Sweet snacks 101

So my hubby enjoys something sweet after a meal. Very typical. I can go either way but when he asks "do we have anything sweet" then I want it too. I have a tendency to not have sweets in the house because I have little ability to say no to sugar. I'm an out of sight out of mind type person on this. Last night there were no sweets so tonight I decided to plan ahead. I grabbed a container of cool whip in my way home to make a key lime pie but was planning to leave the crust off and place them in cupcake papers to freeze. 

Got home....

Not enough Nellie & Joes Key Lime juice (find it at your local grocery, it's fabulous... It's from key west. My Mimai family introduce it to us. The mango key lime is awesome too)

To make the recipe. Bummer...

Hmmm. So I decided to make it with te juice I had and then thought it would be way too sweet. So I then decided to cut down the sweetened condensed milk amount. Then thought about the cream cheese left in the fridge and wah-la. A new recipe was born... Key lime cheesecake cups:

(The pan is clean. It's stained by some chocolate batter)

 The measurements are below and they are nuts because it was how much was left of a few of them. 

1/8 cup Nellie's Key Lime Juice

6 Tbsp low fat sweetened condensed milk

8oz container of cool whip

4 Tbsp of cream cheese. 

Mix all ingredients with a handheld mixture. Use a small ice cream scoop to place in papers. 

Freeze.

I unfortunately did not have access to low fat or fat free cool whip this time so the calories will only reduce once I make that change. 

Here are the facts when divided into 10 cupcake papers:

Each 

101 calories

12 carbs

5.2 fat

1.7 protein

3 weightwatchers points

My blogging thoughts from the big cheese wagon

I haven't been blogging as much lately and I believe it's due to the quick posting ability of Instagram. This past week though I was reminded of how beneficial my blog is to me and how others enjoy reading it and how it may help someone else. A friend of my brothers (who is a friend to me as well) has been following my journey via my blog and Facebook since I trained for my half marathon. He  is on a journey to better health as well. He told me when he met me in person a while back how inspiring my blog and my journey are to him. I was reminded of that by him last weekend when I went for a visit. I talked with him about how there is much more I could be sharing and how sharing and knowing I have readers inspires me to keep going. One specific thing we discussed is how I have kept going through  many disappointments in my journey. Many of those disappointments stemming from medical troubles or mysteries keeping me from losing as I wanted to. 

So. I'd like to try to blog regularly. I typically just blog when something strikes me to write but as I said, I think I'm satisfying those strikes with Instagram (follow me there @findtheskinny). So in addition to strikes I'm going to settle on some regular times and set reminders in my phone to stop what I'm doing and blog. I think it will be good for me on many levels. One of which will be just slowing me down sometimes. 

I went back to my doctor on Wednesday. He is very pleased with my weight loss since April. A little more than 10 lbs. May seem slow but my goodness it's success compared to the 3-4 lbs I'd lost and gained a million times the last three years. Though my blood work was great in April he gave me an option to do it again to check on improvements from being gluten free and having lost 10+ lbs. so of course I said let's do it. Who cares about the needle! So I'm waiting on those results...

I'm traveling this weekend with the marching band. Our favorite trip. I had to pack tons of my own food though. I'll post more about that later. 

I dressed in my run gear because were headed to my alma mater and I wanted to reunite with the famous 2 mile loop on campus. Not sure I'll get to though. I don't want to go alone and so far I haven't found anyone who can go along. Still looking.... Oh and we left 2.5 hours late so the 3 hours of downtime is cut way short. 

For now I'm going to get back to "relaxing" on the big cheese wagon!

Stay tuned!

I am totally seeing dots from taking a selfie with a flash on the bus. *see my findtheskinny cooler?*

I won ! Me - 1 , Sweets - ZERO

So I headed to Zumba after school. I had a huge traffic snafu when I tried an alternate way around a long long line of cars at a left turn lane and ended up having to go back across the entire intersection again.... Hard to explain if you aren't local so anyhow. I was a few min late into Zumba class. 

I was so excited for class tonight as my goal was to increase my heart rate and calorie burn from last time. Very soon into class I did something funny up on my toes or jumping I pulled a calf muscle. I tried for a few minutes to go on but it was getting worse. I had to leave. At that time (within about 15 min) I had burned 125 calories so things were headed in a great direction. My average heart rate was up and so was my max from last time. I was bummed. I headed home to ice it.  

So on the way home I was upset and quite frankly wanted something sweet. Really bad! I'm such an emotional eater. That's when the addiction to sweets gets tough. 

