Thursday Feb. 9th - week 43

Hi everyone, so sorry I've been absent from the blogs this past week.  I feel like I've been having such a bad week and was so immersed in it I didn't even realize how bad it was.  I told you in my last blog that my aunt was hospitalized.  I'm her power of attorney (she has no kids) so when anything goes on with her I have to be involved.  I feel like I spent ALL last week at the hospital - waiting. I finally got her back to her assisted living late last Friday night.  Her bad leg is still hurting (they never addressed it) but at least she is hydrated again.  Just as I thought, she doesn't want to see the vascular surgeon, so I'm giving her a week to see if she can manage the pain with what the assisted living gives her.  If not, she may let me make an appt. for her.   On top of that my husbands uncle died that same Friday.  He was 84 and had been sick for quite awhile, but with his families culture it was a really big deal which required us to be at houses, churches and cemeteries for three days straight.  Seeing his relatives that come from all over the country and keeping up with the different way they do things - a bit stressful.   Finally on Tuesday, we were back to normal and I was trying to catch up our business' taxes and stuff like that.  It's really a pain this year for some reason, plus I still have to do my Aunt's taxes, and our rental business taxes.  Yuck!  On Tuesday night my dog that has congestive heart failure got bit by my other healthy dog - over a stick he was chewing from the firewood!   They haven't done anything like that in a long time!  So I was worried to death about my sick dog, but he looked OK.  Yesterday when I got up, I see that my sick dog has a swollen face and now doesn't want to eat or take any of his pills.  I watched him all day yesterday and finally coaxed him into taking his pills with a bit of chicken.  It started snowing around 12pm in the afternoon and I didn't want to take him out in it, so I thought I'd wait and see if he would start feeling better.  This morning his face was still swollen, but I did get his main pills in him.   I called the vet to see if I could bring him in today and apparently they are EXTREMELY busy and she said I should have brought him in yesterday since bites usual get infected.  Thanks for the guilt trip!!  I already feel terrible.  So, they are fitting him in at 12:00pm today.  He was doing so good before the bite.  I'm terribly afraid they are going to tell me something really bad today.
Sorry this is so off the topic of the BFC.  I just wanted to explain why I haven't been around this week. I did weigh myself yesterday (Wednesday weigh in for me) and I'm down another two pounds to 164lbs.  I have been going all this week with the not having ANY snacks method, have tried to get in a little exercise but couldn't fit much in this past week.  I really think the NO SNACKS is the key for me.   If I get hungry in between meals I make hot tea with stevia, nothing else.  I've been drinking a lot of tea!   If anyone is having trouble losing I would recommend trying to only eat your three BFC meals and try cutting out anything in between for awhile, even nuts, coconut bread, and my favorite the 85% chocolate.    Well, that's it for now.  Sorry for rambling and whining about my week and I hope all of you are doing really well!!  I will catch up on the blogs later this week hopefully.

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.

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!

Wednesday Dec. 8th! BFC week 34

Hi Everybody!  I can not believe an entire week has gone by since my last post! December is just such a busy month as I'm sure you all know, there are not enough hours in the day!  I weighed in today at my same 168 lbs.., bummer!  I mean I'm glad I'm not going up in weight but it sure would be nice to start losing a few again.  Earlier this week I got on the scale and it said 167lbs and I got a little excited that maybe I was starting to go down again, but alas, it was not the case on actual weigh in day.  To be honest with you I'm really not going to worry about it too much for the rest of December.  I know I'm eating exactly what I should be eating.  I don't cheat.  I even gave up snacks between meals this week.  I'm just going to keep going this way until after the holidays.  In January I may need to shake things up a bit, we'll see.  I might even get a hormone panel done to see if I'm out of whack there.
So other than the diet my holiday preparations are well underway.  Got my shopping almost finished thank goodness.  We do not buy for extended family except our parents.  It makes things so much easier and keeps the holiday in perspective I think.  We were not able to get our tree early last week like I had hoped because we had to go see my husbands parents over the weekend.  It was is mom's birthday and she has congestive heart failure and lately has been so tired and under the weather.  I thought it might cheer her up if my husband, and all the boys went down and took her out to lunch.  We did that and I think it did her some good to get out of the house, but it cost us almost the whole day, and left no time for tree cutting. This weekend we are doing a little overnight getaway to Lancaster again.  Three of my boys are coming with us and on the way home we will stop at the farm, meet up with my other son, and get the tree.
My dog, that has congestive heart failure, got put on a new medicine this week called Vetmedin.  It was a bit of a risk because I didn't have the very expensive echo-cardiogram done to be certain of what was causing his enlarged heart.  But I think we guessed correctly because he seems to be feeling better.  Yesterday he stole a newspaper and ran around the house with it, and then later stole an empty Doritos bag out of my son's trash can and tore it up.  We were all like, "Buddy, you're being bad, you must be feeling better!"  So today it's all about finding appointments for wisdom teeth removals, and finding a better deal for our self-employment health insurance which is apparently going way up come January, visiting my Aunt in assisted living, balancing the November work books, and getting the last of my online shopping done.
I hope to catch up on the blogs sometime today or tonight and truly hope all of you are doing great!!

