Finished!

I finished my 4weeks of slim4life! They tried to convince me that I still have 6weeks of "stabilization" (same foods but in larger quantities)... but no thanks, my bill says only the four weeks, so I called the center today and kindly said (for about the 5th time) that I'd only signed up for the initial four weeks and I was done thank you very much.

So how did it go?

1. I lost ten pounds!
2. I never went off plan as far as food was concerned.
3. The snacks were hit or miss on fitting all three in a day (mostly miss).
4. Same with all the pills. I struggle with the ones I'm already supposed to take, yet alone the five with each meal.
5. And I still struggle with water intake. Beverages/liquids as a whole are something that I've never really been able to do in great quantities. I did rediscover that carbonated drinks are SUPER overwhelming after not drinking them for a month.

Going forward, there are definitely food aspects that I can stick with, and I will continue to try to work on getting in water (80 oz though is a stretch). The pills and the snacks? Hard passes here. I will say that after those nasty snacks, I am less inclined to snack throughout the day, or at least double check myself when I'm bored and looking at the pantry. No, I don't have to eat all the holiday snacks at once... freedom! I do still deal with the temptation to skip meals though. I need to convince myself that even if it's a cup of fruit for breakfast or a veggie at lunch, it's good for my metabolism and avoiding unhealthy, filling suppers to have something for those meals.

Trudging through week 2

It's weird to already be halfway through week 2 of this diet thing.

Before I get started though, does anybody else feel like week 1 of Advent is taking forever?? Everybody's talking about how short Advent is and how stressed they are pre-Christmas, so maybe I'm just in denial over here. I've also considered that before the first week of Advent, (it seemed like) every Catholic was like, "Death to Christmas music starting already, you gotta Advent Advent Advent!" So maybe it's just that Advent has been drilled on social media much more?

ANYWHO

I haven't necessarily gone off diet at any point (though I did have some forbidden salad dressing at Applebee's yesterday, but I was so tired of the kitchen and needed a break and gosh darn it I couldn't get my allowed salad dressing container opened and I only barely dipped the leaves in the dressing I promise!). My struggles have been: 1) scheduling myself and eating enough throughout the day, 2) swallowing so many pills and 3) drinking enough water.


I have learned and relearned some food loves that have been my saving graces through this:
       Tilapia is my new fish best friend. For reals, it's so good.
       Olive oil is also my cooking best friend. Everything is getting cooked in olive oil here these days (you're supposed to have 2 tbsp of fats a day, so I cook in 2 tbsp of it).
       Corn tortillas, but not plain room temp...lightly fried in said olive oil. (My mice ate a nice sized bit through my corn tortillas...we're not on speaking terms)
       Turkey breast steaks cooked in (you guessed it)
       Cottage cheese. I liked it before but oh my goodness y'all. So good.
       For that matter, hard boiled eggs. There was a day that I didn't plan out my meal well enough for work (again with that whole scheduling and eating enough) so all I had for lunch that day was a cup of steamed broccoli (my coworkers loathed loved me!). All I had on my mind the rest of the day was those darned hard boiled eggs. I made Matt get himself something to eat so that I could feast on two hard boiled eggs when I got home that evening and it was glorious.
       I did make a weirdly wonderful concoction. It was one of those, welp, this is in the fridge, guess I'll make something of it, times. I am only allotted 6 eggs a week (men can have 9...luckies). I also needed to eat a veggie, and had chosen some spinach, but it was at that point where you start to notice the juices at the bottom and they start smelling extra spinach-y in the bag...so I made a two egg spinach scramble of sorts. It...was quite good!
       Salt-free jerk seasoning. Another cooking staple these days. I am supposed to have 1/2 tsp of "morton lite salt" a day, and besides that you can season with whatever that doesn't have salt in it. I use a lot of ground pepper, but I was needing...something else. I'm a spice wimp, but I decided to experiment with the jerk seasoning, and haven't turned back.

Also, I lost 5 pounds in the first week, so...that's something.