Weigh-In and a Weird (and Kinda Sad) Milestone

I have better news to report this week!

Starting Weight: 290.3
Last Week: 288.8
This Week: 286.0
Net Loss: - 2.8
Loss-to-Date: 4.3

Needless to say I'm ecstatic about this! Finally, my hard work is actually paying off. I did it right this week and the scale shows it. 2.8 is a huge one-week number for me, too. Also of note this week, Derek and I went and had bloodwork done. Hopefully soon, I'll have some answers that will help me get everything under control and keep losing steadily.

I attribute most of my success this week to one thing that's actually kinda rare for Derek and I...keep reading for a post I prepared earlier in the week! But first, a really random photo of me:

At my friend Michelle's wedding, July 4, 2010. Don't ask, I have no idea.
I just kinda dig the picture. Teehee.

--------------------//--------------------


So, this is going to sound pretty lame, but Derek and I did something major this week that we rarely ever manage to accomplish.

We didn't eat out at all this week!

No, seriously, this is a big deal. Stop laughing.

Here's the deal. Derek and I are had been lazy. A lot. We'd come home from work tired and unmotivated so instead of preparing a nice, homecooked, healthy meal, we'd go out. Sometimes to a decent restaurant, which is bad enough as it is, but usually to someplace fast -- Taco Bell, McD's, etc. Not only were these ridiculously terrible decisions nutritionally speaking, but they wrought havoc on our wallet.

And then, on top of that, since we weren't cooking dinner in the evening, we didn't have leftovers to bring to lunch the next day. Add to that the fact that we don't usually keep any quick lunches on hand, like frozen meals or whatever, and the fact that we are usually too lazy in the morning to make sandwiches or put anything together, and you know what that means: buying lunch too!

But not this week! We have cooked (or at least prepared -- I don't know if you can call a BLT "cooking") dinner every night this week. We saved leftovers for lunch every day, and even though last night we made tacos and didn't have enough leftover for lunches, we still made sandwiches for today so we wouldn't have to cave in and go out.

This sounds trivial, I know, but this is really a big deal for us and I'm really proud. We made a rule that we're only allowed to eat out on weekends, and that's only because date night is on Saturday (though we do occasionally cook meals for date night at home), and usually we're so busy during the day on weekends that around lunch time we're nowhere near home to fix something. But we've stopped buying breakfasts on weekends (it had been a "tradition" to stop at Einstein Bagels for breakfast before we hit the grocery store on Saturday mornings), and weekend lunches, if we're not home, are typically something healthy-ish like Subway or Panera. We're trying to limit our dining out for dinner to either date nights or other social occasions (for example, recently we went out to dinner to celebrate my best friend's husbands birthday; this coming week we're having a triple date to our favorite local Japanese restaurant. Side note: wish me luck on that because finding something healthy in all the oil-laden deliciousness is going to be a challenge!), which is helping us to actually appreciate eating out and not look at it as an every day occasion. Eating at a favorite restaurant or something new and fun with Derek and any combination of my favorite people is worth it, just as long as it doesn't become habit!

I should add the caveat that we've accomplished this before, and then we get all excited about how we've been cooking and eating better and then we go celebrate with a trip out to dinner, but not this time. We're doing it right.

And to what do I owe our success? Three things. (Write these down. They're genius, I tell you! Okay, one is a little common sense, but bear with me!)

1) A meal plan. Every week I sit down and create a plan for dinners for the week by going through my favorite recipe websites and picking things I'd like to try, or by deciding what we haven't had in a while or that I've got a particular craving for. Then, I use that meal plan to generate the core of my grocery list, and then add in anything else we're running low on, as well as healthy snacks, breakfast items, and occasionally a back-up plan. This means that on any random night of the week, I don't have to wonder what I'm going to fix because it was already decided, and the items are already purchased. I have no excuse.

2) Really, really good websites. My favorite at the moment? SkinnyTaste. Oh, Em, Gee, this blog is amazing. No, seriously. I'll wait while you go check it out. *whistles* Okay, you're back? Good. So. The woman who writes it, Gina Homolka, has a fantastic knack for creating/altering recipes for all of the foods we know and love, but making them healthy. A lot of whole, fresh ingredients, very little preservatives or processed food, and a LOT of taste. Seriously, my meal plans for the past couple weeks have been coming almost solely from this blog and I have yet to find a recipe I didn't love. Some things have been a little 'meh' but that was typically my own error and they were still good enough to try again. Trusting that the recipes I'm preparing for Derek and I are healthy and are damn-near guaranteed to be a hit is a surefire way to get us excited about cooking. On a side note, she has a metric shit-ton of appetizer/snack/party food recipes that I am DYING to try, but I lack a party to prepare them for. Sad!

3) This is the one that's going to make you all facepalm. Cleaning up and doing the dinner dishes right away. Okay, stop laughing, and stop making the "ew, what?" face. Let me explain. See, my tiny, craptastic apartment has an equally tiny and craptastic kitchen. Without a dishwasher. And with very minimal counter space. Back in our lazy hey-day, it was nothing for us to be so stuffed or exhausted after dinner to let the dishes sit until the next day (I know, gross, shut up!). By the time the next day came around, we were all "Oh, we can't make dinner because the dishes are dirty and if we do the dishes first, it'll be too late to cook dinner so let's just go out!" And so on. But now, we've made a concerted effort to clean up as we go along; washing all the prep dishes while dinner is in the oven, for example, and then after dinner, washing our plates and the pots and pans. It's never too daunting this way, nothing gets gross, and the next day we start fresh. Also of note in keeping us motivated is keeping our counters clean, as in, putting things away and not letting the counter get cluttered. It's difficult in our tiny little kitchen, but it's imperative to making us want to cook.

So there, that's what I've got. I'm really proud of us and I know we're going to keep it up!