Monday - Oct. 17th

Hello everyone!  It's Monday evening and I just thought I'd pop on and check in.  My 14 day Fast Track officially ended yesterday although I still have not had any grain carbs.  I think I stayed on it pretty well.  I definitely did not have any grain carbs for the full 14 days, except I did not give up my Benefiber.  I tried to give it up and get my fiber from vegetables  but I could not eat enough.  I also did not realize that green beans were not allowed on FT and I did have those the first week too!   This past week I broke down and added the coconut bread back in.  I really missed the lemon coconut bread in the morning and also the coconut chocolate cookies that I make my son.   I know coconut flour is allowed on FT but the eating of baked goods just seemed wrong.   So,all in all for me,  the FT did not seem to make much difference in my weight loss.  I lost 2lbs in the beginning and then gained them back somehow.  I haven't weighed myself again on my "official" scale since last Wednesday and will do an official weigh in this Wednesday.   I do feel like eating without grains was not that difficult to do.  I don't think I'll stick to it 100% though.  I don't think I eat that many grain carbs as it is, but I might want a piece of toast with my eggs now and then, or a pizza for lunch made with St. Joseph's Pitas.   The weird thing about this eating plan is that even though I've been stuck on a certain weight for awhile I'm still going down in clothes sizes.  How can that be?  It's weird and I don't really get it.  I think I will just keep going the way I've been going and even it it takes me a whole year or longer I will finally get to my goal weight of 150lbs.    By the way I have been loving the different recipes people have been putting on their blogs.  Yesterday I made those Pumpkin muffins that Amber had posted and I have to tell you they were VERY good.  I got 11 medium sized muffins out of her recipe and they came out very moist and delicious.  I also made the chocolate/mascarpone candies that Dawn had linked on one of her blogs.  I had to use the Simply Lite candy bar melted down for the chocolate coating on the candies though since the cocoa powder coating didn't work for me.   I also just saw a post about Republic of Tea selling Apple Cider Tea!  Doesn't that sound perfect for Fall?!  I think I might have to try it.

Wednesday - Fast Track day 11 / BFC week 27

Weigh in day today and it was disappointing.  Got on the right scale this morning and weighed in before coffee and breakfast and I'm back up two pounds - 172lbs again.   I have to say it's disappointing.   I thought this FT was going to help me move past this stupid 172 plateau, but here I am still at the same weight.  I can't even point at a particular mishap like eating something off plan, or eating too much of something.  I just don't really get it.  My food yesterday was:

Breakfast - two scrambled eggs with Canadian bacon, spinach, & parm. cheese mixed in.
Lunch - 4 slices Genoa salami, 2 slices Swiss cheese 1/2 cup pecans
Snack - 1 cup of decaff with stevia and heavy cream
Dinner - chicken fajita salad with sour cream, spinach, onions and colored peppers
After dinner - 1 cup decaff with stevia and heavy cream 2 squares of Lindt 85%

In trying to figure out the reason for the gain I looked over my food tracker for the past week.  The only thing I could come up with was the day before yesterday I had smoked sausage (no sugar in ingredients) and Amish sauerkraut and roasted Kale chips for dinner.   When I recorded that on My Fitness Pal food tracker I saw the sodium content was HUGE on that meal.  Maybe I need to start watching the sodium content more because I'm retaining water or something.  I still drink 5 or 6 glasses of water a day at least but it might not have been enough for that huge sodium hit I took.
I've also been staying away from coconut flour for the past 11 days even though it is technically not a grain.  It doesn't seem to be making any difference in my weight loss so I'm going to add that back in .., probably starting with today.
I'm not giving up but it is so hard to follow something so exactly and just maintain.  I know I have at least twenty more pounds to go.  Hope everyone else has better luck this week!

