A follow-up to my birthday burger plan...

We had Wendy's tonight and I replaced their bun (which had HFCS) with these. It's REALLY tasty, really soft, and has 3g of sugar and 20g carbs per roll.

So now I can have a burger on my birthday! Just gotta find hot dog buns for when I crave a chili dog. ;)

Highly recommended!

Instant Gratification

A coworker stopped by my cubby yesterday and told me she could see that I was still losing weight. We got into a long conversation about it, but the reason I'm mentioning it is because I told her that this is the only diet I've ever been on that has actually shown me any sort of results. Any. This is actually not true. I have gained weight with almost any other diet.

I said it like I knew it, but that was the 'ah ha' moment where it sunk in. Tonight's weigh in marks 7 and a half weeks on the diet, and almost 14 pounds lost. FOURTEEN pounds.

Them's results, folks.

I have to thank Rosalie for always commenting and encouraging me, and sharing the wisdom she's gained from her time on the diet. It's true, struggling and giving in to temptation doesn't make me feel better, it just sets me back. That moment of indulgence lasts only til the last bite of sugar is swallowed and I realize I've renewed my sugar craving and sabotaged all my discipline and hard work.

Luckily it's not all that hard. Yes, it can be challenging to stick to the diet, but it's not impossible, and that part isn't a personal failure.. it's just a learning curve to look for the stealthy sugars in places I never realized they existed (or in such quantity in those that I did).

So tonight's weigh in? The two pounds I gained from the week we went AWOL? Blam - I'm down 3.8 pounds from there. Double or nothing! I'm also down three quarters of an inch at the belly, and that's after a bottle of water and before a daily visit to "the library."

I'm actually looking forward to my birthday this coming Saturday. We're going to grill, and I plan to have chicken and ignore the hamburger buns and hot dog rolls. I'll get a crudete platter and focus on celery, and then we found a sugar-free cake at Stop & Shop in a tiny little diabetes-friendly bakery display (from which we have already enjoyed the pound cake and angel food cake in the past).

I doooooo plan to try mochi for the first time, but if I have a protein shake for one meal and bacon and eggs for breakfast, it shouldn't be a problem to have one serving.

Warmer weather's here. My chiropractor let me return to my Martial Arts classes. My birthday is impending and my stretched piercings reached 9mm tonight (just one millimeter from my goal).

It's a damned good day.

Not Surprising, Still Disappointing

A weigh-in, with the full effects of our bad week #5, was last night. Not surprising, I gained in both diameter and weight. I'm not that upset about it, but it does strengthen my resolve to get back to it.

It just occurred to me that, on my bad week, I was still ten pounds lighter than my typical weight before we started!

I also realized that I have been a bit coffee crazed lately. I think I drank 3 oz of water yesterday and 8 cups of coffee. So today I will finish the coffee in my travel mug and then avoid it until this evening, focusing on getting my hydration in.

I'm also taking my vitamins this morning, albeit slowly. This is the last of my 6 pack of orange green tea Steaz. I haven't decided if I'll get more. It's not really pleasant, but it is doable. I had orange juice Saturday and Monday to take my vitamins. I have a canker sore coming in (result of a food allergy that I usually keep at bay with the vitamin cocktail documented previously), so I need to get back to vitamins. My Omega 3-6-9 vitamin will also help my back.

I have been running behind a lot lately.. without Soo Bahk Do I'm getting sluggish. So I wake up late, run late, and end up picking up food on my way to work - a habit I want to kick because of the cost if nothing else. I did fear that the English Muffin sandwiches I was getting (3/2) would be made with HFCS, because it seems like that's in everything, but checking the site their brand includes only real sugar. Amazing, this day and age! So that takes a lot of worry off my mind for that.

Running late, I grabbed Bulgogi and Chap Chae leftovers. I'm still stumped to the S/C value of this one. The Bulgogi is fine, but the veggies and celophane noodles in the Chap Chae could potentially be a problem. I documented it as 5/2, tried to eat a small portion, but it's not very filling. Unfortunately I didn't realize it was specifically sweetened with sugar, so it's worse than just the carrots and onions. I want to find some of the shirataki noodles that I read about in the interview with Rosalie - they are 0/0, can you just imagine! We're big pasta people so that will be splendid.

Last night for dinner we had Trader Joe's pre-packaged Chicken Marsala. It was delicious! My husband made some brown rice using chicken stock instead of water and we steamed some broccoli florets. The meal ended up being 1/2. And the portions were hearty again! I've noticed when we try to eat 'normal' food outside of the recipes in the book we find ourselves with small portions that don't satisfy. Better to cook from scratch.

We have a Trade Joe's Pot Pie to try soon, too. I'm ecstatic that there's a pot pie out there that's BFC friendly!

Easter Sunday we're having Prime Rib, so it's just a matter of watching the sides. Maybe some squash and broccoli.

