I Did It

I did it! I got through all of my exercise sessions yesterday even though I was stiff and tight from Monday. I was so tired by the end of the day that dinner was an hour and a half late though. That part's not so good. I tried a new recipe last night too, a stuffed chicken marsala. I tend to watch the Food Network while I'm doing my stepping in the afternoon and it sounded good. It was good, but only half a keeper I think. The sauce was excellent, but making the stuffed, rolled chicken breasts was more of a pain than it was worth. The recipe is here if you want to try it.

Anyway, yesterday's food:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad - 12 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Stuffed chicken marsala, Rice-a-Roni, zucchini, milk - 27 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 53 points
Calories: 2514
Calorie deficit: 2577

Short post again today...I'll try to make tomorrow's longer!

Exercise Surprise

I surprised the hell out of myself yesterday. My intention was to increase all of my exercise sessions to 25 minutes and add a second step session in the afternoon - but when the timer went off at the end of 25 minutes for my first round of step, I said, "25 minutes already?" So I went ahead and did 5 more minutes for a full 30! I did 30 for my afternoon round, too. That means between 2 30-minute step sessions and 2 25-minute boxing sessions, I exercised for an hour and 50 minutes! Almost two hours of exercise for somebody who not that long ago got out of breath going out to get the mail is fairly amazing, at least it seems so to me.

Yesterday's meals:
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Meatloaf, baked potato, carrots, milk - 25 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 53 points
Calories: 2545
Calorie deficit: 2276

My whole body's feeling pretty stiff and tight from all the exercise yesterday, but surprisingly I'm not actually sore...I'm going to get through the sessions today in spite of being stiff, though. Sometimes being stubborn is a good thing!

A Somewhat Disappointing Weigh-In

It's Monday again...that means another weigh-in day has arrived. After increasing my activity level again last week, I was really hoping for a good number on the scale today, but I didn't get it. I did lose, but only 1.8 pounds. I know it's better than nothing, but I was anticipating a more significant loss.

The main reason for that was the numbers I've gotten for the last three days as I've double-entered my intake and exercise into both the WW tracker and the fatsecret.com tracker. Well, see for yourselves:

Friday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Chicken with teriyaki, Rice-a-Roni, green beans - 22 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 53 points
Calorie deficit: 2276

Saturday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad - 12 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Flaky herb chicken, au gratin potatoes, corn, milk - 27 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 54 points
Calorie deficit: 2625

Sunday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Sauerkraut & sausage, milk - 23 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 55 points
Calorie deficit: 1831

At least over the three days I've done the double tracking, I averaged 2244 more calories burned than consumed, and they were pretty typical days. I've already met and surpassed my goal of a 2000 calorie deficit per day. With 3500 calories in a pound of fat, if I'm burning 14000 more calories than I'm consuming in a week, I should be losing about 4 pounds! I really don't understand what's going on here. I considered the possibility that I've built some muscle and that's offset the fat loss, but the types of exercise I'm doing at this point really aren't big muscle builders.

I'm not giving up, though, and in fact, I'm increasing my exercise again this week. Both of my Wii Boxing sessions are going from 20 to 25 minutes, and I'm planning to increase my Wii Fit Free Step session the same amount in the morning, plus possibly add another session in the afternoon. I'm not sure about the afternoon session yet, we'll see how it goes today. I don't want to overdo it and end up not doing anything. I'll let you know tomorrow!

Yes, Exercise!

So the last couple of days have been very interesting. I was really excited on Wednesday when I finally figured out what I think is the issue underlying my lack of progress even when I stick to my program like glue. Since I believe the issue is that I'm not exercising enough, I immediately began trying to think of ways to get more.

The most obvious answer is walking, but unfortunately that's not very practical right now. After falling and spraining my ankle and hurting my knee last fall while walking on the gravel outside the trailer, I'm very reluctant to do that any more. The footing simply isn't good enough. At the beginning of the year, I was using my father-in-law's treadmill, but he's moved things around and it's no longer accessible. So if walking is out, what about other types of exercise? Well, there's certainly no room in here for any type of exercise equipment, and even if I wanted to leave the house, which I don't, we can't afford a gym membership. Finally, I decided that since I've been using the Wii for exercise up to this point, I'd just step it up a notch and get the Wii Fit. The software's got a 330 lb weight limit, but there are workarounds for that.

So yesterday morning, very excited to start out with it, I started setting it up. The workarounds for the weight limit are annoying, but I eventually got it ready to go and started trying some of the aerobic exercises. Rhythmic boxing? Fail. Hula hoop? Fail. Basic step? Fail, plus run into the furniture. Ouch. I was very upset and discouraged, and about ready to give up on trying to lose weight altogether, but Chad said he'd help me try to figure out a way that I could actually successfully use it once he got home. I wasn't very hopeful that he'd be able to, but I figured it was worth a shot...and he did!

He discovered that an activity called "Free Step" is very simple, doesn't take much space at all, and best of all, is actually designed to be used while you watch something else on TV! Basically, all it involves is stepping back and forth onto and off of the Wii Fit Board. Even I can do that - most of the time. I did it for 20 minutes this morning...I had planned to do it for 30 minutes, but I just couldn't make it. It was probably a little overambitious anyway. The software even gives you a formula for figuring out how many calories you burned during your activity. I was a little disappointed when I discovered that my 20 minutes only burned about 175 calories, but it's a start. When I add that 175 calories to my 350 for boxing (yes, I'm doing the Wii Fit in addition to the boxing) I'm up to 525! Over a quarter of the way to my goal of 2000 per day!