Thursday 10/6 -Fast Track Day 5/BFC Week 26

Today is the start of day 5 on the Fast Track.  I actually got into the bathroom before anybody else today and was able to weigh myself before even my first cup of coffee.  The scale read 170lbs!  That is a two pound loss for me -FINALLY!!  I think this FT may have nudged me past my plateau.  I still think that in this stage of the game I'm just losing slower than I was in the beginning, but that's really ok.  The other day I noticed that I was constantly hiking up my size 14 jeans, so when I was in Walmart the other day I grabbed a cheap pair of 12's thinking they would be too tight but at least I'd have them for when the 14's were really too big(I'm just doing cheap jeans now until I get to goal)  When I got home I tried them on and they actually fit.  I am still surprised because I didn't have to suck it in and really pull to get them buttoned or anything - they just fit.  Now this doesn't mean I don't still have some extra fat on top of the jeans,because I most definitely do.  The "old" size 14's do not create any "muffin top" because they are a bit big,, but the size 12's do create a bit of a "muffin top" so that I wouldn't want to wear a tight shirt with them.  Still work to be done and weight to be lost for sure.   I do believe that wherever we have our BIGGEST trouble spot is going to be the LAST place to lose all the weight.  I mean if you are a big thighs person then that might be your last hurdle, for me it's always been the stomach area that is my trouble spot so that will probably be my last hurdle.

I'm following the FT for 14 days but not exactly the menus in the book.  I'm making sure all my meals are fats/proteins and no grains or carbs except for veggies.  I'm still putting my meals into the food tracker to see how I'm doing, even though technically we are not supposed to count anything on the fast track.  My fiber seems to be suffering a little I think its down to about 16 or 17 grams a day.  But hey, that's the best I can do on the FT and it still seems to be working.  Yesterday I ate:

Breakfast - two coffees with cream, left over chicken breast, and celery with a cream cheese artichoke spread
Lunch - I was running around doing errands so I managed about 4 pieces of genoa salami, a few more celery sticks, a handful of macadamia nuts that I keep in the car and one Hint water.  (normally my lunch is a salad with grilled chicken, some raw broccoi and ranch dressing)
Snack - After that  small lunch I needed a handful of pecans, a cup of hot tea and one square of Lindt 85% to keep me going until dinner.
Dinner - I made homemade regular pizza for the boys and the Cauliflower pizza for me and my husband.  I just have to say that it was my first time making the cauliflower pizza and it was delicious!!  Couldn't even taste the cauliflower!
After dinner - one square of Lindt 85% and one decaff with stevia and cream
Also had another cup of hot tea later while watching Mythbusters with my son.

I love how everyone is keeping us posted on the FT news and regular BFC/other diet news!  I think it also helps to see the foods people are eating.  I know I like to see the menus. I'm hoping this FT will get me down into the160's!  (hopefully did not just jinx myself there)

Our sun finally came out yesterday after what seemed like two weeks of gloom & rain!  Hope the sun comes out for everyone today!

