Enjoying my family

My favorite tattoo; I think I deserve a new one since I've done so good!!

I love my boys.  I am the luckiest girl in the world to have married my best friend, and birthed the most amazing, cool, smart, outgoing, and amazing (did I already say that?) kid.  My husband REALLY is my best friend.  He is definitely a "lifetime" keeper for sure!  I have a pretty cool boss too.  Her ending remarks for our conversation about the whole "pantsgate" fiasco was, "You know what the moral of this story is?  Never buy the cheap pants!"  Lol.  Lesson learned!

You know, I've been getting a lot of people ask me, "What diet plan are you using?"  Like I've said dozens of times, I'M NOT DIETING!  I quite literally have made a change to my lifestyle.  I eat what I want, when I want!  The biggest thing I've done is changed the WAY I eat.  Instead of plopping massive spoonfulls of food on my plate (HELLO macaroni and cheese!), I weigh out my portions.  Instead of white rice with my dinner, it's brown (or even better, quinoa).  Instead of mayonnaise and butter in my mashed potatoes, it's greek yogurt and milk.  Instead of 2000 calories of fast food Whopper/fries/coke, it's 600 calories of tacos and about 6 sips of coke.  Instead of a massive glass of sweet tea with my dinner, it's a massive glass of water.  Instead of 3 cupcakes and 4 pieces of snack size candy, it's 2 tbs. of m&m's.  See where this is going?  For my lunch, rather than a sandwich with mayonnaise and cheese/3 servings of salt and vinegar chips/a giant hunk of brownie/coke, I have a piece of (frozen) baked tilapia/one serving of instant mashed potatoes/some type of veggie, usually some type of peas since my boys don't eat peas at ALL/a teeny little 2 tbs measuring cup of m&m's/glass of water.  I'll also cook me some low glycemic index angel hair pasta (weighed out as one serving), toss it with 1 tbs of evoo/lemon juice/garlic salt/about 6 salad croutons, crushed.  This is my lunch pretty much every day, either the fish or the pasta.  I don't always do the potatoes with the fish, sometimes I will do peas and some other veggie.

I literally used to cook an ENTIRE box of Kraft mac and cheese ... and eat the whole thing for my lunch.  Those Totino party pizzas?  I'd eat the whole thing for lunch.  THAT'S why I was fat, not because I'm sedentary, but because my eating habits were out of control.  Fast food 4 nights a week ... I'd eat every single BITE of that burger, fries, and drain that 22+ oz sugary soft drink.  Since July, when I began this whole journey I have not eaten a fast food meal like I used to.  When I get my tacos, I do get a full sugar Mtn. Dew, but I sip on it 6 times and dump the rest out of the window.  I have not had McDonalds, Wendy's, Chik fil a, or Capt. D's ... do I miss them?  Sometimes.  My body's a traitor, and it craves that old junk food.  But I don't tempt myself, and just drive on by!

On teaching nights, my dinner consists of whatever I can find in the way of fruit/light yogurt/tortilla chips (weighed out as one serving)/kashi granola bar/kashi "chocolate square".  I will usually snack on the granola bar at some point, and eat the "chocolate square" as my dessert.  As for fruit, I try to keep grapes and bananas around the house; that's normally what I put in my dinner.

For breakfast, I have a bowl of plain Cheerios with a measured out one cup of milk.  I admit to cheating SLIGHTLY, and pour my Cheerios in the one cup measuring cup, but it's over the one cup mark by about 1/4".  I have that EVERY morning.  I no longer eat donuts/poptarts/anything else loaded down with sugar.

Well!  I just wanted to address the fact that I'M NOT DIETING lol.  I have literally changed my life to something that works for ME.  Am I a total and complete foodie that craves brussel sprouts and blueberries?  Um, NO!  But I've made changes that are GOOD for my body and that I can sustain for the rest of my life!  I'm STILL losing weight, and for this entire month I've barely done anything exercise related!

Went 5K distance today, ran for distance, not time.  Took me about 35 minutes, and that includes 5 minutes of warm up/cool down walk.  Monday begins round 2 of Insanity.  Oey!  Not really looking forward to it, but I will be interested to see what I look like at the end!  I'm already fitting in an 8 in jeans (some of them; my darn THIGHS are what hold me back there!)  Will I finish as a 6?  That wasn't even on my RADAR as far as goals go, but at this stage of the game, it seems very possible!