January 30, 2012 - Monday

Hi Everybody, it is almost the end of January and I thought I'd try to get one more post in before the new month.  It's been a little busy around my house this weekend because we had company come to stay.  My #2 son co-wrote  and co-directed a winter play that was performed this weekend and my out of state parents came to see it.  It was called "Blood in the Streetlight" and was done in the old black and white Film Noir style.  It was good!   You know how company is, I had to clean, change sheets, and cook food to make it look like my house is always in this kind of order, lol!.  They were only here for the weekend so it wasn't too much trouble.  The other thing is my aunt, that is in assisted living, has also been taking a lot of my time.  She has been having some leg and back pain that I'm afraid might be another vascular issue.  The assisted living doctor told her it was her Sciatic nerve and it might be, however I find it a little coincidental that the pain is happening in the same leg that has her amputation and in the same way as before her vascular surgery (in the same leg) a little over a year ago.  I'll hopefully be taking her to her vascular surgeon on Thursday.  I have the appointment made now I just have to convince her to go.


So on to diet news.   As you know I have been stalled at 168lbs for about two months now, which is annoying.  This week I decided to do things a little differently to see if I can get my body back in weight loss mode.  First of all I haven't weighed myself at all since last Wednesday.  This is what I used to do back in the beginning.  Give myself a week to lose some weight.   Then I started sneaking in weigh-ins more and more frequently. Not this week.   I also decided to have NO SNACKS this whole week.  Yep, no snacks except hot tea and that can only have stevia in it and no cream.  So I have been trying to start each day with a two egg omelet with a couple TBS of cheese and a couple TBS of fresh salsa.  Lunch has been either a romaine lettuce salad with some grilled chicken tenders and ranch dressing OR ten multi-seed crunch master crackers with a little mozzeralla and basil on top alongside a Jay Robb shake made with unsweetened coconut milk with a scoop of amazing grass superfood chocolate thrown in.  Dinner is always veggies and a protein, and one cup of decaff coffee and cream afterwards.  Then that is it until breakfast, unless I have a cup of plain tea.  Nothing in between the meals.

The other thing I've started is my Kettle-bells.  My set has three bells, a five pounder, a ten pounder and a fifteen pounder.   They are from Jillian Michaels.  It came with a DVD to show how to do the exercises but the routine she had devised for beginner/couch potato (me) was way too ridiculous and had me doing about six different upper level exercises for way too many reps.  Maybe if I was 20 years old!  Anyway I picked five beginning exercises and just try to do thirty of each of them.  I use the 10 pounder and I really get my heart beating - yes I'm that out of shape.   But seriously I'm starting out a bit slow so that I will keep with it.  I figure if I made it too hard I wouldn't want to do it again.  So every other day I do this Kettlebell workout and then the off days I either walk, jump rope, do jumping jacks or something like that .  I'm hoping I'll work my way up to more reps and this will increase my metabolism a bit and I'll start losing again!!  I do like the Kettle-bells so far because they are kind of fun to swing around and it doesn't take much to get your heart pumping, at least for me. I can say this about my "experiment" so far, I'm definitely hungry when it's time for a meal and I'm definitely a little sore from the weights!  So this Wednesday I'll see how I did, but if I don't lose I'm still going to keep going like this for another week with the exercise and no snacks and see if I can't drop a few.  It sometimes takes my body awhile to figure out what I want it to do!!   Hope everyone has a good week and I'll try to report back the results of my experiment later this week.

Tuesday - January 24

Hello everyone!  My weigh-in is not until tomorrow so I'm not sure yet if I've lost or if I stayed the same yet.  Like I said in my last blog, I think I'm to the point where I have to add some kind of exercise into the mix in order to get my metabolism revved up a bit and my body toned.  I've been at a plateau too long and have to do something to get going again.  This past week, I have been investigating what kind of exercise I might be able to try and actually like.  I found a good way to preview exercise dvd's is to search for them on YouTube.  A lot of clips from different exercise videos are on there and watching a clip will give you an idea if it's for you or not.  Saves a lot of money in buying dvds that you will never use.  After watching a bunch of clips, I started getting interested in kettlebells.  I'll be 51 years old in March and they say as you age its a good idea to introduce weights to your routine (not that I have a routine), to build and maintain bone mass that you lose as you age.  I mentioned kettlebells to my husband and it turns out he had just been talking to one of his customers who is really into kettlebell workouts.  You lift them and swing them as you work out.

