Weekends Are A Constant Struggle!

Oh, the weekends. I have such high hopes but every weekend is a fail. Sometimes not bad but sometimes epic and this weekend was no different.

We started out good by going to the farmers market and getting some fruit for the week. I even packed some popcorn and water for a snack. But then my husband decides to go to the bakery portion and of course the children go right behind him. He didn't see my "WHY ARE YOU GOING IN THERE?!" face. So, the kids ended up with a doughnut. I should have just said "NO".

Saturday afternoon, I took the kids to Toys-R-Us so my daughter could get her reward doll. I should have left my son at home. So 45 minutes and $75 later we get out of there.

We had lunch at Chipotle. The nutritionist said we could have lunch there as long as there was no cheese and sour cream on the burrito bowl. For dinner, was potluck style, I guess you could call it. My daughter had a lean cuisine chicken dinner and no vegetables. *fail*

Mother's Day breakfast was pancakes and sausage, KFC for lunch and Chili for dinner. The store was out of lean ground turkey so I got the lean ground beef.

We all watched too much TV, played too many games, we did not exercise enough, we didn't eat enough vegetables and did not drink enough water. 

Weekends are a struggle! I guess it could have been worse. We could have done like we used to and eat out almost every meal.

We H.A.V.E. to do better next weekend.  I have to have a better plan!

And I have to write this in her food journal. Ugh! The nutritionist is going to get me :)

Breakfast today was 1 slice low calorie cinnamon raisin bread, low fat turkey sausage links, fruit and milk or she can drink the smoothie I made over the weekend for her fruit and milk. She is eating school lunch.  For dinner we will have baked chicken, greens and a salad.

How was your weekend?

Weigh In Day #3

Yesterday was weigh in day and my daughter gained back the pound that she lost last week. The program people said it could be Easter residuals, which is true. We did eat out for the weekend several times. At least she did not gain over that.

I still can't help but feel bad.  I am not at all upset with her because she is doing wonderfully and still has a great attitude. But I am upset with myself. Looking back, maybe we shouldn't have went out at all, Easter or not. Today made me feel like those days when I was on diets and I didn't lose what I wanted to lose. I had those exact same feelings and usually those feelings ended in me quitting. That IS NOT AN OPTION this time though.  I got myself together and started looking and telling them what I was doing. 

Either way, it's over. We have done great this week with our eating. We are going to keep on going. I do have to get back to using the healthy plate and making her write in the food journal everyday and not just a few days at a time. We also have to make more of an effort to get out and exercise on the weekend.

One bright spot is that my baby girl ran up the parking lot today and was barely breathing hard. If this would have been before the program, she would have been visibly out of breath along with her extra drama. *lol* So it is working in several ways.  I have to call her pediatrician and see when we should redo her blood work and check her A1C again.


My Dad's birthday is this weekend and my mother is cooking instead of us going out.  I am going to have to talk with her because she is cooking seafood and I know she is going to fry it.  We can't do the frying. I don't want our efforts to be squashed in one day.  I will see, exactly, what she is making and see if we can bake some of the things for us. Otherwise, we will have to go visit after dinner.  Weekends are the hardest.

Have To Get Back On Track

In an effort to be honest on this blog I will disclose all information, good and bad.   So, the news is that my daughter gained a pound on Thursday.  I know why this happened; it was a busy week for me so I wasn’t as diligent as I needed to be.  We went out to eat last weekend for my birthday, we didn’t have enough activity, we had hot dogs (fat free) and beans twice for dinner, we didn’t have enough vegetables, I think one day we had a cheeseburger and salad from McDonald’s, we didn’t fill out the food journal regularly, she had a few second helpings.  This all goes back to what I said about her failing would be my fault.

I am back on track with her this week.  It is Spring Break so it will be a challenging week.  We are going to plan ALL meals for the week. I will post this weekend.  The kids will be home with my husband most days so we will talk about activities for the week.  I talked with him about the commitment we made for her and how it is BOTH of our responsibilities.  If he sees me doing wrong, he needs to say something and vice versa.

Planning and preparing meals is a must!

