Hello Everyone,

Thought I'd check in and give you an update.  When I went to my brother's cookout last weekend I brought my plate to the picnic table with a hamburger (no bun) homegrown lettuce and onion on top and a side of radishes & celery with some ranch dressing for dipping.  He said, "Oh, so you're still on that diet thing" and I answered, "Yep, for the rest of my life".   It's really true too.  I'm so used to it now I didn't even think about taking the potato salad or the buns or the chips.   To be honest though, every now and then I do go off  the beaten trail a little bit.  For some reason I cave to the chips and salsa at Chili's Restaurant every time we go there, but it's not that often and doesn't seem to throw me off too much.  Also I have some dry red wine or a Michelob Ultra on the weekends every once in awhile.  Since I'm doing this forever I have to allow myself a few things that keep me sane.  It's never sugar though, and it's always just once every couple weeks.
-The past couple of weeks I have been pretty strict however,  trying to get these last 10 pounds off.  Since Benefiber is no longer on the market I have been having coffee in the morning and then making myself a shake made of 1/4 cup of plain Greek yogurt, 1 TBS of  Psyllium Husk powder, a few mixed frozen berries, and some non-sweetened coconut milk, and a little water if it's too thick.  I think this mix of probiotics, and fiber is good for me.  Lunch is usually a salad with smoked turkey lunch meat and dinner is veggies and some kind of meat.   I haven't been limiting myself to really low sugar veggies either.  I've decided that veggies are good for me no matter what, so I've been having snow peas, green beans, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, multi-colored peppers, onions, garlic, romaine lettuce and broccoli in abundance.   I still don't eat after 7:00 pm and most of my carbs have been coming from my veggies and the fruit in my shake.   This week I have broken my 163lb barrier... finally!  I weighed in at 161 lbs the last couple mornings. I'm happy, but like always wish it was more. Isn't that scale such a tease?  I'm almost in the 150's but not yet!  I'm going to keep pushing for the next week or two and see if I can keep going down
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The rest of it:   My two boys had their wisdom teeth removed with no problems.  They were quite funny coming out of the anesthesia though.   We traded in our old Town & Country mini-van which was on the verge of collapse for a new used Toyota Sienna mini-van with less miles on it and everything working. It's nice to have A/C in my van again!   My puppy, Mabel, is getting big but is still peeing in the house!!  Driving all of us crazy.  Luckily she usually goes in the kitchen and not the carpet.  She can be outside with me for three hours and then come inside and pee on the kitchen floor within minutes.  Arrgh!    Cleaning with a pet enzyme cleaner doesn't seem to help - she doesn't sniff and pee she just lets loose with no warning.  I'm now trying to give her a really good dog treat every time she goes outside and pees on demand for me.  Hopefully that will get her motivated to go outside!  Any guesses as to what breed she is?  We only know black lab mother, but thinking she may have some kind of bull dog in her.  Might do that Wisdom Panel test to find out.

 

Mabel getting big

It's been really humid here the last week and we had to turn the A/C on in the house.  This morning the humidity has seemed to burn off  and the air is cool.  I'm opening all the windows to get some nice fresh air back in!  I'd much prefer fresh cool air to air conditioning when I can get it.   Will catch up on the blogs today, but hope everyone is doing well! 

Checking in

Hello Everyone!   Just a quick post to keep in touch.  Bad news last week, I got on the scale and it finally moved..., but in the wrong direction!  I was up three pounds to 166!  Yikes!  Well that is certainly frustrating!  I decided to crack down and see what I could do.  First I got the book that Sherri recommended to me called "The 17 day diet".  This diet is VERY similar to the BFC.  In a nutshell, you cycle your eating patterns every 17 days to "throw off" your metabolism.  The first 17 days you pretty much stay away from sugars and grain carbs (sound familiar?) but you are allowed greek yogurt (1/4 cup) and a bit of fruit.  You also should shy away from high calorie fare like red meat, butter & cheese except for Parmesan for the first 17 days, and really vamp up your veggie eating.  The next 17 days more foods are allowed, and so on.   Anyway I decided to do my own thing with it and incorporate it into my BFC diet so here is what I did:

Breakfast:  Either two eggs scrambled with some onion, spinach and a little parmesan OR a smoothy made with 1/4 cup greek yogurt, a couple frozen raspberries and blueberries, coconut milk, and 1 scoop Jay Robb protein powder.

Lunch:  Salad with mixed veggies and turkey and 2 TBS Marie's Caesar Dressing.

Dinner:  Variety of things like Chicken stir fried with a ton of veggies, ground chicken burgers mixed with southwestern spices and a side of veggies, or a big salad with grilled chicken tenderloins, etc.

I stayed away from the dark chocolate this week and started doing my kettle bells again.    Anyway......my weigh-in yesterday was back down to the 163lbs I've been stuck on forever!  Believe it or not I was actually relieved to see that number back on the scale, lol!!   This coming week I'm hoping to move it down even further!   We'll see if I can ever get past that number. 