Anyway, food for the last two days:

Wednesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Chicken and dumplings, milk - 25 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 54 points

Thursday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad- 12 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Beef & vegetable stir-fry, rice, milk - 23 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 52 points

It's going to be a bit labor-intensive, but I think I'm going to start double-tracking my food and exercise. The WW tracker tells me my points values for everything, but since I'm trying to increase my exercise until I'm burning 2000 calories per day more than my intake, it would be somewhat helpful to actually know how many calories I'm consuming and burning, don't you think? So I'm going to go back to fatsecret.com and its associated Android app (thanks to Travis for reminding me of it!) to record everything as well. One of the really nice things about that site is that it automatically calculates the calories burned in 8 hours of sleeping and 16 hours of resting at your current weight, so once I enter my activities and exercise I'll actually get a fairly accurate number for my daily calorie deficit. Double-tracking is kind of a pain, but I can't think of another way to get all the relevant information, and once I get most of my main recipes entered it shouldn't take too long.

Exercise?

Last night marked my first real attempt at taking one of my old staple recipes and adjusting it to fit into my available WW points. Chad's mentioned a number of times that he really misses my beef stroganoff, so I entered it into the recipe calculator to see if it was anywhere close to a reasonable number of points. To put it mildly, it wasn't...37 points per serving. Generally, my entire dinner is in the neighborhood of 25 points.

Ouch.

So I started adjusting...light sour cream instead of regular, half the amount of butter, ¾ lb of meat instead of 1 ¼ lb (partially offset by increasing the mushrooms from ¾ lb to 1 lb), and 6 oz of no-yolk noodles instead of 8 oz of regular noodles. All these changes resulted in reducing the points value to 25 per serving. Much better! I was a little concerned about there being enough to eat after having reduced the meat by almost half and the noodles by a quarter, but there was plenty and then some. I wasn't even able to finish my half. I was afraid the no-yolk noodles wouldn't be very good, but they weren't bad...a little odd, particularly in texture, but not bad.

Yesterday's meals:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad- 12 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Beef stroganoff, green beans, milk - 30 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 57 points

So obviously over the last week or so I've been doing a lot of thinking about my program and my success - or lack of it - in losing weight. Since even in the weeks where I stick to my program like glue I'm usually not losing much, I've reached the conclusion that the problem must be in the other half of the equation - exercise.

The WW points system is not based solely on calories, but on relative amounts of protein, fat, carbs, and fiber. While I think this nutrition-based approach is a good one, in the end the basis of weight loss is burning more calories than you consume. Since the WW tracker doesn't give calorie counts, I entered a typical 55-point day in another tracker and came out at about 2400 calories. I find that interesting, since I calculated my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) with a couple of different calculators and came out with that same number: 2400 calories. Your BMR is the number of calories that you burn simply by being alive. If I were to stay in bed all day and not do anything, that's the number of calories I'd use. Basically, then, since my intake is equal to my BMR, the weight I lose is dependent on the amount of exercising I do.

Over the last 3 weeks, I've increased my daily exercise quite a bit. The week before last, I started doing 15 minutes of Wii boxing every morning. Last week I increased that to 15 minutes of boxing in the morning and 15 minutes of swordfighting in the afternoon, for a total of 30 minutes daily. This week I've increased it again - 20 minutes of boxing in the morning and in the afternoon for a daily total of 40 minutes. I thought that was pretty good...until I looked up the number of calories it's burning. For every 15 minutes, Wii boxing burns 125 calories. That means that my 40 minutes is only burning about 350 calories or so.

There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. If I'm only burning an extra 350 calories per day, that means I'm only going to lose a pound every 10 days! Obviously those 350 calories from boxing aren't the only calories beyond my BMR that I'm burning, since I'm not in bed all day, but I'm not entirely sure how to calculate the calories I'm burning doing the dishes and vacuuming and making dinner and sitting at the computer and so on. With 3500 calories in a pound of fat, if I want to average 4 pounds per week, I need to burn about 2000 extra calories per day. Now I just need to figure out how to do that...

A New Deadline

Sorry about not posting yesterday, guys...I started this post yesterday morning and came back to it about 20 times over the course of the day, but it just wasn't happening.

Weigh-in day yesterday. I was really, really hoping for a good loss to help me get remotivated and back on track...didn't happen. I stayed right on program all week with my food, I did 30 min of exercise every day, as far as I know I did everything right - and I lost a lousy 1.2 pounds. Yes, I know it's better than not losing anything and it's definitely better than gaining. It's certainly not very encouraging or motivating though. I wish I could figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Meals for the weekend:

Saturday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap- 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: "Gourmet" pork chops, rice pilaf, peas, milk - 30 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 58 points

Sunday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad- 14 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Sauerkraut & sausage, milk - 23 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 54 points

Monday
Breakfast: Oatmeal - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap- 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Pork chops with sweet potatoes and pears, peas, milk - 24 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 52 points

Thank you so very much to those of you who commented on my last couple of posts or had conversations with me about them. I really, really appreciate your support and input on this. I think what I'm going to do as far as my deadline is concerned is change it to the end of this year. Since I was off program for so long at the end of last year, I think it makes at least some sense to call the switch to Weight Watchers a new start. The actual date of the one-year weigh-in will be January 2 of next year. In order to make the deadline, I'll have to lose an average of 4.8 pounds per week, which means I really have to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but at least it's a little more possible than the original one.

