Welcome to the weekend!

Thursday morning I woke up and made my way straight to the coffee.

My routine in the morning for the past two weeks has been coffee, water, coffee, water….

I’m continuing to put lemon and lime slices in my water to make it more interesting.  The other day I even bought some mint leaves in the vegetable section of the grocery store (In case, like me,  you also didn’t know where they were located).  I ended up over there because I was buying fresh bay leaves for a recipe.  By the way did  you know you’re to take OUT the bay leaves when you’re done cooking?  I learned that as well

So while in that section I saw mint.  I had heard of people putting mint in their water and since I am having great success ‘dressing up’ my water lately I thought I’d try it.

Perhaps I didn’t put in enough but I wasn’t impressed.  I wonder how much mint one needs to actually taste it?

But the point is that this way of drinking water is definitely the way to go.   I can easily say I’ve quadrupled my water intake since I started doing this.

I’m glad I had two cups of coffee before the kids really got moving.  Everyone was extra hyper in the morning.  Here’s a picture of Charlotte perusing her phone as her brother launches a sneak attack

This year Charlotte is in middle school and participating in Theatre.  Yesterday her class put on a play. Now let me explain how that worked.  It was actually an informal performance they did just for parents in the classroom.  A fairly SMALL classroom once all the kids and all the parents were crammed inside.  They of course had the CHILD SIZE chairs for the audience to sit in.

How do you think THIS girl would have handled that situation?

Child size chairs have always haunted me as my kids have grown up.  Attending school events of any kind was often impossible for this very reason.  They’re either putting you in a child size chair crammed in the middle of a row with 100 other people OR asking you to sit on a child sized bench that has the sitting portion attached to the table.  So you can’t even scoot it out for extra room.

First of all, we arrived late because the appointment we were at ran long.  In the past I would have not been able to go at all if I was going to be arriving late.  I had to get there far in advance of everyone else.  I had to be the first one there to survey the situation and make sure I could find a place that I could safely fit.  I couldn’t squeeze past people or just show up and find a chair somewhere in the middle row.  I had to find my place well in advance to make sure there was plenty of room and the chair I was in was stable.

As we made our way to the classroom, the fire alarm went off! Suddenly a thousand middle school kids emerged from their classrooms into the hallways and before I knew it I was inundated inside a crowd.  Again can I tell you how horrifying this would have been for me just a few years ago?  It would have been bad enough that I had to walk from the car to the door.  Wait at the receptionists desk for her to check me in.  And then walk ALL THE WAY DOWN THAT LONG HALLWAY to the classroom without crying in pain from my weight crushing my feet.  But now a fire drill?? And a CROWD?  With no ability to quickly move out of the way?

You don’t do anything particularly quickly when you’re over 400 pounds.  At least I never did.  And these sorts of unplanned things were exactly why I often could not attend events.  I simply could not be put in a situation where something unplanned would happen . I had to know my surroundings.  Where I could fit.  How I would have to maneuver in and out of small spaces or crowds.  This truly would have been impossible for me a few years ago.

Yesterday it was all effortless.  So effortless in fact that I didn’t even think about those things.  I didn’t take a picture of the chairs or the tight spaces as I would have in the beginning when everything felt so miraculous.  But the miracle is not a guarantee.  So I need to take notice of these things and be grateful for them the way I used to.  Being fully and completely aware that it is a gift.

Here is a picture of Charlotte dressed in her costume for the play.  She did a great job.

As I continue to listen to my natural hunger and remove sugar from my intake, I find once again that I am much more able to resist the urge to eat during the earlier part of the day.   It isn’t that I don’t think of it.  But it is more mental than anything else.  Anywhere between 11 and 1 I usually begin to feel that I want something to eat.

And do you know what I’ve been really wanting lately?

SPINACH!

I absolutely hated spinach as a child.  Even as an adult I never would eat it.   Yet I started using spinach in omelets recently and I love it.  That’s when I began to see I didn’t hate cooked spinach at all.   I decided to try and cook it creatively in the pan.  I added garlic, olives and a few tablespoons of cream cheese.  I suppose this was a random attempt at creamed spinach.  It turned out pretty good!! Spinach is something you can have a lot of for very few zero calories.  It sure does shrink up fast in the pan though!!

Now when I say I am not eating “breakfast”, this mainly means I am not eating (chewing) a meal of food.   I do continue to add about half of a ready made Atkins Vanilla Shake to my coffee in the morning.  I use it in place of a creamer and I love it.  I am still drinking the rest of my Mexican Cinnamon coffee that I found at Marshalls.  I will be so sad to get to the end of it.  It is some of the best coffee I’ve ever had!! But you know Marshalls gets a lot of discontinued items so I think this was a one time thing.  Maybe I’ll save that last coffee pod for a day I really need a pick me up!

In the middle of the day usually after the children get home from school I end up feeling truly hungry.  I haven’t decided yet if it’s actual hunger or just the fact that my kids are all getting an after school snack.  This is when I will usually drink a protein shake or make one in the blender.   I also make an additional one to freeze as an evening snack.

For dinner we made the Crockpot Turkey White Bean Pumpkin Chili    I’ve been using a lot of recipes off this site because they are free and easy.  Rarely has there been an ingredient that I didn’t recognize or at the very least was unable to locate in the store.  The recipes are not complicated and they are not full of anything expensive.  While they are not necessarily ‘low carb’, most of them are very low in sugar.  And that is the main thing I am going for.  I still subscribe to eating low carb as the best way for me to lose weight but when I am not eating all day long the carbs aren’t adding up continually.  What I do eat during the day is super low carb so this leaves room for the higher carb recipes I normally would have avoided.

Even my kids loved this.  They thought it was strange that it had pumpkin in it because I have never put pumpkin in anything (other than a pie!)  But even they had to admit it was delicious.

This got me thinking….what if I got a little more creative with my protein shakes?  I know there are recipes where you can add pumpkin and from what I understand using pumpkin in a shake isn’t terribly high in carbs or sugar.  I think I’ll look into that.

I hope that you are all having a wonderful weekend.   I can’t tell you how much you all mean to me.  Getting back to what works feels amazing.  But knowing that the journey we are on is walked together means more.  I realize that even for the pain we all go through there is something to be grateful for because it is only through this common thread we share—this struggle—that we have met.   And so I cannot regret that my life has taken me down this path.  There is no other way I would have met so many people who share the same struggles.  And it is through the struggles that I have learned so many lessons of patience and perseverance.  Most importantly that God is with us through the ups and the downs.  The losses and the regains.  And even when He feels far away there are people He places in our lives to remind us that He is with us.

God bless you!

(c) 300 Pounds Down – Read entire story here.