Weigh-in Week 2

I'm gonna try something different this time, instead of smooshing my weigh ins and weekend, in the same post, I'm going to make them separate and talk about what worked, what didn't, my workouts, any cheats, and a selfie to track progress..

Another week, another weigh in. If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen that I lost 2.0 pounds this week for a total of 4.8. Yea, apparently I lost 2.8 last week instead of 2.5. 

I'm definitely a little disappointed that I still haven't seen a big initial loss. Like I said, the last time, I had a 6lb first week loss then it consistently went down every week after that. I keep thinking that I should see a 6 or 4lb loss and I haven't. I was lamenting that I hadn't seen a big initial drop, Kevin reminded me that it might be that I'm just not retaining a lot of water. Most initial big drops are from the initial water weight and maybe I just don't have all that much?

He reminded me that I used to be mushy and now I'm not. I think I weigh about the same in these 2 pictures.

If I ever say I want to cut my hair short again, someone show me this picture and slap me.

I think that's why I was shocked to see I gained as much as I did. I don't look like that lady in the picture. I just don't. Yes these pants are stretchy and the shirt is flowy, but these are size 10 pants and a med shirt. I must have some killer muscles under my fat.

Even though I'm a little disappointed, I know the program will work for me, it did for 50 pounds and can do it again. I just have to stay focused.

Workouts:
Saturday - Body Pump
Sunday - Body Flow
Weds - Boot Camp

I definitely think I could have done better in this area. Sat and Sunday I was feeling pretty rough, I just didn't have a lot of energy and I was hungrier than I should have been. Thankfully something switched on Monday and my energy was back and I didn't feel like I wanted to eat my face all the time. Now that I've turned the corner, I think I can start incorporating in some harder workouts.

Cheats:
I ate off plan 1 day, but it was pretty close to what I would have been able to eat. We went out for steak on Saturday night and I had about 4 oz of prime rib. Then I had truffled cauliflower and some other veggie I can't remember. I didn't eat my lunch fat and was planning on not eating dessert and having wine instead. I didn't really like the wine and since we ate kinda early, I new I'd want my dessert later, so no wine. I'm sure I went over on my fats but it wasn't terrible. If we're going to eat out, I like doing it on Saturday and giving myself an entire week to make it up.

I also think I had 1 tortilla chip on cinco de mayo, 1x I had an extra fruit because I was hungry at night and one day I had a small piece of cheese. All in all, not terrible and enough to get a 2lb loss.

Oh, I've been posting more on Instagram recently because I like looking at other people loosing weight and what they eat. I changed my "name" to LarasLosingAgain. I needed a new name, it was time. I was trying to decide what it should be and I kept coming up with the phrase "goes down" or "Lara Goes Down", which I realized sounded more like a porno than a weight loss feed. At least I came up with a better idea.

My "week" starts on Saturday so I'm already 2 days in as I type this, but I think I'm off to a good start, here's to another loss this week! Wish me luck!

Linking up with BLoved Boston!

What I ate Wednesday

How is your week going? My week is going pretty well. Last week was definitely a little rough, I just didn't have a lot of energy, I was kinda tired and hungry. I'm assuming I was in some sort of transition period and my body was getting used to the change in nutrition. Yesterday and today have been much better. I have my energy back and I don't want to eat my face all the time. I knew it would happen eventually, and I'm glad it finally did.

Alright, I see people post pictures of everything they ate over the course of a day and I'm like, OMG, how interesting, because I'm a creep and like to see what people eat. I decided to give it a shot and let me tell you, remembering to take pictures of all your food is fricking hard. I'd eat the last bite and realize I hadn't taken a picture. 

I started off the day with good intentions and took a picture of what I packed to bring to work. This is breakfast, snack, lunch and snack.

Artsy food...

Breakfast Monday was a Mediterranean Egg sandwich, I ate it around 830am. It was an egg white with some veggies mixed in and a little piece of cheese. Looking at the pic, the bun is a little burnt, but it was still good. This is a new to me Jenny food and I liked it. I love me a nice breakfast sandwich and now Jenny has 3 of them. yay.

Remember, toast ALL the buns. And taking a bite makes your pic artistic AF.

The meal plan recommends that you eat the breakfast food, have 1 milk serving and 1/2 a fruit. I actually like to save those for a little later in the day.

