Long Live the Chia Seed

Well hello there! Fancy meeting you here. I had no idea you come here too, what a surprise! Well, as long as we're here, together, just us friends, I may as well entertain you with a little story or three. First, please allow me to get a little braggadocios. I went to the doctor last week and told her that I would like a full blood workup because I am 100% confident they will look dramatically different than last years tests. So she ordered up the works and sent me on my way. Oh, I failed to mention that as of last Monday (my appointment day) I had lost 12 pounds in a month doing the 4 hour body eating plan, woot, woot! The next day I got my results and sure enough I was correct, my cholesterol had gone down by over 50%, my liver function panel is the picture of health and my A1c which last year said I was borderline diabetic told me that I am far from the border this time. All my other labs had gone down dramatically as well so I was very happy. I did find out that I have very low iron which explains my insane hair loss. So the moral to this story is...it's good to go to the doctor, you learn something new every time. Yay me.
Now it's time for confession, I've been having a very difficult time staying away from the crunch of a kettle cooked potato chip. I think it's because there is no crunch in the foods that I eat so I really miss it. I can go without the sugar all week, but I dream about the crunchy. I tried some celery and although that was good, it's not the same thing, I need to find a way to work that out. Right now, as it's Saturday cheat day, I'm eating super crunchy Doritos Dinamita chile limon chips, yum, but too salty.  I wish everything weren't so salty but I guess I just have to choose stuff that's not salty. I've been cheating about once a week, usually on a Wednesday, and eating some kettle chips at work, I just love those things. luckily it's not really affecting my weight loss too much.
I have discovered an amazingly wonderful product, it's called Chia Seeds and I love them. I put them in my water and drink them down. They do have a tendency to get a little slimy like the boba at the bottom of bubble tea, but I love that stuff. These Chia seeds fill your belly up so you're not hungry as much AND they help you stay regular, which is my dream come true. PLUS they have tons of Omega 3 which is great if you don't like fish (which I don't). I love a good Chia seed.
OK, so now, if you were to see me on the street you would be like "Hmm, it's doesn't really look like Sabrina's lost weight, but she says she has..." and I'm here to tell you my friend, the Sabrina you see before you now is the no Spanks wearing Sabrina. So I look now like I did when I was wearing those damn spanks all the time, which is how you all saw me so I will look completely the same, did that make sense? I would totes still wear them but I need to get a smaller size and they're pretty pricy so I'll just stick to the losing weight for now. Not only is the weight going down, but my measurements are going down too, I've lost one pants size so my jeans are a total joke, it's like I'm wearing clown pants because they were already getting really baggy from my previous weight loss. I even wore my "skinny" scrub pants to work yesterday, although I must say it was still a bit too soon as I was praying for the seams not to split every time I sat down. But they made it thought the day w/o incident so I'll try again next month. Greg has lost 9 pounds, but has lost a bunch of inches, he looks like he's wearing someone else's  uniforms to work they've gotten so baggy. Yay team us! Emma is also very pleased, she is able to fit into some shorts she bought a few months ago only to have grown out of them before she could wear them. So we're a family who is looking great and feeling even greater!
That's my story for now and I'm sticking to it. Until we meet again in this wonderful place, take care of yourselves and don't forget to go get some Chia seeds (Costco sells them) and change your lives.

