Find the nutritional data in your own recipes

Nutrition Data

Positives:

1. You can break down the nutritional data of recipes you make yourself - kind of tedious but enter all the ingredients in and the number of serving sizes, and voila!
2. It has some kind of neat and colorful charts.

Downsides:

1. some simple foods were hard to find, like flax meal and even eggs took a fair amount of searching.
2. it's kind of information overload - data on every enzyme, etc.I'm kind of a big believer in eating a variety of foods and hoping for the best nutrition-wise.
   

Here is a sample of my healthy chocolate chip cookies. BTW next time I would not try to have them appeal to the kids. I would add more sweet spices and forget the fatty chocolate chips and just make them for myself.

Horrible sweet cravings tonight

Why is this still happening? I think bc I have had more sweets lately-
even in small doses. Sweets beget sweets true but depressing.

Tomorrow is my diet day off and I'm going to take it. I had to really
watch myself today. Things were not happening naturally or without
major effort and willpower. Definitely not in my normal groove today!!

I was looking for dinner starting at 4pm. This happens when I'm home
early sometimes and it's horrible. I ate 100 baby carrots and sugar
peas and cooked exotic pestos. I just could not distract myself!! My
lunch may have been too small and my snack was insufficient due to
being greasy and not high fiber. Potato chips and chicken sausage free
samples from grocery store!!!! Somehow I ate an ok dinner around the
right size.
I should have just had a yogurt at 5 but I didn't want to admit
defeat. What a dork.

Then tonight I've been dreaming of making chocolate chip cookies all
evening only deterred by the thought of messing up the clean kitchen
and by knowing that tomorrow I can indulge guilt-free.

I realize this post sounds completely neurotic. I must be more normal
tomorrow!!

What I've given up....

Ok - warning about a kind of hokey posting below....

Despite my sweet craving after dinner tonight, in general, I don't find my new lifestyle that hard. This happened around the 3 month mark, just as conventional wisdom would have suggested - that is the time it takes for a change in lifestyle to sink in. 

That being said, I have given some things up. During those three months, I went through a sort of grieving experience for those things. Now that is a ridiculous term, but it's the best one I can think of. I also gained a lot.

Here is what I gained:

1. A healthy BMI! This was my main goal.
2. More compliments than I can explain. I hear "you're an inspiration" several times a week.
3. A happy husband!
4. Self-confidence about undertaking BIG projects
5. Ability to wear fun clothes
   
6. Ease with my body in summer clothes. It's so great to wear cut-off jeans and a fitted t-shirt.

Things I've given up...upon reflection at this point...ummm....not much. At first I gave up a lot. But most of the things that were originally sacrifices I no longer miss.

1. Pigging out and having fun doing it - or eating to satiety without thinking. This I once found extremely sad for some reason, like if I could never laugh really hard again, but instead just chuckle. However, now I don't want to any more. It does take some discipline to stop before being full though.
   
2. Random snacking for the fun of it all day - constant oral gratification, trying everything offered to me. Again - I don't miss this any more but I did at first.
3. Eating without thinking. I'm pretty regimented and need to pay attention to what I'm eating at every meal. Sometimes I overeat just by accident. This sounds horrible, but again, I'm used to it, like a person with a food allergy.
4. Sometimes I'm hungry, but I don't let myself get starving usually.
5. Alcohol. A huge waste of points and I was never a drinker anyway. On occasion I have one drink. This is really not that much of a change in habit but a change in attitude.

Things I gave-up at first and regained:

1. Ability to enjoy restaurants and social events. I no longer live in fear of "falling off the wagon." I've enjoyed enough special events to know that I will return to my plan the next day. I've also figured out how to find something I can eat in most circumstances without affecting what the group is eating.
   
2. Off-limits foods. I used to mourn very rich or sweet foods as things I could never eat again because they used up too many points for the day. Now I'm perfectly happy having them infrequently and in small quantities. In fact, a whole serving of these foods (pizza, ice cream, etc.) kind of grosses me out. I understand this sounds slightly anorexic, but in fact, most of those foods really aren't that good, and when they are I eat them in small quantities.
3. Sweets. I completely gave them up at first, so as to break my cravings for them. Now I have far fewer, and usually something simple like a few handfuls of sweetened cereal.

People keep asking me how long I can keep this up. I feel fully certain that I can keep this up for a long time. The only things that could derail me are the very small chance of a third pregnancy, or the likely chance of some kind of illness or injury. Everyone goes through physical adversity at some point and I have genes that make it pretty likely. But just a general returning to bad habits will not happen. First of all I would be mortified! Everyone comments on my new body ALL THE TIME and people would notice if I gained 5 lbs. And secondly I want my new healthy body more than I want food so it's just not an issue.

