First Gain, Non-scale victories, & summing up April

In the 10 weeks that I've been doing weightwatchers I've lost weight at every weigh in, until this week. This week I had a .6 gain. Not surprising considering the way I ate while celebrating Taber's birthday and Easter ; ) The bigger surprise is that it wasn't more than .6, but I did try to curb the indulgences and throw in some extra workouts to redeem myself a little. Small gain but it did motivate me to really buckle down and be honest with my tracking this week.

Even though I gained this week I still want to celebrate a few non-scale victories:

1) I went to my WW meeting even though I knew the scale was going to be up not down. Those are the hardest times to go but probably the times you need it the most.

2) I packed away all my maternity clothes and have fully transitioned to my "in between" clothes. Yay for no more maternity jeans!

3) Not only am I out of maternity jeans, but I even dropped a size from my in-between jeans to my somewhat smaller in-between jeans. still a couple sizes to go before I can get into my pre-baby jeans but we're getting there : )

4) Worked out 5 days last week and am getting a little bit faster with every run

5) Turned down the cake at a baby shower last night and chewed on gum instead of having ice cream with Taber after dinner tonight. (Not that I don't believe in dessert if you've worked it into your daily points, but I didn't have the points for it and I honestly wasn't hungry so I'm trying to listen to my body cues more instead of just eating stuff because it looks good ; )

Exercise summary for last week:

Monday: ran 2.5 miles on treadmill 9:27 pace. 25 minute Slim in 6 DVD

Wednesday: ran 2.5 on treadmill 9:10 pace. 25 minute Slim in 6 DVD

Thursday: 30 minute pilates DVD

Friday: ran 2.45 miles outside 9:46 pace

Saturday: ran 5 miles on treadmill 9:55 pace

Summary for April:

Started running again April 11th- logged 34.1 miles since then. That's more miles in 3 weeks than I've run in 8 months. Aw yeah!

lost a total of 5 lbs this month, Just over a pound a week which sometimes feels slow but worth the slow pace to keep the nursing thing going.

And unrelated to running or weight loss but April summary just the same:

Took Cam to his first Celtics game

Made the jumbo tron and little guy was nominated for "fan of the game"

Put up the trampoline. Yay for warm weather and static hair

Spent lots of time snuggling this chubby little dude

Potty trained Brinley (finally!)

Took Cam to watch the Boston marathon. He's totally in love with Desiree Davila now.

Got a visit from the Easter bunny

And stayed busy trying to keep up with these little munchkins.

Life is good.

A Fun and Indulgent Weekend

Last weekend I confess to going off plan a little bit.

Well, maybe more than a little bit, but it was a lot of fun : )

I was up against the double whammy of Taber's birthday and Easter. I cooked a TON for both events and we had company over for both so yeah, lots of food and treats and desserts. I will be happy if I don't gain weight this week, but you never know, between nursing and upping my exercise I might come out even. : )

Exercise summary for last week:

Tuesday: ran 2.25 miles 9:55 pace

Wednesday: ran 2 miles 9:42 pace

Friday: ran 2.25 miles 9:47 pace

Saturday: ran 5 miles 10:13 pace

I'm happy that I'm getting a little faster and that running is getting easier. I'm right on track for my 5K training plan but I really want to start incorporating more strength training to tone my body up. I have this post pregnancy boot camp DVD that I want to try out. It looks hard though so I keep putting it off. haha!

And instead of a recipe today I thought I'd share some of my must have items for the refrigerator.

-The greek yogurt is probably of my favorite snacks of all time. It's so rich and filling and has tons of protein too! I like it in the afternoon as a snack or I'll add fresh fruit to it in the morning and have it for breakfast. It also tastes amazing in smoothies.

-I buy 3 dozen eggs at a time because I like to make omelets with one egg and 3 egg whites. add some ham, onions, mushrooms, spinach, and low fat cheese and you get a HUGE omelet for only 6 points plus!

-Almond milk is amazing in smoothies and a great way to sweeten oatmeal or cereal.

-Carrots are my go to snack when I just need to crunch on something. If I'm really hungry then I dip them in hummus. I buy the hummus in individual serving packets from Costco so I don't eat too much of it. That stuff is good!

-Spinach is great for salads and to stuff in sandwiches, wraps, omelets or even pasta.

-Romaine, great for salads

-Grapes, sweet late night treat.

-Oranges, my new favorite 0 point treat. I buy huge boxes of them at Costco and go through them so fast.

So those are my favorite fridge items. Do you have any must-haves that you stock up on? Fill free to share. Next time I'll do my freezer, lots of little gems in there too : )

Thursday weigh in and running update

Today was my weightwatchers weigh in. My meetings are Thursdays at noon and I have a very sweet friend who watches my girls so I can go every week. Today however she was unavailable and my other sweet friend who I usually call for back up is out of town. The easy option would've been to skip it or go to another meeting but I love my leader and the group I'm in so I decided to be very brave and took all three kids with me.

