Fitness Challenge complete!

I did it! I finished my first ever fitness challenge. And I really quite enjoyed it. And I lost 20 LBS!!!!!!!!!! Woohoo!

I really feel awesome about meeting that goal. I wasn't sure I could do it. 20 lbs sounds huge, and 8 weeks does not seem that long. It seems even shorter after it's over. I weighed in this morning at 198. I didn't even gain weight over the weekend!

So what's next? Well, I know what you're thinking. Now she can eat whatever she wants for the Holidays! And you're right, I can. In the same way that I can always eat whatever I want. I need a break from this hard core weight loss, but that means I follow the maintenance plan, not that I fall off track and ruin all my work so far. That being said... I really need to bake something. But I don't need to eat it all. I'll be back for some more really focused weight loss after the new year.

Here are my before and after pictures! They really don't do the difference much justice, but I can feel it, and so can my clothes.

Before

After!

Zuppa Tuscana, Meagan style

So I love the Olive Garden. Who doesn't? But I'm trying to stay away from bread sticks. And pasta. And white sauce. And probably that dressing they drench their salad in. There isn't much left to enjoy. Maybe the minestrone.

Anyway, I can't promise that this recipe I'm about to share is super healthy, but it's healthier than the original, and it's really really good. I basically just used what I had.

6 c water
3-4 red potatoes
4 chicken bouillon cubes
1 lb ground turkey
1 small onion, chopped
basil
red pepper flakes
1 c whole milk (or whatever milk you have. I can't imagine it makes that much difference)
2 c chopped spinach

Cut potatoes into thin slices. Boil water and add sliced potatoes and bouillon. Boil potatoes about 10 minutes. Brown ground turkey and add chopped onion. Sprinkle turkey and onion with basil and red pepper flakes to your taste. Add turkey to potatoes. Pour milk into soup and simmer 10 minutes longer. Add spinach just before serving and stir until the leaves are cooked.

I was a little disappointed when I found that the meat in my freezer was turkey, not sausage like you are supposed to use in Zuppa Toscana. In fact, sausage might be the whole point of Zuppa Toscana. But the red pepper flakes and basil spiced it up enough that I honestly didn't miss the sausage at all. And that part is sure to be way healthier. The other common ingredient in this soup is heavy cream. I don't ever keep heavy cream in my fridge, because I don't use it. I have whole milk because my 1 year old drinks it, so I just used that. I didn't miss the cream either. I haven't had the real thing in a long time, so it probably doesn't taste as much like the original as I think it does, but whatever. It was really really good. I might find later that I should call it "Potato soup with turkey and spinach" because it's that different, but I'm satisfied for now. Try it out, and let me know what you think!

Fitness Challenge Update: Week 8!

I can't believe this is the last week of the challenge! I feel like I have kind of lost the last two weeks. Hence the lack of updating. My official Monday weigh in was 201. I am so close to breaking that 200 lb mark I can taste it. In fact, the scale said 199.8 after my workout this morning. But I'm not really counting that yet. What I am counting is that I am wearing my favorite jeans today. They will always be different than they were before, but they fit. They even look pretty darn good.

Moving is awful with kids. It totally threw me off. Lots of letting my emotions run my actions and reactions. But I still lost weight. Which tells me I am doing something right. Through it all, I only missed one day of working out, and that was because my 1 year old was having an early morning meltdown, and my husband really needed to finish his homework. And even though I ate 4 sweet rolls last weekend from the bakery down the street (not all at once) I didn't completely lose my focus. Or give up. And even though I was really angry and bitter about it (my poor husband) I resisted the urge to eat any of the ice cream left over in my freezer from my sisters birthday party. I should have handled that better. My husband threw it all away because I was so upset with myself for even wanting it. And I'm really glad he did. It wasn't even good ice cream. So not worth it. What was worth it was the oatmeal cake. Which is healthier than regular cake because it has oatmeal in it, right? I seriously doubt it. It's loaded with sugar, and I should have sent it home with my sister and her friends to finish. But to be honest, I didn't eat nearly as much of it as I wanted to, and I feel like that is progress.

So yeah, last week sounds pretty bad, huh? I have to take a moment to ask myself how much better I could have done in this challenge if I hadn't eaten all that sugar. But then I have to move on and not get stuck there. I could still get as far as 20 lbs in 8 weeks, and that kind of consistency is an amazing accomplishment.

Fake it 'til you make it

Yesterday was a hard day for me. I'm trying really hard to make healthy my nature instead of something I have to work ridiculously hard for, but I'm not there yet. Sometimes the difficulty wears me out, and I get really emotional about the whole thing. Here are a few confessions:

The last thing I want to do at 6:40 am when it's still dark and everyone else is still sleeping is get out of my nice warm bed and drive to the gym. It's been 2 months. It's not getting any easier. I still haven't missed a single day, but sometimes I really resent it. Nobody who sees me there would ever guess that about me though, because they are all really sweet, and I wouldn't want to bother them with my bad attitude. So I fake it. And maybe I'll always be faking it, but maybe someday I might be genuinely happy to be working out at 7 am. Haha.

My 18 month old hates chicken. I can't really blame her either, because I'm starting to get sick of it myself.