Around 11ish, I ate an anytime bar and my 1/2 fruit serving. The anytime bar counts as a milk and since I really don't like milk, it's a handy substitute. They have a new crunchy bar with peanut butter and chocolate chips that I've gotten the last 2 weeks and is super tasty. In yet another odd twist, yea, plenty of soy in that bar, no pain for Lara. Stupid.

OK, this is a picture from today. I had grapes as my 1/2 fruit.

This is where you can pretend to see a picture of my lunch. With lunch you have the meal, 2 cups of a leafy veggie and a fat serving. When I was on Jenny last time, I did carrots for my lunch veggie and dipped them in dressing for my fat. You can also substitute 6-7 almonds for the fat serving and skip the dressing. 

Monday I had a southwest  chicken bowl with rice, beans, chicken, corn and other assorted veggies. Again, new to me and super tasty. I also had some baby carrots and southwest ranch dressing to dip them in. I ate this around 145 because I was in a meeting that ran late. I also ate a plate of dry salad (no cheese, croutons, dressing or meat) in the meeting. Since veggies are free foods, it was no biggie. 

Around 430pm it's time for another snack, generally it's just a fruit, but I saved my milk serving from breakfast until later in the day because I knew I'd be eating dinner late. I really hate milk products and have been trying to choke something down. I hate, hate, hate yogurt, but I did discover this new whipped yogurt and it's not bad! The texture is what always does me in and this one I can handle. I don't do well with dairy milk and can only eat one every few days, but this was a good find. I also had an apple for my final fruit serving, but when I cut into it, it was bad. Fruit fail.

Unpictured, me eating this wit a fork because I didn't want to find a spoon.

After work I got a haircut. I swear she cut 5 inches off the back and it feels SOOOO much better. I get into ruts where I'll let my hair grow and grow then one day get sick of it and do something stupid like have a random lady at Super Cuts give me a new style. This time I learned. I had an appointment at my salon with my lady on Friday, decided I HAD to do it Monday and thankfully the salon was able to hook me up with another very capable lady. So much better.

 I got home after 7pm and whipped up the spaghetti and meatballs, which is one of my favs. I love a nice meatball and yes, this is a Jenny Craig meatball, but when it's the only meatball you've got, it's pretty damn good. I had some leftover zucchini "noodles" that I mixed in to give it more volume.

I also added a little Parmesan cheese and used one of my Limited free foods. Nom.

My after dinner snack was my first giant Jenny fail. hey recently introduced hummus and crackers as a snack and I gave it a go last night. Gross, just gross. It was a big thumbs down from me, so much that I didn't even take a picture of it. There was something about the way it was packaged that make me think of cat food. 

Before I go, I got these Hunter boots on end o' year clearance and I love, love, love them. It's going to be rainy all week and I finally get to wear them!

Enjoy the rest of the week!

What was your last food fail?

First Weigh-in and a Weekend Re-Cap

Well, Saturday was my first official weigh-in and if you follow me on Instagram, you know I lost 2.5 pounds. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely excited to see a loss, but it was a little anti-climactic. Here's why. 

1. Remember last week when I said I regained 42.5 pounds? Yea, I didn't. I regained 45 pounds. I don't know what happened and the number I thought I saw was different than it really was. Maybe I blacked put momentarily or something. Anyways, when I got on the scale I saw what I "thought" was my starting weight and I assumed I didn't lose anything. Thankfully I did and 2.5 is better than nothing but eh, it's what I already thought I weighed.

2. The first time I did Jenny, my first weigh-in was -6 pounds. Now, I know that the last time my initial weight was in the afternoon and I did 10 days before the next weigh-in. I was going to see a bigger loss. Still, I wanted to see something closer to 6, like 4ish

3. I know I would have had a better weigh-in and been close to 4 had my uterus not betrayed me. That's right, I woke up to a special friend. I was so stinking mad. I was apparently really bloated because I must have peed 80 times over the next 2 days. Thanks.

I got home from my weigh-in and it was time for breakfast. I went with the french toast, which was one of my weekend favs. I heated up some frozen Trader Joe's berries for my fruit portion and it was lovely. 

After breakfast, I was off to Body Pump. I haven't been to Pump much recently because I was healing my hip. Also, I've been going to spin class more frequently and pump fell by the wayside. Now when I go, I lower my weights from where I was, but I still have soreness the next day. I really should add it back in once a week.

