When I’m trying to lose weight, I become obsessed about food. Not like I can’t stop thinking about Cheetos and Ding Dongs, but it’s more that I can’t stop thinking about good food. I browse recipes online and fill up my Pinterest recipe board, I check out cookbooks from the library, and I experiment in the kitchen. It’s almost like because I know that I’m really watching what I eat, I want to make sure what I do eat is as yummy as possible. Apparently I’ve been doing this a lot, because the little one has been watching and has been caught more than once doing this:
(That’s a cookbook she is looking at, in case you can’t tell. Please ignore the clutter pile behind her. I promise the rest of my house is spotlessly clean and never, ever gets messy. Ever. Yes, that is sarcasm. But do still ignore the clutter pile.)
I’ve had a lot of people ask what I’m doing for a diet. There is a nutrition plan that comes with TAM, but I’m not doing it. At first it was because I was nursing and didn’t want to be on any type of “real” diet, but now that I’m done (sniff, sniff), I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing because it’s been working and I like it. And those are two very important things in making a diet stick!
So here it is in a nutshell. First, we cook at home, and from scratch. This of course saves us a ton of money, it makes it so that we know everything Sweetheart eats is free of her allergies, and I know exactly what I’m putting in my body. I don’t eat anything processed, from a box, bag or pre-prepared. No fast food, either, although the longer I eat this way, the less that eating out even sounds good. Why eat out when I can make way better food at home, for way cheaper? I plan my menu a week ahead of time, and I make sure that the meals that are planned are healthy, fast and easy, and most of all they have to taste good! But how do you find meals like that? I adore Cooking Light. We’ve subscribed to the magazines for years. I have two of their cookbooks, this oneand this one, and I would love to own more. I don’t have enough good things to say about these people, they really understand the fact that healthy food can and should taste yummy! And no, they haven’t given me anything to say this about them, I just love them!
I also try to eat tons of fruits and veggies. We get most of our produce through a co-op called Bountiful Baskets, which if you haven’t heard of them you should really check them out! We go every Saturday and pick up a ton of produce, and it only costs us $15. You don’t get to choose what you get, but there is usually a good variety and it’s fun to see what new and unusual things you get to try sometimes. Trying to make sure we use everything in the basket in one week has really helped us increase the amount of fruits and veggies we use. And they didn’t give me anything to say that, either.
So that being said, here is a little sample of what my menu looks like each day:
Breakfast: One of my favorite breakfasts is a smoothie made with a frozen banana, plain Greek yogurt, milk, SunButter, and spinach. Yes, spinach. It’s green, but it’s so yummy! And other than the pretty green color, you can’t even tell the spinach is there (recipe here). I also often eat two poached eggs on top of one slice of 9-grain organic toast (also from Bountiful Baskets, yummiest bread ever!) with some fruit. I like to have steel cut oats that I put in the crockpot overnight (recipe here, except I just put the topping on the girl’s and Marquis’s and just put a little brown sugar and fruit in mine).
Lunch: Usually lunch is leftovers from the night before. We also do a lot of sandwiches, usually just tomatoes and a slice of cheese with some mustard and whatever other veggies we have, along with a salad or fruit on the side. If we have leftover meat I also like to do tacos and throw whatever veggies we have inside.
Dinner: When planning the menu, I usually see what lean meats are on sale, what fruits/veggies we got from Bountiful Baskets that week, and what recipes in Cookling Light match that. This weeks’ menu included homemade pizza on a whole grain crust, chicken and rice soup with kale, corned beef and cabbage (yes, again, yum!) and tonight is grilled chicken with pasta and Caprese salad.
Enough of that, on to the stats! I measure again tomorrow, so you have to wait a week to hear those results (insert evil laugh here, mwuhaha!), but I can tell you that I am down another pound. Yes, just one. Just one!!! I keep telling myself that one pound down is good! It’s fantastic really! And I know that now that I’ve posted this, I’ll be down that second pound tomorrow. Oh, well, everyone was bored of hearing me say I’m down another two pounds, right? I feel great, though, and this week suddenly everyone noticed, I got so many compliments! Thanks everyone, you are awesome!! I finish up level 6 tomorrow and move on to level 7 on Monday. I have really liked this level, but there is one move that I won’t miss. Tracy worked so hard to get the yucky fat pads off my hips, and then she makes me lie on that side and do tricky things with my legs so it rubs my newly exposed hip bone, ouch! But hey, better than still having all that padding there, right?
To find out more about TAM, read the rest of my updates here, or go check out the Tracy Anderson website here. The people at TAM haven’t give me anything to talk about them, I just like to blab about the things I like.