They look like this

So we decided to go get a couple kettlebells and give them a try this week.  I'll let you know what I think!  In the meantime I have been walking my dog up and down the street (kind of boring but at least I'm moving!). 

On to food.  Sometimes I feel like I think about food WAY too much, lol!   With this lifestyle you really have to do a lot more cooking and eating of real foods and not the ready made processed varieties.  It does take a bit more thought and grocery store trips to keep it up.  Especially when your feeding a family of six.  I am constantly looking at new recipes using almond flour, or coconut flour as well as finding new ways to use vegetables.   I love when you guys post a new recipe and give your honest opinion of what you think of it.  Yesterday I tried Rosalie's Sinful  Cinnamon cakes.  I added about a TBS of Eytheritol to the batter because she said they weren't that sweet.  I also added a couple tsps of Eytheritol to the butter glaze and lowered the St. Joseph's syrup amount because I was afraid too much of the malitol in the syrup might give me issues.  I also added a tiny bit of chopped pecans to the top of each cake and cooked them in a regular muffin tin.   I want to tell you that these smelled SO GOOD while they were cooking!!  Two of my boys wandered out of their rooms and into the kitchen to see what was cooking.   Now the taste.....DELICIOUS!!   These are the closest thing I have baked on the BFC to taste like the real deal.  I mean these tasted almost exactly like the cinnamon breakfast rolls I loved so much before BFC.   The glaze on top even gave them a bit of a crunchy texture which I love.  If you like cinnamon rolls you must try this recipe.  My favorite so far!!  My youngest son wanted to know if he could bake some and take them into his drama club's rehersal  on Saturday morning because he wanted to impress a certain girl with his "no sugar/lowcarb" cooking!!  Now that's an endorsement. Here is the link to the recipe http://purplerosy.blogspot.com/p/sinful-cinnamon-cakes.html .  Thank you Rosalie for such a delicious treat!
The three inches of snow we got on Saturday night is supposed to melt today with the temperature getting close to fifty.  Think I will get ready to walk!  Hope everyone has a great day!

Week 40!

Wow, forty weeks on the BFC as of today.  I think this may be the longest I have lasted on any particular eating plan.  Four or so years ago I did a low carb / food combining type diet for almost this long and I lost a lot of weight on that too (which I then gained back).  I couldn't tell you exactly what I lost back then or even what I weighed because I really didn't keep track of weighing myself or being that accountable.  That's a big difference between then and now.  Eventually trying to eat only carb meals and then only protein meals turned out to be too hard to stick with.   What I like about the BFC is that its easy.  You can still have good carbs, proteins and fats mixed together which is much more normal, at least for me.  There are some days I have no grain carbs, but that isn't really a conscious decision, its more like how I felt like eating that day.  Another good thing that has happened after this long on the BFC is that I find that I'm not really craving anything anymore.  For example the boys and I went shopping the other day with one of their cousins and we stopped at Bob Evans for lunch.  Now I used to LOVE Bob Evan's rolls (they come with just about every meal) and also LOVED their seasonal Cherry Bread.   This time we all ordered and I got a small Cobb salad.  When the rolls and cherry bread came this time not only did I not  eat any, but I didn't even care that I couldn't eat any.  In the beginning it was like, "No, do not let me look or smell that roll"  Now, no big deal.  So that is good.  Cravings for bad stuff are going away.

So I think the next stage of this journey is to add some kind of exercise to the mix.   It's just like starting the diet - you have to be mentally ready to start.  I think I'm about there.  I saw on a show that Jennifer Hudson (who lost a ton of weight on WW and looks fabulous!) likes to jump rope because she remembers it as a fun activity from her childhood and wanted to find something that seemed fun to do so that she would keep with it.  She also chooses three exercises a day and then does 25 reps of each.  Her examples, 25 squats and then 25 situps and then 25 bent knee push ups.   Now see, that doesn't sound so bad to me - it's doable.  So I think I'm going to start with doing the three exercise thing and then work my way up to finding an exercise I think is "fun". (if thats possible, lol!)
By the way, my son is down eight pounds.  His "secret" that works for him right now is a HUGE BFC breakfast and then a very small BFC lunch and a basically normal sized BFC dinner.  Hot tea in between seems to be helping too.
So that's it for now.  Hope everyone has a great day!

