WEEK 6 -- DAY 42 -- HAPPY VALENTINES'S DAY

While there's something to be said about being on a diet and not letting anyone in your family know you're doing it, it's quite another thing when Valentine's Day rolls around and your husband gives you a big fat box of Godiva chocolates. "Candy", I said, "How nice!" I'm pleased to say that I haven't even taken the ribbon off the box and I don't intend to.

He also went to the supermarket and bought food to make a chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and corn.....one of my favorites. I obviously had to eat it. But as long as that's all I'm doing, it really wasn't too bad. I just have to make sure I pick up the slack tomorrow.

So I made it through the Valentine's Day festivities all in one piece. I'm sure I weigh more than I did when I weighed myself on Saturday morning but I'll never know!!!

WEEK 6 -- DAY 41 -- 6TH WEIGH-IN

1.5 lbs. lost this week

5 lbs. lost this month

14.5 lbs. lost YTD

One day, a few weeks ago, I spent a few hours finding all of these great "success" graphics online. I'm happy that I get to use another one this week since I lost 1.5 pounds. There's nothing sweeter than success. I know my weight ticker says I've lost 15 pounds so far but that's because it can't calculate half pounds.

I definitely feel thinner and actually bought a little quilted vest yesterday to wear to my daughter's house today. It's a size smaller than I was previously buying so that made me happy. The real test would be if my daughter noticed that I had lost weight. The last time I saw her was at Christmas and I was over 230 pounds at the time. Now I'm under 220 pounds so it should be noticeable....especially to someone as discerning as she is.

We were sitting on the couch and she was staring at me. She told me that she liked my new eyeglasses but still kept staring. "You look good", she said...."Are you thinner?" I said no and went on changing the subject. Later we went out shopping and I told her about my "plan" and how I was doing. My son's girlfriend was also with us so I told her as well. They were all excited and then started to give me advice. "Stop right there", I told them. "This is one reason I wanted to do this without anyone knowing.....so no one would give me advice. For the first time in my life, I want to do it my way and it's obviously been successful." They agreed and no further advice was given.

I definitely ate more at her house than I have in the past six weeks because we had lunch as soon as we got there and then later on an antipasto salad. They all had pizza after that but I was full so I only had a few bites. She also made delicious Valentine's Day cupcakes and I couldn't disappoint her by not having one. But, once again, this is the beauty of my very "successful plan".....I can do this stuff and still lose the pound a week I want to lose.

Tomorrow's the actual Valentine's Day. I still have to get through that and then I'll be good to go.

WEEK 6 -- DAY 40 -- Pre Valentine's Day

We've had so much snow this week that it's been hard to get out. Consequently, my Valentine's Day shopping was way behind. We're going to my daughter's house tomorrow which means I better have presents. There's no one in the world who likes a present more than my daughter. So that was my plan for today.....shopping, shopping and more shopping.

I spent a few hours at the mall and, towards the end, started to get light headed. I still had to do food shopping for my mother, who's living in a retirement facility, so I figured I had better leave the mall before I started feeling even worse. By the time I ended up getting home, I felt awful. All I wanted to do was go to bed. As a result, I ended up not even eating dinner. Considering that I would be weighing myself tomorrow morning, I figured it couldn't hurt. Sometimes, you end up losing less when you don't eat. There's plenty of diets out there that tell you to eat a few small meals a day.

Well the weigh-in is less than twelve hours away. Looking forward to it!!

WEEK 6 -- DAY 39 -- SNOWBOUND PART DEUX

Today was the second day of my "snowboundedness". The power finally came back on at 9:30AM which was a sign that the day was going to start off well. I was so excited that I have been doing so well on my plan the past two days and just knew that nothing would steer me off course today. Here's a picture of my backyard "the day after" with the sun shining. What a difference a day makes!!!

Since yesterday's combination of the mini blueberry muffins and the Jenny Craig ravioli was so successful, I went with the exact same thing today. I heard Dr. Oz say that you shouldn't feel that you have to eat a lot of different things when you're trying to lose weight. If something works for you, just stick with it. So that's what I did.

We're going to my daughter's house in New York on Saturday for Valentine's Day which means I'll be weighing myself this week on Saturday before we leave. I'm not stupid enough to think I would want to weigh myself the day after that since I know I'll be eating more than usual on that day. So it's only two more days to my weigh-in. I look forward to this day more than any other day of the week.

WEEK 6 -- DAY 38 -- A Snow Day!!!!

