helloooo out there?

How many of us are in it this round? Russ and I are working together this time, had a great start, and are kinda stalled out... what' goin' on with ya'll?

Eating a Low Points Dinner

By necessity. I neglected to tally the Points on the 3/4 cups guacamole before I had it (and pretzels) as a snack today. As a result, I'm squeezing in a low points dinner -- multigrain cheerios with skim milk, brussel sprouts, raspberry lemonade Crystal Light, and possibly some 94% fat free popcorn for a late night snack (although not TOO late since I took Josh to the airport at 3:30am this morning). I need to go grocery shopping. :o/

YEAH MOM!!!

Nice work mom! You are AMAZING!! Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to round two...starting tomorrow!!! :)

CONGRATS MOM!!!

Two or three more days to go!

Depending on how you look at it, two or three more days to go! If you weighed in on a morning, then Friday weigh day won't count as a day to go! So there's today, Wed, and Thurs!
Holly should email us all the directions again on how to come up with our percentage, and
then we each email them to her on Friday and she lets us know who won!
I changed my mind, no steak to celebrate. I'm going to continue eating well.

Two weeks to go! Or rather 10 days

I sure hope I can accomplish more in the next 10 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We were going to go camping this week, but I moved it to Aug. Last thing I need is a camping trip during the last 10 days of the challenge!

My first "successful" vacation!

Val and I returned from our motorcycle trip and I managed to lose weight! I ate well and excercised every day and I'm SO proud of myself! :)

Also

Also, in case any of you are discouraged, Josh and I joined the church Biggest Loser weight loss contest right before this one, and were complete flops. This second attempt with all of you, is where we are more successful. So if at first you didn't succeed, try try again!

18 days until steak!!!!!!!

The evening of the final challenge weigh in, after weighing in of course, I'm having a great big (okay, not great big, but kind of small, or maybe great big) steak. I am totally looking forward to that!
The next day Chuck leaves for Sturgis.
Then I hear we are going to discuss doing another challenge, for those of us who need to keep on keeping on. I know I'm going to be in on that. We may even up the ante for that round, to keep it interesting. *_*

New challenge: Josh

The fun commences shortly -- Josh arrives in just about 7 hours. When we have house guests it usually means eating out much more, which is bad for the whole Points thing. In this case, it's a fellow contestant and one who has complained about how unhealthy we "made" him be the last time he was here. So will we help each other or hurt each other? My guess is the latter. :o)

Church's annual Baptism by the Bay (which means fried chicken) tomorrow, New York trip (which likely means John's Pizzeria, Famiglia Pizza, and possibly The Little Pie Company) next weekend, and Hairspray at Toby's Dinner Theatre (buffet) the weekend after that. It's going to take a lot of willpower for me to stay healthy. :o)

Got the munchies?

Okay, so what do you do when you want to snack on something? I'm often in a situation where I want to munch on something that takes a while to eat. Of course, carrot sticks and other veggies are always an option, but I'm not too big on vegetables. My go-to items tend to be pretzels (often with 0 point salsa) or popcorn. I've also recently discovered the joy of dry cereal, which tends to be high fiber and therefore low points. Multi-Grain Cheerios were good, but Froot Loops didn't work out too well (colored powder on my fingers). I'm now trying Frosted Mini-Wheats and enjoying those -- LOTS of fiber.

What do you eat when you need something to munch on?

Dutch Brothers Coffee Nutritional Info

If any of you have Dutch Brother's coffee stands near you, I can give you
their nutritional info. It's on their website, but a bit hard to find.
I wonder if Starbucks has info on their site. I bet Melissa would know.

Preparing for my upcoming vacation...

Val and I are going on a motorcycle trip next week (July 15-18) for our 5 year "since we met" anniversary. I am still on a roll with staying within my points and exercising everyday since we started the challenge and I REALLY don't want to break my streak. My weight has plateaued and has even gone up this week so I'm losing my drive. However, I've researched the hotels and made sure that they all either have a pool or a gym so I can keep on going. It will be tough counting points and finding the energy to workout after riding 300+ miles/day so I plan on doing it every morning before we leave. Hope I can do it. Will let you know how it goes!!

