Wow! And more food stuff.

I think my pictures are on the bottom...and huge. If so, i will fix it when I get to a computer!

So, here's my "Before" stats and some pictures

245#
Waist 45
Hips 50.5
Body fat percent ~28

I stepped on the scale expecting to see 260. After 2 days on nutrisystem, it was 242.4. I'm going to say I started at 245 to make myself feel that much better.

I'm impressed because I've been very down on myself lately. I've felt terrible, so many of my clothes don't fit, and shopping for new pants has been AWFUL. I hate looking in the mirrors at department stores, especially when the pants that fit me and that I can afford are all "Mom Jeans." Now, I love my mother, who wears jeans. I am a mother, who also wears jeans. But there are jeans, and then there are mom jeans. http://www.graspingforobjectivity.com/2012/10/plus-sized-denim.html I'm probably wearing the offending jeans RIGHT NOW. But I don't have the time, patience, or money, to go in search of nice-looking jeans for myself. So I get frustrated and very down on myself. I honestly believed that I was upwards of a size 24, 260+ pounds, and my waist had crept well over 45". The biggest men's pants I've ever worn were in my college and post-college days, when I was a 42x30. Now most 42s won't fit.

Surprise, surprise, the last few days, even before starting NS, I've noticed that my pants are much looser, I'm on belt loop #6 now (I was on loop #3 for quite a while, then #5, then back to #3 just recently). When I was weighed for my weight loss surgery consult, I was 253, and I just FELT bigger and even less healthy than I did all those months ago. But I guess not. I'm also not sure how they figure that my body fat % is only 28 (not the "obese" category? Seriously?). Probably because my wrist measurement is large...I have fat on my wrists, and I think that is a proportion they assume you DON'T have fat. Well, we'll see what it says next week!

Anyhoo, food stuff...

The food stuff

So, Monday for dinner I made my own! (I wasn’t planning on doing it so early in the system, but I made SURE I followed the steps.

1 entrée is typically 2 proteins and 1 carb. 1 regular turkey burger is 2 proteins, and for the carb I had sweet potato “fries” (oven broiled sweet potato, probably equivalent to about 1/8-1/5 of a large sweet potato). Total about 275 calories. For my veggies I had steamed broccoli and a salad with tomatoes. For my “extra” fat, I added a low calorie slice of cheese (60). Total calories for all of that? Probably 375-400. Nice.


At first, I was hungry…I wanted 2 burgers like usual. I wanted the bun like everyone else had. And then, I won’t deny it, my brain went into feminist mode, recalling articles about women denying themselves food just to fit into what society says they should. How women should stand up and take what they want, and the diet industry is prospering on women’s insecurities (men’s too, but across our society, women tend to be the most active in the diet industry). But I reminded myself that this isn’t forever. This is a change to get my body to a healthy weight. If I forego the big white fresh-baked rolls for a few months, I will FEEL better. I already feel better. This is not to say I will never have rolls again. Or that I can’t find a healthy substitute. I’m not choosing to always deprive myself, I’m choosing to be healthy so that I can be here for many more years. So I can hike and dance and climb with my kids. So I can hike and dance and climb with my grandkids. Hell, I would love to hike and dance and climb with my great-grandkids, if I’m so lucky. I want to avoid the diabetes and heart/cholesterol/blood pressure issues that run in my family. My outlook needs to change from “I live to eat” to “I eat to live” (see Dr. Fuhrman’s book “Eat to Live”—amazing stuff, and I would love to get back to that kind of living once my body “resets” to a healthier weight).

After the table was cleared and I packed up the baby’s leftovers, I realized, yet again, that I wasn’t hungry. It will take me some time to remember the difference between cravings and hunger. I had a good meal, seasoned well, tasted great, and plenty of calories. My body still craves the simple carbs and sugars it is used to. In order to satisfy that craving, I had my dessert of the NS mini chocolate chip cookies with a glass of almond milk. It helped quite a bit, and by then I was ready to get down to what I needed to do that evening.

Tuesday morning I brought my same cottage cheese and applesauce as yesterday, but instead of a muffin, had apple cinnamon oatmeal. I never got to the oatmeal! Just had my cottage cheese, applesauce, and coffee. I had it as a snack that afternoon and skipped the hummus and veggies.  I had the NS Red Beans and Rice, leftover steamed broccoli, and a salad of ½ coleslaw mix and ½ spring mix, a few tomatoes, some bacon bits, and my own FF dressing (1Tb Italian, 1Tb roasted red pepper dressing, 1tsp BBQ sauce, and ½ tsp hot sauce). The inspiration was from a wegmans pre-packaged salad mix I had in the fridge. It is a coleslaw/romaine blend with bacon bits and tortilla chips for toppings, a yogurt dressing, and BBQ sauce to mix in. I used the veggie blend and some of the bacon and made my own dressing. I’m saving the other stuff for a later date. I planned on adding a hard boiled egg as well, but I left that at home. Oops.