xoxo

Week one: -7 pounds

Today was the official one week mark of embarking on the 4 hour body. As of 6:30am I have lost a total of 7 pounds this week. Emma thinks she's lost about 5 pounds and her stomach is much flatter than it was and her thighs are definitely shrinking, not that they were big to begin with. She's very happy. Greg did not weigh himself at the start but just weighed himself yesterday so he'll know more for next week, but he did need to tighten the duty belt on his uniform so that's a good sign. I've had to abolish the vegetarian at home plan for Greg, he was not happy, but didn't mind the soy meat. Kayleigh & Mimi are not thrilled with the new plan of only having dessert on Saturdays but they are happy to have meat back on the table (no, they're not on the "hobo diet" as Greg affectionately calls it). My crock pop happily gets used every night now to cook our delicious beans to last a few days so I don't have to keep opening cans! I must say, I've done more hunting for recipes and along the way have found that eating at Chipotle is encouraged as it has everything we need in a meal minus the rice and dairy products if you get it in a bowl, Emma is very happy. I've also found recipes to make pancakes with beam flour (I don't know what the hell that is or where to find it, but I will), sounds a little sketchy but worth a try, although I can't have syrup. I can have guacamole so I'm LOVING the Wholly Guacamole from Costco, so delicious, maybe I'll put that on my bean flour pancake. Oh, I do have a confession, Greg and I set out to go to the gym yesterday but when we got there at 7: 15 it was closed, they close at 7 on Sundays, so we decided to sneak a treat. We went to the frozen yogurt place and had tiny little samples of each flavor then ran out. Muwahahaha, we are mad geniuses, sneak a sample and ditch. It's a great way to curb a craving without completely blowing your day of eating well. Don't tell Emma though, she'll be ANGRY that we didn't bring her a sample. I even tried the popcorn flavored yogurt and kinda liked it!

So, that's the summation of my first week, it was successful and better yet I feel really good. Thanks for caring.

xoxo

The pressure of cheating got to me

So it's 12:31am, the day after my first cheat day. I have to say it wasn't all that I thought it would be. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, but I found that I didn't really want all the crap that I was dreaming about eating. I woke up at 8:00, went to pick Emma up from her lock in at the church and we went straight to my fav coffee shop. I had my mocha and Emma and I split a doughnut and scone. After that we were kinda full and felt a little sick from the sugar. At home I did laundry and had some chips that weren't as satisfying as I thought they would be. Emma made a PB&J and felt very let down, she said "Aw man, I was so excited to have a PB&J, those are the BOMB, but now that I'm eating it I'm realizing it's not as good as I thought it would be!" So we discussed how it felt more like a burden to eat some of the stuff because we didn't really want it but didn't want to waste the day. Later, we went to dinner with my parents and had some Italian food that was very good and some ice cream from Emma's favorite shop The Salt & Straw, which was also very good. But all in all it was a nice day that made my stomach hurt and made me long to have a salad or something that wasn't so heavy or sweet. Poor Greg missed most of his day sleeping! He got home from work at 8:00 then slept until 3:30 when he had to get up so we could go to dinner. During dinner I commented that his blood sugar was probably going to spike because it's been so low with the new eating plan, and sure enough when we go home his sugar was really high which made him sleepy, then he had to go to work, so he only really got one meal to splurge.
In conclusion, we realized that we need to have more of a plan for our cheat day, we need to choose one meal that's the splurge and have it all worked out in advance instead of just having a list of random foods that sound good to us but don't really go together. I also realized that it's amazing how salty junk food is, my fingers are so swollen I can't take my rings off and they were too big earlier! I'm going to drink a cleansing tea and go to bed. It was a relief when the clock turned 12 because the day of high pressure to eat was over. Oh, as of this morning when I weighed myself I was down a total of 7 pounds since Monday. I had put on about 5-6 pounds during my last month or so of my time in hell, but now I'm at my lowest weight since having started this whole endeavor. So I'll keep you posted on my success. I just wish I could move my head to the right without pain, stupid gym, it hurt my shoulders and neck! I need to take a spin in the Angel machine to shake away my aches and pains. I'll do that right after church, that seems like an appropriate time to get hugged by an angel!

