Menu Monday

This week should be a pretty quiet week.  I have today off, so we're heading to the coast for the day.  I'm working the rest of the week, and we really don't have a lot going on, so we decided it would be a good opportunity to try out some recipes I found on Pinterest.

If you haven't used Pinterest yet, it's worth checking out - it's basically an online corkboard for collecting links and images from around the internet.  I've been building a few different boards, and have found that it's a pretty helpful weight loss tool, since it helps me organize all the recipes I've found so I can plan ahead and not get bored.  I've also built an inspiration board to look at when I need the kick in the butt to either stop eating or start moving.

So without further ado, here is the weekly menu and activity schedule:

• Monday:
• Will stop on the way home from the beach, will probably order a salad or soup
• Activity: Hiking
• Tuesday:
• Black-eyed Pea Burgers on home-made ciabatta with Roasted Broccoli
• Activity: Wii Fit Yoga/Strength
• Wednesday:
• White Bean Salad
• Activity: Walk or Wii Fit free steps
• Thursday (Heading to a game night straight from work)
• Leftover lentil soup with kale (eat at work before leaving)
• Activity: Wii Fit Yoga/Strength
• Friday:
• Sweet Chili Lime Tofu with Quinoa and Spicy Cole Slaw
• Activity: Rest day

I still haven't gotten menu planning for breakfast or lunch down yet. I have almost the same thing for breakfast and snacks during the week.  For lunch, I'll either have leftovers or a sandwich.  Since I have to pack my lunch, the daytime isn't really where I go off plan, so I've decided I need to get the hang of menu-planning for dinner before I tackle breakfast and lunch.

Weekly Check-In

Weekly Loss: -2.2
Total Loss: -32
Yearly Loss: -2.2
Last Week's Activity: Worked out 5 times, earned a total of 20 activity points

I'm not sure if I was crazy to re-commit last week, but it worked.  A 2.2 loss in spite of New Years Eve, New Years Day, and a day of travel, was hard work.  I used all of my weekly points and activity points this week, which had me a little nervous.  But I tracked absolutely everything.  When I went into the red, I didn't say "forget it" and stop tracking altogether, I got off my butt and worked out until I was back in black.

I'm excited about next week, but a little nervous.  I'm switching meetings, to a 7 am Wednesday meeting.  I love my Saturday morning leader, but getting to my 8 am meeting on my one day a week to sleep in was making me resent meeting, and resent WW as a whole.  Getting to a 7 am meeting is going to be a challenge too, but I have to get up on Wednesdays anyway.  And if worse comes to worse, the center has open hours all morning.  If I miss the meeting, I can still weigh in on my way to work, and come back for the evening meeting.

The rest of week is going to be challenging too.  My birthday is Wednesday, and Matt has a big romantic dinner planned for that, and I have friend in town Thursday night, so we'll be going out.  Matt and I went to the farmers' market this week, so we've got plenty of fresh produce.  We'll post a full menu later today or tomorrow, but the highlights I'm looking forward to making are Chocolate-Covered Pomegranate Seeds and Sweet Potato Bread (wish me luck on veganizing my first baking recipe!).

New Year, New Me?

I was going to spend this post talking about all the things I did in 2011 to get healthier.  But the truth is, I had kind of a wake-up call.  When I went back to look at my progress, I realized I've weighed between 228 and 232 since the beginning of September.  I'm actually exactly the same weight I was on Sept. 7.

I've made a lot of strides towards a healthier life.  Matt and I eat a mostly vegan diet.  I've started incorporating activity into my routine.  But that's not translating into results on the scale.

On the bright side, I am 19.8 pounds lighter than I was January 1, 2011.  So I know it's possible to lose weight.  When I look back at what changed in September, it's not that I fell off the Weight Watchers' wagon, it's that I willfully jumped.  Every excuse I could think of, I used.  Traveling for work?  No need to count points, it's just one week.  Halloween?  If I gain from the candy, I can drop it next week.  Christmas party?  Well, Christmas only comes once a year.  Another Christmas party?  Well, I blew it at the last party, what's a couple more glasses of wine and cookies?  You get the idea.

I usually think New Years' resolutions are cheesy.  After all, if we need to make a change in our lives, we should just make it - no reason to wait until a special day.  But this year, I see the point.  I need to hit the reset button, and today has given me the opportunity to look back on the last year and see that.

