My New Shipment Came!

Sorry, I left you all hanging about whether or not I lost that one pound and got down to a 10-pound weight loss in four weeks. I'm sure my five readers are very anxious to know. :)

Well. . .

I actually lost a pound and a half that week!!! I was thrilled! (Yes, my scale does it by the half-pound). So that put me at 165.5, and a 10 and a half pound weight loss after four weeks! Pretty AWESOME!!!

As far as last week goes, I waited and waited for my new shipment to arrive. Last Friday, it finally came! And it's been a million times better having food that I actually like to eat. Such a difference! I did have more than one cheat meal while I was waiting for my food to arrive, so I wasn't too sure how good week 5's weight loss would be. I weighed in yesterday, and my scale said 163.5. Two more pounds! So that puts me at 12.5 pounds lost in 5 weeks!!!

So far, so good!!! Here's what I'm actually looking forward to eating right now:

*NutriCinnamon Squares cereal for breakfast. It's so good! I am not even a cereal person, but I love it and I want it every morning.

*My very favorite Nutrisystem dinner that I found in this shipment (I know I ordered some for my first shipment, but didn't get any until this month). . .
Flatbread Pizza!!! It's yummy! I bake it in the toaster oven until it puffs up and the cheese is really melty, and it beats out their Thick Crust Pizza and their Sourdough Pizza. I do look forward to eating one of these for dinner most nights. I'm not saying it's Pizza Hut or anything, but for diet food it's pretty dang AWESOME!

*A bowl of sliced strawberries with dinner every night. Strawberries seriously are nature's candy.

*The Chocolate Mint Crunch Nutrisystem dessert bar. It tastes like a real candy bar, and I love mint chocolate stuff!

As far as lunches go, there's nothing I'm totally loving. Their soups are definitely fine, and I have three varieties that I switch between. But I wish there was a lunch option that I love, like I love the breakfast, dinner, and dessert options. Bummer!

Highlight of the week- (other than discovering the flatbread pizza and losing two more pounds) was that I FINALLY got all the food out of the boxes, cleaned out my pantry, and re-organized everything to make room in the pantry for my Nutrisystem food. This was a huge challenge, since my pantry is most definitely not big enough! But I took an entire evening and filled up five huge trashbags full of expired food and trash. No wonder it took me five weeks of Nutrisystem dieting before I finally got around to doing this! But it's so nice now to have all my food organized in the pantry and not have to go digging around in the box for it. And all the foods I didn't like from my first shipment? It went into food storage!

It's just so encouraging that I've lost 12 and a half pounds so far! This is hard, but it WORKS!!!

Almost To 10!

So guess what? Even though I thought I didn't lose any weight last week, I did lose 2 pounds! I was really happy about that! That put me down to 167, and made for a total of 9 pounds in 3 weeks. Not too shabby!!!

This week will be a different story, I'm sure, since I'm currently waiting for my next shipment of Nutrisystem food to arrive and really scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as meals I already have from them. All that's left are the meals I hated and refuse to eat again! I've still been doing just fine on the breakfasts and lunches, but dinners haven't been great this week. I mean, they have been GREAT, but not great for the diet. :) As soon as my new shipment arrives (hopefully soon!), then I will get right back on track and be just as strict again.

So for this week. . . I really want to lose just ONE pound! Just one measly little pound! That way, I will have lost 10 pounds in 4 weeks and I'll be 1/3 of the way to my goal weight!

Please, scale. . . One pound? Check back on Thursday, when I will reveal the scale's great mysteries once again. . .

Plugging Along

Gosh, I have been such a slacker lately when it comes to posting on this blog! I definitely need to post more often! I'll do the big news first. . . So almost a week ago, after two weeks of being on the Nutrisystem diet, my scale said I weigh 169. So that's 2 and a half pounds lost the second week, for a total of 7 pounds in two weeks! Not too shabby! I was pretty happy with progress like that!!!

More random things I'm learning about myself on this diet:

*I have learned that I can be around foods I love and resist eating them! It's difficult, but I can survive it. I even passed the McDonalds test. Kirsten got a Happy Meal with chicken nuggets and fries, and my friend and her daughter had McDonald's and everyone was eating it but me. And I didn't eat a single fry! It was sooooooo hard though, and as soon as I smelled that bag of deliciousness after I got it in the car I just wanted to rip that bag open and devour everything in it! McDonalds isn't my favorite food in the world or anything, but I do love those fries and dang, did they smell good!

*I pretty much live for my one cheat meal that I give myself per week. I look forward to it, think about it, dream about it, and plan out exactly what it is I want to eat so that I won't go overboard but still get to enjoy it. And it's working good for me so far!