Monday -September 26th

I have been really bad this past week in tracking my foods.  I've still been eating pretty much the same as I have been so I sort of know what the daily totals would be like, but still, I think tracking is a good idea and I'm back to it.  I had a really nice time on our short, overnight Lancaster trip.  We left right after my son got on the school bus Thursday morning.  Since we only live about an hour and 1/2 from that part of Lancaster we got up there fairly early.  We spent all of Thursday shopping around at the little craft shops.  I love all that kind of stuff and it was so nice having no boys with us acting bored out of their minds.  My husband actually likes shopping too so that is nice.  I have to say we never ate any really good food while we were there.  We stopped at a family restaurant for lunch and it turned out to be mainly a buffet type place which I don't like.  The small menu part was all sandwiches so I got a sausage and saurkraut sandwich and told them to leave off the roll and just put it on the plate.  It was OK.  That night at the dinner theater my parents wanted to see they also had a buffet!  It was pretty bad!!  Some kind of meatloaf gel-like thing, creamed corn, carrots and peas mixed, and a tasteless chicken and broccoli casserole thing.   Blah!!  Skipped the veggies, except the pre-served salad, and ate the two meats.  At least there was no chance of overeating!!  The play was called "John loves Mary" and was a farce about a WWI veteran bringing home a wife for a friend that saved his life in the war, but the friend turned out to be already married.   I think my husband and I were the only ones in the theater under the age of 65!  It was nice to to this with my parents though.  The next day was breakfast at the hotel. My dad can't pass up a deal and the hotel included a "hot" breakfast.  This turned out to be round sausages that were cooked about two hours before anyone got up, and some kind of egg beater eggs.  Another round of shopping followed, and we got some nice lanterns with those wax electric candles that are on timers.  They come on by themselves for five hours and then turn off by themselves for 19 hours and then keep repeating that pattern.  So cool!  On the way home it poured down rain and we got stuck in a ton of traffic.  We had to pick up my son at Towson and we were about an hour late!  Oh well.

  I stayed away from the scale all the rest of the weekend and finally just got back on today - 172lbs again!  What in the world!  It's so weird how long I seem to last on one number.  I think I'm going to try that Fast Track challenge that is happening in a week or so.  I might start on it a little early too, just to see if that shakes things up. I know I couldn't do no carbs forever, but I think I can do it for one or two weeks.  I might switch my probiotics to a different brand also.  The ones I'm using right now are not capsule form, which Jorge says is the better kind.  I might try this one which I found on sale at Walgreens.

What kind does everyone else use?  Any recommendations?  That's about it for today.  I have to run and take my dog to the Vet.  He started his heart medicine last week and they want to re-check him today to see if it is the right dosage and all that.  Hope everyone has a great day! 

 

Wednesday 9/21 - week 24

There really is nothing much to report this week.  I'm stuck at 172lbs.  It seems to be that once I lose a pound or two I must than stay at the new weight for a few weeks before I'm allowed to go further.  Why this is, I have no clue!  I don't do anything differently, stay true to the 15/6, and don't cheat.  It's just the way it is with me. Lose a couple, wait, wait, wait, wait, lose a couple, repeat.    Like I said before I have noticed quite a difference in my clothes getting too big which makes me feel great, even if the scale isn't moving that quickly.  It's weird.  So,  I haven't been on the blogs too much the last day or two and it looks like I've missed a barrage of postings!!   This week has been so busy, with our business, vet visits, and assisted living visits. I have an elderly Aunt and I am responsible for her.  It's a long story but because of her diabetes she ended up having her foot amputated and than had to go live in an assisted living.  I take care of her bills, and personal needs and I try to see her once every one to two weeks to see if she needs anything. Things were rocky between us for awhile, but it's gotten a lot better this past year.  Today was her birthday, so I went to visit and bring her flowers. It was nice.  Tomorrow my husband are going to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to meet my parents at a dinner theater up there.  It will be the first time my husband and I have ever gone away overnight together without any of our boys coming with us, during a school week. In fact the times we've gone away together by ourselves in the last twenty years can easily be counted on one hand. It still feels very strange to me even though I actually only have one kid  left in public school - and he's in 11th grade!   We will be back on Friday, so its really not that big of a deal, just very unusual for me.  Lancaster, Pa is also Amish country and while we are up there I hope to check out some craft stores, and fresh vegetable stands to see what I can find.  I looked up the dinner theater menu for tomorrow night and there is really only two things on it that we can eat, a chicken broccoli casserole, and some kind of meatloaf.  The rest of the stuff is basically, potatoes, rolls, corn, ravioli, baby carrots and a desert buffet.  My dad thinks the food at these places is to die for and I'm thinking my husband and I will have a big, late lunch somewhere good and then go to the dinner theater not that hungry.  Plus we will have to bring dark chocolate with us to avoid the desert buffet!  Good grief!  I hope the play is good!
Hope everyone else has a good rest of the week.  I think I'll go catch myself up!

