Long Week!

Today is my little sister Andrea's (or Peeglet) Bridal Shower!! My older sister, Candice, my little niece Addison, and I spent all day yesterday traipsing through Costco, Home Goods, and Target buying everything to make for the shower today. Then, we spent even longer baking, cooking, shredding, etc...but everything looks so yummy! The hardest part was messing up the deviled eggs. We've never really made them before, but they are Peeglet's absolute favorite. After hours of tediously de-shelling the eggs...and ripping them in half, or tearing the skin, and creating divets, we admitted defeat. However, with a quick call to mom, she salvaged the 3 dozen eggs we'd already hard boiled and suggested an egg salad! Huzzah!! We just deviled the yolks, and chunked the whites and mixed them all together! Absolutely delicious. The down side to all of this? I think every recipe had cream cheese, mayonnaise, or both! We used almost an entire Costco sized jar of Hellman's! Obviously we don't eat like this all the time, but I'm really going to have to watch myself today so I don't go hogwild! We do have a lot of fresh fruit and veggies, to be served with dip of course, so I will limit the dip intake, hopefully! As far as for the rest of the week, I was hoping to have a great and encouraging blog about how wonderful we've been doing, and all the weight we lost, and the week truly started out that way! We made delicious meals at home, watched our portions, had left overs to pack for lunch, and I even had plans with Peeglet to attend a Zumba session on Thursday night! And then, Wednesday night at work happened. To make a long, and tearful story short, I was in an encounter with the manager at work, and ended up feeling I had no respect, and so technically quit my job on Wednesday night. I got a call that I still had a job, and ended up calling the district supervisor to resolve some issues. This was such a stressful situation, and unlike anything that I've ever been involved in. For those of you that know me well, you know that I'm usually a calm person in control of my emotions, and that I very much want to and do get along with others. Luckily, after several conversations, the situation was resolved, but the stress of it all sent me into an eating downward spiral. Wednesday night, my support system (Kyle, Peeglet, and her fiance, Daniel) made and shared brownies with me, because chocolate helps so much! Then, I was so stressed out about seeing the person on Thursday, I forgot to pack my lunch, so I ran to McDonald's on my lunch break, with every intention of ordering a grilled, sweet chili chicken Mcwrap and water. But, there, in the drive thru out of my mouth came, I'll have a No. 1 with a large coke! (this is the first regular pop I've really had since the cleanse). After wolfing down my lunch (and it was delicious), I checked facebook to see a message from my cousin's wife, Michelle. She was so nice, and said how inspiring my blog has been, and that she was on day 4 of her own GM Cleanse. I felt so terrible, here I was just falling into the same old pattern! If only I had checked facebook before lunch!! I still thought it would be okay, because I would work it off at Zumba. At 7:25 pm, Peeg and I pulled into the parking lot of the little workout place for class. The music was already going, the parking lot was overflowing, and people were already dancing inside through the window. We were so intimidated, and I was still pretty overwhelmed by everything at work, that we decided to flee! So, yes, it has been a very long week, physically, mentally, and emotionally! (I cried, a lot, on Wednesday and Thursday) and I definitely saw just how much I am controlled by stress, especially when it comes to food choices! My hope from here on out is that I don't let that kind of stress and situation occur again, the situation was a long time coming, and I just kept ignoring everything that was going on, hoping to avoid a confrontation. Obviously, I found my breaking point, I'm not proud, but I do feel like I know now that I need to take the time to address things. This should carry over into eating as well! Planning and addressing food, having food prepared, and having healthy things on hand to munch on should help me avoid situations where I am at the McDonald's drive in at all!

Some Struggles

This week has been full of ups and downs for Kyle and I. We both gained back a few pounds from the cleanse. Kyle said he knew this would happen but I thought I'd finally be in the 250s for the first time in years. But, it looks like it might be a few more weeks til I get there. However, we went grocery shopping and bought a bunch of fresh things, and I've been given some good looking recipes from friend's and found more on pinterest. This week we get to look forward to mexican pizza, jalapeno-popper stuffed chicken, chipotle black bean burgers, crunchy chicken salad with poppy seed dressing and some other goodies!

Hopefully the new recipes will keep us inspired. I got pretty discouraged this week, because I gained weight back and I felt like no matter what I eat, I'll be at 265 for the rest of my life. This is the weight that I usually am, and it seems like every diet/exercise try stagnates at this weight. Today, however I was 263...and that was after even cheating with some Pizza King pizza (my favorite!).

The next step to get sorted is exercise. I'm planning to start out slow, just long walks with Oscar, our dog, and Kyle. Again, exercise would be helpful, but because of my arthritis/joint pain, strenuous exercise is difficult. I am doing a lot of physical therapy for my lower back and Sacriiliac joints, and its the best I've felt in years. Even my parents said I looked really healthy when I saw them yesterday! So, walking should go a long way I hope. Also, my little sister has moved in with us for the summer, until she get's married July 20th! We really want to try Zumba to work out and look sexy for the wedding!