Four Days and No Activity

This week has not been the best week in our household. When I say week it is Friday-Thurday.  We did not get out and exercise this weekend.  I went out Friday with a friend so I couldn't get out and walk or do something active with the kids.  Of course, it would have been great if my husband would have got out and done it but that's another story.:) We didn't get out on Saturday because it was my birthday and I had to get my driver's license renewed. Have I mentioned that I am a procrastinator. We went out to an early dinner. Sunday, I just did not feel like doing anything. On Monday, we had Girl Scouts. So, we went four days without doing some extra activity.  This is a "no-no" and cannot happen again. I feel bad that we won't have anything to put on her activity log for those 4 days. It really should not have happened. I don't expect to be out every day but going 4 days is not acceptable and I have to do better. 

The exercise and activity portion of this program is hard for me. My daughter is a child but doing extra physical activity is not her thing. I cannot let that much time go by anymore. I will talk with my daughter and we can come up with a plan that we have to stick to.  If I give her something to plan, she may be more prone to remind me that we need to get moving. We need an attitude adjustment on the exercise thing. Yesterday, today and tomorrow she is at the program exercise class.

On a funny note: We went to Outback for my birthday. Yes, it was a bad choice while on this program. We let the kids splurge and they got a brownie with ice cream on top to share.  The poor things ate the brownie like they had never had anything sweet in their life. We had to make them slow down before they choked themselves. It definitely made me see that sweets can't be in the house.

Do you have any suggestions to get the extra activity to fit, easily, into our day?

The Taco Bell Incident

Did you know the Taco Bell Chicken Ranch Salad has 970 calories? I won't mention the fat. Well I now know because my husband got it for my daughter yesterday evening. OMG. I knew I would be high but that is really bad.

I worked late and had a meeting after that so my husband had to get the kids from aftercare. I made it home before them. When they opened the door, I saw my husband's Taco Bell bag first. I think to myself 'Really? Why are u going to Taco Bell when you know we are not eating out and you are doing it in front of Girly and two, you know I put that chicken in the crock pot?' Then I saw my daughter come in with a bag for her and my son. Need I say more? She did use fat free Ranch dressing but I don't think it helped much. I asked why he went to Taco Bell and he said because he thought I wouldn't have time to cook. Granted, he was trying to be helpful.

If this was pre-program, I wouldn't have thought it was an issue but this is post-program. I had the chicken and string beans. We will talk about this later. Even if they went to Taco Bell, there should be better choices.

We have to look into it for other restaurants too. This is just one of those set backs that we have to learn from. I have to make sure we have some frozen meals for these cases.

I have to let this one roll off and keep it moving. We both made some wrong choices this week.

Habits and Routines

My kids and I have habits and routines, just like everyone else. Since this blog is about health, food, etc. I will give our previous habits because they were really brought to life yesterday. It also brought to light how they need to change.  Yesterday, I didn't know if I should cold turkey change or do a gradual change. When do you know which way to go?

Habit/Routine #1 - On Monday's, my son has Cub Scouts. We usually would eat out because I had to pick the kids up, do homework, talk to them, listen to them whine about doing homework before we had to leave for the meeting. There was just no time to cook and I just didn't want to rush anymore than I already was. Now, I am married, but my husband worked until 6:00pm so he was not involved in these after school activities. Can we all say, overwhelmed mom? *lol*

Habit/Routine #2 - One or two days a week, we would go to the grocery store, on the way home from school to pick something up for dinner. Before we would even get out the car, my son would ask for a doughnut and my daughter a muffin.  Now this grocery store has great doughnuts called Colossal doughnuts and big muffins. So pre-program, I would usually say yes unless the days where, in my head, I knew they just had one earlier in the week. We get those and get whatever else we wanted in the store. If it was a day I really didn't feel like cooking, we got Ho.t Pockets. They would eat doughnut and muffin on the way home, in the car.

Habit/ Routine #3 - REPEAT #1 or #2 at least two more times

Habit/Routine #4 - No extra exercise.

Yesterday was the first Monday, after starting the program.  Now, this shows how programmed my mind is. After work, I immediately thought about going to P.anda Express. Darn, I can't go there, we are on the program. As usual, I forgot to take some meat out the freezer. I need to get better with that.  My husband has since been laid off but I even forget to tell him to take it out. *lol*

I even thing about this being our one day of eating out. Again, I had to talk myself out of it. I felt horrible.  I go get the kids and know that we won't eat out but I still have to go to the store because I have not been grocery shopping. We get to the parking lot and #2 starts.  At first I say "NO" which should have been the end of it. But then I try to rationalize and say it has to be gradual because, I will be honest, the kids looked sad and my daughter said "not even a raisin bran muffin?". I know, I know...bad mother. I told them yes but I told my daughter she could only eat half of the Raisin Bran muffin.

