Pick the Pink!

This past week, pre-Turkey day class was about recipe substitution.  As a plus sized girl who grew up in a house with a mom who was always on a weight loss plan of some sort (weight watchers, medically supervised shakes, slim fast shakes, etc), there are a lot of things that I grew up doing that I thought were “normal” in the context of food. Case in point:  using a mix of ricotta and cottage cheese in Lasagna.  Using Sweet-n-Low and red wine vinegar as salad dressing. Using Sweet-n-Low with mayonnaise and skim milk as coleslaw dressing.  I thought these were NORMAL! And I still do, since that’s what I grew up watching my mom do, and in turn, learning them from her.  Is it any wonder that I shun the blue and yellow artificial sweeteners and only go for pink?

The majority of the class was spent modifying recipes.  The class leader this week was my nutritionist (the one that I have met with once and will meet with once more before the end of this process).  She is very nice, and it was a change from the other class leaders.

She handed out regular full of fat recipes for us to review, and then we discussed how to make them healthier.  And all of the suggestions that were made were all things that I currently already do! I don’t fry eggplant for eggplant parmesan. I already bake it! I already use reduced fat cheeses and turkey in my lasagna (and it is delicious). If I do get the hankering for fettuccini alfredo, I already do use low fat cream cheese and skim milk instead of cream! Or better yet, a small scoop of the Philadelphia cooking cream is really good, too. But don’t think I cook like this all the time—because I don’t. (Most of my week night meals are bags of frozen stir fry veggies from Trader Joes, Tyson grilled chicken breast strips, frozen cooked shrimp, and microwave rice and veggies from Birdseye. I only cook heavy things like this on weekends when I have tons of down time).

Even though the boyfriend and I didn’t do Thanksgiving this year—yes, we shunned cooking a turkey and all the trimmings—I still feel like I’ve gained weight.  Maybe because it’s time for a visit from my aunt flow, and I’m feeling all bloated and stuff--or it could be the entire pot of corn cake that I made and ate over the course of 4 days—but it will be interesting to see if I gained or if I continued to lose after this week. I've also slacked on my exercise--none on Thursday, or Sunday.

As of last week weigh in (where I lost another 4 lbs), I was down 14 lbs from when the class started on September 11. Yes, it’s not as much as it should be—I should have been losing 2lbs a week—but it’s much more than I thought I could do! The first few weeks I struggled with fluctuating—but the past three weeks I’ve lost consistently (5lbs, 3.5 lbs, 4 lbs) I just hope to keep moving the scale down. My goal was to lose 40 pounds before my scheduled surgery—because as it’s explained, the more you lose before surgery, the more you will lose in the long run—because during the first year after surgery—you will lose about 75% of your desired goal—so the lower your starting weight, the closer to your end goal you can get within a year.

So today is Monday, and during the week, I am awesome at sticking to plan, eating at regular times, and being a great diet person.  (Well, I was until lunch today when I went with my coworkers to Chilis and ate a bowl of Enchilada soup at 400cals, a salad w/blue cheese dressing at 410 cals, and some chips/salsa that I'm estimating at around 300cals). Weekends(and weekday holidays) seem to be my weak points.

Weigh in is tomorrow night.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I have inched down another pound or two—but I’m also not going to get discouraged if I didn’t.  Every day is a new day to make healthy decisions!

I hope that all of you are making your own healthy decisions and finding your way on this journey, also.

On a side note, I think alot of people have dropped out of the class.  There has been no sightings of Amber, Half-n-Half, Dundalk, and a slew of others who never made the postings earlier in the year.  At this point, I'm beginning to think that I'm the ONLY person in my class who hasn't missed a single day. Go me!