Weigh-In and why Pinterest is my best friend

You know the drill... first the deets:

Starting Weight: 290.3
Last Weigh-in: 282.4
This Week: 282.2
Net Loss: -0.2
Loss-to-Date: -8.1

Okay, so these aren't exactly earth-shatteringly exciting numbers. But, it's a loss, and considering how much I wibble-wobbled (I've decided that this is a perfectly valid phrase) this week, I'll take it. I frickin' had chinese food for dinner last night. I should've posted a 5 pound gain just on the basis of my sodium intake alone. But alas, I somehow got lucky and I will not complain. I will, however, do better this week. 

Usually I spend my weekly posts analyzing what I did that week or complaining about how hard this is. For the most part I think that's necessary because I can go back later and see what my trends are. For example, I know that the weeks where I gain are the weeks where I've eaten out too much (or sometimes at all), and the weeks where I lose the most are the ones where I've had, obviously, better food, but I had a more positive attitude. Those things are vital for me to stay on track and keep going. However, I know that it can get pretty old for those of you who are reading this from the outside, so I'm going to try to change it up. I'm going to try and think of actual topics for my posts as opposed to just vent sessions. I started out kind of doing thing but ran out of ideas, haha. I shall try again!

So this week, I decided I wanted to talk about where some of my motivation for not eating out has come from: Pinterest! In the beginning, Pinterest was primarily a method for me to pin Christmas decorating ideas and homemade gifts, and baked goods. Ooohhhhhh the baked goods. I started occasionally pinning real meal ideas and things sort of took off from there. Now I have 18 different boards (see for yourself -- click the link!) where I pin everything from craft ideas to funny quotes to desserts to books I want to read. But since I've had the account, the board that has become the most important to me is my "If My Kitchen Were Bigger, I'd Cook Every Day" board. This is the board where I pin the things that I see that look tasty enough for me to try and put into rotation on Derek and I's weekly menu. There are several things on that board that I'll probably never cook because they're just wayyyy too fat-kid, and they're there because they'd be yummy in theory. But for the most part, all of the recipes are ones that are either good for me by nature or can be made better. And, I've finally gotten slightly more organized and created another board for the Recipes I've Tried. It has a long way to go, as there are only 15 pins on it so far (and some of those are ones that I'm planning to try soon -- as in, they're already on a menu plan), but it'll be pretty useful in identifying the things we liked and didn't like, and maybe even giving ideas to any of my friends who want to take a look at what I've cooked for their own inspiration. 

I have a billion and fifty cookbooks that cover a variety of 'genres' of cooking: healthy, slow cooker, quick & easy, Weight Watchers, Joy of Cooking, Mexican, Italian, Asian... you name it, I probably have it in cookbook form. But Pinterest offers some things that cookbooks can't. First of all, I'm a very visual person. I'm one of those people that really does judge a book by its cover. I have a hard time deciding if a recipe is going to be tasty if I can't see what it looks like. Pinterest helps with that. For one thing, several of the cookbooks I've accumulated don't have pictures of every recipe (if any -- I'm looking at you, Joy of Cooking!). This leads to me skipping over recipes that may be really good because I just can't visualize what it will taste like (I'll give you a minute to simmer on how ridiculous that sounds). For another thing, most Pinterest pins are actual photos of the recipe as it's prepared... typically by one of hundreds of bloggers far more ambitious than I. Not only do I typically get step-by-step photos of what things should look like at each part of the recipe, but I know that the photo of the end result is far more likely to closely resemble what I end up with. Yeah, they use creative lighting and really awesome cameras, and somehow all of them maintain a sparkling clean kitchen while I end up with every dish I own in the sink... and they can "style" their food to make it look good, but have you ever actually seen how cookbook photos are taken? Sometimes the food they photograph isn't even cooked completely... or there are fillers in it to make it look bigger and heartier... there are essentially makeup artists for food. It's essentially akin to comparing magazine photos to Facebook photos. The photos in cookbooks aren't food, they're props. Photoshopped. Cleaned up. Your average food blogger doesn't have time in her day to perfectly stage a meal she's just spent hours preparing and photographing and writing about. It's more real. And I happen to like real. 

Secondly, on Pinterest you can tell by how many times it's been pinned how popular it is...which is a better indicator that it's actually a really good recipe. Granted, there are probably thousands of people just like me who pin recipes that look delicious and never actually cook them, but there are always a few people who have prepared the recipe and left comments -- either on Pinterest or on a blog -- about how delicious it is, or what it was missing and how to make it better. This is incredibly valuable information because it means I don't have to spend money on food that may not be what I was hoping for it to be. 

The bottom line is that Pinterest has helped me make great strides in preparing our meal plan each week and sticking to it. At least for the most part, anyway. And this is without mentioning all the great ideas I've gotten from Pinterest for preparing meals ahead of time or bulk preparing meals to keep in my (teeny tiny) freezer. If you're not using Pinterest to its full potential, you should be! :)