Scale Saturday 2018: Week 4

This week was an odd one. Despite working hard all week, the scale stayed the same four days in a row, with just a couple big drops. I know it's all part of the fluctuation of it. I just hope after this I never have to come back down from as great a weight. Those of you who followed along with my weight loss three years ago may remember I proclaimed up and down (no pun intended) I would never do this again. Life has a way of sneaking up and sucker punching me in the face. 

I stepped up my exercise this week, and it felt good. Sore, but what my body had been missing for too long. I combined "power walking" with floor exercises: planks, scissor kicks, and leg lifts. 

I was able to get more sleep as well, which makes a huge difference in outlook. Addie has been waking only once or twice a night, though a couple nights ago Ian was up crying for hours. It turns out he has double ear infection now. Our computer crashed as well a couple days ago, so I'm back to blogging on my phone, which is not ideal. What a month it's been. 

I wanted to share with you a healthy meal we had this week before we get to the scale part. I love pasta, so not allowing myself noodles of any kind is truly a sacrifice. This supper amazingly didn't feel like much of a compromise to me! The best part is everyone loved it.

1 cup spaghetti squash: 35 calories

1/4 cup spaghetti sauce: 40 calories

3 ounces ground venison: 134 calories

or 3 ounces baked chicken breast: 110 calories

My plate with the chicken totaled 185 calories. The boys and Eli had the stuffed squash with venison sauce. We use venison in place of hamburger a lot here because, living in a family of hunters, it's free meat (besides the work of butchering, grinding, and packaging it). It's also a much lower calorie option. Three ounces of 93% lean ground beef is 170 calories.

Since I gained those 5 pounds last week, this is a loss of 3 new pounds, which is right on track. 

Stuffed Mushrooms

We've wanted to try making our own stuffed mushrooms for a while now, and I'm so glad we finally did! These turned out amazing! Kudos to Eli for doing the "legwork" on the recipe. They were savory, creamy, garlicky, and would make a great appetizer for parties or a side for steak or pasta meals. (Note: We doubled this recipe because we had more than 20 mushrooms, resulting in extra filling.)

Stuffed Mushrooms
Ingredients

• 20 large portobello mushrooms, washed and de-stemmed
• 1/2 pound Italian sausage (we mixed our own ground pork with Italian seasonings)
• 2 cloves of garlic, diced
• 1 tbsp. butter
• 1 bag spinach
• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup dry bread crumbs (we smashed croutons in a baggie with a rolling pin)
• Salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste

Directions

Wash the mushrooms and pull out the stems: save the stems! Lay mushrooms out on a baking sheet.

Dice garlic and mushroom stems.

Saute garlic and mushroom stems with butter for a few minutes...

...then add spinach to wilt.

Once spinach is wilted add cream cheese and melt. Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Lastly, add the sausage and mix well.

Generously spoon filling into overturned mushrooms.

Mix Parmesan and bread crumbs...

...and sprinkle over stuffed mushrooms.

Bake at 375°F for 12-15 minutes. Serve while still warm.

Enjoy!

We had some leftover filling, so I boiled 8 lasagna noodles, rolled them up and baked them so nothing went to waste. The boys who get a little queasy with big mushrooms thought these lasagna roll-ups were great!

Scale Saturday 2018: Week 3

This was another hard week, you guys. And what do I do on hard weeks? I trip and fall.

I was going to give some excuse for postponing today's post till Monday, but after arguing with myself for an hour this morning, I came to the conclusion that my blog is all about the realities of life that maybe some people gloss over. And the truth is, in this journey you are going to trip and have to get back up. So this is my virtual dusting-off-the-knees and limping forward. It brings me back to why I named my blog The Space Between in the first place...this life is the space between where we started and where we want to be. It is a journey, not a destination. No one belongs here for very long.

This week's battle: Addie's first ear infection and a sinus infection for me. Addie was sleeping through the night before she got sick around the first of the year. Since then, most nights have been long, repeated feeding sessions; some she was in so much pain she just screamed every hour on the hour. 

This week has made me stop and think about all those who are suffering from chronic pain or illnesses. I don't know how they do it. All week I've had really bad headaches and sinus pain. I had sharp pains shooting through my teeth, there was so much pressure in my face, which was swollen and red. I spent every second of down time with a warm washcloth thrown over my face, and when Sudafed and Flonase failed to work I finally went to the doctor. Addie and I are both on antibiotics now. The good news: Addie only woke up twice last night to eat!

Amidst the growing frustration I felt I found myself allowing myself this or that little treat throughout the week. While that shouldn't have been a big deal, my "revised-eating-habits muscles" are not beefed up enough to withstand that kind of liberty yet. A "what the heck" deep fat fried onion ring at a birthday party turned into a handful of breaded cheese/broccoli and cheese balls. A celebratory beer turned into three, because you can't just stand there with nothing in your hand...right? And when we got home I was hungry because I really hadn't eaten supper...might as well throw some pizza rolls in the oven. Sigh

I lost two pounds this week. I was holding steady! And then I gained five back. I'm back where I was at the end of week one...and that stings. But I've brushed off my knees, and I'm not going to cry about it. I will not get an off day this weekend because frankly, this was pretty much an off week. If the past is any sort of an indicator though, the regained weight comes off quicker the second time around. So if you're new to this, don't let it discourage you!

I'd love to hear if any of you have started a weight-loss or health makeover this year! How are you doing? What are some of your tricks and tips?

