Fast track to starvation

Hello again everybody!  It's so easy to get out of the habit of blogging, and so difficult to get back into it!  It's the same way with most things I struggle with, I guess (eating well, keeping the house clean, etc.).  I apologize that I have put everyone through over a week without knowing what I'm eating!  Hopefully everyone survived.

And the thing is, I don't know if there's even enough memory space available on my blog to post pictures of everything I've been eating even if I had faithfully documented it.  Right after my last post I went on another eating bender, and with an occasional half day of control here and there I have basically just been eating excessively and gaining back weight since then.  Like, a really large amount of weight.  Like, Will's jaw literally dropped when I told him how much weight I had gained in 1 week.

I am bummed of course, but not overly concerned.  I was shocked with how low my weight was when I weighed in the day after Krista's wedding, and whenever I just drop weight quickly and unexpectedly like that it comes back on pretty easily.  If only it worked the other way too.

SO, I am pulling out my secret weapon.  Weight Watchers Fast Track.  It's boring.  It's miserable.  It's 1000 calories a day.  But it's easy, and it's effective.  If I can find the willpower to get up off the floor and quit whimpering that I'm dying of starvation, it's actually kind of nice because the food choices are so simple, and it with a little preparation ahead of time it means I can eat my simple dinner whenever I want regardless of when Will gets home or when the girls get hungry.

I found a link to it online, and it's the OLD version of it that I like better too!

Here it is.  I'm doing the Higher Protein "Red Light" version because I like to shuffle everything around so I end up with more snacks.

I may post pictures of what I eat tomorrow, but as long as I'm doing fast track I probably won't bother to do it every day because I'll be eating almost exactly the same thing every day even moreso than usual.

I'm not sure how long I can keep this up, especially since I'll be making multiple batches of cupcakes and cakes and hanging around pizza and snacks all weekend.  We have Emily's birthday party on Saturday, which is being held at a place that pretty much forces us to serve junk food, plus we have various other activities and get-togethers, almost all of which involve copious quantities of food.  But maybe if I plan ahead of time to have a slice of cake, I can do just that and move on with my life without ruining everything OR feeling deprived?  And in the meantime any days I spend doing Fast Track will just put me in a better position to be allowed to have a splurge?

Who knows what will work and what won't.  I certainly don't.  This is a new approach though at least (the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results as my good buddy Einstein once said) so we'll see how it goes.

So here's what I've been doing since I last posted.

My great-grandma's 97th birthday.

Yes, THESE cakes again

I had fruit :-(

The hat was supposed to be a door decoration, but when you're 97 you've damned well earned the right to wear whatever you want on your head

 Not pictured: A week of eating too much.

Then!

The Children's Festival at Baker Park.

The bubbles were a HUGE hit

We got to hang out with Abigail for a bit too.

On Monday, Emily's field trip to the Frederick airport.

That pretty much catches us up to today.  Soon it will be time for me to head to Bodypump, which I hope will help take up some evening hours and help distract me from my hunger.  I also noticed the new gym has 1.25lb Bodypump weights now, which makes me quite happy.  I've already made the jump up in weight on most exercises though to compensate for their absence, so I guess I'll just have to wait until the next time I'm ready to go up in weight to fully appreciate them.

So I'll try to post all my food tomorrow, and after that we'll see.  If I am not posting my food then I'm not sure what I'll talk about every day, but those who know me also know that I can always find SOMETHING to yak about.  I'll try to channel that into writing so that I don't leave everyone bereft again :-)

My internets!

Aaaah, it's nice to have a computer again.  Ours stopped working midway through the day on Thursday, then Will got it up and running again last night.  I shouldn't really complain, since I did have access to the internet through Will's iPad and our iPhones, but I really like my big screen and keyboard.

I've still been taking all my pictures and eating well and I was HOPING that this would be the week I get my new gym clothes since I was only 0.6 pounds away as of yesterday, but today I was actually up 0.4 pounds from that weight (so much for Saturday always being my lowest weight) so they'll have to wait until next week at least :-(

I've been doing a good job of eating healthy, not bingeing and maintaining my weight, but I think I've reached the point where I really am going to have to cut back on calories to start losing again.  I know I SAID that before, but I am finally convinced of it.  I know how to eat a normal healthy clean diet right now and that's what I've been doing, but calories are still calories.  When I look back on how I lost the next two "decades" of weight the last time through, it was by doing Weight Watchers "Fast Track", which is a pretty restrictive approach where you basically eat 1000 (well-balanced) calories a day and don't use any flex points.  The last time I went from the weight I am now to 10 pounds below it was over the course of January 2005 in preparation for my trip to St. Martin and the 10 pounds AFTER that was in January 2006 in preparation for my SECOND trip to St. Martin.  As I type this I am realizing that maybe the takeaway point here is that I should schedule a trip to St. Martin next month :-)

Fast Track is kinda boring, but it works.  Maybe I should challenge myself to 30 days on the program, just bite the bullet and get 10 pounds off, then rest there a bit as I go back to eating how I am now.  The only problem is that I'm not all that nice when  I'm doing Fast Track, and I have kids to deal with now who need me to be nice.  Still pondering.

