One would think though that all this would balance out in the end so I’m not sure where the 20 pounds came from. I am cutting down my alcohol consumption to a minumum. I was imbibing more than I usually do. I’m a pretty light drinker in general, but cutting out a drink or two a night should help.  If I cut out the wine on Saturday and the mimosa on Sunday, I’d have an extra 4 points at least.

The only area that I can see or feel where I’ve gained weight is around the abdomen, bust and upper arms. My face doesn’t look any fuller. My legs are shapely and muscular. My hips and butt seem fine as well since my size 10 pants/shorts still fit fine. I’m more sensitive to the weight gain around my waist and overly self-conscious about it too.

I discovered that Whole Foods carries a brand of soda made with stevia as opposed to aspartame and high fructose corn syrup. I need to check it out. I forget the name. though I know it was -Evia in it somewhere. The black cherry was quite good.

Here’s to hoping this 20 pounds finds a new home preferably not attached to my body sooner rather than later.

This book has further reinforced my opinion that most mid-level chain restaurants should be avoided at all costs. Your typical fast food restaurants of the McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell ilk get a bad rap, but really they pale in comparison to places like TGIFriday’s, Chili’s or Applebee’s, some of which who refuse to publish their nutritional information.  Its shocking to think that you could sit down at one of these so-called family restaurants and consume upwards of 5000 calories in one sitting between appetizers, salad, bread, dinner and dessert… not to mention the unspeakable amounts of fat, sodium and sugar on top of it all.

I highly recommend this book for anyone and everyone regardless of whether you are dieting or not. It will help you be more informed about the choices you make when out to eat or at the grocery store. It is good to remember no one restaurant, brand, style of preparation or type of food is 100% bad.  You may be able to wade through dozens of gut-busting choices to find one or two not-so-bad choices or dare I say, healthy choices.  We cannot afford to be ignorant to what we are poisoning our bodies with by items cleverly masked as food.

The first step in the chain of progress was joining Weight Watcher’s after seeing the success one of my closest friends had on the program I decided to give it a whirl. I highly recommend the online version of the Momentum Plan. It has worked well for me seeing as I lack the motivation and general interest in attending local public meetings and it also works well with my Web 2.0 geekery given the set of online tracking tools and their overall performance. I can easily look up various foods, recipes and figure out the points, chart my food intake, activity levels, weight loss & measurements. I wish I had done the measurements early on because I am curious to see how they have changed in the past six months.

As far as diet goes, I’ve learned to modify and balance my eating habits for the most part.

- While I love breakfast food, I’ve never been a big breakfast eater, which always led to snacking throughout the day. I usually have something from the grain family whether it be a fat free or low fat muffin, cereal bar, granola bar etc. Weight Watcher’s has delicious Blueberry and Double Chocolate Muffins. I really like the Special K Strawberry Cereal Bars. If you happen to live near a Genuardi’s, they carry a brand called Eating Right and they have awesome Cranberry Citrus Bars. Kashi also makes a yummy pumpkin pie granola bar. Odwalla makes some decent “superfood” bars, which are quite tasty and replete with omega fatty acids and are all natural.

- I had never been a big fan of diet soda and always loved my dark carbonated beverages like Dr. Pepper. I still limit my intake, because I don’t want to overdo it on aspartame. I wish more sodas would be made with Splenda or other natural sweeteners. For the most part, I drink Coke Zero (or Cherry Coke Zero). I like other diet sodas now Diet Sunkist, Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Pepsi, however Diet Coke is just gross. I also drink about 2-4 cups of tea per day. I tend to prefer herbal blends, florals and fruity ones. Other than that I drink a lot of water. Thank the foods gods and goddesses for Crystal Light on the go packets. I was also happy to see that Ocean Spray makes some on the go packets as well. I really love the White-Cran-Peach. If you can find them the Mixed Berry Water Sensations are pretty good. The grape one is okay, but the lemon and orange ones are surprisingly gross.

- The next big food modification was bringing my lunch to work. I realized I had fooled myself into thinking I was eating relatively healthy getting fresh sandwiches, salads and whatnot from local eateries and the cafeteria at work. I love Italian Hoagies, but for all intents and purposes I may well have been scrafing down a McDonald’s Big Mac and French Fries. There really isn’t much difference when you breal down the caloric intake and fat content. That is setting aside processed foods versus unprocessed foods. Granted I have slipped a little bit away from the organic/natural foods in the process, but losing weight came first. Anyways, normally I pick up something I can easily reheat in the microwave, which tend to be frozen lunches from Smart Ones, Eating Right, Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice. I tend to balance out the lunch with random combination’s fresh fruit, yogurt, cottage cheese with pineapples, rice cakes, dried fruit, carrots, rice cakes, pretzel sticks and some sort of low fat dessert. Weight Watcher’s desserts are awesome. I love their cookies and cakes. Also, No Pudge brand makes an awesome fat free organic brownie mix. You just add fat free yogurt instead of eggs, oil and water.

