Second chances

Well, I weighed myself this morning, and I'm down another 2.8 pounds!  That makes about 5 pounds in the past 2 weeks, which makes me happy :-)  I am back to the weight I was around Thanksgiving after my fall weight-loss efforts.  I have a bunch of little mini-milestones in my head along the way and this was the first one!  The way I mark my weight gain in my head is like this:

Starting weight...

-0lbs = weight I was at 9 months pregnant with Emily

-5lbs = weight I was before the holidays

-7.2 lbs = weight I got down to this summer/lowest weight I've been since I had Charlotte

-10.2 lbs = weight I was when I got pregnant with Charlotte

-20.2 lbs = lowest weight I was able to get to after having Emily and before getting pregnant with Charlotte

-30.2 lbs = weight I was when I got pregnant with Emily

-40.2 lbs = lowest weight I got to during my first go-round with WW when I was 24

So I think of the extra weight I carry baby by baby (since my body pretty much did the EXACT same thing with both of them weight-wise).  First I'm getting rid of the Charlotte weight, then the Emily weight, then the weight I put on all by myself :-)

Anyway, on to my food!

Breakfast was easy because I had made extra servings of the Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Hot Cereal yesterday so I just pulled out a bowl, added some milk to moisten it a bit and sprinkled some yummies on top.

Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Hot Cereal cooked with water and banana, a dash of skim milk, 2 tsp sunflower seeds, 2 Tbsp dried cherries and a sprinkle of cinnamon

 Still no eggs :-(  I fail.

My mom and I returned to the spinning class we were scolded in last week, and there were 3x as many people there this week!  Most of the people there were newbies so there was a much more tolerant atmosphere.  Also nasty glaring girl wasn't there, which helped.  I did manage to hop off my bike and dramatically rip the handlebars off in the middle of class though, which was probably a bit distracting.  Oh well, I'll learn the correct way to set my bike one of these days.

I'll bet you can't guess what my morning snack was!

Yep.

 I am now out of that delicious blue cheese that has been on my salads for the past week, so I had to decide what new kind of cheese I wanted to get to grace this week's salads.  I LOVE good cheeses, I can (and sometimes do) eat them to great excess but they're so high in fat and calories that I've decided the best way to enjoy them is to sprinkle them an ounce at a time on my salads. That spreads the flavor out a bit and makes me feel like I'm getting enough.  As a result, I really expect cheese on my salads now and if I try to cut it out I feel deprived!  Anyway, I ended up deciding on this pretty little slab of local feta, and thus the idea for a Mediterranean salad was born.  It wasn't quite spot-on since I had to throw it together in about 5 minutes while we were home between preschool and dance class, but it was tasty.  Someone else in the house was a bit jealous of it.

Greens, leftover steamed broccoli and cauliflower from last night, broccoli sprouts, cucumbers, yellow bell peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, 1 oz crumbled feta cheese, 2 Tbsp unhulled pumpkin seeds, 12 small olives, tahini dressing (2 Tbsp tahini shaken with lemon juice)

 I had forgotten how tahini kind of gets thicker instead of thinner when you shake it up with lemon juice so I ended up smearing this paste-like stuff on my salad instead of drizzling it with a light refreshing dressing so I'll have to work on that.  I also forgot that tahini, being a seed butter, is about the same amount of calories as peanut butter.  Yikes.  I calculated that my salad was around 9 points, which is high for me but not horrible.

Later, once we were home and settled from the Tuesday whirlwind, I made another "apple pie" smoothie.  When I make applesauce I add vanilla extract and a ton of cinnamon, which is what makes this smoothie taste so yummy.

1 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt, 1 cup applesauce, 12 almonds, handful of ice

My sister-in-law Margaret came up to hang out with us and I was very grateful for her help!  Charlotte only napped for 40 minutes, which made for a loooooong afternoon.  

Even though I was home the whole time, I decided to attempt the crock pot lamb and barley risotto again since I went to Common Market today and wanted to use the lamb I had bought before it went bad on me!  It smelled heavenly while it was cooking, and tasted amazing!  SOOOOO rich and filling, despite only having about 1 1/2oz of meat per serving (it WAS 11 points though, so for that it had better be filling!).  It was great for dinner but eating all of it felt a bit too heavy...I think if I make it again I might cook a leg of lamb in the oven and serve this lamb-less as a side dish in a smaller portion.

Clean Eating Magazine's Lamb Barley Mushroom risotto

I shouldn't complain though, because it stuck with me all evening, and the only other thing I felt like eating was a bit of the mango Emily requested and a partially de-zested grapefruit.  Dinner called for lemon zest, which I did not have, so I figured grapefruit zest would do in a pinch!

Goodnight!