It's pretty simple.  If I'm just trying to work out and eat healthy with no structure, I gain weight, or  I maintain.  If I count points, I lose.  Sometimes I wish the answer were more complex, because then I'd have an excuse.  But I don't, Weight Watchers' lays it out pretty clearly.  So my resolutions this year are simple, but concrete:

- Exercise at least 30 minutes 4 times a week.  Work up to 60 minutes 5-6 times a week.
- Track every day.  Learn to use the Simply Filling Technique for days that's not practical so I can still be on plan and not use it as an excuse to blow the week. (I will definitely blog about that when it happens).
- Get to a BMI of overweight

And my more abstract resolution - continue to strive to live a healthy lifestyle.  Be it through food choices, deciding how to spend my afternoon, or making movement part of my life, look for opportunities to be healthy, and take them.

For example, when I decided to spend Christmas afternoon doing this:

Instead of sitting inside watching TV.  Yes, that's me and Matt outside in 12 degrees weather.

Happy New Year!

Weekly Weigh-In

Weekly Loss: 0 pounds
Total Loss (since 8/10): -30 pounds

So do you remember last week when I said I was going to track everything? Yeah, didn't happen. I tracked all of Saturday, part of Sunday, and didn't open my tracker for the rest of week.

I guess I should be happy that even without tracking, I was able to maintain.

My leader says that if you go two days without tracking, it's time to mix up your tracking method. I realized after the last two weeks, tracking online just wasn't working for me.

So I bought the "Ultimate 3 Month Tracker" - it's a small notebook that I can keep in my purse, so I can keep it on me. So far I've tracked all of yesterday, and breakfast from this morning.

Activity as a Lifestyle

It gets pretty cliche, but the thing about WW is that it's a lifestyle change, not just a diet.  That means that for me to be successful, I have to not just look at what happens when I sit down for a meal, but the rest of my life too.

Before I started WW, I lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle.  It wasn't always like that.  I was pretty active growing up - my family hiked, biked, canoed, camped, and skied all the time.  Growing up in Alaska, it just felt natural.  I was on the cross-country running and cross-country ski team in high school.  I was never skinny, but I was in good shape.

Then I went to college, and those habits just kind of died.  Going to the gym wasn't a priority.  I didn't find time to run or bike.  I didn't have a car, so going hiking became a big deal - I had to either find a group that was going (and thus get out of bed before noon on a Saturday) or find a friend with a car.  Because I wasn't making activity a priority, I wasn't going out of my way to make friends with people that made it a priority too.

So over the last 10 years, I went from someone who was outside for several hours at least 4 times a week to someone that could spend all day inside, in front of a TV, without really noticing.  Because I kept eating like a high school athlete, it's no wonder I got to where I am.

One of the things I've had to admit to myself since starting WW again is that I'll never be a gym rat.  I just don't enjoy it.  I can do an hour on the treadmill or the elliptical, but I get so BORED!  And when I get bored, I lose motivation.

What I've found, though, is that if I work activity into my lifestyle, I get it done.  That might mean an active date with Matt - instead of just spending the day hanging out, we'll ride our bikes to the park and have a picnic or go for a hike.  I've been riding my bike to work, which takes about an hour each way.  I could never make myself spend two hours at the gym, but taking the time to bike to work feels like a treat.

And that brings me to today.  I've wanted to start volunteering now that we've gotten settled.  So when I heard about the Great American River Clean Up, I decided it was the perfect way to spend the morning.  Matt and I could hike up and down the river, and the American River Parkway would get cleaned up in the process.

A year ago, I would have heard about the clean up on the radio, and thought "Good for those people, the type of people that can get up early and actually have the energy to do something."  Now I am one of those people, and it feels great!

Weekly Weigh-In

Weekly Loss: -1.6 pounds
Total Loss (since 8/10): -30 pounds


I thought I would feel more excited when I hit the 30 pounds lost mark, but this week seemed kind of anti-climactic.  I almost didn't go to my meeting.  Partly it was because I had other stuff to do, so I had to go to an early meeting and didn't want to get out of bed, but also because I didn't think I would lose.  I'm still not sure I deserved to lose.  I felt gross all week, and that translated into very little activity and very little tracking.


