Posts from — May 2009

I’m driven by WANT power today! Well, that and all of your amazing encouraging comments! Thank you so much for your kind words; it really does keep me going I hope that article gave some of you an extra boost, too and insight into, perhaps, a missing piece of this weight loss journey that we are on.

I’m excited about trying out this new POINT tracking experiment. It was strange, though, to put this morning’s breakfast on last night’s tracking day! I woke up hungry, too, which doesn’t normally happen, but I decided to push off breakfast until I got in my workout. I did a 35 minute weighted stint on the elliptical, then got to making some eats. I went with 3 scrambled egg whites with a slice of 2% cheese and 1 tbsp. salsa and a half serving of TJ’s Multigrain Savory Thins for 3 POINTS…

I don’t think I’ve mentioned these before. They are a tasty cracker! Basically a rice chip with added grains and seeds….

A full serving is 17 crackers and only 2 POINTS! I just went with 8 crackers this morning, which was plenty…

A little later, I fed my Frap addiction with a homemade Caramel Lite Frap made with coffee. 3 tbsp. fat free half and half, 2 tbsp. sugar free caramel syrup and lots of ice. Good stuff and this one’s only 1 POINT…

For lunch, I made another version of turkey burgers – Ranch Turkey Burgers! For these, I used

• 20 oz. ground turkey breast
• 4 tbsp. Light Ranch Dressing (I use Kraft Light Three Cheese Dressing)
• 1 tsp. Hidden Valley Ranch Dry Mix ( packet)
• 1/4 c. chopped scallions

1. Mix ingredients and shape into 6 burgers.
2. Cook about 4 minutes per side.

I ran this through the Etools Recipe Builder and came up with 3 POINTS per burger. I grilled mine and served it on a honey wheat bun with lettuce and pickles. It was great! The key to turkey burgers is to NOT overcook them; otherwise they get all dried out. But, these were cooked just right and had a nice flavor to them. I served it with 1 cup cherries and 1/2 c. leftover barbecue bean salad. A filling 8 POINT lunch…

Later in the afternoon, I felt like having a snack. I decided on a filling snack of High Fiber O’s, 1/2 c. nonfat greek yogurt and 1 tbsp. dried cranberries for 3 POINTS…

Dinner was heat and eat. I’m trying to dwindle down the freezer stash! I decided on 2 TJ’s stirfry veggie eggrolls and a bowl of Tabatchnick Vegetable Soup for 5 POINTS…

It was just right! I WANTed to fit in dessert It’s okay; I had the POINTS, but I kept it simple. Just a plain, old Deep Chocolate Vitatop with no accoutrements for 1 POINT…

And it was just fine and hit the spot

Now, I still have 4 POINTS left for breakfast tomorrow! For some reason this little mind game/tweaking helped out today. It’s new and different. Also, I like the fact that I feel like I am eating quite a bit of food, yet I go to bed knowing that I still have POINTS left for the morning. It’s all robbing peter to pay paul, so to speak, but hey, it’s something different. When I look at my day, I’m just tacking on a couple more POINTS to lunch and taking them away from dinner. But, I think it may be a better way to eat overall anyway. Many Europeans eat this way, too with their largest meals being eaten midday and lighter in the a.m. and late evening. My parents eat that way when they visit Italy every year and come home having lost weight despite large multicourse midday meals. And you know, French women don’t get fat ;P Well, until they come to America and eat at Mickey D’s.

So, the experiment continues! But, danger lurkes at my nephew’s graduation party tomorrow evening :0

I will keep reminding myself : I’VE GOT THE POWER!!!

Have a great night =)

I woke up with a lot on my mind this morning. It all had to do with my weight loss journey. I haven’t been happy with the way things are going, or shall I say, not going. If you’re a regular reader, you know I keep lamenting about my difficulty with getting to my WW goal weight. I’ve been playing with those last 10 pounds for months now and it’s wearing on me. I was thinking today that you are all probably tired of listening to me winge and whine about it, too! But, this has become a place to not only document my eats for the day. I realize it is a therapeutic exercise to blog every night. I write about my frustrations with myself, my trials and tribulations and it all seems to help me move on and be able to start over when I’ve gone off track. Sometimes, I feel badly to have you all put up with my boo-hoos and pity parties, but I began this blog as a tool to help me through the remainder of my weight loss, and as much as I don’t want to bore you with it all, I have to maintain the integrity of why I started this blog to begin with. That being said, I really did some soul searching today. I was feeling like I’ve lost it. Lost my desire to keep losing. Lost my will to keep going with this and hit goal. I thought maybe this is a sign that I am just done. I am okay at this weight and I should just get on with my new healthy life. But, I’m not feeling it. I need to keep going, but how do I get the strength to keep going, the drive, the will? Well, I came upon THIS article on Wellsphere that gave me the answer I was looking for. It’s not will power that’s missing; it’s WANT POWER! This article spoke volumes to me! It’s exactly the boost I needed. So I give you my New Point of View: There is no such thing as will power, only want power! Spread the word, not the icing!!!