Slow and steady.....

Another not so big weight loss at WW but at least I've been down each week.
I'd better throw in exercise this week.
Slow and steady wins the race......I hope.
How's everyone else doing? Are you keeping it a secret?

Bad Me

Lost four pounds while camping... and I am gaining it back while eating french toast

Hooray for Weight Watchers, I love the points system

Since I started weight watchers, I've lost 11 1/2 pounds. Yippee.
Now I need to be extra good and get in some exercise because I ate some of Josh's
birthday cake. Twice. *_*

A Successful Day's Menu

Okay, so I'm sitting here eating a slice of pepperoni pizza that's in addition to the dinner I already ate and yet I'm not going over my daily Points limit. How did that happen? I just happened to have a really low Points day and it occurred to me I should share what that looked like.

So should you. On a day when you've successfully stayed within your Points limit and yet not gone to bed hungry, what has that looked like? Here's what it looked like for me (with apologies to those allotted fewer points):

Breakfast:
1 c. Multi-grain Cheerios (2 points)
1/4 c. Blueberries (0 points)
1/2 c. fat-free milk (1 point)

Mid-morning snack:
24 square pretzels (2 points)
Wholly Guacamole 100-calorie snack pack (2 points) (I need to find healthy guacamole in larger quantities and utilize my tupperwares)

Lunch:
Multi-grain Sandwich Thin (1 point)
2 Tbsp Hellman's Light Mayo with Olive Oil (2 points)
Mustard (0 points)
2 slices Turkey Ham (2 points)
Diced peaches in light syrup (1 point)

Mid-afternoon snack:
Baby carrots (0 points)

Dinner:
1 Medium Baked Potato (2.5 Points)
1 c. Hormel Turkey Chili with Beans (4 points)
2 Tbsp reduced-fat sour cream (1 point)

That brought me to 20.5 points and since I'm allotted 32 points until my next weigh-in, I splurged on a piece of pepperoni pizza (7 points) and I'll probably have a WW ice cream candy bar (3 points). If I was still hungry, I'd throw an artichoke into some boiling water and soon have a 0 point snack (dipped in lemon juice and fake butter).

Really, the only reason this day worked out as it did was that I had a lot fewer points than usual for breakfast. Cereal is a good thing. Incidentally, one of my potential downfalls is a weekly meeting at a breakfast buffet (I have a hard time passing up shredded hash browns), but I think I've found my solution -- oatmeal with some fruit stirred in.

Wise Investments

In the interest of sharing helpful tidbits for others, what are some of the wisest investments you've made in order to lead a healthier lifestyle? Here's one of mine:
These are Gladware 1/2 cup containers, which will forever be known as "Tupperware" in my mind (just like tissues are always Kleenex, sodas are always Coke, cotton swabs are always Q-Tips, and backhoes are always Caterpillars). Why are these genius? Because they allow me to take small quantities of items that don't go well into little "Ziploc" (there's another!) bags -- salsa, hummus, and other healthy dips for pretzels, carrots, celery, etc. (the stuff that does go in the bags) -- to work with me. Lunch suddenly became much more tasty.

So what are your secrets?

I go to WW tomorrow to weigh in. John and I went to SFV this weekend to look for apartments and I did NOT eat well (or exercise). So we'll see how I am doing tomorrow. I'll let y'all know. How is everyone else doing? Holly is kicking butt, apparently. This weekend is the fourth and the family shin-dig will be a test. Mom? You gonna' help us out with the healthy snacks? I'll bring veggie sticks.... Of course Janice and Lisa each weigh 100 pounds and the men aren't invested. It will be up to us (Tammie, mom) to encourage each other! Go team!

Silence...

Everyone staying strong?

I'm doing well. For those who don't know, I'm training to be a life/leadership coach. I have a peer coaching me for practice, so I've centered my coaching plan around losing weight, exercising, and sticking to WW Points. Working well thus far. This week I lost 3.4 pounds! (Okay, so last week I only lost 0.2 pounds, but whatever...) :o)

How are y'all doing? Sticking to points? Exercising regularly?