Counting Down 50

 I did it!! I DID IT, I DID IT, I DIIIIIIDDDDD ITTT!!!! Excuse the blurry picture, crappy cell phone mixed with not being able to turn the light on (babies sleeping).  Tomorrow is weigh in but I'm doing it a day early because, well I had a feeling I'd be there. SO excited!!! This is the first time in years I've been under 200lbs!! Really motivates me to keep going!  My reward for this is - SKIPPING CHEAT DAY! Yes, I am done with cheat-day Sunday. We do DQ on Sundays so I may have a mini blizzard but I can eat half and fit that into my macros. Sunday always sets me back, then I'll screw up Monday and it's a vicious cycle so I'm just gonna stick to it. I've lost 25lbs in 11 weeks, so I know I can do another 25 in 3 more months! Although I know the lower I go, the harder it will be. I got this.  So what am I doing? People ask this, it's funny because on some of the facebook boards I'm one of the people asked how they did it, vs being...

I am back on that train and feeling GREAT again! Also down a few pounds but let's wait till Sunday for that! Yesterday was a busy day, I got up had my coffee did my workout. Then I had to go out and fix our fence so the puppy can't get out. I had a confrontation with the BIGGEST SPIDER I'VE EVER SEEN! It was like a horror movie scene with this thing. It got away so it's somewhere in my garage, waiting to attack!! Ugh. Took my kids to swim after that and I actually swam, like laps, which is hard in a round pool lol. But I was feeling it after 10 minutes. Got out and made everyone lunch, then had a job interview at 2. Did that, IDK if it went well or not. The reality is that 99% of the other applicants probably have 10 years of experience and I haven't worked in 14. And they are probably available at all hours, where as I can only work evenings. They are looking for people to help in a temp position and right now, I'd take that. She said if you get that and prov...

This may be my hardest challenge yet. We LOVE to eat out. Mostly me. I think it's because it's a break from mom duties. Dinner in our house, with 8 people is a lot of work and a huge mess. Prep, cooking and eating leaves me with 2 loads of dishes plus an hour of clean up. While I'm in the kitchen doing that the kids are destroying the rest of the house so then I have to do that (or get on them to do it which is equally exhausting). Then our 2 yr olds basically cry and scream through every dinner because they're tired and cranky, I'm up and down getting new forks for kids who dropped them, filling drinks, getting little kids more food and always holding someone on my lap. It's an exhausting meal. So I love going out for dinner. The girls usually behave better out, someone else preps, cooks and cleans. They serve me and my kids! BUT, my favorite places to go are hibachi and mexican. Which means I eat rice, noodles, carb filled yumyum sauce. Chips, tortillas and wh...

Today I was at 204 according to the scale. *insert very sad face here* No one to blame but myself. I had 3 slices of pizza this week, a bacon cheddar steakhouse burger from Mcdonalds and a few fries. Cake. All the cake. My bday was Sunday so we bought a big cake and I had probably 4 slices of it over 2 days and some ice cream. We ate out a lot and I didn't behave myself. Hibachi (I ate the rice AND the noodles). Mexican food - I had enchiladas, tamales and had some chips. We went to applebees and got steak w/ salad, not the worst. Except for the gigantic margarita I had!!! I was beyond buzzed. So yeah, only myself to blame. And I'm paying for it. Letting myself eat all that, over eat ect has left me like I'm starting over. I feel hungry, often. I crave bad stuff again. Really wasn't worth it. I think I may actually be keto-fluing again. I'm feel like total crap. Headache, body ache, tired and blah. Back on track now. Going out for lunch with hubby today, Mex...

Today I got up, had my coffee. Girls got up. I decided to get my work out in, 47 glorious minutes of butt-kicking cardio. Burnt 491 cals according to fitbit. Then I cleaned up, made lunch. And got tired! I've been fighting this little headache the last few days, interestingly enough I also have not had any soda so I thought maybe that is why. But I am drinking MIO in my water and it has caffeine so IDK, maybe that's not it. Anyway, I was just tired, wanted to nap. So I laid on the couch, watched a movie with the kids. Watched some more tv. Just didn't do anything. Wanted to eat but resisted. Got up, cleaned a bit. Had half a coffee (only had half at breakfast), and an atkins bar which I shouldn't have ate but I wanted to see if it would help pick me up. It didn't. So I said ya know what?! I'm gonna put on a few workout videos and just do it. I did and I feel like 10000000% better now. 24 minutes, 210 calories out. My 9 yr old did it with me, they laugh usually a...