I really like that a 10am Saturday class exists at the gym closest to my house. What I don't like are the people who attend. There is an older gentleman who is often at the weekend classes. I know he's a regular but he's so fricking obnoxious. He's constantly shouting or egging on one of his friends or just being annoying. Everyone rolls their eyes when he starts but it's a gym class and no one will ever say anything to him. He's the reason why I stopped going to the class several months ago and ran on Saturday mornings instead. Ugh. I might have to go back to running.

After a lot of glaring and RBF, I got home, showered and then my brother and I headed off to a flea market / antique show. We weren't impressed and both agreed that these weren't antiques, but instead things that we had in our house growing up and if we really wanted them, we'd get them from mom.

I had this phone and sold it for $2 at a garage sale in the 90s. They wanted $28 for it. No.

After that I did some house things and then Kev and I headed to dinner. We went to Nana Steak in Durham and it was pretty good. we split the prime rib and had vegetables. Well, I had about 4oz and Kev ate the rest. You can definitely eat out on Jenny Craig and still lose weight. I was just a little nervous that it was so soon and I want a big loss this week. But we still had a lovely time.

On our way home, we stopped at Pier One and got some lamps. A few months ago I received an email from Influenster that someone signed up using my affiliate link, I was entered into a drawing and won a $100 gift card to Pier One! NICE. I've been holding onto it for a while and I finally remembered to cash it in.

It's a bad picture, but they're really cool.

Sunday morning I woke up and made some coffee, ate a breakfast scramble and watched a Twister Sister documentary. It was surprisingly good.

Then I ran to the mall to get a new pair of flip flops and I came across a really cute shirt. The large fit well and was perfect. The med, not so much but I got the smaller size knowing that I'm going to be able to happily wear it in a few weeks. Goal shirt!

Made my lunch and a off to Body Flow. Really, I got a new yoga mat last week at TJ Maxx for $9 and I was excited to try it out.

There's a lady who goes to this class who wears baggy shirts and no bra. I unfortunately know this because some poses force you to bend over and look a certain way. Then you see things you don't need to see. 

Dinner, then off to the store to get more fruit for the week

Chicken fettuccine Alfredo with zoodles and broccoli.

Now I'm finishing up this post and eating some Ranch Snaps. They're new to me and apparently a "lentil crisp". Not bad.

How was your weekend?

Linking up with BLoved Boston!

Five Thing Friday

Look at this, I said I was going to blog this week and I did. Small wins folks, small wins.

Might as well take it old school and do a "Five Thing Friday". Heads up, I;m super tired because there was a storm last night and the dog and cats really wanted to come into the bedroom. Between all of their fussing, Lara didn't get much sleep. :(

1. A few weeks ago, my office expanded and we took over the the space on the other side of the hallway. Now the office is in a big 'U' and my team moved onto the other side of the office. They really like it, we have the new desks, I have a shinny new office, it's all good, except for the temperature. 

It is so damn cold on our side, BUT my office is like 10 degrees warmer than everyone else. If I;m OK, they're freezing. I'm hot and they're comfortable. The other day it was crazy cold and I had to send them this. 

I found some old, pre-rebrand gloves in the Marketing closet. I'm saving them for the next time they complain about the cold.

2. Back in the day, my Jenny weigh in was Saturday morning. I'd do my thing all week, hold on Friday night, weigh in the morning and if I was going to have a treat, it was Saturday. Then I had the entire week to be on track. Since my weigh-in week starts on Saturday, so does my work-out tracking (is that even a thing?)
Here's how this week looked
Saturday - Thought really hard about going to the gym. Really, really hard, but we went to the farmer's market instead and I was a little bummed about my weigh-in
Sunday - Went to the Southern Women's Show instead of yoga.
Monday - Boot Camp
Tuesday - Spin
Weds - Planned to go to boot camp but they hungry hit me and I knew I didn't have enough fuel to workout.
Thurs - So flipping tired. I had planned to go to spin though.
Friday - Kev and I have to get some photos taken

Just 2 workouts this week. Not awesome but better than nothing.

3. My brother lives with us now and while he's looking for a job, he's been taking artistic pictures of my animals.

With the light through the trees, she's like the second coming of dog.

I'm pretty sure Luger has a stash of mouse and bird carcasses under the deck 

This is Godiva, I am her person. She talks and says my name and it's creepy AF.

Still waiting for Kev to give the green light for me to get a baby goat. He keeps saying no, something about baby goats not being baby goats forever. Whatever.