Still Stressing

Short post today, I'm still stressing out about yesterday's topic. I've managed to keep myself on the program, mainly I think due to already having the meals planned and sheer habit and stubbornness.

Yesterday's meals:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap- 14 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Curried chicken & rice, milk - 22 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 53 points

On a slightly positive note, I did next week's meal plan and grocery list this morning and it went pretty smoothly. I'll talk about what I did differently in one of next week's posts.

Motivation Zero

So I did a little math yesterday and discovered something really depressing. I'm not sure if I mentioned it when I started writing or not, but when I first decided that I was going to try to lose this weight once and for all, I gave myself one year to do it. I needed to lose 222 pounds to get to my goal weight of 175, which works out to about 4.25 pounds per week. That seemed to be a reasonable sort of number. From another perspective, I wanted to lose about 56% of my body weight, so I needed to lose just over 1% of my weight per week, which seems even more doable.

Now I'm 27 weeks in, and I've managed to lose a whopping 24.4 pounds. In order to succeed on my diet, I would need to lose 7.9 pounds per week from now until Sept. 6, which marks the one-year deadline. That's obviously not going to happen. Even people on weight-loss TV shows who have professional trainers and medical support and so on don't average that kind of weight loss. So basically no matter what I do, no matter how well I follow my program and how good I am about exercising, I'm absolutely guaranteed to fail. My motivation just went to zero. How do you stay motivated to do something when you've got no chance at all to succeed at it?

Realizing this is somehow even more depressing because I've been doing so well over the last couple of weeks and I was feeling really proud of myself. Except for one meal last Saturday, I've been right on track with my eating. I exercised for 15 minutes every day last week, and for 30 minutes every day so far this week. I lost 3.2 pounds at Monday's weigh-in, I've started the weekly meal planning, I've written every day but one, and I've even been doing really well on my daily schedule...and all this in spite of the refrigerator being broken! And now it seems like it's all for nothing. I know, I know, each of these things is good in and of itself, but with the knowledge that a little less than 6 months from now I'm going to have failed at the overall plan, they seem pretty pointless.

It's been suggested to me by a couple of different people that I change the deadline based on the fact that of the 27 weeks since I started, I've only actually been on program (either Atkins or WW) for 17 weeks. To me, that seems rather like rewarding myself for screwing up. And a deadline is a deadline, isn't it? Deadlines aren't the sort of things you can just change around to suit your whims. To try to see if there was any justification for this suggestion, though, I did a little more math. It seems like I spent the entire day yesterday and most of today doing math. In the 17 weeks on one program or the other, I've lost 36.6 pounds - 12.2 pounds of it I've lost twice because of the weeks off program - for a net total of 24.4 pounds. Even using those numbers, though, I only come out to 2.1 pounds per week on program, which is only half of what I needed to lose. If I add 10 weeks to my deadline based on the 10 weeks I was off program, it reduces the number I need per week to 5.7 pounds, which is still probably out of reach. I haven't lost even close to that much in a single week since I started. The best week I had I lost 4.4 pounds.

The other idea I had, also involving changing the deadline, is to make January 3 my "new" starting date. The justification for this, such as it is, is based on the fact that I was off Atkins almost as long as I was on it and that I started "fresh" with a totally new program when I switched to Weight Watchers. That would make my weekly number 4.7 pounds, which might be just barely reachable, although very difficult. So far I've averaged about 2.3 pounds per week on program with WW.

I'm still quite doubtful about changing the deadline, though - it seems to me to be cheating, "justification" or not. Please give me some feedback on this, guys...comment on the post, comment on FB, email me, IM me, text me, whatever. I really need some input here.

I think the only reason I was able to stay on plan yesterday was that I had the meal plan already in place. There's another item for the "plus" column...weekly meal planning is very helpful in case of personal emotional meltdown. Anyway, yesterday's food...

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad - 14 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Chicken with teryaki, Rice-a-Roni, green beans, milk - 21 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 52 points

Sorry today's post was so long-winded. Thanks for wading through it, and please let me know what you think.

Oops!

Oops! Got on today to do my blog entry and realized that I missed yesterday. Don't worry, I didn't go off my program again or anything, just completely spaced my blog.

So last time I was talking about my laughable attempts at Wii canoeing...since that's not gonna happen, I decided to try Wii swordfighting Tuesday afternoon. Much better! It's a lot of fun, and definitely a good workout. It also uses a somewhat different set of muscles than boxing, which is good. Lots more forearm movement in swordfighting - they're sore enough today that I even noticed it when I was boxing this morning. I'm trying not to think about what they're going to feel like this afternoon!

Meals for the last two days:

Tuesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad - 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Chicken with Red Wine Sauce, Rice-a-Roni, green beans, milk - 27 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 55 points

Wednesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Beef and vegetable stir-fry, rice, milk - 23 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 54 points

I did really, really well at hitting my points target! I was exactly right on Tuesday, and only 1 point short yesterday. Figuring out my meals ahead of time with the weekly meal planning has really helped immensely with getting the right number of points per day.

Speaking of the weekly meal planning, I haven't talked about it for the last few days. After the stress and difficulty of figuring out the plan and creating the shopping list, I was very unsure about the entire idea. So far, though, I'm really liking actually using the plan. I know every day exactly what I need to eat to be at or close to my points target. I know what I'm going to make for dinner, so when it's time to start getting ready to cook I can immediately grab the right meat to thaw and the right ingredients to prep - and I know I have all the ingredients.

