Tomorrow’s a happy hour reunion for one of my old jobs, and that will be challenging, too.  I’m definitely not going to drink any alcohol (waaaah!) but depending on the menu at the place I may or may not stay perfectly on plan – we’ll see.  If they have a chicken / veggies or fish /veggies option (hell, even  a steak / veggies option) I should be just fine.

Exercise-wise, my bike ride was cut short yesterday by rain, so I only got 15 minutes in, but that puts me at an hour on the week so far.  I didn’t go today because my back is really killing me (I think I pulled a muscle or something in the move).  That’s ok, though, they only want you to get 2 hours of exercise per week on Phase 1 because we’re eating so few calories and detoxing.  I’ll see how I feel tomorrow and try to get another half hour in on the bike.

All’s well, I can’t wait till weigh-in day!  :)

McDonalds was involved.  Often.

*hangs head in shame*

Miraculously, though, I gained only 3lbs during my naughty time.  I feel as if I got off lucky.  VERY lucky.

Today marks the beginning of my first week in my new home and so today I begin again with Fat Flush Plan.    Back on Phase 1, stringently, for 2 weeks to flush out all the caffeine, artificial sweeteners, alcohol, fats, sugar, dairy, etc, etc. I’ve been loading up on.

I’m definitely looking forward to getting the energy back that I had found during my first try with FFP.  And seeing my sinuses clear from a lack of dairy again – there’s definitely a sensitivity there.

I didn’t grocery shop like I should have yesterday (was finishing ALL my unpacking and house setup), but I’ll still have a good, on-plan day by buying lunch and dinner.  The day will look like this:

• Cran water before breakfast
• Berry whey protein smoothie for breakfast
• piece of fruit for midmorning snack
• Chinese chicken salad, minus the crunchies, for lunch
• another piece of fruit for afternoon snack
• Grilled chicken breast with dijon and a small side salad with vinagrette for dinner

Then on the way home from work I’ll grocery shop.

One thing I’ve realized is that the blogging was a key piece in keeping me honest, so I WILL blog every single day now, even if it’s just to say, “I stayed on plan today”.  As soon as the dedication to blogging slipped, everything else slipped, too.

Time to go exercise!  A 45 minute bike ride is on tap for today.

It’s good to be back  :)

I learned that this week.  I fell effortlesslyback  into my previous, flawed, free-wheeling frame of mind with regard to eating and I payed the price with a 1.5lb gain this week.

:’(

Worst part is, I had sooo much going on in terms of food I wasn’t supposed to eat that it’s impossible to pinpoint the culprit.

-It could have been the dairy (which I swear I had a sinus-related reaction to, both times I ate it).

-It could have been the wheat/sugar I ate (it was Fiber One “poptarts”, but still…)

-It might have even been the soy cheese, which has “milk protein” listed as an ingredient, so I *think* its still dairy (I need to research this better).

-It might have been the fact that for a couple of days at least, I had TWO Larabars in a day

-It could be because I wasn’t religious about taking my supplements and making sure I got my daily flax seed oil, ground flax seed and even all my cran-water each day.

-Or, it could have been the fact that I blew off the gym this week and worked out only two or three times (as opposed to six like I want to and should be)

Regardless of the why’s, the what is that I feel like shit about it.   I knew I wouldn’t lose, but I was hoping to eek by with a staying steady.

But the truth is, that’s still not making progress, and the gain is the bitter pill that I need to get my ass back on track, so…

So, this week I’ll replace one meal each day with a smoothie and I’ll drop back down to Phase 1 for my meals.  This means fewer spices, no carbs (save for fruit, which I can now have in smaller portions than before) and no: larabars, almond milk or soy cheese.   This also means that when I go out to eat (as I will be several times this weekend) I MUST eat on-plan in the restaurants.  Very challenging but, if I’m going to lose the rest of my weight (and I still have a LOT to lose) I have to be able to be disciplined.

Hell, where circumstances allow I’ll replace TWO meals per day with a smoothie.  That’s actually one of the structured plans under Fat Flush…it’s called the Smoothie Shakedown.

I can do it, I’m just going to be grumpily grumbling along the way, lol

Then, next week I can go back to three full meals per day but still on Phase 1.

Even though I’m going back to the detox phase I do NOT expect to lose at the same rate as I did on Phase 1 initially.  I think my body is still mostly detoxed, so the benefits of purging that stuff will not be repeated.  At this point I’d be thrilled if I can re-lose my 1.5lbs next week, and then the following week be back in the making actual progress mode.