I gave the girls a breakdown of what the meeting would be like. Mom will stand on a scale, people will talk and clap for each other, and if I'm good they'll give me stickers. They liked the idea of stickers and promised to be really good if I shared. Deal.

The girls were good for their word. They were seriously perfect angels the whole time. I had packed the iPods, snacks, and even bribery goodies but never had to use any of them. They loved it when I got a sticker for my 2.4 loss today! aw yeah!! And Teya was beaming when everyone clapped for me and she told me to raise my hand and talk again so I could get more stickers/praise. : ) I was prepared to leave in the middle of it if things got hairy, but we were able to stay for the whole thing and afterwards Teya said, "Actually mom, that was pretty fun!" Seriously love my kids and so glad they decided to have a good day when I really needed them to.

So yeah, down another 2.4 which is a big loss! Down 13.4 lbs since I started WW 2 months ago, and down 30 lbs since the end of my pregnancy 3 months ago. I credit the solid losses I've had over the last 3 weeks to the fact that I started running again. It's really made a big difference. Last week I ran 4 times. I did 3 two mile runs and a 4.6 miler on Saturday. I'm getting faster and my pace is now around 10:30 min/mile so that's kind of exciting. I feel like I have a million more things to talk about but I gotta get back to the kiddos. So, I'll leave you with a recipe and some pictures of my kids because they're awesome.

Angel hair with Tomato, spinach and Feta: WW points plus 8

1 cup of cooked angel hair pasta

2 tsp olive oil

1/2 tsp garlic

1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes (you can also use canned tomatoes if you don't have fresh ones)

1/8 cup feta cheese

2/3 cup of Spinach leaves

sea salt to taste

Heat 1 tsp oil and garlic in a pan. Add tomatoes and cook for 3-5 minutes until soft. Add spinach leaves and stir until wilted.

Toss angel hair pasta in remaining tsp of oil and season with sea salt. Add tomatoes and spinach and the feta cheese. Toss until everything is mixed together. This is so easy, it's my back up dinner when I haven't' really planned for anything because I always have canned tomatoes and pasta. Really yummy and my whole family loves it.

They also really love this guy. He's constantly getting smothered by his big sisters. Such a good little sport : )

Working hard

Today was my weight watchers weigh in and I was down another 1.4 lbs. I hit my 5% goal, got a sticker and only have 15 lbs to go till I hit my pre-pregnancy weight. As long as the scale keeps going down I will take it. : )

Some people are blessed to have the baby weight just melt off them while they breastfeed. I am not one of those people. I work very hard every week to say good-bye to each little pound. I carefully measure my food, track my points, drink my water, and down my veggies. When I'm at a party I say no to all the yummy treats, I don't finish my kids' leftover fries and nuggets like I used to, I've replaced my old afternoon sugar binge with a workout, and I don't snack late at night. It's not easy, sometimes I WANT to do those things still. But every time the temptation comes instead of giving in I think, "what will I really get out of that if I eat it? Will it fuel my body? Am I even hungry? Will I be happy afterwards if I eat it?" Stopping to think about it usually changes my mind. If it doesn't then I say, "okay, you can have that treat, but first you have to drink a glass of water and eat a piece of fruit. If you still want it after that then go for it." 9 times out of 10 I don't want it anymore. And when I do want it, I eat it. But I still measure out the portions and track what I've eaten so I don't get out of control. It seems to be working.

And speaking of working, I did two 2 mile runs last week and my knees are working just fine :) . It is so therapeutic to be able to run again, even just short distances. Getting my heart pounding and my face all sweaty, I don't know, it just makes me happy. I also tried doing pilates last week. hahaha! My core is soooo weak after being stretched out during pregnancy, it was a pretty pathetic attempt. You gotta start somewhere though right? Maybe if I keep it up I'll actually be able to get through the whole video without wimping out.

And here's a little recipe for my favorite evening treat:

Strawberry banana smoothie: WW points plus value: 2

4-5 big frozen strawberries

1 ripe banana

1 cup of vanilla almond milk

mix ingredients in a blender and wa-lah! DELICIOUS low point, very filling treat.

btw I am a huge fan of the almond milk! I put it in my oatmeal too instead of sugar to sweeten it up a bit. Good stuff.

