Weight Watchers Week # 12

Again, I should not really name this post Weight Watchers since I did not do the plan this week.  My few days on the smoothie diet helped jump start me back into my diet though.  I lost 3.2 pounds!  And that all came off the first two days of the smoothie diet. 

I am on week 12 which means I should be down 12 pounds, but I am not.  I behind.  Right now I am down 8.4.  My vacation is six weeks away so it is not possible for me to reach my goal weight by then.  Almost 12 more pounds in six weeks is not going to happen when it has taken me 12 weeks to lose 8...although the last month or so I have stalled/gained. 

My revised goal for the next six weeks is to lose five pounds.  That should be enough for me to fit in my sundresses for the trip. 

I got way off track there for a while, but I the smoothie jump start helped me get my head back in the game. 

Week -3.2
Total -8.4

Smoothie Diet Day # 3

The scale rewarded me again so I decided to keep going, except that I need a real lunch.  I made the same banana pear breakfast smoothie as the day before, but the pear was not ripe so it wasn't a very smooth smoothie. 

Then I got dizzy.  I have chronic problems with dizziness and when it hits I never know how long it will last.  It could be days or weeks so I do whatever I can to get it to go away quickly.  If that meant eating real food, so be it.  This same thing happened on day three when I tried to go gluten free.  I tried to rationally think about what it could be.  I had been eating plenty of fruit so sugar and carbs could not be the problem.  I had been drinking plenty of water so that should not be a problem.  That leave sodium.  I normally eat a higher sodium diet since I'm used to processed foods and I probably had been getting very little sodium over the last couple days.

I ate my "real" lunch of a salad with balsamic dressing (prepackaged), whole grain crackers and turkey meat.  I felt better later in the day.  I at a "real" dinner too.  I made a shrimp stir fry with brown rice.  It was delicious. 

So...I guess I am done.  I made it only two and a third days.  I am getting better at making the smoothies so I am going to continue to have them for breakfast and then try to continue to eat well balanced other meals and snacks. 

Smoothie Diet Day # 2

I think I know now how baby birds feel.  Drinking smoothies is like having someone chew up your
food for you.  Or maybe like baby food.  At least now I know what to do if I ever have major dental work and cannot chew. 

If you read yesterday's post, you know I am not loving this.  The only thing that kept me going for day two was that the scale rewarded me this morning!  I needed to make the smoothies more appealing to my taste buds though so I started playing with the recipes. 

For the white smoothie I used a pear instead of an apple, frozen banana, nonfat plain yogurt rather than greek, nonfat milk, and water.  I was supposed to include raw nuts as a healthy fat, but did not want them in my smoothie so I ate the almonds separately.  This worked out much better than yesterday mainly because the extra liquid made it more drinkable.  I also started using an extra large straw as well so I could do something else with my morning besides drinking a smoothie.

I still needed a snack though so I had a piece of string cheese and a mandarin orange in the late morning.  BTW...I have been addicted to mandarin oranges lately.

The red smoothie for lunch went better as well because I again added more liquid and used a bigger straw.  Today I did raspberries, blueberries, nonfat yogurt, nonfat milk, protein powder and chia seeds.  I drank it all!  I'm two for two at this point.

Hungry, really hungry.  I need to find something better to do for lunch because these red smoothies do not cut it.  It's basically fruit and protein powder which is not keeping me full so I try to stretch out my snacks to keep me full through the afternoon.  I added more fruit too.  I had some crackers, turkey, an apples and two mandarin oranges.  I grazed all afternoon.  I think I'm going to eat a real lunch tomorrow.

For dinner it was green smoothie time.  Feeling confident, I use spinach, apple, nonfat yogurt, nonfat milk, and grapes.  Let's just say I'm now two for three.  This was way too thick and apple-y.  I ran out of pears so I used an apple, which just did not work.  I'm done with apples in smoothies and need to stock up on pears instead.  I only drank half of the smoothie and then had a few pistachios for my healthy fat.  I was surprisingly full though from what I did have because it was so thick.  I also had some carrots and tomatoes as an appetizer because the smoothies do not have many veggies and I usually eat a veggie tray each night before dinner. 

After dinner I went to the store to stock up on more fruit to try different kinds of smoothies tomorrow.  I forgot the popcorn though!  Popcorn is my evening snack of choice because it is crunchy and takes a long time to eat.  I had some soy nuts for a snack instead. 

