Day 4

Eats:
#1: omega 3 egg + 3 whites, two slices of whole wheat toast with canola oil light butter and whole fruit spread
#2: Myoplex Light French Vanilla RTD shake
Snack: caramel mini-rice cakes
#3: two sticks of 2% string cheese, apple
Snack: tortilla chips and salsa
#4: grilled chicken salad with mandarin oranges, pineapple, almonds, and tortilla strips topped with honey lime dressing (Chili's)
#5: fat-free coconut cream pudding, caramel rice cake with cream cheese
#6: banana

Beverages:
cup of Plantation Mint herbal tea with skim milk and Splenda
32 oz glass of iced tea with Splenda
glass of iced tea x 4
diet Cherry Coke

Supplements:
fenugreek and prenatal vitamin

Workout: I missed it again...walked the dogs. Work is really impeding on my gym time!

Comments: At least I got a decent meal at Chili's, but missing my Lean Cuisine mid-afternoon caused me to be starving and I ate chips and salsa for an appetizer. *sigh* But my pants were a lot looser on me yesterday...I'm sure it was water weight.

Day 3

Eats:

#1: 3/4 c high-fiber organic cereal, small banana, 3/4 c skim milk
#2: Myoplex Lite French Vanilla RTD shake
Snack: two pieces of fudge, serving of sour cream and onion mini-rice cakes
#3: Lean Cuisine meatloaf and whipped potatoes
#4: two sticks of 2% string cheese and oatmeal
#5: omega 3 egg + three whites, two slices of whole wheat bread with canola oil light butter spread and 1/2 tbsp whole fruit jam, 1 c green grapes
Snack: two sticks of 2% string cheese, caramel rice cake with cream cheese
#6: protein pancakes (egg + 3 whites, 1/2 c fat-free cottage cheese and 1/2 c oats) with 1/4 c sugar-free syrup

Beverages:
1/2 liter of wild cherry sparkling water
cup of Plantation Mint herbal tea with Splenda and skim milk
16 oz. diet coke
glass of iced tea with Splenda x 3

Supplements:
fenugreek

Workout: None again...burning the midnight oil with work. So I walked the dogs...again. I'm hoping that next week when I'm on vacation I'll be able to get to the gym more regularly.

Comments: And being at the office every day clearly is just too tempting with all the holiday goodies still hanging around. At least I resisted the urge to pick up Wendy's on the way home from work!

Day 2

Eats:

#1: 3/4 c high-fiber organic cereal, small banana, 3/4 c skim milk
#2: Myoplex Lite French Vanilla RTD shake
#3: Lean Cuisine meatloaf and whipped potatoes
Snack: four turtles (see below)
#4: two sticks 2% string cheese, three slices of lean ham, apple
Snack: serving of sour cream and onion rice cakes
#5: omega 3 egg + three whites and a slice of 2% American cheese, two slices of whole wheat bread with canola oil spread and fruit spread, 1 c strawberries topped with one packet Splenda
#6: low-fat low-sugar coconut cream pie yogurt, one stick 2% string cheese, 2 tbsp air popped popcorn with butter spray, fat-free sugar-free creamsicle
Snack: caramel corn rice cakes with 1/2 tbsp brown sugar cream cheese

Drinks:
cup of Plantation Mint herbal tea with skim milk and Splenda
1L peach sparkling water
diet cherry Coke x 3
16 oz bottled water

Supplements:
fenugreek, Zyrtec

Workout:
None. By the time I finished work and nursed McK, it was too late to go to the gym, so I settled for walking the dogs for 30 minutes around the neighborhood.

Comments: My first temptation...homemade turtles. I was strong and resisted for a while, and then I was starving and gave in and had two, and then two again after I pumped breast milk! But they were mostly pecans. Very tough day today...I don't remember being THIS hungry THIS early last time. I'm compensating by having a few extra carbs (hey, I'm literally eating for two) but it's tough! At the end of the day, I can only do the best I can.

Day 1

Eats:

#1: one whole egg + three whites, packet of low-sugar apple cinnamon oatmeal made with 2/3 c skim milk, stick of 2% string cheese
#2: two sticks of 2% string cheese and an apple
#3: lean roast beef and one slice low-fat Provolone cheese on two slices whole wheat bread with light mayo and Dijonnaise, 1/2 kosher pickle
#4: 5 oz. roasted sirloin, new potatoes, steamed carrots and zucchini (Boston Market)
Snack: serving of sour cream and onion mini-rice cakes, a couple of carrots
#5: protein pancakes (egg + three whites, 1/4 c fat-free cottage cheese, 1/2 c oats) and 1/4 c sugar-free syrup, fat-free sugar-free fudgesicle
#6: two caramel rice cakes with two tsp of brown sugar cream cheese

Drinks:
16 oz. bottles of water x 4
two diet cherry Cokes
one diet Coke
cup of sugar-free Suisse Mocha coffee

Supplements: fenugreek and prenatal vitamin

Workout: 10 minutes of interval training on Stairmaster, 12 minutes of fat-burn cardio on treadmill