You live in the Raleigh Durham area and have pets? My brother can take some super awesome pictures for you. 

4. I've been making  my team taste test things I find. It started with the 3 new peanut M&M flavors. Chili Nut, Honey Nut and Coco Nut. Then we did popcorn and yesterday we started on Oreos. So far the Reeses ones are a hit and the 'filled cupcakes' taste like unicorn tears. Sounds delish. I have partaken of 0. Because weigh-in.

5. Saturday I found the biggest Honey crisp apple I've ever seen in my life. This bad boy weighed 1.5lbs and at $4.99 a pound, that folks, is a $7.50 apple. 

I got this shirt at the last Kappa Delta training academy I went to. One of our platforms is building confidence in women. The shirt says "All I need is coffee and confidence". #GoConfidently

Have a great weekend and wish me luck tomorrow! Fingers crossed I see a decent loss!

Linking up with Amanda - Meet @ the Barre! AND

Jenny Craig Food Hacks

So, I was contemplating what I should blog about today, back in the day, Wednesday was some sort of fashion, (I think) but remember, this is now a weight loss and exercise blog... sure, it's still me though. Oh, before I go on, Jenny Craig has no idea that I'm on their plan, I'm just another person eating some food. Mkay...

So, like I said, I ordered 3 days of Jenny food online then I went to my center and got a week's worth. I even tried to follow the "Week One" planned menu, hey, at least I'll get to try something that I hadn't before. 

For those folks who aren't familiar, on Jenny Craig you eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and 1 snack on them, then you supplement 2 milk servings, 1 1/2 fruit servings and all the vegetables your colon can handle.

Replace the words with, "I ate too much Broccoli. I ate all the broccoli. We're out of broccoli, so much broccoli." and you have me Monday night. Kev loves my songs. 

So, on to some of my Jenny hacks!

1. TOAST EVERYTHING. Really, if it can be toasted or cooked in the oven, do it! I'm thinking about bringing a toaster oven to work and putting it in my office. Well, I'm exaggerating, but now I want one. 

The Turkey Burger is one of my favs and when it was in my surprise box, it was a hella surprise. 

Veggies for DAYS!

2. Embrace your inner OCD. No offense to people who are truly stricken with the disease, but I have a slight twinge of it and it comes out full force when it comes to some things, like not having your food touch. In this stunning plate, I picked the potatoes out of the rest of the meal and cooked them in a pan.

Note the peas in the picture, but not on my plate. F peas. I hate them.

3. Put the food on a plate. Plate food is more like real food. I'll be honest though, this sunshine sandwich is one of my favorites and I'd eat it off a hobo's sock if that was my only option.

Plate food.

 4. Make a big ass pile of veggies. Embrace the volumizing and add all the free veggies you can handle.

We got $2 green beans from the farmer's market. So many...

 5. Save something special for the weekend. I love the breakfast scramble on Sunday morning. Mainly because I like to pick put the potatoes, cook them in a pan with some seasoned salt and pepper and eat them separate from the eggs.

This is mainly because I need a pan, and I can't make it like this at work.

6. Embrace condiments! Know which condiments are free foods, like mustard, and flee from things like mayo, but you should anyways because mayo is gross.

But let me tell you the story of the fish and chips. When I did Jenny the first time, I loved the Fish and Chips and I especially loved the little packet of malt vinegar in there. I was seriously looking forward to this ALL DAY and you know what, the stopped putting in the mail vinegar! AND I didn't have any in the house. Thusly, I had all the sads.

So much broccoli...

So there are some JC hacks a la me.  How everyone is having a great week!

Have you tried the coconut LaCroix? Delicious or tastes like suntan lotion? Discuss.

Time to face the music

Yes, yes, it's been a while since I posted on here. No real excuses, but life got in the way. Now I'm back. I won't make any promises about how long, but I'm here because I have some things to talk about and I need to hold myself accountable.

I know it's on my Instagram and I think somewhere in my bio, about how I lost 50 pounds on Jenny Craig in 2011. My first weigh in was at a whopping 210 pounds. For someone just 5' 3", that's a lot. I don't have a lot of pictures from back then, but Facebook was kind enough to show me this on Halloween.

Obvs I was a witch and I had my black cat. Pretty chunky.