Today the weather forecasters predicted that we would get somewhere in the area of 12" - 18" of snow. For once in their lives, they were correct. Based on the fact that I was going to be snowbound all day, I thought it was going to be hard to stay on plan. Let's face it, what else is there to do when you're stuck in the house. I started off with my usual Hostess blueberry muffins and tried to stay away from the refrigerator/pantry all day long. By 4:30PM, rather than having a snack, I opted for the Jenny Craig cheese ravioli. Here's a picture of it......I wasn't able to find a picture of just the ravioli alone but just know that I didn't eat the macaroni and cheese as well as the brownies shown in the same picture. As soon as I finished eating, the power went out.

There is nothing that makes me angrier than having no power. Since we also have well water and a septic system, when we lose power it also means that we have no water and no use of flushing toilets. It's simply miserable. Once the power went out, I went upstairs with some candles and my book and my book light and read for the rest of the night. At one point it was so cold that I was actually reading with gloves on while under the covers. The power did not return until 9:30AM. Here's a picture of my backyard taken from my upstairs bedroom.

So as bad as the power outage was, it certainly kept me from eating anything else for the day. So all in all, another successful day of eating and way below my recommended 1650 calorie intake.

WEEK 6 -- DAY 37 -- Back On The Wagon....For Sure!!!!!

After yesterday's momentary lapse, I can only go up from there. I woke up feeling positive. I wasn't hating myself about what I'd done. It was time to move on. I started off the day with my usual package of Hostess mini blueberry muffins. I reach for these because they're fast and quick. I'm sure scrambled eggs and toast would be much healthier but I usually don't have time to cook in the morning. I know I've reported in the past that I have Entenmann's blueberry muffins in the morning and today I realized that they have been Hostess brand all along.

Late in the afternoon, while in my office, I had two mini Milky Way treats simply because I was starving. I'm going to have to bring in some healthier snacks so I have something to reach for when it's 4PM and I'm hungry. When I got home, I had a Jenny Craig thin crust pizza (delicious) followed by some sugar free jello with a little bit of Redi Whip on top.

I found this great site (the one where I get the weight loss ticker I use) called My Fitness Pal and you can actually plug in what you've eaten and it will give you the caloric intake as well as how many grams of fat, carbs, etc., each item contains. If you plug in what you've eaten for the entire day, it will tell you how many leftover calories you have that you can still consume. Based on my current height and weight, it calculates how many calories I can eat in a given day in order to lose weight. The total they have allotted me is 1650 calories. I can't even imagine how many calories I consumed yesterday but I know it's well above what they recommended. Since I've been on the plan, I must be consuming less than the 1650 calories or I wouldn't have lost the weight I've lost. For instance, today it says I've only consumed 575 calories and it says if I continued this way for the next three weeks, I'd lose another 15 pounds. (This is a sample of what their calorie counter looks like.....it's not mine but you get the picture).

Well, that's not going to happen because that's unrealistic. But the bottom line is that I'm happy that I was able to get right back on the horse again after yesterday's debacle. (By the way, I just did the calories for all I ate on Monday and I was only 90 calories above what's recommended for me). Now I really love this calorie counter.....I don't feel half as bad as I did about yesterday. But don't worry. I hope I won't be doing this for another 36 days.

WEEK 6 -- DAY 36 -- BACK ON AND OFF THE WAGON

Now that the weekend is over and my company is gone, it's time to get back on the wagon. I started off the day with a Jenny Craig blueberry muffin with high hopes of continuing with a Jenny Craig dinner. Somewhere between 4PM and 5PM, I fell off that wagon.

Having done so much food shopping for Super Bowl, thoughts of the things in my pantry and refrigerator were circling around in my head. Since I hadn't had any of the chips I had bought for my party, I kept thinking about the Cool Ranch Doritos and nothing could keep me from having some. Sitting down with a Diet Coke and some Doritos is heaven. There's no way you can eat a Jenny Craig dinner after having Doritos.....no possible way. So I thought I wouldn't eat anything else for the rest of the day. Then I started thinking about the leftover Hawaiian meatballs and heated those up. Now I was on a roll......and it wasn't a good one. After the meatballs, I decided to have a Super Bowl cupcake (which I also hadn't had the day before). And as icing on the cake, I had a Reese's peanut butter cup.

This is as bad as it gets. This is the first time in 36 days that I've done something like this so I really can't beat myself up about it. In the past, I would have done this, weighed myself, gotten depressed and kept on eating. Since I only weigh myself once a week, I have no idea how much damage I've done. I refuse to lie in this blog. If I fall short, I'm going to report it as this will help me along the way. As long as I can pick myself up tomorrow, I'll be fine. Stay tuned.

