The longest day

I have decided to make Saturdays my official weigh-in days, for the simple reason that Saturday mornings are when I weigh the least for the week.  I don't know why, especially because I tend to have an extra drink and sometimes a bit more food on Friday nights which I would think would affect my weight negatively (or rather, in the positive direction), but for years this is how it has been.  Because I can't keep myself off the scale every day/every other day it is frustrating for me to observe this and not be able to "officially" record my lowest weight for the week.

That being said, I haven't really been recording my weights.  With a bit of looking back and estimating I can usually figure out how much I have lost each week, but now that I am weighing in on Saturday hopefully I can refrain from weighing myself more than once a week since I'll know I'm getting the lowest weight.

SO, after weighing in this morning (and after a frustrating week of watching my weight jump around for no reason) I am down 9.4 pounds since I started this particular effort back in early January, which means I am down 2 pounds this week?  I'm not sure if that is exactly right, but the total is right.  Oh well, from here on out I'll be more accurate...and as long as my weight is going down that makes me happy!

Last night we had a return of the barf fairy.  We're still waiting on some test results but I'm getting pretty concerned.  On the one hand Emily's just fine during the day and eating well so it's not as bad as it could be, but on the other hand she is still barfing over 2 weeks after the original incident. I am wondering if it could be reflux since it only happens at night, or possibly lactose intolerance?  I did a bit of googling today, which I KNOW is a bad idea, and stopped abruptly when I came up with epilepsy and a brain tumor as possibilities.  Then I went and hugged Emily for awhile.  But the fact that Charlotte had it too and the rest of us have been having stomach upset off and on kind of disprove those theories, but it's baffling so I'm trying to consider everything.  Plus we're running out of blankets for her to sleep under.  We have way too many dry-clean only comforters :-(

Since I (obviously) didn't sleep well and since Will left early this morning to go to an all-day kettlebell training class in Alexandria I decided to forego the regular Saturday morning breakfast (which is more labor-intensive) and make black forest oatmeal instead.  The girls loved the idea but basically only ate the cherries out of it.

1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup 7-grain milk, 1/2 cup water, cherries, cocoa powder

 Emily requested scrambled eggs (and ended up eating 2 of them!) but I usually make them with a bit of milk.  Then I remembered my mom saying that my great aunt (who was famous for her scrambled eggs) used water in hers instead of milk so I gave it a shot.  It turned out very well, but more omelette-y than fluffy.  Fine with me though.

Egg (scrambled with water) and tobasco

 I was hoping to get out of the house today since Will was gone from 7AM-7PM, but when I asked Emily what she wanted to do she said "Jump on the bouncy thing, play hide and seek until we run out of hiding places, then go outside and play hopscotch".  I should've known my little homebody would want to stay put on her day off.  It worried me a bit since I always seem to be hungrier when I'm at home all day, which I'm sure is due to boredom and my constant proximity to food.

I had a babybel light and a KeVita for a snack, then a blurry salad for lunch.

Greens, sprouts, radishes, snap peas, broccoli, 4 pecans, 1 oz blueberry vanilla chevre and hummus/balsamic dressing

Side of pineapple, with our hopscotch board in the background

 Today was such a weird weather day (blizzarding for 5 minutes, then sunny and clear, then back to snowing) we stayed inside for our hopscotch but thanks to an idea I saw on Pinterest I thought to pull out some tape and was able to entertain the girls for a bit making a board in our front room.

1 boring cup of cottage cheese for a snack

A bit of leftover greek yogurt cole slaw

An orange

 I was so munchy, I worried I'd just keep snacking all afternoon so I decided to go ahead and have an early dinner.  I had planned something pretty light so I figured I'd eat it and then I could have second dinner later if the need arose.

Thai green coconut shrimp with basil over buckwheat soba noodles

Later some mango

 Once Will texted over an hour after I thought he had left to tell me he was ALMOST leaving, I cracked open a beer.

Same as yesterday

 I also made up some roasted kale, but this time I used dinosaur/lacinato kale which did not work very well. I knew that going into it and had intended to sauté this kale but I was out of clean pots so I roasted it anyway.  If I'm ever forced to use this kind of kale again for kale chips I will make sure to tear it into smaller pieces because even if I was able to get parts of it crispy there was always a soggy side to each piece too.  Eew.

Kale chips (with ketchup, a la Kath)

 I held off the hunger for as long as I could, then I served myself a cup of our leftover peanut soup as my second dinner.  There's less than a serving left now :-(  Probably a good thing because it has been around for quite awhile at this point and it is so yummy I would just keep eating it until it goes bad.

Put together, both my dinners (minus the beer)  were about 10ish points, so not too bad for a multi-course multi-ethnic meal!

I still felt like I needed some dessert though, so I made my favorite mix (and popped it into a straight-out-of-the-dishwasher bowl which was a bit warm so it melted my chocolate chips and I had to eat this with a spoon).

2 Tbsp sunspire grain-sweetened chocolate chips, 2 Tbsp peanuts, 2 Tbsp raisins

I could have EASILY eaten 2 more bowls of this, but instead I had a glass of skim milk (unphotographed...I usually decide to have a glass of milk after I've already dumped my memory card for the day).  I'm finally feeling comfortably full vs. the panicky-hungry feeling I've had all day.

I think it was purely psychological.  I knew I was stuck at home alone all day with the kids so I was worried I'd eat too much and my subconscious did its best to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Will was only gone for about an hour and a half more than a normal gym day though so I don't know why I was so concerned about it.  I guess because this is one of the usual days I get to spend with him and I didn't this time.  It's a good thing I was able to do this though, because next weekend I'm going away overnight and Will is staying with the girls so this gave me a chance to kind of make a preemptive deposit in the "doing nice things for each other" account.  Then a couple days after I get back we head to San Antonio for a bit of time JUST THE TWO OF US!  Between our family vacation and both of our sets of parents/babysitters traveling quite a bit the past few months we haven't gotten much time without the kids so that'll be REALLY nice.  As cute as they are, I appreciate them more when I have time away!

I don't think I did too badly with my eating today though.  I'm glad I had a good weigh-in this morning to inspire me to keep myself under control!  I get so sick of the mind games I have to play with myself to lose weight, but it's definitely worth it in the long run.