I feel like I got a pass this week.  If I let myself slip back down the path of "kinda sorta" following the plan, it's going to be pretty tough to get back on track.  So this week, my focus is going to be on tracking everything that goes into my mouth, no matter how tired or busy I am.

Weekly Weigh-In

Weekly Loss: -2.2 pounds
Total Loss (since 8/10): -28.4 pounds

This week was a really good week, WW wise.  After a small gain last week, I got my head back in the game.  I tracked, I moved, I made an effort to get all my good health guidelines in, and when I got on the scale yesterday, it showed.

I didn't have any secret tricks this week, I just followed WW as it is written.  It shouldn't surprise me anymore - when I'm on plan, I lose.  When I'm not on plan, I don't lose.

We're Back!

It's been a hectic few months.

Since we last posted, we've had a few changes - the biggest one is that we're no longer in Northern Virginia, we've moved to California!

After a 5 1/2 day drive, we pulled into Sacramento, for a nice stay in a residential hotel.  Although we had a small kitchenette, we weren't able to do a lot of cooking that lended itself to blogging (unless you like pictures of salads and canned beans, then do I have some recipes for you)!

We've since found an apartment with a full kitchen, and have been slowly unpacking and getting everything in order.  We've also been finding the grocery stores and farmers' markets.

Our Farmers' Market Haul

We've also been getting other parts of our life in order - namely our finances and our diets.  I've come to realize that the two things are closely related.  Saving money and paying off debt is very similar to losing weight.  Both involve making a budget - if I eat more than my alloted points for the week (i.e. eat more calories than I burn), I gain weight. If I stick to my points "budget", I lose.  If I spend more than I make in a week, I go into debt, but if I spend less, I save money.  To stay within either  budget, I have to make choices.  If I want a latte, I can't buy a cookie later.

I don't really want to go into the details of our financial situation, but I will say that we're making an effort to save.  And since food is the biggest part of our budget that we can control right now, what we eat is going to play a role in that.  So we've decided that we're going to start including that in the blog.

But here's the thing.  I love food.  I really love eating good food.  And any plan, either for losing weight or saving money, that makes me give that up is bound to fail.  That needs to be another focus of the blog.

Hence, the new goal in the header - we want to lose weight, save money, and eat ethically, but we want to do that without sacrificing flavor.

Quiet Week

I know I haven't really been posting a lot on the weight loss front.  That's because there hasn't been a lot to post about.  I had a slight gain when we got back from Sioux Falls, but it was an expected gain.  I didn't track at all, was eating meals prepared by others or in restaurants for 6 days, attending frequent, wedding related celebrations with the associated food and drinks, and sitting in a car for 4 of those 6 days.  So not really conducive to weight loss.  I probably could have tracked, or focused more on activity, but honestly, kind of needed a break.

But now it's back to the grind.  I've had my fun, I need to get back on track.  Matt and I have about a month before we move cross country to California.  I know that's going to be a major disruption in my life.  I don't want to know how long we'll have to go without access to a full kitchen or our kitchen equipment.  Even if all goes according to plan, July is going to be a stress-filled month.  And based on some of the interactions I've had with the people handling my move, assuming that all will go according to plan is quite optimistic.

So my goal for June is to really ingrain some of the healthy habits that will carry me through times of stress.  Those include:

1. Having healthy snacks on hand for when I get hungry
2. Watching my portions - even if I can't control what's put in front of me, I can control how much of it I eat
3. Finding healthier outlets for my stress than junk food
4. Keeping activity a part of my daily routine.  Even if I can't get to the gym or take 60 minutes to do Wii Fit, I can at least go for a 20 minute walk on my lunch break, or take the stairs instead of the elevator

I know these aren't concrete goals, they can't be measured.  The TA that taught my "Fitness for Life" lab in college would be disappointed.  But if I focus on them, and really ingrain them in my lifestyle this month, when I'm more or less in control, when I feel things spiraling out of control next month, I will have them to fall back on.

