Thanksgiving Week

It's Thanksgiving week already!  Usually I am the one hosting Thanksgiving for my brother and his family,that lives near me, and for my parents that travel over from West Virginia.  This year, of course, my mother will not be with us.  At my mom's funeral my dad requested that we ALL come down to his house for Thanksgiving.  He said he would provide the turkeys and his famous bread stuffing and asked me to come up with a menu for what everyone else could bring.  That's going to be a LOT of people at his house for the day.  My family will include my husband and I, our four boys and my oldest's son's girlfriend.  My brother that lives near me has two kids, and my brother that lives near my dad has five kids and three boyfriend/girlfriends that will be there for the day.  I think that is a total of 22 adult-sized people for dinner. and 12 actually sleeping at the house!    We will be having the traditional foods plus roasted brussel sprouts, mashed garlicy cauliflower and a sugarfree pumpkin cheesecake for desert, so those of doing low-carb will have something to eat.  I'm also bringing down some sugarfree coconut flour pumpkin muffins to have on hand for temptation times or a quick breakfast.  Not too worried about falling off the diet while I'm there.

Still have Thanksgiving decorations up over here!

I've been sticking to my NO snacking, and totally eating clean this past week to get off the rest of the six pounds I gained BUT I did not lose any weight this past week.  Weird huh?  I'm not going to try anything different this week since it will be hard enough to stay with what I'm doing over the holiday, but maybe the week after, if there is no weight loss, I'll re-look at what I'm eating.  

I have to hit the grocery store today to get my supplies for Thanksgiving.  I'm sure 10,000 other people will be out doing the same thing, so I better get out there early.  

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

It's working

Happy Friday Everyone!

As you know from my last post I was up in weight from not monitoring my foods better the last two months. This week I decided to be much more involved.    Here is what I did:

1)  No snacking  - only eat three times a day and if hungry have hot tea with stevia - no cream!
2)  No healthy backed goods or protein bites this week - This was huge because I've been having so many of them lately.
3.) Track food on My fitness Pal - OK, I'm still not good at doing this everynight, but I tracked a little
4.)  Eggs for breakfast instead of baked goods or pancakes.
5.)  No eating after dinner
6.) No alcohol

I did all those things and have to say I definitely felt hungry in between meals.  I drank a lot of hot tea!  One or two times I did have a cup of decaff in the afternoons with cream just to be a little fuller until dinner.  I kept telling myself that it was good to feel hungry for the next upcoming meal.  I did feel hungry a little in the evenings before bed.  I think I was so used to popping an almond flour muffin, or protein bite everytime I felt a bit hungry that it is going to take my body a little time to get used to not having them in between meals.  I'll save them for the upcoming holidays and they will feel much more like a treat.

The good and suprising news is that I am back down by three pounds as of this morning.  Fridays are my new weigh in day.   I have another three to go before I am back down to my lowest weight so far of 159lbs. I still do want to get down to my original goal of 150 though and think I have to just do more of the above to get there.  There is a chance my body just doesn't want to get that low again now that I'm in my fifties.  We'll see.

My youngest boy has been a high school counselor at the local "Outdoor School" this week.  All sixth graders in our county go for a week to this overnight camp and learn about the environment, and owls and stuff like that.  As a senior in High School you can volunteer to be a counselor if you're in good standing with your school.  Kyle volunteered.   I'm picking him up this afternoon and taking him to Chipotle (I'll get the salad).  He says he is exhausted and starving!   It's been a cold week here to be in outdoor school -down in the thirties at night and only going up in the forties during the day.  We were supposed to get snow on Wednesday but it missed us and went north to Pennsylvania.  I have a feeling Pattie got some.   This week coming up is supposed to be much nicer and going back up to the sixties a few days.   Maybe I'll walk this week.  I will continue doing what I did this week foodwise and let you know how it goes.
Have a great weekend everyone!

Little slips add up

Hello everyone,

Things are slowing down again over here after the horrible past two months I've had.  Last Thursday my dad called to say his new couch was in, and wanted to know if I could bring my van down the next day and help him pick it up from the warehouse.  I drove back to West Virginia last Friday morning and he and I took all the back seats out of my van (they are heavy!) and drove over to the town of Winchester.   Dad wanted to stop for a Chinese lunch buffet before we picked up the van and I said OK even though I know Chinese food is NOT good on the BFC.  I didn't eat any rice but I could tell the sauce in the foods probably had sugar.  We picked up the couch and hauled it back to his house.  Oh and on the way back we stopped at the shellter to check out a dog we had seen on Petfinders.com.   They didn't write this on the description on the website, but it turns out this particular dog was back at the shelter after biting his new adopter's  face due to food aggression.  I felt bad for the dog (and the previous owner), but don't think the dog was right for my Dad.  He needs calm, and companionship right now, and can't take on a dog with problems, especially like biting.   I really think this shelter is going to have a hard time placing dogs, because they didn't have anything good to say about any of the ones we looked at.    Anyway, when we got back to his house we managed to haul the couch in and get in placed in his livingroom.  It looks good!  Dad said, that wasn't bad for an old guy and a midlle aged woman.  Hey!!   I don't like being referred to as middle aged!
After we were done, we went and put some flowers on my mom's grave and had a nice visit.

New Couch

 So over the past two months I haven't been weighing myself at all.  Although I thought I'd been eating right during this whole crisis, I know I've been having some slips, from not being home so much.  A piece of regular bread with my eggs at dad's, the chinese buffet, some  non bfc crackers, too many protein bites and not enough actual lunches,  eating after 7:00, restaurant food many nights while going to hospital, etc., etc.    Although these bunches of "little things" don't sound too bad, the bunches of little things have apparently added up to bad news!!   I got on the scale today and I am up in weight for the first time on the BFC.  I mean I've been up and down two or so pounds before because my weight fluctuates like that, but this time I was really up - SIX pounds!!   Now that is a concern, especially with the holidays coming up.  That's a hard enough time to maintain weight as it is, let alone trying to lose.  Ugh!   So I've got to come up with a little game plan to get my weight back down. I'm still feeling so lazy right now that don't feel like cracking down on myself but I really must!!  If I've learned nothing else this past two months it's that our health is important and we can't put it off until tomorrow.    It turns out that Rosalie's post came at a perfect time this morning because she had some good tips for staying on track.  In case you didn't see them they are:

1.Eat within 1 hour of waking up
2.Make sure to eat a healthy breakfast - get a good start to you day
3.eat every 3-4 hours
4.Never skip a meal
5.Make sure your snacks are healthy ones (healthy fats, nuts, etc.)
6.just protein and veggies for dinner (no Carbs)
7.No food past 7pm
8.get some form of exercise everyday if you can - for me its walking

I need to work on number 1, number 3, number 4, number7, and number 8!   That's a lot of numbers!  I guess I am slipping more than I thought!   I also wish I could be more like Kay and not snack AT ALL and just eat meals!!  My snacks are healthy but I think I get into them too much and sometimes eat the snacks instead of a meal!  Not good!

So starting today I am going to stop being so lax and THINK more about what I am doing and eating.  I will also try to track my food again (even though to me that is such a pain), and hopefully start walking again.

I'll let you know how it goes.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!