Scale Saturday 2018: Week 2

We started off with a bang this week: Sunday was Gavin's 9th birthday. And of course there was cake. Thankfully Sunday is my off day. I did not keep up my food journal (but wanted to out of curiosity!) though what I ate was pretty easy to remember.

Pizza.
Cake.
More pizza.
More cake.

I washed it down with orange juice, because my throat felt like I had swallowed glass, and a can of Pepsi. It was one of the best Pepsis I had ever tasted.

My favorite frozen pizza: the Screamin' Sicilian. Fire roasted peppers, pieces of sausage bigger than my thumb....

The strangest thing is that I didn't feel out of control like I had to binge on junk food while I could. I almost considered staying true to my diet all day, but I'm really trying to avoid burning myself out. The fact of the matter is, if you eat nothing but pizza and cake in a day, you will gain weight. My "off day" cost me three pounds.

This has been an awfully hard week emotionally and physically, just from the point of being mama. It was the second week of nearly everyone being sick, but my little babies got it bad this week. Ian was listless on the couch for three days with a fever...and then Addie got it. I haven't been this sleep deprived in...well, I don't know when. The nurse on call told me it's most likely influenza and to stay at home unless it's an emergency. Influenza is spreading like crazy this year. A man from my hometown died because of influenza last week. My heart hurts for them...for my babies that have never been through this. I'm scared for Addie.

While I feel like I've been cheating on the diet front because I really haven't felt hungry in two weeks, I did splurge last night and have some curly fries with my can of tuna. (Did I make that sound glamorous enough?) And my poor husband came home with a bottle of Bailey's liqueur for me, probably hoping to stave off a sleep-deprived meltdown on my part. I had a glass of that, because these changes I'm making need to be a lifestyle and not a sprint to a finish line. And this isn't a lifestyle where I never have a drink to relax because of the calories it contains. I have the rest of my life to get this right (though that time may not be that far off, I'm not going to sweat it).

Besides my "off" day, the fries and Bailey's are the only splurges I've had this week. There were no late night sweets binges, no "sampling" a spoonful of a tasty, high calorie something, no sneaky runs through the drive-thru. Actually, it's been two weeks since I've stepped foot out of this house. Maybe that's why the results weren't as spectacular this week? More likely because I had to re-lose 3 lbs from last Sunday, so in fact 6 pounds were lost this week.

Fun Fact: there are 150 calories in ONE SHOT (1.5 oz.) of Bailey's Irish Liqueur. 
Our tumblers are about 8 oz, so a tumbler full of Bailey's over ice is at least 600 calories. Yikes.

Scale Saturday 2018: Week 1

With the dawn of a New Year, so many resolve to reinvent themselves. While I don't buy into the idea that a new year is the key that will suddenly make goals attainable, January 1st this year conveniently landed on a Monday, and also on the day I decided to take control of my health...again (as much as is possible, anyway). Four days into this new start I decided to revive my "Scale Saturday" posts as a way to stay accountable to my goals. The last time knowing I had a number to report made all the difference in whether or not I shoved some high calorie trash in my mouth in the middle of the night. My goal is to lose 68 pounds. Not being my first rodeo, I know at that goal weight I feel my best, and I can maintain it fairly easily.

My morning tools. Coffee, taco egg whites with taco sauce, grapefruit, and my food journal. In the journal I record every weight-in, up or down, if my weight changes, and the food/calories I consume a day. My daily caloric goal is 1400 or under.

I'm a procrastinator at heart, so putting this off until after the holidays seemed like the obvious route for me. And since the first couple months establishing new habits are the hardest, starting off with so many temptations around seemed like setting myself up for failure. We had so many Christmas goodies laying around. Yes, even with my self-lecturing "there will always be more cake and pasta and bacon! Remember how good you felt when you were healthier? Remember how happier you were? This will help you be a better wife and mother!" 

Starting was the easy part. Continuing...not so much. I have not felt well the past couple months, and I held no illusion that my diet wasn't a contributing factor. Some days I felt downright rotten. A couple times I tried cutting back on eating and I'd feel dizzy until I ate something. I wondered if I had given myself diabetes. Despite procrastination, I honestly tried to reduce my sugar intake in December, which made this week's start possible. I'm in the absolute worst shape of my non-pregnant life--yes, even worse than last time. My body aches and my knee always hurts now. It clicks when I walk, not just when I'm heading up the stairs. I have bursitis in it again, something I've only had when I'm overweight. Yikes, right?

I'd like to introduce you to my exercise partner. (She comes by her cheeks naturally!) She's been very needy lately so this way I can move and keep her happy. You guys, I still look pregnant. Kind people say, "Oh, you just had a baby!" But...my baby is 8 months old. No more excuses! My exercise routine is simply trying to walk around the house for an hour a day, on top of my regular activity. I'll increase exercise when I decrease my size and the stress on my bones.

This was taken two years ago this month, at my goal weight. A couple months later I experienced my third miscarriage, and started emotional-eating again. A few weeks after that we found the house we wanted to buy, which turned into a stressful two-month rollercoaster ride. Three weeks after we closed on this house, I became pregnant with Addie. 

I'm calling this first week a success, even though I had a couple middle-of-the-night weak points where I inhaled a cinnamon roll and some fudge. I understand these results are not normal, simply because I have so much to lose at this point. Please pray for me! And Happy Epiphany!

These results seemed unreal (maybe this old scale is off, although it's always been reliable in the past?), so I also measured bust, waist, and hips...and I'm happy to report that I'm also down 2-3 inches on each measurement! Deo gratias!