Alexis - Week 3

Week 3
I weighted in this week at 196.3. The big change is I am now allowing desserts again. I made a pumpkin bake this week to enjoy at night (recipe to come) and bought some sugar free whip cream. I usually try to avoid splenda but I don't have the energy to whipped cream each night for this dessert and it is so good with whipped cream. I also bought some Truvia baking blend which has bulking agents to make it almost a 1 for 1 sub in recipes (which adds carbs). I usually avoid it since it is made with stevia and sugar alcohol but darn it, it made the pumpkin bake so much better! That and low carb tortillas are my compromise foods right now. I am going to try really hard not to compromise more than that (please note I wrote this part early in the week!).

Typical Day
Breakfast: So far still the same for breakfast, tea with half and half or some sausage. Had a work meeting with breakfast on Tuesday so I made sure to eat at home. I packed my favorite tea bag and used their cream and enjoyed my tea at the meeting (all pastries, juice, coffee and water for tea. Not even fruit this time).

Lunch: This weeks lunch is chicken salad on crackers. Really yummy if I do say so myself! See recipe. I also bought a six pack of Zevia cherry cola soda which is sweetened with stevia and sugar alcohol. Not really carb free if you count sugar alcohols but it has been a treat. That flavor is not bad. Avoid the Dr. Pepper version which I found to be disgusting. Lunch out on Friday was to a Spanish Restaurant with all the Directors in my school. I had a chicken masala type dish with some string beans on the side. They put the bread bowl right in front of me and I had some major internal dialogue going on for a long time, but in the end I held strong. I resisted the free wine, the bread and the yellow rice and felt really good about it. The sauce probably had some carbs (it is made with white wine) but I figured it was still lower than if I added all the rest.

Snacks: Cheese sticks, pickles, beef jerky, almond butter, and squirts of sugar free whip cream directly in my mouth! Terrible but delicious. 2 pump, whole milk Chai from Starbucks. Definitely my weakness. The Chai mix is of course loaded with sugar so I limit it to 2 pumps, and whole milk is about 8 grams per cup (!). Definitely a treat that is not very low carb. I avoid walking by Starbucks because I have a hard time saying no to that.

Dinner: So hard this week. I am back in my rut of being overwhelmed with having to make 3 dinners at night. I start to think of an option and then it is either not low-carb convertible or not veggie convertible. I finally settled on lasagna and made a regular vegetarian lasagna for Greg and Vivi and a zucchini noodle lasagna for me. While it is tasty to use thin strips of zucchini instead of noodles (with layers of sauce, herbed ricotta, and mozzarella) it is a mess. It basically becomes a liquid pool when you try to serve it hot. Luckily I was not serving it to company! That meal lasted us three days until I could get over my cooker's block. We had take-out one night and I chose fajitas. I just eat the meat and onions with sour cream and guac in 1 low carb tortilla from home. Luckily they forgot to include the regular tortillas that come with the meal which is great because I have a hard time dumping them.

Thoughts
So this week I did great until Friday afternoon when I was completely derailed by Greg's parents. Of course they had no idea I was on a diet. They sent a box of frosted sugar cookies in halloween shapes for Vivi. They did this last year as well. They come from an upscale cookie company and they are delicious! I can say no to a lot of things. In fact I have treats in the house that I can avoid with little problem. Chocolate, sandwich cookies, m&ms (healthy version), kettle corn, chocolate chips, etc are all in my cabinets and as long as they are not in my sight all day I have no problem saying no. But one look at those cookies and I ate 6 of them in an hour. I couldn't stop. I have a special place in my heart for sugar cookies and I ate them until I had a belly ache. I felt such shame when it was over and a lot of anger at Greg's parents for sending them (why did they have to send a dozen and half!). I threw the rest in the freezer so Vivi could have at least  1. I tried to get back on track immediately but the whole weekend ended up being a wash. I didn't binge again, but we had company over for dinner on Saturday so I just ordered whatever I wanted at the restaurant and didn't go low carb. For lunch on Sunday I had cheese and crackers. For dinner we made oven nachos and had ice cream for desseert. And of course I made sure all the cookies were gone by Sunday night. Greg and Vivi ate a few but in the end I probably ate 12 of them myself. They were 30 grams of carbs each by the way.

So, my great 4.5 days were completely tainted by 2.5 bad days. I am committed to getting back on the horse on Monday morning and learned that certain foods are really really off limits because I lose all will power when I encounter them. Ugh! Even when you think you are safe at home, trigger foods can sneak up on you in the mail!

Total Loss
I gained 3.8 pounds! I also have my period so that may account for some of the difference. Not to mention carbs and junk food make me puffy and bloated so hopefully it will go away again once I am back on track.