Carbs beget more carbs

I took my youngest son to a birthday party today and had a couple bites of pasta salad and potato chips while we were there. Now the rest of the day, I've been so snacky for other carbs! Today is my mom's birthday, so my oldest and I made carrot cake cupcakes for her party tomorrow. I had one to sample. WTF?! I had planned on having one tomorrow night and that was it. I've had some of my kids' bunny cracker snacks, too. This is a good lesson, I guess, as I learned that I really have to limit bad carbs like white pasta. I know tomorrow will be another bad day because of my mom's birthday party. My grandma is making fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Uhhh...yeah, I really shouldn't eat any of that, but there's no way I'm going to turn them down. My plan had been to be really good today, tomorrow leading up to dinner, and then on Monday have pretty much zero carbs. So much for today. Ugh.

On a brighter note, I'm down 13 pounds from when I started the SBD! Woo hoo!! A couple friends I hadn't seen in awhile today at the birthday party complimented me on how good I look which is awesome. And I'm wearing a shirt I bought in the Juniors department at Kohl's. Amazing!! I also got a dress there (in the Juniors department) for an upcoming Vegas trip. I took some updated measurements on Thursday I think it was, so I'll have to post those. And I don't think I ever posted my originals.

Amazing!!

I ended up really going off the diet last night for our date night. I decided I wanted to drink along with my husband, so I did. We had mango banana daiquiris, red wine (just one glass), and espresso martinis. (Side note, I"m amazingly not hungover.) I tried to stick on the diet foodwise, and mostly I did except that I caved and had one of those little chocolate chip cookies I had mentioned. They were good but not amazing, yet I kept snacking on them. I made us some awesome oysters for dinner instead of us going out, and we heated up some ciabbatta rolls to soak up the awesome sauce. I debated if I even wanted to weigh myself today, but I did want to see what the impact of all that would be. I honestly expected to go up about three pounds. I was VERY surprised that my weight this morning was the exact same as yesterday!! That makes me feel much better about getting ready to start reintroducing some carbs, knowing that my weight isn't going to skyrocket back up!

What the deuce?!

My weight was up slightly this morning! Only 0.4 pounds, but still. I kind of wonder if it's because yesterday, and somewhat the day before, I kind of grazed all day instead of having actual meals. I'm getting pretty tired of cooking eggs for breakfast, so I've been snacking more in the morning instead of eating breakfast. Last night I had planned on making dinner but then didn't and just grazed. I wonder if that has to do with the slight weight increase. I know I didn't drink as much water yesterday as I usually do either.

My mom is keeping the kids for us overnight, and I know I'm going off diet slightly today (although I'm going to try to stick with it as much as I can), so I'm curious to see how it affects my weight tomorrow.

Right now, though, I'm off to a weigh-in at my gym for a 90 day weight loss challenge. I think I'm just about at my initial goal of losing 10 pounds which is pretty cool.

It's been one week

Are you singing Barenaked Ladies after reading that? I am. Not that I'm complaining, though. I'll take a fun little ditty like that stuck in my head. :)

Anyway, yesterday marked my first week on the South Beach Diet. So far so good. I'm borderline obsessed with weighing myself and regularly do it every morning, diet or not. Yeah, yeah, I know you're not supposed to, but I just can't help it. This time I just wanted to monitor and make sure I was losing like I was supposed to. Why give up carbs if I'm not showing any progress? I did my official weight check yesterday and redid my measurements. Ready for it?

I'm down 10 pounds!!! I FINALLY broke under 180. I've been stuck in the 180s for at least a year, aside from a few days following a nasty stomach bug where I dropped down to 178, but of course that came right back as soon as I was eating again. I'm beyond thrilled. My doctor had said that 175 would be an adequate weight for me since I'm tall and have a larger frame. Ideally I'd like to be around 155, but I don't think that's realistic. I weighed 167 when I got married, so I figure somewhere around 165 would be pretty good. I haven't lost a whole lot measurements wise. I think I was down half an inch in my waist, half an inch in my thigh, and a quarter inch in my arm. I guess that's something. The shorts I put on yesterday were really loose...like I could pull them down all the way while they were buttoned. Woo hoo! I'd love to be able to fit into my size 10s and 12s again and get rid of all my size 14s that I've been wearing, well, since my oldest was born.

