Here we go again

So I think the hardest part of blogging is coming up with titles.

I’ve done good at eating at home and us not going out for lunch or dinner. However I could have made better dinner choices the last couple days. Both nights for dinner we have had beef wellington. Mainly because the tenderloin was thawed. I think tomorrow will be a chili day if the hubby is ok with it. I just wish I knew where to order or buy bison instead of using hamburger. Also maybe I’ll try ground turkey.

So dinner was half healthy. I made a WW chicken recipe that was really quite yummy. Here is the recipe if you are interested. I used boneless skinless breasts and it worked out really well. The other half of dinner not so healthy. I made the Pioneer Woman’s green beans which you can find here. So so good. I didn’t use as much bacon grease as she suggests and they came out fantastic.

At least my husband is willing to try new stuff. Tonight it’s beef stew which is currently in the crock pot and making the house smell delicious.

SO my husband and I were watching this show last night called the 650 virgin. This guy lost 400 pounds without surgery. He hired a personal trainer and did it all on his own. As we were watching, we started talking about how he doesn’t like being fat, How I don’t like being fat and how we always say we are going to do something but it usually ends up me trying and he wants to make it easy on me so we go out to dinner.

So I told him last night that if we are going to do this then he needs to change the way he thinks about food.

Like we don’t need to have meat at every meal. That’s the way he was raised and thinks that’s the way it should be. For the last 6 years there has been meat, usually red, at dinner. I tried a couple weeks ago to get him to try this layered WW mexican thing with only black beans and you would have thought I was trying to get him to eat a pile of poop.

So he agreed that he would eat whatever I make as long as it tastes good. So this morning I am going to be looking for some great, tasty healthy dinner ideas, So if you have any you would like to share then please feel free.

This also means that I am going to be posting here more often. I am putting it on my to do list every single day so hopefully that will motivate me more and to keep myself and the 2 people who read this up to date.

Why is it so hard to come here and write an update? Why is it so hard to take 10 minutes to blog to the world how I am doing with my weight. I mean I spend enough time in front of this thing that I could write hours and hours of posts.

I guess it boils down to I haven’t been eating right. I haven’t curbed my drinking and I feel like a failure in the eyes of the blog world.

Hopefully I will get better. I have to exercise at least 4 times a week for physical therapy and it’s got to be at least 30- 45 minutes so I guess that’s better than nothing right.

Thanks so much to Lee for checking in with me to see how I am doing.  Well I haven’t been doing that great.

I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. The players for this post are my husband J, my husbands brother B and myself.

So on August 29th J and I went to dinner at a friends house. As we are leaving we see that our son has texted my husband telling him he needed to call B. There are 3 VM’s on his cell phone, all from B and he is drunk as hell. Did I mention he had got out of jail the day before and is on probation? So we get home 3 more drunken VM’s and countless phone calls. It’s seems B is not only drunk he is homeless. He had been staying with his girlfriend, but the girlfriends daughter wouldn’t let him back in the house because he is a negative influence. ( I don’t blame her one bit) So B asks if J can drive and hour to come pick him up from the bar. I step in and say no. Not going to happen. Flurries of phone calls commence to the other brother, the sister. What to do, blah blah blah.

My husband goes and picks him up the next morning. The situation was if B didn’t pay the courts $2000 for 10% of the back child support he would go back to jail for a minimum of 6 months. We don’t have $2k but their other brother and sister split it and agree to pay it with the condition that he - A. Get a job and B. Find a place to live. IN the meantime he is living in our basement. I am NOT happy about this at all, however I am trying to look at it from the -”If it were my brother I would help him” point of view. However, B has a known track record for not wanting to leave once he has “moved in” He once needed a place to stay for a couple weeks and their mother agreed to let him stay there. THREE YEARS LATER, she had to change the locks to get his ass out. (*SIGH* Deep breath, Breathe Breathe)

So very reluctantly I agree he can stay here but there has to be a definate move out day whether he has a job or not. PERIOD. I will not enable him. He of course does the whole ” OH I want a job and to move forward, I don’t want to live on your couch, blah blah blah.”

Fast forward to today- October 5th- Currently he is sleeping off a hangover on the basement couch. He has applied for a total of 2 jobs. Any money he had from working in jail went to beer and cigarettes. Did I mention this WINNER is 53 years old? FIFTY THREE YEARS OLD. He has until the 20th to get the hell out of our house.