- While on the subject of work. I have a desk drawer totally dedicated to healthy snacks. I highly recommend this because it prevents me from heading down to a vending machine and getting unhealthy stuff. I usually keep the kind of stuff I would crave that would also be filling. So I have an array of 100 calorie snack packs and candy, the aforementioned granola and cereal bars, raisins, and sometimes rice cakes.

- Vitamins are also helpful. I usually stick to a regiment during the week, sometimes I forget though. I find having a healthy dose of vitamins reduces the appetite and gives you energy. In general I take, a multivitamin, Vitamin D, Vitamin C (sometimes I up the dosage with Emergen-C if I am under the weather), Fish Oil, Flax Seed Oil and Alphalipoic Acid (its good for hair and nails). I only take Iron as needed, same with things like Ginseng, Mothers Wort and some dietary aids.

- I used to be really bad about making dinner and would almost always stop and pick something up along the way (or having Tim do so) thus falling into the same patten I did with lunch. I tend to be somewhat lazy when it comes to cooking after working 9-5 and commuting. I’ve learned to keep things on hand that can be combined and prepared quickly and easily. The George Foreman Grill is your friend. I prepare most of my meats on it unless for some reason they need to be baked another way. I find having various marinades and sauces on hand to be an easy solution and most (when used in correct proportions are not bad at all calorie/fat wise. Sometimes I cheat and make a frozen pizza or something from my lunch stache. I’m not a big fan of frozen food, but I have grown to love frozen french fries. Normal french fries are pretty unhealthy given the whole fried in oil scenario, but baked french fries are less than half the amount of points for a decent sized serving.

Stay Tuned for the Fitness & Exercise Installment….

I’ve splurged a couple times this week, once over the weekend. I seriously wanted to punch Chili’s in the face when I perused their “healthy alternatives section” All items are 750 calories and 25 grams of fat. Apparently, they use some definition of healthy that I am not previously aware of. I don’t equate 25 grams of fat with being healthy. In the end, I didn’t do as bad as I thought that I would there. I have to guess the point values by ingredients and average them out. Tuesday, I was in pure culinary heaven, darren and his mom made us this amazing stuffed squid. It was amazing. I love meditterean dishes. I’ve seriously been thinking about the awesomeness of the squid all week. It was that good. Last night, tim and I went to Panera since we had a house showing. There stuff isn’t too bad diet wise. I love their Asian Sesame Salad minus the cilantro. I really wanted one of their chocolate pastries.

I find I have gotten better at not giving in to temptation when the whim strikes. I really sit down and think about how much I really want something and then decide whether its worth the extra points and splurging. Occasionally, I throw caution to the wind and eat what I want. I find sometimes doing weird shit like having one single potato chip on a daily basis satiates the craving and prevents me from scarfing down an entire bag.

I have to say I am so in love with the 100 Calorie Snack Packs. I really love the candy bar varieties, especially the Snickers and Twix. They are about 2 points each, whereas a normal candy bar would be about 7 points if memory serves me right.W

I’ve been doing much better at preparing dinner when I get home, even if they are quick and simple dishes, its better than popping a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. Last night I made cheese tortellini, with pasta sauce, ground sausage and a touch of parmesan. I find doing a little pre-planning before I get home does the trick. I assess what I am in the mood for, what I have at home and anything that I would need to pick up en route. I find it hard to pre-plan too far in advance since I am a mood eater. I can’t just eat steak and green beans because today is Friday and it was pre-ordained to be steak and green beans day.

I received a new fitness DVD from Jennifer Kries Hot Body Cool Mind series from Netflix. I really like the pace of the workout as it is broken up into several segments including, Qigong, which I am interested to learn more about, Pilates, Yoga and Dance. Pilates are hell. Makes my yoga fails pale in comparison. How can one fail at sitting up from a supine position is beyond me, but I could only get so far without pushing up with my hands. Her Waking Energy DVD should arrive today from Netflix as well. Looking at the difficulty in the first level of this series, I am nowhere near ready for level 2 or 3 yet.

