Day 6: Sunny Sunday !

 

I've been up and down but I'm not giving up. I might have been close to rock bottom but I held on tight and started the climb out. I can't look back and I can't change the past, but I have full control of the future when it comes to my weight.

It's Sunday and it's Day 6 of this last-ditch effort to get the weight back off. It was pretty chilly when I got up this morning shortly after 8 am. I didn't realize the overnight low was going to be 10, so I wasn't prepared! It's 11:30 now and it's only 27. The high for today is only 31 and it's going down to 18 tonight but the high for tomorrow is 48 .. talk about your roller coaster of temps!

Breakfast was 120 calorie french toast with an 80 calorie yogurt. I'm not ordering this item anymore for 2 reasons. One, it often shatters in shipment and two, you have to add an extra power fuel. I feel like this means I'm paying more for my breakfast. My next order processes tomorrow and I'm only getting waffles, pancakes and cinnamon rolls this time around. If I really wanted french toast I could get some low calorie high protein bread and make up a batch, then freeze individual slices.

I'm finishing up a second cup of coffee and will then head to Wegman's and Walmart. I thought about skipping Wegman's but I really prefer their produce and I want to get another tub of their cottage cheese, their whipped cream and some Alyssa's cookies. It sounds crazy, but officials are recommending that you stock up on food in advance of the eclipse because they expect an influx of people coming into the area because we will experience totality. Hard to do that with fresh items but anything other than produce will keep for a couple weeks.

I headed out to grocery shop about 11:50 am and I was back home by 1:44 pm. First stop was Wegman's and they had hardly no lettuce and what they did have was tiny and half rotten. I managed to scavenge 2 small heads, along with some celery and radishes. They had none of the Wegman's brand cottage cheese either. I did get some whipped cream, some low fat sour cream and some Alyssa's cookies but that was it. I managed to get out of there without buying any "treats", even though I was a bit hungry. Next stop was Walmart in Cicero. I've gotten over my fear of going there, though I am now more careful with my phone and purse. I returned the 9 jars of baby food I had left, which was nearly $13, and checked out $176 later! Most of what I bought I didn't really "need", but I like to keep the pantry stocked. Pet food is always a big expense. I got a 30 pound bag of Meow Mix and a 40 pack of canned food for the strays. I also bought a 3 pack of scratch boxes for Minnie. She takes good care of her nails! I also grabbed a pack of filters for the fountain, even though I didn't really need them. I also bought another big container of Miralax as I use it every day right now. It's really helping my digestive tract, which has seemed pretty sluggish. It was $25, but that is 45 uses or about 56 cents a day. I won't need to buy any for quite some time. In the food department, I bought another head of lettuce, 1 jar each of my salad toppings, a jar of salsa, 2 six packs of Diet Coke and 2 of Fresca, 20 cups of yogurt and 3 bags of frozen green beans. Doesn't sound like a lot for $176 but there were a lot of high dollar items. I was so mad at myself - the seal is popped on the jar of pickled onions I bought. This is the 2nd time I've had that happen with these salad items. I will be returning it next shopping trip! It felt much warmer while I was out because the sun was shining so bright. I had to take my coat off after I loaded the car at Walmart because I was too warm, but I needed it when I got home!

I have an open jar of tomato sauce I need to use and I also have an outdated box of dry pasta (ziti) I want to use. So after I fed Minnie, put the groceries away and had my 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt I grabbed the box of pasta and a handful of plastic bags. The box indicates there are 8 servings and each is 200 calories, so the plan was to count out the pasta into 8 servings. I ended up with 50 pieces per bag, with 3 left over. From a nutrition perspective, each serving was 7 grams of protein and 42 grams of carbohydrate. The carbs are what get you when it comes to pasta, but a serving meets Nutrisystem guidelines for dinner, which is 2 power fuels and a smart carb. A power fuel must contain 80-120 calories and at least 7 grams of protein. A smart carb must contain 80-120 calories and at least 3 grams of fiber. So one serving of pasta would be one power fuel and one smart carb, with room to add something more for the extra power fuel. Last week I bought a couple packages of gnocchi, but those are off the menu for a while, because I know I would totally overeat with them!

