The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I've said several times I was going to start adding pictures. So here goes a few.

This first one is when I was a little girl. Before I ever had to think of weight. Or even clothes for that matter lol.

This next one is when I discovered I was fat. I mentioned in my first blog that when I was in the sixth grade I was made fun of by two of the most popular boys in our school, when the "regular" sized girls and I were exercising at recess.

Then it just kept getting worse from there. I graduated high school and went to a jr. college in my hometown. After I graduated from there I started work and packed on the pounds. Luckily my boyfriend never made me feel bad about it. This next picture was at my highest non-pregnant weight 220 lbs.

After we broke up, I managed to lose a little weight and started dating my future husband. On our wedding day, I got down to 207.

I've fluctuated up and down a few lbs. I was 219 the day I found out I was pregnant 21 years ago and was 233 the day my daughter was born. This next picture is the day she was born.

It is now almost 21 years later and I'm finally on the downward spiral. I left the 200's several years ago and hope to never see them again. I'm still no where near where I need to be but seeing how far I've come so far I will eventually get there.

Starting New

It's been nearly 2 years since I posted last. A lot has happened since then, except for my low carbbing. I don't know what happened to me. When we last spoke, I had gone to the dr. and had good results with y blood sugar and all my other tests. So instead of being smart and staying with what I was doing, I let my low carbbing fall by the wayside. I have not been doing well with my medicine either.

In the fall of 2010, I started back to college to finish my degree I had started 27 years ago. I want to get my degree in teaching middle school mathematics and English. I've had a good slow start so far by only taking 9-10 hours each semester. That has helped me to get a 4.0 average the last 3 semesters. This next semester, I am going full time (12 hours) as well as working full time at the middle school. We'll see how my grade point average holds up.

I had gallbladder surgery the week of Thanksgiving which probably helped me not gain much weight during this past holiday season. Still having some issues with digestion but everybody says it can take your body up to 6 months to a year to get used to working without a gallbladder.

So now here it is a new year. 2012. I've decided I've lollygagged around long enough and as of Jan 1, 2012 I'm back on the low carb bandwagon. I am now on my 5th day and have done surprisingly well considering I haven't cooked a lot. I know the weight doesn't come off me fast like it does other people but my doctor attributed that to my diabetes, so I'm going to try not to weigh myself too often.

One thing I have done this week that I haven't done the times before that I've started, is that I haven't gone to the sugar free candy yet. I don't usually eat much candy anyway but when I think I can't have any, I want it all the more. I'm going to try to stay away from it the total first two weeks, but I'm sure I'll go back to it.

I'll just list a few of the things I've been eating. I've only had bacon & eggs on Sunday. Got a bit of a stomach ache after I ate it so I've shied away from it since. But I've had a few other things I'm surprised didn't bother me. Sunday night and Monday for lunch I had fried cabbage with polish sausage. We didn't have school on Tuesday so it was pretty easy to eat right. I've taken a Atkins Daybreak cranberry bar to school each day for breakfast. Tuesday night for dinner we had a Walmart rotisserie chicken & I cut up leftovers and put in a salad for Wednesday's lunch.

I had a ham sandwich on oopsie rolls that I flattened out to resemble bread a couple of times and made some cheese chips. Last night I read a recipe with 3 tbs of cocoa, 1 egg, a little baking powder, vanilla, and sweetener. I made this and put it into 2 cupcake papers & it came out just like a brownie. I'm not much for chocolate and I didn't quite get it sweetened enough but it was pretty darn good.

I'm going to try to start doing like I did before and post new things I've made with pictures when I can. Loved everything I made before so I'm sure I will go back to my old posts and remake more of them. Walmart was out of jicama the last time I was there so I can't wait till they get some more to try more ideas I've found.

Been going through some old pictures so I might post some of them to give you an idea of where I've been (with weight) and where I am now.

My college classes will be starting back on Monday night Jan 9. It will be interesting to see how I will be able handle it all this semester.

Thank you for reading and.............

Stay tuned

Official Results from the Doctor.