So I had a few thoughts. A single scoop of vanilla ice cream from chic fil a. No... Not a good choice. A vanilla come from sonic. No... Not a good choice. I needed to stop in Kroger maybe a Hershey bar from line... NO NO NO!!! Not a good choice. I made myself resist and made it home. It was a true battle with myself. While at Kroger I purchased some vanilla almond milk to make some fake ice cream. I used my sport bottle blender. I mixed 12 oz almond milk, 6-8 ice cubes, 2 TBSP of PB2 (powdered peanut butter w cocoa) and 2 tsp of butterscotch sugar free pudding mix. It tastes like a butterfinger bar when you mix these things in a protein shake but I added the ice and put it off into the freezer to make fake ice cream. (No protein powder of any type)

It is super good! (Maybe less ice next time)

I divided all I made into four servings approx 1/2 cup each. 

Weight Watchers it is 1 point for a serving

Calorie counters. Each serving is 41 calories. (Only 1.5 g fat)

For me this was a huge success! I beat the craving to eat sweets because I was frustrated/ upset. I've iced my calf and its pretty sore. I will see what tomorrow brings. 

I helped get a running group together at work and tomorrow is a running day I sure hope I'm able to run tomorrow! 

Woohoo!

So I had a great weigh in on Wednesday losing 2 lbs landing me at 191.8. This morning I hopped on the scales for a midweek weigh in. 189.8!!!! That's right! Two more lbs and I broke the 190s. Goodbye 190s!

My exercise schedule for the week didn't work out as well as I wanted because of adjusting to new routines and things popping up. Hoping this week will be better for that. I'm just so stinkin excited for 189.8!!! Wanted to share really quickly! 

Back to Routine equals New Goals

This week school starts and routine returns. I've already picked up a new habit suggested by my cardiologist. That habit is eating not a quick breakfast in the car but setting down for breakfast at home with lean protein each day before work. I began that habit during marching band camp. I pre cooked gluten free biscuits and pancakes to last a few weeks. I also pre cooked chicken/pork sausage links. So each morning it took 1 min to warm EITHER one biscuit OR two pancakes in the microwave with a sausage link and cook one egg at the same time in the skillet. Super easy. Some mornings I ate it on the back porch while the dogs ran. (Multitasking!)

Next goal : get my exercise routine in check! My fantastic dr gave me a target heart rate zone to try for three months in addition to removing gluten. Well I do better with one big goal at a time. So now that I'm successfully eating gluten free I'm ready to hit the exercise hard. I'm going to purchase my polar heart monitor soon. Sunday night I sat down and planned out an exercise schedule for the week. It is as follows: 

Wednesday - Zumba

Thursday - Spin Class (fairly new to me)

Friday - Zumba

I decided that each week I'll set my schedule on Sunday when I plan the rest of my tasks out for the week. My "big rocks" for any 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fans out there!

I'm starting with classes. While I'm working on those I'm going to check back into some of my old routines I did with trainers as well as try to find a trainer again to use up the rest of my trainer sessions and see if its something I want to do again. 

I know I said I'm best at one big goal at a time but I think this one goes hand in hand with my exercise routine. It's to clean up my eating. 

Tonight I was watching Extreme Weightloss with Chris Powell. He ate for a day as his client used to eat and he was completely ill from eating restaurant food. Now I am super careful about restaurant food with my gluten free diet these days. (But that doesn't make gluten free restaurant food ok!) However, his experiment really struck me.  He said he has a treat once a week and its usually tortilla chips or frozen yogurt. Seriously! Seriously! How many of us consider those treats and not just foods that aren't "too many points" or they fit into our calories etc. 

My treats usually consist of Hersey's chocolate or ice cream and truthfully happen 2-3 times a week. Not ok. 

I know some about clean eating but over the next few months I will be figuring it out even more. I've been gluten free for 3 months and I've lost about 10 lbs which my cardiologist was super excited about. Next I'm going to settle back into my exercise routine and clean up my diet and then in 3 more months make that appointment with my doctor to see how it's gone with both a gluten free AND clean diet as well as steady exercise. 

I need encouragement though. I'm going to be posting more often on here as we'll as my Instagram/twitter accts. mostly food / exercise pics there. If you don't follow me there... both places you can find me @findtheskinny go follow me! My blog readers and Instagram/twitter followers truly keep me accountable and motivated. Thank you!

Tomorrow is weigh in day. I think I will also attempt to take measurements in the morning if I can find my measure tape without making myself run late. 

So here's to new goals an being back in a routine!

More water in Florida in more ways than one!

So when you head to Florida for vacation and you're like my husband and I you figure out how to spend as much time as possible at the beach. We successfully spent 6 days out of our 7 at the beach. The water, sand, sun, dolphins, boogie boards, ocean side dining, tunes at our beach chairs, seaweed in our hair, etc all made it just what we wanted it to be. Relaxing and rejuvenating. We also happen to get nice tans and our hair turned a lighter shade of blonde from our normal. We had all the ocean water and experience we could need or want. 