So, I came up with a new plan for myself today. I devised it over my breakfast of a whole wheat cinnamon raisin english muffin with a tsp. butter for 3 POINTS…

Okay, this may sound weird to those of you that count WW POINTS, but I think this may be my answer. I am going to start my tracking day with lunch. I will start off with my 21 POINTS at lunch and subtract the day going to breakfast the next morning. Why? Well, it seems that I really have trouble in the afternoons with snacking. So, I thought if I start at lunch, make lunch bigger and end with breakfast, if I had an “incident” or maybe overate a little in the afternoon, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to only have a couple of POINTS left for breakfast. But, if I kept it the same and overate leaving me only a few POINTS for dinner, that would leave me feeling deprived and sad. I know this may seem like a strange way to look at it. It’s mind games. It may or may not work or make any difference at all, but it dawned on me today and I felt excited to try out this “experiment”. We know all that matters is “calories in, calories out” in a 24 hr. period, so who cares what meal starts your 24 hr. day, right?

So, I decided to embark on my new plan at lunch, making it as “big” as necessary to feel full. Guess what? I wasn’t so hungry today! Murphy’s Law. But, I know that the afternoon has been rough lately, so I just ate what I was in the mood for and therefore, had lots of POINTS for later, just in case. Lunch was an almond butter and sugar free jelly sammie with carrots and sour cream and onion rice chips for 6 POINTS…

and a Grande Mocha Lite Frap for 2 POINTS while picking up a few things at the supermarket…

Well, that took me all the way to dinner! I decided on a quick dinner of Trader Joe’s Chicken Chow Mein (split with big daughter) for 6 POINTS…

and for dessert, a Weight Watchers CandyBar Ice Cream Bar for 3 POINTS…

That leaves me with 4 POINTS for breakfast tomorrow! I know it’s just switching things around, but for some reason, I felt much better using my tracker this way. If anything, it’s at least a fun twist on my “old” program. I’ll still be blogging the same way, beginning with my breakfast, but I’ll just be counting that breakfast with my previous day’s POINTS.

If you made it through this everlasting post, I commend you! Thank you for listening to my rambling and for all the wonderful comments and suggestions. I really appreciate you coming along for my crazy ride

Have a great night !

I am hormonally challenged today. I feel tired, annoyed, happy, frustrated, bored, excited, tired and more tired. How’s that for a skitzy lady? It must be that time. Could be why I wanted a basket of chocolate this afternoon! Pfft! And I was being so “intuitive” with my eating these past few days Well, I got back to counting today, with the exception of the chocolate incident. But, there’s always tomorrow. That I can count on…

Breakfast was an Arnold Sandwich Thin with a wedge of Laughing Cow Light and 2 tbsp of hummus. A yummy 3 POINT combo…

Then, I headed out to take Gram to get some bloodwork. After that, we picked up my Mom, went back to Gram’s living community and met my Dad and nephew for lunch in one of the restaurants there. I ordered a Mediterranean Veggie Wrap made with romaine, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, red pepper hummus and feta and a side salad with lite Italian dressing on the side. It was very good! I estimated it at 6 POINTS…

Later, I had a snack of prunes and an Italian fig cookie for 4 POINTS…

Then came my second “snack” which was all the chocolate in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Yes, it’s a real place. No, I can’t tell you how to get there ;P Oompa loompa doom-pa-dee do. Can you tell chocolate makes me crazy?? Sigh. Moving on….

Dinner, as if I needed it, was the last of the leftover Greek lima beans mixed with orzo for 8 POINTS. I love these beans! If there are any Greek blogfriends out there who have a recipe for this, I would love to have it!!! Who knew lima beans could be so good…

I’m not thrilled with how things went down today, but I’m hoping tomorrow will be better. I feel like I am in limbo right now. I’m not at goal yet, I want to lose more, but I’m just “hanging out” and not giving it the hard core press I need to get to the end. Any suggestions??

Have a great night everyone =)