xoxo

4 hours to a new me

OK, so it's a few days late but this the post I promised. When I started my new job last week I worked with a woman who had just lost 75 pounds and was losing more every week. I asked her what she was doing and she told me it's called the 4 hour body. So I bought the book and figured I would give it a try. Greg and Emma wanted to join me so we embarked on this adventure together. It's a "slow carb" diet so we haven't been eating any white food, no dairy, no sugar and of course no bread/rice/grains. It's been so amazingly easy, it sounds really crazy but we focus our meals on beans and veggies and soy meat products. Greg is not loving the at home vegetarianism so I've given him a little leniency and he's had some ground beef and chicken this week. Anywho, while on this new eating plan I've already lost 5 pounds and I have to say  I have never felt this good. I have so much energy and Greg and I have been going to the gym and I find that I don't even want to fight going. I think part of that might be the fact that I can plug my earphones into the treadmill and watch live network TV which is a luxury since we don't have cable. I can watch The Voice while briskly walking alongside other sweaty people. It's been really nice. The best part about this eating plan is that for one day a week we can eat anything we want/as much as we want. It's like a game, we talk about all the things we're gonna eat and build up our list. Tomorrow is our first cheat day and as much as I've been looking forward to it I'm not sure I'll go too crazy. This is going to be a boring post, I'm fixin' to go to bed now, it's been a very long day and I'm ready for some shut eye. One thing's for sure, I'm so looking forward to having a coffee drink tomorrow. I've been having to drink my coffee black with cinnamon in it for flavor, no sugar and sometimes 1Tbs of cream. It's really good, but I sure do miss my Mocha. I'm gonna savor that baby like it's my last.

I know I've been a diet jumper lately (as in the last 30 years) but sometimes you have to rule out the things that don't work for you. I figure as long as I'm still heading in the right direction who gives a hoot what I'm doing. OK, gotta run, my bed is calling me, I have a big day tomorrow.

xoxo

I'm ssssshhhhhaaaaking it!

OK, so I have two different stories to tell you but I'm only going to tell you the funny one now and tomorrow I'll tell you the other one that might not be as funny, but it's still good. OK, initiate flash back sequence to the early blog post when I told you about the weird shaking machine I saw in the mall that people are using to shake their fat off. Do you remember that? SOoooo, I started tanning (yeah, yeah, save your judgement for someone who cares) and the place that I go to, Holla out to my girls at Palm Beach Tanning!, has a machine called the Body Angel or some other nonsense like that. Anywho this magical machine is a Red Light therapy machine that helps to erase fine lines, repair sun damage, yes I see the irony, and they claimed that it helps people lose weight too. Well, what the hells, I thought to myself, it's included in my package I may as well try it. So I told my home girl Kansas (that's what her name tag said) that I wanted to try the machine. She walked me to the room, said "OK, so all the directions are on the poster on the wall" then left. I thought that was a little poor on the customer service department, but what do I know. So, I've never been known to have the patience to read directions, I de robed, hopped into the machine and started pressing buttons. The machines these days have a tiny little person in them that walks you through the running of it so I just let the tiny woman tell me what to do. All of a sudden a burst of warmth and red light came on and wrapped me in cocoon of warmth what I can only imagine an angel's embrace feels like. It was amazing, penetrating to my very being. But I'm not content with that, I need to know what other features it has, how do people lose weight? So I'm pushing more buttons and the tiny lady tells me I have entered the cellulite  busting program? What? Did she just say this machine will bust my cellulite?! I pushed the OK button and stood there waiting to be flogged or whatever it was going to do. Imagine my surprise when the floor started to gently move. So I'm standing in the midst of an angel hug and the floor starts vibrating, rapidly building up to a speed that I'm pretty sure gave me early onset shaken baby syndrome. But I'm standing there, as if on a surf board because the tiny woman keeps telling me not to lock my knees. I'm surfing while being hugged by an angel all the while being completely nude!! HELP, I've got a Tsunami building up in my fat as the tectonic shaking is making my multitude of lady lumps, in the back and in the front, my humps, my humps... were rolling like a new phase of the moon had begun. So the whole thing has taken me by surprise and I'm being shaken so vigorously I would defy any piece of cellulite to dare stay on my buttocks! I was scared it would not stop, 10 minutes seems like a lifetime when you're dizzy, but I couldn't stop the machine, the buttons were too high and I was told not to lock my knees so I had to surf and hold my breastacles lest they fall off from the sheer violence of the shaking they were getting! I also had to try to focus on the angel hug that was getting hotter and hotter and I'm pretty sure I saw Satan's face coming at me from the wall of red light, but my brain was so shaken I couldn't see straight. Thankfully the shaking became more gentle and finally stopped. I jumped from the machine and stood there and burst out laughing because all I could think of was I had just experienced the very shaking machine I mocked in my blog! Karma hits me again. I failed to mention that I was at the "beach" with my mom who couldn't figure out how to make the machine shake. I met her when I got out and told her I though my whole butt was going to fall off. We laughed then went to get some dessert, cuz that's how we rolz SON!
 Fast forward to me finishing my wonderful coffee sitting in a booth laughing at how surprised I was at my experience with a machine named after an angel. I went to stand up and POW my back went out so bad I could barely walk to the car. That damn machine BUSTED a cap in my back. I was bent over like an old lady begging my mom to help me get in her stupid SUV that had to be so high, then I begged her to drive around aimlessly so I could use the seat heater some more. It took me days to recover from that experience! But I have to say I have gone back and read the poster which told me I was supposed to start out on a lower level to build up to the highest which was the cellulite treatment. So now I go regularly and although I don't notice too much difference in the weight, I do love the red light portion, it's so wonderful, I learned that the heat can be offset by the fan if you can reach it from a surfers squat. So that's my story for today, another story will happen tomorrow-ish.