Saturday 9/17 - dog stress

Nothing new in the weight department today.  I really appreciated everyone's comments and encouragement on my last post.  I still might try the fast track in a week or two to see how it works, but other than that I'm not going to change anything else I'm doing.  I feel like I've gotten to a point where I'm eating so much healthier than I used to, choose only healthy carbs now when I have them, and only get sugar from basically my vegetables and dark chocolate in the evening.  I think the weight will come off even it takes me another six months to lose the last twenty.  Even though the scale is slow, I've really noticed a difference in my clothes.  I used to wear a size 16 pants and right before I started the BFC I had even bought a couple size 18's.  I'm 5' 6" and even before I was married and had kids (almost 23 years ago), I wore a size 12, maybe some of my clothes were a size 10. I was in shape then too!  Unless they are making sizes different these days I have no idea how people are getting into size 6's or 4's.  Anyway, it's getting cooler here now and I went to try on my jeans and they were too big - yeah!  I decided to just buy a cheap pair at Walmart for now since I'm still hoping to lose more weight.  I bought a size 14 and believe it or not, they not only fit but I can fit two fingers in the waist while I've got them on!  My shirts went from a size 1X to a size L.  So in general I am doing pretty well, I just have to stop being in such a rush and give myself time to lose the weight in a healthy way.

So in other news I got some bad news about my dog this week.  We have two dogs, Buddy & Marley.  Marley is three years old and is a yellow lab/retriever mix.  Buddy is an Australian shepherd/beagle mix. Buddy will be eleven this March.  Anyway, in the last three weeks Buddy has developed a cough that sounds like kennel cough.  I took him into the vet this week and they told me he has a heart murmur.  The vet wants me to take him to a canine cardiologist that is about 45 minutes away.  She told me their workup would be about $450.00 to diagnose his heart condition and find the right meds for him.  Geesh!!  I love my dogs but I have two kids in college and that is a lot of money!  So after much thought (and kids making me feel guilty) I decide to do it.  I call the cardiologist yesterday and they say it's not $450 it's $600!  Well that is just too much for only a diagnosis.  I started looking around for other vets in my area that might be able to figure out my dogs problems without him going to a cardiologist and I finally found one that sounded hopeful. This vet told me she could do all the diagnostic tests the cardiologist would do except for a heart sonogram.  She sounded super nice and talked with me on the phone herself for about twenty minutes. She even said she could see him the next morning, which is this morning.  I hope she gives me some better news and I'm able to give Buddy another couple years with medication.  I love dogs, and have always had them, but I do hate this part.  The part when they get older and such hard decisions are needed.  Wish me luck!

Buddy & Marley

Sunday Sept. 4- Labor Day Weekend

So it's Labor Day weekend and we have nothing going on!  Boo!  I thought about throwing a little backyard BBQ but honestly, I didn't have the desire or energy.  I have so far spent the weekend running errands.  I picked up my son from college for the long weekend (to give him a bit of a break from his party roommates), I went shopping with my other son for appropriate clothes for his upcoming student teaching practicum,  and then my husband and I spent most of today at Home Depot (his home away from home) looking for a new front door for our house.  Have you ever heard the story of the shoemakers kids that have no shoes?  Well, we are the Contractor's house that has no improvements.  We didn't order the door yet because I don't want it sitting in our livingroom for months until he has time to put it in. There is a new window for our living room that had been propped up next to the closet in our living room for three months -seriously!   I finally stuffed it in the pantry last February and that's where it's been ever since!  When my husband makes the time, we'll go get the door we picked out, and he can put that and the stupid window in at the same time!
 