Cooking healthy food takes more time than I can give some days. I don't want to cook lunch. I want to eat a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich on two pieces of real bread with a nice glass of milk and some fruit. Or share mac n cheese with my daughter. I don't want to cook breakfast either. I want to eat a bowl of cereal and call it good. My dad came home from a month long business trip once and said he never wanted to see scrambled eggs again. I'm starting to feel that way too. And you know, when I know that my daughter isn't going to eat the healthy dinner I cooked, I'm much less happy to cook it. I love to cook. But lately I've been so stressed out about what to eat that the joy is completely sucked out of the cooking/eating experience. It's just another chore I have to do every day.

I will never not want fries and a shake. When my husband brings them home with his dinner, and I eat my burger with half a bun, I get more mad than I should. He doesn't even really like fries all that much.

There is no food in my house. I say that way more often than I want to. I hate going to the grocery store, and I hate that I can spend so much and have to go back a week later.

Ok, I think that's enough confessing for now. Just for the record, the scale read 206 again this morning. I didn't really gain a pound last week, it's just that I don't go to the gym over the weekend, so my Monday weigh in is almost always a disappointment, and I need to get over it. Or start my weeks on Tuesdays.

Challenge Update: Week 5

Sorry I didn't post an update for week 4. I weighed in last Monday at 206.8. Today I weighed in at 208, which was definitely a bummer, but not only for the obvious reason. Let me explain a little.

According to the plan I'm following, I should have started the "maintenance" phase last Monday. But I thought, "hey, I've been dropping 2 lbs pretty consistently on the 1500 cal. phase. Lets see if I can last another week." Unfortunately that week was completely wasted. I was lazy. I didn't plan. I didn't eat more than 1500 calories in a day (except for Thursday, which was my anniversary and I shared one of those amazing giant chocolate cake balls with italian cream filling. It was called a tortufo, and it was free for our anniversary. Good thing we only go there once a year)  but I wasn't as smart about it as I should have been. If anything I didn't eat enough. I skipped snacks when I was too busy. I didn't drink as much water as I should have. So I was trying to get ahead of the game, and it totally backfired. I wasted that week when I should have been on maintenance, in preparation for beginning the cycle again. Now I have to wait longer before I can really start losing again. Which is a pain in the middle of a competition.

But gaining a pound is really not that big of a setback in the grand scheme of things. Today I got weighed and measured at Curves, and I brought home a progress report. I have lost 14 lbs since I started this blog, but I have lost almost 18 lbs of body fat, which means I have gained 4 lbs of muscle. My body fat percentage has dropped from 40.5% to 34.7%. I have lost at least 2 inches from my bust, waist, abdomen, hips and thighs. And the people around me are starting to notice. I'm starting to notice that my clothes fit differently. I'm able to wear things I haven't worn in a long time. Christmas is in 2 months. I'm hoping that by then, I'll be a few lbs under 200, and I'll never see that number on the scale again.

My favorite pair of jeans

A little more than three years ago I bought this pair of jeans that I LOVED. I loved them because they fit perfectly. They sat on my natural waist, which is where I like my jeans to sit. They were the perfect color, the perfect length (what jeans are ever the perfect length?) and they were so comfortable. And they were a size smaller than I had ever bought jeans for myself. This pair of jeans was so great that I didn't give up wearing them even after they were a little too big. 

A few months after baby #1, I tried them on. I was pretty disappointed because they fit everywhere except the zipper. Because duh, your body changes shape when you have a baby. So they fit my waist and my legs and my butt, but not my hips. Not that that meant I could never wear these jeans again, I just needed to lose a few more pounds. But they wouldn't be the same. They wouldn't be the perfect jeans for me anymore. And I didn't end up losing those few more pounds before I got pregnant again. 

Even after that realization though, those jeans are still a benchmark to shoot for. Yesterday I tried them on, and it was a little harder than I like it to be, but I got them zipped up! I even sat down in them! I wouldn't wear them out of the house yet, but we are getting close folks. And of course, I have hope that there is another perfect pair of jeans out there for me.

Challenge update: week 3

Yesterday began week four of the fitness challenge, and I am down to 208! That means I have lost 10 lbs in 3 weeks! I'm pretty proud of that, and I hope I can keep it up for a while.

Last week was harder than it needed to be. Why? Because I didn't make a plan. I didn't take an hour to write down what I was going to eat 5 meals a day for the week. Why not? Honestly, I just didn't get around to it. And here it is Tuesday, and I haven't done it this week either. Before you get too disappointed, that doesn't mean that I didn't stick to my plan. I did, it was just harder. I had to think about what I was going to eat way ahead of time. I wasn't prepared to cut veggies or put chicken in the crock pot in the morning so that I wouldn't have to worry about it for dinner. I was stressed out about it. But not as stressed as I would have been a couple weeks ago, because I'm so used to cooking and eating the right things now that it's becoming second nature.

The other risky thing I did last week was go to the grocery store without deciding what's for dinner this week. I made a list of basics that I knew I was missing, and hopefully I have most of what I need. I hate the grocery store because I never know exactly how much I'm going to spend. I'm going to hate it even more next month if the government shutdown lasts, because I'm on WIC, which saves me $150 on formula every month. Seriously. I could feed my entire family for $150/month if I tried really hard. And that's what it costs to feed my 4 month old.

Anyway, it's that magical nap time again. It's a little later today, and I hope it lasts. Maybe I can make my meal plan.