My final weight

Drumroll please. As of this morning I weighed 340 lbs. That is a whopping 8 lb loss in the 10 day period without doing anything more special than eating normally and skating a little bit. Feeling pretty good.

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The last day……

Well, folks, today is day 10. It is not without regret that I say that. I am sorry I didn’t update every single day but who seriously wants to read about my every meal for a 10 day period. That’s a little narcissistic. I will say this. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was. I learned that you can eat healthy. Yes it is expensive but I am sure that the money that I saved not going to Mickey D’s and Jack in the Crack about adds up. I also learned that just because you are eating healthy doesn’t mean you have license to eat all day, everyday. While I still lost weight, I probably could have lost more if I exercised a little self-control and exercised period. I did skate while doing this  but you really should get more exercise than just two or three times a week. I will post my final weight tomorrow since today still counts. I learned that it really is a combined effort. My husband was just not with it and it’s hard for me to deny the kids something that he will allow them to eat. So my new philosophy is when they are with me it’s healthy, when they are with their dad, I turn a blind eye. If he wants to kill himself, that’s his perrogative. Hey, we have a life insurance policy.

Will I go back to eating like I used to. Probably not. I have approximately 171 lbs to lose and something’s gotta give. Unfortunately, that something is me. I wish that six or seven months of eating healthy and exercising could knock out all this extra weight I am carrying but it’s just not true. I have struggled with my weight all my life, it didn’t take only a few months to put it on so I know it won’t take a few months to lose it, and this will probably be my battle for the rest of my life. Why couldn’t I have been born thin but kind of stupid?

I wish I could say that I have some meal that I am just itching to eat but in reality I don’t. I feel really proud of myself. I don’t want to screw it up.

As for the blog, I am going to pop in from time to time, probably put some recipes that I have tried out and found to be worthwhile, my weight struggles, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

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Day 4 and 5 Recap

Day 4: Stayed up late the night before preparing for Day four. I was making Oatcakes for breakfast and an Eggplant Lasagna for lunch. The oatcakes had cooked steel cut oats in them so I cooked them the night before and I also sliced the eggplant. I shredded up some zucchini to make Zucchini Bread but I have yet to make it. The Oatcakes were tasty but a lot different to cook from the regular pancakes I am used to making. The kids enjoyed them. I had some leftover batter so I saved it for the following day. I got the recipe from a cookbook that was given to me at one of my WIC appointments.

The eggplant lasagna was so good. Better than I expected. That recipe also came from the WIC cookbook. I thought for sure my sons would like it, and when I gave them a spoonful of it they seemed to enjoy it, but when I actually put it in their bowls to eat they weren’t having it. They would not eat the eggplant. They are really making this whole process discouraging for me. No matter how much I plead, threaten, they just won’t eat some of the stuff I make. I don’t know what to do.

Dinner was a carrot and sweet potato beef stew. I got that recipe from a Biggest Loser Cookbook my sister sent to me. I was surprised at how well it turned out, especially the beef. Very tender. I don’t think Mr. Sawyers shared my sentiments, however, because he was not very enthusiastic about eating it.  He also didn’t want any of the lasagna. I had to beg him to taste it and while he admitted it tasted good, he didn’t want any of it. I think my husband’s problem is that he just can’t wrap his mind around what it is he is eating, no matter how good it tastes.

I went skating with some friends and my husband took the kids to the drive-in. God only knows what they ate there. Afterward, me and my girls went to Denny’s. I have only been out to eat on other time besides this and then I ordered a salad. I wanted something different. I chose the T-bone steak and eggs. It was pretty good but weird not putting any steak sauce or ketchup on my food.

I am chugging along, trying to remain faithful. I know it’s doable. I just wish I had more of a collective effort in the house. It makes it that much harder when I feel like I am pulling everyone along instead of them walking alongside me.

Day 5: Down 7 lbs. I can’t believe it. And that is with hardly any exercise. I am ecstatic. We had a late breakfast, leftover oatcakes from yesterday. For lunch, leftover beef stew. Today was a strange day, though, because I just couldn’t get motivated to do anything around my house. I was a little bummed out today I think. I tried to bake some jicama chips but that was a colossal failure. I just couldn’t get it right. I think it would be better to shallow fry them. I am going to have to experiment with that.

We have a church service on Wednesday and my husband goes to school Wednesday nights too so the evening is a busy one for me. I didn’t make dinner because we had a lot of stew left over and I figured if my husband got hungry, he could just eat that. Before I went to church I stopped at Henry’s to grab a few items. Organic Grade A Maple Syrup, Organic whipping cream, Medjool dates (more brownies), and almond butter. The tally? $30. Crazy right?

