Una ragazza magra

I tried something new last night, and it was so good that I had it again tonight:  fish tacos.  Now, for some of you, fish tacos might not be all that adventurous, but I had never had them, so I made my own (very low calorie) version at home.  I usually bake my fish, but since I didn’t want to have to wash the dish, I decided to cook a few tilapia fillets in a pan.  I doused them with some chile-lime marinade (zero calories), and I had some shrimp in the freezer, so I tossed those in as well.  As the fish cooked, I shredded it just like I would normal taco meat, and then I ate them in Joseph’s lavash bread (45 calories for a very large half wrap) with some cheddar cheese melted on top– sooo good!  I would even eat that if I weren’t on a diet.  Also, I might make them for DH because even though he’s not a huge seafood fan like me, I think he would still like it.  It’s always easier if we can eat the same thing.

For two small tacos (I use 1/4 of a wrap for each– they come in rectangles, so splitting it up is easy.) using 1 oz. of full fat cheese and 4 oz. of the fish mixture, the calorie count is only 255.  If you round it off with a good size serving of a veggie, it’s not too bad, and it keeps me pretty full.

I didn’t work out today because I teach in the evenings, and if I want to work out, I would have to get up earlier than noon, and that just hasn’t been working for me.  I stay up until 3 am or so (DH works second shift), so I usually sleep in.  If I had an appointment with my trainer, I would get up, but since I’ve been cut down to once a week, I usually only make it to the gym 3 or 4 days a week instead of 5 like I used to.  That’s still not too bad, though, I suppose.  I may really make an effort next week to go early on Wednesday– I’ll let you know what happens.  Here’s my calorie report for the day (it’s not as impressive without the exercise!):

d	Calories   Eaten 1,008   BMR* 1,882   Exercise 0   Total Burned 1,882   Differential -874

Weight at home:  164.5  This is 1 lb. down from yesterday– woo hoo!  My lowest ever before I gained some back is 159.5.  This means I’m only five pounds away– can’t wait.  Once I hit my lowest ever, I’ll only have about 15 pounds to lose until my goal.  That’s almost inconceivable.

So, if you’ve read my recent posts, you know that I’ve been very low in calories while my diet is supposed to be around 1000-1200 on most days.  I hadn’t been counting the flax oil capsules that I take (nine per day, three with each meal), and that in itself is 90 calories.  I only take them because I’m supposed to, according to my center.  Also, the diet is too low in fat otherwise, and they say if you don’t take them, you hair can start falling out, or your nails can break.  I’ve noticed the hair thing, and I hadn’t been very good at getting them in prior to re-signing a few weeks ago.  Since then, I’ve been very diligent about taking them.  The hair is still falling out, lol, but hopefully it will stop soon.  I have extremely thick hair anyway, so it’s not noticable unless someone’s in the shower with me, which doesn’t happen often.

Here is my food journal for the day followed by my calorie report (I know it cuts part of it off on my screen, but this is much easier than trying to resize it, so you get what you get– sorry!):

Breakfast:

MRC - Lemon Pudding, 1 serving 80 7 10 12 Instant, Quick, and Regular Oats Cereal, 0.25 cup, dry, yields 74 13 1 3 Egg, fresh, 1 large 75 1 5 6 Cheese, Best Choice Colby Jack Cheese, 1 oz 110 1 9 7 *Flaxseed Oil Capsules, 1000 mg per capsule, 3 serving 30 0 3 0

Lunch:

*Flaxseed Oil Capsules, 1000 mg per capsule, 3 serving 30 0 3 0 protien bar smooth caramel peanut, 1 serving 150 15 7 15 HNS kiwi melon, 1 serving 70 2 0 15

Dinner:

Tilapia, 3 oz 68 0 1 15 Shrimp, cooked, 1 oz 28 0 0 6 Lawry’s, Italian Garlic Marinade, 1 Tbsp, 1 serving 0 0 0 0 Green Beans (snap), 1 cup 34 8 0 2 HNS kiwi melon, 1 serving 70 2 0 15 Bread, Joseph’s Middle East Pita Bread, 0.5 serving 45 9 1 2 *Flaxseed Oil Capsules, 1000 mg per capsule, 3 serving 30 0 3 0 Cheddar Cheese, 1 oz 114 0 9 7

