The Week in review

Saturday morning and my weight in was NOT pretty. I knew by the level of praying I was doing as I hit the scale that it wasn't going to be a joy filled weight in. I exercised really hard this week - but the food and the Salty Dogs were a little over the top this week. It was a really warm week and those ice cold Salty Dogs (Cold Grapefruit juice + 1 Shot of vodka over ice = YUM!) add up in the calories. Uffda. Will have to back away from the fruity booze drinks!

I have been trying a few new recipes to try and break free of the frozen meals. I found several great links to Flatout Flatbread Pizza's and they carry them at my local store so I gave that a whirl this week. LOVE THEM!

The recipe I followed came from this wonderful blog LaaLoosh.com and it was really easy and tasted wonderful. The photo above is from last night's dinner. The flatbread has pizza sauce, oregano, garlic salt, reduced fat mozzarella, mushrooms (canned - it's what I had on hand), purple onion, and one sliced red roma tomato. You can cook it on a piece of aluminum foil so no dishes!

And the flat out bread ends up being really crisp and wonderful. You actually bake the flatbread in the over for 8-10 minutes before adding the toppings. After I add the toppings I put the wrack in the oven all the way to the top to kind of broil the veggies and cheese into a melted yum pile. Works perfect! It's a lot of food and it has close to the same point value as the weight watchers frozen pizza I purchase at the store - but with fresh ingredients and FLAVOR! And this is like - twice the food. Sooooo good!

**Crickets** & Health

I have been kind of quiet here lately. There has been a lot of drama at my job lately and in my personal life as well. When I go through changes I tend to shut down a bit. I am trying to work on that - but change is hard. :)

We are trying to tighten our belt around here. This is impacting things in many ways. One of which is that I stopped my Weight Watchers account. I am pretty nervous about this, but I really have just been paying them to keep track of my weight for the last 6 months. I have been terrible about tracking my food, so I would do it a day or two and then give up until the next weight-in. Repeat weekly for months. So I decided to stop paying them to track my weight.

I took all my weight-in totals since last August when I joined and put them in a spread sheet. I will continue to weight-in every Saturday morning and tracking my weight, but I will now enter it on a spread sheet rather than a snazzy web site.

So my weight-in this morning was with trepidation. My first week without my WW crutch. Did I put on 5 lbs by clicking the "Cancel my Membership" button? Nope! I think the fear of going on my own actually made me more diligent then I had been in the past as I lost 3.1 lbs this week! WOOT! So now I am feeling like I can do this on my own and not pack the weight back on. I just have to use the principles that Weight Watchers taught me and keep myself honest about what I am doing. And yeah - I am still nervous about the decision, but having a good first weight-in on my own goes far in making me feel like I can do this.

So - My total weight loss thus far is 48.9 lbs. (SO CLOSE TO 50!)
I have lost 7 inches from my waist, 5.5 inches from my hips and 5.5 inches from my bust.
I was a US 16 when I started on Weight Watchers, and I am now between a US 10 and a US 12.

I still don't have an end number in site. I don't really feel like there is a finish line for getting healthy and strong. I am still overweight and I will continue to fight the fight. I want to get as much weight off my joints as I can so I can avoid spending my golden years getting new knees and hips if I can.

In the next couple weeks I want to teach myself to cook some new meals. I have been eating a lot of the pre-packaged Weight Watchers, Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine meals for many months. There is no reason I can't make those myself and save some money! I recently had the Epiphany that eating canned potatoes was crazy and started buying 5 lb bags of potato's. I don't eat them quite fast enough - but even if I only manage half a bag I am still eating a fresh potato rather than a canned one AND a canned potato costs so much more than a fresh one! Plus environmentally it's a win as well. Less cans to recycle. Less processing costs. There are so many little things like that which I would really like to change.

And how have all of you been?!?

Saturday Morning Health Check in

Good morning! I am getting back into the routine of doing a Saturday morning reflection and goal setting for my health. I weigh in on my Weight Watchers online every Saturday morning, so this is always a good time to reflect on what is going on with me.

This morning I had a slight increase in my weight with the weight-in again. I decided to pull up my statistics on Weight Watchers to see where I was with my Weight on January first compared to now. I am two pounds lighter today then I was on January 1st. I really have been bouncing up and down in the same five pound spot for the last 5 months. It was good to see. I can't really fool myself when I see the chart right in front of me. I have been working out a lot and I am seeing changes in my size and shape, but the weight loss has really dried up in the last five months.

So I am back to tracking my food and measuring it out accurately. I am going to spend some time looking at the recipes on WW online to try and find something exciting. I got out of the pattern of trying a recipe every week and have been way to dependent on sandwiches and box meals. This week I will get back in the rhythm of tracking my food. I feel like that is where I am going astray since I have never stopped working out and pushing myself that way. The good news is that I held a pretty good maintenance schedule over the last five months - so I know when I get my weight to a level where I am comfortable I can hold myself there with comfort. BUT I am not in maintenance mode yet - I still need to get my weight down.

The level of joint pain I have now compared to last summer is so much less with the weight loss I have already achieved. As I march proudly into my 40's I really want to get as much of my bulk off as I can so I don't spend my 60's and 70's having knee surgery and unable to garden or ride a bike. I am proud of what I have achieved but I still have distance to cover. I still have swollen knees that ache and I get excited thinking about what my energy level and my ache level will be like when I drop xx amount of more weight.

And no - I don't have an end number in my mind. I have an area I would like to get toward - but I want to see how I feel when I get to certain levels of health. I know for my height I need to get my weight down AT LEAST another 20 pounds to enter the "normal" range on the BMI scale, sothat is where my path is taking me right now. I would also love it if my Wii Fit didn't say "That's Overweight" after every weight in. (After years of it telling me "That's Obese" it doesn't seem as bad, but still - I want it to say something nice!)

So that's where I am at!