There are a lot of things they say exercise does that I call total b/s on --- for instance, helping with cramps or making your periods lighter. LIES. It makes me cramp worse and bleed like I've been stabbed in the heart. BUT, the days I get a really good workout in, I don't feel so hungry in the mornings. I'm trying to do nothing but coffee in the mornings again, I feel like the Atkins bars were holding me back. So it does seem to curb appetite for me! I am looking forward to lunch though! This was yesterdays and I'm planning to do the same today. Now this isn't "Keto" approved but I'm not really doing full keto, I'm doing low-carb. So I have 1/4 cup full fat cottage cheese, 2.8ozs of sliced ham. This is from the deli, but I will tell you it tastes like bacon. It's like really soft, delicious, amazing bacon. 1/2 cup of watermelon and a small salad that consisited of 4 slices (I then chopped) of cucumber, 1 tbs of red onion and 4 cherry tom...

Hubby is back to work and our schedule is back to normal! Yesterday was my first day back to sticking to my diet and I didn't do real well. I did ok up till dinner. That's where it went south. But it wasn't the worst so I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I did get in a workout yesterday, I took the boys skating! I loved skating as a kid, my mom and I would go 2 times a week and we had a blast!! So I've been wanting to take my kids and finally got to yesterday! The last time I had been skating was about 5 years ago, it was a moms night out. We were horrible, kept falling and decided to just leave and go get drinks instead lol. So I was nervous because here I was, hadn't skating in a long time and had 3 kids who have never skated, ever, to try to help. I don't know if it was because I'm more in shape now than I was even just 8 weeks ago, but definitely more in shape than I was 5 years ago! Or if a higher power just was on my side and knew I neede...

This week has been more bad than good but somehow, I've lost more weight that previous weeks!! Husband filled the house with junk, he's been on vacation. I've had bday parties and playdates to go to. I had cake at the birthday party. We had DQ yesterday for a treat for the kids. We had a long day and no one felt like cooking so we ordered pizza. I wasn't going to eat it but I was starving and just didn't feel like cooking, even just for myself, so I had 3 slices - crust and all! I had a granola bar the other day (it was like 33g carbs). Sonic messed up my drink order and it was most certainly NOT diet. I actually didn't drink much of it, but I had some. I also have only got in 2 days of exercise all week! So this morning I got on that scale expecting to see the worst.... but instead I'm down 3.2lbs!! How did that even happen?! Am I starving my body? Is that why I'm not losing as fast? Should I be eating more? Maybe getting more carbs than 50? I don...

My husband wanted to do the grocery shopping this week, he had friends coming over so I said yes because I always screw up and buy the "wrong" meat. He calls me on his way home and asks if that was a larger shopping list than usual? I told him well, with the kids home I am spending a bit more needing more snacks and stuff through the day - while the kids wouldn't normally snack at school they sure do at home! He asked how much I expected that to cost and I said oh 225-250. He said oh ok. Gets home, I see the receipt - $350!!! The kids are helping him unload and I think I had a mini seizure as they were hauling in - a case of hugs, boxes of capri suns, chocolate dipped granola bars, DONUTS, popcorn, chips, boxed mac and cheese. SO MUCH JUNK! I was mad, I was like omg, I've worked SO hard to get them weaned off all this crap and you just filled the house with it! I asked him - were you hungry when you shopped? "Yes". EAT FIRST. No more. Nope. He lost his groce...

Well the scale this morning said 1 lb down! I was let down, I was really hoping for two.  I know that 1lb is good, average weight loss but I want to see 2 lbs darnit! Of course if you take the 8 weeks I've been doing this and divide by the 18.8lbs, I average 2.35lbs a week. But I feel like I was doing good, getting 2lbs, 3lbs now it's just 1lb.. I wonder if it was the cookie I had mid-week or maybe eating too late. Maybe my keto-desserts are hurting me. Low-carb they are, low-fat they are not! Maybe I'm one of those people that diet sodas still make me gain. Maybe I need to cut my AM coffee. I don't know exactly what's going on, all I can do is try to mix it up and see what happens. So this week, I am cutting back to 1250 calories. NO diet sodas at all, I don't drink many but I have been drinking 1 can a day lately. More water. No food past 7pm, if we're late having dinner I'll survive! Mixing up my cardio with some tabota.  And I'm making i...

 My muscles, dream and kids are crazy.  I was talking to my husband about it and I said do you remember on that shark movie, Deep Blue Sea, where she adds the sharks sample to the Alzheimer patient sample and it starts firing. I think that's what my muscles are doing, firing. Coming to life after not getting much use! Spazzing out! My back muscle freaked out yesterday and then last night I had a muscle twitch in my obliques that started around 10pm last night and is still, 12 hours later, twitching. Which I think is what brought on my dreams because it feels a lot like a baby kicking! Last night I had a dream that I was pregnant, with twins, again! But the only baby I was feeling was the one on the front left so I was searching some weird storage place for a doppler. Then I suddenly snapped into being labor and giving birth at home, to TRIPLETS lol. Then I woke up. Whew! When I woke up my muscle was really going crazy lol.  Today I got in a great workou...