I have been getting discouraged. I'm sticking to this diet with very few slip ups. However the weight is still not dropping off like it does for everyone else. I keep saying Im doing it mostly for my sugar & when I check it, it's always better. I have heard so many people tell me how dangerous this is for me to be doing. How that while my sugar may go down, it will wreak havoc with my cholesterol. I have tried to figure out what is causing my slow weight loss to no avail. So these last few days, I have been questioning myself. Is this really worth it. Is this doing enough good for me to have to miss out on doughnuts, cereal, and whatever else I see someone else having that I suddenly realize I loved.

Well, I had a doctors appointment today. I was going to let that be my deciding factor in if I was going to continue. If Im not going to lose weight quickly and it's not helping my health or actually harming it in some way I will just chuck it all in and start something else. So here are my official results from the doctor.

Bloodsugar a1c. In January it was 9.4 (they actually want it under 6) Today March 30 it was 6.8.

Total cholesterol January 196 (not bad) Today 175

Triglycerides January 319 Today 126

My good cholesterol January only 36 (needs to be over 39) Today 47

Needless to say my doctor and I were very pleased. I was dissapointed in my weight loss. With gaines and losses, my total official loss is just 9 lbs. When I complained how other people seem to lose faster, she reminded me that as a diabetic I won't respond to things like others and she said that if I keep it up, slowly but surely the weight will drop. So tonight I have a renewed enthusiasm.

Thank you all for reading and I will write more later.

March 7, 2010

Well, I officially cheated this week. Twice. Not just a bite of something, and nothing horribly but I cheated none the less. The first time was Tuesday. My sister and I took my mom to Lexington to UK to try to find out the cause of her persistant hoarseness for the last few months. I had it in my mind that I was not going to cheat, so before her appointment we went to Denny's. I just had eggs and sausage, but they had some whole wheat pancakes and sugar free syrup. So I had half. Mom had to see a speech therapist first for a voice test which took a video of her vocal cords. Then she had to see an ENT specialist. They agreed that her problems are from thinning vocal cords from aging, and can be helped with a minor surgical procedure. She will have it this next Thursday, but getting everything arranged, seeing the anesthesiologist, getting preop bloodwork done, we didn't get out of UK till around 6. We were all tired & just wanted to get something to eat & get home, so we ended up going to taco bell where I got a chicken soft taco and a meximelt. I also drank a "real" coke.

Saturday, Whitney & I went back to Lexington to shop some. Again I was going to do good. For lunch we went to Golden Corral. I had roasted chicken, roast, cabbage, green beans, brussle sprouts. But after a long day of shopping, and ready to head back home, hunger hit. We went to subway and split a footlong subway melt. I did pretty well, after a bite or two, I took the bread off and just ate the meat & veggies. But where I messed up was cheetos. I love cheetos. And ate most of the small bag. I'm not going to beat myself up, I'm going to hope that the veer off program will help break my stall.

So, today was much better. I had 2 scrambled eggs and 2 slices of bacon for breakfast. For lunch, I just had half of an atkins bar, since I ate breakfast so late. Went to the grocery but it was kind of hard because Whitney is on Spring break from college this week & I needed to get some stuff for her to eat while I'm having to work at Middle School. I love having her home, even though I really don't get to see her too much. One good thing she loves when I experiment with my low carb recipes.

I only cooked 2 things today. I had one for dinner and the other I'm going to have for lunch tomorrow. Both came from one of my favorite youtubers wannabeloser. She also has a website wannabeloser.com. The spaghetti squash alfredo is exactly how she did it. The Enchilada is based on hers but I made it with hamburger instead of chicken.

First the Spaghetti Squash & chicken alfredo. I poked about 5 good sized vent holes in the squash and cooked it in the microwave for about 13 minutes. When it was done, I cut it in half lengthwise and set it aside to cool a little so it would be easier to handle.

While it was cooling, I heated a pan, melted 3 tbs of butter, then added 3 tbs of heavy cream, 1/4 cup of parmesean cheese and a little bit of garlic powder. (I didn't have any real garlic on hand). Combined it all to make a sauce. I then added a little bit of cut up chicken. By now the squash was a little cooler, so I removed the seeds and used a fork to scrape the flesh out, it comes out looking like spaghetti. I put the squash in the pan and coated it with the sauce. Just like the cauliflower potatoes it's not exact but when you realize you can't have "real" pasta, this is a pretty good substitute. The carb counts are 5.6 with 1.1 fiber so a net of 4.5. The picture doesn't do this justice.

