Week 19 Results

Pounds Lost this Week:  +2.0 lbs

Pounds Lost to Date:  -27.4 lbs

I’m not shocked in the least that I gained this week.  I had called it and knew with the take out we were eating last week that it was inevitable.  I tried to be good and worked out as well, but the temptation was just too much to bear and I indulged too much.  But I am getting back on track this week now that we have our new fridge and it’s stocked with lots of fresh, healthy food.

Here’s this week’s dinner menu:

Sunday 5/19:   nothing.  We attended an afternoon baptism party and ate enough there :)  no cooking (and no dinner) tonight.

Monday 5/20:  Chicken Thighs with Mustard Citrus Sauce (9 pts+) and sautéed squash with garlic (0 pts+)

Tuesday 5/21:  Ginger & Cilantro baked Tilapia (6 pts+) with steamed brussel sprouts (0 pts+) 

Wednesday 5/22:  15 Minute Ginger Shrimp Stir Fry with ½ cup brown rice (10 pts+)  

Thursday 5/23:  Leftovers (volleyball night)

Friday 5/24:  Spicy Sweet & Sour Chicken with ½ cup brown rice (8 pts+)

Saturday 5/25:   Shrimp Pad Thai (on the Lighter Side) – substituted miracle noodles for the rice noodles in this recipe (8 pts+)

Week 18 Results

Pounds Lost this Week:  -0.4 lbs
Pounds Lost to Date:  -29.4 lbs

It may not be much this week, but I’ll take it!  Any loss (or even no loss) is considered a win in my book.  I wasn’t exactly the epitome of weight watchers standards this week and followed my points only about 75% of the time.  I allowed myself freebies on Friday, Saturday AND Sunday when I normally only allow myself some freebies on one day of the week.   I did work myself out much harder than I normally do, but maybe that just helped me from having a gain. 

Sunday morning instead of sleeping in for Mother’s Day I decided to give a new workout a try.  One of my fellow preschool moms told me about an outdoor bootcamp that was being taught 5 minutes from my house.  No sign up required and for $15/class you get an hour long butt kicking workout with a gorgeous view of the Hudson River.  Figuring I needed to do something different to mix up my training I decided to give it a try.  Talk about butt kicking!  lol  My arms were so sore all day Monday.  It definitely was just what the dr. ordered but boy was I not expecting to feel that sore afterwards.  Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I’ll be going back for more this weekend ;)

I’m taking this week off from meal planning because our refrigerator died suddenly late last week.  The new one is being delivered later this week but that means we will have to do take out for a majority of the week.  Hopefully that means I’m not reporting back this time next week with a gain but I am going to try and be as good as I can be – and also go back for more butt kicking to burn off the extra calories!! 

p.s. look how pretty our new fridge is!!  I can’t wait for it to arrive and fill it back up with yummy healthy food!!!
 

Week 17 Results

Pounds Lost this Week:  -1.0 lbs
Pounds Lost to Date:  -29.0 lbs

A slightly bittersweet week for me.  While I may have just missed the 30 lb mark, I did achieve a few other milestones that I’m pretty psyched about:  (1)  I’m now within 10 lbs of the goal number I was forced to put into WW (2)  I tried on my “skinny” pants (which are 4 sizes smaller than where I started) and got them to button (not all that comfortably but they went on!!) (3) I’ve lost 15% of my body weight

I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished over the last 4 months.  Hard to believe that it’s only taken 4 months for me to get this far but at the same time it feels longer than 4 months that I’ve been cooking and eating this way.  Maybe that’s a good sign that my brain is catching on that this is a lifestyle change and that in order maintain what I’ve worked so hard for I’m going to need to continue to eat like this (or close to it).