I tell you, though, as I get closer to the end of phase one, I'm soooo ready for some carbs. A cracker, a bite of bread, a strawberry...I feel like my options are getting more limited the longer I do this. Summer fruit is still pretty inexpensive, and my kids love fruit, so it's been really hard to dish them up peaches, nectarines, strawberries, etc. and not indulge myself. I did get some sugar free, 25 calorie popsicles that help with my sweet cravings, but it's still not the same. It was really hard this past weekend to not have any beer or alcoholic beverages since the husband and I usually indulge in a few on the weekends. My mom is keeping the kids this weekend so we can have a date night, and I think I'm going to cheat a little and have some red wine. It's phase two approved, and I'm so close, I figure I can indulge just a little.

I was really proud of myself at my MOPS group today. At each meeting one of the tables provides breakfast for the entire group. Normally there are quite a few egg dishes, but of course not today. There was one I could eat. Another egg dish had potatoes in it and was topped with crescent rolls or puff pastry, and everything else was fruit or pastries. Sigh. It looked awesome, but I held strong and had two little pieces of the one casserole I could eat. I was so glad I'd had something to eat at home before going instead of banking on there being multiple options for me. Tonight I have Bunco, and I'm kind of expecting the same thing...not a lot of food options I can snack on, but I'll just make sure I'm full when I go or stick in some almonds or another diet approved snack. Hopefully the adult beverage that's served isn't something I love.

I'm still struggling to not taste my kids' food...I had no idea how often I did that! I bought some bite size chocolate chip cookies for them at Trader Joe's last week, and I swear the cookies taunt me every time I open the pantry. I actually put one in my mouth the other day just to taste it and then immediately spit it out. I'm still not sure if that was gross or clever or some combination of the two. I think at this point a lot of it is just that I really want a carb of some sort, so I'd take what I could get.

Five more days to go on Phase One!

Fruit

I miss fruit. That's all I have to say right now.

Day 2

Today seemed to be easier, but I also had a lot more food choices because I made it to Costco today and was able to get what I needed for my meal plan and snacks. Yesterday was a real struggle because I had to postpone Costco because of a sick kid, so pretty much nothing on my meal plan worked for lunch, dinner, and snacks. I ate a lot of ham and cheese roll-ups and cottage cheese.

I think my biggest hurdle in this first two week period (Phase 1) is going to be remembering not to take bites of what my kids are eating. Yesterday I slipped up and had two tiny pieces of fruit from my son's fruit cup, and today I had a sip of my son's lemonade. Not too bad in the grand scheme of things I guess. As soon as I took the sip of lemonade today I realized I wasn't supposed to have it; yesterday it was awhile before I realized about the fruit.

Costco itself was a bit of a struggle because of all the samples and my kids like to eat lunch there. Thankfully I evaluated everything before just mindlessly eating whatever it was. One of the samples was smoked salmon on a cracker, so I gave the kids the crackers while I ate the salmon. I had planned on eating lunch when I got home, but I was starving. I had a hot dog and just tossed the bun. It was hard to not take a bite of my oldest's pizza slice.

I took my measurements yesterday but still need to take a before picture. I debated redoing the weight and measurements today because I really indulged Tuesday so I figure the numbers might be a bit elevated. Oh well, it will just look like I've lost that much more.

Day One

I don't know why this blog looks so funny, I'll have to do some playing around with the design settings and getting it normal. What's with all the little corners on everything??

