!

Ok, see you all on Saturday!