Here’s this week’s dinner menu:

Sunday 5/5:   nada.  I stuffed myself with a late lunch at a baby shower I attended so no cooking (and no dinner really) tonight

Monday 5/6:  Cilantro Thai Grilled Chicken Thighs (7 pts+) with Garlic Roasted Cauliflower (0 pts+) (this again fell off the menu again last week and we ended up eating out Friday. Oops ;)  Definitely making it tonight)

Tuesday 5/7:  Leftovers (volleyball night)

Wednesday 5/8:  Skinny Chicken Pesto Bake (6 pts+) with Miracle Noodles (0 pts+)

Thursday 5/9:  Spicy Korean Tacos (8 pts+ for 2 tacos) I substituted ½ cup of pre-cooked chicken breast strips for the tofu

Friday 5/3:  Tuscan White Beans with Spinach, Shrimp & Feta (7 pts+)

Saturday 5/4:   Leftovers or take out (Saturdays are crazy between tee ball & birthday parties we have every weekend)

Week 16 Results

Pounds Lost this Week:  -2.2 lbs

Pounds Lost to Date:  -28.0 lbs

This week’s loss more than makes up for last week’s small gain. Yay!  Seeing this also leads me to believe that maybe last week wasn’t a true gain and was just extra bloat from too much salt or something.  You-know-who showed up this week as well, which only reaffirmed my bloat suspicion.  I’ve been keeping up with running and this week worked on conquering the hills that surround where I live.  It was tough and slow going but I did it.  I’ve also been drinking mango, ginger infused water.  It’s supposed to boost my metabolism.  Who knows if it really does but I’ve been drinking so much water that it’s a welcome change to have something that tastes a little different.  If you want to try it yourself you can find the recipe HERE.

Here’s this week’s dinner menu:

Sunday 4/28:   Spinach Lasagna Roll ups (6 pts+) with side salad (0 pts+) 

Monday 4/29:  Slow cooker Thai Chicken over miracle noodles (8 pts+) 

Tuesday 4/30:  Baked Lump Crab Cakes (5 pts+) with side salad (0 pts+) 

  

Wednesday 5/1:  Leftovers (have an event to attend)

Thursday 5/2:  Ginger & Cilantro baked Tilapia (6 pts+) with steamed broccoli (0 pts+)

Friday 5/3:  Cilantro Thai Grilled ChickenThighs (7 pts+) with side of lemon green beans and salad (0 pts+) (ended up not making this last week)

Saturday 5/4:   Leftovers or take out

My Journey to Green

In honor of Earth Day this week I am dedicating this post to going GREEN.  I’ve always been an earth conscious person but over the past year I’ve furthered my journey over to green.  You’d be surprised how a few small little changes can make a huge impact on our environment.  While I’m in no way 100% green, I do what I can and what I’m comfortable with. 

I’ve always recycled.  Ever since I was younger my parents recycled.  It was just something we did.  I’m slowly getting my husband to do it and find myself less and less pulling things out of the trash bin and moving them to the recycling bin.  Little by little I’ve added on other things such as using reusable shopping bags and most recently I’ve been buying more organic food. 

If you take a closer look around the produce section of your supermarket you’ll notice that a lot of them come from outside the USA.  The pesticides that are used in the US are bad enough that I don’t even want to think about what they’re using in Chile or Uruguay.  Not to mention what kind of genetically modified foods are also lurking in our supermarkets.  (those little stickers on your produce DO actually mean something other than price).  Eating organic drastically reduces your exposure to these harmful pesticides and GMOs, but it can also make for an expensive shopping trip.   To keep down cost I stick to the “dirtydozen” list and buy those items as organic. The Environmental Working Group publishes this list along with its partner list (the Clean 15).  The lists include the top foods that have the highest & lowest content of pesticides.  The highest (on the dirty list) are the ones that should be purchased organic and the lowest (the clean list) are OK to be purchased non-organic.

If you’ve thought of going green but don’t quite know where to start, try making one small adjustment in your life.  Whether that’s recycling, or using your own bags at the supermarket or carpooling to work.  You don’t have to make crazy changes in your life and you also don’t have to do everything.  These are some of the simple changes I’ve made in my life:

• Recycle all of my paper, metal & plastic
• Use reusable bags when shopping
• Use energy efficient light bulbs & appliances
• Buy organic foods off of the “dirty dozen” list  
• Changed to green cleaning products & laundry detergent
• Use reusable coffee and water cups at work
• Purchase oxybenzone-free sunscreen for summer