I was very concerned that I wasn't going to be hungry for whatever I had on the plan for a given night, but that hasn't been an issue. I look at the plan in the morning while I'm eating breakfast so I know whether it's a salad or wrap day for lunch, what my afternoon snack is supposed to be, and what I'm planning for dinner. Somehow that knowledge must prepare my appetite for the scheduled meal, because it's sounded good every night so far! The issue of not being able to prepare the meal I've planned because of unforeseen circumstances hasn't happened yet, so I can't speak to that at this point. As far as preparing the meal plan and shopping list causing more stress than it saves, for this week I'd call it about even. It's been smooth sailing all week, but Saturday and Sunday were pretty bad. Since it was the first time, I think some difficulty was to be expected, and I'm going to be doing a couple of things differently this week, so hopefully the process will be much smoother the second time around.

Chicken and Dumplings...Mmmm

My experimental recipe last night was a reasonable success! It's definitely one to add to the list and keep in the rotation, with a few changes. I was concerned while I was making it that it was going to be a little bland, and I was right, but it was still quite edible, and bland is very easy to fix. A little more salt & pepper, a little garlic, some sage in the stew as well as in the dumplings, possibly some celery seed or a chicken bouillon cube, and it should be greatly improved. The recipe made a lot of food, too - I couldn't quite finish my portion. Full is good!

Yesterday's meals:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Turkey pastrami wrap - 13 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Chicken and dumplings - 22 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 52 points

Meal timing and the meals themselves were a little messed up yesterday as a result of needing to wait for the refrigerator repairman to get here. I didn't have the stuff to make my soup for lunch, so I missed a point there and was very hungry by snack time at 3:00. Which didn't actually happen until about 4:30 because I didn't have any yogurt until Chad got back from the grocery store. As a result, dinner didn't happen until about 7:15...more than an hour late. I'm actually rather proud of myself for sticking to the program and the meal plan even though meal timing was off and I was starving. That's frequently a combination of circumstances that ends up with me going off plan badly.

I was 3 points short of target yesterday. The original plan called for 54 points, one short of my daily allowance of 55, but not having my soup at lunch reduced it by 1, forgetting my milk at dinner reduced it by 2, and a miscommunication about the type of biscuit mix to get for the dumplings increased it by 1. All in all, considering it was a bit of a crazy day, I think I did pretty well.

I even managed to get not one but two exercise sessions in! I did my 15 minutes of Wii boxing in the morning, and tried out Wii canoeing for the first time in the afternoon. I am a miserable failure at Wii canoeing. A video of my pathetic attempts at it yesterday would quite possibly win the grand prize on America's Funniest Videos. It definitely got me tired, though! I got Chad to try to help me with it last night, and we determined that my...uhhh...errr...figure...is the issue. I'm simply not built for Wii canoeing. Things get in the way. I'm going to try something else this afternoon. Possibly with no greater success, but we'll see!

Hooray!

Hooray! I lost 3.2 pounds! Definitely encouraging, and I can use all the encouragement I can get right now. I can put up with looking and feeling ridiculous while flailing around with my Wii controllers, stressing out while trying to create a weekly meal plan for the first time, and even with the refrigerator breaking down again after just a week - as long as I'm losing weight.

This meal plan thing is rough, though. I did finally manage to get a week's worth of meals figured out on Saturday, and tonight will be my first try at a new recipe I found on the WW site. When I read the recipe it sounded pretty good, so I'm going to ignore the contradictory comments and just make it and hope it's edible. Making the grocery list once I got the meal plan figured out was almost harder than figuring out the meals, though. That's a lot of ingredients to write down at once, pretty overwhelming. I've got a couple of plans for different ways to do it this week so that hopefully it won't be quite so bad, because I was so overwhelmed by it by dinnertime on Saturday that I ended up going off plan.

The weekend's consumption:

Saturday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Salad, tomato-beef broth - 14 points
Snack: None
Dinner: 2 Burger King double cheeseburgers, large fries - 40 points
Dessert: None
Total: 64 points

Sunday
Breakfast: Oatmeal - 10 points
Lunch: Salad, tomato-beef broth - 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Sauerkraut & sausage - 21 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 49 points

So obviously Saturday night wasn't so good. It wasn't horrible either, though...I hadn't had a ton of points during the day, so even with going way off program for dinner, I only ended up 9 points over my daily allotment. That was covered with quite a lot to spare by my 49 weekly flex-points, and I went right back on my program Sunday morning and didn't beat myself up about falling off too badly. Sunday I ended up 6 points short. Having my meal plan in place should hopefully mean I don't have many more days where I'm more than a couple of points off my target. We'll see how it goes!

Food List Frustration

Well, yesterday's attempt at adding recipes to my list was an exercise in complete frustration. I spent about two hours working on it, and in the end I had added exactly zero items.

I started with my own recipe book, but everything I tried to enter ended up being way over on points, mainly because most of them are pasta recipes, and apparently pasta of any sort is going to be completely out of the question. So since pasta seemed to be a problem, I switched to one of my Atkins cookbooks. No pasta there, right? Well, no, there's no pasta...but there is rather a lot of fat. Also a problem. So much for the Atkins cookbook. Ok, surely the recipes on the Weight Watchers website itself should work for the WW program, so I decided to look there. Aside from some ridiculous numbers of servings per recipe (6 servings? Really? Why on earth would I want to make enough food for 6 people?) some of their entrees sounded pretty good - until I started reading the reviews. "This is the best meal I've ever eaten!"..."This was pretty good, after I made some changes to it."..."This is horrible! I ate one bite and threw the rest out!" All for the same recipe. On every single recipe I looked at. I gave up. I'll give it another try today with some of my other cookbooks, and hope I have a little more success.

