Garden Goodness

Well, I am back from vacation and am getting serious about my health again.  I came back at 198 lbs on Monday morning and am now 194.6 on Friday morning.  Not a bad week.

I have started up the Bowflex again and have been doing stomach crunches every morning.  It's my stomach that has me the most upset about myself, so it's what I'm focusing on right now.

Meanwhile, our garden is in full swing!  We have had so many veggies come in that we have already been freezing things!  It has also been great for having healthy food!  It's been fun coming up with different ways to cook everything so we don't get sick of it all!

This is a stuffed 8-ball zucchini (I forgot to take a picture before I cut it all up).  It was stuffed with spinach, smoked Gouda cheese and Parmesan cheese.  It was soooo good!  And it felt so decadent even though it was good for us!

Last night I made zucchini chips in the oven - lots of red pepper - yum!!  I did determine that I have to cut the zucchini very thick in order for it not to just wither away to nothing.  Of course, I was using the 8-ball which makes the chips large with a lot of seed filling in the middle.  But they were so good!!

I also made a cheesy yellow squash casserole the other night - I am telling you - very good stuff!

And we have tomatoes and cucumbers so I've been making "salads" with them - pretty much just tomatoes or cucumbers (sometimes both together) and a vinaigrette of some kind (which we make from olive oil and vinegars we bought up in Helen this spring - some amazing flavors! See their website HERE).

Tonight, however, is date night - Mexican food and alcohol - so I'll be up a bit in weight tomorrow, no doubt.  I must say I am looking forward to some chicken wings tonight.  I think I'm craving protein due to the weight lifting.

I'm pretty proud of myself this week!  Hopefully I can keep it up.  Next week will be stressful due to court dates, and stress always makes me want to eat more, so it will be a struggle.  It will also keep me from the time to create in the kitchen, which may also lead me to eat not-so-good choices.

One day at a time!  For now ... Happy Summer!

Sugar = Hunger?

I have a theory.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was doing so well?  Then we went on vacation and I thought I could just slip right back into the groove.  Well, not so much.

I am finding that I am starving.  All the time.

And the one thing I really changed over that vacation was allowing myself to eat sugar.  I had been really good with cutting it out and wasn't even missing it until I started eating it again.  We had ice cream and cookies and candy.  And now I'm just hungry all the time.

I'm thinking there is something to this.

Now I'm going on another vacation so I expect I'll have a hard time again.  It's going to be difficult to get back to that point where my body was doing so well without sugar.  Honestly, I didn't even miss it, and now I can't get enough of it.

Hence my theory that sugar leads to being hungry.

Now I have to start all over again.

After vacation.

The "Good" Hurt

I am so sore today!

I started back up the bowflex and total gym yesterday and also did better on my walk/jog in the morning.  I'm paying for it today, but it really does feel "good."  It's that pain that means I am doing something - AND that it's working!

I haven't lifted the weights since September and, boy, I can really tell.  I was down on the weights from 100lbs to 80lbs for basic lifting, so I've lost a lot of muscle.  My legs are sore from the squats.  I can't do "real" squats due to my knees, so I have to do them on the total gym (which is really wonderful on the knees!).  I can really feel it today!

I'm not doing as well with the eating.  I think my stomach stretched on vacation.  I'm actually having my stomach growl all the time!  And I'm eating, so I don't know what's up.  And then at night (my worst time for will power) I end up OVER eating.  One good thing is that it is summer, so we are having veggies from our garden!  I made squash, turnips and green beans the other night for dinner.  There is nothing so good as fresh garden veggies!!

I'm taking a day off for my muscles and will lift, walk and total gym again on Saturday.

Feeling good!

Vacation in Tybee

We had a wonderful 4 day weekend in Tybee Island, GA this last weekend!

We ate a lot of food and I'm up some pounds because of it, but it was a really fun time and I'm back on track now!

We went to The Lady and Sons (Paual Deen's restaurant) and the food was just fabulous!  My body was a bit  angry with me (which is actually a sign that I've been eating pretty well up until this trip!).

The above are Shrimp and Grits and a loaded Bloody Mary - just wonderful!!

We also had to go to the Savannah Candy Company store - just smelling the wonderful aroma probably added about 3 pounds!!

