Day 3/113

I am counting Monday as day 1 even though my official weigh in was Saturday. I did not start until Monday and fully enjoyed my weekend. But, throughout this challenge Saturday will be my official weigh in day, so this week's weigh in won't actually be a full week of being on track. And when I say official I just mean how I will be marking my weekly loss throughout the challenge.

Also, I will be using the weight that I was on my home scale Saturday morning to calculate my weekly loss rather than the LL scale. The only time LL will weigh me in again is at the 8, 12 and 16 week marks.

Ok. So we're at day 3. Sometimes days 1-3 are really easy and sometimes not so much. I am happy to say that this time these 3 days have felt incredibly easy. I actually wasn't going to do a blog post today because I almost feel silly be SO excited about 3 good days. I mean, I still have 110 days to go just in this challenge. I was also slightly nervous that if I wrote a blog post about how awesome I'm doing then tomorrow I would have a challenging day. But, I decided that I needed to write this blog post today for my future self.

I've talked before about how I often go back and read through my old blog posts. I've been blogging for almost 7 years now and it has never taken off to be anything more than an outlet for me and I'm 100% OK with that. I love this outlet and I love the ability to go back and read through my struggles and successes.

So here's what I want to tell my future self.....THIS IS NOT THAT HARD!!!!! You really need to
stop making it so hard. What I did this week was plan a breakfast for all week, lunch for all week and 6 different dinners. I made these meals hearty enough that I haven't been eating at all between them and I've barely even gotten hungry. I plan a snack or dessert for after dinner, but I've been done eating by 7:30 or 8 each night and am not hungry between then and bed.

Breakfast has been the absolute weirdest concoction, but I have been on a kick with it for a while actually. It's 3 hard boiled eggs, 1 tbsp chipotle mayo, 2 chicken & maple breakfast sausage and a banana. It amounts to 5 points/507 calories. This keeps me full for a few hours and since I don't often eat breakfast until 9:30 or later I can have a late lunch so I don't get too hungry before dinner.

Lunch has been Dietz & Watson buffalo chicken breast, 1 oz of Trader Joe's Lite shredded mozzarella, 1 tbsp Hellman's Lite Mayo wrapped in a Mission Carb Balance tortilla. I pair that with quinoa & black beans, baby carrots, sugar snap peas and an apple. This amounts to 7 points and 490 calories.

Dinner Monday was chicken parmesan with Banza pasta (which is pasta made from chickpeas). This dinner was 5 points/435 calories. I didn't care for the chickpea pasta so I only ended up eating half of my serving.

My after dinner snack/dessert was an Enlightened bar, which I have talked about before on this blog. These are seriously so good and I have come to the conclusion that they actually really help my weight loss efforts. I eat one of these between 7 and 8 and I am not hungry at all for the rest of the night. There are many times when I am starving right after dinner and it drives me crazy. That hasn't happened at all this week.

I ended Monday at 19/23 points and 1467 calories.

Tuesday was just as successful. Breakfast and lunch were the same. I was a little more hungry in the afternoon so I also had a banana between lunch and dinner. Dinner was pot roast and broccoli. I had read a bunch about nutritional yeast so I decided to try it. I sprinkled some on my broccoli. I don't have much of an opinion on it. It wasn't a strong flavor at all. I'm going to try the nutritional yeast in other ways before I decide whether I think it's worth it or not. Dinner was 7 points/300 calories. Tuesday ended with 22/23 points and 1497 calories.

On to today. Sometimes I fall apart on day 3. I was a little worried that would happen today for no reason, but it didn't. I actually felt the least hungry today, but I did have to fight with myself not to eat for no reason. Breakfast and lunch were the same. Wednesdays I don't eat breakfast until almost 11 so I wasn't eating lunch until around 2 today. I had no problem getting through the day without snacking in between those meals. Dinner was grilled chicken marinated in Olive Garden Italian dressing with a boatload of green beans. This dinner was 3 points/315 calories.

Tonight I decided to have slightly more of a snack after dinner. I had apple slices with 2 tbsp of PB2 powder. This snack was only 1 point/125 calories. I then, of course, ended my day with an Enlightened bar.  Final count today was 19/23 points and 1517 calories.

With WW Freestyle you can "rollover" points you don't use in a day. You can only rollover up to 4 points a day. Monday I rolled over 4, Tuesday I rolled over 1 and today I will rollover 4 again. In just 3 days I have added 9 points to my 42 weeklies that I get. I have also earned 43 FitPoints since Monday.

I am meeting my mom for lunch tomorrow, but I have already planned out my day so I'm not concerned about it at all. I actually tracked all my food for the week (well, except for Sunday) on Sunday! I am already thinking/planning out my food for next week. There is no reason why I can't keep on this streak for 16 weeks (and beyond). I don't need to be this "perfect" all the time either, but there's NO reason why I can't eat like this most of the time so that I can still fit in those indulgences that I like every once in a while. I did that last April with no problem and dropped 15 pounds that month. I don't need to lose weight at that rate all the time, but that just proves that this doesn't have to be as hard as I make it. I like that I have this outlet to remind myself of this because I am SURE that I will hit hard times again when I think this is the hardest thing ever. It's not. Remember that!