WEEK 5 -- DAY 35 -- SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

Well I made it through Super Bowl Sunday. As I already mentioned, we were having a mini Super Bowl party and I was excited about making a lot of different appetizers. As usually happens, I bought too much and ended up not having half of what I had planned. The good news is that I put out all of the chips and dips, etc. while I was cooking the appetizers so I never had a chance to eat any of that.

I made a Hawaiian meatball recipe from the old Betty Crocker recipe cards of the '70's. It was a great hit and I didn't feel I overdid it by having a few of those. Then I made a delicious crab and cheese spread that you put on english muffins and broil in the oven so everything melts on top. These were out of this world and I had a few of those as well. I had also bought chicken wings that we never touched and had planned on making an antipasto salad which we didn't do either. My son's girlfriend made homemade pizza and I had one small slice and I really mean small.

We were all so full that we never even had the Super Bowl cupcakes I had bought. I had forgotten all about them with the excitement of the Saints winning.

So all in all, I don't feel I did too much damage to all the hard work I've done so far on my plan. Tomorrow I'll be right back in the good eating mode.

WEEK 5 -- DAY 34 -- 5TH WEIGH-IN

3.5 lbs. lost this week

3.5 lbs. lost this month

13 lbs. lost YTD

Yes, you're reading that right. I lost an additional 3.5 lbs. this week. What makes this weight loss even more spectacular is that I'm actually weighing myself two days earlier because of Super Bowl weekend. My usual weigh-in day is on Monday but today is Saturday. So I've actually lost these 3.5 lbs. in five days.

Which brings me to another point. Who is crazy enough to have Monday as their weigh-in day? Only a crazy person would weigh themselves every week after the weekend. What I'm going to try to do is make this weigh-in day on Fridays in the future. To accomplish this, I will weigh myself on Sunday for next week's weigh-in and then on Saturday for the following week. And then the week after that I'll weigh-in on Friday and do that for the rest of the year.

You can't even imagine how excited I was when I got on the scale this morning. It just proves that what I'm doing is working. And I don't even feel like I'm dieting or that I'm missing out on anything. For the past five weeks, I've done everything I wanted to do and haven't turned down any social engagements. In the upcoming week, I'm having lunch out with a friend. If I was on my typical "diet", I would have made an excuse not to do this.

No one in my family even knows I've lost weight and I'm wondering at what point they will start to notice. As I mentioned, my son is coming home this weekend with his girlfriend so that will be the first test. If it's not noticed by them, I am going to my daughter's house next weekend for Valentine's Day. Surely she will notice. We'll see!!!

WEEK 5 -- DAY 33 -- Food Shopping For Super Bowl Sunday!!

This week I'm definitely going to have to make a change in my weigh-in day. There's no way I'm weighing myself the day after Super Bowl Sunday. My son called yesterday and said he would be coming home with his girlfriend to watch the Super Bowl with us. So, as any good mother would do, I spent the day shopping for all sorts of things he would like to eat that day. It's been years since my husband and I have had anyone here with us watching the game. My son was either in college or out of the country on this famous Sunday. My daughter was usually at a party somewhere else so it's exciting for us to actually be having a real Super Bowl party.

I can't even tell you how much restraint I had to muster after I got home from food shopping. We have an Amish Farmer's Market close to my home and I love to buy their bagel chips and some of the different spreads/dips they have all made out of cheeses from their farms. Usually, I would come home from the market and sit down and eat the chips with one of the spreads and I'd finish the entire thing. Today it went right in the refrigerator waiting for Sunday. This is a picture of a typical Pennsylvania Dutch Market although it's not my exact market.

One thing I know for sure......I will not be on any plan or any diet on Sunday. That's my reward for having lost 9.5 pounds in January. So which day will I weigh myself? You'll have to check back to find out.

WEEK 5 -- DAY 32 -- A Good Eating Day!!!

With thoughts of the previous day's potato chips, I vowed to be good all day today and I was true to my word. Between working and running errands, I was pretty much on the go all day. I grabbed one of the very easy Entenmann's blueberry muffin bags while I was running out the door this morning. For dinner, I had Jenny Craig's Fettucine Alfredo with Chicken. I always have a small roll and butter with this dinner and that was my guilty pleasure for the day. I followed that up with some sugar free jello with a little bit of Redi Whip on top.