Overall I am snacking way too much.  I am following the rules though of having protein and fat in each snack, but I had way too many snacks today.  I definitely need something more substantial for lunch tomorrow.  I am not craving any sweets, probably due to the insane amount of fruit I'm eating, but I want meat!  I was practically drooling at my husband's dinner.  I'm having little bit of turkey each day, but that is all for meat.  I can't say I'm feeling any better yet, in fact, all this fiber is making me incredibly bloated and I look like I'm about four months pregnant. 

I think I'm learning some good things about how to put together a healthy meal, but I am not understanding the point of putting it all in a blender.  Having fruit, yogurt and nuts for breakfast sounds great!  A spinach salad for dinner with some lean protein (shrimp or chicken), balsamic vinaigrette, and crushed nuts would be divine.  

On to day 3....

Smoothie Diet Day # 1

Day 1 of the smoothie diet started later in the day than planned because I had a doctor appointment in the morning and had to fast for blood work.  I made the first smoothie at about 11am.   The morning smoothie is a "white" smoothie, lunch is "red" and dinner is "green".  There are multiple recipes in the book for each.  I tried out my new blender and it's "smoothie" function and it worked pretty well.  There were still a few chunks, but overall much easier than the old blender. 

Apple Pie Smoothie:

Red apple

Banana
Raw almonds
Greek yogurt
Fat free milk
Cinnamon

I did not like it.  I did not like it at all.  I tried to drink it and managed to get about half down over the course of 90 minutes and then gave up.  I like apples, but not apple juice and I have never cared for the texture of greek yogurt.  I am going to switch to regular yogurt tomorrow even though I am supposed to use greek for the high protein, but I just cannot deal with the chalky texture.





I made lunch at about 2:30pm.  I admit I am already looking forward to eating a snack so I can chew some real food.

Ruby Red Frostie:
Raspberries
Blueberries
Orange
Protein powder
Chia seeds
Water (not in recipe, but needed)

This one is tasting much better than the one this morning...probably because it is all fruit.  It takes a long time to drink one of these things though.  I guess eating a meal does too, but for some reason I just want to down these things.  I only drank about half of it.  I am already questioning how long I am going to do this for.






Snack time!  This has been the best part of my food day so far.  Turkey meat and whole grain crackers.

 

Dinner time had me tempted to already give up on this since I was making my husband a steak, but I had my green smoothie.  I even color coordinated my straw.  This one was probably my favorite tasting smoothie, but it was not cold enough.  As with the first two, I only drank half when I decided I had enough. 

 

Green Smoothie:

Spinach

Pear

Grapes

Fat free milk

Chia seeds



 

The half smoothie did not fill me up for dinner so I had more crackers and turkey.  Then for my official snack later in the evening I had popcorn.  I had a little bit extra for snacks, but I think it evened out because I only drank half of each smoothie. 

 

I have to say this day was a struggle.  I worked from home today so I did not have much to distract me as I do in my usual day at work running around...so I thought about food all day.  Since it was snowing and raining all day, and I worked from home, I did not get near the 10,000 steps in.  I only did in the mid 3,000's. 

 

Right now I am not feeling like I will get through five days of this, but we will see!

 

Juicing & Smoothies

Ever since I watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead a couple months ago I have been trying to figure out how to incorporate juicing and/or smoothies into my diet.  Not so much to lose weight, but to be healthier.  I have many mysterious health ailments and doctors have thought I had all sorts of nasty things wrong with me but all the tests come back negative (although still waiting on some) and they remain stumped.  I keep taking more and more pills to try to combat all of this which is similar to the people in the movie.  My body is not happy about something...maybe it is what I eat?  In the movie two of the people are overweight and have nasty autoimmune disorders.  They spent 60 days having nothing to eat but juice, mostly from vegetables, and lost a ton of weight and got off all their medication.  The third person was not overweight but had a problem with migraines and she did the juicing for 10 days and her migraines went away.  They proposed people give it a try for 10 days to "reboot" their bodies and get rid of toxins and cravings.  It was very inspiring so my husband and I decided we were going to start juicing!!!!   

We were so motivated.  We bought the fancy $300 juicer, I went to an organic market for the first time and stocked up on things I have never eaten before like kale.  We decided to replace one meal a day with juice.  I thought about doing a full 10 days of juice, but our enthusiasm quickly waned for a few reasons.

1. It takes a LOT of produce to make a glass of juice
2. The juicer is a PAIN to clean
3. Juice is NOT filling
4. Kale is not for beginners
5. It gave me a sugar rush that felt similar to the start of an anxiety attack

The third item is the main reason why this has not worked out for us.  We even tried adding a scoop of protein powder to the juice, but still was not filling.  I think the fancy juicer will need to wait until summer to make some lemonade for us. 