The enchiladas. I browned 1 lb of hamburger & drained off the fat. I added 2 tbs of ole elpaso enchilada sauce and a little bit of colby & monterey jack cheese. I then took the 4 sheets of Joseph's flax lavish (I wrote about it last week and have a picture) and halved them and halved them again making 16 pieces. But I only used 6 of them. In a glass baking dish, I put about 2 or 3 tbs of the enchilada sauce in the bottom. I put a good amount of the hamburger mixture on the piece of lavish and roled it up and placed it seam side down in the baking dish. I made 6 of these in the dish. I then poured about 1/4 cup of the enchilada sause over the top and topped that with the shredded colby & monterey jack cheese. I put in the oven at 375 for about 10 minutes or so. The net carbs are about 3.1g. (Like I said last week, I hope the Joseph's lavish bread is legal.) Oh! Also, I didn't use all the hamburger mixture. I still had enough left so that I can have a chipless taco salad one day this week.

Have a good week everyone! I'll post more later.

February 28, 2010

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Still been sticking with my low carb. I've finally got the hang of making the cheese crisps, and with 2 tbs of Walmart brand salsa it's a great snack.

I've been doing some things that I didn't think were too bad, I'm still staying under my 20 carbs a day, but according to the Atkins diet, might be hindering my weight loss. I was never much one for coffee but lately I've been drinking a lot of it. Caffiene can cause stalls. I had been eating some Russel Stover Sugar free candies, and I have found some wonderful sugar free candy at our Dollar Tree. They are in the shape of teenie tiny resee cups. They have the chocolate peanut butter, and the same kind in black forrest cherry. A serving size is about 30 of these tiny candies. Once you subtract off everything you're allowed to, they have a net carb of 0 grams. I never eat 30 at once but grab a little handfull every now & then & sometimes drink coffee with it. The artificial sweetner aspartame has been known to cause stalls & added with my caffeinated coffee could be messing me up. I've been drinking a lot of the Walmart brand of crystal light. Again, the aspartame is in it and I drink lots of this. I'm going to try to cut down on all this this week and drink more plain water.

I'll tell you a few of the things I've been eating this week & I have pictures of a few. Like I said before, you can grind up almonds and use it like flour or corn meal. I used it this week to coat pork chops. It was very good.

I have several recipes that uses cream of mushroom soup. So I've been making that a lot lately. I posted the recipe earlier and it has about 8 carbs in the whole recipe. I have some pictures of me making it. And the recipes I used it with. The first one was chicken, with Cheese and rice (of course I didn't use rice, I used cauliflower pulsed to resemble rice in my blender. In my pictures I didn't put when I added the chicken, or the cauliflower. I usually prefer chicken thighs but this time I used breast strips. Should make 4 servings at 6.3 grams of carbs & 2.6 grams of fiber for a net carb of 3.7grams.

One of my family's favorite dish is broccoli casserole. I made this tonight for us to have either for lunch or dinner tomorrow. I started off with the homemade mushroom soup. I microwaved 16 oz of frozen broccoli. I then mixed the broccoli and the soup together and added 2 tbs or real mayo and shredded up about 2 chicken breasts. I put it in a baking dish added about a cup or so of shredded cheese and 4 tablespoons of french fried onion rings. Baked at 375 until the onion rings were browned & the soup got bubbly. Makes 4 servings at 10.5 grams of carbs and 3.6 grams of fiber for a net carb of 6.9 grams.

I found something today at Walmart that I think is Legal. It's called Joseph's Flax Oat Bran whole wheat lavash wraps. They come in a large sheet 4 to a package. The package says 1/2 sheet is 7 carbs with 3 fiber so that is 4 net. Well I took that half and halved it again which would be 2 net. We made cheeseburgers and I was able to half that half and use it like a very thin bun. It was very good. Ideas started rolling through my mind. Using them for sandwiches, pimento cheese rollups, or a soft taco. I sure hope they are legal for atkins because I think this is going to be another staple for me

.

