Healthy food for the WHOLE family

I find it a struggle sometimes to get my kids to eat 'healthy' food. Maggie LOVES veggies of any kind. But in general they are kids and they love their carbs and that's not exactly on my 'healthy' list. They are always pointing out my different 'diet' food and going 'ewwww.' So tonight I decided to try something different.

One of the kidlets FAVORITE dinners is what they call pasta with bacon...lol. pretty good description. It's carbonara. It's bacon, and noodles and a creamy parm cheese all over. It's super fatty delicious-ness! Again, this is something I haven't made in a while because I pretty much ONLY make it in family size and Adam and I don't eat that way anymore. But I decided to health-y it up a bit and see what they thought, and of course I didn't tell them there was anything different about it :)

I started by using turkey bacon instead of regular bacon. It was a little more difficult to cook without burning because it doesn't naturally make a bunch of grease to cook it in, which is why it's healthier but also why it's easy to burn. Then I also used whole grain wheat pasta. I bought a good brand that didn't look as brown as the last kind I'd bought, which Katie snubbed her nose at based on color alone. Then I pretty much made it as usual. And the kid response? Near standing ovation! They loved it as if it were the same kind I'd always made (none the wiser about the healthier choices involved.) and I was able to enjoy it with them which was so nice :)

I used to think that eating healthier was difficult so I didn't bother. But it's the little changes like not having seconds on the carb portion of the meal, or having a fruit and veggie, or two veggies for side dishes, and especially switching to whole grains...not to be confused with 'whole wheat' there is a big difference. Now that I've gotten used to it, I find it easy to shop for and enjoying the difference it makes on my waistline. I think I do spend slightly more on my groceries each month but it's a negligable amount, less than $50 difference for the whole month, for my large family, that's not bad!

getting things moving again...

I've been plateau-ing for several weeks now. I'll maybe lose a pound and then be stuck at that weight for another few weeks. I'm not sure what I've been doing wrong, but it's been terribly frustrating! And then yesterday happened.

I have discovered and fallen in love with special K bars. My favorite one is the peanut butter one. It litterally tastes like a reeses peanut butter cup, but with a krispy crunch. It is divine! And the stats on it are great! They're even fortififed with 20% of your daily vitamins, so if you were to eat five of them thru out the day about 2-3 hours apart and have one healthy meal, you (supposedly) could lose weight. Well I enjoy the bars but had never really put this theory to the test. I've been plateaud and rather enjoying the food and way I've been eating and since I wasn't gaining I didn't really mind. Especially since i did crack the evil 200 mark. I've been stuck at 199 for a while...and you know what, I'm fine with that!

But yesterday I had a bar for breakfast which is pretty normal for me, and then I need a snack 2 to 3 hours later, This is usually when I opt for something a little higher in calories, which then sets the precedent for the rest of the day to be smaller portions of normal food. However at my normal snack time I opted for another bar instead. Then a few hours later we had a late lunch at red robin with the missionaries. Since I'd only had those two bars before then I felt like there was some wiggle room in my calories and ate without guilt. I ate PLENTY of french fries (i love them there!) and had a chicken sandwich that also had crispy onion straws and bbq sauce on it...mmmmm yum! And of course I indulged in some diet soda.

I was so full from this meal (which i usually try not to get that full, but it was superbly good food!) so the rest of the day I really didn't feel like eating. Which was nice. I knew I'd had enough calories for at least the day anyway. But then around 8:30 in the evening while out at a movie with a friend I got a little snacky so I whipped out another bar from my purse and had that, ahhh, satisfied without opting for popcorn! We stayed up chatting till midnight because she is moving soon and I won't have this opportunity again for a while.

So this morning I followed my usual routine, get up, go to the bathroom and then weigh myself, in just my underclothes. I do this every day, without fail. And got the shock of my life today when I saw 1...9..6!!! That is 3 pounds lost from YESTERDAY! I stepped back on several times to verify and yep, sure enough, that was right! Every time i bust thru a plateau it catches me off gaurd. But let me tell ya, losing 3 pounds in a day makes a huge difference! I felt thinner last night so i already suspected that there was a possible loss, and I was right! This morning has been great no matter what just because of that.

For anyone keeping track my new total weight loss is....drum roll please!!!

45 pounds!!!!!!!!!!
That feels so awesome! Wow, I started at 241 and am now at 196.
Of course the same normal fears crop up, of what if i gain some back, which i suppose is a possiblity although one thing I seem to be great at is plateauing. Honestly thru all of this, not once have I gained any weight, I have only pleateaud or lost. So there's hope! Crazy to hope for a plateau but I don't dare hope for another loss...but stay tuned, I'll let you know!

In other news, next week is my 10 year anniversary, I am nearly my same weight that I was the day I married the Husband Man. The week after that is my pre op appointment for the surgery which is the week after THAT, life is moving faster and faster it seems, but at least I'm healthy enough to run and keep up with it!