On the brighter side, with school having started this week it's beginning to feel a little bit like Fall, and I love Fall!  I love the smell of woodsmoke in the air, I love the cooler air at night, I love when all the leaves turn their beautiful colors, I love the leaves crunching under my feet when I walk, and I love homemade soups and breads on a chilly evening.   Oh whoops, cross out that homemade bread part!    Anyway, I've been weighing myself everyday and haven't seen any loss. In fact it's kind of weird, some days I'm 174 and then another day I'm 176, and then back to 174 again...,back and forth like that.  Never 175 though - weird huh!  So, I decided to go back to my original little handwritten journal I was keeping when I first started the BFC.  I lost the first twenty pounds fairly quickly and I wanted to see what I was doing differently back then.    The only changes I could find were these:  In the beginning I was eating the Uncle Sams cereal with unsweetened almond milk for breakfast.  Plus back then I was taking a Flax seed oil supplement with my morning vitamins.  Other than that I haven't changed things up too much.  I switched from the Uncle Sam's because it didn't keep me full until lunch, plus I thought there might be too many carbs in the cereal and the milk together.  So I might just try going back to that cereal for a while to see if that makes a difference, plus I bought another stash of Flax seed oil pills.  If after a week that doesn't make a difference then I might try that Fast Track menu for a week and see if that gets me moving again.   I guess I will keep trying tweaking things until I find the right food choices that work best for me.  I hope everyone is enjoying the last of their Labor Day weekend!

Wednesday Aug. 31 - Posting Food

First of all I just wanted to say thank you for all the supportive comments you guys made yesterday. I do feel a little bit better today.  Talked to my son (ok, twice a day so far) and he sounds a little better.  His roommates went out to a big party the first night and came back to the room about 2:00am, but still had to get up for early orientation activities. He said they were moaning all morning about how terrible they felt.  Good grief!  I told Nick to try to get through a semester and if he still hates it there in December he can come home and get his basic requirements done at the community college and then transfer to a different  4 year college for his Junior year.  Hey, that would save us some bucks as well.  So, we'll see.

Ok, weighed in today and just as I thought I'm the same weight - 174lbs.  On the positive side, I did end the month of July at 176lbs, so I guess you could say I'm down two pounds in one month, which is better than ending the month at 176lbs, or going up!  So that's a positive.  While everyone was gone yesterday I made the lemon coconut bread which turned out really well.  I think it comes out moister if you don't bake it the full 40 minutes, I think mine was in there about 25 - 30minutes.  Less dry that way.  The lemon flavor is really good and I think I might like it best so far as well.  I'm thinking for Fall we should try it with some pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice baked in.  I think I told you my youngest son is trying to cut down on his sugar because of all my "evil of sugar" rants, so he requested his school lunch have no cookies. The first day his lunch looked a little sparse,which made my think about Dawn's peanut butter cookies. Decided to make a batch of them yesterday afternoon as well.  I left them out to cool and when my boys got home they ate all of them but two!  So I might make another batch of those and hide them somewhere for Kyle's lunch. Unfortunately I don't think I can eat them.  I know that cookies are my weak spot and I KNOW I wouldn't stop at just one.
Rosie suggested I post my food so maybe you guys can see what might be slowing me down.  Sounds good to me so here goes:

Breakfast:  Two cups of regular coffee with powdered stevia & heavy cream & benefiber first thing in the morning. Wait about 2 hours then have two eggs scrambled with 1/2 slice chopped onion, a little mozzarella cheese, two slices of bacon  put on one small smart and delicious WW tortilla.
Lunch:  Two left over grilled chicken tenders and one slice lemon coconut bread right out of the oven
Snack:  About an hour later a chocolate Jay Robb shake with a scoop of amazing grass, in unsweetened vanilla almond milk
Dinner:  Spicy ground chicken sliders on a plate (about three), green beans from the garden, two sliced tomatoes with basil, olive oil and two fresh mozzarella slices.  We eat around 6:00pm.
After dinner:  One cup decaff coffee with stevia powder and 1/2 & 1/2 with two squares of Lindt 85%.

According to my Food Tracker my totals for the day are: 55 carbs,  6 sugars, and 27 fibers

You guys are awesome!  Thanks for the help and hope everyone has a great day!

Tuesday 8/30 - little depressed

The hurricane came and went here this weekend.  After all the media hype, it was really not much more than a bad rainstorm in my area.  Like I predicted we lost our electricity.  The power company sucks around here and it doesn't take much for us to lose it.  Luckily though it was only out for for about nine hours.  It took another four hours after that to get our internet and tv back on.  Yeah Comcast!    We did lose a big branch from one of our trees and had a ton of little dead branches that shook out on to the gound and stuff like that.   Everything is pretty much cleaned up and back to normal now.

