Food
A Really? Weigh In
Really? Really?!
February 3, 2012
Weight: 373.0
Change from Last Week: -0.2 pounds
Change from Highest: -29.8 pounds
Zero point two pounds.
I’ve watched my food. I’ve eaten well. I’ve counted my points. I’ve exercised HARD.
I have earned more than 0.2 pounds this week. At this rate… I will lose ten pounds this year.
*sigh* Something has to give.
It is not me. I am not giving up. I do not give up.
I tried eating more early in the week, and that made a big fat zero’s worth of difference.
This week, I will alternate days of higher food and significantly lower food. Let’s see if that will do it.
One change I am going to make this week is to significantly UP my veggie content via our new cold press mastication juicer (woo hoo!) and make some raw crackers with the pulp. When I look back through my journal, I see plenty of fruits, lean proteins, and whole grains, but I see remarkably few vegetables.
In fact, there are days at a time where I eat none.
I just don’t like vegetables.
Time to put on my big boy pants and make it happen, and veggie juice (which I can surprisingly tolerate) sounds like a good way to do it.
I’ll blog later about the February updates for my New Year’s Resolutions.
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MyBlogSpark Giveaway: General Mills Cereal
Disclosure: The prize pack, information, and giveaway have been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark.
As an active member of MyBlogSpark, I periodically get invited to various campaigns to try out healthy foods. In addition to trying out said foods in my home, I also get to host a giveaway and offer one reader the chance to also try those foods.
This time, MyBlogSpark and General Mills provided me with five boxes of cereal!
For a while now, General Mills has been promoting more whole grains in their cereal.
To be quite honest… I don’t eat a great deal of cereal, and when I do, I usually make it myself (recipe coming soon!). However, there have been many busy mornings where I haven’t had time to make myself breakfast or I’m out of my regular cereal, and it would be nice to have something to fall back on.
As a result, when I was given the chance to review (and giveaway) these five boxes of cereal, I was happy to give them a whirl!
I’ll start with the taste. They tasted exactly as I remembered them. No change at all, so that’s a plus.
As far as the ingredient list, I was simultaneously pleased, surprised, and disappointed.
I was pleased that Cheerios are surprisingly clean! I was surprised that Cinnamon Toast Crunch, while admittedly being high in sugar (although whole grains were still the #1 ingredient), did NOT have high fructose corn syrup. And I was disappointed (and surprised again) that Total does! Total cereal, the cereal I would have bet to be the cleanest in the box, had high fructose corn syrup as the third ingredient.
I still advocate a clean diet, but if you read my blog regularly, you may know that I follow a 90% clean/10% don’t-sweat-it diet. I place cereals like these in that 10%. I fully believe that the occasional indulgence is acceptable and appropriate in a healthy diet.
Want the chance to try these five cereal out for yourself? (Full boxes, too. Not the little scrawny single serving ones.)
Giveaway is only open to US residents. (Sorry everyone else!) Entries will be taken until 10 p.m. Central time, January 26th. Winner will be announced at next Friday’s weigh in.
This is going to be a nice and simple giveaway. One shot per person. To enter, just leave a comment here answering this question: “Which of these five General Mills cereals (Lucky Charms, Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Total, Honey Nut Cheerios) are you most excited to try?”
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A Black Friday Weigh-In
First of all, the results of my post-Thanksgiving weigh-in…
Oh yeah! Down 0.8 from Wednesday! And that was WITH a traditional Thanksgiving meal! It just goes to show (me) that if I eat moderately, enjoy myself, and don’t go overboard, I CAN enjoy the holidays and stay on plan.
November 25, 2011
Weight: 376.2
Change from Last week: -2.6 pounds
Change from highest: -26.6 pounds
I do realize that this may not be typical and I may have to give some back next week. But regardless, I didn’t put on tons of weight. I didn’t gorge myself. And I even had a small slice of pecan pie last night that was every bit as good as the three slices I would have had in years past.
Thanksgiving: 0
Jeremy: 1
And on to the shopping…
I’m truthfully NOT a Black Friday shopper. I go, but I’m not one of those who ever camps out or even waits in line. In fact, when I found out that Target shoppers were going to be lined up past the front door to Lowe’s, I suggested we hit Wal-Mart first.
I go to Black Friday sales for ONE reason.
Cheap DVDs. And I knew Wal-Mart and Target were both going to have some cheap DVDs and Blu-Rays that I wanted to attempt to get my hands on.
The plus side of having such a short shopping list? If I don’t get it, no big deal.
First stop… Wal-Mart
Our first stop was Wal-Mart. Our town has two Wal-Marts, and we always go to the one that is on the other side of town because it tends to be less crowded. Even on Black Friday, it was less crowded. I’ve seen our Wal-Mart with a bigger crowd than this on regular shopping days.
We picked out four Blu-Rays, and although Tina had her heart set on getting a $38 Shark Floor Steam Cleaner, we couldn’t even find the displays.
After getting in line, (thanks to some very nice people who let us cut since we didn’t have a cart and literally had only a few things), Tina saw the Shark sitting, unattended, by the register. After asking everybody around if it was theirs, no one claimed it, so we ended up getting the cleaner, too. Win!
Second stop… Target…
Our town only has one Target. Dear Jesus, this place was packed.
