Scorecard on My Restart Efforts

Rome wasn’t built in a day and my empire is no exception to the ‘time and patience’ rule. I hit the restart button on my weight loss efforts and the last couple of days have been a combination of tries and trial-and-error.

Nothing I ate yesterday stayed down. Oh, well. I will call that day errors. Mild cheddar over garlic triscuit crackers – yacked. Too much fiber consumed too fast. Fresh-herb baked chicken breast with stuffed portabellos – half yacked. I learned. I’m eating the right things, but not concentrating on chewing slowly and big chunks become, well, blown chunks. (Excuse the graphic nature of this post) After things settled down, I returned to my cold chicken and spinach-stuffed portabello. It wasn’t too bad chewed to death.

Rule No. 1 – Eat protein first and eat slowly and carefully. Funny thing is that only goes for healthy food. I could eat Orioles and Rocky Road ice cream at the speed of light. Yes, that’s weird. I don’t make the rules; I just break them and later beg mercy from the lap band gods.

Today, I started my day with my weight loss special breakfast – Oatmeal Yogurt Crunch. Ok, that’s a long, corny name. The night before, I mixed 2 cups of plain, fat free yogurt with 1 cup of plain rolled oats. To that mixture, I fold a can each of pineapples and mandarin oranges. After the oatmeal softens, I mix in a half cup of slivered almonds. I add a scoop of vanilla flavored protein powder to each serving. I estimate that it has about 230 calories and more than 20 grams of protein. Quite filling and it gives me a good head start to getting 60-80 grams.

Rule No. 2 – Limit carbohydrates within a high-protein diet. I try to get my protein from solid protein instead of shakes, but I still use Juice Plus as a vitamin and protein supplement.

I got some exercise. I walked two miles to a convenience store to get milk for my little girl and myself. Not impressed? I left at 2:30 p.m. (in Louisiana!) pulling my nearly-40 pound toddler in her Little Tykes wagon built for two. Ya gotta see this thing. It’s got a door, two seats and cup holders. On the trip back with a bag of groceries, I drank half the water and splashed the rest on our faces. “Mommy, my face is crying,” she complained. I guess the ungrateful little tot would prefer spontaneous combustion.

Rule No. 3 – Exercise at least 30 minutes a day. I dragged my earthly remains home at 4 p.m.

I’m a heavy drinker (of water), so this routine didn’t change much for me. It’s very hard for me to drink less than 16 ounces at a time. It truly is hard for me not to drink with meals and I do think this is a big part of weight loss surgery success or failure. I’ve gotten it down to only sipping with meals and when I do abstain from water with meals, I never can wait an hour before having a large glass of water. Shame shame.

Rule No. 4 – Drink at least eight glasses of water a day with no drinking during meals and ‘something’ about an hour before meals and ‘something else’ about an hour and a half afterwards. I drank 80 ounces of water today and I will aim for 100 ounces. The rest of the water rules will not be achieved without a 12-step program.

My day ended with a horrible headache from the hot walk. Dinner was shrimp Alfredo over Dreamfields low-carb pasta and leftover spinach-stuffed portabello. This low carb pasta is out of sight and it has 7 grams of protein per serving with only 5 net carbs. I estimate the pasta, shrimp and mushroom dinner had more than 40 grams of protein. I think there was about three different types of cheese in those ingredients and cheese=protein!

I have the end-of-the-night-munchies. Watching my toddler and husband snack on about 5 different things hasn’t been easy, but only because I have to fetch snacks and clean up the messes that they leave. I’m thinking of ending my day with a large cup of sugar-free Nestle’s Quick with milk. 10 grams of protein, here we come!