			CALORIES	CARBS	FAT	PROTEIN
			1,008	57	53	106

d

I had a great workout today– 550 calories on the elliptical, and 100-something on the treadmill afterward.  I tend to burn just as many calories doing the elliptical as I do running, and I dislike it less, so I think I’m going to stick with that for the most part instead of running all the time.  I’ll still do a mile after each workout, but if I run 4 miles or so for the calorie burn, then I end up with blisters, and the calorie burn is really the biggest thing I care about.  When I do the elliptical, I use manual mode with resistance set at 7, and I usually do between 180 and 210 strides per minute.  So, it roughly equals running in terms of calories anyway.

Oh– and for the best news:  I lost 1.5 lbs. at WI today (that’s since 3 days ago).  Hopefully it will be as much or maybe more on Friday.   A good loss should help keep me motivated to do well when I go to the wedding.

weight at home:  165.5

MRC weight:  168

Today went very well.  I ate just what I was supposed to, and I had a really great workout.  I’m also not hungry at all.  It’s only 10:40, though, and I don’t go to bed until 2 am, so there’s still time, lol.  I do have a planned snack, though, so hopefully that will carry me through until tomorrow, which is WI day.  Today the scale showed the same as yesterday morning, but I’m already below what I was this morning, so I think tomorrow should be a good WI, too.  I need one of those, so I’m pretty excited to see how it turns out.

I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and I tried on one of the size 10 dresses I bought a few weeks ago that didn’t really fit.  It’s very very close to fitting now, so I’m hoping that if I do really well the rest of the week that I will be able to wear it.  As a side benefit, wearing it might help motivate me to avoid the cake, lol.  I think if I had DH zip it for me, I could wear it, but it’s too snug to zip myself just yet.  Although, I would hate to bust a zipper and have to wear it all night long, so I won’t go that route unless it really does fit.

Here’s what I did today:

d	Calories   Eaten 745   BMR* 1,900   Exercise 571   Total Burned 2,471   Differential -1,726

This does not count the strength workout I did (about 40 minutes), and it was circuit training, so I probably burned about 200 calories in that alone.  My concern is that my calories are under 800!  It’s no wonder I’m hungry at the end of the day.  I’m eating what I’m supposed to, but they say it should be around 1000-1200 calories, although I don’t have to count them.  I find this quite puzzling.  I may ask them something about it this week.  As I said, I have a 100 calorie snack planned if I get hungry, so this could change a bit around, say 1 am, but not too shabby for today.  I also don’t have any baked goods coming out of the oven to tempt me, so tonight should be a good night.  The baking is over for a while now, thank goodness.

weight at home:  168

Well, this weekend could have gone perfectly, but I did a little too much baking.  I had muffin and cookie mixes that were going to expire, so, rather than let them go to waste, I made up the cookie dough and baked the muffins.  My husband will eat the muffins (that is, if I don’t get to them first), but the cookie dough will stay in the freezer.  That presents a bit of danger for me, but so far it hasn’t hurt me since the initial night of mixing it up.

Tonight I did well with the muffins until the end when I just totally caved.  There’s no other way to put it– my willpower just left me.  I was genuinely hungry, though, so that didn’t help matters.  Even after dinner, I was really hungry.  At that point, i had only had about 700 calories, so that might have something to do with it.  Still, I should have had something other than muffins and a bit of a rice krispie treat.  Hopefully it won’t hurt me too much, and hopefully this coming week will go better than the weekend did.

I just wonder where the original motivation has gone.  In the beginning months of the diet, even if I was hungry, I didn’t cheat.  Now, hunger just gets to me sometimes.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m just tired of dieting or what.  I know that if I just buckle down and do what I’m supposed to do, this will all be over in just a couple of months.  I guess I just need to remind myself of that for the next few weeks when I’m tempted to cheat.

weight at home: 168 (.5 up from yesterday– maybe it’s a delayed cookie dough reaction.)