What do you eat when you don't have a diet to follow

     Since finishing the cleanse, we've been on our own again with food, which is a little scary. We've done ok, but not great picking our own meals. The hardest part was eating barbeque at my sister's and fiance's engagement party. There was so much food, and we indulged quite a bit. Ribs, chicken legs, spaghetti, deviled eggs, salad, cheese cake, breadsticks, etc... to name a few items. However, we were incapable of gorging as much as we normally do. And the biggest difference was we had some regrets about eating so poorly. We also felt lethargic and uncomfortable for the rest of the evening, and even woke up more sluggish the next day. We are definitely noticing a huge difference that eating poorly plays on how we feel, and we're choosing to try and eat healthier just because we feel better and more refreshed.

Last night we also ate out again. I surprised Kyle with Alex Clare concert tickets at the Old National Theatre, and so we decided to make it date night and check out Mesh on Mass Ave. We're trying to do a little bit more expensive date night once a month to some nicer restaurants we want to try, rather than running to Applebee's or O'Charlies type restaurants once a week. Mesh was absolutely delicious!! And we ordered somewhat consciously. Kyle and I split the Applewood Chicken Salad and a 14 oz lamb t-bone which was out of this world good! We also split the calamari for an appetizer and broke down and split the bread pudding for dessert. However, we felt the lamb and salad were good options, and we only had 1 refill on our basket of bread instead of the two or three we normal eat.

All and All were realizing this is going to be hard work and we have to choose to make the right choices everyday. I know there will be times when we mess up, and I know that we can't get discouraged, but instead just need to do better the next day. But, for the first time in a long time, I feel like this is something we can do and be successful at!!

Results of the GM Cleanse!

We made it through the cleanse!! And we did very well until 6 pm on Day 7, at which point we ate out at Red Robin to celebrate my sister moving to Indy and my cousin running her first mini! But even there we ordered and ate much healthier than we normally would. Kyle ate a Bruschetta Chicken sandwich, side salad, and broccoli and I ate the BLTA croissant w/o mayo, a side salad...and sadly most of my sister's kid's menu french fries.

Our weigh in at the end of it all was very exciting! Kyle weighed 320.2, after starting at 335.6, that's 15.4 lbs down. I weighed a flat 260 so also lost 15 lbs! We're so pleased with our progress. We're also very aware that loosing weight quickly often means you put it on just as fast. However, we did the Cleanse to jump start our weight loss and also get our bodies used to eating healthier, and so we won't crave those comfort food so much.

A couple things that made me quite happy is that we did eat out. I actually ate out twice on Day 6, Friday and then at Red Robin on Saturday. Even though we went out to eat, I still managed to order really healthy things. Friday morning I had breakfast with a friend at La Peep's. I ordered an egg white omelette with spinach, mushrooms, avocado, sun-dried tomatoes ( I even had them hold the cheese :( and the potatoes) and had fruit instead. Then, later with my sisters at Applebee's I thoroughly enjoyed a 12 oz NY strip steak (we were allowed unlimited beef!) and did two ordered of steamed veggies for my side. So, since it's pretty unrealistic that we will cut out eating out all together, I'm really encouraged that they're are tasty options available, but we'll just have to discipline ourselves to order those things and not the regular stuff we usually get.

I asked Kyle how he felt throughout the week and at the end of it. He said he felt pretty lethargic the first few days, especially because he was going without his regular cup of joe at work. But, at the end of the week, he felt that his energy level was back to his usual level, without the coffee! He also says he feels skinnier! I feel skinnier too! And also don't feel too deprived of energy, but I still have a mild headache, hopefully that continues to diminish as I continue to avoid caffeine!

So, thanks everyone for all the encouragement and support, I've gotten several comments on facebook! I honestly can't believe how supportive everybody has been. I've gotten recipe ideas, websites to look at, and general encouragement from some very unexpected places and I know we'll need it to continue forward to someday skinny mini! So any advice or tips are very welcome as we traverse our weight loss path!!

GM Diet...Through the hardest part, onto Day 5!

We made it through! To meat day!! :) Just enjoyed an 8 oz sirloin for breakfast! Thank goodness. The last two days have been a little difficult. Fruits and Veggies on Tuesday weree okay because there was a little more variety, but I couldn't bring myself to eat much more soup. Yesterday was also pretty difficult. I managed to eat four of the eight bananas we're allowed and all 3 glasses of milk. However, both days I was feeling pretty  drained, hungry, and light headed.

However, it's been working. This morning I weighed in at 262,  which is 13 lbs lost and Kyle weighed 325, so he's lost ten! We're pretty proud of ourselves, and we haven't cheated, even though we've been laden with treats at our places of employment this week. Hopefully, this is the jump start we need to eat healthier long term, and that we stick to eating at home, making healthy meals, and staying away from large quantities of processed food.

Also, overall, my achy joints haven't been bothering me nearly as much, and I think my ferocious headache (probably from caffeine withdrawal) is finally subsiding. Two and a half days left, but I know we can make it!