Reboot

Between my husband's birthday (pizza and chocolate mousse cake) and a brand new back muscle strain, this week has pretty much been a wash for the BFC plan. My husband and I have resolved to start over fresh on Sunday. In the meantime we're trying to make decent choices but we're also getting the demons out of our system.
I'm not happy about this. I know this is akin to emotional eating, but I need my husband to be on board with this. If I'm stopping off at Burger King on my way home for him, I'll grab something for myself, too. If he makes hot dogs and chili fries, I'll join in. So getting him to agree to it, and using the evidence of our false belly fat from this week (I lost 1.6 pounds but gained back over an inch) as motivation, will help us forge ahead.
I also, thanks to this new injury, have been restricted from my Martial Arts practice by my chiropractor. I understand I need to give my body time to really heal, or I'll just do something even worse later on (this strain is from overcompensating from a previous strain). But it's definitely going to drive home the effects of missing the plan's goals this week. Can't wait to punish myself with next week's weigh in.

Sabotage

I made the blueberry velvet muffins from the BFC book on Tuesday night, and they are really good! Smell a bit funny because of the soy but they taste fantastic.

Anyway, their value is 0/2, and that's all I had for breakfast this morning, plus coffee.

When I got to work they begged me to run an errand because the people who normally would do it were out and everyone else was swamped. So I do, and the last stop puts me in the same parking lot as a Dunkin Donuts. Remembering how good my iced coffee from last week was (surprising because I didn't think DD would taste the same without sugar or flavored syrup), I stopped in before heading back to work. I handed over my travel mug, asked for a coffee with extra cream, and was on the road again before I got around to taking a sip.

I was disappointed a bit because it was clearly that morning's coffee. But that road wasn't especially busy so I could forgive leaving the coffee in the pots longer than the corporate-suggested 15 minutes.

It was only when I got back to work that I took a sip which included a granule.

Yup. Sugar. They made my coffee extra light and sweet, and because it's been so long since I ordered it that way, and the coffee already tasted off from being burnt, I didn't realize it! Luckily I sip slowly from my travel mug, but still! Have you seen them scoop sugar into coffee cups there? There would have to be at least 5 tbs for that cup.. how much did I have? I don't know!

The blood sugar spike came and went and I'm feeling very down in the dumps now.

Dinner was already planned to be a protein shake (0/0), as I have martial arts tonight. Thank goodness for that. String cheese (0/0) now. Need to drink more water and cheese helps me want to.

I weighed in last night. Down another .25" and two pounds! I'm sure the weight has more to do with the hair we removed, though!

And then I brush and brush and brush and brush my hair....

Before

After

I feel like I ought to have weighed myself before I started! ;)

This took about 50 total hours of combing between two people's now-achey hands. Started Friday night, and ate minimally up til now. Finished at 5:58am this morning. SO thankful I had a chiro appointment before work today!

Tomorrow I get a cut and next week I go back for color.

Misbehaving to Miss Behaving

Last week we regressed and picked up fast food three times (Burger King, McDonalds and Subway/Chinese Food). It has just been so crazy and my husband has been waiting all night for me to get home from my activities, so I think he might have been emotionally eating. When he'd ask me to pick up 'garbage' for him, I'd try to make suggestions for him to at least try and make better choices, but it is what it is, and I'd end up eating it along with him just to skip the time to make myself something better. I did take the buns off my sandwiches and tried to scrape off the ketchup and onions (never ate tomatoes anyway). For the Chinese food I ordered Shrimp Mei Fun instead of my usual General Tso's chicken.

But looking back at what we did it, it still isn't anywhere near as bad as what we would have only a month ago. Refused to just throw caution to the wind. I've enjoyed the results so far too much.

His birthday is this Friday and we have agreed that all bets are off for sugar on our birthdays (my own is on the 30th). What's birthday without cake? And I'm sure there will be other indiscretions throughout the day. ;)

I'm planning to just try to behave extra well for the rest of the month.

I decided on Friday to comb out my dreadlocks, which I've had for 3.5 years. Most people believe that you have to just shave off dreadlocks to get rid of them. It isn't the complete truth, that's just the most painless way to do it! I brushed for 5 hours on Friday night. Saturday morning I got up at 7am and ran to the store for cream and for another comb, and then I had a second set of hands helping til about 11am, when I went to my martial arts class. Ran some errands and then went home and continued combing with my husband until 4am! Got up Sunday at 8:30am and kept going ALL day until 11pm. And I still have about 20 individual locks to comb out!

So you can imagine our hands were busy and we didn't have any idle moments in which to want to snack! We skipped cooking on Saturday, which is when we had Subway (husband) and Chinese food (me). Breakfast was toast for me and cereal for him. Lunch was keilbasa and gouda/monteray jack cheeses. I had the Back to Nature crackers, my husband didn't.