Yesterday I had such a sad day.  Had to take son number three over to his college and drop him off.  The college is only about an hour away but he is going to live on campus.  The thing is Nick is such a homebody and even though he chose this college over another one that is closer to us, he was miserable all day.  I wish he had picked the college he could commute to.  One problem is he had requested an alcohol free floor at the dorms, but the college said they had SO many requests for that floor that they couldn't accommodate everyone.  What?!  New freshman are actually being responsible enough to request a non-partying atmosphere and instead of the college thinking, "this is great, lets set up more non-alcohol floors and maybe a whole building" they say "oh sorry, we only have a few of those spots open for studious people so everyone else will just have to make do with the party people".    Not only that, they didn't have enough rooms in general so he he got "tripled".  That's when they put three people together in a two person room until something else opens up.   His roommates seemed friendly enough as they lined up their ten shotglasses on their dressers,  but they just couldn't be more the opposite of Nick in every way.  So anyway Nick was pretty miserable yesterday and that made me miserable.  What a long, sad drive home I had.

The good thing is that even though it was a hard emotional day, I didn't go off the BFC!. Yeah me! The bad news is, I've been weighing myself everyday this week and haven't seen any loss in weight all week.  Tomorrow is my official weigh-in but I doubt that there will be anything different tomorrow.   This is getting a little depressing. and I'm just not sure what else I can do to get this weight moving. How long does it take to get over a stall?  I've only lost 1 lb in basically a month!  Blah!   Don't worry though, I'm not going to quit.  I'm definitely going to keep with what I've been doing because, you know, what else can I do?     So, sorry to be so depressing today.   I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow.  On looking at the bright side, everyone in my house (expect my college graduate) went back to school today.  That gives me a little more time to myself! Yeah!  Maybe I'll go try that lemon coconut bread that Rosie posted.   I that that was a great idea! I love lemons!   Thanks for reading and I promise I'll try to be more positive on my next post.

Friday 8/26 - Keep Going!

Thanks for all the encouragement you guys!  I was a bit frustrated on Wednesday weigh-in because I only went down one pound, and that's after two weeks of NO weight loss.  I am definitely not giving up though!  I just have to get over this stall that I'm in. Everyone's encouragement and tips sure help!   After my weigh in on Wednesday I decided to make another batch of  Dawn's famous coconut bread.  I took Rosalies advice and added an extra egg to the mix, plus I used 1/4 tsp of stevia powder instead of Truvia.  This time I made the cinnamon instead of the Cocoa.  I actually like it better.  For some reason this bread (its not cake or anything) keeps me satisfied much longer.  Yesterday I had two slices of it in the morning with some Natures Hollow on top plus some scrambled eggs with cheese.   I ran a bunch of errands all day and didn't get home until about 3:00pm. which was really too late for lunch, so I had another two slices of the bread.  Then for dinner it was a pork chop and some green beans and my after dinner coffee plus two Lindts.  I wasn't even that hungry at dinner or at all the rest of the night!  

So the things I'm tweaking this week are:
-Drinking at least six full glasses of water in addition to my stevia iced tea  and my coffee every day
-Eating coconut bread with my eggs in the morning to keep me full longer
-Incorporating a Smart & Delicious tortilla into lunch. (I didn't like them that much before but find them to be    much better fried like a quesadilla)
 -Only having heavy cream in my morning coffee.  After dinner I'm switching to half & half
 - weighing myself every morning, even though it will only count on Wed. weigh-in day
Hopefully this will shake things up a bit and I'll have a loss next week.

