In weight loss news....

So last week I had a horrible WW week. Gained over 2 pounds. Ick.

Well as of last night I'm seeing a loss of at least 6 pounds since last week. WTF? I guess the gain could be water weight. Who knows.

But the best news is that yesterday morning I saw 189.6!!!! Not only below 200, but below 190! Wow. What an awesome reward to the hard work I put in. Will update the ticker tonight after my WW meeting with my official WW weight.

Guess what I'm wearing

And no, this isn't the beginning of some erotic post.... What I'm meaning to announce is that I'm finally wearing size 14 again! I was wearing a 12 when I graduated HS (maybe actually a 10, but I never bought any besides my prom dress), so maybe I'm getting sort of close! I have a feeling I'll be in 14s for a long time since my thighs will have to slim down considerably before I can fit into 12s and not look like a sausage casing stuff too full. But I still feel really good about myself!

Relatedly, for those who have been following my weight ticker recently, I gained this week...it was bad. Gained 2.4, actually. Ugh. The most frustrating part is that I was exceptionally good. We were at some friends' house, so I had little control over what I was eating. I had a salad when we went out Friday night with grilled chicken and very little dressing. I even didn't eat the shell to the salad (it was one of those deep-fried taco-salad type of bowls). I was proud. The next day I had a 4-point breakfast (cereal), a small lunch (ham sandwich), and avoided an Italian dip they had b/c I was sure it was made with full-fat cream cheese and full-fat mozzarella and know it was served with full-fat crackers. It killed me not to dig into that. And it actually made me a little pissy.

I was doing all this so I could indulge in a bratwurst. I hadn't had one in a really long time, but found that some aren't *that* bad. I tried filling up on fruit along with my bratwurst and then just sampling some of the goodies that we had. But as the Buckeyes didn't do so well, my diet took a hit as well. I indulged in way too much fruit pizza (I always love that shit)...but still don't think I used *too* many flex points.

So then Sunday was my family reunion. I had a McDonald's fruit & yogurt for breakfast, ate very small portions of everything at the reunion (was still overly full), then had a grilled chicken sandwich for dinner.

Monday night SIL and BIL invited us over for dinner. We have FF hot dogs (1 point apiece) and light potato chips. But then their other friends brought puppy chow. Damn, I love that stuff. I probably took a little too much of it, too.

Okay, so I overate some, but really, 2.4 pounds???? Ridiculous.

So now I've been weighing myself this weekend (as I always do--I'm fascinated by the natural fluctuation of weight) and since my meeting Wednesday night, as of last night, I have lost over 4 pounds. Who knows if that will hold. If it does, it sounds like my gain last week was mostly water weight from all the sodium. Or someting like that.

Either way, in the mornings I'm now seeing 190.4. Wow. Almost to the 180s???? How exciting! I am starting to feel like I should take a pic of the scale so my OB believes me when I tell her "no, really, I was down around 190 when I got pg!" lol The last time she saw me, I think I was still around 225. I don't remember--it's somewhere in my blog. But I dont' want to jinx myself, so I won't, but I will once we get a BFP!!!

Healthy Treats

I've discovered a few healthy-ish treats that I wanted to share with everyone out there trying to watch their weight!

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Lemon Shake-Up

You've all probably tried the drinks at fairs and festivals. They put an obnoxious amount of sugar into a cup with lemons, ice, and water, shake them up, then hand over the calorie-laden drink. Well, I've found a good way to make them with zero calories!

You'll need:
1 lemon
1/4 to 1/3 c. Splenda
ice
water
martini shaker

1) Squeeze all the juice out of the lemon into the martini shaker.
2) Add the Splenda
3) Add about 8 ice cubes
4) Put lemons into shaker, then fill the shaker with water until about 1 inch from the upper rim.
5) Put lids on shaker and shake the hell out of it.
6) Pour into cup (sometimes the lemon halves don't fit) and enjoy!

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Pumpkin Ice Cream
From Hungry Girl

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Breyers Double Churn Free Creamy Vanilla fat-free ice cream
1 tbsp. canned pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/8 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
2 low-fat honey graham crackers (half a sheet), lightly crushed
4 tbsp. Fat Free Reddi-wip

Directions:

1) Place ice cream in a small dessert bowl, and allow it to thaw just slightly (a few minutes).
2) Then stir in the pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice until thoroughly mixed.
3) Place bowl in the freezer for 30 minutes to allow the ice cream to firm up (editor's note: don't freeze too long or you'll never get it out of the bowl!).
4) Then top with the Redd-wip, followed by the crushed graham crackers.
5) Enjoy!

MAKES 1 SERVING (2 pts per serving)

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I found a fantastic frozen pizza last night that I've fallen in love with. I got it at Kroger. I don't know about you, but I have a horrible time rationing myself when I'm eating pizza. I'd prefer to eat half a pizza. Well, half of this pizza is still only 480 calories (9 points for you points-counters...it has added fiber)! If you eat only a quarter of it, it's only 4 points per serving! Wow! Unfortunately, I forgot to write down the brand, so I'll have to look and post later. We added mushrooms to it, but you could add any veggies for free added flavor! Oh, and I needed to add a bit of Italian Seasoning to it as well. Yummo!