Yesterday's intake:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Salad - 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Chicken with Szechuan sauce, Rice-a-Roni, green beans, milk - 21 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 49 points

Six points short yesterday, not terrible but not great either. Hopefully I can hold it together today, all signs so far this morning indicate it's going to be one of my bad days. So far so good...

Boxing or Random Flailing?

So yesterday and today I had to really force myself to do my daily Wii Boxing exercise. Partly it was just that I haven't been sleeping very well so I'm tired, but I think it's also partly the game itself. It really seems that all I'm doing is flailing around and hoping that it connects; there doesn't seem to be much in the way of skill or a learning curve, and trying to throw a punch while holding a controller is a bit awkward. I think I need to try out some of the other "sport" games that came with the Wii and see if any of them give me as good a workout as the boxing does.

Yesterday's intake:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Chicken with teriyaki, Rice-a-Roni, green beans, milk - 22 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 53 points

You'll see that I made my cop-out meal from the other night again, but this time I actually did it on purpose. It was good and it was easy, so I decided it was a keeper. I spent a little time yesterday making a list of all of the dinner entrees that I've made since I started the WW program. It's a pretty short list. I hadn't realized quite how much I was repetitively making the same meals. There are only about 10 items, and I know a couple of them I've only made once. Boring!

Today's task is to go through some of my cookbooks and recipes and the WW site and add a bunch of entrees to my list and calculate their points values. I'm actually getting kind of excited about this meal-planning idea. At the very least I'm going to have a wider range of options entered into my recipe calculator to draw from, and if I'm not bored with what I'm eating I'm more likely to stick with it.

Weekly Meal Planning

Well, I think I've decided to give the weekly meal planning thing a shot. If it works out, I think it could be very beneficial, and if it doesn't, I haven't really lost anything. I was informed yesterday that I was overthinking it and going crazy about every little detail...who, me? Overthink things? Stress myself out over tiny details that nobody else would notice? Never!....uhhh yeah. Anyway...

I've decided I'll do my planning on Sunday mornings for the following week. Since Chad has Sundays and Mondays off, that will be the most practical for grocery shopping, and I prefer to start things on Mondays anyway. For this first week, I think I'll start the planning process a little ahead of time. That way I'll have a little more time and hopefully not get too stressed out about it. Since one of the things that I need to do in order to make this work well is add quite a number of recipes to my WW tracker in order to calculate their points value and that's a fairly time-consuming process, extra time is a definite plus. I think I'm also going to create a list of main dish ideas that I can refer to while I'm making my meal plan so that I don't end up making the same things over and over (which is what I tend to do now) or drawing a complete mental blank when I try to think of things to cook. Perhaps I'll post the list here on the blog if you guys are interested in seeing it.

Yesterday's meals:

Breakfast: Oatmeal (with raisins!), banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad - 15 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Chicken & broccoli stir-fry with General Tso sauce, rice, milk - 23 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 52 points

Only 3 points short of my target, I did pretty well yesterday! I've actually done well all week so far, both with diet and exercise...I really hope I lose when I weigh in on Monday.

Raisins! Raisins!

I had raisins in my oatmeal this morning! I feel so decadent...

I'm a lot less sore today than I was yesterday, boxing is going to be much easier! The dogs look at me so strangely when I'm exercising. I'm sure it's quite funny to watch, but hey, if it works it works.

Yesterday's meals...

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 7 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Chicken with teriyaki, Rice-a-Roni, green beans, milk - 22 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 48 points

I was 7 points short yesterday, which isn't so good. On the other hand, I had a terrible time figuring out what to do for dinner, but I still managed to cook something and not go off my program, which is very good. It was kind of a cop-out, since all I did was saute some chicken breast and pour a little teriyaki sauce to dip it in, but it filled my stomach and stayed within my points, so I guess it works.

I've been considering off and on trying something I've read about in a number of different places as being a good idea: weekly meal planning. A lot of people seem to swear by it for lowering stress, saving money, and reducing food waste as well as for weight loss. In theory, it sounds like a good idea, but I have a number of concerns about it.

First and foremost, how do I know on Sunday what I'm going to be hungry for on Thursday? Or will the act of having planned to make stir-fry (or whatever) that day somehow automatically put me in the mood for it? Also, will trying to figure out an entire week's worth of meals at once cause me more stress than it saves? It seems like it might be overwhelming. And finally, what if something unavoidable happens that causes me to be unable to stick to the preplanned menu? I'm afraid that might freak me out to the point that I mess up the whole week.

On the positive side, knowing in advance what I'm going to make for each meal would eliminate the hour or more of trying to figure out what I want for dinner, if I have the ingredients, how many points it's worth, etc. It would at least reduce the number of times I look in the produce drawer and wonder what on earth the puddle of slime in that bag used to be. I think it would also be helpful in adding some variety to our meals, since I tend to fall back on the same few recipes over and over again as a result of not being able to decide what I want to make. And of course it would help me be closer to hitting the mark on my points target every day.

Have any of you tried weekly meal planning in the past? Do you do it now? How did you like it?

Sore, Sore, Sore

Wow, a lot more of you read my ramblings than I thought! Eight of you "liked" yesterday's post on Facebook. I had no idea so many people were following this process, and I'm really encouraged and motivated by that! Thanks, guys.

