The Day of Reckoning

This morning marked one week since I started my diet with Nutrisystem. I survived one week, don't I deserve some kind of medal for that? I did go to the mall and treat myself to some shopping, but that's a whole different story. . .
One week meant I could weigh myself! I didn't really have any specific expectations. Mostly I was just really curious, and knew I would be disappointed if I had only lost one pound or two. After one week of dieting (including the delicious burger I had on cheat night), my scale now said. . .

171.5
I lost 4 and a half pounds in one week!
Thank goodness this is actually working! It's horrible and I mostly hate it, but it's working and I'm losing weight! So I felt good about it today!!!
Hooray!!!

Here's how my meals have been going lately. . .

Breakfasts-
*I thought I hated all the breakfast bars, but today I tried one that wasn't too bad. . . the Cinnamon Bun bar. It's a smaller bar than most of them, which gave me hope because I thought it might taste better. I'd much rather eat a smaller thing that tastes better than a bigger thing that tastes worse! I'm not saying it was the best thing ever, but it had a decent flavor and I think I would order some more of those for next time.

Lunches-
*Gosh, I don't think I could ever survive Nutrisystem in the summertime! Other than bars, it seems like ALL the lunches are hot, soupy items and you just don't feel like eating those when it's warm outside! Soups are great when it's cool, but yesterday and today we had temperatures here in the 80's and nothing hot for lunch sounded good! What I really wanted was a nice sandwich. . . but let's not talk about how badly I want a turkey, bacon, and avocado club sandwich on some really yummy bread. Mmmm. . . .
Anyway, yesterday (the hottest day!) I tried the cheesy tortellini and just couldn't finish it. Too hot and much too gluey for a hot day! Today I had the fudge graham bar, and I actually thought it was a pretty good bar. I'll have to order some more of those! I wouldn't want it by itself, but with a string cheese and some fruit it made kind of a nice lunch!

Dinners-
*Note to self: Do not order hot, soupy dinners to be following the hot, soupy lunches. Too much watery, soupy stuff and it makes me just not want to eat dinner at all!

*The chicken and dumplings meal was pretty good. Too watery, but after leaving most of the sauce on the plate I liked the actual pieces of chicken, dumplings, and veggies.

*Two nights ago I had the grilled hamburger patty. It said I could put it on a small whole-grain roll, but we didn't have any. I put shredded low-fat cheese over the top of it and dipped it in ketchup instead. It was nice to have a non-watery entree, but the patty had a very strange taste to it. Very strange!

*I have been having really bad luck with the macaroni and cheese. It says to add very hot but NOT boiling water to it and let it sit for 8-10 minutes. The first time I tried it, I had to throw it away because the noodles were all completely crunchy. GROSS! So I tried it again tonight and used water that actually was boiling. It still didn't cook all the noodles!!! Some were cooked fine, but a lot of them were crunchy and it was just nasty. I stirred one ounce of the low-fat cheddar into the sauce, which made it thicker and less watery. So that helped, but next time I have got to get those noodles to all cook! I don't know why it's so hard to do!

Extra stuff:
*Thanks to a suggestion from a Facebook friend, I tried Vanilla Coke Zero. I don't love it and won't be drinking it every day or anything, but I did like it better than any Diet sodas. If I'm going to be eating something that I don't like, I think it will be good to have it on the side to get rid of the flavor better than water does. But I much prefer ice water! I'll mostly be drinking big glasses of ice water.

*My favorite fruit to have with meals or as a snack is definitely sliced strawberries. Love them! They taste delicious right now especially! I was pretty much switching off between strawberries and grapes, so tonight I went grocery shopping and bought pears, plums, and apples as well so I can have more variety. I still think nothing beats strawberries! Unless it was boysenberries or tangerines, but both of those are pretty much impossible to find in Washington. (Sniff).


I have high hopes to keep it up this week and lose some more pounds! I'm on my way to my goal and it feels good!

Dr. Pepper, I Miss You!