We’ll see!  But for today it’s shame on me, lesson learned and unlike all the other times I’ve lost a lot of weight I am NOT going to let this turn into a permanent backslide.  This time, failure is NOT an option.  For one thing, I have waaaaay too much accountability by virtue of this blog, and all my jabbering about it on Facebook.  I can’t fail AGAIN, I just can’t.  Too much public shame.  But more importantly,  I am hell bent and determined to enter my forties an “official” hottie and make my next decade – and the 2nd half of my life – the best time of my life.   I refuse to simply get older, I will get BETTER, as well.

And with that, off I go for a bike ride to right some of the wrong of last week!

-butterscotch pudding I ate at Jar last week at an impromptu girls night dinner during which I was otherwise VERY sensible (carrot ginger soup, salmon and pea tendrils…I ate TENDRILS for crying out loud!)

-copious amount Puerto Rican food I ate late last Saturday night (it was amazing, so no regrets!)

-Almond milk which I have successfully incorporated into my diet with no ill effects that I’ve noticed – even though it is technically off plan

-Larabars (see above note about Almond milk)

-wine, of which I had 2 generous glasses last night – *right* before weigh-in

yet, somehow, by some miracle I am down 3lbs this week.

How the hell is that possible?!    I mean, I did work out a lot last week – 5x is a lot for me but only 2 were at the gym, the rest were just 45 minute bike rides.   Maybe that’s it…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely stoked.  I’m just shocked.   And, frankly, a little scared because I fear as if it might be creating a slippery slope of cheating my way back to my old way of thinking and eating (and weighing).

So, assuming I can keep:

-one full-on cheat meal a week  - at a restaurant, because I really don’t feel the need (nor have the means) to cheat like that at home

-almond milk, which makes me happy…I love to drink  a glass of milk

-Larabars, which are just THE best snacks.  Yummy, satisfying…just…awesome

-wine, for the occasional glass, maybe 1-2 a week

and can successfully add:

-soy cheese

-some sort of cereal…maybe the gluten free Flax granola I’ve been eyeing at Trader Joe’s would be a good choice…

-the occasional very small dose of artificial sweetner in stuff like sugar free chocolate syrup or sugar free maple syrup

I really think I could easily follow this plan forever.   So, hopefully the three things I want to add won’t hurt me and I can continue losing.   We shall see!

Maybe if I work out every single day in some capacity, I can be a bit freer with my food.  I think I can definitely achieve this even though I loathe going to the gym  - except when I train with Jay but I only have 8 half hour sessions left with him  :(   and even my bike rides are starting to get a bit boring…though I’m trying to use them as an opportunity to get a HUGE Toluca Lake fix before I move to Santa Monica soon.  It’s just that riding around aimlessly is a bit more boring than having a destination…though even as I type this I wonder if I’ll miss my aimless, circling rides once I move and my daily bike ride becomes my commute.

Who knows.  There’s also an awesome gym at my new office building.

It will all work out.   For now I need to stop babbling (hazard of blogging at 5am, lol) and just learn to maybe take things as they come a bit more.

I’m super grateful for the 3lb. loss.  It represents more than 1/8th of this current mini-goal and is a fantastic start.   I’ll add in the new stuff, one week at a time and try to at minimum keep the 5x/week exercise going, if not increase it to exercise every single day.

Thanks and praise be to the diet gods for finally giving me a plan I can work with!  <3

Good thing, too, because in anticipation of losing that last pound this week I made plans to go to my friend Gary’s to pick up a guitar he’s going to loan me so I can “try before I buy” and make sure I enjoy playing enough to invest in my own guitar.   Thanks Gary!  :)

Aaaaand, I’m already half a pound toward the next mini-goal, my second of three 23lb mini goals.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, I’m sitting here typing this while wearing a pair of jeans that less than 2 months ago I could not even get up over my hips, let alone zip up and sit around in.  To be honest, they’re not quite ready for prime-time – still a little too much muffin top – but within a month I should be rocking them, which is good because the first new pair of jeans I recently bought is already too big on me (I’m hoping I can shrink them).   Ironic….for years I have hung-dry all of my jeans because I was too afraid to put them into the dryer and shrink them.  Now I’m needing to shrink them.  Definitely an awesome non-scale victory.

I mentioned above that I’d explain how I jumped off the slippery slope of cheating.  Friday night, I went to a big work party/celebration which was catered by Wolfgang Puck.  I decided ahead of time to indulge in both the alcohol and the food – and indulge I did.  Three drinks (after a month and a half of NO drinks – yes – I got a wee bit tipsy!) and I sampled literally every single thing they served – we’re talking passed hors d’ ourves and three different buffet stations.  Plus dessert and coffee.   Yes, a LOT of food, though I was having mostly appetizer sized portions of stuff.   Looking back, I have no regret for the indulgence.  Sometimes there are VERY special occasions and I can’t stay on any plan without an ability to indulge once in a great while.

The next day I went on a date  :D  and we had Indian food.  Naan, rice, cheese (in saag paneer, my favorite!)  - all off-plan.   And the leftovers I had for lunch the next day were also off-plan.

