What's to come...

Well, hello! I previously had a blog with a friend who was doing WW too, but she had many life changes that put that on hold. In the couple of months since that occurred, I have often thought, "I should blog that," when I had a random thought or a particularly good recipe, or needed to share my struggles. But, I didn't feel right being the only one posting on a partner blog. So, voila! I won't be posting anything good here tonight, so just take some time catch up on the old posts (copied from the partner blog) while you're here. Look for my stats, more recipes, more tips, and the ups and downs of my weight loss journey coming soon. I am currently at 35 pounds lost, so am over 1/3 of the way to my goal! See ya soon!

The 25 Milestone--Gone!

Originally from 6/3 on DMT

Remember this picture? It's of me with my men a few months before I started WW.

Do you know who this is? It's me, yesterday!

I don't know if you see a big difference or not, but I sure did, and was pretty suprised! I planned to take an actual picture of me at my 25 milestones, but skipped 25, so had to do a 26 pic!

Jack Bauer

5/26 from DMT

I love the show 24, so even though I was hoping to reach 25 lb. lost this week, I was excited to be able to update my facebook picture with a 24 theme. :) I'm at 24.8, so almost 25 lb! How exciting! Here's something to stare at:

Pizza Pizza!

Originally posted on 5/12 on DMT

So, quick update, I gained a pound. Not so great. But, I saw it coming. Today I still have 7 left, even with eating out for lunch (work provided, but I ate smart) but think I'll only eat 2 of them. I know that I "should" eat my points, but I'm going to a conference and therefore eating out for dinner Thursday, and all three meals on Friday. So, even though you don't stockpile points on WW, I'm going to try! That's the bonus of doing it "off the record." I can make my own rules, and still lose weight. Errr...something like that. *lol*

So, a recipe for you, inspired by the dinner I fixed for my family tonight. The bonus is it doesn't make a lot of dishes!

Pita Pizzas
-Find your favorite kind of Pita bread. My Walmart deli section has some amazing "flax" ones that are "0" points for 1 pita, so I count them as "1" each since I ate 3.
-Top with pizza sauce, bbq sauce, ketchup/mustard, whatever floats your boat for sauce.
-Top with whatever meat or veggies you would like.
-Top with low fat cheese, whichever flavor you like.
-Bake until done, or be cool like me and use your Presto Pizza Pizzazz (I really could NOT live without mine). It took 8 minutes on that.

Here's how I actually made mine:
Pizza #1--Cheeseburger
1 Pita bread, topped with a big squirt of ketchup and a little squirt of mustard, then swirled around like pizza sauce. I then put 1/4 of a leftover hamburger from grilling on Sunday on it (broken up), thinly sliced dill pickles, and onion. I topped it with 1/4 c. ff cheddar cheese. It was 4 points of amazingness for the whole thing.

Pizza #2--Faux Margherita
1 Pita bread, topped with pizza sauce from a jar, swirled over the bread. I then topped it with spinach leaves (instead of basil--thus the "faux"), chopped tomato, and garlic salt. I then cut up one round of Baybel cheese and scattered it on top. This was another 3 points of amazingness...true amazingness, for the whole thing.

Pizza #3--BBQ "Chicken" Pizza
1 Pita bread, topped with BBQ sauce, swirled over the bread. I then topped it with about 1/2 oz. turkey breast (what I had on hand--obviously not chicken), onion, tomato, and 1/4 c. ff cheddar. This was again, true amazingness, for 3 pt.

So, I had 3 personal sized pizzas for 10 points. Can you belive that? The average pizza slice is at least 4 points, so I think I made a WW deal! And, as I said, not too many dishes!

Try your own variation and let me know what it was!

How to not lose weight...

Originally posted on DMT 5/10/09

So, if you want to make sure you don't lose weight, I have a couple of tips for you.

1) Eat out. A lot.
2) Have holidays.

I don't know the effects, if any, of my last few days yet (weigh in is Tuesday), but I can say I'm not really looking forward to weigh in. I hope I have lost something, though I doubt it will be as good as the last couple of weeks (3 lb. and 1.9 lb.). The reason, I ate out for dinner on Wednesday (pizza), lunch (Grilled KFC) and dinner (Arby's) on Thursday, had a Krispy Kreme at breakfast at work (normally I resist), ate out for lunch (Chinese) and dinner (La Gondola) on Friday, and for dinner (Don Panchito) yesterday. I didn't exactly evaluate what I ate for WW points either. And then, today is a holiday (Mother's Day), so I had wonderful french toast cooked for me for breakfast, and we're cooking out meat, meat, and more meat for dinner. I hope to stick with a small steak and shrimp though, so as not to totally blow it! :)

Tune in Tuesday to see what this has cost me. Yikes! Thankfully my life isn't usually this luxurious (aka: busy), so I usually do more home cooking and control the points accordingly!