On the home front, Prom was last weekend (the night before Mother's Day) and my youngest son got all spruced up and went with his girlfriend and my second youngest son (who is in his first year of college) also went, because his girlfriend is a senior in high school this year.   It was a lot of fun running around to the two houses and getting pictures and seeing them enjoy themselves so much.  Prom is a MUCH bigger deal than when I went many years ago! 
Mother's day I spent with with my two extremely tired boys, and my two oldest boys and my husband.  I got everyone's help clearing out my gardens, planting some annuals, laying mulch and putting in my huge vegetable garden!  That was a good present.  Afterwards they made me grilled shrimp & steak and sauteed broccoli.  It was pretty good!  It's funny that anytime the guys cook for me it's always steak on the grill!
This week I took my youngest son to take his driving test.  I get more nervous than them when I have to take them for their tests!  In Maryland they start the test with a safety check of our car and then move on to the skills test which is the dreaded parallel parking and then they must back into a small parking spot.  If they pass that they go out on the real road for a ten minute road test.  After the test person gets in the car with them I have to go walk around so I won't watch them take their skills test.  I peek every once in awhile to see if they are still struggling with the parallel parking.  This time when I peeked, my son was already done and was backing into the parking spot!  What!   He nailed it the first time - phew!  All that practice paid off.   So I knew he had it after that, and sure enough he came back from the road test as a new driver!!  He was VERY happy, and I am also VERY happy you know why?  Because, he was my last one and I NEVER have to teach driving skills, or parallel parking every again in my life!!! Yahoo!!
Next week two of the boys are getting their wisdom teeth out and I my youngest will have his done in June.  After that I think most of my stressful events will be over for awhile.  I just have to get through my oldest son moving out this weekend, sigh.

Oh, I have one question for you guys that maybe you've already talked about.  What happened to Benefiber??!!   My husband and I were using that every morning in our coffee but we can not find it anymore.  It's off the store shelves and not online anywhere.  Did they go out of business?!   I think the Metamucil is too expensive.  We've just been skipping our fiber supplement and so far it doesn't seem to be a problem.  

Hope the rest of you are doing well, and enjoying the nicer warm weather!

My excuses

Why I haven't been blogging - excuses by Beth:

Excuse #1.) New puppy!!  She is starting to settle down now, but good grief was she a handful!  It was like having a new born that needs attention every second, except this one chews and pees on the floor!  Plus it took here awhile for her to sleep through the night even in her crate.  A good chunk of my day is still used up running around after her...but it's getting much better.

Excuse #2.) Working on my late aunt's estate. As if I didn't have enough to do with our rental properties, and the home improvement business, my kids, and of course the puppy, I am also the executor of my aunt's will. It's really no big honor. All this really means is I have to do ALL the work involved with settling her estate according to her wishes.  That's ordering the grave markers (she never got one for my uncle), hiring an estate attorney after I finally found one, finalizing all her financial accounts (tons of paperwork here), giving the register of wills everything they need by specific due dates, and packing up and selling off her stuff.  It's not fun folks!

Excuse #3)  My mind has not been on the BFC lately.  My oldest son, that finally landed a full-time job last March, is moving out at the end of May. Yes he found a nice little apartment to rent with his best friend that also works in downtown Baltimore.  I'm really happy for him, but sad for me.  This is the beginning of my little family breaking  up.  First it will be him and pretty soon the other three boys will follow.  My little world that totally revolved around my boys is starting to change and that's making feel a bit depressed.  I already miss the younger days with them as it is and soon they'll be all gone.

Excuse #4.) However, this is probably the biggest reason, besides the puppy, that I haven't blogged lately.  I have not lost any more weight!!  I am stuck at 163 pounds and I am doing all the same stuff I've always done but I'm not budging!!  I would really like to get down to 150lbs before I go to the beach at the end of July and at first I thought that would be easy to do, but now......I don't think it's going to happen this way.    If I were in maintenance I would be very, very happy, because I like what I eat, it's easy, I'm used to it, and all that.  But....I'm not in maintenance, my body just thinks I am.  So I'm beginning to wonder if this is as far as I can go with the BFC?  Must I do something else to lose the last thirteen pounds?  I really hate to shift to some other diet because I really like this one.  I know I don't ever want to add sugar into my diet again, because that is bad on so many levels,  but maybe I'll have to switch things up to start losing again.  But how??   Maybe not so much cheese in my salads, not so much butter in my meat sauces, not so much yummy Parmesan dressing.  I might have to actually restrict myself like I'm on a real diet.  One where I eat boring, plain foods for awhile.   I'm still thinking it through.  I've followed the BFC to the letter up until now, but just can't get past this last plateau.  I saw Jorge had an extreme three day menu where you don't eat any breakfast other than coffee, you have chicken over spinach with only vinegar an oil on top for lunch and than dinner is just a grilled pork chop with 1/2 cup of broccoli.  Bland? Yes!  Boring? Yes! But will it get off the last pounds? I don't know.  Don't even know if I could stand it for even three days.
Anyway, it seemed boring to blog every week and write about how I'm at the same weight and doing all the same things, so I just stopped for awhile.  

Well those are my sorry excuses for not blogging or commenting a couple weeks . I started reading everyone's blogs this past week and realized how much I missed hearing about everyone and what they were up to.  So..,  I'm going to try to get back on-board and figure things out from here.