Here's an example of how I put goals 2 and 4 into practice on Friday.  Matt, a friend, and I met up at Truckeroo, a Food Truck festival near my office.  Matt and I both got sandwiches from El Floridano.  If you're in DC and haven't tried them, find out when they'll be near you.  For $7 a sandwich, you won't regret it!  They have great vegan options as well as normal pulled pork sandwiches.  If you get the tempeh, it's not a bad meal, points wise.  I picked El Floridano because, unlike some of the other options, I felt like they had reasonable portion sizes.  After sandwiches, I had a green tea popcicle from Pleasant Pops.  Matt had the Strawberry Rhubarb.  Overall, it was a high points dinner, but I had planned for it, and I definitely don't feel like I went overboard.

After dinner, we all walked down to the new Yards park in Navy Yards for some live music.

Matt and I at the Yards

 The Electric Slide

The Anacostia Waterfront at night

The Yards Park

An evening of free music, just enough good food to feel good about it, and walking.  I felt in control, I had fun, and I wasn't obsessing about my weight loss journey.  It felt great!

Traveling

This was supposed to be a post about staying on plan when traveling.  But there's no way I can claim to have stayed on plan over the last week.  But I've learned that figuring out what went wrong can be just as valuable as what went right, so here goes...

When I got to the airport on Tuesday, things were going well.   I checked in for my flight, and walked past all the fast food.  I had mentally prepared myself for this walk.  I always get food at the airport, but when I really think about it, I don't need food at the airport.  I don't usually eat a whole meal at 4 in the afternoon, so why do I need something when I'm at the airport?  Armed with a good book, I settled in at the gate to wait for my plane.

I had planned ahead, and was planning on picking up dinner at the Whole Foods that I knew between the airport and my hotel.  Easy, less expensive than eating at a restaurant, and lots of low points options.

Easy, right?

Things started going downhill about 15 minutes before my flight was supposed to board.  I heard a garbled message that may have mentioned my flight, and when I saw people starting to line up at the gate, I asked around and realized my flight had been cancelled.  And the next available flight wasn't for another 5 hours!

Gone were my plans for an easy dinner in the hotel and a quick workout.  I had to eat in the airport.  There are not a lot of vegetarian options in the airport.  The only restaurant that seems like a good option is Panda Express, but their tofu dishes aren't actually vegetarian.  Also, I wanted a beer.  So I headed over to the bar.  Still not a lot of vegetarian options, and I was frustrated and already hungry, so I wasn't making good choices.  I ended up going with the nachos and, because I didn't understand what the waitress was asking me, a giant, $9 beer.  Even as I was drinking the beer and eating the nachos, I knew I didn't have enough points, but I ate it anyway.

This evening set the tone for the rest of my week.  WW wise, everything that could go wrong, did.  I forgot my workout clothes, so I couldn't take advantage of my hotel's gym.  The hotel didn't have a mini-fridge, so I couldn't pre-buy breakfast like I usually do.  After the airport debacle on Tuesday, I just stopped counting points, so I have no idea how much I ate.

I did make a point to eat smaller portions, but I don't think that will make up for everything else.

So what's the moral of the story?  Well, aside from not flying, it's planning ahead.  I should have has some snacks in my bag.  I like Larabars (Cashew Cookies are my favorites), fruit like apples and oranges, and almonds (especially the chocolate covered kind!).  I didn't pack these because it was only supposed to be a one-hour flight.  I also need to learn to not let my emotions order food.  I could have gotten a salad, and I would have felt better if I had, since the nachos weren't really that good anyway.

I also need to learn how to not let a bad day, or in this case, a bad evening, throw my entire week off.  I should have just tracked as best I could and moved on.  Also, I could have gotten some activity - I didn't have my workout clothes, but I did have my running shoes - there's no reason I couldn't have gone for a walk.  I need to learn that a bad day doesn't have to turn into a bad week.

I weigh in tomorrow morning.  I'm not looking forward to what I'm going to see, but if there is a gain, I deserve it.  But then it's a new week, so I can start over.

Planning Ahead

Over the years, I've found that one of my biggest obstacles to weight loss is my inability to plan ahead.  I wait until I'm hungry before I start thinking about what I'm going to eat.  Then, because I'm hungry, I eat whatever is easiest - usually pasta, take-out, or fast food.  This is probably even a bigger problem for me than stress eating.