I am so sore through the arms and shoulders today from doing Wii Boxing the last two days! Obviously, it's doing me some good. I just finished this morning's session...painful, but I got through it. I had a lot more trouble winning my fights today, though - my poor overused muscles!

Anyway, on to yesterday's menu...

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 7 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Ham, red potatoes, peas, milk - 24 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 53 points

I actually did pretty well yesterday on getting to my points total, only 2 points short. I didn't feel very good after dinner, though - I think I might have eaten too much in my quest to use all my points. Looking at the distribution of points through the day, I'm wondering if I should eat more points at breakfast and fewer at dinner. It would be easy to add a few more points in the morning simply by adding some raisins to my oatmeal, which is the way that I would normally eat it anyway. The only issue with that is that I'm afraid that as I lose weight and reduce the number of points I have available per day, I'll feel deprived and resentful when I inevitably have to remove the raisins again. I'll have to think about it.

I'm Baaaaack...

So I obviously haven't been keeping up on the blog lately.

Wow, I just looked, and I haven't posted in 7 weeks. In that 7 weeks, I've lost a net total of 1.6 pounds. Obviously I do a lot better when I write about what's going on. I don't think more than about 4 people actually read what I write, but I'm beginning to think that just the act of writing helps. Anyway, back to it I go!

Yesterday's meals...

Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 7 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Sauerkraut and sausage - 21 points
Dessert: Pudding and Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 49 points

I currently have a total daily allowance of 55 points. According to the program, I'm supposed to use them all every day, but I rarely make it. I think as long as I'm within 5 points or less I'm doing fine. As it is, I'm eating every 3 hours and rarely or never getting the recommended number of vegetable servings. Most vegetables and fruits have a zero points value, and I'm supposed to have nine servings per day, in addition to my 55 points?! There's no way I can eat that much, so I do what I can.

I'm starting back with exercising this week as well. The treadmill I was using is no longer accessible, and it's pretty uncomfortable for me to go in and use it anyway, so last night I fired up the Wii and tried out the Wii Sports boxing game for the first time. It feels a lot more like random, frenetic flailing than actual fighting, but at least it's energetic, random, frenetic flailing that definitely gets my heart rate up and tires me out. I started out with 15 minutes and I'll increase it weekly as I've done with my other types of exercising.

A Bad Weekend

Well, yesterday was weigh-in day. Not such good results this week by any means. I lost one lousy pound. On the one hand, it's not surprising, because I didn't have a very good weekend. I don't know why, but I was in a foul mood all weekend, and that translated into a complete lack of motivation to cook, plus cravings for unhealthy food. Saturday night I decided to just go ahead and eat fast food. I had 30 daily points still available, and all 49 of my weekly points. One of the things that the weekly points are supposed to be there for is so that if you have a craving or a slip, you have space to include that in your program without feeling like you've fallen off completely. I used 10 points of my weekly allowance Saturday evening, and I didn't feel too bad about it. Unfortunately, Sunday was another bad day, and not only did I have Burger King for dinner again, I also ate an entire sleeve of Ritz crackers. That took another 20 points of my weekly allowance, and made me feel pretty rotten about myself.

On the other hand, however, the single pound is a little frustrating. I still had 19 of my weekly points left, even after my terrible weekend, and I started exercising last week. I walked 10 minutes on the treadmill at 2 mph four days last week, and I was rather proud of that. I was afraid that having not exercised during the period between stopping Atkins and beginning WW might have resulted in losing all the advances I'd made in increasing my exercise time from 5 minutes to 12 minutes per session. Anyway, technically I stayed within the WW guidelines for the week and didn't get good results. I know that the technicality doesn't really count, though. I had a bad weekend and I paid for it. I'm back on track now though.

It's been several days since I posted, so I'm not going to list my entire intake...I've already mentioned the worst part. Total points for each day were:

Thursday: 44 points
Friday: 54 points
Saturday: 66 points
Sunday: 76 points
Monday: 47 points

You guys have no idea how hard it was for me to admit to you how much I screwed up this weekend...it's even more embarrassing and humiliating to write it down and see it in black and white than it was to screw up in the first place. The deal I made with myself when I started this blog back in September was that I was going to be totally honest and accountable in it - about the bad things as well as the good. That's a large part of the point of writing it in the first place. When I do well I get to bask in the sound of your cheers, when I'm struggling but sticking to it I get to lean on your encouragement, and when I screw up royally...well, I have to admit it and take the scorn.

So Confusing...

So I've decided that staying within the technical specifications of a weight-loss program is only one piece of the puzzle. Figuring out why each program works (or doesn't!) and why they stress different foods is almost more important than sticking to your daily points or carbs or calories or whatever you're counting. Or maybe that's just the way my brain works and other people don't care why a program works as long as it does, in fact, work. I don't know. My intake for the last two days:

Tuesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal - 7 points
Lunch: Turkey pastrami wrap, tomato-beef broth - 14 points
Snack: Cottage cheese with canned pears - 9 points
Dinner: Sauerkraut and sausage - 21 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 56 points

Wednesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal - 7 points
Lunch: Salad, banana - 16 points
Snack: Plain Greek yogurt with blueberries and honey - 4 points
Dinner: Ham steak, red potatoes, peas, milk - 20 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 52 points

Anyway, I've been doing a pretty good job of staying within my WW program guidelines so far, although squeezing in three servings of milk and nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day hasn't quite worked yet. I'm working on it! Some of the points values are very confusing and counter-intuitive to me, though, particularly coming from a low-carb program like Atkins. Fruits and vegetables are for the most part zero points. While that's really nice and I love being able to eat fruit again and have more than half a cup of vegetables with my dinner, it's also a little mind-blowing, because fruits in particular have a lot of carbs. A banana has about 25 carbs! That's as much as I was allowed in a whole day on Atkins, and I don't have to count it at all on WW? Even an apple is about 15 carbs - unthinkable on a low-carb program.