Crazy Good Pasta Dish Recipe

Orig. posted on DMT 4/29

I didn't post a recipe yesterday, but noted that I may do one soon. Well, today is the day! I made up a dish for dinner, and it was so fabulous that I wanted to share it! It doesn't have a name...leave a comment with what you think we could call it! Here it is:

Unnamed Pasta Dish

4 flavored Chicken Sausages, Cooked and Sliced (I used spinach/asiago from Sam's)
1 Jar Roasted Red Peppers, Drained and Sliced
1/2 bag fresh spinach leaves
1 tsp. dried minced garlic (or 2-3 fresh cloves minced)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp. dried basil
1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 c. Fat Free Balsamic Vinegar salad dressing
Salt & Pepper to taste
1 box Penne Pasta (Ronzoni Smart Taste)

Cook pasta until al dente. In the meantime, saute sausage, red peppers, spinach leaves, garlic, tomato, salt, pepper, and basil together until spinach is wilted. When the pasta is done cooking, drain it, put back in pan, and then toss it with the balsamic dressing. Add the sauteed mixture and stir. Top with Parmesan cheese. This made 10 cups @ 3 points per cup.

My husband and I both ate 3 cups. If you like artichokes they would be really good in this, but my husband doesn't, so I didn't. Adjust points accordingly if you add them, of course. We grilled out on Sunday, so I had Bill grill the sausages then and just reheated them in the saute tonight. They don't have to be grilled. That's the reason that I said use 4, when they come in 5 packs--we split one the night we grilled. :)

Let me know if you try it out or find a great tweak for it!

Vacation and a Birthday!

Originally posted 4/28 on DMT

Well hello! I was planning for a much different post today...but my weigh in this morning was minus three pounds! I was so surprised, since it was my birthday this week, and I did indulge a little.

Since I last wrote I went on vacation. My goal for the vacation was just to not gain weight. A day or two into that, I realized that may not happen. It was harder than I thought, for many reasons like the fact that I have to have caffeine in the morning, which I currently fulfill with iced tea. But, I didn't have that on vacation, so soda it was. In addition, I didn't have spray butter, or ff sour cream and mayo, etc. So much eating out was bound to be trouble...and it was! I weighed before leaving for vacation and when I returned...4 pounds gained! But, thankfully it must have been a lot of water weight, because by my real weigh in, I was down a pound from the previous weigh in two weeks prior.

So, now I am at 20.8 lb. lost since I started 2/11. I'm headed to the doctor this morning, and am anxious to see the difference on their scale, since my last visit was prior to WW, but I gave up soda before joining WW. I just wonder what I'll see!

I would like to share some tips or a recipe, but have to go get in the shower! Perhaps a little later! :)

Update!

Originally posted 4/8 on DMT

On Tuesday's weigh in I lost 1 pound even, so I'm now at 16.8! My hubby is at 20.2! Woo Hoo! We're headed to visit my mom in Tennessee Friday-Thursday, so my goal for that time period is TO NOT GAIN! I'm going to weigh in on Friday and Friday (but not count that in my stats) just to see what the week does to me. I may enjoy a treat or two, but overall am going to try to be sensible and use my tools that I've learned. Oh, and did I mention it will be my first "girly" time on WW? We'll see how that goes too! Sorry if that was TMI!

I've been thinking more about blogging daily a list of what I've eaten. Does that interest you?

See you when I get back from Tennessee! Oh, here's a pic from today...do I look 16.8 lb. lighter (ignore my windswept hairdo)? :)

Stuff I love & Donut Hole Recipe

Originally posted 3/29/09 on DMT

First, let me think about some things I've had none to very little of since I started WW on February 17th.

Real hamburger or beef products. I've been eating mostly 97% fat free turkey which is amazingly close to beefy tasting once it absorbs the flavors you're cooking with. I've also been tapping back to my vegetarian roots (was for 6 years) and eating veggie burgers. I was really craving a real burger yesterday and had a double quarter pounder without cheese from McDonalds. I saved my points for it, and put fat free cheese on it at home. It was so good! Next I want a diner burger, but think we'll just make those with turkey burger at home.

Real butter or margarine, full fat sour cream, mayo, and cream cheese. I am in LOVE with Parkay's butter spray, and am tolerating the ff mayo and sour cream. I used it to make taco dip last weekend and it was yummy! However, I am totally put off by the sweet flavor of ff mayo. Any ideas?

