Just Put White Flour on My Thighs, Please and Thank You (50 Day Challenge, Week Five)

I continue to be humbled by the ups and downs of this challenge. Somedays, it is just too hard to pull it all together: the planning, the preparation, and the making of deliberate choices when auto-pilot is all I can muster. Then I remember how good it feels to eat well, and the pride I feel when I succeed. There's also the beauty of watching the kids eat real food (when all else fails, at least they ate kale that day)! And so it goes, one step forward and one step back, as I struggle to find a groove that suits us for the long-term.

This week's challenge was:

1. stop eating when full
2. snacks between 2-5pm must be fruit or vegetable

Aha moment(s): 

• The kids truly eat whatever I eat. When my afternoon snack is carrots and hummus, they snack on carrots and hummus too. It's so simple, and so effective! 



A true delight is to see the kids graze in our backyard garden. They have no problem eating peas, tomatoes, raw kale, lettuce, and green onion. Nug draws the line only at arugula!

• Rarely, if ever, do I eat by myself. Mealtime is always a frenzy of hands and mouths, a child on my lap, sharing my plate, and getting up and down one hundred times. This has always been my excuse for not paying better attention to my fullness level. I've realized that even in the chaos, however, there are many moments of pause (when I get up to fill somebody's water, for example) when I can check in on my appetite. So I am officially giving up on this excuse. 

Biggest hurdle this week: 

Ok, TMI alert. Since getting my period back after pregnancy, my PMS symptoms have worsened. Maybe it's my old age (36)?, but once a month I am exhausted (asleep before 9pm), short of breath, and full of aches. I have no energy to cook and since eating a salad on a good day is a struggle, forget about it. I still managed to exercise four times this week, wrangle the kiddos, and cook a few meals, but I also gleefully dunked myself in several pools of fat, sugar, and white flour. 

Weight change: 

My weight was down (153.6) at the start of the week, when I was eating right. Unfortunately, weigh-in happened after ice cream and hamburgers (and water retention). It was just a few weeks ago that I saw 150 on the scale, and I didn't think I'd be seeing these higher numbers again :-( 

Today (end of week 4):

155.6 lb

And I'm not posting my measurements because they are up too, BUT! I compared them to January 2013 and they are a tiny bit better which leads me to believe my workouts are working!

Start of week 1:

154 lb

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How it went down, in photos... 

Stop eating when full:

I couldn't figure out how to take pictures of when I was full, so I call these photos variations of success in appetite control(!). I did better on meals than with treats.

1) One spoonful at a time kept me from over-doing it on a day when that was all I wanted to do. I left the spoon on the counter, and any chance I got, I snuck a spoonful of "Chubby Hubby" ice cream. I ended up eating only about 1/4 of the pint. (Unfortunately, later in the week I finished the pint, and totally paid for it with a stomach ache and insomnia). 2) Chocolate and fruit after dinner. I actually wasn't hungry for it, but ate it anyway for a stupid reason: I ate an avocado, but I have an avocado allergy(!) and I was trying to get the weird allergy taste out of my mouth. 3) These are oatmeal-whole wheat pancakes topped with chocolate chips, which, rather than eating handfuls of straight chocolate, were filling enough to keep me from going back for more. I ate them after lunch for the SOLE reason that I wanted to veg in front of the tv a little longer. 4) Whole wheat muffins. These I ate because I was bored. They were the only food eaten out of boredom for the week, amazing! 

Snacks must be fruit or vegetable:

Clockwise. 1) Broccoli and cauliflower. Ok, they were fried in oil, but it's broccoli and cauliflower. 2) Carrots and hummus. 3) Veggie chips (also fried). 4) Peach, banana, and yogurt smoothie. Cookie GULPED it down. And Nug insisted on throwing a kale leaf in! I'll be making these for mid-day snack again soon. 5) Kale-carrot-almond-quinoa burger. The kids also gobbled this. In the past, I would smother it in mayonnaise, but mayonnaise has more than 5 ingredients. Boo hoo. 6) More carrots and hummus. That jar of hummus had been sitting untouched for weeks until this week's challenge. Now I need to buy more! 

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Next week's challenge (challenges are cumulative): 

1. eat one local food at each meal
2. only eat local meat 

Where I'm at to-date:

• stop eating when full
• snacks between 2-5pm must be fruit or vegetables
• avoid foods with more than five ingredients

Last week I commented on how I let the kids eat packaged food when I don't. Well, ta-da! Homemade granola bars.

• no fried-foods
• no low-fat/diet foods
• two fruits or veggies with each meal
• no refined sweetener
• 100% whole grain
• no more than one glass wine/day