This was a fantastic oyster from the River House in Savannah - I don't know if I've ever had oysters so good!  They also made a fried calamari that was definitely the best calamari I've ever had.

Clearly I ate and drank a lot on this trip!!  I feel refreshed and ready to get back on track!  Our next vacation is visiting my folks in Virginia later this summer - I know I'll be eating a lot then as well, so I'll try and be super diligent with my food choices until then!!

Happy Summer, y'all!

Updated Graphs

I just put in March, April and May weight loss graphs in the Stats & Stuff section.  I didn't realize I had lost so much already!  I started off at 202 lbs and now am 193 or so (I was down to 192.8, but I ate french fries with ranch dressing tonight, so I know I'll be back up in the morning!).  That's 9 lbs!  I had no idea I had lost that much since March.

Feels good!  Now I really wish I hadn't eaten those french fries!

Well, tomorrow is another day.  I'll do better!

Watermelon/Cayenne Drink

I'm not a big fan of the "weight loss drinks" that abound on the internet.  I don't think there is any easy trick to losing weight.  It's a lot of hard work and perseverance.

That being said, I've found a recipe for a fun drink that has a little "kick" to it and that I can make in my juicer!  It's 1/4 cup of watermelon (1/4 cup of the actual juice), ice, cayenne pepper and 8 oz of water.  You are supposed to drink it after every meal and it is supposed to increase metabolism and keep cravings at bay.

It's actually quite tasty.  I ended up squirting some lime into it as well.  I figure even if it doesn't do what it claims, it's still a great way to get me to drink more fluids.  That's one of my downfalls - the inability to drink all that water we are supposed to drink.

In other news, now that it is summer, my 2 youngest daughters (ages 15 and 8) have started coming to the track with me to walk/jog.  I tell you what, I wish I had the energy of my 8 year old.  She can just run and run and run.  Me?  Well, I walk more than run ... actually I never RUN.  It's more of a jog ... which is actually slower moving than my walk.  My 15 year old says I'm "adorable."  Good grief.

I'm down a lot of weight.  I'm in that zone where it's not hard right now.  I love this zone.  I'm careful with what I eat and have switched to trying to keep sugar out of my diet rather than just counting calories.  At night, I snack on almonds or other nuts.  Sometimes I will have popcorn.  And I try not to eat after 7:00 at the latest.  Sometimes I can't hold to that, and I'm okay with that.  I'm not on a "diet."  I'll never survive if I don't allow fun things.  We even had ice cream the other night.  As long as I don't go wild and eat it every day, I'm good.  And right now, it's easy.  I know I'll hit a rough spot at some point.  I always do.

But for now, I'm back down to 193-ish.  I had been back over 200 earlier this year, so it's coming.

It's helpful because my 15 year old is all about getting in shape this summer, so she's helping look for recipes and helping me stay on track with exercise and is a wonderful buddy in this!  I love summer!

Visual Documentation.

So, I keep track of my weight by using homemade graphs.  Lately I've started marking on the graph when I have an increase in weight with the reason for the gain.  Like on May 6th, I went out to lunch and ate Chinese food.  The next day, I was up almost 2 lbs.  As the water weight left me, I dropped back down again.

Yesterday was Mother's Day so I was taken out to dinner at Bonefish Grill (one of my favorites!).  Today, I'm up 2 lbs.  On the graph, I marked it as "mother's day."

I had already forgotten about the lunch out with Chinese food, so if I hadn't marked it "Chinese Food" on the graph, I wouldn't remember the reason for the increase.

I think this is going to help me see what it is that is causing my increases.  Documentation is going to help me, I think.  I mean, I have always logged my food etc, but there is something about being able to see it on one page in graph form with the increases marked with the reasons for the increase that I think is going to help me.

Also, it's helpful to see the decrease in weight once I'm back on track and the water weight is gone.  It helps me see that just because I had a nice dinner out, it's not a disaster and things even back out again as long as I go back to my routine.

I am going to keep this up and see what it teaches me.  I've already learned that eating out is a definite cause of weight increase.  So I can now consciously try to keep that down to 1 time per month or so.  (Although I'm not going to deprive myself - that is a path to disaster!)

I'll be curious to see if there are other causes of my increases in weight - like a stressful day of court leading to overeating that night (using food as comfort after a bad day).  I'm going to start keeping track of this on my graphs.  I'll report what I find!