My Path to Outer Skinniness

Last night I decided to do something drastic. I decided to weigh myself in the evening. I always way a few pounds more in the evening than I do in the morning. For one, I've been eating all day and the food adds weight. I'm sure there are many other reasons. Anyway, I weighed myself at 174.6. Honestly it's not that bad. But it is a gain. And at this point in my pregnancy (especially with morning sickness not being bad at all) I have no reason to gain weight. The fetus in my body does not weigh 3 pounds. Nope. Not even close. I've been craving red meat like crazy all week. I think it has finally worn off however because the thought of red meat makes me feel a bit ill at the moment. The problem isn't that I've been craving it or that I shouldn't have it. Honestly, I need the iron! The problem is that I've been using it as an excuse to eat whatever I want. The other night I had a Baja Fresh Burrito Ultimo. It probably has something like 800 calories. I...

Like so many mornings, I woke up, went into my bathroom and stepped on my scale. 170.6. My weight is down a little more. This is about another pound down. If I were to lose 2-3 more pounds I would be just under the obese weight level for my height. One more pound and I'll be down 25. On one hand I'm excited to be down a little bit more. This means that I am eating better in spite of myself (probably the lack of fake sugars, trans fats, and alcohol would be my guess), but it also means that I am losing weight while pregnant. The mayo clinic book I have says it's okay to lose a couple pounds in the first tri-mester so I won't panic yet, but I am a bit on alert. I want any weight gain to be because my baby's growing or because of baby related adjustments - not because I've given in to cravings and am eating like a vacuum cleaner! Loss is not my goal right now. Health is. Yesterday I walked the Run Like Hell 5k. I'm pretty proud of this. I've never done ...

Well, if you haven't heard via facebook yet, I am pregnant! And both my husband and I are super thrilled about it. What does this say about my weight loss program? Well, it's on a temporary stall I suppose. But my healthy program doesn't have to be. And that is why I will continue to blog. I did some research about what I should be doing to stay healthy and what the normal weight gain will be. I'm in the first trimester (about 5 weeks) and my resources tell me that I should only gain 1-2 pounds between now and December. This is a bit of a relief. They also said that with morning sickness (which I don't really have) it's possible to even lose weight! But I'm not holding out for that eventuality. I got this book to sort of help me out. It's called "The 100 Healthiest Foods to Eat During Pregnancy."   It has a list of things for each trimester that you should work into your diet and it explains how each food works and benefits you and your bab...

Gnocchi with Wild Mushroom Ragu That's the link for the recipe. It's vegetarian, and the calories can be a bit high with the mascarpone, but it is so delicious! I used Trader Joes Gnocchi to save time and scrapped the fancy tomatoes for diced store brand. Here's the nutrition breakdown: Ragu (with Mascarpone): Calories: 299 Fat: 22 Carbs: 15 Fiber: 4 Protein: 4 With a cup of gnocchi it's about 540 calories, which seems a bit high, but seriously, it's all vegetables. I don't mind eating that many calories of all vegetables. And besides, the taste is worth it! On another note, I half expected a weight gain after a weekend of eating what was available, not moving around much, and been pretty stressed out. I spent the weekend at Camp Magruder with my parents and my sister helping out with the Clackamas High School A Choir Retreat. I ran sectionals mostly and my family made all the meals. I ended up eating more than I probably should have in terms of c...

I just put in my calories for the day using the Diet Controller program. I am so happy with myself. I even made what I thought was a fatty recipe (chicken and dumplings Tyler Florence style) and found that it wasn't really as bad as I expected. I can't get over how easy it is to calculate the nutrition for recipes in this program! I tend to avoid tracking because it is so tedious! You have to look up all the nutrition information, write it down, and add it all up. For a recipe with a lot of ingredients, this could take as much as an hour! I realize now that part of the reason dieting has been so hard for me is that I not only have to deny myself things that are fatty and delicious, but I was avoiding foods that I knew would take a bunch of time to find information for. I did my whole days worth of food in less than 10 minutes with this program! I stayed within my calorie range for today. So that is going well. Now I just have to get the exercise in check. This week is going ...

Okay, so I was going to wait a little bit to report on how the diet controller program is working but I want to talk about it already. I spent probably a good hour or two yesterday entering nutrition information data into the program on the foods I eat regularly. I put in the whole menu for chipotle, a few items from taco bell (yay fresco!), and some odds and ends around my kitchen. This morning I decided I wanted to have pumpkin oatmeal for breakfast - one of my favorite fall recipes ever! So I opened up my computer and started putting nutrition information for my specific ingredients. It has a database of basic stuff, but I like having specific brand information in there. For instance, my Bob's Red Mill thick cut organic oats will probably have more vitamins, fiber and protein than generic oatmeal would. So I added in the ingredients to the database. Then I added the recipe. It's so cool, you can go in to make a food item, click on an ingredients tab, and then add the ingre...

Well, I know I said what I was going to do in my last post, it's just been a bit slow in happening. I've decided to try something new. I downloaded this calorie tracker  program awhile ago as a free trial and I liked it, but I decided I could do just as well with my excel spreadsheet. Well, obviously my spreadsheet isn't keeping me on task anymore. So I'm going to try this out. It keeps track of your nutritional balance, it keeps charts and graphs for you, and the best part is that it stores your entries so you can pull them back up easier (something that was annoying with excel). You can also add exercise, measurements, and weigh-ins. I'm looking forward to using it and reporting further on its effectiveness. I've got bowling tonight, but I think I'm going to talk Paul into walking with me to New Season for dinner. We should take advantage of the lack of rain while it lasts! On another note, I've been on a nesting kick this week. For some reason I...

Today I went in to the doctor to get a pre-pregnancy physical. Well, sort of. Really what I wanted was a definite diagnosis for pcos (polycycstic ovarian syndrome) which I've been learning lots about and had suspicion about having. Why does this matter to a weight-loss blog you might ask? Because pcos throws off your insulin levels and makes it very difficult to lose weight. It also puts you at high risk for type 2 diabetes. I may or may not have announced that Paul and I are not trying to not get pregnant...as in, we're not avoiding babies. As I've been reading about what I should do in case I do get pregnant (like taking prenatals, getting more exercise etc..) I ran across a bunch of information about pcos and had great concerns about it. I learned two things from my appointment today. First is that I don't have pcos. Yay! Second is that my doctor told me not to run anymore, but walking is a great idea. I wanted to ignore her advice and keep running anyway (instant Be...

I've been feeling rather apathetic lately about being on the weight loss wagon. I had such a milestone with losing a pant size and I thought that perhaps it would push me to keep going. But I feel myself becoming more and more complacent. Got my hair cut today. Notice that it hides the second chin? I haven't tracked my calories in weeks. I should probably do this soonish. I also haven't really been keeping up on my running (sorry Christy) I just don't want to do it at all. I dread it actually. To top it off I added 10 seconds to my time trial for dragon boating yesterday. My time in May was about 1:51. My time yesterday was 2:01, making me the third slowest female paddler on my team. I really wanted to prove that I could keep up with the rest of the girls. I don't want to give up on it, but my zeal for proving myself is a bit dampened given my inability to perform. The only thing that's got me a bit interested in my health at the moment is all the food ...