Sure I'd like to get Wine & Roses - but I'll take what I can get. ;) 

I decided that I would take some pics of my new lower carb, more veggie dinners to show you guys how they turned out. 

Here is Pork & Cauliflower night: 

Basically I just:

1) cut up some pork and browned it in 2 tbs olive oil and added mushrooms

2) while that is cooking broil some chopped up cauliflower with low cal spray butter or pam on top, salt and pepper (FYI - this is super yummy as its own side dish too) 

3) mix them together and add two tablespoons of butter (on the whole thing - not per plate!) 

Pretty tasty. The pork looks a little funny because they were having a really good sale on cubed pork. Next time I'll have boneless pork chops. :) 

Rachel 

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Well girls, things are still going well. The last few days have been veggies galore and I don't see anyone complaining. Frankly, it's quite amazing!

I have to admit that I'm still having big time trouble in the afternoon. Mostly from about 2:30 up until I get dinner ready. Even though I have had all my snacks - my tummy just gets downright famished that time of day and for most of it I'm in the car. It's hard to be in control when you are in the car passing McDonalds.....Burger King.....Wendys.....Taco Belll..... Ugh! snap out of it! ;)

Things will hopefully start to get better next month. See for a while now the whole fam has been car pooling to save money, which is great, but I end up spending about 4 hours in the car everyday because we all get dropped off on different ends of town. Such a pain in the butt! But, my office is supposed to move downtown at the end of the year. That would put me just a few miles from Terry's work and then we would move Harper to a school just around the corner making for a much, much shorter route.

Well, the daycare that she is at now gave me some paperwork last week that said that they were raising their rates by $30 a week!!! That's $120 a month!! So even though they were willing to grandfather us in for a few more months with our orginal scale - the more Terry and I talked about it, we figured it was a sign that we should just move her now. This way I drop Terry off, go about a mile down the road and drop off Harp, and then diagonal accross town to my office. Still a long drive, but in December it will cut the city time drive by about half.

HOPEFULLY this will get us to the point where we can work out some exercise time! I found out from one of the ladies in the downtown office that there is a gym in the building that only has a ONE TIME $20 fee and you can use it as long as you work in the building! Awesome eh? She said she would show it to me the next time I'm down that way.

Anyway - speaking of driving, I better get out of here so I can beat the traffic!

Rachel

254

 The spaghetti squash experiment turned out really well. The only thing that I might have done wrong was put in a little too much sprinkle cheese. ;) Terry said that he thought that he might like it just as much as the noodle version. That's saying a lot for a bowl full of squash! :) 

Harper liked it so much she ACTUALLY LICKED THE PLATE AND TRIED TO CHEW ON IT!!  That has NEVER happened before - even with her all time favorite, regular spaghetti. Man, I wish I could have grabbed the camera fast enough to see her smearing the plate on her face to get it off. :) 

And one other funny note, this is our cat Lamonte either playing dead or taking a nap. Sometimes it's hard to tell.... 

Here's to more veggies tomorrow! 

Rachel

255

 What I ate today:

Notes on todays eats:

1) Everything was good - even the squash instead of noodles! 

2) SQUASH OUT OF SEASON IS EXPENSIVE!! $6.50!!

Rachel 

255

 Sorry, I know that's gross, but I think it's kinda funny when you haven't really focused on veggies in a while and your tummy does cartwheels and all kinds of fancy tricks for the first few days. Haha - I won't dwell on it. ;) 

I feel much better today - I thought I was get a stomach flu yesterday because I was nauseated the whole day, but it seems to have passed. I often have problems with that because I have a very nervous stomach and even little things can set it off. Like if I have to get up early and don't get a good nights sleep - forget about me not feeling like barfing all morning. I got my dads stomach. I've found that it helps to take a heartburn pill before bed so I dont end up with sour stomach in the morning. 

It will be interesting to see how we both feel at the end of the week. I think that all the fiber will be really good for us. I already feel less bloated! (This is  turning out to be a gross post! Sorry! haha) Tonight we are having spaghetti squash dinner and thats a lot of fiber!

I think it's funny how much Doodle (our 1 1/2 year old, Harper) likes the veggies that I thought she wouldn't even pick up. Tonight with the fake spaghetti will be a big test. That is one of her all time favorites! But last night I made:

Greek Chicken

3 chopped up chicken breasts

2 tbs olive oil

2 cups chopped mushrooms

1 package frozen spinach

1 tbs chopped garlic

1 cup feta

(cook the chicken and mushrooms in the oil, add the spinach and the feta!) 

And Harper LOVED it! She ate almost all of it! But I shouldn't be surprised because she always likes fruits and veggies. I guess I was more surprised that Terry and I liked it! haha

Rachel 

255

p.s.

Yes, that is down 5 pounds! I didn't weigh myself yesterday, but I know that last week I was at 260 and I think I've maybe lost a pound and lost a bunch of bloat! :)

What I ate today:

Some notes on todays eating -

 1) Greek chicken turned out great! :)

2) Don't open a can of nuts in the car and eat out of it!

3) Soda was for an upset tummy - no diet sprite available

 Rachel

260

 Hey Guys!