Matt knows that about me.  That's why he was understandably worried when he was getting ready to be out of town for a week.  And that's why he left me this:

There is a sweet potato lasagna (recipe coming), falafel we found at Costco, homemade hummus, leftovers from last week, and a huge ziplock container of already cut-up vegetables.  So for lunch or dinner, I just have grab something and put it in the microwave.  Even I can handle that.

One of the most important things to do when you're trying to lose weight is to look at the behaviors that got you into this position.  For me, it was stress eating to a certain degree, but it was more a failure to plan ahead.  It would be easy to laugh it off and call it laziness, but I was doing other things while I wasn't grocery shopping or cooking, so it was more of a failure to prioritize my health and diet.

There are a lot of diets out there that just hand you the food you need to eat, to make it is as easy as possible.  And that works for a lot of people, but it never worked for me.  I did lose weight when I tried Slim Fast, I also lost weight when I was in college and all I ate were frozen dinners like Smart Ones and Lean Cuisine.  But as soon as I went off those diets, the weight came back on.  I realize now it was because I never really learned to prioritize my meals or my health.

Frozen dinners are handy to have in a pinch.  I keep Boca Burgers and frozen veggies in my freezer so we can make them if we don't feel like cooking.  But it's not a long term solution.  For one thing, frozen food is really boring.  And there aren't a ton of vegetarian options out there, fewer options if you want vegan or low-points.  

The long-term solution is learning to plan ahead.  It's realizing when I start working out at 6:00, that I'm going to be hungry when I'm done at 7:00, so I should have something ready to go.  It's understanding what is in the fridge and what is in the pantry, and knowing how to combine that into a meal, and thinking ahead to go to the store if I'm missing something.

And most of all, it's knowing your wife well enough to know that while she's figured a lot of this out in her head, she's still struggling to put it into practice, so it's providing her with the tools she needs to not slip back into her old habits.

What can I say?  I married an incredible, awesome man that takes care of me!

It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle

People that have done Weight Watchers have heard this before.  A diet is something you do until you lose the weight you want to lose.  A lifestyle is a permanent change that you make in your life.  The idea is that you will be active and eat healthy for the rest of your life.  This mindset is what helps people keep the weight off once they lose it - after all, it was an unhealthy lifestyle that made them overweight in the first place.  If that's what they go back to once they get to goal, the logical result would be that they would gain the weight back.

It was Einstein that defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  If it was your lifestyle that caused you to be overweight, it would be insane to expect to return to that lifestyle and not regain the weight.

I guess that would make me insane, because I've started and stopped Weight Watchers at least 4 times.  I don't know the actual number - I went to my first meeting with my mom when I was 16.  It always starts really well, I lose 10 to 20 pounds, and then things just kind of fall apart.  There usually isn't a specific thing, I just get lazy.  I come up with excuses to skip the gym, or to "cheat" and not track.  I inevitably end up gaining when I start cheating, and then I throw in the towel and give up altogether.  I usually gain the weight back, and then some.

So what's different this time?

I think I finally understand what it means to change my lifestyle.  When I did Weight Watchers before, I tried to make it fit my life.  I am a stress eater - when life gets stressful, I stuff my face with sugar and carbs.  I used to stop by the gas station on the way home from my bar prep class, and load up on 4 or 5 king size candy bars.  I might have one left by the time I got home - and it was a 4 block walk.

When I've gone on Weight Watchers in the past, I didn't deal with this.  I wouldn't eat 4 candy bars, but I would devour sugar free jello or light cool whip.  I made myself sick eating candy with sugar alcohol.  I barely tasted it, I just needed to eat it.  And eventually I would need to eat something, I wouldn't have access to my "diet" food, I would eat junk food, and start down the slippery slope that lead to me giving up completely.

I don't enjoy fake food.  Fake food doesn't satisfy my cravings.  If I want chocolate, I can have chocolate.  It's just that I choose to have a small piece of good dark chocolate, instead of a King Size Snickers, or a weird, sugar free candy bar.  And I track it, and I move on.  Or I go for a walk, or have a cup of tea.  The truth is, since I stopped eating food like sugar free jello, and I haven't eaten a lot of refined sugar, I don't crave sugar.  I do still crave sweetness, but usually something like a piece of fruit or a small piece of dark sugar will satisfy that.