There is so much more but I’ll let it go- The point of all that was to get to this.

My eating was going ok. J and I had settled on a Mediterranean style of eating but with having an extra mouth to feed we had to go old school because I REFUSE to feed him seafood and expensive organic foods. If it was up to me he would stay in the basement with a loaf of white bread and a pound of bologna and I’d never see his face.

So I have been drinking, pretty much everyday. The stress he is putting on our marriage is almost too much to deal with. We have fought more in the last 5 weeks than in the last 6 years. So most of our meals consist of what is the cheapest to make that will have leftovers so we aren’t spending an assload on food. I mean we had a freezer full of food, chicken, pork, hamburger, steaks. We are now down to 3 packages of chicken breasts, 4 steaks and a few pork loins. I do have seafood in their but I refuse to feed him seafood and steak. EFF you that’s my food.

So it’s been chili, lots of pasta dishes, sandwiches. The only upside is that I haven’t gained any weight. I am still sitting at 305. Which isn’t great but it is what it is.

Over the weekend I decided I was going to give Jillian Michaels website a try. I get 30 free days so I am starting with that and am making my own food separate from theirs. I really wish that I could include my husband too in this healthy eating but I’m not cooking special meals for the douche-bag brother in law.

IF anyone has gotten this far and has suggestions for me - please feel free.

And Thanks so so much for Lee reminding me that their are people out here that care and think about me.

You made my day Lee. ((((BIG HUGS))))))

Michelle

The eating thing isn’t so bad but I am still having a hard time with the no booze. It seems there is always a reason to drink. So yesterday I tried something different and I will let you know how it goes.

Eating a Mediterranean life style isn’t that hard. The biggest part for me is butter on bread, So either I brush it with olive oil or don’t eat bread. I am loving the seafood aspect since that is my favorite kind of food ever.

Getting it at Costco is very cost effective too. To make sure I am getting in enough veggies, I made the WW no point soup and just threw some extra stuff in there.

Good for you and low in calories.

Well I’m off to bed just thought I would check in.

Over the past week or so I have been trying to decide exactly what I want to do. There are so many diets out there and some are so tempting. Like the Flat Belly Diet, on the surface it looks great then I read an article from the Mayo Clinic and now not so much. Then I read something about the Sonoma/Mediterranean diet and the more I read, the more I liked. It’s not so much a “diet” but a lifestyle. Essentially you eat an assload of veggies, fruits, whole grains, and good fats like olive oil.  I read more about it at the Mayo Clinic online and it has some great benefits like lowering your chance of heart disease and cancer. There was one study that followed 600 people from Crete and they have the lowest rate of heart disease and longer life capacity.

With the heart disease that runs in my husbands family I think this may be a great way of eating for us.  You limit your amount of red meat to a few times a month and eat mostly fish and some chicken. I think I can eat like this for the rest of my life. So that is what I am doing and our family is doing. So hopefully in a week or so I will have some good things to report.

Breakfast-

Sandwich Thin, 1 whole egg, 1 egg white, 2 slices 2% American Cheese, Fiber One yogurt

Lunch-

Salad- Romaine lettuce, 4 oz crab, 2tbs cheddar cheese, 6 saltines, 2 tbs homemade ranch dressing.

Dinner-

Breast of Julia Childs roasted chicken with tarragon, 2 cooked carrots, 3 Ketel One Vodkas with Crystal Light.

Not the best but not the worst by any means

I went and bought Julia Childs, Master the art of French Cooking today. Tonight I made her roasted chicken with tarragon and let me just say, Holy Crap was it good. I made it according to recipe tonight and I’m sure it wasn’t the healthiest mainly because of the butter usage, although it was less than most Paula Dean recipes.

I think I will try and see if I can lighten it up by using less butter. I look forward to make her dishes and trying to make them healthier. I also can’t wait to see the movie. I am hoping to see it Sunday afternoon.

that is how I refer to Jillian Michaels in my house. I bought her 30 Day Shred a few weeks ago but at the time I couldn’t do it since I was still recovering from surgery. However now I am back to doing it and while I hate her during it. I feel good after and know that she is making me stronger and skinnier.

I’m not doing it everyday so on the off days I am going to alternate with Billy’s Boot Camp and the WATP DVD’s.

I also decided I am going to post everyday what I am shoving in my pie-hole. Just one more way to put myself out there and be accountable.