I know that it's been a long time and Terry and I are as fat as ever. Sigh. We have been so busy lately that we have been using our very, very busy schedule to justify our eating and lack of exercise. 

But the other day I read that article saying that they have pretty much decided that lower carb is better in the long run then lower fat, I decided maybe it would be a good idea to try to at least try to start eating better. 

I don't believe that Atkins is a healthy way to go because we tried it once before and I truly believe that the reason people lose weight on it is because IT IS FREAKING IMPOSSIBLE TO EAT UNDER 20 CARBS A DAY.  You would litterally just have to gnaw on big hunks of meat all day. I'm sorry, but I don't like meat that much and we couldn't afford it anyway. 

So I did more of a modified South Beach style - mostly lean meats, veggies, fruits, and whole grains. I know that with South Beach you are supposed to go for a week with the whole no carbs thing - but we are just too busy for that. I needed a healthy menu that I could also feed my daughter and do a two week shopping list for. 

I think I came up with some good stuff to make for dinners, but I know that the days are going to be tricky. Lots of the same lunch over and over. That's the hard thing when you aren't doing processed foods. Lots of tuna and lunch meat on whole wheat pitas. 

So we are giving it a shot and seeing a) how we like it and b) how much this menu will cost. We have a very tight budget and the grocery bill needs to fit into that too. Steaks every night are not going to be affordable! 

This first week will be bumpy because we cant do a full grocery run till Friday - but next week should be smooth sailing. :) 

Rachel 

260

 Hey Ladies! 

As practice for my big 5K coming up in January, I signed up for a Breast Cancer awareness walk in October.

If anyone would like to donate to keep me motivated I would love it! :) 

HELP RACHEL RAISE SOME MOOLA! :)

Rach

255

 Okay girls, my sister and I are signed up for January 9th! No refunds! No turning back now.

Terry and I are going to attempt to go running as soon as we get home tonight with Harper in the jogging stroller. We will see how it goes - hopefully well. :) 

Thats about it for today - oh and by the way, the fastest way to lose a couple pounds is to cut off 10 inches of your hair. :)

Rach

256

P.S. Isn't this a fantastic photo! I look so thin! I should always take my picture in my bathroom looking up at a cell phone! ;) 

I don't want to be a super model - I just want to be this lady. 

Well, it's been about a month since I've been here and nothing much has changed. I still have all the same stats pretty much, with the same ol excuses. 

I decided to write again today because I was in the bagel store getting lunch. 

It wasn't a bad lunch at all - much better than a lunch from the burger joint next door. But still a fast food lunch. Anyway, I'm waiting over at the soda machine for my order and I notice a table of 30 to 40 year old men sitting nearby.

The 3 of them were just sitting there paying no attention to me at all. Which is fine - I mean I am not here to say that they were doing something mean to me or made a snarky remark or anything, BUT...

As I have said before in this blog I have been fat for most of my adult life. Only for about 2 years did I live the glorious life of a thin, hot 20 something year old. And because of my past experience I KNOW how men react to a pretty woman pretty much anywhere.

Now I'm not talking about the way guys act in bars when they are trying pick girls up - but just when you are in a shop or a park or any other public place. Men treat you - different. When you're fat, they aren't mean to you or anything usually (I mean I'm just talking about passing someone in a grocery store isle or something like that) but they treat you the same way they treat their mom or their sister or their grandma.

They treat you like a "Mamm". 

When you are thin - men, young or old, put a skip in their step to open a door for you. Not that they wouldn't do it before, they just wouldn't put a little speed in their walk to get there faster. Old men wink at you, more working guys call you "sweetie", if you reach for something on a high shelf - magically a guy appears to get it down for you. 

They treat you like a "Miss". 

I'm not saying that these guys are jerks normally or anything, but I think that they are somehow wired in their brain to do these things. I don't think that the old guy at drug store who called me "Honey" wants to get in my pants or anything like that at all - I really think their brain kind of goes, "Ooooh - girl pretty." 

I know thats very simplistic of me - but that was the best way that I could think of to describe the different feeling I got from men in general when I was thin. And I think that women who have been thin for a long time and then become fat later in life don't notice really, I think they just think that they are getting older. 

And at the bagel shop those men wouldn't have looked up at me if my hair was on fire. I just didn't tune into their pretty-girl radar. Just like a long time ago I when I was like 24 and single I tried and experiment. I went to that web site - Hot or Not.com and I put in some pictures. I put in one full body when I was fat, one close up when I was fat, one close up thin, and one full body thin. The results were interesting, but expected. On the two heavy pictures I averaged about a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. On the thin pictures though, I averaged a solid 8 on the face shot and a 8/9 on the full body shots (this was in regular clothes, but fashionable and well fitting). These stats all came from men AND women. It's amazing people's perceptions of you just because of your weight. 

I just want to get back to like the woman in the picture. She is not at all what I would call a galmour gal or anything like that - she just looks nice, her clothes fit well, and she just, well, looks nice and healthy. 

I want to be back to at least a 6 or 7 - is that so wrong?

I could do that, right? 

Rachel 

255

P.S. And I just want to say I love you to my husband, Terry. Who still runs to open doors for me. :)