One last thing that I have tried this last week is the Atkins Advantage bars. The Endulge bars are very good they are just like candy bars, but they aren't approved for induction. I still consider myself still in induction. The Advantage bars are approved for all phases. What I have used them for is when I don't feel like fixing breakfast in the morning, I'll take one to school with me & eat one with a cup of coffee. My most favorite right now is Carmel Double Chocolate Crunch, and Carmel Fudge Brownie. I tried a chocolate granola one, & didn't like it as well. They are horribly expensive like 6.12 a box for 5 bars. But I think you can find some online cheaper. I think I'm going to do that next time.

Thanks to everyone for your good wishes and encouragement. I'll post more again this weel.

February 21, 2010

Well, it's been a few days since I've posted. I'll give you a little run down of what I've been eating the past few days.


Thursday morning I was going to spend some time with Whitney but she had a class till 10:30, so I had time for conteninental breakfast at my hotel. The only thing they had that I was allowed to have was some sausage patties and egg patties. Which would have been great if they were good, but oh well. Still had a little time before she got out of class so I went to Big Lots and bought the Jillian Michaels WII game. FYI it's pretty good.

Whitney & I went Dr Bizer's Value Vision & I had an exam for contacts & Whitney got some glasses. By the time we were through we went to a late lunch at Ryans. I had a salad, roast, cabbage & smoked sausage, baked chicken and green beans. How I handle dessert at those places is I get the sugar free jello then anything else that looks tempting I get a tiny bit of each one on my place. Not a whole piece or even a whole spoonfull but just enough for a taste. Anyway, that satisfied me pretty much for the whole night. I think I did have some sugar free candy & some coffee later.


Friday we had school for the first time that week. Had eggs & bacon for breakfast. Then at lunch, they had wienerwinks. I got one & took the bun off and and a little bit of a salad. That night we had some company and Darrell got a Hot & ready pepperoni pizza. I ate the top off of 1 piece without any crust, and then a slice of ham, rolled around a piece of swiss cheese and a little mayo.


Saturday, eggs & bacon for breakfast again. I got up late so it was more like lunch. So I didn't have anything again till suppertime. I got some baked chicken at Kroger and fixed some canned green beans in the microwave with a slice of bacon.


Today I woke up earlier and had bacon & eggs again for breakfast. For lunch I had a hamburger on oopsie rolls and a little bit of salad. For supper, I made some soup that I divided up into 7 servings, I ate one for supper, darrell ate one, am taking one for lunch tomorrow & freezing the rest.

I made a few things today to use later, that I'll post the recipes.


My vegetable beef soup

• browned hamburger



• 1 large can (or 2 small cans) whole tomatoes



• 1 medium onion halved, then sliced sideways



• about 3 stalks of celery sliced thin



• about 1 cup chopped cabbage

I just put it all in a big pot with some water & cook the daylights out of it. LOL

So Darrell can have some thousand island dressing, I made him some. Just took some mayo, some low sugar ketchup, some pickle relish, and a packet of splenda. Tomorrow for lunch, he is going to take some ground hamburger, chedder cheese, nuke it a couple seconds, then take some lettuce and a little of the thousand island dressing and it's supposed to tase like a big mac.

I know tomorrow night we are having steaks. I wanted to make some green bean casserole but store bought cream of mushroom soup has too many carbs so I made some.

• 4 button mushrooms chopped finely


• tbs butter


• 1 cup heavy cream


• 1/4 tsp garlic salt


• salt & pepper to taste

Saute the mushrooms in butter. Stir in heavy cream garlic salt & pepper simmer till it reduces and covers the back of a spoon. Then I took 1 can of french green beans & mixed them into the "soup". I put in a casserole dish to bake tomorrow. I will either put pork rinds or a little bit of fried onions on top. Here is a picture of the beans before I bake it.

February 17, 2010

Well, this has been an interesting day and a challenging day for eating. Darrell is now sick. Doesn't seem to have the stomach thing as bad, but he is aching all over especially with a headache, and doesn't feel like doing anything but sleeping. He's kind of on the verge of having some kind of stomach eruption.