After service we decide to go to Denny’s with some friends (Deja Vu) and I order the steak and bleu cheese salad with no dressing for myself and bacon and scrambled eggs with wheat toast for my sons. My husband orders some ungodly syrupy mess. GRRRRRR………. The twins start to beg me for my friend’s pancake puppies and when I say no they start to whine so I spread some honey on their toast and give it to them. Demetrius loved it but Darius wasn’t so convinced.

I came home, made myself some brownies and started to type. I am tired and feeling like I am at the rubber meeting the road stage of this endeavor. The novelty has officially wore off. I love feeling like I am being responsible with my health but I’m not sure. Maybe I expected some drastic difference. I, for the most part, feel the same. I think I wouldn’t feel so melancholy if my sons weren’t such picky eaters when it comes to healthy foods. If I was serving them pizza, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, potato chips they would be scarfing it down by the plateful. Why are four-year-olds so frustrating? 5 more days to go……….

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Days 2 and 3 recap

Day 2, Sunday: Sunday is a very busy day for us because we primarily spend most of it in church. For breakfast I need something quick because we rarely wake up at a time that allows us to really sit down and eat. I decided to make french toast with whip cream and fresh fruit and bacon. It was quick and the kids scarfed it down with no problems. Even Mr. Sawyers liked it. I also put a London Broil steak in the crock pot for when we got home from service. I seasoned it with all-natural beef broth, seasonings, and balsamic vinegar.

I must not have eaten enough at breakfast because when I got to church I was still hungry. A quick stop in the snack bar revealed that I was just going to have to let my stomach roar because there was NOTHING in there on the approved list. When we got home, the house was filled with the aroma of cooked beef. YUM! But I really didn’t have a plan for side dishes. What to do? I had a yam that I hadn’t gotten around to using and thought some sweet potato baked “fries” would be perfect. I looked for the recipe in the cookbook I got from WIC and began to prepare them but the darn things weren’t going to be ready for another 30 minutes! By this time I am feeling faint so I eat some Triscuits with guacamole while I wait for the fries to cook. I think I gave the kids a banana or something like that. Mr Sawyers just couldn’t wait to eat so he made himself a sandwich with some of the steak. I told him to use the mayo that I made but he claims he couldn’t find it and ate the store bought one. I can see I am going to have to resort to more drastic measures with him……….

 Anyhoo, the timer went off on the fries and by this time I can’t wait to eat. Guess what? They were burnt!!!!!! I mean ragin’ cajun! What the heck? Some were salvagable enough to consume but the rest were only fit to line the trash can. That left me feeling pretty dejected. On a positive note the meat was very good. I am usually at a loss as to how to prepare red meat (except for ground beef) because we didn’t eat it growing up. My husband made himself a fruit and yogurt parfait in a wine glass and he enjoyed it. We took our afternoon power naps and got ready for evening service.

Dinner was trickier. I was going out with some friends after evening service. I have to get some time away from this house in order to avoid the possibility of me snapping and winding up on the 10 o’ clock news. This would be my first time going out to eat since I started this. My husband was going home with the kids and I figured he should be ok. They can have fruit, there’s lunch meat in the fridge, there’s some leftover steak. But to my dismay I found a receipt for a local mexican restaurant on the ironing board. HE BROKE THE RULES AND INVOLVED MY CHILDREN IN HIS SHAMEFUL CONDUCT!!!!!!!!!!! OH THE HORROR! I thought we were in this together 😦 Mr. Sawyers is just not convinced yet. As for me, I got to the restaurant and realized the only “approved” thing on the menu was, you guessed it, a SALAD! So I ordered a small one with no dressing, just some olive oil on the side. Actually it was so good, I got another one. I only had water to drink. So many of my friends were wondering why I wasn’t eating. One even told me that she knew I was hungry having only eaten a salad. And, while I was keeping myself calm on the outside, I was salivating on the inside for some of the pizza. Then someone ordered a cheesecake and it took all the forbearance within me not to attack them and wrestle it from their hands and just lay out on the table smashing it all over my face. And I don’t even like cheesecake!

So what are my feelings? Day two was easier but I still have some kinks to iron out and I have to figure out a way to beat Mr. Sawyers into submission, GRRRRRR………

Day 3, Monday: I get on the scale, as I do every morning and I am three pounds lighter. The only exercise I have had was my skate lesson. That felt pretty good. For the twins’ breakfast I fixed them yogurt with honey, blueberries, strawberries and cashews. They absolutely would not eat the cashews or the blueberries and made a colossal mess flinging yogurt on themselves and the table as they picked out the strawberries. I really need to sit down at the table and eat with them.  I usually like to use the time that they are eating to do other things but they just see that as a green light to go ballistic with their food. And I HATE it when they waste food.