xoxo

Depression & Hell on Earth

Hi all, I'm writing this while on the verge of tears of frustration and anger at the dum, dummy, dunces that took Emma's tennis team photos. I've been trying to get a link to see them for two weeks now but apparently there is a monkey with a lobotomy running their site who can't get jack squat right. I just told them to forget it, I'll take my own damn pictures of her since they can't seem to let me see any of the proofs to order them. Jackholes!!!!!!!!!! Phew, that felt good.

OK, "why so long?" you may be wanting to scream at me. Let me tell you, it's incredibly difficult to muster up the will to do anything when you're soul is being crushed and you're in the middle of a deep depression. I know you all know I was working in Hell on Earth, but I don't think you knew how badly it was sucking me dry of my will to do anything. I even totally let go of the weight loss mission. But for the grace of God I didn't gain back any of the weight I had lost, but I was also not eating healthy and that made me feel even worse. Now that I'm away from there I am reminded not only why I went into the medical field (because God called me to do it) but also why I started this mission to eat healthier (because I love me and I want to feel good). Even in the midst of my depression I mostly tried to buy healthy food but we were going out to eat too often. I did, however, lessen our carb intake, put a ban on all fast food as well as stopped buying snacks that were sugar based. Kayleigh has lost about 10 pounds (she also has grown at least 6 inches in the last couple of months) and Emma (with the help of Tennis and daily smoothies) has lost 10% body fat. Greg also lost 20 pounds!!! I'm so proud of those guys. I'm most proud of the fact that K & Mimi have not even asked for fast food since a week after we stopped. I told them it's poison and they said "OK" and that was that. We did turn to Subway for emergency food stops but that's better than McDonalds!

So now that I feel better about my work future I'm focusing on my weight future. I've been making smoothies for breakfast (frozen fruit, kale, yogurt & water). "Kale?" you ask, yes my friends, I put a handful of kale and maybe some unsalted nuts if I have them around. If you overdo the kale it gets a little grassy, but that just makes me feel healthier. I've even suckered the kids into drinking them, not knowing what's in them but yummy fruit. I'm on a mission to feel better and I'm renewed with vigor and excitement. Today I implemented at home Vegetarianism, you can eat a cow if you're going out to eat, but at home it's all healthy stuff. Greg is skeptical but the kids are on board. I downloaded two apps on how to be a Vegetarian and they have some great recipes. I also talked to the kids' doctor and asked her what I need to watch out for. She said to give them a multivitamin and some calcium chews, done and done. One thing I have learned is that I need to buy my veggies as I need them, keep carrots and other snacking veg on hand but shop daily for meal ingredients, this saves money on wasted veg that doesn't get used. Tonight I made some almond pesto with fettuccine, zucchini & carrot "noodles". It was delicious. Kayleigh tried it but opted for beans but Mimi, Emma and even Greg ate it! I also gave them a proper portion of it but because there were the carrots and zucchini it was more filling. I was going to make cashew oatmeal cookies for dessert but forgot to get butter at the store. Oh well, I tried.

