Updates!

Wow, it's been forever since I last posted! The last time I posted I said that I was going off any special dieting, and just keeping a close eye on my weight. Well, it has worked. I haven't gone down to 137 since I started just eating whatever I chose. So... I got to eat to my heart's content on Thanksgiving! It was a little scary though, coming home and weighing myself to see the scale say 144! But by breakfast time the next day, I was already back down to 141, so I didn't have to do a steak day. I ate cautiously, and stuck to low carbohydrate and starch foods. By Saturday morning I was back down to hovering between 139.5 and 140.0. It seems that my hypothyroid might be pretty stabilized! I'm still going to watch my weight VERY carefully until the end of my 42 day maintenance phase.

I have to say I am really enjoying being able to eat banana bread, tacos, corn on the cob, and, of course, sweet potatoes! Yummy! I am also enjoying being able to eat these foods without the fear of bloating and weight gain :D

I have been thinking about what I'm going to do at the end of this diet... whether I am going to do a second round of the HCG, in an attempt to lose 10 more pounds, or if I am going to try something else. I've been half-heartedly looking into trying Acai berry, as that is said to really do a great job with energy and weight loss.

Here are a few links, so you know what I'm talking about.

One Reporter's Journey

Acai Berry Questions and Answers

The only thing is that I think it can be expensive. I'm going to do some more research on it, and will update my blog when I have more information.

Meanwhile, my hubby thinks I look great. I think his words were - "better defined and shapely figure." Oh who am I kidding. I know those were his words... I wrote them down right after he said them HAHA!!!

Loving the new me!

I give up! lol

I have the hardest time keeping my weight up to where it's supposed to be at 139. I have gone down to 137 twice, and rarely am above 138. To keep my weight up, I've eaten walnuts, which helped but then they disappeared, I've eaten a little banana bread (which did nothing) drank a smoothie with a banana - nothing. I hate a handful of corn chips. Nothing. Not even half a pound. I go to bed every night at 138.5 or so, and by morning I'm between 137 and 138. I realize that I only have to stay within 2 pounds of my ending weight, but I'm tired of worrying about it.

So, I'm going to continue weighing myself in the morning, and before every meal. Based on that weight I will decide what and how much to eat. For instance, today I had friends over, and we made a big pot of mac 'n' cheese for everyone. I went and weighed myself, and was hovering between 138 and 138.5. So I had about half a cup of mac 'n' cheese, and a nice size salad with ham. By dinner I was 138.5. So I feel like I made a good choice. I ate food that I enjoyed, but paid close attention to the portion, as well as making sure to get in some really healthy food in the process. I'm going to stop worrying about carbs, and sugars, except to make sure I'm not having something to eat that is pure sugar. An occasional cookie would be nice, but I won't be sitting there pigging out on an entire batch. I like mac 'n' cheese, but I won't be eating the entire box anymore (even if it IS my favorite spirals! lol) and I'm going to make sure I get plenty of fruit and vegetables. I am still not having very much dairy - no more than about a cup of milk a day, and possibly some shredded cheese in my salads. I'm getting lots of protein in hard boiled eggs, and steak, with a little chicken every now and then. A well balanced diet is key. And I will adjust my quantities based on what my weight is before my meal.

You know what this means, right? I can eat worry free at Thanksgiving, as long as I pay attention to portion sizes and variety. YAY!

Guess what I made?

Banana bread! It's so yummy :) At least that's what I remember anyway lol... I don't get to eat banana, flour, or sugar yet, so it's off limits to me, but my family will enjoy it :)

I've been closely monitoring my weight. Yesterday I had dropped weight, and ate more calories, bringing my weight up. Today, I dropped only a small amount so just ate normally for breakfast. Unfortunately I was unable to eat lunch, and then unable to weigh myself before dinner as I was in Everett (they opened a new Winco - bananas were 18 cents a pound!!!!!! Hence the banana bread lol) and starving. As a result I wasn't able to take care with the amount I ate, and by dinner had already gone up a pound from my balance weight of 139. So I'm spending the evening drinking lots of tea and water, and will weigh myself before my nightly soak in the tub to see how my weight is doing.