Today started off poorly (I succumbed to a cookie dough ball for breakfast), but I decided to straighten up and do well for the rest of the day, and, surprisingly, that worked.  DH suggested pizza for dinner since we’re re-plumbing the house this weekend (no water, and we’re trying to get it done ASAP so we can turn the water back on), but I stuck to my guns and kept to plan A, which was grilling veggies, chicken, shrimp, and steak kabobs.  Pizza is my number one favorite food, so resisting the urge to throw in the towel for the day (especially after the cookie dough ball) was tempting, let me tell you.  Now, of course, I’m happy I stuck with it because the scale will make me happy tomorrow morning.

Last night was a total disaster.  I made up a bunch of cookie dough because I had some mixes that were expiring.  My  plan, of course, was to freeze the dough in balls and not eat any of it, but that went way out the window.  I had over 1,000 calories in cookies/dough, and I could/would have happily eaten more, I assure you.  I still lost weight this morning somehow, though.  According to my nutrition tracker on sparkpeople, I still had a calorie deficit for the day since I had worked out.

This brings me to another topic– sparkpeople.com.  I’m really impressed with it.  I signed up months ago, journaled one day, and never went back.  However, I’ve journaled for four days straight now, and I LOVE how you can run all the calorie reports and see what your deficit is for the day.  So, I think I’m going to skip posting my food and just post my calorie report:

Not too shabby, even with the cookie dough ball.  It’s also nice to see how many calories I can have to maintain my weight.  1900 without exercise isn’t too bad.  Unfortunately, it will be lower at my goal weight, but that’s how it goes, I guess.  I’ll just have to exercise so I can eat more.  Also, this just shows how important continuing to journal will be in the maintenance phase.  There will be times when I go way overboard, but I’ll just have to note that and go under the same ammount in subsequent or preceding days. 

Anyway, all in all, things are going well.  This next week shouldn’t present any major problems.  Next weekend I have a wedding to go to, but it’s an evening wedding, so if I can avoid the cake, at least I won’t have to struggle through dinner.  The bad thing is that DH is in the wedding, so he has to show up for pictures at 4:00– which means we will most likely skip dinner and be famished at the cake and punch reception, making said cake and punch all the more tempting…

weight at home:  167.5 (down 1.5 from yesterday)

Once again I’ve been doing a lot of travelling and have been really busy during the week, making it hard to blog.  I’m basically just holding steady, I guess, but that’s better than gaining.  When I’m away from home, I find it really hard to eat well.  For one, there are usually poor options for me, and second, it’s just hard to pass up the tasty stuff and eat a bar or just salad when everyone else is having a tiny bit of salad and eating cookout food, etc.

This weekend will be the first in six weeks where I’m able to stay home (I’m missing my cousin’s graduation, but I’m just sick of traveling!).  In order to avoid eating out, I’m planning a yummy at-home and on-plan cookout dinner for Saturday.  We’re going to jog down to the farmer’s market (only a mile away), pick up some fresh veggies, and grill up some veggie and chicken/beef/seafood kabobs at home– can’t wait.  At least hubby is on board with the not eating out (albeit his is from a financial standpoint, but whatever!).  I find restaurants so difficult to navigate food-wise.

As for this week, I started out well, and then things went downhill yesterday.  DH woke me up with DQ’s new raspberry truffle blizzard– soooo to die for!  On Monday I was “off” my diet and wanted that blizzard, but they were closed, so he picked one up on his way home from the gym that morning for me– I couldn’t not eat it.  It was so sweet of him to do that, so I was going to just eat a few bites, but then I really loved it, so I finished it.  The rest of the day went decently (hardly had anything for lunch), and then I got the bright idea to make brownies because a mix I had was expiring.  They were good too, lol. 

Today has been totally on plan, though, and I’m working out tonight, so hopefully I’ll get back on track.  This weekend shouldn’t pose any problems, so I’m hoping to get a jump start on dieting.  I’m still about ten pounds away from my lowest weight ever (just before DH came back from Iraq).  I’ve calculated things out, and I need to lose an average of about 2 lbs. a week to make it to my goal before my program expires.  That is still very doable, but I need to stop messing around, or I’ll never get there.  However, I don’t see any more brownie disasters in the near future.

weight at home:  171 (170.5 yesterday before the brownie got me.)