I was on Jenny for almost a year and my goal weight was 160. Here's me about there. The one on the right was taken 2 moths before goal and the one on the left 4 months after wards. I'd put myself at 163ish in both of these.

Call me delusional, but I think my 163 looks different than other people's. I was wearing a size 8 or 10 pant and that color block tunic from the Loft is a small. The striped one on the right is an Express medium.

I maintained my Jenny weight within 5 pounds for a year and in the summer of 2012 I stopped going to the center. Stuff happened, I was on maintenance, I was doing fine. I enjoyed my wine and sushi and it was good. I ran some half marathons and went to a lot of Body Pump and Spin classes.

Slowly but surely, the pounds crept back. The last time I weighed myself was in the summer of 2013 and I was at 170. Not terrible, just 10 pounds over goal, no biggie. First the pants that were super lose got tighter, then they fit well, then I went into the next size up portion of my closet. The medium shirts gave way to larges. And so it goes. #DontGoThreeYearsWithoutWeighingYourself

But I look at myself in the mirror every day and I was pretty sure I'd gained back 20-25ish of the 50 I lost. So I tried several things over the last 2 years. I joined a running club, did a 24 day detox, I did the Whole 30, the 21 Day Sugar Detox (I still haven't had artificial sweeteners in 2.5 years). What else, I had my macros done, tried that, and most recently I had my resting metabolism tested and started seeing a nutritionist. Fun fact, I apparently burn 1627 calories at rest. Really, my metabolism is disgustingly normal.

At the end of last year I was working back from my hip injury and unable to workout. It really messed with my motivation and I felt myself get one step bigger. That's when I went to the nutritionist. I never really got into it and it seemed like every day something happened and I was over my calories or had too many carbs or something.

Last Sunday night I might have had a mini breakdown. I was sick and tired of watching all my hard work backslide. So I called Jenny Craig. One of my biggest fears of going back was that I had developed a soy sensitivity and all foods have soy in them, and could I handle eating the food 3x a day for the next few months.

They had a special, it was 3 days of food, breakfast lunch and dinner, for $40, free shipping, So I ordered it. Worst case, I'm out $40. I talked to one of the phone reps and they renewed  my legacy membership for $0 and made me an appointment at my old center on Saturday morning at 8am. I ate 3 days of Jenny and had 0 pain or intestinal distress.

That morning, I picked out clothes that were light, peed 2x and didn't eat or drink anything. (that's what you have to do for the best results). If you can get up early enough to #2, that's great too. Did you really think I'd do an entire post that didn't include some sort of potty humor?

For the first time in 3 years, I got on the scale. Did I mention that going that long is really, really bad?

I knew it would be bad, but not 42.5  pounds regained bad. That's right, do the math, ouch.

So, back I go to Jenny Craig. Back to weekly weigh-ins and accountability. I also signed up for a 30 day Boot Camp which starts tomorrow. I know my mom is going to comment that I look beautiful regardless of what I weigh and others will say that a number on the scale doesn't define you. I get it.

But what I don't like is that I busted my ass for a YEAR to lose 50 flipping pounds and gained most of it back over 4 years. A fucking year.

So I'll do it again and turn this blog into a weight loss blog. There's going to be a lot of this:

(Everything you ever wanted to know about Jenny Craig food hacks.)

And some of this.

(most recent selfie of me. Mid March)

And some sweaty pictures too.

Hopefully this won't be a year long journey, but it will be the last time I need to lose 40+ pounds.

Linking up with BLoved Boston! AND

Celebrating Grandma

I know it's been a while since I posted, things got really crazy right before we headed to Europe. I have more light hearted pictures and posts planned but today is a day of remembering and celebrating my Grandma, who passed away at the age of 92 last Sunday.

She had gone into the hospital with a kidney infection before we left for Germany and when we returned, my mom let me know that she had taken a turn for the worse and passed away that afternoon.

I flew to Pittsburgh yesterday and the funeral is this afternoon.

My Grandma was awesome and I know just how fortunate I was to have her as long as we did. I was lucky to have been able to visit her when we were up here for the football game in October. I couldn't have known it was the lat time I'd see her.

Both of my Grandfathers passed away before I was born and my dad's mom passed in 1984. So it's just been Grandma for all those years,

She was always there for every event, every play. every show, choir concert, you name it, she was there. She was our biggest supporter and loved her grand kids unconditionally.

I wish I had something eloquent to say, but I don't.

My Grandma was awesome and I'll miss her every day.