Sunday's menu was pretty much the same for breakfast and lunch, though we didn't want to eat out again for dinner. We had a can of Hormel's white chicken chili, of which a serving is 4/1. But we would usually each have a can on our own before. We increased the size of each serving by adding chicken stock, cream and fresh cooked chicken. Had whole wheat saltines, bringing the total for the meal to 4/2.

This morning I had the toast again (with Philly cream cheese and Nature's Hollow blueberry preserves). The jar of preserves is more than half gone after only a week. It took a week to get the first order from Carbsmart.com, so I'm thinking I'd better place another order, as I plan to make the Blueberry Velvet muffins later this week, and I suspect that'll kill the jar if I haven't already. I have a second jar to last me while I wait for the order, and a jar of apricot preserves (to try in oatmeal since that's my usual dinner before Martial Arts evening classes). It's tough to live off staples that I can only get by mail order.

Since we were combing my hair all weekend, we didn't get out to do the usual grocery shopping (I made three quick trips but didn't have a list to get everything we need). And since I still have plenty of combing to do before my haircut appointment on Wednesday, I'm thinking of going to get some more meal supplies on my lunch. Husband has been eating cereal for breakfast a lot. I was going to make him some eggs with cut up ham in a scramble this morning to see if that helped with his pork fatigue, but since we were exhausted I didn't want to assume he'd get up before it had turned to rubber in the warming oven.

Any other ideas for breakfast protein sources? He's completely OVER bacon and sausage. I can eat the same thing day after day myself, and I have no ideas for him.

Week Recap

I can't believe I went a whole week without posting, but man it has been busy!

Sunday we made the Gourmet Steak with mashed potatoes (one of these days I'll include page numbers for reference). We had the asparagus on the side and the gravy with mushrooms and it was delicious! I had leftovers for lunch twice this week (a benefit of making four servings for two people). Monday night we made the Superb Chicken Enchiladas. Couldn't find the green enchilada sauce in the recipe, so it had a higher sugar count but was still pretty decent. Couldn't find the Mission chips so we got Green Mountain Gringo, and I found them entirely too salty, so I didn't finish them (put the salsa on my enchilada instead).

Also in the 'reject' pile is the Turkey Polish Keilbasa we tried for lunch on Sunday. I was able to eat it with a lot of horseradish, but on its own it was very yuck. It was even this gross brown color. We'll just go back to finding the most natural keilbasa we can, because Keilbasa, gouda and crackers is my husband's favorite Sunday lunch. This time we had the Back to Nature Stoneground wheat crackers. Those things are delicious! They taste like club crackers, and I have to be sure to put a serving on the plate instead of bringing along the box, because the box would be empty in no time! As a meal, we were able to have ten crackers each, and my husband didn't even finish his. 

Tuesday our shipment from carbsmart.com came, so I've enjoyed the Nature's Hollow preserves on toast with cream cheese for breakfast twice this week. Other mornings I had Cheerios, or Uncle Sam.
That day I tried the Jay Robb Dreamsicle Whey Protein Isolate powder for the first time, with Vanilla Almond Milk. Yum! I found the vanilla flavor way too sweet, and the chocolate way too weak. The Dreamsicle tastes how it sounds, so I had Vitamin Shoppe order me a 24oz container. 

I made the French Toast using the Ener-G brown rice loaf I found at Big Y this morning, with scrambled eggs and bacon (except I burnt the bacon). I have to say that Ener-G's carb value is not SO low that I wouldn't prefer to make french toast with the Ezekiel bread we had. Four pieces was too much (and took too long to cook before leaving for work), so I'm much happier to halve that and eat real bread. The Ener-G wasn't awful, but it was very dense. Looked like it should taste like pound cake, but tasted like rice. Not bad, but not amazing. Wouldn't make a sandwich from it, for sure.

My husband says he's tired of sausage and bacon in the mornings, so I'm trying to think of a new source of protein. Thinking maybe I'll cut up Canadian Bacon and put it in our scrambled eggs.

This weekend I'm going to make the Blueberry velvet muffins from the book. I have been dying for those, and like I said, busy week! If next week's as busy as this, those muffins will come in handy!

Weigh in was Wednesday. I wasn't surprised that my weight had shifted up a bit, but was surprised that my belly measurement had decreased again.

Back pain has been bothering me this week. Like a glutton for punishment, I'm going to a martial arts tournament on Sunday.

Oh! I should post that I have been trying a bottle of orange sparkling green tea (Steaz) to take my vitamins. It's... not really working. It's the closest thing to orange juice that I've found, but I still get nauseous after it.. that 'gaggy' feeling until my next meal. Maybe it's because of the carbonation fighting the downward motion of the pills, or maybe it's less to do with the drinks and more to do with not taking my vitamins with food, but I usually have a lot of my fiber with breakfast so I don't want that to block the vitamins from absorbing.

I feel like the cabinets are finally 'stocked', so I'm hoping the grocery bills will start to go down. The whey powder is what will bankrupt us now. :P