Putting myself to good use

I'm trying to be helpful lately. A lot of people have come to me for advice. Most people really don't want to hear what I have to say, which is kind of severe, but a few do, and I'm trying to help them with practical, plausible ideas. One friend has a 9 week old who is now sleeping through the night. She is a bit overwhelmed with the notion of getting back into shape and thinks that she should start. This is really a tough one. When you have a small baby, a toddler and a school-aged kid, finding time to focus on meal-planning, cooking, shopping, exercising, etc. is just kind of unrealistic. I suppose it's possible, but I'm not sure exactly how. I will find some ideas though. One has to do with thinking through every hour of your day and when you might possible have some time. But before that - the most important thing to do is ask yourself, "am I ready to make a huge commitment to this project?" The answer when you have a 9-week old probably is and probably should be, "No." It's ok to admit that. On the other hand, baby steps can be taken. Examples of baby steps are: cutting back on desserts, exercising 2-3 times a week, trying not to eat egregiously horrible foods like pizza and french fries, etc.

Below are my two contradictory thoughts on baby steps:

1. Baby steps don't result in significant weight loss, if any at all, and as such can be more frustrating than doing nothing.
   
2. Baby steps can be helpful in learning and practicing some of the necessary habits that will be used once a major lifestyle change (diet) is undertaken.

The reasons that baby steps don't work, in my unscientific opinion, is that a body used to hanging out at a certain weight will tend to stay there, unless it is shocked into going to a different place. This shock can occur by a serious increase or decrease in food or exercise (or pregnancy!).  Similarly a small increase or decrease in food or exercise doesn't really do much. 

So eating just a little bit better or walking a little more really doesn't have a big impact on weight. However, those things can get you started without being overwhelmed, and they can get you to start thinking more positively about your ability to make changes in your long-ingrained habits. Baby steps can help you see ways to make better choices at restaurants, find 15 minutes to take a walk instead of snack, find a chance to walk up a few flights of stairs during work, to start planning high-protein snacks before you get famished, to stop craving cheese on top of everything.

It is so exciting to watch this happen in a friend - my same friend who was my coach originally (not the friend with the 9-week old mentioned above). She has started her own blog so you can read for yourself. But in the last 3 weeks I have watched her change from listing all the excuses for why she went over her points and couldn't find time to exercise, to actively seeking practical solutions for finding exercise time in her tight working mom's schedule and planning how she will handle her many upcoming social events. It's a real change in attitude - from "If I can work health and fitness into my social/work/family life I will" to "my social/work/family life has to work with my health and fitness goals." Now of course this is very difficult - but we're working on solutions together - and I love helping her!

After Shot By Natasha

I feel very vain posting a pic but many of you have asked so here it is- by my budding Photographer Natasha

Here is a before picture. Completely horrifying.

PMS and hunger

For the past three months I have struggled with keeping to my points during my pms days. This month wasn't nearly as bad, perhaps because I made a conscious effort to keep track of my cycle so I knew what was going on. At any rate, I read a very interesting article on weightwatchers.com. It basically says that the extra hunger during those days reflects and is off-set by an increase in metabolic rate for those few days (even though you feel exhausted) and that eating a bit more makes no difference to weight loss goals. It may seem like you're gaining weight, due to water retention, but that all ends after the period is over anyway.

Size matters

I really started this diet in earnest because my size 12 clothes were tight and I absolutely refused to buy clothes in size 14. I just wanted my size 12s to fit, and I had this deeply buried notion that getting to a size 10 would be a fabulous amazing result, but I didn't think too strongly about it as I didn't want to reach for a goal I couldn't attain.

I am pleased to report that I am now a size 8!!!

I have not been a size 8 since I reached my full adult height. I really can't believe it.  The upside is that I can buy fun styles previously unavailable to me. The downside is that I do not own a single item of clothing that fits me, except for a few t-shirts I bought in the past couple weeks. It's pretty daunting to need new everything - casual clothes, work clothes, workout clothes, pajamas, underwear, bras, bathing suits, evening attire - and for various seasons! The multiple seasons thing has been an issue as the weather in April and May has been all over the place. This level of shopping is time consuming, expensive and kind of frustrating. Luckily a lot of things are on sale now, and I'm not really a clothes horse so I would settle for one or two of each thing (except the underwear of course!)

On the positive side, it is starting to settle in that I've accomplished something large, and that if I can do this I can do other things that I once thought out of reach. A sweet and wholly unexpected reward.