Since I made a HUGE amount of the Chili Con Queso this morning, and having bought tortilla chips at Winco, I'll serve some of that to Jim. He liked it last time, so that should be pretty good for him. Hopefully Luke likes it too, but he's been grazing on fruit for the past hour and a half, and had a little yogurt, so if he doesn't like it, at least he won't be hungry :)

DROOOOOOOOL!!!!!

I just made 2 batches of my mom's famous (honestly... it's been in the paper) Chili Con Queso Dip! Without giving away the whole recipe, it's got sausage, tomatoes, garlic, onions and a ton of cheese. I worked out the calorie/fat/sugar content, and here's what I came up with. I estimated about 1 cup per serving (ended up being the perfect amount for me) and guessing about 10 cups(?) per recipe. For one serving, there is approximately 236 calories, 1.5 grams of sugar, 20 grams of protein, and 13 grams of fat. Not bad! Anyway, I ate my 1 cup's worth, and it was delicious!!!!

So this morning, I weighed myself, and had dropped a pound and a half! Yikes! I'm 137.5, which would be awesome if I wasn't trying to stabilize my weight. I wracked my brains trying to figure out how to bring that number up. Walnuts seem to have done the trick. I'm back to 138.5. I'm not going to worry overmuch about my food intake as long as I can be within half a pound of my final HCG weight of 139.0. So... now I know what to eat if my weight drops too drastically lol.

For breakfast this morning I didn't have any strawberries, so I blended just milk and 3 quarters of a canned peach. Divine, I tell you. God knew what he was doing when he put such wonderful foods on this earth!!

It was nice to be able to snack throughout the day. In addition to the walnuts, I also snacked on peaches, and had a Luna bar. Strictly speaking, I shouldn't have eaten the bar because it has a bit of flour in it, but it had less than 3 grams of sugar for the entire bar, so I just spread it out over a period of time. Plus, I was trying to get my weight up a little, and I know any kind of grain will give me a bit of a jump. It's so weird being able to watch my weight go up and down. I've never before had an issue of what I ate. I might gain a pound by nightfall, but then by morning I'm back to my weight from the day before, maybe even down half a pound or so. Now, though, I have watched my weight drop a pound and a half overnight, and watched it jump a pound within a few hours! Once my weight stabilizes, though, I shouldn't have this issue any more :)

Well, I made it!

Sort of. This morning I woke up STARVING!!! I debated what to do. I haven't woken up very hungry since I started this diet. I started wondering if the HCG had left my system already. I'm going off of the yourhcg blog, which says it takes 2 complete days after the last day of drops before you can eat regularly on the 3rd day, but I didn't get my drops through them. I got them from Amazon, so maybe the solution is different, and doesn't take as long? I was still wary, so I called Susan to talk it out with her, and discussed me eating breakfast. I didn't think I'd make it to lunch time without eating. It felt like my body was digesting itself lol. I ended up deciding, with Susan's help, to eat 2/3 of the normal amount of food I would have eaten for lunch and dinner combined, and eating that for breakfast, so that each meal was 2/3 of the amount I would have eaten. For breakfast for the kids, I had made scrambled eggs with cheese and sandwich meat (smoked turkey), and put it on toast for the Luke as a sandwich. I measured out approximately 100 grams, and ate that (I can have cheese and turkey on phase 3).

For Lunch, around 1, (I had been pretty hungry for about an hour before I was able to eat and had been guzzling water trying to keep myself from being too hungry) I ate a steak, celery (allowed on phase 2) and applesauce. I was still hungry, so I ate the biggest strawberry I'd ever seen! It was about half the size of my fist!! After the strawberry I was fine. We went to what we have named "The Pumpkin Shoot" which is when we take a ton of pumpkins up into the mountain and exercise our 2nd amendment rights :D. We got home around 3, and I was already hungry again. By 4 I was feeling ravenous. I worried about eating more calories than I was supposed to, so I went and weighed myself, feeling nervous about the extra food I'd eaten (I haven't eaten breakfast in just over 3 weeks!). Lo and behold, my weight was holding steady at 139.0 (My weight again this morning). So, this leads me to believe that if the HCG isn't completely out of my system, it's mostly out.