There are of course more aggressive things you can do to be green if you’re already doing everything I’ve said.  Such as:

• Switching to holistic medicine
• Buy a hybrid or electric car
• Use paraben-free makup
• Use sodium laurel sulfate (SLS) free shampoo & conditioners
• Implement Meatless Mondays.  It’s not just about being vegetarian. If everyone in the US were to eat meat one less day a week it would save 99.6 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock farming. (that’s the equivalent of taking 19.2 million cars off U.S. roads for a year!!)
• Composting kitchen scraps

If you want to read more here are some resources to check out:

• Environmental Working Group (EWG) – A Wealth of Information from Green products to GMOs
• Center for Science in the Public Interest – website that breaks down ingredients in foods
• Skin Deep Database – rates beauty products
• Just Label it – Genetically Modified Foods
• Non GMO Project – Genetically Modified Foods
• Clean 15/dirty dozen List – organic shopping guide published by EWG

Week 15 Results

Pounds Lost this Week:  +0.8 lbs
Pounds Lost to Date:  -25.8 lbs

I would be lying if I didn’t say I was disappointed with my weigh in today.  It’s the first time in 15 weeks that I haven’t had any type of loss, let alone a gain, so it’s kind of a blow to my ego and my motivation.  But it’s barely a pound, so I can’t beat myself up too much over it.  I can only blame myself and it could be due to a number of reasons.  Last week was one of those weeks where I was just SO hungry.  Nothing was satisfying me and drinking gallons of water was just not cutting it.  Could be that the uptick in my exercise was making me more ravenous and I should have adjusted my protein intake to help with the hunger.  Whatever the reason though, today starts a new week and a new beginning.  To end on a positive note, I increased my mileage and ran 3.5 miles yesterday.  I was pretty proud of myself :)  

Here’s this week’s dinner menu:

Sunday 4/21:   Store bought sweet sausages (5 pts+ per link) with sautéed zucchini and garlic (0 pts+)

Monday 4/22:  Taco Monday! (using ground turkey & whole grain shells 6 pts+) with fat free spicy refried beans (2 pts+)

Tuesday 4/23:  Leftovers  (volleyball night)

Wednesday 4/24:  Sprint Stir Fried Chicken with Sugar Snap Peas & Carrots (5 pts+) and ½ cup white rice (5 pts+)

Thursday 4/25:  Ham Steak (3 pts+) with sweet potato fries (5 pts+)

Friday 4/26:  Cilantro Thai Grilled Chicken Thighs (7 pts+) with side of lemon green beans and salad (0 pts+) 

Saturday 4/27:   Leftovers (we will be running around between tee ball & birthday parties)

The Money Motivator

Now that A is turning 5 we thought it was about time that he could start earning an allowance and do consistently do more chores around the house.  Money has proven to be a big motivator for him (it helped with potty training!) so why not use an allowance to help motivate him to get his chores done around the house. 

We decided on using a punch card system for him to earn his allowance rather than giving him just a weekly rate.  For every chore he completes he earns a punch in his card.  Once the card is full he can turn it in for his allowance ($5).  He can also earn extra punches for extra good behavior or for doing something extra special.  My thinking was that it would motivate him even more (to get the punches) and if he decided to skip a chore or behaved poorly that day, then he doesn’t earn a punch for his chore.  He will (hopefully) feel the consequences being it will only take longer to fill the punch card and earn his allowance. 

The punch card itself looked pretty easy to make and I had started to try my hand at it on the computer.  But I got frustrated after about an hour and decided to chuck it and purchase them (cheap) from this seller on Etsy.

A is pretty excited to get started and to start earning his own money.  I told him that he needs to save half of it and the other half he can spend on whatever he wants.  Here’s a brief list of the chores that he will be responsible for and the frequency.  Not every chore will be every day.

• cleaning his room (daily or as needed)
• feeding the dog (daily)
• clearing his dirty dishes after meal times (daily)
• cleaning up toys in the playroom (daily)
• putting away wii remotes when done playing (as needed)
• helping to empty the dishwasher (couple times a week)
• helping load the laundry in washer/dryer (couple times a week)