I really do miss Dr. Pepper and Pibb Xtra. REALLY do!!!
I never liked Diet Dr. Pepper in the past (or any diet soda), but I tried it again yesterday hoping that it would be better than no Dr. Pepper at all.
Seriously. . . it tastes absolutely NOTHING like Dr. Pepper to me! No similarities at all! I learned that I'd rather drink water than drink diet sodas.

Overall though, I had a pretty good Nutrisystem weekend! I'm thinking about foods less than I was before, and I made some new discoveries including the following:

*Fat-free Yoplait in the Apple Turnover flavor is even BETTER than the Key Lime Pie flavor! YUMMY!

*I like the Nutrisystem pizzas just fine! They're not anywhere near as yummy as real pizza of course, but compared to other Nutrisystem meals I think I can eat them pretty often. I had both the Thick-Crust Pizza and the Sourdough Pizza, and I liked the Thick-Crust kind the best!

*Having a string cheese and some grapes or strawberries with whatever gross lunch entree I have makes the meal much more bearable. I do really like fruit and string cheese!

*Have I mentioned the lunch entrees are not yummy? I did have the chicken noodle soup, which was decent, and another one similar to that but with thicker noodles that I liked pretty well too. The grossest one EVER was the fettuccine alfredo. That's what it was called, but it tasted nothing like alfredo anything! It tasted like nasty, watery noodle soup. I couldn't finish it!

*I really like their chocolate bar desserts! My favorite is the Mint Chocolate Crunch one, it tastes really good!!!

*I seem to hate all the breakfast choices except the cereals. I thought the apple cinnamon oatmeal was gluey and hard to swallow, and the Chocolate Chip Granola bar just didn't have a good flavor. Now I wish I had ordered all cereals for breakfast.


Have I lost weight??? That's the big question on my mind. It's so tempting to get on the scale, but I'm making myself wait until Wednesday, after one week of the diet. This had better be working!!!

Burger, Anyone?

This is embarassing, but confessions are part of this blog's name, so. . .

It's only the second day of my diet, and I went out to dinner. I ate a delicious cheeseburger and drank one glass of Dr. Pepper.

I know!!!

But it's completely Stephen's fault, and he admits it too! He came home from work really hungry, didn't want anything in our fridge, and really wanted to go out to eat. Kirsten, who hadn't been anywhere in the car today, really wanted to go too. What was I supposed to do???

To keep me from going completely binge-crazy or something, I already had figured I'd have ONE meal per week that is a "cheat meal." I can go out to eat (otherwise my social life would become completely dead, and I don't want that!) and order something I love, but I'll eat a smaller portion than normal and not have side dishes or desserts.
For example, I told Stephen we could go to the burger place and I would eat my burger, but no fries. And it worked! I didn't eat a single french fry! Gotta celebrate the small stuff, right?

My burger tasted heavenly, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!!! Blazing Onion Burger Co in Millcreek makes the best burgers we've found since we moved to Washington. They're comparable to Fuddruckers, and I love Fuddruckers but they don't have them here. So at least I made it count! As I got down to the last few bites I just didn't want the burger to be gone, because I knew it was the last real food I'd have for an entire week.

So yeah. . . I feel guilty.
But not too guilty, because I knew I'd have to splurge once a week. Is that a bad idea? Or am I just being realistic with myself? :)

Back to the Nutrisystem food. . .

*I actually really liked the breakfast today! It was a cereal called NutriCinnamon Squares, and with some fat-free milk on them they were yummy!!! I could definitely eat that every morning, so I wish I had ordered a ton of those. I think I only ordered three or four though.
I had a fat-free Key Lime Pie Yoplait yogurt with it and it was a really good breakfast!!! So my day started out great!

*Lunch was not the same story. . . I had high hopes for the Cheesy Homestyle Potatoes, because I love mashed potatoes so much. These were gluey, and I really didn't like the flavor. Yuck! I did have grapes and string cheese with my lunch, which made it more bearable.