Saturday January 14, 2012

I'm having a bit of writers block trying to come up with something to talk about on here. Nothing is really new or different.  My weight this week was the same -big surprise.  I'm thinking I might have to do something to shake things up a bit but I'm not sure what?  I realize that the last 18 lbs will be the slowest to lose.  Rosalie said she took a long time to lose the last pounds, and Amber said she was stuck for a long time also, so I'm not really discouraged...just tired of being at this weight!  It really is like the scale is stuck - but I know its not, all of us in the house use the same scale.
To give you an idea of what I'm eating, here are my last two days as far as I remember:

Day 1
Breakfast:  two coffees with heavy cream, benefiber, and stevia
                scrambled eggs with mushrooms, onions, bit of spinach and bit of cheddar cheese
          
Lunch:   Chiplote salad with black beans, cheese, grilled peppers, and pica de gallo

Dinner - grilled slices of london broil with wine sauce, mashed cauliflower with cream and Parmesan,
             steamed broccoli
Snacks thru out day:  coffee with decaff, cream stevia, two coconut muffins, 3 squares Lindt 85%
                                chocolate

Day 2:
Breakfast - two coffees with heavy cream, benefiber and stevia
                 3 link sausages, scrambled eggs with onion, cheese and mushrooms
Lunch - Running errands so had two orange flavored coconut muffins, handful of roasted almonds, and
             cup of decaf with truvia and heavy cream

Dinner - homemade meatballs in spaghetti sauce (Delallo 1sugar per serving), green beans marinated
             in vinegar and capers
                         
Snacks thru out day: two coconut muffins, 3 squares Lindt 85% chocolate, coffee with decaf, stevia,
                               and cream

So those are basically my days.  I think everything is allowed and within the boundaries of the BFC, but maybe it's too much rich food.  I don't know. 

I'll tell you one thing that is a bit hard when following the BFC and that is cooking dinner for six people every night.  I have to come up with something everyone likes and will eat, but I have to make sure it's BFC friendly for my husband, my son and myself.  Here is an example of how frustrating this can be.   I tried Jorge's Raspberry Porkchops one night for dinner.  By the time I prepared the raspberry/mustard coating sauce and ground up enough nuts to dip it in and then coated seven pork-chops (a girlfriend here that night) and got two huge pans out to fry them in, trying to make sure they didn't stick to the pans (which they did), and meanwhile got brussell sprouts chopped up and put on roasting pan in oven with olive oil salt and pepper, and then had to make a pot of brown rice for my non BFC eaters.  It becomes quite a chore!!  After all that, no one really liked the pork chops that much!  They were met with such a lackluster reception that they are off this house's recipe list.

I sometimes think how much easier this would be if I was just cooking for myself!!  First of all I could eat when I wanted to, not at a set dinner time (here it is 6:00pm), secondly when you are just making one piece of protein you can take much more care in the cooking and do it right, and thirdly I wouldn't have to come up with some kind of brown rice, whole wheat pasta, or potato to go with my meal(because I don't eat them any way!) and lastly I could eat the same recipes over and over and not have to worry about people being bored with the menu.    Oh well, one day they'll all be moved out and then I'll probably miss my days of family dinners........or not?
Hope those that were sick are feeling better, and everyone is having a nice weekend and doing something fun!!

Monday January 9, 2012

I'm still trying to get used to writing 2012 instead of 2011. For some reason that always takes me about a month to stop doing the old date.  I don't have anything different to report weight wise yet as my weigh in is Wednesday.  I've decided that I won't be weighing myself every single morning like I was doing.  I will definitely weigh in once a week though.  I'm steadily losing weight but very slowly now that I'm getting closer and closer to goal weight.   My son is doing very well so far on the BFC.  He has only been at it a week and we all know the first couple weeks are the hardest.  He says he is down five pounds so far and I believe him.  He is in the kitchen right now whipping himself up some eggs, bacon and a slice of low-carb bread for breakfast.  I have hope that this time he will stick with it.  He has been completely stressed out lately trying to find a job.  It's hard times for college graduates right now and his field (Digital Art and Design) is extremely competitive.  He has been SO close to landing a job about three times and then someone else gets it.   He is waiting to hear about another job this week.  Fingers crossed.  Once he is working full time I think the weight thing will really take off.

