Just Keep Swimming...

Last week I gained .2 at Weight Watchers. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it was only my second gain since I started. The gain was a result of my not tracking my points and a very teenager like attitude of "I want to eat what I want, when I want, and in the amounts I want." Since I've been doing Weight Watchers for so long, this is not as bad as it could be. Last weekend I was remembering what it was like to eat whatever the hell I wanted. Fondly remembering. Sometimes I just want to go get a hamburger and fries (and not the happy meal size). And then follow that up with a big cup of frozen custard. And maybe some pizza. Or a donut. But only from the donut place across the street from the library - where I work!! But I don't - well, usually I don't. Or if I do the hamburger just isn't very good after the first few bites, or the french fries are cold, and I wonder why I wanted them in the first place. (I have to say though, the donuts are always worth it).

On Saturday I went to buy some new clothes - and was very pleasantly surprised to find size 14s were loose and I could squeeze into a size 12. I started out this journey a size 18/20. So I know it's working, slowly but surely, and there are results worth not getting the hamburger. On Sunday I started counting my points again and getting back on track.

My point is there are always times when I want what I shouldn't have. There are always times when I'm tired of doing the work and want to just say "f*** it" and give up. And sometimes I do - for a little while. But I always manage to get back on track and keep moving forward. That's what matters - not the fall, but the getting back up again.

My daughter, the vegetarian

My daughter is 4 years old. A few months ago she started asking me questions about where the meat we eat comes from. I always want to be as honest as possible with my children, so I told her. We would be eating dinner and she would ask, "What animal does this come from?" and I would tell her - a chicken, or a cow, or a pig. Then one day she tells me "Mama, I don't want to eat animals anymore. I don't want animals to be killed because I am eating them." So I explained to her that many people feel this way and they are called vegetarians. She was thrilled to find out there were other people in the world who felt the same way she did and that she had a name for it now. (In my head, I was thinking - uh-oh maybe I shouldn't have been so honest...). 

She has not eaten meat for 2 months now. Not even Chik-Fil-A or McDonalds. I am impressed with her determination to stick with her beliefs at the age of 4! But sometimes it can be hard to find recipes to make everyone happy. Of course my son wants to eat nothing but meat. I don't want to cook separate meals for her, so I have to either cook a vegetarian recipe everyone will eat, or cook a recipe that will allow the meat to be added separately. Oh, and it has to be points plus friendly for me. Here's a  vegetarian egg casserole that was successful in making everyone happy. Which I only need to try and do every day...

Vegetarian Egg Casserole 

(5 points plus value per serving)

Ingredients

	6 oz bread stuffing dry mix
	1 cup shredded reduced-fat Mexican-style cheese
	2 cups low-fat milk
	1 can cream of mushroom soup
	6 large eggs
	1/4 cup uncooked onions
	1/2 cup uncooked broccoli
	1/2 cup red bell pepper
	1 tsp garlic salt
	1 tsp Italian seasoning
	12 oz Boca Meatless Ground Crumbles

Instructions

• Heat oven to 350. Spray a 13x9 pan with cooking spray. Add stuffing mix, boca crumbles, veggies and cheese. Mix remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour over ingredients in the pan. Cook uncovered for 50 minutes. Let sit a few minutes before serving. Note: you can add other veggies to this dish, whatever you have on hand!
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Gettin' jiggly with it

I went to see my doctor a few weeks ago (during which there was a conversation that is a post all in itself to be shared at another time) and my doctor recommended that I add exercise to my routine that would get my heart rate up - evidently she has not been to any of my yoga classes. She suggested I try Zumba. I found a class right after work on Tuesdays, so I thought I would try it out today. Whoa. I am really, really uncoordinated. It was pretty comical - the entire class would all be moving to the right, but I would be moving to the left. Everyone's left arm in the air... and my right arm in the air. Or I would just sway as I tried to figure out what the hell everyone else was doing. There was LOTS of jumping and bouncing. I may have lost 35 pounds, but I still have many jiggly parts. Actually, most of my parts are still pretty jiggly. The jiggly parts were not happy about being jiggled around vigorously for an hour. I left the class with no desire to ever go back.

Then when I got home I looked up the activity points value for an hour of aerobic exercise. (Activity points can be traded for food points in Weight Watchers). My hour of uncoordinated jiggly misery was worth 12 points! That's like an extra meal! 3 extra snacks! A good sized piece of cake! Maybe that hour wasn't so bad...

Later on this evening after Zumba my daughter wanted to have a "dance party." I got my tired butt up off the couch and ended up dancing with my kids for almost an hour. I didn't get tired or need to sit down. I laughed with them, shook my bootie with them, and sang off-key with them. I don't think I have ever played with them at such a high energy level for so long. Before I put them to bed, my daughter asked "Mama, can we do this every night?"

