Officially a month

January 2nd was officially the one month mark of my diet or as I like to call it my lifestyle change. I am down 18 pounds. I am so excited with the progress I am making.

Today was my six week weigh in and I am down another 1.6 pounds. Not exactly the goal I was aiming for, but I will take it. I put on a pea coat today that I haven't worn in about a year and it fits better than it has in along time! I am thrilled about it.

I will say I have been getting bored lately with vegetables. I keep reminding myself that this is good for me and I only have a few more months of this. I also need to get my butt in gear and get to working out again. My schedule has changed this quarter and with school three times a week at night I think I am going to have to start working out in the early morning. I am not a morning person so this could be difficult for. However I want to meet my next month goal of 15 pounds and I know exercising will help get me there.

Till next week!

Woo Hoo Week 4

So yesterday I went to my four week weigh in for my Ideal Protein diet and I am down 1.6 pounds!!! I am pretty excited about that considering this past week was Christmas and there was so much food around me! I have been baking and of course I had to try what I was making before handing it out to people. I wouldn't want to give anyone awful tasting cookies. = )

Then there was Christmas dinner!! So many carbs were around the table. I didn't go over board though and I am pretty impressed with myself about that because I love potatoes!

I plan on getting back on track this upcoming week. That way my next week will be a little better.

Something I learned this week about the ideal protein food is when the package says don't over cook...be sure to pay attention to what you are cooking. I attempted to heat chicken noodle soup on the stove top, I wasn't watching it too closely which let to it boiling and the package said don't let it boil. It curdled and was gross, I couldn't even finish it. I will probably only heat that in the microwave from now on. Although the microwave can be trouble too. I over heated the cappuccino drink and it over flowed out of the cup and made a mess. Needless to say following the instructions closely for this food is important.

I will check in next week after my next weigh in. I plan on getting new measurements then too.

Week 3 Weigh In

Yesterday was my three week weigh in and even with a not so great weekend I still lost 2.4 pounds!!! I am pretty happy. I am hoping that I can loose a little more for the next weigh in. Currently I am down a total of 14.2 pounds. I am so happy right now. My clothes are starting to fit a little bit looser, especially my uniform pants. 

I really excited I even lost a few pounds this week because I spent the weekend in Seattle. My mom had open heart surgery at Virginia Mason. She is doing amazing and I am so thankful for that. Being on this diet and being out of town isn't that easy. I mostly ate a the hospital cafeteria with my dad and I did try making good choices, but eating what is convenient isn't the healthiest. I did bring a few snacks, but even those weren't choice snacks while on phase 1 of the Ideal Protein diet. 

gingerbread men, I can't wait to ice them 

Even with it being a little hard to stay on track I did not beat myself up when I got back home for that. I just started over again on Monday. I didn't quite because I was disappointed I didn't stick to the diet because I knew that there are bumps in the road when trying to change your lifestyle. Heck I've been baking cookies for Christmas and I keep eating them because I need to taste them. Yes there is a need to taste them! I would not want to hand out gross tasting cookies...that would be awful!! I mean seriously if I wouldn't eat them then I would definitely not share them with anyone. =)

sugar cookies waiting to go in the oven 

white chocolate macadamia nut cookies

Next week's weigh in will be awesome! Till then have a Merry Christmas!! 

Carly waiting for crumbs to drop on the floor

Nervous Nelly

Today my parents headed to Seattle for my mother's doctor appointment. She is going to have quintuple bypass surgery tomorrow morning. I keep telling myself that everything will be ok. She will meet with her doctors today to discuss the surgery. I keep trying to not think of the worst case scenario, but I can't help it and I won't be fine till the surgery is done and over with.

This is definitely a wake up call though. I am glad I am making a change in my lifestyle so that hopefully when I am my mother's age I won't have to go through this. I know this will be a long road to recovery and I will be there to be help her on this journey. I need her to be around when I have kids so she can spoil them too. :)

Baking Queen!

It is Christmas time and I am getting all set up for it. I have the tree up and decorated and stockings hung! Besides decorating for the holidays I love  baking.