I'm wearing a size 12 right now and thuroughly enjoying it. So hard to beleive still that the person in the mirror is that much smaller than the one i saw in there such a short time ago. I'm plateauing again which is so frustrating, but at least it's at 199, lol, that feels a little better. I wish i could lose more than one pound at a time though, seems like i stay the same weight for a few weeks then all the sudden jump down a pound or two and get stuck again. I think i need to change up my game if I'm really going to get off the last 10-15 i'd like to lose to be comfortably under that ugly 200 mark. My ideal goal weight when i started this was 185, I'm only 14 pounds away from that, but I figure if i can lose 10 more on my own before my surgery, then maybe my surgery will take care of that last few?! Here's hoping.

I never thought i would wear that again.....

I had the thought as I tried on several comfortable fitting size 12 clothes, that i was sad I didn't have any of my old clothes from when i used to be this size. Then when pondering exactly when that was i realized it was right around the time i was married, i was somewhere between a 10 and a 12 when i got married. The wedding dress. That beautiful princess gown hanging in my closet, could I really fit into that again? I told Adam I was going to go try it on just to see. Katie followed me up the stairs because she wanted to see it.

I pulled it out from the back of the closet, unzipped the garment bag and just stared at it for a minute. Remembering how it felt to put it on and feel like the most beautiful woman in the world that day. Could I really fit into this? It's one of the few things I remember very clearly feeling thin in. I pulled it off the hanger and unzipped it, Katie's ooh's and ahh's and giggles of excitement started before I'd even stepped all the way into the open back. I stepped in and slid the dress up, it slid perfectly over my hips and waist and even my arms glided gently into the non-stretchy sleeves. I stopped for a moment marveling that this felt quite comfortable not too tight at all. I started to zip the back and it slid up my back stopping near the bra. My chest has apparently grown despite the current weight loss and stopped the zipper from going all the way up. But I know that part will be taken care of next month, as my reduction is scheduled for May 17th. This is the reason I did not post a picture of myself in the dress. It doesn't zip all the way up, however it zips past the important part, my waist and hips, quite easily. I was in serious shock all day, did this really happen? Did I really get down the weight i was when I got married??? I came down the stairs to show the Husband Man, I didn't even get all the way down before his "wow" echoed across the room. He smiled at me, and I felt like the princess I did the day I married him. Katie carried my train as she came down the stairs on her bottom laughing the whole way. I loved that moment.

I am having trouble realizing how much weight I really have lost, I'm wearing a lot of the same clothes (baggy as all get out but still) and since I'm still wearing them i still feel as fat sometimes as i did when they fit properly. So I am still in shock that I am a size 12, after starting at a 20. that's 4 sizes difference. I just look in the mirror and think, I'm not that thin am I??? But when I tried on my wedding dress, I very clearly remember wearing it and feeling thin, and feeling good, it's given me a whole new feeling inside my body, a thin feeling.

When I started my weight loss my main goal was not a specific weight number as much as it was a size number, my final goal was to be a size 12, but inside I felt like a 14 might be the best I could get to and i would have been ok with that....but to suddenly realize I have acheived what I thought was an unattainable Goal....wow, that's a little mind blowing. I'm still slowly losing a pound here and there and there's a faint possibility that I could be a size 10 again and I think if that were to happen I would scream from the roof tops, I very clearly remember being a size 10 and feeling thin and happy in my skin. Although to be honest, I'm starting to feel that way right now already. The end of my life as a fat person is in sight, and the beginning of my life as a healthy person has arrived. I'm loving that.

On a side note, at the dr's office with Darla the other day, we saw her regular dr, the one I see every time i bring her in, but he hasn't seen me in about 2 months. He kept asking me who I was, which kind of annoyed me because I've met him several times and he remembered Darla (because of her squeaky breathing...you can't forget that) and he even remembered all four of my other kids, but for some reason he couldn't remember me. He kept telling me, you're not her mother and I said well no not yet I'm her foster mother but I'll be her mom soon enough, and he kept saying, no, not you, it was the other woman that always brought her in, the larger woman. LOL...He didn't recognize me because I'd lost 40 pounds!!!! that was a first, lol, seriously, that kinda made my day haha.

plateau breakers

Ok so i've had this plateau for seriously weeks now, at least 2 weeks. It's an ok weight and all, but what's frustrating is it's 201, 2...0....1..... If it were only 2 pounds lighter I'd LOVE to see that everyday on the scale, just to be under 200, if i plateaued at 199, at least it would be under 200. argg, i'm soo frustrated. I've been doing maintenance so well that all i do is maintain the exact same weight, but i'm not done trying to lose. I went back to my maintenance because I HAD been losing so easily on it before but somehow i broke my stride and i'm looking to get it back!