It sounds like I'm eating the same things almost every day. Dr. Oz says this is a good way to diet. My option this morning was either eating the blueberry muffins or stopping into my local gourmet food store and picking up a croissant filled with blueberries or cheese. I thought about this and then figured one of these is probably close to 1,000 calories so I decided to pass. Before I was on my plan, however, this would be a daily non-thinking thing for me. I would stop in there, pick out one of their pastries and not think twice about it.

If there's one think I've learned in these thirty plus days, it's to "think before I eat".

WEEK 5 -- DAY 31 -- The Good and Bad of It

Started off today with a Jenny Craig breakfast.....blueberry pancakes and a sausage patty. As I've said before, the quality of this food is exceptional. Everything tastes great. My intention was to have one of her meals for breakfast and then another one for dinner. Midway through the day, however, I had cravings for some potato chips. (And this picture exactly replicates what I had...two little bags of Lay's). I don't think I've eaten these all month and now, in retrospect, I wish I didn't have them today either. When I do something like this, it changes my thinking and then, all of a sudden, the Jenny Craig dinner I had planned on having was no longer desirable to me. And I know from past experience, had I not had the potato chips, I still would have eaten the Jenny Craig dinner and would have been much happier.

So what terrible thing did I have for dinner..........Campbells Chicken Noodle soup with a buttered bagel. Between the sodium and the butter, not to mention the heaviness of the bagel, this was not the best choice. But the good news is that I don't have to weigh myself tomorrow morning so I have no idea how badly the potato chips and the soup/bagel will have affected my weight.

Tomorrow is a new day and one thing I know for sure......I won't be eating any potato chips today.

WEEK 5 -- DAY 30 -- Eat In Moderation!!!

I woke up this morning feeling so great about my January weight loss but now it's on to more success in February. Since I feel I look better and I'm actually fitting into more of my clothes, I find myself spending more time trying to figure out what to wear. When I was at my highest weight a few weeks ago, there were only a few things in my closet that fit so it wasn't too hard to figure out what I was going to wear each day. Now I definitely have more options and I'm excited to get dressed in the morning. Today I wore a suede jacket I haven't worn in awhile because it's a bit fitted. I have to refrain from buying any new clothes because whatever I buy now probably won't fit next month. It's amazing what a difference even the 9.5 pound weight loss makes.

I had my usual room service oatmeal and white toast this morning and loved every bit of it. I came home earlier than expected from Atlantic City and couldn't decide what I would eat when I got home. Since it was after seven o'clock already, I opted for two pieces of pizza at our local pizza shop. This was definitely not the best choice but it's all I had so I can live with it. I love Sicilian pizza so that was my pick. They only had one slice so my second slice was white pizza. I know this probably doesn't sound like any kind of healthy eating but, in the past, I would have had this and then some kind of cake and then some kind of candy. So, in actuality, it's a lot less than I used to eat.

My mother always used to say that she was thin because she ate in moderation. Eating in moderation was something I haven't done in years but I'm doing it now and I'm getting results. That's my new mantra.......Eat In Moderation!!!!!

WEEK 5 -- DAY 29 -- 4TH WEIGH-IN -- 9.5 TOTAL POUNDS LOST IN JANUARY

2.5 lbs. lost this week!!!

9.5 lbs. lost this month!!!

Well it was well worth the wait to finally get on the scale this morning and to see that I've lost another 2.5 pounds this month. That means I've lost 9.5 pounds in the month of January....even though the blog ticker says 10 pounds lost. For some reason it doesn't do half pound increments so I guess I'll have to live with it.

It also means that my plan is working. I'm only supposed to be losing one pound a week and would have been happy to have lost 4 pounds in the month of January....one pound for each week. Instead, I've lost 5.5 pounds more than that. How good is that??

What this proves is that I can do this and really not deprive myself. I was out of town for a few days this month, went into the city to have dinner, went out to lunch with a friend and basically didn't turn down any offers that involved eating like I usually do when I'm dieting. But what I did do is not punish myself if I cheated. Because I'm only weighing myself once a week, I don't even know how the cheating (if you want to call it that) affected my weight.

I'm back in Atlantic City today and tomorrow so I ended up grabbing a package of those Entenmann's blueberry muffins on my way out the door and that's what I had for breakfast. For dinner, I had my favorite tuna salad sandwich at the Metropolitan Cafe with a few fries.

In the past, I'd go out to lunch or out to dinner and then weigh myself the next morning and I'd weigh more than the day before. This would depress me and then I would eat again that day because I was mad at myself. This didn't happen to me once this entire month.

I still haven't added exercise to my new plan and I will be doing that soon. But it's great to know that I've been able to lose almost 10 pounds with just cutting back on what I usually eat. I'm now excited to begin my second month on the "plan".