i'm losin' it!

I'm totally motivated again!

I lost 2 pounds this past week!!!!!

Woo Hoo!!!

How did I do it? Very smart choices.

Yes, I did cheat a little last weekend. Okay, alot. It was a holiday weekend and I fully took advantage of it. I had a 10 oz ribeye and cheese fries and cheese cake all in one sitting. The next day, I had cheese stuffed, Marsala chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and a Tiramisu for dessert. I can't even imaging how many points it was. It all fit into my lack of motivation and funk that I was in. But then on Tuesday I was hard core back to exactly what I should eat.

My new favorite lunch is a LARGE bowl of mixed fruit (like strawberries, watermelon, grapes, pineapple, honey dew, cantaloupe, etc.) and about a half cup of diced 2% block cheese. It's totally satisfying, great nutrition (loads of water, fiber, dairy and protein). So I had that maybe 4 or 5 times this past week.

For my dinners, I hate very sensible. Chicken and veggies. Or lean beef and veggies.

I had almost no sugar or artificial sweetener.

Yesterday morning, I had some Protein Pancakes that a friend at work made and brought in. The ingredients sound absolutely gross, but they are the BEST pancakes you'll ever have and they're LOADED with protein, whole grains, fiber, and dairy. Here are the ingredients, you should try them: 1 cup egg whites, 1 cup cottage cheese, splenda to taste (or turbanado sugar to taste), 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 cup oatmeal. You put it all in a blender and mix until well blended then fold in blueberries (which are SO good for you). I don't need syrup because the taste is so yummy, but you could top them sugar free syrup or honey or a little powdered sugar.

I have to say I was a little ticked a my WW meeting this morning. A lady was talking about how she splurged a little when her husband ordered her a margarita after dinner last night and when she got home, her neighbor had given her some desserts that she totally indulged in and felt so guilty. You know what the leader said?? He gave her an "Asserting" flyer so she could learn how to tell her husband and neighbors no next time. WHAT???!!! Okay, maybe that can help on some level, but don't you think we all know how to say no? That didn't address the real issue. What she needed to learn was why she was unable to resist those sweets that her neighbor gave her.

The main problem is the sugar. The leader touched on it by saying that alcohol is high in sugar and thus high in points. Okay. But what next? Why is sugar bad? That's what she needed to hear. If she doesn't learn why sugar is bad, she'll keep indulging and sabotaging herself time and time again.

Our bodies need sugar. Our brain needs sugar to function. Without a certain level of sugar we will start getting tired and sleepy all the time because our brains will start shutting down.

But on the other hand, too much sugar will send our body into a panic. And you know what it will do when it starts panicking? It'll ask you for more! That's it's natural response to an overload of sugar -- give me more!

Did you know that the USDA recommends 40 grams of sugar a day, for a 2,000 calorie a day diet? And did you know that WW's yogurt, which is only 2 points, has 26 grams of sugar??!! That's 65% of your daily allowance. And that's IF you're on a 2,000 calorie diet, mine is probably only 1,000-1,200. I think this says it all right there. WW isn't concerned with things like this. They only care about calories, fat and fiber. At any cost.

So when she had the margarita, depending on where she ate it, she could have had up to 26 grams of sugar. This might have been her daily allowance all in one swallow, on top of whatever sugar she'd already consumed in the day and in the meal she just ate. Her body was swimming with sugar and screaming at her for more. So no wonder she when home and ate everything sweet in sight.

If she knew this, she's know how to resist sugars like this altogether. More importantly, she'd know why sugar is bad and it's effect on her body.

That's what my goal has been for the past 6-8 months is to find out why some foods are bad for you so I'll know their effects on my body so I won't just deprive myself, but I'll actually be saving my body and prolonging my health and in the short run lose the weight I need to lose.

So strike one for WW.

I'm still going to go, though, just because of the accountability. I'm sure at some point, I'll stop going to the meetings just because I know I'll hit my limit of BS at some point and just won't be able to take it any more. But I'll still WI every Sat morning until I hit my goal.

Oh, yea, and by the way, before I started on WW, I had already lost 10 pounds on NutriSystems. So when I say I've lost 80 pounds, it should really be 90 pounds. I keep forgetting that first 10 pounds. Well, actually, it'd be 82/92 pounds because of the two I lost this week.

Sorry for the long posts, I'm just so excited to be back.