This week I have to get a ton of paperwork ton.   I send off 1099's to every subcontractor that works for us and then have to get a "first edition" of our taxes done so I can send off FAFSA's for my college boys.  Then after that I start the end of the year paperwork for my in-laws and the rental business.  My husband is not the best when it comes to his "paper trail" from work which makes everything that much harder. There are definitely days I wish I could quit my job, lol!  Then I remember I can't. 

Before I sign off this time I thought I would share a recipe that has been really working for my son, my husband and myself throughout the holidays and beyond.  I've been making these lemon cheesecake bars for a snack or added on to a breakfast or lunch.  I worked it out on "My Fitness Pal" and I think they come out to be about 4 carbs and 1 sugar per bar.(cutting 20 small bars in a pan)

Lemon Cheesecake Bars

Crust:
1 large egg beaten until frothy
1 1/4 cup almond flour
1 packet truvia
1 tsp. baking powder

Combine all crust ingredients.  Add more almond flour if too wet.  Push dough into bottom of an 8x8 square pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray or wiped with butter.  Bake crust for about 10-15 minutes in 350' oven until lightly browned.  Meanwhile make filling.

Filling:
2 packages of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
Truvia to taste ( I use about 1/4 cup)
1 Tablespoon Lemon Extract
Juice from one lemon
2 large eggs

Beat cream cheese, Truvia, lemon extract, and lemon juice until well blended.  Add eggs one at a time until well blended.  Pour cream cheese mixture over almond crust and spread evenly. 
Bake at 350' for about 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

That's  it.  They are pretty lemony.  You could probably change the extract flavor and make different varieties as well. 

I think it sounds like everyone did pretty well over the holidays and I'm glad!  It has become a lifestyle change for most of us with our individual tweaks for what works best for each of us.  Like everyone here my thoughts keep going back to Pattie and it reminds me of how fragile life really is and to keep our weight struggles in perspective with everything else going on in our lives.

Wednesday Weigh In - January 4, 2012

Hello everyone!  It's Wednesday weigh in day for me.  I haven't been on the scale in two weeks so I was a little leary of my weigh in this morning.  Happily I am the same weight -167lbs.  Unhappily I didn't lose any more.  Seriously though, I am actually glad I made it through the holidays and our little trip without gaining.  Now that they are over it will be easier to get back on schedule and hopefully work these last eighteen pounds off.   I think the closer you get to your goal weight the slower the pounds come off! Ugh!

My oldest son has put on quite a bit of weight since he graduated from college and of course we've been trying to encourage him to lose weight.  Like most kids(or young adult in his case), the more we tried to encourage him the more he ate and did what ever was the opposite of what we were saying.   On New Years day he actually came to us and said he wanted to do the BFC like we were doing.  He said he could no longer deny that my husband and I were losing weight and he was not(with the methods or lack of methods he was using). I think when he got on the scale on New Years day he was actually shocked at what he actually weighed.  I think everyone, no matter how young or old you are, has to have that "moment" when you finally realize that you are out of control.  Until that moment you fool yourself into thinking that you aren't really that bad, that you carry your weight well, and that you can start losing when ever you want to and it won't be that hard.  At some point reality finally hits us all and only then can we begin our journey back to health.  Honestly, I was getting pretty worried about him and was SO happy that he decided to finally try the BFC.   I told him that it might be easier for him because I am already cooking that way and he can just join in.  I told him the first month is the hardest.  I told him that I would help him in any way I could. I told him I have faith in him that he CAN do this!   I told him to try and do it TOTALLY for at least one month and he would see a difference.   You really can't cheat on the BFC like you can on other diets.  I really hope he sticks with it and gives it a chance.   Patience is not his strongest point. 

So that's where I'm at this cold January morning.  We had snow flurries all day yesterday although nothing stuck on the ground.  I took down all my Christmas decorations and now I'm off to start reconciling the business books in preparation for taxes!  What fun!!   I hope everyone has a good weigh in this week and we all continue to encourage each other with tips, recipes and empathy!