*I really don't mind this diet at all for breakfasts, and lunches aren't so bad either. Dinners are tough though. Especially with this crisp fall weather we're having, I am constantly in the mood to cook one of my favorite family dinners and eat a normal dinner the way I used to! Just about everything sounds good! I'm dying to make Cheeseburger Pie, Chicken Enchiladas, or homemade Macaroni and Cheese. When it's "soup and grilled cheese" weather and Stephen and Kirsten get to eat that for dinner, I mope a little bit about eating just my soup, because I crave a grilled cheese sandwich on the side. I thought I'd crave desserts and sweets a lot on this diet, but I'm surprised to see that I mostly crave cheesy, hearty, real foods the most.

*I need to start exercising, especially if I want this weight loss to move faster. I did buy the EA Sports Personal Trainer game for the Wii, and I have grand intentions to start using it very soon.

*This diet really does keep you feeling full and satisfied almost all the time. I'm almost never hungry.

More stuff I'm learning about the Nutrisystem food:

*Now that I'm getting towards the end of my first shipment of food (my next one ships out in about a week), it's getting harder because I've eaten most of the foods I actually like already and am getting left with the things I just don't want to eat. Ugggggh! For this new shipment, it's going to be LOTS better because I ordered a bunch of the same things, and I already know I like them. Can't wait for that new shipment!

*The most terrible, awful, horrible Nutrisystem foods I've had on this diet are by FAR some of the desserts, believe it or not! The chocolatey, sugary desserts aren't bad, but they package lots of snacky things as desserts, like chips, pretzels, etc. Oh, they are FOUL!!! I hated the Nacho Crisps with a passion, and the Honey Mustard Pretzels were even worse! I can't figure out what makes them so awful. Maybe it's the soy protein they add to them? Nasty! Stephen tasted some and he agrees with me!

*Breakfasts: I really don't like the oatmeal. It's just way too gluey. The pancake mix is decent. My next breakfast shipment will contain lots of cereal packets, since those are the breakfast items I actually like. I'm getting a whole bunch of my favorite one, the NutriCinnamon Squares. And the only breakfast bar I'm re-ordering is the Cinnamon Bun bar.

*Lunches: I wish they had more variety in their lunch choices, other than just lots of soups. I'm re-ordering quite a few of the Chicken and vegetable noodle soups, some Ham and Bean soup, and absolutely none of the pastas. The only lunch bar that I want more of is the Chocolate Graham bar. And I only eat that when I'm on-the-go.

*Dinners: My next order consists of 12 Thick Crust Pizzas, 8 Flat Bread Pizzas, 7 Sourdough Pizzas, 5 Hearty Beef Stews, and 3 Chicken with Dumplings.
Yep. . . that's it.
Those are the things I actually like from their dinner menu! Everything else is too soupy, watery, and just grosses me out, especially after eating soup for lunch. I'd much rather eat the same exact thing for dinner every night than a whole variety of stuff that isn't so good. Anybody with me on that?

*Desserts: I'm actually pretty excited to receive 24 Mint Crunch Bars with my next order. It's thin, like a regular candy bar, and seriously yummy! I'm also ordering a few more of the regular Crunch bars, chocolate chip cookies, and hot cocoa. And that's it! I tried pretty much everything and don't like most of it. Even the brownie and the chocolate cake aren't very good. So I'm ordering what I like!

*As far as other grocery items, these are the things I find myself constantly buying and eating:

-A whole bunch of these (I slice them up and eat them in bowls with my lunch or dinner). Sometimes I have apple slices or grapes, to mix it up a little.

-Bartlett Pears. Holy yummyness! Pears are tricky, because you have to cut them open at the exact right time for them to be good. Cut them too soon and they're kinda crunchy. Wait too long and they're brown and mushy. But if you get it just right, they are delicious! I ate two perfect pears last week and thought I was in heaven!

-Yoplait Light. I eat one every single morning!

-String cheese! I get a little tired of it, but it's still good!

Confession:
If I don't lose any weight this week (I weigh in tomorrow), I won't be surprised. Last Saturday was a completely awesome day. . . we took the kids to the Issaquah Salmon Festival during the day (where there was booth after booth of fair food!), and went on an amazing date that night to see Wicked and eat at El Gaucho with my husband. Needless to say, my diet pretty much flew out the window that day. At the fair I ate some really yummy fresh-cut fries (this was probably the worst of all the things I ate that day). And then at El Gaucho. . . WOW, that restaurant is to die for! I had a delicious filet steak, the best side dish of macaroni and cheese I've ever tasted, and shared a really small chocolate ganache dessert with Stephen.

It's so hard to believe that just one day of splurging like that can kill your diet, but I'm guessing it probably can. I've been really good on all the other days! But that day probably killed me, according to the scale. Guess I'll find out tomorrow!