Of course I skipped the Nutrisystem dinner and dessert, because of my splurge.

So this might be a horrible diet tip (we'll see how my weight loss goes), but for now here is. . .
Diet Tip #4:
*Let yourself go out to eat, or eat something you REALLY love, once per week. And if you choose to go out, order something you really enjoy. If you're just going to order a plain chicken breast or a salad, what's the point? You might as well eat at home!

Things I Have Learned After One Day of Dieting. . .

So far I have learned. . . that diets really SUCK!!!

Yesterday was my first day being on Nutrisystem, and ALL day long I couldn't stop thinking about food! I normally don't think about food that often, but I just kept focusing in on things I wanted to have but can't! It's not even that I'm hungry, I just crave my favorite things!

I thought non-stop about chocolate, cheese, bread, cookies, ice cream, and those brownies I ate the other day. I wanted to just devour delicious food, ALL DAY!
I realize that I sound like a fat girl. Sigh.

Here's a list of the Nutrisystem food I tried out yesterday. . .

Breakfast:
Chocolate Chip Scone- NOT a fan! It was super dense and chewy, and I usually like to eat really light in the morning so it was hard for me to get it all down.

Lunch:
Vegetable Beef Soup- This was a decent soup. I liked the chunks of potato and carrot in it, but I didn't like the black beans in it and it was a bit spicy for my taste. At least I didn't hate it!

Snack/Dessert:
Nacho Crisps- GAG!!! The flavor tastes okay the second the chip goes in your mouth, but the texture is really strange and the after-taste is just horrible. I couldn't finish the bag! Too bad, because I know I ordered a few of these thinking I would like them. Never again!

Dinner:
Three Cheese Pasta with Chicken- I liked this dish just fine. It was much more like a soup than a pasta, so they could have just called it soup.

Other stuff I added on:
-Apple slices
-String cheese
-A few peanuts and raisins
-Sliced strawberries

To impart my knowledge to the rest of the blog world, I'm going to share dieting tips from a first-time dieter as I discover them.

Diet Tip #1:
*Sugar-free gum is such a lifesaver! I bought packs in a whole bunch of different flavors, and whenever I'm craving something sweet and flavorful I can pop a piece of gum in my mouth. The fruit flavors are my favorites, especially the Extra Watermelon flavor! I better make sure I always have packs of gum in my purse whenever I go places, to guard against those cravings.

Diet Tip #2:
*Don't ever sprinkle Sweet and Low over your fruit, thinking it will taste like it does when you put sugar on it. I sprinkled one pack of it all over my strawberries, and it was awful! I had to rinse my strawberries off, but they were still mostly ruined. Plain fruit is much better than artificially-sweetened fruit! Now I know why sugar-free stuff tastes the way it does. Bleah!

Diet Tip #3:
*When you feel like you want to cheat, go look at a picture of yourself that makes you look fat. It takes the fun right out of cheating.


I really hope today is a much better diet day than yesterday was. Aren't the first few days supposed to be the hardest? It gets easier, right???

I weighed in before I started the program at 177. I'm only going to weigh myself once a week, like the program recommends. So in one week we'll see how much I've lost!

I now completely understand why people on a diet start to dream about food.

Gaining Before I Lose

Okay. . . apparently, ME before starting a diet is a really bad thing.

I have been eating everything under the sun, because I knew that my Nutrisystem food was going to arrive in the mail today and I'd be starting my diet tomorrow.

BAD.

My confession:
Last night I was really craving brownies, so I made a pan of my very favorite Ghirardelli brownies at MIDNIGHT. Between last night and tonight, I ate almost the entire 8x8 pan of brownies. That's right. . . all by myself.
I don't normally eat that many brownies at once, by any means! But knowing I won't be able to eat them again for awhile just put my cravings into overdrive!

They were sooooooooo good, though. . .