The last few days I've been having oatmeal for breakfast. Once again, something that I really like, high nutritional value, lots of fiber, very natural, but very high carb. Half a cup of dry oatmeal is once again about 25 carbs, or a whole day's worth on Atkins - but only costs me 4 points. The reason I've been having oatmeal for breakfast instead of eggs and bacon or sausage? I was planning to have sausage the other day - and then I looked at the points. Bacon is fairly reasonable on points value, 4 points for three pieces. Sausage is not. Sausage is 15 points for 8 ounces! It reminds me of my reaction to learning that butter is 3 points per tablespoon. What?!

I think retraining my mind and reactions to work with the WW program instead of Atkins is going to be the hardest part of the whole diet!

It Worked!

So yesterday was weigh-in day and I was sooo nervous as we pulled in to the doctor's office. I really didn't think I was going to have lost any weight, with the number of carbs and the sheer amount of food I've been eating on the WW program. But guess what? I did lose! And I lost more than I did on any week I was on Atkins. Let's hear it for 4.4 pounds! It worked! I'm so excited. As a result of the loss, my daily points allowance has gone down from 57 to 56. I don't think that's going to be much of an issue, since I've had a hard time most days eating enough points!

My food for the last few days...

Friday
Breakfast: Scrambled egg, 3 sausage links, banana - 12 points
Lunch: Turkey pastrami wrap, tomato-beef broth - 14 points
Snack: Plain Greek yogurt with blueberries and honey - 3 points
Dinner: Chicken with teriyaki sauce, green beans, Rice-a-Roni - 23 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 56 points

Saturday
Breakfast: Scrambled egg, 3 pieces bacon - 11 points
Lunch: Turkey pastrami wrap, tomato-beef broth - 14 points
Snack: Plain Greek yogurt with blueberries and honey - 3 points
Dinner: Ham steak, peas, red potatoes, milk - 21 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 53 points

Sunday
Breakfast: Scrambled egg, 3 sausage links, banana - 12 points
Lunch: Turkey pastrami wrap, tomato-beef broth - 14 points
Snack: Cottage cheese, canned pears - 7 points
Dinner: Smoked sausage, sauerkraut - 21 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 58 points

Monday
Breakfast: Oatmeal - 7 points
Lunch: Turkey pastrami wrap, tomato-beef broth - 14 points
Snack: Banana - 0 points
Dinner: Chili, saltines, milk - 28 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 53 points

I've done a pretty good job of sticking to my points, although figuring out how to get them all in has been interesting sometimes, to say the least. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on the blog previously, but the WW program, in addition to the daily points allowance based on your age, gender, and weight, also gives a 49-point weekly allowance to everyone. These points can be saved up for a special occasion, split evenly through the week, not used at all, or any combination of the above. I ended up using one of those points on Sunday, although I hadn't planned to use them at all. It doesn't seem to have hurt me any, though!

Hungry!

Yesterday was a hungry day...not sure why, I ate the same things I've been eating all week, but I got progressively hungrier throughout the day. I was grumpy and tired all day too (well, I'm always grumpy and tired, but more so than usual!), so maybe I was just hungry as a response to that. Anyway, I managed to resist and not eat anything I shouldn't, so that's a good thing.

Breakfast: Scrambled egg, 3 sausage links, banana - 12 points
Lunch: Salad - 16 points
Snack: Plain Greek yogurt with blueberries and honey - 3 points
Dinner: Ham steak, peas, red potatoes, milk - 20 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 56 points

Aside from being hungry yesterday though, I'm concerned about what the scale's gonna say on Monday when I weigh in. I just feel like I'm eating way too much to be able to be losing any weight, particularly on the carb side. I've purposely avoided adding up the carbs I'm eating so I don't freak myself out, but that doesn't keep me from knowing that fruit and rice and potatoes are high-carb! I know they're complex carbs, but still...I guess we'll find out on Monday!

Stir-Fry. Lots & Lots of Stir-Fry.

So last night I decided I'd make a stir-fry for dinner. That would seem like a simple, healthy, diet-friendly sort of meal, right? Well...sort of. The WW online tracker includes a recipe builder, so I entered all my ingredients and then stared at the total in shock. 18 points per serving! I managed to reduce it to 16 points by cutting out some of the cooking oil, but it still seemed awfully high. I'd already thawed the meat, though, so since I had enough points available, I decided to go ahead and make it. At that point I discovered one reason the total was so high. A pound of meat and two pounds of vegetables makes a lot of stir-fry. A lot. Suddenly my two servings of stir-fry turned into four servings...with 8 points each. As a result, I was quite a bit short on my points total for yesterday, but I suppose things like that are going to happen as I learn this new program.

