3/1/12 247.2
Pounds lost in 2012: 68
Pounds lost in 2013: 2
Pounds lost in January: gained .8
Pounds lost in February: 0
3/1 178.0
3/8 178.0
Sooo frustrating. However, as many sacrifices as I made, this week was easier, for SURE. I found more and more meals that were not only "legal" but enjoyable, things I might never have tried if I hadn't been forced to break out of my mold of the same old things. Some of those things:
1. Salmon! I've always been scared of cooking fish, but I baked a big beautiful salmon this week that didn't even need any butter.
2. This thing right here:
3. Brown rice, black beans and fat-free mozzarella cheese.
And then there are my new favorites from last week, like light bagels and fruit smoothies. I know these are not miraculous discoveries and they've been a part of a lot of people's healthy food rotation for ages, but I'm a creature of habit and it took a real shakeup to get me trying new things. So I have Simple Start to thank for that!
I'm proud of how I adapted my behavior during this second week as well. There were several occasions when I accidentally cooked too much food (you know how a recipe starts small but kinda gets away from you as far as volume goes?), and kinda gleefully thought "And I can have ALL of this!"... followed by "Do I need all of it, though?" and most of the time the answer was no. I put the leftovers in a dish and had the rest of it for another meal. I didn't eat popcorn every night- Chris shared a bag with me one night, and that was it. Night time snacking was mostly just fruit!
But however much I plan to hang on to some of these new healthy habits, I'm done with Simple Start for now.
First of all- it didn't work for my body. You'd think putting so many healthy foods (and this week, reasonable portions of them!) into my diet would make a big impact, but here I am, exactly the same. Maybe the results of the good choices I made will show up next week, but I would say that for such a dramatic change, this result is not acceptable.
Also, I'm with Chris Traeger from Parks and Rec when he says ""I don’t know if you know this, but things with fat in them taste way better than things without fat.”
It's also expensive to eat this way! I made whole wheat pasta with 98% lean ground beef, and it cost twice as much and tasted half as good as my normal spaghetti recipe. I kept lots of fresh fruit and vegetables on hand, and while I enjoyed it (for some reason, the more fresh produce I have in my kitchen, the more I feel like an adult who has it all together!), it's costly. I plan to keep that up as much as I can, though.
Another major drawback is it's just not convenient- almost everything I ate this week involved at least a little bit of prep and cleanup, there's not much that could be considered "grab and go", and I really like to grab and go. There's nothing really enjoyable that I can get at a drive-through, and restaurants aren't much better.
So overall, I plan to incorporate some of these new healthy meals into my eating plan, counting points for them. What's nice too is that Simple Start can be done one day at a time- I can wake up any morning I want and say "I don't feel like counting points, so I'll do Simple Start today". So I'm glad to have had this experience!
But I'm also going to be glad to enjoy a little butter on my light bagel and a little ice cream before bed. So there's that!