 The other news is we are apparently getting a big hurricane this weekend.  This Irene is supposed to hit the East Coast at about 8:00am on Sunday.  I'm about 3 hours inland so I think we will just see a bunch of rain and wind, so I've got to make sure everything loose is secure on my deck and in the backyard.  Plus I have to make sure I have enough propane in my grill outside in case we lose our electricity (that's what usually happens to us-with Hurricane Isabella we lost it for a week!) and we need to get some extra gas to run our generator too.  My son Nick was supposed to move into Towson University this Saturday for his Freshman orientation but the college just posted on their website that they are postponing move in-day until Monday morning because of the Hurricane.  Towson is just north of the Inner Harbor of Baltimore where the Chesapeake Bay comes in.  They say the Bay waters may overflow and cause problems in the city, so the college is taking precautions.  I'm actually glad because I would rather have Nick here with us when the storm hits.  I'm such a mother hen type. 
I hope everyone on the coast stays safe and Pattie I hope you secure your beach house and come home before the storm hits!

New to Blogging

Hi,

I've been reading everyone's BFC blogs for a few weeks now and decided it might help me to start my own blog.  Confession:  Although I've read a lot of blogs I have never tried this myself until now.  I guess I'll start off by telling you a little bit about myself.  I have been married for 22 years and have four boys.  My oldest son is graduating college in a few weeks, the next is in his second year of college and the third is graduating high school in a few weeks.  My youngest son is a high school sophomore.  I think, like a lot of women, I have spent the last twenty years focused on my kids.  Although I have loved every minute of raising my boys I have to wonder where I went.  As I neared my fiftieth birthday this past March, I realized two things:
1.) My boys are becoming more involved in their own lives and don't need me like they used to.  While this is a good thing and what we actually want as a parent, it also leaves me with a bit of sadness and a bit of wondering - what should I do now?
2.) One of the things I decided I need to do now was to start thinking about me more.By thinking of me more I mean my health, my body and my future.

Somehow over the years I've managed to let myself go.  My weight has creeped up, exercising is almost nonexistent, and I even had dental issues that I'd put off. Although I don't think I have any major problems or ailments, I can't remember the last time I've been to the doctor for a well checkup.  The first thing I did right before my fiftieth birthday was to go to the dentist and got two root canals and two crowns put on.  I was so relieved to have this done, and have vowed go regularly from now on. Then I started thinking about my weight.  I had been on the Suzanne Somers diet about five or six years ago and had lost about 25lbs at that time.  As with a lot of people and a lot of diets I found that I couldn't eat like that forever.  Her plan is similar to the BFC and Atkins where you stay away from sugars and bad carbs, but on hers you basically can't eat carbs and fats at the same time - you have to keep them three hours apart.  This means no sandwich of any kind, no toast with fried eggs, no cheese and crackers etc.  Too hard to maintain.  The BFC looks similar but I like the fact that you can combine fats and carbs.  I also never considered fiber before and that also looks like a good thing to consider.  So anyway I started the diet on a Wednesday, April 6, 2011 to be exact, and therefore weigh myself every Wednesday morning.

Here is my journey so far:

April 6, 2011 I weighed 197lbs.
April 13, 2011 -196lbs
April 20, 2011 -193lbs
April 27, 2011 -190lbs 
May 4, 2011    -191lbs

So I was very happy to actually be losing weight even if it did seem to be coming off very slowly, and not the big losses I've read about in other blogs for the beginning weeks.   I figured I had probably messed up my metabolism over the years with the different techniques I've tried (Suzanne Somers, then trying my hand at gourmet cooking, then low calories)  This morning when I got on the scale I was so looking forward to seeing my weight out of the 190's but instead I saw that I had gained a lb.  I was disappointed and a little depressed to see that.  Instead of quitting I decided maybe if I started this blog maybe it would help me. In reviewing last week here are things I may have done wrong/different. 
1).Had some alcohol one day.  My husband and I had a couple vodka and Sobe's and it's the first alcohol I've had since starting. 
2.) I had also been writing down everything I was eating and this week I didn't do that. 
3.)I had a couple pieces of 85% chocolate every night this week while before I only had a few pieces the entire week.
4.) Drank a lot of ice tea & Stevia instead of just plain ice water. 
5.)Although I put clear Benefiber in my two cups of coffee each morning I stopped taking the additional Benefiber pills I was taking before because I ran out of them.
6.) I got hungry this week, so maybe I should eat more of the right stuff and not get hunger pains.

  That is all I can think of that was different.  Maybe if I become more accountable by writing things down I will figure out what I am doing right or wrong.  Any hints or suggestions by anyone that might be reading this are welcome.  Thanks!