This time, I realized that I deserve healthy, filling, real food, I just deserve it in moderation.  Food won't solve my problems.  I can eat an entire bag of M&M's, I still have to get my work done.

I know that substitutions work really well for some people, and if they're working for you, I'm certainly not going to second guess that.  But I know that I needed to deal will my stress eating, I needed to deal not only with what I was eating, but with the fact that I was eating at all.

Weekly Weigh In

So I didn't grow the food that led to my scale victory, but this picture still seemed fitting, since I feel like I won a major battle this week, and it was "Victory Garden" (aka my "Victory Produce Aisle") that helped me get there.

After struggling with the same 3 pounds for 3 months now, I've finally broken out of that rut with a 2 pound loss!  I made some major changes this week - I switched from Points Plus, the new Weight Watchers system, back to their "old" system, Momentum.

The new plan was sold as a way to get you to "eat cleanly" - healthy, whole foods had a lower points value than processed "junk" with the same number of calories.  The problem was, I was already eating almost all whole foods.  Matt and I just don't eat a lot of processed food.  So when the foods that I ate the most of went down in points, I ended up eating a lot more.  And eating a lot more meant some serious stalling at the scale.

I've had people ask me how I can eat a plants-based diet and still struggle with my weight.  There is so much literature out there that pounds just melt away when you cut meat out of your diet.  And for some people, that's true.  But what I've learned in the last 6 months of doing WW on a vegetarian diet is that calories are still calories.  If you eat more calories than you burn, those calories turn into fat.  Keeping this math as simple as possible is what helps me lose weight.  So, at least for the foreseeable future, it looks like I'm back on Momentum.

Hungry, by Crystal Renn

One of the things I want this blog to be is a place where I can talk about the struggles of trying to lose weight.  Somehow, I got to be over 100 pounds overweight (that's a story for another time).  I struggled for a long time to accept that I've overweight (actually obese, if you want to put labels on it).  Then it took me a long to accept myself at that weight.  The funny thing is, losing weight actually became easier when I started to actually like my body.  I'm not longer battling myself, battling my body, I'm not losing weight in spite of my body, I'm embracing myself.  I'm able to stay on Weight Watchers because I'm eating nutritious, good food.  I don't feel like I'm depriving myself, I can still live my life.

That's what drew me to the book Hungry, by Crystal Renn.

When she wrote this book, Crystal Renn was the highest paid plus sized model in the world.  She had started her career as a "straight-sized" model, meaning she was about a size zero.  In her book, she describes how the only way she was able to maintain that size was through anorexia and hours at the gym every day.  She hated herself and her life as a size zero.  On top of that, she wasn't a very successful model - she didn't have any spark, nothing unique about her personality, mostly because she was so hungry all the time, all she could thing about was food.

I picked up this book because, even though I struggle with the opposite problem of eating too much, I thought reading about a model's struggle to find a healthy weight and embrace her body would help me work through some of my own food and self esteem issues.

I really, really wanted to like this book.  I really did.  And I commend Crystal for telling her story in such a public way.  I do think the book helps with size acceptance.  But I just couldn't get used to the tone.  It was too cheerful, as though all your problems will be solved if you just learn to love your body.  It's like she was just able to flip a switch and start eating again, as though you can get over an eating disorder through sheer willpower.  

I know this is Crystal's story, not the story of eating disorders.  If I wanted that, I would have found a text book on eating disorders.  But the tone was so cheerful, and that was hard for me to get over.  That may my own problem.  I may be too cynical for this book.

I will give it this - it made me think about how we define beauty.  I know I will never be a size 0.  And I would be thrilled if I could look as good as Crystal looks on the cover of her book.  She's either a size 10 or 12 in that picture.  So the book did help me think realistically about my weight loss goals.

Exercise

I'll be honest.  The hardest thing about Weight Watchers for me is getting to the gym.  Actually, it's getting off my butt and working out at all.  I've learned over the past umpteenth time I've tried WW that I can actually have good food while still staying within my points.  I don't usually feel like I'm on a diet.  But for whatever reason, I'm having a really hard time incorporating exercise into my life.

Today is the second day in a row I've come home saying I was going to work out.  But when I got home, I sat down on the couch, and next thing I knew, it was time to go to bed.  So here's my new rule - no computer or TV until I've gotten at least 30 minutes of exercise.