So then we moved on to the idea of smoothies.  These have fiber and should keep up more filled up.  A fellow blogger gave me an idea for a recipe...blueberries, banana, spinach, protein power, chia seeds and almond mile.  Back to the organic market I went and got chia seeds (yes, like the pet...they are super healthy!) and almond milk.  We had this for dinner one night and it actually filled us up!  The problem though was that we still wanted to chew something.  Given it was also the middle of winter, the hubby gave up on this pretty quickly since the idea of having a cold dinner was not appealing.

I kept on though trying to figure out how to get all this good stuff in me.  I started trying to make smoothies for breakfast...but of course continued to have problems.  They were not tasting good and the texture was like sludge.  Clearly, I was doing something wrong.  Also, my blender really sucks at this so I would be shaking it and opening it to stir and still ending up with little bits of spinach instead of it being blended.  Why can't I get this right?  And why can't Jamba Juice just be healthy!  I could drink those all day long.

I started looking online for smoothie recipes and came across a smoothie diet.  I diet a lot, but I am not usually one for fad diet...until now.  I believe there is something too all this that getting all these nutrients in my body will be better for me than my usually diet of pre-packaged Jenny Craig food.  I am going to try a smoothie diet by the Hollywood diet guru Harley Pasternack based on his book The Body Reset Diet.  There are three phases of 5 days each for 15 days total.  I can do that, right? 

Phase 1: 3 smoothies a day, plus two crunchy snacks
Phase 2: 2 smoothies a day, plus 1 meal, plus 2 snacks
Phase 3: 1 smoothie a day, plus 2 meals, plus 2 snacks

After the 15 days are up, then it is 1 smoothie a day, 2 meals, 2 snacks and you get 2 "free" meals a week.  All meals and snacks are based on being high in protein and fiber to stay full.  Meals should also include healthy fats and carbs.

There is also an exercise component of 10,000 steps per day plus 5 minutes of strength training. 

I am starting today (Monday) and hoping to make it through at least phase 1.  I got a new blender and a pedometer.  I will keep you all updated each day on how it is going!!!

Any advice?  Any smoothie recipes you want to share?  Have you tried juicing of smoothies???

Weight Watchers Week # 11

I should not even call this a week on a diet. I did not try at all and it shows. I gained 2.2. For those of you following along that means I've gained 4 pounds in two weeks. It's amazing hard it is to lose weight and how easy it is to gain. Ugh.

Week: +2.2

Overall: -5.2

Weight Watchers Week # 10

Fail.  Epic fail.  Life stress got me way off track for the last week and a half.  I couldn't even bring myself to go to the WW meeting.  My husband and I had some serious talks about some big decisions we needed to make and it really stressed me out.  I gained 1.8 pounds.  My official weigh in day was Thursday morning and I haven't gotten back on track.  Friday night I gorged myself while out with friends and then Saturday we went out for fondue and had all 4 courses.  Melted cheese and chocolate is healthy, right?  I tried today to get a plan to get back on track by going to Jenny Craig to stock up on food so I could start fresh Monday morning...but they were closed!  Ack.  They changed their hours since I had last been there on a Sunday.  I am going to try to get there tomorrow morning, but it is supposed to be snowing so we'll see.  I am sure I have gained more since Thursday than the 1.8.  I need motivation! 

Week +1.8
Overall -7.4

Weight Watchers Week # 9

I am not really sure how this happened, but I lost 1.4 pounds this week!  I tracked only for about half the week and of course the days I didn't track were the bigger eating days with chips and fajitas.  I have no plans of giving up Mexican food.  I think this week may have been partially due to my thyroid medicine being adjusted so hopefully that will help me get a little more of a loss each week.  I am still on track at 9.2 pounds down in 9 weeks but it feels really slow.  I do feel like I have a good balance though.  Some weeks I indulge a little and others I don't.  It definitely shows up on the scale but I am ok with it.  I am now completely off of caffeine and sweet and low which is an accomplishment.  I have also been eating fruit for snacks quite a bit (I am in love with mandarin oranges right now) and actually had a craving for a banana!  I unfortunately found a new salty crunchy snack that I love and had a couple times in the afternoon instead of fruit.  Pops chips are very tasty.  I like the plain flavor but not really the BBQ or cinnamon sugar.  They are crispy and salty and yummy.  This past week I would say has been the first time that I noticed that I look smaller.  My clothes have definitely been fitting better but I didn't notice anything in the mirror until just recently.

What are your favorite snacks???