I sort of disappeared for a while after I re-signed to start my program for another 17 weeks.  I’ve been maintaining more or less for the past couple of weeks.  My grandfather had knee surgery, and I went home to stay with my grandma who had a stroke recently and can’t really take care of herself.  So, while I had control over the cooking, dieting was just not on the priority list.  Between running her to doctor appointments and taking her to visit my grandpa, I just grabbed whatever I could whenever I could.  My basic strategy (and I know this is totally unhealthy) was to skip breakfast and lunch and just eat dinner.  Most days it worked.  At least I stayed in a normal calorie range that way, and since I knew it was only temporary, I didn’t feel too bad about it.

Surprisingly, one of the things I MISSED was exercise.  Go figure.  I think I’ve actually started to enjoy it.  It’s definitely a part of my routine now, and I just feel a little bit icky when I don’t do it.  I didn’t exercise for a week and a half, and I was really ready to get back to it.  I had planned to run outside while I was there, but I never really had a chance to get out of the house and leave my grandma alone.  Now that I’m back, I have lost quite a bit of endurance (I think I had been slowly losing that even before the long break).  I can now only do about 2-3 miles depending on the day, and I was running a solid 4 miles just a few months ago.

In looking back, my husband’s return from Iraq has really thrown me off.  I’m very happy to have him back, of course, but my routine definitely took a major hit.  Exercise and weight loss is no longer my top priority– now it’s third or fourth, really, and some days less.  He also presents a lot more temptations for me– dinners out more often, carryout pizza, etc., so I’m still struggling with those things.  He’s very supportive, and most of the time the cheating is my idea, but I always know I have a ready and willing partner in crime when I want to throw the diet out the window.

So, now that the summer is here and my family obligations/traveling is over for the most part (still two weekend trips planned– graduation parties– ugh), I’m looking forward to a restart/recommitment.  I am much less busy these days without school, so one would think it would be easier to make it to the gym.  However, I’m lacking structure to my days without my classes.  Before, I knew I had to go to the gym at a certain time because it was the only way to fit it in, but now I can move my time around and procrastinate, and I sometimes don’t make it.  I’m also still adjusting to the new training schedule– once a week is a bit less motivating.  I’m hoping they’ll change their policy soon.  I’d like to make a compromise between one and five times a week (what I was doing before)– say three with the trainer (weights with him, cardio on my own) and two days of cardio on my own. 

Anyhow, today was a perfect day.  I even resisted the snacky stuff at work tonight.  Yesterday I had a ladies’ night party to go to, so my dinner was two handfuls of chips, some salsa cream cheese dip, and a little cheesecake cupcake– yummy, but not on my diet.  I did skip dinner, though, and breakfast and lunch were on target, so calorie-wise I was fine.  I’m going back to being strict with my program (yea for veggies!) again, so hopefully I’ll see some results soon.  I plan to go in in Friday to WI, and we’ll see how it goes.  I should be down since last time (I was up a bit from my grandma’s), so here’s hoping for the best.

I’ve bought a couple of diet books that were on clearance, and I’m thinking of doing an informal review of them as I read them– the first is rather interesting/helpful.  It’s about eating in general, and the advice can be applied to any diet, really, even if you don’t follow their “plan,” which is basically just portion control…more to come.

weight at home:  172 (my lowest since this restart was 170, so not too bad, really.  My lowest ever was 159.5, so still a ways to go.  I’m hoping to hit that by the middle of June.)

I haven’t posted in a few days, but it’s not because I’ve fallen off the wagon.  I went with my husband to his national guard’s weekend and wasn’t near a computer.  Things are going well, for the  most part.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been all that adherent to plan, but I made good choices, so I’ve still lost quite a bit of weight (five pounds, I think, but we’ll see at WI tomorrow).