Shutting down

A couple of you know that I used to have anorexic tendencies. I was never officially diagnosed, but I didn't eat for a lot of my junior and senior years of high school. Whenever I was faced with a situation where I had no food choices--it was either eat unhealthy stuff or go hungry--I chose to go hungry. So I see those tendencies creeping back in and I'm not exactly sure how to fight them. I try to make situations so I can control them, but there's not much I can control when we're here. Therefore, I tend to shut down. It's easier for me to not eat at all than to just have a couple of chips or just one cookie, especially in an already stressful situation. Once I start, I have a hard time stopping.

I'm working on it. I believe just being aware of it has to be good for something. But I'm a work in progress.

No, I didn't lose 70 pounds at all by not eating--I always eat now. But when in situations where I don't have a healthy choice, it's hard for me to let my guard down a little and try portion control with unhealthy stuff, especially when I don't have any idea what the nutritional value of stuff is (and when I'm in a situation where everyone is eating everything in sight).

Standing up for myself

I have a really hard time standing up for myself when it comes to food and my ILs. They know I'm trying to eat more healthy and they have thought about that. For instance, my MIL got me some FF Ranch dressing for our salads the other night, which was so nice!

However, I also don't like picnic foods. None of them. I'll eat the meat, but no macaroni salad, pasta salad, potato salad, deviled eggs, baked beans, melon...so the only other option is potato chips, which I have cut out of my diet. Yeah, so we've had picnic foods for dinner both last night and tonight. Last night it was nice--they got chicken to grill, salad, tomatoes, and corn on the cob. No worries--I eat all that. Well, tonight we're having....brats (yum, but SO fatty...), hot dogs, baked beans, chips & dip, watermelon, and macaroni salad. So I asked if I could make some cookies. So I'll be eating hot dogs and my cookies. I have NEVER liked picnic foods, but have they ever noticed that? Of course not. 6 1/2 years around this family and they've never thought about it.

The problem is that I have a hard time standing up for myself and asking for stuff that I can eat (besides making the dessert...hey, I'm trying). I guess I just figure that it isn't important enough that they would remember so why would they change their menu for me? I just wonder when they'll notice that I eat nothing but the meat. Eh, probably never.

You might be wondering where DH is through all this? Yeah, he asks me wtf else you're supposed to eat at a picnic. Helpful, dear. Thanks. We cook out at our house all the time and I have no problems. So he's no help and doesn't say anything. Ugh. So eating around here is pretty miserable.

Exercise

Whenever I exercise, I go full throttle. I have a hard time not doing at least 45 minutes of cardio plus about an hour of lifting and I would go 5 days a week. But every time I jump into that, my weight loss stalls. So I'm trying to start slow. Last Wednesday night I told my WW leader that I was setting a goal to take a 1/2 hour walk every night that week. I walked Wednesday through Friday evenings, then didn't walk on Saturday (but we did work on the deck). Then I took a 1/2 hour bike ride with my mom on Sunday (which DH is letting me count as a walk). I went out last night and took a 30 minute walk by myself and will probably do the same tonight. That will make 6 of 7! Woohoo! To help inspire me, DH has given me a coupon booklet for a free massage if I take walks 6 of 7 nights Sunday through Saturday, too. So hopefully this will be the start of some motivation to get active (but not too active)! As long as I don't see a gain this Wednesday, I'll keep going, too. :D

Moving forward

CD 1 of cycle #3.

And, surprisingly, I'm fine. I kind of just "knew" that last cycle wasn't it.

So new tactics (sort of) for this cycle. Starting using the CBEFM. Going to buy sticks for it tonight. Also think we'll invest in some PreSeed, which will simulate fertile CM, which I seem to be lacking.

Not sure if I'm going to continue to temp. It's sort of become an addiction for me, as I've been doing it for 6 cycles now and I find it really interesting how the temps act based on the time of the month. So I probably will--I can't really resist.

Going to try to relax more during the 2ww this cycle. That might mean finding extra stuff to do, even. Our weekends are really full. I'll probably O around June 25th or 26th (our anniversary is June 24th!), which means we'll be BDing starting Saturday or Sunday before (while we're helping friends move....). So from about the 26th or 27th on I want to keep myself busy. The weekend of the 27th we're going to my hometown for my 10 year class reunion. But that next week might be a little bit of hell for me, trying to keep busy, knowing it's a short week (we're out of work for the 4th on Friday).