Then on Tuesday night my friend came over and was hungry so I invited him to cook himself some dinner using a bunch of dim-sum dumplings (whose noodle-y outside makes them off limits to me).  Yeah…he made a TON and I ended up eating probably a dozen dumplings…at around 9pm…AFTER eating a full dinner AND having a smoothie.

I was disgusted with myself about the dumplings because of all the other cheating I’d done that week (which had been planned, save for the leftovers on Sunday).   Fortunately I’d already worked out 2x this week (more than usual, I’ve been lazy about exercising lately) so I made sure to work out yesterday morning.

THEN, on the way back to a dr. appointment yesterday, I passed Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.  YUM.   It was on my mind throughout the doctor visit and when I left to go back to my office, I thought to myself, “I should stop and get a piece of chicken…after all, the chicken I had at lunch SUCKED (it was very dry).”

“Then I thought, “I could probably get a buckwheat waffle, too, it’s not *too* bad.”

As I sat at the light to make the turn into Roscoe’s, I thought about how permissive I was getting with unplanned cheats.   I thought about how this was my pattern with diets, I’d do REALLY well for a little while and then slowly my commitment would wane and my waistline would wax.   I decided I didn’t want to fail again, so I pulled out of the turning lane and beelined to my office where I satisfied my hunger with some cran-water and a Larabar.

Then, when I got home and sat down to watch TV and eat my healthy dinner (ahi tuna, asparagus, and a piece of my flax seed bread), there was a “How I Lost 100 lbs.” show on Discovery Health Channel.  I sat and ate and watched how others had lost significant amounts of weight by mostly just good old fashioned disciplined diet and exercise.  They success stories were super inspirational to me, and at the end of the show I cried and I recognized that the fact that I caught that show – right at that time – was a bit of a miracle to me, a reward for making a good choice…maybe some assurance and support from a higher power, even.  Whatever it was, I needed it and I deeply appreciate it!

Now my resolve is renewed.  I will begin October by going back on Phase 1 of the Fat Flush Plan again for another detox (I feel  it’s too soon, or I’d do it now….going on once per quarter feels like a healthy plan to me).    With any luck I will achieve my second 23lb mini-goal – and get my reward, long-awaited professional tooth whitening – before my trip to NY.   MAYBE I will even hit the 50lb lost point by then!  If I do, I will also be 100lbs lighter than I was at my lifetime high – and if all those things happen I have another reward in mind which I’ll get while in NY.  That one’s top secret though  :)

So, life is good, Fat Flush Plan is STILL working for me (even when it seems it shouldn’t, because I cheated) and I’m more excited about this than ever.  I can’t wait to reach my -69lb goal, which will put me VERY close to my ultimate goal weight at which point I’ll be half the woman I was.  I CAN DO IT!!!!

Remarkable considering the cheating of the weekend which is well documented in the past 2 posts.

I have a feeling that the loss has to do more with me being artificially heavy via “time of month” last week than any real loss this week, but hey, I’ll take it.

Especially since it puts me just 1lb short of my first mini-goal of 23lbs lost.  WOO HOO!

As soon as I lose another pound I’ll be visiting my friend Gary (and his adorable puppy Maggie) to pick up one of his guitars, which he’s loaning me in advance of my buying my own…just to make sure I really want to learn to play before I buy my own.  A very nice offer and a less expensive way for me to get a reward, yay!

24 lbs. from now I get the teeth whitening I’ve wanted for soooo long.

Lots of motivation!

• A breakfast burrito – regular tortilla is forbidden, and I think there was some sausage in there.
• 1/4 cup mac n cheese.  That shit is like diet kryptonite to me.   Small victory: previously I would have eaten it with wild abandon, so given that 1/4 cup is not bad…
• 1 slice of very delicious birthday cake.  YUM.  Gotta say I don’t regret that one… lol
• 1 entire bag of Turtle Chex Mix.  That was VERY BAD.  :(

So, on Monday, I got back on Phase 1 for four days hoping to undo the weekend’s damage.   Though I did have 1 piece of sprouted wheat toast on Tuesday morning…

This week’s results in a separate post, ’cause I’m organized like that.  ;)

Walking in I knew I was in trouble.  The place smelled AMAZING.  They brought us a big, round loaf of their homemade bread with a small bowl of butter and proceeded to give us a very detailed presentation of their pizzas.

I nearly died.

My friend ended up ordering a panini and slicing himself a healthy slice of bread, slathering it in butter.  I contemplated it – after all, what’s one lousy slice of bread and butter REALLY going to do to my diet?