Week -1.4
Total -9.2

Weight Watchers Week # 8

This week was a mixed bag.  I did not track and was off track part of the week and then pulled it together at the end for a 0.8 pound loss.  I admit, I did think of skipping the meeting this week and giving up, but I re-motivated myself.  My pants are all fitting better which is nice, but the vacation is far enough away that my motivation is waning.  I know once the vacation gets closer that I will start getting frantic. I have just bounced around the last 3 or 4 weeks with no real progress.  The key is I need to stop cooking/baking for other people, which is no fun, but I make yummy food for other people for various reasons and then I end up tasting and eating the same thing.  I am going to set a new small goal that I get to 10 pounds in the next two weeks. 

Week -0.8
Total -7.8

Weight Watchers Week # 7

Oopsie.  Looks like I let my birthday celebration last too long this week.  I only tracked one day out of the seven.  I went out for dinner and drinks one night and had a cupcake and chocolate covered strawberries on my birthday.  I tried to reign it back in the last two days of the week, but it was too little too late.  I gained 0.6 which I know is not terrible but I have basically stalled the last two weeks.

Week +0.6
Total -7.0

Weight Watchers Week # 6

The trend continues!  Last week I lost 2 pounds so I knew this week I would not lose much.  I did lose 0.4 though which I was thankful for because I did not stay on plan or track for 3 days.  I had a couple personnel issues at work that had me really stressed out because I had to have some difficult conversations.  I got through it, but I still used food when stressed.  I am an emotional eater, no doubt about it.  I got back on plan though so again I am proud that I did not give up entirely.  This coming week has some celebrations which will involve eating.  I am going to enjoy and try to be extra good the rest of the week to offset.

Here are the totals
Week -0.4
Overall -7.6

Weight Watchers Week # 5

It was a good week!  I lost 2 pounds, even with the Super Bowl which included our traditional chicken nachos.  I admit I was not really sure how many points were in the nachos.  I did not count the chips and weigh the chicken and cheese, but I made a guesstimate of 20 points. 

Today has already been a tough day though.  For some reason I have been starving all day.  My stomach was rumbling all morning even after eating breakfast and drinking a big glass of water.  Now I am doing some stress eating.  Hopefully this will end soon and the rest of the week will go smoothly.  I want this week to be good since the following week is my BIG birthday and I'm going to celebrate rather than sulk over being old. 

I am still on track for 20 pounds by mid May for my vacation.

Here are the totals:
Week: -2.0
Total: -7.2

Weight Watchers Week # 4

Even Steven.  I weigh exactly the same amount as last week.  I did get off track over the weekend because I took a cooking class on making Asian dumplings...which I sampled of course!  Plus, I was hungry since the class was over lunch time so unfortunately that put me off course for the entire weekend.  I got back on track on Monday though and still feel good about the week.  I'm am trying to avoid my usual "all or nothing" mentality.  In the past when I would mess up, I would just say screw it and REALLY eat a lot.  Not this time, I got back to plan pretty quickly. 

I do have some challenges coming up.  This weekend, of course, is the Super Bowl and my husband's team is in it so we will definitely be watching.  Then in two weeks is my birthday which I normally celebrate with food.  I am planning on celebrating with sushi though so that is better than many other options.  And I have not written about it yet (posts still in the works) but I am obsessed with making cupcakes lately and all I want to do on the weekends is make more cupcakes.  I usually find someone to give them to but I need to taste before giving them away... 

I have moved up my 20 pound goal from 20 weeks to 18 weeks because I booked a vacation to St. John in May and want to be at my goal weight by then. 

Here are the totals:
Week: 0
Overall: -5.2

Weight Watchers Week # 3

It was a good week!  The Jenny Craig food helped kick start me again and kept my portions in check.  I only drank one night which helped as well since alcohol is a lot of points.  I lost 2 pounds this week which puts me over the 5 pound total mark now.  Yay!  I was even motivated to get to my meeting early this morning while it was snowing.  Another thing I am proud of is that I went to the movies and did not have any candy.  It's a tradition in our house to stop at the grocery store before a movie and boxes of candy.  This time I just brought a Jenny Craig bar with me instead.  My husband was even good too and brought a bag of Jenny Craig cereal for this snack.  He was not pleased with this, but said he wasn't getting candy if I wasn't. 

This coming week I have a big challenge.  I am taking a cooking class on making Asian dumplings.  I signed up for it a long time ago and still want to take it, but I will need to limit my tastings.

I just booked a vacation for May so now I have even more motivation.  My pants are already fitting better after losing just 5 pounds.