It probably doesn’t help that I have a minor head cold. They always throw me off. I’m just stuffed up and a little woosy feeling. I’ve gotten a normal amount of exercise this week. I got a yoga dvd from Netflix yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, but that is on my to do list for the weekend. I also get a heavy dose of double suck because its getting on towards that time of the month too.

I sometimes get paranoid on Thursdays that when I weigh in on Friday that I won’t have lost any weight for the week. I picked Friday as my weigh in day because I tend to splurge more on the weekends than during the week. This week, I’ve splurged midweek more than I did over the weekend or during the beginning of the week.

My activity and exercise for the week was a little off, but I did start adding 10 minutes of weight training into my daily or semi-daily routine. I have some 5lb dumb bells I got awhile back. I also have some 2lb ones, but they don’t really do much. I dug out my exercise mat too so I can start doing sit ups and crunches. I really need to tone my upper body. My legs get a good workout through walking, taking the stairs and the elliptical.

I still need to get better at the cooking/baking aspect of dieting. When I cook I tend to go over or end up burning through the remainder of my points on one thing. I don’t want to totally rely on pre-packaged foods. I don’t mind bringing the Lean Cuisine/Smart Ones/Healthy Choice frozen lunches to work with me, but I don’t want to also eat them for dinner every night. I also need to find some low calorie and low sugar alcoholic beverages. Since I am a girl-drink drunk, all the drinks I like run about 4 points per drink.

I’ve always had a stumbling block when it comes to fitness and exercise. I hate going to the gym. Luckily, I have an elliptical machine at home, which I am trying to make a concerted effort to use on a daily basis, if only for 10-20 minutes a day. On average since, I began WW in January, for the first month my weekly activity points were below 20 per week. Although, I may not have been accurately counting them as diligently as I could’ve been. For the month of February, I hovered in the 20-30 activity points per week range. This week, due to increased activity I hit 60 activity points for the week. Being more active and physically fit can come from a variety of others things involving not going to the gym. I walk a decent amount on a daily basis whether its just my meanderings around my office, going to and from my car in the garage, taking the stairs instead of elevators, or taking a walk during lunch. Aside from that, being as active as one can be is better than just slow roasting in bed or on the couch. Simple daily activities can boost your metabolism, tone muscles and promote weight loss. I never thought about cleaning being beneficial to my health and well being, but you do burn calories and whatnot when you scrub the floor, do laundry, or clean the house etc.

All that said, I lost another pounds this week bringing my weight loss total to 15 pounds. I’ve started noticing from my increased activity levels that I am losing more body mass in place of muscle development and toning. My biceps aren’t just mushy flab globs anymore, the muscle is coming back, which is awesome. I hated flexing my biceps and seeing no change between the relaxed and flexed states. Hopefully, by summer time I can start wearing tank tops again wtihout being overly self conscious. The muscles in my calves and thighs is toning up nicely too because I try to walk as much as I can. Even my abs are toning up, which is nice.

I realized that I forgot to actually set a new weight goal once I hit my first goal, my next goal is 180 pounds, and I’m 5 pounds away at this point. I’m also about 10-15 pounds away from a healthy BMI (20-25), currently I am at 27. I decided to recalibrate my daily points to 24 from 25 to see how that works out for me. I’ve still been doing well, I went a little over again this week, but still have yet to burn through my weekly points allowance. I tend to use 10-15 extra points per week (out of 35).

Now that I am becoming more active, lets hope I can stick with it. I think once I got over the hurtle it became easier to really want to continue to be more active. I’m going to try to keep up with at the very least doing the elliptical machine at home on a daily basis. I’ve always wanted to learn yoga, but again like going to the gym, I have a weird thing with going to yoga classes. I think its because I am a hard core multi-tasker, committing to doing one thing in particular for X amount of time just never is appealing for me.

As an interesting side note, Tim and I were discussing cheese. I was telling him the other night to use up the regular mozarella before using my reduced fat. He said okay, and then told me just to keep getting the reduced fat cheeses for the both of us to use. Given his cheese consumption, I am putting this one in the win column.

Also, when I was at 26 points, I was using about 10 out of 35 floater points per week. This week at 25 points, I used 3.5 points out of the floating 35. I’ve still yet to use more than 10 per week.

I seem like diet soda now, which surprises me because I always hated diet soda. I think the step down to Coke Zero makes regular diet soda not seem as horrible as I thought it was. I can see the difference in the weight loss. I looked at one of the pictures from yesterday and didn’t immediately want to shred it cause I looked awful. I could see the weight loss. It wasn’t a great picture, no makeup, schlubby clothes, but I still looked good.