But now that I'm still getting over it and am able to eat I better try. So for breakfast I made a mock danish. People, this is another thing that you think will be gross, but if you have an open mind, and realize you can't have the real thing, it is pretty good.

• 2 oz cream cheese softened (you can nuke it a few seconds)
• 1 egg
• about 2 packets of splenda
• a little vanilla
• cinnamon

I get my cream cheese really creamy before I add in my egg because it's a little hard to mix up completely especially if the egg is cold. But lots of people like it that way because it gets pockets of cream cheese to bite into. Then mix in all the other ingredients. Just mix to your desired consistancy. Then all you do is put it in a bowl (or leave it in the bowl you mixed it in) and microwave for about 2 minutes maybe up to 20 seconds longer. You can either just eat it out of the bowl you cooked it in, or flip it out onto another plate, like I did for the picture. I added just a little bit of sugar free syrup. I think it has about 4 carbs. I first saw this on youtube from the user bowulf. I saw another user irisdaflower add a little maple flavoring then divide the batter into 2 small bowls then after they were done put a piece of sausage between the 2 to make them like McDonalds Mcgriddles. I think I'm going to try that. It would still only have 4 carbs because sausage should have 0.

Lunch consisted of 2 of my oopsie roll bread and a slice of deli ham, with a little bit of real mayo, a nice little sandwich that was pretty good. And of course my sprite 0. I posted the recipe and pic for the oopsie rolls yesterday. The recipe comes from the internet by somebody named Cleochatra. It's a version of Atkins Revolution Rolls. The original recipe says you can make 6 rolls out of it for .09 grams of carbs each. Since I flatten them down & try to make them look more like a piece of bread, I get at least 8 of them. So I'll say that mine are 1/2 carb each. I used 2 so that was 1 carb. My Walmart cooked ham was 0 carbs and my "real" mayo was 0. My sprite 0 had 0 carbs so my lunch total was 1 carb.

Many of you know that I had signed up for a photography class at EKU in Richmond KY tonight. We didn't have school today in Laurel County but at EKU theirs were just a 2 hour delay. But no word on the night classes. This class was going to be from 6 to 9. Didn't know what to do, I didn't want to leave Darrell if he was going to be as sick as I had been. But he said that since I had already paid for it, I should go, that he'd be ok.


I came a little bit early to see Whitney before class, she has a night class too at 6. So we went to grab something to eat at KFC. This is great if you have to eat out. Ready for this? Their new grilled chicken has 0 carbs!!!! I wasn't really hungry so I had one thigh and their green beans. The beans have 7grams of carbs with 3 grams of fiber for a net total of 4. So my running total for the day so far is 8.


It was a very good class. There were only 6 of us that showed up though. Class didn't get done till 9:30. We talked a lot, can you believe it? Anyway Darrell told me I shouldn't drive home in the dark, you can't tell if any spots on the road may be slick. And besides I can spend the day with Whitney tomorrow. Whitney & Carly's dorm doesn't allow overnight guests during the week, so I got a room at an EKU discount rate at the Jameson Inn. Very nice room.


I got thinking about only having 8 carbs today. The only thing that conserns me about not getting enough carbs is because I'm diabetic and I forgot my bloodsugar monitor at home. Concerned about getting too low to quick before I know it. So I thought I'd get Wendy's cheeseburger to eat without the bun and instead of fries a small chili. I brought it to the room, ate the burger without the bun 6 net carbs, and took 2 bites of the chili. It dawned on me I don't know how much carbs are in the chili. I was picking out the beans but I thought I better check it out anyway. A small chili is 22 flippng carbs. Luckily I only took 2 bites, but I don't know how many carbs to count for that for my total for the day. The burger brought me up to 14 the chili could have sent me over my induction limit, but I'm going to try not to worry about it.


I'm trying to be sensible about this like Dr. Douglas told me to do. I'm not just eating meat. I'm trying to eat several different types of vegetables and in another week or so I will start adding in some low sugar fruits.



Hope everyone else is doing well, & I will post again tomorrow.