Breakfast: Scrambled egg, 3 pieces bacon - 11 points
Lunch: Salad - 16 points
Snack: Plain Greek yogurt with blueberries and honey - 3 points
Dinner: Beef and vegetable stir-fry, milk - 10 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 45 points

One thing I noticed as I was using the WW recipe builder yesterday I thought was interesting - although they say that vegetables are worth zero points for the most part, and the vegetable line items showed zero, they were adding a few points to the bottom line. I haven't altered the recipe yet to a more reasonable size, and for the total points for two servings, it's showing 33 points. If I add up the individual line items, though, I get 25 points. That's a pretty significant difference! I'm guessing that if an item is worth less than one full point, it shows as zero, but when the software totals the points, it's adding in those fractions. I'd really rather it told me if an item is worth .7 points and so on, but so be it.

I'm On a Diet? Really?

So I'm a little concerned that my new program doesn't really seem like much of a diet. As I was eating my bowl of pudding last night for dessert, I was thinking about what I ate yesterday, and it didn't seem terribly...diet-ish. Well, judge for yourselves:

Breakfast: Scrambled egg, 3 pieces bacon - 11 points
Lunch: Salad - 16 points
Snack: Plain Greek yogurt with blueberries and honey - 3 points
Dinner: Chicken with Red Wine Sauce, green beans, 1 cup chicken Rice-a-Roni - 23 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 57 points

That doesn't really sound like a day on a diet to me. The salad I had for lunch sounds like diet food to some extent, except it was really more of a chef salad, with cheese and meat and hard-boiled egg - very yummy. I really felt guilty about having the Rice-a-Roni with dinner, but I was 8 points short for the day without it. That's a huge number of carbs! I know, I know, I'm not supposed to be counting carbs anymore...but it's going to take a while to change that mindset. It would have been a little healthier if I'd had plain rice instead of Rice-a-Roni, but I had it available so I used it. I guess we'll see what the scale says on Monday!

Day One!

Well, yesterday was interesting. After having been on Atkins, the Weight Watchers program is somewhat counter-intuitive, and I think it's going to take a while to get accustomed to the differences. I certainly get to eat a lot, though, which is pretty cool! I have 57 points to consume each day, and yesterday I only managed 52, but at least I was close. It felt strange, but very nice, to be able to eat fruit and vegetables to my heart's content.

I think the change that's going to be hardest for me to get used to between Atkins and WW is the difference in the way butter is treated. On Atkins, the whole idea is to convert your body from using carbs as its main energy source to using fats, so fats like butter and oils are encouraged and unlimited - within reason, of course. With WW, the program seems to be based more around nutrition density, calories, and the relative difficulty of processing different types of foods. The high nutritive value, fiber, and complex carbs in fruits and vegetables are encouraged and unlimited - but pure fats like butter are penalized. A single tablespoon of butter counts for 3 points. It's not really a big issue right now when I'm having a little difficulty figuring out how to eat enough to use all my daily points like I'm supposed to, although it feels a little odd to be carefully measuring something I used to use with abandon, but I can see it becoming a problem down the road as I lose weight and reduce the number of points I have available. I'll deal with it if and when I come to it, I suppose! Anyway, yesterday's meals...

Breakfast: Scrambled egg, 4 pieces bacon - 13 points
Lunch: Salad - 16 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Chicken & mushrooms, sauteed zucchini, milk - 19 points
Dessert: Sugar-free Jello pudding, Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 52 points

One thing that I think did work really well with my previous program was the schedule I made for myself of eating something every 3 hours so I was never really hungry, so I'm going to continue to do that with WW. If I'm starving, I'm more likely to have cravings, and less likely to want to spend the time and energy to cook when I want to eat right now! It's best to prevent that as much as possible, I think, since my energy levels are never exactly high to begin with. Avoiding the situations where I'm tempted to fall off the program is a large part of the battle!

A New Year, A New Start

Hey everyone! As I'm sure you've all figured out by now (since I haven't made a blog post in nearly two months) I got very frustrated with my lack of progress on my program and fell off it with a vengeance just before Thanksgiving. I thought it would be fairly self-defeating to try to start a new diet during the holidays, so I set a start date of January 3, the first Monday after New Year's, and here we are!

Based on the research I've done and comments from you guys, I've decided that the main reason I was so unsuccessful with losing weight on Atkins last fall is that my body was in starvation mode. I simply couldn't manage to consume enough calories and still stay within my carb limits. I was averaging 1100-1200 calories per day, and although different calculators came up with different numbers, the general consensus seemed to be that I should be eating 1900-2000 calories per day. That's a big deficit.

Anyway, what I've decided to do is go with a different program altogether, and the winner is Weight Watchers Online. The online version of their program is cheaper than the weekly meetings, and getting me out of the house to a meeting would be next to impossible anyway. I've been on Weight Watchers twice before, both times with the traditional weekly meeting format, both times very briefly and quite reluctantly on my part. Needless to say, I didn't have much success. They've been around for a very long time, though, and many, many people have lost a lot of weight with their programs, so they must be doing something right!

The WW program is based on point values assigned to everything you eat. They calculate the number of points you need to consume per day based on age, gender, height, and current weight, and the number changes as you lose weight. For example, when I was exploring the site before I weighed in this morning, I entered a guess for my weight as 400 lbs, anticipating that I would have gained back all I had lost. The system then calculated a daily total of 59 points for me. When I discovered this morning that I've only gained back 7 lbs (YAY!) and changed my starting weight to 383, it reduced my daily points to 57. They encourage fruit and vegetable consumption, which is something that I was having a hard time with on Atkins. On WW, most fruits and vegetables have a zero points value, so I can eat as many of them as I want. Well...within reason, of course! But I won't have to restrict myself to half a cup of vegetables with dinner and no fruit at all, which will be very nice.

So as of this morning, we're off and running again! It's gonna work this time. I'm determined.