For dinner I had the NS chicken pot pie, with a repeat of my lunch salad (except with more cabbage/carrots and less lettuce) and my egg. I was pretty full! I'm still surprised when that happens. My eyes have been trained for so long to see what I THINK is a good meal, when in reality I need so much less. I had the NS cheesecake bar for dessert since dinner was saltier than normal.

As I delve more into sharing and my own history with food, I know it is related to control. If anyone has done any research on eating disorders, you know it is often associated with control. Food is sometimes the one thing that a person CAN control, and when they do it to excess, it becomes a disorder. My issues are twofold. The control aspect is like the opposite of what I described above: I have so much going on, so much I have to control, so much I have to get right, so much I have to fix, that I often don’t control a damn thing that goes in my mouth. It is something I don’t have to think about. It tastes good, so who cares? It also is a bit OCD: I can’t imagine food going to waste. So I eat leftovers, I can’t pass up free food, etc. It is like hoarding!

How do I fix this? How can I repair my relationship with food? Well, I’m not sure. But for now, I need to establish control. I can’t let myself get overwhelmed (which is why proportioned meals are good for me right now) or forget that my goal in eating is to survive and thrive, physically, not to escape and eat out of stress or depression. The control and meal plans help with that—a lot. Sure, we have a whole bag of honey BBQ potato chips in the pantry. But I have special K cracker chips if I want something salty. I have nutrisystem popcorn if I want it. We may have Sarah Lee brownie bites (I’m not 100% sure what they are—a big red box of packaged goodies I don’t even look at!), but I have cookies and chocolate covered pretzels and fruit if I want a sweet treat. For the OCD half of my issues, I need to remind myself that if I’m just eating the ¼ of a burger my daughter leaves on her plate so it won’t “go to waste”, it IS going to waste. It is adding to my excess weight and other related issues. It will be unwanted and wasted whether it goes in the trash or into my body. If all else fails, healthier stuff will go to the dog. He doesn’t mind, and doesn’t have excess weight to worry about! ¼ of a turkey burger would do him good. (obviously don’t feed your dog bad things like onions, excess garlic, grapes/raisins, avocado, etc)

NS Food reviews:

Mini Chocolate chip cookies: ★★☆☆☆

In a word: Meh. I guess if I had them again, I wouldn’t mind too much, but if given the choice I won’t order them. I figured they would be somewhat hard and tasteless (like those 100 calorie pack mini chips ahoy cookies), but…wow. I could barely taste any chocolate, even when I bit off a “chip” from the top of a cookie and ate it by itself. The cookies were hard, but didn’t soften at all in my almond milk. It satisfied the craving, sure, but it wasn’t very good. If you like crunchy cookies, you might like these better—I’m a soft cookie fan, myself.

Red Beans and Rice with Sausage: ★★★★☆

I want to give these 3.5 stars. Good, but I’m not sure if it is 4 stars good. The sausage is GREAT for diet sausage. Unfortunately, there are only 3 little slices, lol. The seasonings are pretty salty, but not too bad. The rice is pretty soft, but that is to be expected from a pouch meal. My advice: pour it into a bowl to cook. I feel like the plastic made it taste funny when it was really hot. After it cooled down (on my plate) and was mixed with my broccoli, it reached 4 stars. But at first I was ready to give it 2 or 3. And add some veggies. Frozen/thawed peppers and onions would be GREAT in here! Let them thaw on the counter in the morning so they are room temp and soft, then microwave with the rice. Zero extra effort, and would definitely add to the flavor and texture.

Chicken Pot Pie:  ★★★★☆

The flavor was pretty comparable to other prepackaged pot pies. Fairly small, but that's the point of portion controlled meals! The crust topper was a bit tougher than I would have liked, but still flaky and the flavor worked very well with the sauce and filling.

Cheesecake flavored bar:  ★★★☆ ☆

Not bad, but the texture was a bit odd (slightly hard, like a nougat). Size-wise, it was like a small candy bar, maybe the length of my palm (see picture). A little tart and not particularly cheesy, and the graham cracker layer had something in it that stuck in my teeth. I will eat it, because it reminds me of a candy bar and I already ordered 2 more lol. But next order I probably won't be getting them.

Cinnamon Struesel Muffin:  ★★★★☆

A little smaller than the chocolate muffin, but very similar to "regular" prepackaged muffins. No aftertaste, just cinnamon and a slight brown sugar flavor.