5K challenge day 1

Got my run in this morning while Teya was at preschool. I put the baby down for his morning nap, plugged Brinley into a nice episode of Curious George and headed down to the basement for a run. I miss my old gym back in Minnesota that had childcare but a treadmill and PBS kids has turned out to be a pretty decent alternative : )

I warmed up by walking for a half a mile then got off to stretch. I hopped back on and started jogging at 5.5 mph (10:54 min pace) My training schedule called for 2 miles today so that's what I did. I bumped it up to 6.0 for about 3 minutes and it was tough, but I felt good through the whole run and finished in 21:26. After my run I did resistance bands and some ab work to try to coax my long lost ab muscles out of hibernation. I know they're buried in there somewhere...

It felt really good to run again and the new shoes are great, although I thought my knee did hurt a little when I was done. I'm probably being hypersensitive because I'm so paranoid of getting injured and not being able to run again, but I decided to ice it and take some ibuprofen just in case. It feels fine now so hopefully I was just overreacting.

So that's day 1, always feels good to be back on track. And since some people have asked for recipes I'm going to try to throw one in at the end of every post. Here are two of my favorites:

Grilled Chicken Fiesta Salad:

WW points plus value: 9 w/out chips, 13 with chips

Ingredients:

2-3 cups Mixed greens salad

1/2 cup canned black beans

1 grilled chicken breast (I just sprinkle mine with garlic salt and lemon pepper and saute it in a pan for about 3 minutes on both sides)

1/4 cup reduced fat Mexican blend cheese

Fresh garden salsa ( I get mine at Costco)

Trader Joe's corn salsa. (best stuff, EVER!)

Tortilla chips (optional, I just use them for extra WWpoints since I'm nursing but the salad is great without them)

Load everything up on your plate and top with the salsa. You don't need any dressing, the salsa is perfect and gives it tons of flavor for hardly any calories. In fact, Salsa is my go to condiment these days. Tons of flavor for low low points. I bought 10 jars of Trader Joe's corn salsa and 4 jars of black bean salsa the other day because we go through the stuff so quickly. And speaking of salsa, here's another quick lunch idea that I use it on:

Sweet Potato with black bean salsa:

WW points plus value: 5

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato

3 Tbs black bean salsa

Wrap sweet potato in saran wrap and microwave for 5 minutes

cut it open, sprinkle with salt if you want and top with salsa. This is one of my favorite things to eat for lunch, fast, easy, delicious and filling. I'm sure other salsa's would be good with it but this black bean stuff that I get at Hannaford's is the bomb. (and if you don't have a Hannaford where you live then my taste buds weep for you, this stuff is awesome. Maybe I'll send it out to all my non-east coast friends for Christmas ; )

It's on!

Today I bought new running shoes. FINALLY! they discontinued the Nike Elite Zooms that I normally buy so I went for something new and am trying out a pair of Brooks Raveena 2's. I think they'll be great!

Also I officially registered for my first post-baby 5K! The race is 6 weeks away on May 21st. My goal is run it in 30 minutes. Kind of ambitious considering my current pace is about a 12 minute mile but I've got 6 weeks and as long as my knees cooperate I think I got this : )

It's been a good week: )

Today was my Weight watchers weigh in and I was down another 1.8 lbs! WOOT! When I started going to meetings 2 months ago I weighed 156. Today I weighed in at 146.6. I'm only 0.4 away from losing my first 10 lbs! YAY!

I know 10 lbs may not sound that impressive for a 2 month period but I'm really happy with the rate I'm losing at. I lost my baby weight way too fast after I had Teya and it really affected my milk supply. It's common to lose up to 20 lbs the first month after having a baby but doctor's recommend that nursing mother's only lose a 1-1.5 lbs a week after that first month. So that's exactly what I'm doing and my milk supply has been great and the little chub is thriving!

See, Just look at those chunky thighs and that double chin. : )

He's also sleeping through the night (8-9 hours every night) and he's not even 3 months old! My girls didn't do that and I swear it's because he's getting better milk. Who knows, but it makes me wonder...

Anyway, at our meeting they challenged everyone to walk or run a 5K in 6 weeks. We all got to sign up on a big poster and we get stickers every week we complete our training. Race day is May 21st and if we complete a 5K we get a little 5K charm for our keychains. I'm not gonna lie, I am PUMPED about this challenge! I know it might seem a little juvenile but stickers and little charms totally motivate me. You better believe I'm going to earn those babies!

So yeah, now I just need to get some new shoes so my knees will be nicer to me and then I'm going hit the pavement starting next week. Since I haven't been able to run though I have been doing my Slim in 6 DVD's and have worked my way up the the hour long workout. It's kicking my butt and makes me sweat buckets, but it feels good to get my burn on and when I feel like giving up I just imagine that I'm on the Biggest Loser and Bob and Jillian are in my face and yelling at me to push through it. Whatever works right?

So that's the latest update. Workouts are going well, I'm eating well and I'm excited to run my first 5K in over a year.