Here are the totals.

Week: -2.0
Overall: -5.2  

Weight Watchers Week # 2

You know how on the Biggest Loser they all hate week # 2?  Well, the dreaded week 2 was not kind to me.  I gained!  Only 0.2, but still I gained rather than lost.  I stayed on plan though so I am just telling myself that it is just balancing out with the first week since I had a big loss that was probably lots of water in the first week.  It put me in check though that this is not going to be easy.  Right after the WW meeting I went to Jenny Craig and stocked up on food so that I know I have low point choices available.  My goal is a pound a week and I know it will not be exactly a pound each week so I am still on plan.

Week: +0.2
Overall: -3.2 

Weight Watchers Week # 1

I have once again started Weight Watchers and had my first weigh in today.  I have been dieting most of my life...I am good at losing weight and terrible at keeping it off.  It has been a couple years since I did Weight Watchers because I was doing Jenny Craig off and on and WW has changed how points are calculated so it seems like sort of a new program to me, which is a good thing.  I'm trying to remember things I did years ago the first time I did WW and was really successful.  I lost 27 pounds in 6 months.  I have since fought for years to keep it off and have "found" 20 of it again.  My goals are to think long term so I want to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks. 

I just finished the first week and I admit it was tough the first few days and I was cranky.  Once I got over the hump it has not been too bad.  Now I just need to keep it going.  I even took the dreaded "before" picture of myself in some form fitting work out clothes.

WW has changed how points are calculated since I last did the program with the idea that not all calories are created equal.  Fruit is now free, but they really ding you on alcohol.  A small glass of champagne used to be 2 points and now it is 4...and who drinks just one small glass of champagne at at time?

Now on to the results!  Drum roll please.....

I lost 3.4 pounds.  Yippee!!!!

Diet # 463

I'm pretty good at losing weight.  I'm pretty awful at keeping it off.  It's almost like a game to see how much I can get away with and not gain weight.  It's a game I always lose.  So here I am now up 15 pounds from this time last year.  I started a new diet today and also started another Biggest Loser contest at my work to help stay motivated. 

On the bright side, I have learned to accept myself in a bathing suit...even a bikini.  No more old lady bathing suits for me!  No offense meant to anyone, of course.  A year ago I went out in public in a bikini for the first time as an adult.  Luckily the strings on the side make it "adjustable".  Even though I am up 15 pounds from this time last year, I still wore my bikini on the beach a couple weeks ago. 

So, here we go again...I want to fit into my clothes again.  Stay tuned for updates.

WW: Week 5

Well, I'm not back on track yet. Last week is now a blur with how busy it was at work. I only journaled my food for 2 days and didn't really pay attention to what I ate. I will admit there were donuts and cookies and mexican and margaritas involved so I'm really surprised I actually lost some weight. I think it might have been water or whatever from the big gain the week before so I'm not feeling like I accomplished anything. My vacation is only three and a half weeks away and my goal now still over five pounds away (although I'd really 8 or 11 to get to my all time lowest or even lower). If I'm really sticking the program I can do 1.5 per week which will get me close to my "realistic" goal. A couple weeks ago I was so close that I though I would breeze past it, but now that's not the case. The bikini I wanted looked horrific on me so I'm still on the hunt for new bathing suits.

Here are the results:
2.4 loss for the week / 2.8 loss overall

WW: Week 4

Oops. Momentum is gone again. The Biggest Loser contest at work ended and I came in fourth...just 0.1 pound more would have put me in the money. I did pretty well with losing 9.5 pounds over the 12 week contest. Now I'm quickly gaining it back. I decided to let loose a little and eat what I want for 1 day...then it turned into a week and I gained 4.6 pounds!!! I am really hoping some of this is water weight because I didn't go that crazy. I knew it would be up a little, but 4.6 completely shocked me. Ugh.

If anyone has any words of wisdom or encouragement...I need it right now.

Here are the results:
4.6 gain for the week / 0.4 loss overall

WW: Week 3

Weight Watchers works. No doubt about it. Follow the plan and you will lose weight. The mental part of it is the hardest. Right now my mind is in the right place to do this and I'm losing weight. I'm even still eating out at my favorite Mexican restaurants. I just eat less. This week was very up and down food wise because I was very sick for a couple days and didn't eat much. Then when I felt better, I was starving all day.

I am only going to be reporting my at home weight going forward, rather than the WW weigh in at work since that one fluctuates more based on what I've eaten before the meeting and what I'm wearing.

Here are the results:
2.0 loss for the week / 5.0 loss overall