So that's where I'm at friends, I'm going to recharge the system and it will be Weight Watchers 2.0, ain't no stopping me now.

xoxo

$2 madness

OK friends, I know it's been a while, it seems like time is whipping by! So last week I took a $2 challenge, almost half of the world is in such poverty that they live on the equivalent of $2 US a day for EVERYTHING! Now I think we all know we could never live on $2 for all of our living expenses for a day, so I took the food challenge. I tried to do it for the whole family but in the end I was the last man standing. So this took much planning and research for recipes, but it was actually an eye opening experience that I quite enjoyed. The first day I had toast with a dab of almond butter for breakfast, PB&J sammie and an apple for lunch and a sammie for dinner too (didn't plan well that first day). All week I drank only half strength coffee and used one tea bag a day, didn't want to spend all my pennies on drinks! I was freaking HUNGRY on that first day so I did some recipe hunting. Armed with my meager monies I took to the grocery store and hunted for the cheapest fixins for a filling meal I could find. I decided to make crock pot lasagna! Not only was it super cheap (no meat), it came out so incredibly awesome it's now on the rotation as a favorite. It turned out to be $0.75/serving and it was satisfying. Notice how I didn't say filling because how filling can a piece of lasagna the size of half your palm be? The online consensus was to eat as many legumes as you can because they're filling and CHEAP. I made a pot of lentil soup from a little kit that was on sale for $1, that made four servings so it was only $0.25/serving, woot, woot. I was really getting the hang of this and after the second day I didn't notice the hunger anymore, it was just a mild wish I could have a tasty morsel or some other such delicious thing. One day I made stir fry with some frozen veg and $1 noodles I found on sale, another delicious meal that was cheap. I was the queen of the $2 a day thing! Then I realized I was not getting what I needed to out of the challenge. There was a light at the end of my tunnel, this was only a challenge, not a true way of life. I had the luxury of choosing higher quality foods than most people in true poverty can. I had a nice warm house full of stuff that I could rest comfortably in while my tummy growled, I wasn't in a drafty shack watching my children go hungry. Even though I lost three pounds that week I gained a better reality of how lucky I am to have all that I do. I also realized that even on my Weight Watchers I've been eating more than I need to just because I could. I was fine not having all kinds of snacks, I ate healthy with smaller portions and I didn't feel cheated. I have to say that I even faced TWO of the demon cakes that had been brought in to celebrate someone's 40 year anniversary and I didn't even flinch. There were a few people at work who went out of their way to make sure I knew they thought I was stupid for taking the challenge but I suspect they were more upset because they're evil ho bags who have no compassion (but that's just my opinion). This challenge opened my eyes to a different way of thinking, I can be a penny pincher and still feed my family well and have some left over money to buy a little something for the homeless woman who lives on the corner by my office, I bet she lives on $2 a day.

When you make a meal tomorrow, price out how much each thing you prepare costs and see if you can eat on just $2 for a day. It's a fun challenge to try for a little while but I'm very grateful I don't have to do it all the time. In fact, I've been very naughty lately and I need to get back on the straight and narrow. I'm actually scared to weigh myself, I've been eating like my old self, but there's always tomorrow, right? Hey, did I mention that I didn't eat that evil cake? That should count for something, right? Hells YES!!!! I really want a shamrock shake now but I'm going to ignore that too, so I'm already ahead of the game! Woohoo for me, death to desserts (except for the little bit of creme brulee I had a lunch today, hehehehe). I must go now, I need to switch the laundry and ignore the licorice that has wormed it's way into the house and keeps calling out to me. Last night it haunted my dreams and today it made sure it was front and center in the cabinet so I would want to turn it into a straw and drink my delicious tea through it, but alas I am a fighter and have turned away from it. Mmm, don't you love it when you turn it into a straw at the movies and it gets all melty and gross? yeah, me too, that's one of my favs. I also love it when it's all fresh and soft, mmmmm, red vines are tiny little ropes to hell. I am tempted to use them but I shall refrain.

xoxo
sugar lumps