Damn. Looks like I'm going back to Zumba. Hopefully the jiggly parts will become less jiggly if I go on a regular basis.

The beginning of the Journey

I didn't start out this year planning to lose this weight. I lost quite a bit after the birth of my son two years ago just by breastfeeding him until he was 15 months. He weaned himself and the pounds started creeping back on. I started to notice my clothes were getting tight...and then my clothes didn't fit. In the time period from last July to January 2012 I gained about 20 pounds. I was kind of ambivalent about the gain. I had been heavy my whole life, dieted on and off my whole life, lost and regained the same 40 pounds over and over again. So this was the pattern I lived - nothing new.

My mom asked me to go back to Weight Watchers with her in January 2012. We had been members before and lost weight for a while, but didn't stick with it. I didn't want to go. I wasn't really interested in counting points. I didn't want to do the work. I didn't want to look at my weight issue and deal with it. But I went to support my mom. And I started losing weight - more than 10 pounds in the first few weeks.

I'm not sure I can pinpoint when it clicked for me. It's weird but I think my attitude of not really caring was a good thing at first. I wasn't too hard on myself if I didn't lose much - it just wasn't that big of a deal. I was just there supporting my mom, and if I lost some weight too that would be cool. I started losing more weight, and feeling better. My clothes fit better and then became too big. I started doing yoga several times a week. And all of a sudden I was the one who was serious about following the program and losing the weight.

Maybe I didn't expect results and so didn't want to get my hopes up too high. But when I did get results I started to hope. I started to believe I could actually do this. I've spent my whole life failing at losing this weight, but I didn't have to stay in this pattern of behavior.

I think the key this time is about my attitude towards myself. If I don't lose weight one week, or don't lose much weight, or even gain weight, I don't beat myself up about it. Next week is a new week. This is a lifetime coming and it's not going to happen overnight. And I'm not perfect. I still eat a spoonful of peanut butter right out of the jar sometimes. But that's OK. I've finally let go of my guilt about eating and cut myself some slack.

I had a moment the other day when I saw a picture of myself and I was like - "wait, is that me?" - wow. What a moment.

February 2012 - In Vegas with my girlfriends

In June on vacation with family - ignore the no makeup!!

Shopping with coupons

I have a love/hate relationship with couponing. I love saving money. I hate doing all the work to prepare for a shopping trip. Couponing is incredibly frustrating: you can't find a coupon, or you can't print a coupon, or they won't take the coupon, or it's not for the exact thing you thought it was. Not to mention I'm really horrible with math. So I go through phases where I do all the work and save lots of money and build up a little stockpile...and then I get tired of messing with it all and quit for a few months. Then I start paying full price for stuff I know I could get for free or very little and I go back to the couponing. Anyway, currently I am in a couponing phase. Today I went to CVS (my favorite couponing store), Target (my second favorite couponing store) and Walgreens (my most hated couponing store - there's nothing more confusing than couponing at Walgreens) and I saved 69% on mostly stuff we will actually use. Not bad. But any couponing website or person who says you should only spend an hour or even a few hours a week on preparing for your shopping trips is LYING.

The skinny on "The Skinny Roll"

My focus for this blog is the changes I have been going through in the past year, in particular my weight loss journey. I hope to expand it to include posts on cooking, parenting, yoga, and saving money, but my original idea was a blog about weight loss.

So - why "The Skinny Roll?"

My kids have always loved my fat roll. The big one, the one I hate with a passion, right around my middle. The one that prevents me from wearing anything that ties around the middle or has a belt. The one that makes me want to buy shirts that are too big. That fat roll.

A picture from last summer of the fat roll
taken by my 4 year old photographer.

My kids like to play with the fat roll - it's kinda like play-doh, all squishy and soft. They pat it, squish it with their little hands, lay on it, form it into different fat roll shapes, knead it like the cat (the cat loves it too for this very reason). My son went through a phase when he wanted to lay his head on it every morning for a little while. Of course, he had to lift up my shirt and have full access to the fat roll. I think it was some warm memory he had leftover from breastfeeding that he associated with the fat roll.

Sometimes I get annoyed when they want to play with the fat roll. They squeeze or pat too hard, or poke it like I'm the Pillsbury dough boy (they are 4 and 2, so they don't realize why that might be funny - or not funny). So the other day my daughter was patting on my fat roll. I didn't feel like being patted, so I jokingly asked her to quit messing with my fat roll. She said "Mommy you don't have a fat roll anymore - now it's a skinny roll!" Ahh, out of the mouths of babes. It made my day. Maybe even my week.

Watching that fat roll get smaller and smaller has been one of the best things in my weight loss journey. And having my daughter rename it changed the way I feel about the part of my body I hated the most.