 For myself I had, for the first time, a canary melon. O.M.G. It was so good. So sweet. I saw it in the store and said “What the hey? I’ll give it a whirl.” It had such a mild sweet flavor. I also made a brownie recipe that I found on the internet. The ingredients are walnuts, medjool dates, salt, and cocoa powder. When I first saw it I was skeptical. How can all those ingredients come together to taste like something that even remotely resembles a brownie? Boy was I wrong! They were a chocolate lovers delight! I loved them. It’s so nice to find a guilt free dessert that doesn’t taste like cardboard.

So now it’s time for lunch. No big deal right? I had no idea what to make. I have a fridge full of groceries and I was absolutely clueless what to prepare for them. Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to actually plan what we eat for the day in advance, at least until this becomes second nature. Great, something else to add to my already overloaded repertoire. I just ended up making a Caprese salad for myself, which the twins wouldn’t touch (more for me!), and I made them Triscuits with cheddar cheese and roast beef (getting a lot of mileage out of those crackers). They also had some red grapes.

 For dinner I made baked honey mustard chicken legs. I was going to cook some brown rice but the chicken was almost done and, I didn’t realize this, but the rice takes almost an hour to make! What to do? Think fast. I remembered a recipe from the Food Illusion blog. It was buttermilk whole wheat cheese biscuits. They cooked up quick and tasted delish. I also boiled some broccoli. My sons will actually eat broccoli because they say it looks like trees.

 My friend stopped by to drop something off and try a brownie. She couldn’t stop raving about them. She has been eating “real food” for the past four months so she is my cheeleader. There are so many recipes out there and so much info on the subject that sometimes it can be overwhelming, it’s nice to have a frined to turn to and bounce ideas off of.

My conclusion: What I like? I feel more responsible, like I am taking charge of my and my family’s health. I am learning to really cook. I am doing something that will ultimately change me for the better. What I don’t like? The time it takes to prep the food. I am usually chopping vegetables to the tune of my daughter screaming in the background. It’s so aggravating. I actually have to use brain cells I would rather focus on other things to focus on food and what we are going to eat. I know that this will pass, that it is still so very new to me and will, eventually, become second nature, but right now it’s a pain in the patootie. I really don’t like my cooking “flops”. Up until this point, I thought I was a pretty good cook. I am having to go back and relearn somethings.

I shall remain stalwart. I am not going to quit. I am going to use the bumps in the road as markers to learn from. I just hope that I can keep this up after the ten days is over with………..

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Day One Recap

Well, the first day was…….discouraging at best. This is DEFINITELY a different experience for me. As I have mentioned earlier, I have roller skating lessons on Saturday mornings. Normally my sons come with me but we had a late Friday night so I decided to let them sleep in and go solo. I wanted some fuel in my tank before I left so I fixed myself an almond butter and fruit spread sandwich. I also prepared the waffle batter to be ready for my husband to make breakfast when everyone else awoke.

As I was preparing the batter, my son woke up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and informed me that it was time for our skating lesson. Dang! I didn’t know they actually looked forward to it. They are always so scared on their skates but I guess they like it. Anyway, I now have to switch gears, get myself and them ready, and fix them something to eat. I made them the same type of sandwich I was eating and some fruit. I wanted to give it another try, see if they would be more responsive to the sandwich this time. Negative. They ate the fruit and used the sandwiches to bludgeon each other. Fail #1.

We go to our lesson. Skating was great. I am really seeing progress and I worked up quite a sweat and an appetite. So now it’s time to eat. I come home and ask my husband how the waffles were. He said they tasted like “healthy waffles”. He also said he burned the first two before the waffle iron we have is new and we don’t really know how to use it. So now it’s my turn. Should be easier for me right? Wrong. I forgot to spray the iron with cooking spray first and poured the batter on it. Bad idea. I was scraping the waffle onto my plate. Fail #2. The whip cream turned out well and I just ate the scraps with the cream and maple syrup and berries. It was very good.

Lunch was another matter. My husband took my sons to get a hair cut and some new shoes. I shudder to think what he to them to eat while they were out because he wouldn’t tell me. That is another frustration. Mr. Sawyers is not completely on board with this so I feel like I am doing it by myself. Not to thrilled with that. I stayed home and decided on a BLT. I love mayo, so imagine my dismay when I read the ingredients on the “healthy mayo” I had and found it to be unacceptable. So I get this brilliant idea to make my own mayonnaise. Fail #3. I wasted almost a dozen eggs and over a cup of olive oil on my first try. I was so disheartened. I finally got the hang of it and it was very good. So was the BLT. for dinner the kids had an apple, Triscuits, and fresh guacamole. I went to the store, spent more money on food, and came home.

All in all, a VERY challenging day. I hope I can stick with this for 10 days, let alone change my lifestyle. My house is a mess, I have spent more time in the kitchen than I care for and washed more dishes than I like to think about. I am going to have to borrow a mantra from recovery, one day at a time, one day at a time.

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