So with the pasta measured out, it was time to weigh each portion. Each bag weighed 2.1 ounces per my scale, with the plastic baggies accounting for the extra .1 ounce. I ended up throwing the 3 leftover pieces into 3 of the bags, so 3 meals will have a little tiny extra calorie or two. When you're fat you don't look at calories and honestly, I never considered the calories when I sat down to eat pasta (or anything really). When I made pasta for Alex and I there were never any leftovers. We ate the whole box, which is 8 servings and 1600 calories. Granted, he was a big guy and probably ate 2/3 of the box, but it was still too much for both of us. I should have been making veggies or salad with every meal and serving small portions of pasta, which is what they do in Italy. My point here is I need to pay more attention to calories and ingredients if I ever want to stop buying food from Nutrisystem. I have to learn what to eat and the right portions. I don't see myself counting out individual portions of pasta like I did today, but I can cook a pound of pasta and then portion it into 8 meals. 50 pieces of pasta doesn't like much in a baggie but I know it will double in size when I cook it. My plan is to weigh the pasta after cooking and then compare 2 ounces of dry with a 2 ounce portion that has been cooked, to see the difference in size and the difference in weight. think about grilled chicken. You think "oh, that is all protein and I can have a whole breast". Well, no you can't because all that protein has a bunch of calories. Just 3.5 ounces of chicken breast is 165 calories, and that is provided you cook it without any added fat. Even though it's going to take some time to get the weight off again, my goal is to stop buying Nutrisystem products within 6 months of reaching my goal. I will always be able to buy "a la carte" if I want, but I want to stop the $300 a month shipments. I love the breakfasts, lunches and snack, but the dinners are not that great and my choices are limited. I get bored because I'm having to eat the same things over and over. I can make my own meals, I just need to put in the time to start coming up with ideas and trying them. Hence the pasta experiment! There is no reason I can't cook up some meatballs and have one small one with a 2 ounce portion of pasta and some veggies or a salad. So I have a lot to think about and work on over the next year or so. I figure it will take me that long to lose 100 pounds.

In order to weigh the pasta I had to dig my scale out of the corner cupboard. As long as I was up there I decided to organize it. It looks so much nicer now! The stepstool Michelle got me for Christmas really comes in handy for quick tasks like this. After that was done I cup up a head of lettuce and made myself a salad.

Thinking about the pasta I was thinking about having pasta as a kid. My mother would cook one box of pasta for the 6 of us but there would also usually be meatballs and sausage. I was never a big pasta fan as a kid and I never put grated cheese on it. I also didn't like peppers or onion. I can remember picking them out of spanish rice or goulash. I couldn't imagine either dish without them today! I wish I had told my mother she was a good cook before she was taken from us. I'll bet none of us ever told her that. Being a mother truly can be a thankless job. She did know that we loved her chocolate chip cookies, her Christmas cookies and her cakes .. so hopefully she got some joy out of that.

I had my afternoon snack of 80 calorie cottage cheese and 90 calorie Alyssa's cookies around 6:30 pm. I didn't have dinner until after 8 and that was 260 calorie turkey & mased potatoes with an 80 calorie yogurt. Evening snack was a 140 calorie lemon zest cake. In an effort to use less whipped cream I broke the cake up into pieces and then put a squirt of whipped cream as I ate each piece. I think I used a lot less whipped cream this way!

It's 10:12 now and long past my bedtime. I will do skincare and brush my teeth before bed. I took a shower before dinner. Today was a good day. I might not have gotten on the treadmill but I did walk around the grocery stores, so I didn't spend the whole day sitting on my a$$. Tomorrow is Day 7, the end of week 1. I plan to do an "official" weigh in on Tuesday morning. I did weigh myself this morning and I was 264. I'm not worried about that as in reality, I was only 6 ounces heavier than yesterday. As I've mentioned a few times, water retention plays a big role in your weight from day to day. I'm proud of myself for not buying any "treats" while I was out today. It's time to stop rewarding myself with food!

On that note, I'm headed upstairs.