I set an alarm today to get up extra early so I could get a workout in BEFORE any kids got up. Of course before any of that I had to feed chickens. While doing that all of a sudden this intense stabbing pain in my shoulder blade came on. It took me to my knees. I thought I was having a heart attack at first (until I realized that was the wrong side lol). I took some deep breaths and tried to stretch out my arm and then finished the chickens real quick and hobbled into the house. Woke up my 16 yr old and begged him to try to pop my back (normally my 12 yr old does this wonderfully but I didn't want to risk waking the other kids). He tried, no luck. So it hit me, it was probably muscle pain not bone. I can't reach to massage this spot so I'm just doing shoulder rolls and lifting my arm up and down to try to work out that muscle. It actually helps. I also took some iburpofen because, ouch. I have a high tolerance for pain, I gave birth to two 10 1/2lb babies with no drugs befo...

Yesterday I had such horrible sweet cravings all day, gahh!! Plus I felt SO hungry all day. Didn't matter how much water I drank, I felt starving. Maybe that salad for lunch was a bad idea, not enough calories or protein to keep me full! We have left over pork from dinner so that will be lunch today. Got my exercise in this morning, it was hard, I wasn't feeling it so I really had to force myself to put everything into it. When I realized I was just kind of standing there, doing the movements but not moving, I turned it off and just went into my ab workouts. Crunches, side crunches, 30 second planks. Push ups, leg kicks, weight lifting. Fitbit says 350 cals. better than nothing but I'd like to see 400. I really need to get to 600 or so a day. I think I need a treadmill. When I get burnt out on the videos I like to jog, I like to put my music on and go for it. It clears my mind and gives me a break from the kids. I know it doesn't burn as many calories, but it does hel...

Yesterday was kind of a blah day.  We left the city and bought our country house but have quickly realized we want to be out further, on more land. 2 acres just isn't cutting it. We kind of came up with this 5 year plan - buy 20 acres, clear it ourselves, work on building a home on it. Doing as much of the work as we can ourselves so we come out with a small mortgage.  But the first step is buying the land and we need more income for that. Hubby works full time, we do well but there definitely isn't enough to add on another big loan to our single income. So the bank folks say if I can make 600 a month and show steady work for 6 months to a year we should have absolutely no issues buying property. Fine. I was wanting to start back to working anyway, get some experience - it's been 14 years since I've worked! Well, it's been 2 months since we decided this and I've put in at least 20 applications and I've only got one call - just to tell me I wasn'...

Exactly 1 lb down this week. Considering the screw ups, the birthday cake, the ice cream. I'm REALLY happy with that! But now, it's crunch time. Goal #1 is in 14 days and I don't know if I'm gonna get there. I wanted to be at 199 by my birthday, it may not happen but I should be close!  Decided to take today off from exercise and tracking - I'll mentally track but no figuring out macros. I may do a small workout later, we'll see. Hubby and kids are off to the movies - probably won't be back till 2pmish. I was thinking about taking kids rollerskating later, I LOVED rollerskating as a kid. I went with my mom every Friday and Sunday, we had such a blast together! So I'd like to start that with my kids, my older kids. My oldest has to work (boo!) but I could take my 12, 9 and 6 yr old and we can learn together! The downside is the nearest roller rink is a 20 minute drive, boo! But maybe if we get good we'll just start going down to the skate par...

After the carby cake fiasco of our sons bday hubby did not want cake for his birthday but what is a birthday without something sweet?! So I whipped up these adorable keto-friendly cheesecake bites! They were AHHHMAAZING!!!  1 8oz container of cream cheese (at room temp) 1/4 cup pyure 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla.  That's it! Mix it, done! The crust - 1/2 cup of almond flour blended with butter till it's crumbly (just like graham crackers).  I used silicone cupcake pans, pressed the crust mixture down, added a scoop of the filling, bake at 350 for 15-20  minutes and done!  Chill for at least 4 hours. My topping is just a handful of chopped strawberries, some water, a squirt of lemon, pyure to sweeten your liking. Cook it till the strawberries are tender and it cooks down a bit and chill till you serve! SO GOOD!  You MUST make these!!! This recipe made 9 little cheesecake bites, 2 for the birthday dad and one for everyone els...