Week 2 and My First Weigh-In

This post is coming late- sorry! I wasn't super-excited to write about this past week since it wasn't too successful.  The kids were not too impressed with the new foods, and let's face it- it is hard enough getting yourself to commit to a healthier lifestyle when you don't feel like everyone else is on board. Between that and having not worked out at all last week, I was feeling pretty discouraged. When it came time for my first weigh-in on Sunday morning, I wasn't expecting much to see much progress, if any at all.  Then I opened my eyes and peeked at the tiny digital screen above my toes.  It told me this: 169.6 pounds and 39.8 % body fat.

As I stood there in the buff staring at those numbers, I knew I could respond to this one of two ways. I could either be completely discouraged by how little things had changed (Just a pound in two weeks?  That's only half a pound a week! Why am I even bothering?  If this is how badly I do at the beginning, then how on earth am I actually going to do better?) or I could celebrate what change there was to be had (Well, a pound in two weeks would still be 26 pounds gone a year from now, and that would be nice.  Besides, I'd done a lot of cheating this past weekend, so this is pretty good.  Not only that, but I lost some body fat, so I know that the pound wasn't just water weight.) I'm doing what I can to look at it the latter way. Let's face it- finding the positive side is necessary for success in weight loss, and in life. So I stepped away to get dressed, and I told myself over and over "Better it be one pound of lasting change than five pounds of temporary change."

Even though I wasn't going to let the slow start to my weight loss get me down, I still had to sit down and adjust my goals for the upcoming week.  The changes don't seem to be sticking as well as I'd like, so I've decided not to add any new ones this week: I'll still work on doing healthy breakfasts and dinners, give up soda and prepare for healthier snacks.  I will also have a big focus on the dinners this week, but more on that below.

I tried a total of four new recipes this week, with little success.  The first recipe was some breaded fish sticks.  It's not a huge surprise the kids hated that though- they don't really like fish to begin with.  Rhett recommends keeping tartar sauce on hand if we do it again.  The second recipe was the one breakfast recipe I tried last week- a bran muffin that can keep up to six weeks in the fridge.  I'm the only one eating them, and I don't think they taste good without honey or jam, but they are filling and it's nice to have a breakfast you can grab and go with (I'll be posting this recipe). The third recipe was a chicken curry soup.  The kids weren't fans, and I thought it was okay but too watery.  I'm used to curry being a sauce that goes over rice or potatoes, not as a soup.  A possible one to try in the future if it were just me and Rhett eating, I suppose.  The last one was a healthy macaroni and cheese recipe.  Even though I cheated and added two extra kinds of cheese in there for flavor, it still required enticing the kids with dessert to get them to eat some.  Not exactly the best overall response when you're trying to get your family to eat healthier.

I think I need to approach how I make dinners differently: this week I'd really focused on finding meals that were more kid-friendly, and the fact that the kids still didn't like them discouraged me a lot more than I thought it would. After all, if you're making meals that are specifically aimed to please kids and still getting a thumbs down for dinner, then it's time to try something different. So, I'm going to stop using Tosca Reno cookbooks for this week and go with something more tried-and-true: Better Homes and Gardens. I've made dozens of meals from my trusty cookbook and I've only ended up with one or two that the family didn't like. Maybe if I approach our dinners by taking recipes the kids love and making the necessary changes to turn them into Clean Eating dinners, it will be easier on the kids.  After all, the meal will be something more familiar, so it might be an easier adjustment. I can't tell whether or not the bad dinner reviews come from the style of the cookbook author or if we'll run into this problem in any Clean Eating venture, but maybe the dinners I make this week will answer that question for me.

I sincerely hope that things start changing more for the positive.  I've found my self-control to be incredibly lacking, and I wonder if I need more structure: maybe having one area of my life better organized and in hand will affect the other areas.  Something that I'm still contemplating over, but I might be able to apply it in the future. One week at a time though, and one set of goals at a time.  I have enough on my plate already! (so to speak). So, to summarize: not a lot of progress in weight loss, but I'll take what I can get.  We're sticking with the goals we already have, and we're trying a new approach to making dinners. I've got my fingers crossed that I'll be able to hit my first "mile-marker" (lose 5 pounds) by my birthday- that's just a month away! Anyway, until next week!