I packed food to take and everything, but I unfortunately didn’t eat any of it (didn’t stay cold in the cooler, and I didn’t want to take a chance with bad chicken).  So I tried the new KFC grilled chicken, and it was pretty tasty.  I didn’t have any sides, so that all went fine.  On Saturday evening, I did eat out at Texas Roadhouse, and I had a grilled chicken caesar salad (and about six rolls, I think– ugh).  I ate that much because I didn’t have anything for lunch, and I only had a piece of low cal toast with .5 oz. of cheese and half an orange for breakfast.  So, calorie-wise, I still had a deficit.  Last night we ate at Chili’s, and I pretty much stuck to plan with fajitas (minus all the side-plate gunk that I don’t like anyhow).

Today was also a little rough.  I skipped lunch because I was so busy (this is becoming a habit that I need to break).  Dinner was with friends, but skipping the long story of how this came about, I only had a very small turkey sandwich and a small scoop of mashed potatoes (very small, and $9, so I wasn’t too happy).  I ate a granola bar at home because I’m still starved.  I know I’m going to have to eat something else tonight, but I’m going to hold off until my DH gets home from work so we can have a fun midnight snack run together.  It won’t be too diet friendly, but I worked out today, and my calories are still super low.

Tomorrow is another diet trap– a professor’s house for drinks and tapas, and I’m probably going to Indy with DH to get some free birthday stir-fry at BD’s mongolian BBQ.  Stir fry isn’t too bad for me, and I’ll just try not to eat a ton at either place.  Then Weds. is back to the program.  I don’t have any foreseeable events after that, so hopefully things will settle down a bit.

weight at home: 165.5  (my lowest was 159.5, so I’m getting closer!!)

NSV is a non-scale victory, in case you were wondering, and this was mine today:

I had a staff meeting that I was supposed to go to from 3-5 pm.  However, I teach at another college (usually) until 3:30, so I always have to show up an hour late, and my boss is okay with that.  Well, today I let them out early (at 3:00) because they were doing presentations.  I had argued back and forth with myself what I was going to do for lunch.  Option 1 was to go directly to the meeting, skipping lunch.  Option 2 was to come home and grab something quicker than what I was supposed to have for lunch.  Option 3 was to take the time to actually eat what I was supposed to have (8 oz. of salad veggies– ick).  In the end, I went with option 3 because I just decided I was worth it.  I didn’t want to eat the salad.  I would have much rather had “breakfast” again, and that would have been quicker, but it technically wouldn’t have been adhering to plan.  So, I took about ten extra minutes and ate what I was supposed to eat.

The funny thing is, I was prepared to cheat on my diet just to make it to a pointless meeting ten minutes earlier.  I’m glad I put myself first for once and didn’t make an excuse for why I couldn’t stay on plan.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been showing any improvement on the scale recently.  Perhaps there’s a re-balancing of water going on since I lost 11 lbs. that first week.  At least I haven’t gained, so that’s something, I suppose.  Well, I’m off to work on and hopefully finish my paper tonight– I think it will be an all-nighter, but since I’m on this diet, I can’t have caffeine, so we’ll see what happens.

weight at home:  170.5

That’s right, today was perfect.  I know that this should be the norm and that the cheating days should be few and far between, but there you have it.  It’s been a while since I was 100% absolutely perfect.  Hopefully this will start a trend.  I’m not even hungry.  One thing I did today that helped was spacing out my meals better.  With my school/teaching schedule, I have been eating lunch too soon after breakfast, but I waited today, and that made all the difference.  I wasn’t starving by the time dinner rolled around, so it filled me up, and I wasn’t so crazy tempted to cheat because I was ravenous.

Once school is out (only one more week), this won’t matter anyway since I’ll be able to pretty much set my own schedule.  However, it’s still good to know that spacing meals out is key.  Other than that, there’s not much to report.  I worked out today, like usual.  I’m going to be missing a couple workouts this week in an effort to get my last paper done (what I should be doing right now), but things will go back to normal (hopefully even better than normal) once school is out and once I’m done taking care of my grandma for 1-2 weeks.

weight at home:  170.5 (still hovering here– possibly the sodium from the pringles.  I am super sensitive to salt because this diet limits it so much, so when I do have it, my body goes nuts.  I had a lot of water today, though, so hopefully that will take care of things, coupled with a very good eating day.  Hopefully I’ll see a small loss tomorrow.)