After making our way around the store and asking a few Good Samaritans where the DVDs were, we finally found the movies. I had my heart set on the $7.99 Psych TVonDVD sets. Alas, the first DVD stations we found only had movies. Fortunately, yet another Samaritan pointed us to the back of the store, and we were able to get EVERY DVD box set we had on our wish list, including the entire series of Heroes for only $7.99 per season. Super win!
But then… we had to get in line.
Super suck.
The problem was that four lines were feeding into one mega line. The truth of the matter is, they needed a line referee because people kept cutting. After we had been in line for forty-five minutes, someone ahead of us was complaining because it had already taken them fifteen minutes to make it that far.
However, we reminded ourselves that we had everything we came for, and if we had to wait for a while because some people chose to screw up their karma by cutting line, then we were still going to get everything they needed. And they were going to have slashed tires in the parking lot. Win win.
But yeah, the line sucked. And continued. It took us about an hour to FINALLY check out, and we semi-bonded with the people in front of us, so all in all, a successful trip.
And yes, we got WAY more DVDs than we needed, so we’re counting this the rest of our Christmas shopping for each other, and except for a few relatives, we are now DONE Christmas shopping.
It’s Christmas!
I love Christmas! We’ve had our tree up for a week. I plan a blog post already to detail some of our ornaments, including a few that are fitness and weight loss related.
I’ll be back on Friday with a geeked-out Power Rangers post, because I haven’t done one of those in a long time.
To my American readers, please continue to have a wonderful holiday weekend. And to my non-American readers, please have a wonderful weekend!
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Pre-Holiday Weigh-In and a Motivational Image
First of all, the super good news! I DID lose weight before Thanksgiving! Woo hoo!
Now I may be all bloated and full of salt on Friday, but I am STILL going to weigh-in. Let’s just see how Wednesday and Black Friday weigh-ins compare.
I’m about to show you a weight loss motivational picture, but before this turns into something else, let me post one final Thanksgiving image for some holiday cheer.
A gym in Brazil (I think…) posted pictures such as this for their advertising a few years ago. A lot of people got upset. Fat jokes or things that others consider insensitive truly don’t bother me. And for that reason, I find this picture both motivational and AWESOME.
And because I want to look like him and I have a man crush, I’m posting this picture, and I’m reminding myself, “Would he be splurging non-stop for the next five weeks? Don’t think so.”
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Thanksgiving, Middle of the Trifecta
It wasn’t until Tina and I started going to each others’ family functions that we discovered how different families from the same region of the country can be. The Thanksgiving meal we share is, I think, one big example.
At my parents’ house, Thanksgiving meal will consist of a turkey, homemade stuffing (although not actually stuffed in the bird), gravy, rolls, mashed potatoes, corn, peas, macaroni and cheese, roasted sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce. And for dessert, some type of pie that is definitely not pumpkin. My mother, who was the cook when I was growing up, hates pumpkin, so I was literally an adult before I first tried a pumpkin pie.
Tina’s family has a very different menu. Turkey, ham, green beans, scalloped potatoes, baked beans, some type of sweet potato casserole, and rolls with pumpkin pie for dessert. One year I think there were even deviled eggs. To me, this feels more like a July 4th meal. I’ve got to be honest – while I’m happy to go enjoy this meal with Tina’s family, it just does not feel like Thanksgiving to me. And I’m quite sure that my family meal doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving to her.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, Thanksgiving is about giving thanks and being with people you care about. Food is just that – food. It doesn’t make or break the day. (Even though I hate baked beans. Yuck.)
So, we’re heading into the middle meal of the Holiday Trifecta that tends to ruin people’s diets.
I have NEVER understood that. Thanksgiving is just NOT a scary meal for me.
I do Weight Watchers at the moment, so this is what my Thanksgiving meal at my parents house will look like with estimated points.
Turkey, 6
Small amount of gravy, 3
Mashed potatoes with peas, 8
Roll, 4
Macaroni & cheese, 8
Sweet potato, 4
Cranberry sauce, 3
These are high estimates, and yes, this is a VERY generous plate of food. It comes out to 36 points. Yeah, that’s a buttload of food. But you know what? I have 71 daily points. I have 49 weekly points that I’ve barely touched because I’m saving them for the Thanksgiving eat-o-rama. Even if I add a slice of pie at 10 points, I’m still doing okay.
And best yet – for the most part, these are all real foods. My mother is a southern cook. She cooks with real food, not fake ingredients.
I’ve clearly been struggling with my weight lately. I weigh more now than I did in January. I’m not going to sit here and say “I’ve made great choices and I just don’t know why I’m gaining weight!” I know exactly why I’m gaining weight. I’ve eaten too much and not moved enough lately. The end. But the me of a few years ago would say, “Ah screw it. I’ll start over on January 1st.” After all, I’ve got Thanksgiving, multiple Christmas parties, and a freaking trip to Vegas before January 1st to contend with. But I am NOT hitting the reset button on 1-1-12. I’m taking charge now.
If I make that choice to wait, I’ll start January 1st weighing 400 pounds. That is NOT happening. Instead, I’ll splurge occasionally throughout the holidays, relying on my daily points and weekly points (I still think of them as flex points) to get me through. I’ll exercise.
And besides, when I eat real food and exercise, I feel good. Why shouldn’t I want to feel good now?
So who is with me? Anyone else planned out their Thanksgiving meal?
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