So I decided to eat something. I chose eggs, because they're available on both phase 2 and 3. I have been craving egg salad the past couple of days, so I checked the list. Mayonnaise wasn't on the list of allowed foods, but the list says that it is not a complete list. SO I went online and checked for sugar content. Turns out that I can have all of the ingredients in mayonnaise except sugar, which is less than 1 gram per tablespoon. So I decided it would be okay, after going to my little scale to figure out just how much 1 gram of sugar was. It's teeny!!! So I put 1 tablespoon in a bowl, boiled 3 eggs, and used 2 to make the egg salad. The total sugar content for it was less than 3 grams total (eggs each have approximately 1 gram of natural sugar in them). I have really been savoring every bite. I used to just eat it all up really fast, but I am taking little bites, really moving them around in my mouth, tasting, chewing, and thoroughly enjoying it :)

What I'm going to do every day, to be sure that I'm successful, is weigh myself before every meal. I will use my weight to determine how much I should eat for that meal. If I've gained a little since breakfast, I'll have a smaller lunch. If I've lost since breakfast, I'll have a larger lunch. Same goes for Dinner. I think this is the way to make sure that I don't overeat or under eat, making sure that my weight is properly stable.

I'll right, I'm going to go finish enjoying my very delicious egg salad. Happy November, everyone!

Good eating!

Today was the third day for my 3 day beans. If you'll remember, the first day was beans over rice, seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, served with homemade biscuits, the second day was baked beans with hot dogs, seasoned with mustard, ketchup, and brown sugar, served with homemade cornbread. Today was creamed beans. The first day I made the beans I saved the bean water (more like gravy). Today I took that back out of the fridge, added a can of sweetened evaporated milk (sweetened because I forgot to pick up molasses) and some honey (for the same reason). As an afterthought, I went ahead and mixed in some cheese. While waiting for that to cook, I fried some diced red potatoes. When the mixture was done, I mixed it into the bean mixture from yesterday, and served it up with the fried potatoes.

So far, Jim hasn't come into the house to eat it, but my friend Susan is over and she said the beans were delicious, and the fried potatoes were perfect :) So I'd say the evening was a complete success!

ETA: Jim came in and he is delighted with the beans. He's still in awe that I was able to stretch one batch of beans so far. He also said the potatoes were awesome. WhooHoo!!! I am really learning so much about how to feed my family, and in a healthy way! Yes I realize that fried potatoes isn't exactly the most healthy thing to eat, but the beans are very healthy. Lots of protein there :)

I also made oatmeal cookies again, and they were quickly eaten up by Luke, Susan, and Katie :) I'm going to make another batch tonight to take to the pumpkin shoot tomorrow. I know people will enjoy them :) I need to get a cookie jar, I've been making cookies so much lol plus I want to make more. I need to make the no-bake cookies :)

Back on the HCG thought, today was my first day off the drops. This morning I was 139.0 This is the weight I need to stay within 2 pounds of. That means I can weigh as little as 137, or as much as 141, but not outside that range. If I go outside that range to the lower end, I need to up my calorie intake. If I go outside that range on the higher end, I have to immediately stop eating any food for an entire day, while drinking quite a lot of water. At night I eat the biggest steak I can stomach, however I like it, and then that should get my weight back within the proper range. The entire purpose of the maintenance phase is to stabilize my metabolism. At this point there is a very shaky balance. I need to make sure that this balance is not thrown out of whack before my hypothalamus has adjusted to the new weight and caloric intake.

Turning Over a New Leaf

You know, this diet really has me shaping up, not just literally lol but in other areas of my life. My priorities have really switched, with my focus being more and more on my kids, my relationship with Jim, the house, etc. On the side of my blog, in the link area, there's a link to the Flylady website. She tells you how to set up a "control journal" that governs every aspect of your life, so that you follow it until it just becomes habit. You customize it to your own personal needs for your own house. There's sections for the "Zones" which are the different areas in your house. There are 5 zones, and you work on each zone for one week of every month, with a detailed cleaning list for each zone. Beyond that there's weekly schedules. For instance, Monday is my errand day, Tuesday is my free day, Wednesday is my heavy duty day (clean in every zone for 20 minutes, plus refrigerator and porch, etc) and the list goes on. It's really been helping me stay on track. I'm using it in conjunction with my day planner, in which I have scheduled special appointments. When I schedule something, I make sure it falls into my weekly plan. As a result, everything from the laundry room to the back of the house is spotless every morning. The kitchen I am having the hardest time with, because it's the place I hate the most. I keep allowing the dishes to pile up, and the counters to get cluttered. I will really be working hard to break that habit. The only two rooms that aren't spotless every day (except for the kitchen) are the living room and family room. I don't know why that is. There's dog hair that needs cleaning every day, the rooms get messy from the kids, etc. At any rate, I'm really going to start working harder on those rooms. On a fun note, at Value Village the other day I found a BEAUTIFUL table cloth for a round or oval table, and I brought it home and brightened up the entire dining room with it, and the small plate with a candle surrounded by rocks :)