I've set my goal to get below 200 pounds before July 4th. I really don't know if it's possible since that's less than a month away to lose 9 pounds. The way I've been losing I don't think I can do it, but I'm sure as hell going to try! I've been strict with my eating and will continue to do so, but haven't been exercising. I have a hard time taking it easy with the exercising--I typically either have to work out daily for 1-2 hours or I don't work out at all. But when I start suddenly working out that hard my body sort of freaks out and holds onto the pounds for weeks or months at a time. When I don't lose for a large amount of time, I have a hard time keeping up the exercise, especially with the heat of summer bearing down upon me. So I guess I just need to find something small that I can commit to. I'd love to commit to walking every night with DH for at least a half an hour. Wonder if I can get him to commit to that. We can start tonight. We'll get home from work around 4:30, fix our WW Chicken & Pineapple Stew for dinner, I'll head to my WW meeting at 6:25, go to CVS after WW at 7:30, get home around 8:30, go out for a walk, be ready for bed at 9:00. lol Guess that doesn't leave much time for actually getting stuff done around the house, does it? Oh well, there's always Friday night...lol And maybe we could take the niece for a walk tomorrow evening when we babysit?

Okay, I'm officially babbling. But I'm excited to make a plan--I want to commit to it. I'm posting it here so maybe someone out there in blogland will hold me accountable.

And I was worried...

Apparently this is what I get for being distracted this week from my weight loss and focusing more on making a baby. Take a look at that ticker over there to the right. That's right, I lost 2 pounds this week according to WW! Of course, my scales at home disagree, but who am I to argue with the WW scales??? hehe I attribute the loss to doing really well during the week (even at book club AND a work picnic last week!) and being pretty active this weekend, even though I ate pretty crappy. Still made the best choices I could when I had a choice, so I probably didn't eat my 35 flex points for the week, but I'm not sure. This weekend I'm going to try to keep active as well. I'm hoping to get a Wii Fit sometime soon, too. ;)

Of course, then there's the thought that I might actually be/get pg. I already have phantom pg symptoms....I've been nauseous since about 3 p.m. today. Ugh. I'm just going to wait until I get the tests and then I'll test and (hopefully) then I'll know. And if I were to be pg this cycle, I will need to figure out how the hell to eat. I think I should be eating more when pg, but I don't really know how to eat more while being healthy and conscious of what I'm putting into my body.

Oh well--will stress about that when/if the time comes.

I figured out tonight that if we don't get pg this month, we'll be BDing the week after helping friends move and before my 10 year reunion. Which means we'll probably either need to BD at a friend's house (ick) or at my parent's house (double ick). But we'll do whatever we've got to do! Then if we don't get pg THAT cycle, we'll be testing for cycle #4 around the time we head out to St. Louis for a wedding, assuming my cycles are all 28 days. Now that's forward-thinking for you. Or obsessing. Something.

Earlier tonight I was having a total MPD moment. Neurotic Allison would be saying "What if we missed my O? What if this thermal shift today is my actual O? What if we BD for 4 nights straight for nothing? What if something is wrong with me that is causing me to get a bunch of +OPKs?" Then calm, rational Allison says "If those things are true...we'll try again next cycle. And that's it. It's not the end of the world. Just no baby this month and I have more time to lose weight and possibly get below 200." Pessimistic Allison then chimes in "We'll probably never get pg. Lots of people were sure we'd have an easy go of it, but I'm sure that's not going to happen. My CM sucks and about the only thing I can do is go off my allergy medicine and hope that it gets better...but I'm sure it won't." And so on and so forth.....

Reflecting on the weekend

Eating this weekend was pretty awful. We went to New Riegel Friday night. I got a chicken breast and had a salad without dressing....but ate fries with it. Then Saturday we got pizza. Saturday for lunch I suggested Wendy's and wanted a grilled chicken sandwich. Guess who ended up with a Chicken Cordon Bleu? Ugh. So I peeled off the bacon and cheese and just ate the deep-fried chicken. And fries. Had cold cuts for lunch on Sunday, though, so that wasn't bad. And I actually stood up for myself and requested some baked chips as well as the greasy fried ones. I never would have done that in the past, so I'm really proud of myself. Just going to get back on the wagon today and try to be good all week and try to work in some walks.

As far as baby-making for the weekend, it was weird. Neither of us wanted to BD at the ILs and we were exhausted on Saturday night. I got some positive OPKs and some negative, so I'm totally confused about those. But my temps have stayed up since Friday, so that's a good sign that I did O on Thursday.

As for my temps, though, they're being weird. If I retake my temp one after the other, I get really different temps. I try to be consistent--put the thermometer in the same place in my mouth, keep mouth closed, stay in bed...but they're still sometimes all over the place. I think I need to stop doing that because then I just pick my favorite. lol

But we BDed for good measure last night. Who knows why, but it was okay :)

I'm tempted to go buy some PreSeed since I seem to be having some CM issues. I found a pharmacy close to my house that has it, so I wouldn't have to order it online. Just curious if it's actually cheaper to get online or in the store. I think I'll run down sometime this week.

So now I'm officially in the 2ww. It's going to be a long 10 more days, I have a feeling. No big plans between now and next week, so nothing to take my mind off it all--just counting down the days until I could conceivably test!