Anyway, it's 8:00 AM the day I'm starting the South Beach Diet. I feel like crap today, but I think it's from over-indulging yesterday knowning it would be my last time to have carbs for a couple weeks. I'm not sure if it was all the pasta and garlic bread, sweet tea vodka drinks, or the onset of whatever stomach bug my son has. So far I'm finding the most difficult thing is to not snack on my kids' food. I was getting some crackers out for my oldest and was tempted to have one. I made pancakes for my youngest and was tempted to have a bite. I'm trying to get my kitchen cleaned up, then I think I'm going to make myself some eggs.

Later this morning I figure I'll weigh myself and do some measurements so I can really track what happens on this diet. These first few days I may update the blog here a couple times a day to keep on top of how I'm feeling and what my challenges are and all that.

Unbelievable--a new post!

Excuse me while I blow the dust off this blog!! I'm getting ready to start a new weight loss adventure--the South Beach Diet. I'm starting it on Wednesday, so I plan to actually use this blog to track my thoughts about the diet. I'm also trying to start running, so I figure I can document my attempts at that as well!

Weight Update

I can't believe I'm going to put this out there, but I figure I might as well. I'm a modern woman, do I really care if people know what I weigh? Yeah...I kind of do. Oh well. I was just entering my weight from last week's weigh-in on my WW weight tracker. Out of curiousity I went back to see what my weight was when I started WW back in September. It was 190. On January 1st it was 183. I'm pretty pleased with myself that I managed to lose weight over that time frame given that I went to Florida and Mexico, as well as celebrated Thanksgiving and indulged in Christmas treats. Granted, had I been "good" I probably could have dropped more, but a loss is a loss, right? As of Friday morning--my day to weigh in--I was down to 181.6. When I reach 180.5 I will get my 5% loss award! My goal weight--I think--is going to be 150 so I still have a ways to go. I'm giving myself the whole year to get down to that. I figure that way I won't discourage myself with an unrealistic timeline, and it will factor in some time for weeks I don't lose or when I hit plateaus.

I joined a gym!

My friend Mary works for Lifetime Fitness. There was one really close to our old house, but it was so expensive to join when it first opened, even though it was huge and looked like it had a ton to offer. Several friends of mine drive the 20 minutes or so from our area to the one closest to us, so I had thought about joining but again wasn't sure if I wanted to shell out the money, even though I really wanted to get into a gym routine again to help me get back in shape.

This is where my friend Mary comes into the picture. She sent out an email recently that they were having a special, that with an employee referral you could join for $39 a month. That's at least $20 less than it was last time I looked at the monthly dues. And there was no contract, no enrollment fee, I can cancel anytime. I decided to take the plunge. I signed up last week when it was the last day of the promotion, but I had a cold then the stomach flu then the cold returned last week, so I wasn't ever able to go. I decided we'd head over there today, even though I kept coming up with excuses to not go.

I'm so glad I went! Mary was there to work out, so she hung out with me for awhile, and my friend Michelle was there as well. Will had so much fun in the child care area, he didn't want to leave when it was time. Woo hoo!! I was so glad they liked it. Two hours of child care is included each time you go. They have a huge outdoor pool we can use in the summer (since our community one always seems kind of skeevy)...I'm very excited for all the possibilities!

I did 15 minutes on the eliptical trainer and thought I was going to die. I used to do 45 minutes on that thing every day at a pretty high intensity (pre-kids, of course)! I moved to a stationary bike after that and did almost 30 minutes, so I feel pretty good about what I accomplished my first day back at a gym. It's pretty close to Will's school which will make it easy to go on his preschool days since I have to head that way anyway to pick him up.

Basically going to the gym today confirmed that I am indeed an out of shape fat ass that needs to get back in the gym and start dropping these pounds!!

(Oh, and on an unrelated topic to the gym, I had a physical last week and talked with my doctor about weight loss. She said 30-35 pounds is probably the ideal amount for me to lose, so that's what I'm going for!)