My Nutrisystem food did arrive today, in a huge box!
I was a little shocked to discover that none of it needs to be refrigerated or frozen. Even the dinners and meats. Really??? They're all just in little boxes! Are the meats all freeze-dried or something? Bizarre! I had cleared out freezer space and everything. So now I have no idea where I'm going to put it all, but I'm going to have to come up with a better solution than keeping that huge box on my kitchen floor and digging it out whenever I need it.

Tomorrow morning I'll weigh myself before I start the diet, and I'm very sure I've gained a few pounds in my eating frenzy I've been on. And then. . . the adventure will begin.
I better lose weight! That's all I have to say about it!

Nutrisystem, Here I Come. . .

I am SO not a dieter.

I've never been on a diet before, in my whole life! I never really needed to. I always felt like I was good enough at maintaining my normal weight, and if I needed to lose a few pounds I would start drinking SlimFast shakes for breakfast and lunches. It worked well. . . until I had baby #2, otherwise known as Natalie! She is almost 5 months old now, and I haven't been losing any weight! It's been driving me NUTS. SlimFast hasn't been working one bit. The last straw happened about a month ago, when a lady at the fabric store asked me when I was due! I was so mortified! I certainly don't think I look pregnant, but if other people think so then it's time to take more drastic measures.

Reasons why I NEED to start a real diet and lose weight:

*I have GOT to fit back into my pre-pregnancy jeans again soon! The weather's going to get cold again, and I refuse to buy bigger jeans!

*I am still 20 pounds more than I was before I got pregnant. 20 pounds makes a huge difference in the way I look and feel!

*With two little kids at home, I really don't have the time available to go work out at a gym. So the pounds need to come off from food, rather than working out.

*I feel fat. I hate how my stomach looks, hate my thighs, hate my butt. This just needs to change, and the sooner the better!!!

Reasons why I chose to try Nutrisystem:

*While it's expensive up-front, the cost per day is really pretty good when you break it down. Plus I got it at a good discount from Costco.

*You can choose all your own menu items. I'm a picky eater, and since there are lots of things I KNOW I won't like, I don't have to choose those.

*It's seriously a diet for lazy people. Or people who just don't have the time to devote hours to cooking meals for themselves, counting calories themselves, and all that.
When it comes to food, I do consider myself lazy. I like it to be fast, I like it to be convenient. And since I'll still be preparing food for a toddler and a husband, I don't want to have to put a lot of thought into what I'll be eating. Grab it out of the freezer in its pre-portioned size? Sounds good to me!

*I've heard from several friends that it worked well for them. Plus I saw Tori Spelling endorsing it on her show Tori and Dean. I love Tori and Dean.

I ordered all my food, and it's already been shipped. So I should be starting next week.

Really. . . I'm not excited about it.
Excited to lose weight? Yes!
But excited to eat the food? Not a chance. I'm not expecting to like ANY of it, and I'm going to really miss eating out at restaurants, Dr. Pepper, and yummy, cheesy, fried stuff.

I LOVE to eat out! And I love having friends over for dinner and eating in social settings like that. It's going to be tough for me to be on a diet and force myself to not eat foods even when I'm surrounded by them. Can I even do it???
I'm not saying I'll never cheat. I'm already sure that sometimes I will still go out to eat and splurge on something. I'll just make it as infrequent as I can handle.

And that's why I started this blog. . . to hold myself accountable for what I'm eating. I'm going to write whatever I want here. Reviews of the meals I'm eating, what I'm craving, how much weight I've lost, and what happens when I cheat. :)

My goal:
*To lose 30 pounds! I resolve to stay on the Nutrisystem diet until 30 pounds have been lost. That's the 20 pounds of baby weight, plus 10 more pounds for good measure.
After I lose 30 pounds, I can go back to my regular eating habits with SlimFast to maintain the weight.

Rewards:
*For every 10 pounds I lose, I get to go clothes shopping and find some HOT new clothing items that I'll feel like a million bucks in!

Punishment:
*The punishment for not losing weight? Staying on this freaking diet for a longer time!

My confession:
Right now I weigh. . . 175 pounds.