I decided against it. Aside from some small cheats (too much meat or fruit, chicken sausage, half a Larabar), I’ve been perfect on this plan for a month.  I haven’t had any of the verboten food or drink:  no coffee, no booze, no sugar (I have chewed some sugarless gum, so I’ve had sugar substitute other than Stevia Plus).  I’ve been pretty close to perfect for over a month now and its paid off.

I ordered a Nicoise salad with tuna, lettuce, tomato, green beans and vinagrette.  It was yummy and filling.   And, as usual, the feeling of being good on my diet was much more satisfying in the end than the taste and feeling that I would have gotten from eating the bread and butter.

Now, even as I type this, I know I’m going to be cheating, three times in the near future.  I am attending a wedding tonight which is being catered by an AMAZING caterer who did a friend’s wedding (I didn’t attend the wedding but I’ve heard a lot about the food).  I don’t know what they’re serving but I do know this:  my previous m.o. would be to eat as much as possible, lol.   This time, I will check out all the food there and choose a couple of things that are either hopefully on plan, or minimally cheatful.  Because even though it’s the right choice to turn up my nose at bread and butter on any given day, I DO plan to indulge – as little as possible but still indulge nonetheless – on truly special occasions, like a wedding.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to breakfast with a friend.  I’ll bring my own toast (yes you heard me right…I toast and flax-seed-oil up a slice of sprouted wheat toast *right* when I leave the house to go to breakfast.  Kept in a Ziploc bag, it retains some of its warmth and moisture until I’m ready to eat it – it works well!) but my order of choice at this restaurant is 2 eggs and 2 chicken sausage patties.  Technically the sausage is a cheat…but it IS chicken (vs. pork which is not allowed on the plan at all) and I am sure to drink extra water to more quickly flush out the sodium.   A very minimally impactful cheat in exchange for feeling like YES, I can go out and eat breakfast at a restaurant like a normal person.  Totally worth it, and something I only do about twice a month.

And tomorrow night I have a date (woo hoo!) and we’ve chosen a sushi place that I belatedly remembered doesn’t offer brown rice (Sushi Dan FAIL!).    But, the restaurant is close to the movie theater we’re going to afterwards, and my date’s been wanting to go there so…a little white rice won’t kill me, especially since I won’t be having sushi again for probably at least a month after this (since I just had it last weekend).

I guess the moral of this story is really knowing when and how to cheat (rarely as possible) and planning ahead / thinking it through so you can cheat as innocuously as possible.   Because life isn’t perfect and expecting to be absolutely perfect ALL the time is just not realistic or sustainable.  Even though I still have a lot of weight to lose and I’ll be on FFP’s more restrictive Phase 2 for a long time, there has to be a bit of wiggle room.   It’s all about knowing when and how to cheat and only doing it when it’s REALLY worth it.

Which is great considering the above and also the addition of sweet potato (which it would seem is here to stay!) and the fact that I went out and had sushi with about 1 cup of brown rice, which contained both mayo and brown rice (both not approved foods for Phase 2).

Woot!

This week I test in corn.   Oddly enough, I can have kernel corn now but they specifically say corn on the cob comes in Phase 3.  Maybe because of quantity…

Anyway, my first month on this plan is done and I’m feeling good and happy with my results.  I generally don’t feel deprived (I have my moments…still miss cheese and some sweets) but fast food no longer looks good to me AT ALL.   I got a flyer yesterday from Weinerschnitzel (a previous guilty pleasure) and I was scrutinizing it and nothing looked even remotely appealing to me.   The other side of the flyer was from Dairy Queen and none of their frozen treats were tempting, either (however…the chocolate chip cookies in the background were another story, lol!)

Now I’m excited about stuff like spaghetti squash with chicken and tomato sauce…..grilled salmon…steamed mushrooms….whey protein smoothies…lol  Such a different world.

Admittedly though I’m getting tired of the same old type of meals, so it’s time for me to dive into this HUGE list of Fat Flush Plan Recipes and try some new dishes.

I think this week I’ll try:

-Shrimp Egg Foo Young

-Mock Barbeque Chicken

-Yummy Meatloaf

I will report back and take pics (If I remember to do so before gobbling this stuff up, lol)

Did cheat this weekend by having sushi with some mayo and brown rice.  Given the profound lack of fat Japanese people out there, I’d reckon that’s a safe cheat  ;)    And if I’m not weighing in higher on Thursday, that tells me it’s OK and I can do it 2x/mo.

Since Friday, have felt a wee bit more tired this week than my first two, and so I have to think it’s the sweet potato, which makes me sad.  Next week I switch to corn, we’ll see if I feel any different when eating that and no sweet potato.

Then I get a week to test in a new cheat food.   What should it be?   I think I’ll post a poll and let my loyal readers help me decide (read:  this is a not-so elaborate ploy to see if anyone’s listening.  ”TAP TAP TAP is this thing on???”    lol

Rock the vote!    lol