Full fat cheese. I am suprisingly pleased with the reduced fat and fat free version of cheese, as long as I'm not trying to eat it all by itself.

94% fat free popcorn. This is a staple. It is 1 point for the whole bag! And, the bonus is that it doesn't have the greasy finger problem like typical popcorn so it's fine to eat at work while you're typing and working with paperwork. Sometimes at home I make it extra special and spray the above mentioned butter spray on it and then put extra salt on it--yum! But, without the spray don't try to put extra salt or seasonings on it, it won't stick!

Real chips. I've been almost exclusively baked, and that's going better than I had hoped.

Sugar. Splenda for me! Lovin it! You can even order Unsweetened tea at McD and ask for Splenda Packets.

And another product I love is Ronzoni Smart Taste Pasta. It has tons of fiber and is white, even though it is made of wheat. I'm not a big fan of wheat pasta, but this isn't wheaty and tastes exactly the same. 3 pt. for 1 c. Which is a lot when it's spread out on your plate. YUM!

Ranch Dressing. I detest reduced fat or fat free ranch because of that weird taste that is in all reduced dressings. Any good picks here? I've been eating it, but would honestly eat more salads if I found one I loved.

I'm eating tons more veggies and fruit than before too. Oh, and oatmeal and yogurt which I've grown to love and just was okay with before.

There are more, but these are the main things sticking out in my mind. These are all pleasing alternatives. Before I went WW I ate at McD for breakfast just about every day! Youch!

What are your awesome products you couldn't live without in your weight loss journey?


Okay, now for the recipe. I stumbled across this the other day on recipezaar.com (thank them for the picture) tweaked it just a bit and made it for breakfast today. They were YUMMY! More muffin looking than hole looking, but yum yum still. With the baking mix I used (I just had pancake mix on hand), it was .5 pt. each. Be sure to calculate it with your mix if you make them.

Healthy Donut Holes

Ingredients

• 1 cup + 2 T Bisquick reduced-fat baking mix or pancake mix
  
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 egg (or equivalent in egg substitute--which is what I used)
• 2/3 cup skim milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons (sugar substitute) for shaking
  
• 1/2 teaspoon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Spray a 12 hole mini muffin pan with butter flavored cooking spray.
3. In a medium bowl, combine baking mix, 1/4 cup Splenda and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
4. Add egg, skim milk and vanilla extract.
5. Mix well to combine (my batter was runny).
6. Drop by spoonfuls into prepared muffin pan.
7. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes.
8. Remove balls from pan (I had to use a spoon to dig them out)
   
9. In a ziploc plastic bag, combine sugar coating ingredients and place warm donut balls in 2 or 3 at a time and shake to coat.

I doubled the recipe and it made 36 holes. I ate 12. Yipes! But, since I just had salad for lunch it worked. I look forward to having some leftovers with yogurt in the morning for breakfast on my way to work. Let me know if you try to make them!

Tips!

Originally posted 3/26/09 (recipe edited out, as I've found something better) on DMT

If you've read my facebook, you'll have already seen these. But, for others, I wanted to share them too, and cheat on having to think today. :)

--I was making 2 pt. packs of the bags of baked chips we had opened, and kept snacking, so had to end up giving myself 2 points. I had read somewhere to chew gum while cooking so you weren't tempted to do this. That would've been smart.

--For dinner recently we had spinach and asiago stuffed chicken sausages. We found these at Sam's Club. They're big sausages for only 3 points each, and really yummy! I don't remember exactly how much we paid for them, but there were three packages of 5. Sometimes I don't like a lot of spinach, but these really aren't too spinachy.

--Hostess 100 Calorie Cupcakes are only 1 point per pack! Holey Moley! I read this somewhere and had to check it out myself at Walmart. Yup! I've been craving a cupcake so this will be great--they have 4 flavors.

Meet Lacey!

Originally posted on Double Muffin Tops (old blog) on 3/25/09

I am in my sixth week of unofficially doing WW. I say unofficially because I'm not actually a member, but I sure am giving them a lot of press while doing it! In the five weigh-ins I've had I've lost a total of 13 pounds: 7 the first week, 4 the second, 1 the third, then 1/2 on the fourth, and .8 on the fifth. So, I'm calling it lucky 13, even though it doesn't add up neatly that way. At first I didn't keep track of the point whatever.

WW has been a lot easier than I had thought it would be, though I have had my weak days and strong days.


This is me and my family. My husband is on this journey too. I'll say this is my "before" picture.