Comments: Ugh. Now that we have shopped, this will be SO much easier. I had forgotten how tough BFL was without the proper food on hand! We even went to Vitamin Shoppe and got a tub of Dutch chocolate protein powder and two packs of French Vanilla Myoplex Light RTD shakes. I sure hope the protein powder tastes better now than it did three years ago! But I got lots of good healthy and some semi-healthy stuff at Kroger...baby spinach salad, cucumbers, carrots, yogurt, lean ground turkey, fat-free cheese and cream cheese, fat-free Cool Whip to mix in with sugar-free Jello, lots of diet drinks, Splenda, almond butter, sugar-free Popsicles and Fudgesicles, rice cakes, bananas to blend in with my protein shakes, fruit, oatmeal, sugar-free syrup for my pancakes, cottage cheese, a HUGE thing of eggs...all the stuff I used to buy on a regular basis ALL the time when I was training. It's amazing to me now though how much cleaner things have gotten. For example, the little packets of instant oatmeal are now made with whole grain oats, which is a huge improvement! Yogurt is lower in sugar now. There's a larger variety of rice cake flavors. It's amazing. And we went to Bed Bath and Beyond and used my 20% off coupon to buy a grinder attachment for my mixer...P wants to start buying super duper lean top round and grinding it up into meat so I can have hamburgers instead of my nasty Boca Burgers since he thinks soy is bad. (I don't agree.) I also have a ton of Lean Cuisines in the freezer that I need to eat over the next few weeks. I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The gym wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but I am SO HORRIBLY out of shape!

And the hardest part about today was taking my before pictures...and realizing that I look exactly the same now as I did three years ago today. I'm going to try to use it to fuel the fire and get this done quicker than I did last time, but it was VERY hard to look at those pictures and realize that I'm right back where I started. *sniff*

Starting again and my history

Well, here we go again!

A lot of you reading this blog probably remember when I went through this in 2003, but just to recap for those that didn't know me then or don't remember, I discovered Body For Life by Bill Phillips in December 2002 when my husband heard about it on the radio. He got a copy of it at Half-Price Books, read it in a night, begged me to read it, I read it in a night, and I was inspired.

I then embarked on a journey to transform my body. I started at a very chubby 228 lbs and size 22. My mission was to slim down to 150 and a trim size 6, which, as I know now, was totally unrealistic. I completed three twelve-week challenges. We converted our storage room to a weight room and started with a treadmill and a very simple Weider bench and weight set. Eventually, we upgraded that weight set to a Gold's home gym, and then eventually I got a membership at 24 Hour Fitness. Overall, I trimmed down to 161.5 lbs, a tight size 10, dropped my blood pressure and cholesterol levels by such astronomical amounts that my doctors were amazed, got my belly button pierced, had a tattoo on my hip redone with a flower and butterfly design to signify the process, and totally revamped my entire wardrobe. This was the result:





However, this process was not without its price. I decided at the end of my third challenge after being contacted by an area trainer to give figure competition (aka body building) a try. I trained with that trainer for about six months before starting a pre-contest diet (aka starvation) in March 2004 for a competition in June 2004. After about two weeks on the diet, I fired my trainer and went it alone with the help of other competitors. I finally realized about a month away from the competition that it wasn't going to happen without doing astronomical amounts of cardio, cutting my carbohydrate intake to an extremely unhealthy level, and about going insane in the process, and threw in the towel. I ended up having to see a therapist for obsessive compulsive disorder related to food and exercise habits, and thank GOD I escaped without developing anything worse.

In September 2004, my husband and I decided to start a family. I got pregnant in October 2004, and miscarried in December at twelve weeks. The resulting sadness and depression put on some pounds for me, and that added with the baby weight took me out of my slim size 12s. I got pregnant again in February 2005, which immediately upped me to a size 16, and it went on from there. I did my best to stay active and not eat the farm, so to speak, but when you're pregnant, you start to not care about much else but survival!

This is my last belly picture at 36 weeks...



And what was inside!



After my daughter McKenna was born and I started breastfeeding, my hunger reached new and interesting levels. Even though I dropped 35 lbs almost immediately, being hungry constantly combined with eating easy snack foods while I adjusted to being a temporary stay at home mom and eating out a lot put on about ten of it back. Excuses, yes, but there it is. I'm now 1.5 lbs in weight above where I was back in December 2002. It would drive me crazy if I obsessed about it, but instead I look at it as a good thing. If I had NOT lost that 60-something lbs before I started my family, where would I be now? Bordering on 300 lbs, that's what. Not good.

And here we are! Seven weeks post-partum, and I'm ready to start losing the weight. And what better way to do it then the program that got me there the first time!

A lot of people who don't blog wonder why people like me put their personal life out on the internet for all to read. I can't answer for other people, but the reason why I do in journals like this is so I have somewhere to come to be accountable and record what I've done.

I don't have a lot of thoughts about the next six months other than to say that it's going to be easier...and harder. Easier in that now I know how to do it. I know how to eat. Changing my eating habits isn't going to be the struggle it was before. I am now used to drinking diet soda and eating sugar-free things. I know how to lift weights and do cardio properly. And since I know this program works and I know HOW it works, I won't be sitting there boo-hooing the first month when I see no progress. My cholesterol and blood pressure levels are still very low. But it will be harder in that now I have a baby to keep up with and a very demanding schedule as a working mom. I won't have tons and tons of time now to spend hours in the kitchen each night grilling chicken and making protein pancakes for the next day. Since we're doing daycare, we don't have all the funds in the world to buy the latest brand of protein powder that is out there. I'll be coping on less sleep. My workout room is now my nursery, which means that I have to go TO the gym every time to lift and work out. And the hardest of all is that I plan to breastfeed until McKenna is a year old if I can, which means that I will have to make sure that I'm not dieting excessively so as to not disrupt my milk production, I'll be hungrier a lot more than I anticipate since I'm literally eating for two, and those last ten pounds most likely won't go until she's weaned.

I still plan on taking a free day, but it's more likely going to be a free meal with extras and not the full blow-out that I did every challenge in 2003.

So, here goes! Wish me luck! I'll post a food journal every day and a record of what exercise I did...it will help keep me accountable. Enjoy!