Okay, now I know this blog is about food, not cleaning, so let's get back to that! The other area that I have really made drastic changes in my life are in the area of meal times. Usually, for breakfast there's oatmeal or cold cereal, lunch time is a sandwich, either with bread or a tortilla (Luke's personal favorite), dinner is whatever I can cook out of a box or scrounge out of the fridge. Well... that has stopped. Now, breakfast is pancakes (in the shape of Micky Mouse for Luke lol) or waffles, oatmeal with bananas, or french toast. Lunch is grilled cheese and tomato soup, or quesadillas, dinner is actually thought out and prepared well ahead of time. For instance, there's this recipe I have for 3 days worth of beans. You cook 1-2 pounds of red beans (after overnight soaking) either in the crock pot or on the stove, with a bunch of salt, pepper, garlic salt, and 2-4 packets of ramen flavoring. After it's cooked down, you pour it into a strainer, and save the juice in the fridge. You cook rice (of which I cooked an enormous pot so that I would have it for the next few days) and serve the beans on top of the rice. I added shredded cheese on top to make it taste better for Luke, who is not a huge fan of beans. I also made some homemade biscuits. By the time Jim got home, I had just put a big plate of the rice and beans with cheese on the table, and was JUST taking the biscuits out of the oven, so it was nice and hot. I served him and Luke on the table, something that is somewhat rare in our house. I'm trying to bring that back. No TV during dinner time, at least once a week. We'll work our way up from there. No need to rush into it and get Jim upset that I'm trying to change our entire routine overnight :)

Tomorrow, with the beans that are now in the fridge, I'll be making baked beans...adding ketchup, mustard, and a few other ingredients and baked in the oven. I'll be making cornbread to go with it, and will pick up some hot dogs to cut into pieces to add to the beans.

Saturday will be creamed beans, where I'll be adding the juice from today back into the beans, and adding a few more ingredients.

In the meantime, I made a big batch of refrigerator bread (still hasn't collapsed, almost 4 hours later... wonder why? It's only supposed to take 2). Sunday I'm planning to make a small pizza.

So you see? My cooking habits have altered drastically. I LOVE it!!! I'm going to look for a certain cookbook. My mom had it when I was young from the library, and was all about how to make mixes that you store in large quantities, and you just take some as you need it and make all sorts of things, such as cookies, breads, pancakes, etc, depending on the mix. It would be great if I could come across it again, because it would certainly simplify meal times :)

Now to talk about my weight. I am so excited!! I am down to 140.0 this morning. If I only lose 1/2 pound by Sunday (my last day on the VLCD), I will have broken into the 130's! I am so excited! Tomorrow is my last day of drops. I am so excited that I have stuck through it, and was so strict with my eating. It has really been worth it. I do have one confession to make. I cheated a tiny bit. Yesterday was my uncle's birthday dinner at his daughter's, and her boyfriend was making this delicious French beef bourgonyon (not sure how that's spelled). It smelled so wonderful, I went ahead and dipped my spoon in the sauce to taste it. That's my only infraction for the past 3 1/2 weeks, so I feel okay about it.

I won't bore you with the details of my past several meals. I really only ate the same things every day anyway, with just a few twists. I have been eating more eggs recently, because, frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of chicken. It doesn't seem to have effected my weight loss at all, so I'm glad about that. I am eating it as prescribed by Dr. Simeons - 1 whole egg added to 3 egg whites. I put salt and pepper in it, and I'm good to go :) Maybe tomorrow I'll add some spinach and have fake quiche. Hmm. I'll have to add the real thing to my list of desirable foods to eat :)

Monday is coming fast... I can't wait to make my chef's salad!!!