Something else came with it as well. Plenty of water consumption. Every day we filled 4 Nalgene bottles (2 for each of us = 64oz of water each) That means outside of my beach water I needed 16 more ounces to meet my 80 oz a day. No problem a cup with my thyroid med in the am and a cup with my heart med at bedtime. Easy peasy!

Well it turns out that I still did t quite make 80oz a day but came much closer than I have the last few weeks at home. My husband feels that it is due to sweating more on the beach. I agree but I also think it just goes with the overall refreshing effect the beach has. So in general going to the beach help increase my water intake closer to my daily goals. 

My current water goal is 80oz a day. I use the plantnanny app (thanks to LindseyLosingIt from Instagram sharing her experience with it) to track my water consumption. It's like a modern day Tomagochi (remember those? I may have spelled it incorrectly). I plant a plant and I have to water it to make it grow. In my last few months I've grown plants and planted them in my garden and ice also killed plants. But anyhow. I'm now growing a Cactus that I named Spike. It all seems silly but it actually helps. 

When I tell plant nanny that Im active and 193 lbs it requires 134 ounces of water a day. I just don't feel that is necessary for me. So I manipulated the numbers down to 100oz because I recently read about dividing your weight in half and drinking that many ounces. That was when I was still 199ish. I found with 100 oz that I spent an excessive amount if time in the bathroom. So I dropped down to 80oz and it seems to work well for me. I plan to ask my doctor at my July appt what he suggests in this area. But for now I've lied to Plant nanny and told it I weigh 155lbs and Im sedentary to get it to require 80oz of water. 

So I've attached a few graphs along the way to show how inconsistent I have been at home and how much more successful I was at the beach. This week is the top graph. (The last Saturday is today and is only halfway complete as I have half a day left) Now my goal is to continue the good habits I formed this week once I return home. I'm wondering how these good habits along with lots of fresh local foods this week will affect my weigh in in the morning. I'm anxious about that. 

Downward trend... Who knew?

So I weigh in weekly as most people (especially us weightwatchers) do. Each week I have three outcome options: loss, gain, or stay the same. Each week I hope for a loss and settle for staying the same but despise gains. Normal right?

I often feel agitated by the ups and downs. Why can't it all be downs?. I told my husband the other day that if I had never gained back any pounds I've lost in my lifetime that I would have lost more weight than I actually weigh! I'm sure most people fit that description. 

So I recently noticed a trend and its easy to spot in my weight tracker graph. It's two low "peaks" where I had significant losses with a significant gain in the middle. Now this is pretty personal and I don't mind that just a warning. 

With PCOS and endometriosis both I must be on a hormonal birth control. No option. Well I went off the prescription for a week while I was on another medication that really didn't mix well with it. Well that week I lost 5-6 lbs. wow! So when I started back I maintained for one week and then gained 5 lbs. I was not happy. I felt that the prescription was maybe holding back my weightloss progress which I needed in order to control the PCOS. 

So I called and made an appointment with my doctor (OBGYN) and over the next week took a risk and stayed off the medication to see what happened. I lost 3.4 lbs. of course I did!

I went to the appointment yesterday and as always my dr was amazing and talked and listened and he said that the weight loss was likely water that the hormones make your body hold onto and the loss would likely stop/ level off if I stayed off the medicine. I cannot stay off the medicine for medical purposes so we had to chose something else. So we chose to change the type of medicine that Im on. I'm pleased with our decision and he said that a change could be beneficial. 

So next ...

He said. I do want you to notice something. He had written my weights down from the last four appointments including yesterday. They we're :

203 (Dec ish)

200 (Jan ish)

198 (March ish)

193 (June 21)

So he said you've actually lost 10 lbs (5% of my weight) since we first determined you have PCOS and began discussing your weightloss. I hadn't really noticed that downward trend. So I said look at my weight watchers graph with me. I did the landscape view where it goes back 24 weeks and ,by George, there was the downward trend. Now it did look like a mountain range but overall it's going down. I was excited. 

I guess I get so caught up in the weekly that I lose sight of where I'm going. He told me to keep it up and it would get easier as I lose to lose more (hormonal lay due to PCOS)

I felt encouraged when I walked away yesterday. 

I write this post or a few reasons:

1. To encourage others to advocate for themselves and talk openly with their doctors about how their medications affect them. 

2. To remind others, as my doctor reminded me, to look at the overall not just the right now. It's about losing in a healthy way. Not losing fast. In the long run losing slow will be more permanent. 

I know this post was personal and I hope you don't mind. I need some feedback though. As you may notice my weight watchers app lists 200 as my starting weight because it's what I weighed the day I started but from the time my doctor and I talked and I headed in the glutenfree/weightwatchers direction I was 203. So I'm thinking if changing my ww starting weight to match. I have 203 as my start weight on myfitnesspal and would kinda like to see it all match. Opinions?