So just because I am on diet doesn't mean I can't do a little baking!! I was skeptical to start a diet during the holidays but I seem to be doing okay so far. I baked some white chocolate macadamia nut cookies the other day and did very well in not eating all of them. I did eat a couple though, but I am okay with that. I figured it couldn't hurt for me eat at least two. =)






                                             

Tonight I tried a recipe from Pinterest for dog cookies. I think they turned out well. Carly ate them so the must great right!! They are peanut butter dog cookies. Four easy ingredients and tada....dog cookies.

I also attempted a recipe for Ideal Protein friendly oatmeal cookies. They actually taste good! I cheated a little since I didn't have Ideal Protein oatmeal, I used Better Oats 100 calories oatmeal. The nutrition information was similar to the IP oatmeal. That is my favorite oatmeal out there. The only wet ingredients was the 1 teaspoon of vanilla and about 2/4 of a cup of water. It only made 7 cookies, but that is enough for me for tonight and tomorrow. They are super moist and tasty. Now they don't taste like the oatmeal cookies that I normally bake or that you can get in the store, but what do you expect for healthy, low fat, low sugar kind of cookies. I would definitely make these again.

I think that's it for today, but do plan on baking more in the upcoming days. I always bake cookies for Christmas and I don't plan on stopping that now!

Carly taste testing her peanut butter cookies

Week 1 Weigh In!!!

So I started on Sunday and had my first weigh in since starting. I did weigh myself at home before going in because I wanted to see how close my scale is to the one at the health care center. It is pretty close. Today I weighed in at 279, a 7.6 pound loss. A lot is water weight, but some is actual fat! I am pretty excited and it has me motivated to continue. 

The food I have tried so far has been great with the exception of the banana pudding. I thought it was awful. I am so use to making myself breakfast in the morning, but having their easy silver packets of space food has been nice too. Less dishes for me to do in the morning. I don't know if I have a real favorite yet, but I probably could have eaten another package of those strawberry wafer bars this morning. =) Good thing I only had one. 

When making my dinners at night my favorite dressing so far has been the Walden Farms Asian dressing. It tastes great with so many things. Today I picked up their blue cheese dressing and I am not so sure what I think of it. It sort of tastes like blue cheesing dressing, but not. I am starting to think their creamy dressings are no match for the regular bad for ranches and blue cheese dressing out there on the market. I also picked up an Italian sun-dried tomato dressing I can't wait to try. I am going to try it with a pork roast in the crock-pot this weekend. 

Another surprise to me is that I am actually full with the little bit that I eat. My calorie intake has been cut significantly and I don't feel like I am starving. 

Since I am still new at all this I am trying to figure out different way to make stuff, make it tasty, and make me want to eat it again. I love cooking however I am not use to cooking like this. I will continue to surf the internet and find new things to try because I plan on continuing this adventure until I reach my goal!

Well till next take care! 

p.s. i will post some pictures soon. i am going to take picture to track my change. 

A New Chapter

When I logged in this morning I noticed that people actually looked at my page. The funny thing is I created this mainly to post stuff for my friend Nikki to check out and another way for us to keep in contact. Although I can't complain it's the internet and everyone looks at everything.

Well today is the first day of a new chapter in my life. I am starting a diet. I have always disliked that word and I have thought of it as an evil four letter word. I prefer lifestyle change, which I have tried before and have failed at. I am 36, over weight, and not very happy about it. So I decided to try something that I have not ever tried before thanks to my friend Treena.

We went to a an open house for a program called Ideal Protein. I had heard about it, but didn't think to much of it. I had heard a little bit about the program and before the open house this was a program I wasn't interested in it because it sound like it wasn't very much fun and I kept hearing you couldn't exercise during the program. Well I was wrong. You can exercise and I am excited to start this program and see how well I I do.  I actually like exercising and I want to be able to keep it up.

The packets of food do look like space food packets. Everything is in a silver packet, but I do get to eat real food for dinner and a little for lunch. There are also some protein drinks that I get to add to my day. I am also excited that I still get to drink coffee!! Granted I can only have black coffee, but I can add the vanilla protein drink to it and it apparently tastes like a vanilla latte and I will be happy with that. I will be trying that in a minute.

 

I plan on using this site to help me keep on track. I think this is actually going to work and I will do well!!! My first meeting with my coach was this past Thursday and I will check in again with her this Thursday. I can't wait.