As soon as Charlotte wakes up from her nap we'll be heading up to "The Farm" to celebrate Easter.  "The Farm" does not have internet OR cell service, so I will be in a technological black hole.  So here is all the food I've eaten up until now with a couple shots of what we've been up to.

Thursday April 5th

Shredded wheat squares, dried cherries, xylitol, cinnamon, milk

Later, an egg

I was hungry in the morning so I finished up the leftover Mulligatawny soup

Weirdo quickly thrown-together salad of greens, olives, leftover Sole, blue cheese.  It worked, just barely.

Charlotte's leftover Amys Organic Fat Free Vegetable soup with tofu shirataki noodles

Mango yogurt strawberry jalapeno smoothie...shared with Charlotte and she LOVED it despite the slight spice

Brown rice pasta, chopped chicken sausage with diced tomatoes and peas, chopped fresh herbs and grated 50% light Beemster on top

After dinner Emily requested that we go on a "picture-taking walk".  Of course I had to agree!  If I can get her taking pictures for me then I won't be the only one in the family tasked with documenting this crazy ride :-)  Here are some of her shots.

Our phlox

Our neighbor's lawn ornaments that Charlotte is ALWAYS grabbing

Me holding Remy still so Emily could get a picture of his face

Love this one

Charlotte's boo boo :-(

From under a Japanese Maple in someone's front yard...that's probably why I didn't look so happy here

Sunset

Grape Hyacinths in our neighbor's yard

Our peach daffodils

 I wanted to finish out the day without my dessert mix, but I had the correct chocolate chips for the first time in so very long, so I HAD to do it.

Friday April 6th

Mango coconut walnut cinnamon oats

A fried egg on the go

After morning Zumba I took the girls to a playground of their choosing today...we never did make it to the museum.  Oh well, playgrounds are good too.

I really wanted to be an active and involved parent on the playground, so I made sure I was up and running around with them instead of plugged into my phone on a bench.  It was exhausting.

Charlotte refusing to look at the camera

There's her face!  If only there weren't a huge shadow over it

Juice break

Greens, tomatoes, pine nuts, olives

A brie

 After an extremely badly behaved Costco run (lots of privileges were taken away for biting, spitting, and poking each other with toothpicks) we came home for a snack.

My goofy girl

Charlotte sang Happy Birthday to the hummus over and over

Cottage cheese + juice-sweetened jelly

2 mini blueberry muffins (recipe from Skinnytaste)

2 more mini muffins

 Emily has been asking to make "blueberry bread" for weeks and I was afraid to because of my history of completely blowing it around baked goods.  Luckily I was able to stop myself after 4.

I still wanted more though, so I tried to eat fruit instead

 Dinner was delicious.

Whole wheat mushroom broccoli yellow pepper onion sausage 50% Beemster pizza with roasted brussels sprouts

1/2 Mandolin Abbey Ale...very sweet

 I used up the rest of our champagne mangoes to make some "ice cream".

Nonfat plain greek yogurt, mangoes (some pureed, some just chopped) and 2 Tbsp xylitol throwin in the ice cream maker

Since it was a full moon last night, we did a "moon walk" like last month, except that Emily wanted to make it a moon jog.  Oy.  After Zumba and playgrounding I DID jog, but I sure didn't like it.  

 Also?  The moon that rose Thursday night at 7:20ish?  Did not make an appearance until the VERY END of our jog.  But it was SO big and yellow and bright!

Sorry...didn't bring my tripod on the jog

Then I spent a freakin' hour and a half at Wal-Mart getting last-minute Easter things.  Miserable.

 Saturday, April 7th

We got up and slammed breakfast, then got out of the house at 8:06AM...I think it was a new earliness record!

Shredded wheat squares, banana, walnuts, xylitol, cinnamon, milk, coffee

 We went to the gym, and Will was less than impressed with the new location.  They didn't have foam rollers or kettlebells or any of his favorite toys there.  We had a decent workout though, then he headed out for his 10AM massage.  Lucky.

My snack egg

 I got these flowers at Costco yesterday and I've been carrying them from room to room with me ever since.  They smell really good, and I love the delicate color.

I had a mid-morning snack of leftover roasted brussels sprouts.

Then I was still hungry, and in the type of mood where I'm feeling sick and tired of being hungry all the time (even though I really am NOT, I just think I am), I had 3 dates dipped in peanut butter.  I almost just threw in the towel at this point and started eating lots of things and not taking pictures, but I resisted that urge and I'm very glad I did!

Lunch was a massaged kale salad.

Kale, lime juice, avocado, corn, tomatoes, blue-ish cheese (I forget the kind, but it's tasty) and pecans

Emily's leftover tomato bisque from lunch

 I decided to just finish the ice cream from last night in place of my smoothie today, since It's basically just a frozen version of a mango smoothie.

Shared a little bit with Will

There.  Now I feel caught-up.

Happy Easter everyone!