A friend posted on Facebook about a diet called the "Sacred Heart Diet" it's called that because it was created by a hospital called Sacred Heart that did this diet for patients needing to rapidly lose weight. It's basically a form of the cabbage soup diet the army does, but no cabbage. You make this soup and you can eat as much of it as you want, whenever you want, and for a week you eat that all day and on each day you get one extra thing, like one day is fruits and one is extra veggies and one is MEAT and you even get a baked potato one day too. I figure if i could stick to HCG for 26 days then surely i can stick to a soup diet for 7 right?! I hope so, supposedly it's a 10-15 pounds loss over one week, heck that's what i lost my first week on hcg so why not huh? I'm enjoying trying these different things and finding what i do and don't like and what works for me. I'll give it a shot next week and see how it works. I ate soup for lunch today (not that soup, but soup still) and it was an all veggie soup and I enjoyed it so as long as I can stand it for a week, i'll make it thru.

Part of the problem I think is that I am working out and building muscle because I still feel thinner, but somehow i manage to build exactly as much muscle as i'm losing in fat because my weight has been the same every single stinking day LOL.

No matter the reason, I was trying to make myself feel thinner by picking a before and after set of of pictures to show, because everyone figures after losing 40 pounds i must look soooo different. Unforunately I'm really not seeing it much, my boobs are still so large that they take up my entire field of vision when i look down. I know my clothes fit different and that's pretty much what i'm going off of on looking different. My face doesn't look much different to me really. Other people have told me how different i look, so anyway i was trying to find a good fat picture (well all fat pictures are bad but you know...) And apparently i was really good at avoiding pictures while fat, or hiding my fat with a well placed child, or deleting any that managed to make it to my computer. So i really have no good fat pictures, and If i can tell YOU as the reader anything, it's that if you're going to go on a diet, take a before picture!! Arrg, that is so frustrating, i thought about it, but the last time years ago that i took before pictures for a diet they just bummed me out when i bombed on my dieting. I worried that taking pictures this time would be like a curse to my motivation. I don't know why, for most people it helps, but i was worried i wouldn't actually be able to do this. I showed myself didn't i?!

Still hunting for fat pics, hopefully i'll find one eventually that shows me in the middle because that's where i've lost the most!!!

hCg

I started my second cycle of HCG on Tuesday, which meant two days of fat loading which i HATED, because I actually don't enjoy that food anymore especially not the way it makes my body feel. And as expected I gained a few pounds on those days but I wasn't worried because I knew it would come right off once I started. The last cycle i did in the first week alone i lost 10 pounds i was losing two pounds a day after the first two days of fat loading. So i obviously expected similar results this time. Now backing up, I started HCG this week after my appt with the plastic surgeon because i wasn't sure how soon the surgery would be scheduled for and I wanted to make sure i lost the last 15-20 pounds before it. I actually have been losing weight just fine during my 'maintenance' real world eating phase. I had found a balance of food that tasted good and i didn't feel hungry and i was losing around 3 pounds a week. But since my experience previously with hcg i thought that would be a faster way to finish off the weight loss. However I am now on the 6th day of this diet and all i've managed to do is lose the weight gained during fat loading. I'm already plateauing at the same weight i was before starting this cycle. I didn't plateau last time until the second week. The thing is this is making me lose weight at nearly the same rate as i was before, back when i enjoyed what i was eating more and i could exersize. It feels like the reason it might not be working as well is that when i started this the first time i was eating terribly, i mean fast food at least once a day every day....yuck, but that made the new way of eating a big shock to my body, so of course i lost weight. but since for the last six weeks i've been eating normal healthy food (and enjoying it i might ad) i think that this slightly less food (But still the same kind of food) is not as much of a shock and therefore isn't going to have the same result as before. So looking at this as a lifestyle point of view i think i'm going to ditch hcg at this point. If i am losing at the same rate i was managing to lose it before, then why should i bother struggling to remember to take my drops three times a day and prepare different food than my kids and eat less times a day and everything that goes along with hcg, if i can acheive the same results with my own healthy eating, eating when i'm hungry, and getting to dance and exersize (which is not allowed on hcg because you're not taking in enough calories to support it).

Add to this the fact that they called this week to schedule my surgery for May 17th, that gives me a month and a half, or around 6 weeks, so if i lose an average of 3 pounds a week that would make me 18 pounds lighter by then....add to that the 3-5 pounds of weight taken off during surgery...and bada bing, i'm at my goal weight.

I'm not dissing hcg or anything, i think they just assume that most people go back to their way of eating crap and so the next cycle of hcg is still a good shock to the system and makes you lose weight. I've changed my whole eating outlook, and despite waiting the prescribed 6 weeks between cycles, i'm just not feeling it this time. I'm going to see how the next few days go and see if i can get below my current weight, 203 (38 pounds lost), but i'm pretty sure i won't be finishing out this full cycle. I'm not a quitter, and i hate the idea of quitting and not completeing something, but i also have to simplify life, and the way i was eating before was much simpler.

I wish that i could just look at the scale one day and see 199, that would make everything all better, if that's all i ever got to, i'd probably still be happy...lol, just to be UNDER 200! only 4 pounds away, i'll be there soon enough and everyone will know it when i am!!