In the store, I got some more "bag o' greens" and frozen dinners.  There was no time to cook.  I did not get our normal frozen dinners though. I got them both L.ean Cusine dinners and I fixed a salad for them and one for myself. So that was actual another habit, I broke. We  would usually get one of the high calorie meals.  So I thought I did pretty good.

I also got my daughter the F.uze drinks.  They have a juice that is low in calories. My daughter likes them and the nutritionist said they were fine to give to the kids on the program as long as they still drink water.  There is, pretty much, no other good juice for them to have.  All of them have so many calories. Don't be fooled by the 100% juice idea because the calories are still high.

I didn't let the kids eat in the car either. We got home and ate dinner, the kids were satisfied.

We even went for a walk and the kids played tag with a little boy, on the playground.  My daughter got 45 minutes of active exercise yesterday.

All in all, I think we did OK today.  It wasn't perfect but it is a gradual change.

My daughter has exercise class today.

The First Day of Weight Loss Program

Yesterday was the first day of the program at the hospital.  The program is for 2 years, the first year concentrates on weight loss and the second year is about maintenance. Insurance is covering the costs so I am happy about that.

My daughter was weighed in at over 200lbs and height of 5'5". Shocking. I didn't know she weighed that much. I felt horrible. The nurse talked to us first, mainly about diabetes. She was supposed to be talking to my daughter (dd) and us.  It was so funny because the nurse could not relate the whole diabetes talk to my daughter. She was nice and tried though. My daughter was just looking at her with a blank stare. That lasted about one hour including paperwork. One part of the paperwork, I had to ask my daughter questions. What did she want to get out of the program. Her answer "lose weight". What did she think she would be able to do after the program. Her answer "be faster". One question was if she thought people treated her differently because of her weight and she said "yes" and then it asked why, she said some people were mean. So sad, it breaks my heart but it is going to change.

My daughter is a happy child.  She is spoiled and has no worries. Some of the kids are mean to her because of her size and height. She is a bigger girl.  She is sweet, helpful and is a nice girl. When she does come home and people have been mean to her, I try my best to console her and let her know that the people are mean and she should not listen. While I am saying this, in my head, I know that I have to do something. I also want to go and get those children for talking about my baby. *lol*

Back to the appointment, after the nurse, the nutritionist came in. OMG, I knew this was going to be an eye opener because all the bad habits were going to come out. *lol* She asked a lot of questions to my daughter and my husband and I. All the bad habits came out...we eat out 3-4 times a week, we run out of cereal so my husband takes them to McD's sometimes on the way to school, the kids watch too much TV, drink too much juice, snack on the wrong things, don't get enough exercise.  We sounded like that typical family on TV that is doing the wrong things.

I know we eat out too much, we are a busy family, the kids have activities, I have church activities, my husband was working the later shift. I would be tired..too tired or too rushed to cook.

The nutrionist asked my daughter what did she think would be the hardest part for her. She said "nothing". You have to love children.  She just doesn't know *lol* The nutrionist then asked me and I said the cooking.  I am going to be honest. I don’t mind cooking but I also don't want to do it everyday. The nutritionist asked can we cut down on eating out to a certain number, I said yes.  I said, if we can't eat out than we won't eat out.  She said that may not be realistic. I then said once a week and she asked can we keep it to that. I told her that "We have to do what we have to do for her and the family." That is the motto.  There is NO choice in this situation.

So we left with three 9 inch divided "healthy plates" for lunch and dinner. Half the plate is or vegetables, one fourth for meat and one fourth for grains. She is to dring a cup of water and eat a salad before dinner. No seconds except for vegetables.  Luckily she is not a picky eater and loves salads. No junkfood, juice, french fries and things like that in the house.  She can have treats but we have to buy single serving, no boxes in the house.

I am going to have to get it together with the cooking.  The nutritionist suggested batch cooking on the weekend.  I am going to have to do that.

The program has exercise classes 3 days a week for an hour. The third day is half exercise and have a class with the kids and parents.  She has to keep a food diary that they look at every Thursday.

All and all, I am excited for the program, her and the family. But at the same time, it is going to be a struggle for me to make sure I have cooked food and keep her motivated and on the program to get healthy.