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That darn 0.4 lbs made it’s way back again today. The yo-yo happening is frustrating, to say the least. A gain of 0.4 lbs today brings my total loss back down to 6.3 lbs. Erggg. Again, body fat % appears to be decreasing, so it’s possible it’s just water retention. It seems far too early to be hitting a plateau, so I’m not sure what the deal is. We’ll be indulging a bit this weekend, so I wouldn’t expect to see much of a decline until next week. I’ll just hope for better results next week and to get past this yo-yo quickly.

C & I were busy running errands and cleaning house today. House cleaning this morning followed by a trip to Costco, Kmart, Trader Joe’s filled our afternoon. When we got home, we spent some time out front checking out the flower garden (searching for bugs) and in the meantime, 12 flies made their way in to our house. TWELVE. Fortunately, they were all large and slow, so they were easy to smack with the fly swatter. Then, while moving a planter inside from the patio, it cracked and broke right in the sliding doorway… giving more flies ample opportunity to make their way inside the house. While we scooped and vacuumed dirt, more flies joined the party. They must have been attracted by the scent of the pot roast I had cooking the in the slow cooker. I took care of about 4 more, but two are still hanging out and being evasive. I trapped one in the guest bathroom and the other is cruising around the living room.

I’m tired this evening. Ben was travelling for work, so I had C duty all day and it’s tiresome by the end of the day. Having no reprieve makes for a very long day. I think it will be an early bedtime tonight.

Today was a veggie/protein day, so I added some zucchini and artichoke to my diet today. I tracked my calories for today and came up with approx 1,150 calories total (83 g carbs). I think carbs were probably a bit high, I had two jello sugar free puddings today and am realizing now that they’re a bit high on carbs (12 g carbs). I’ll probably eat those a bit more sparingly in the future. They are quite yummy, but not worth it if they’re causing my weight loss stall.

Recap of Day 12:

Breakfast: Oat bran pancakes, yogurt

Lunch: Deli meats (beef & ham), cream cheese, eggs, zucchini, artichoke

Snack: Almonds

Dinner: Beef pot roast, artichoke, jello puddings

Exercise: the exercise bike awaits…

I’ll be taking a hiatus from posting updates for the weekend, so I’ll see you all next week!

Down 0.4 lbs today, making up for the gain yesterday. Total loss is 6.7 lbs. My body fat percentage has been steadily decreasing, even on days when I see a gain, so that makes me feel better. I think the extra exercise and inconsistency in weigh in times is throwing the scale off. I was down one notch in my belt this morning, which made me very happy. :)

I had another Zumba class tonight. I’m really enjoying the weekly class I signed up for through our local community center. The instructor is fantastic and the class isn’t too large that you feel swallowed up by sweaty, uncoordinated people. The other class I attended at 24 Hour Fitness on Monday felt a bit like mass panic set to music. I know I can probably find another class at 24 hour that’s a better fit for me, it’s just a matter of trying some other ones out. The class on Monday was an evening class, so it was probably busier than some of the mid-day / mid-week classes are. It was still fun, but I felt lost and out of step the majority of the class. I’m guessing a smaller class with more individualized instructor attention will work better for me.

C and I visited some friends today and we learned how to make and can jam. We made strawberry jam today and it turned out quite yummy! I had a few small tastes here and there as we completed batches. It was hard to not eat more, but I wanted to stick to low carb for now. I grabbed and extra jar that we canned to save for later. I know it’s going to be delicious! I’m hoping to expand canning to other kinds of fruits so I can have delicious fruits on hand for C and know everything that went in to them. She loves canned peaches and pears, so I’m going to give those a shot and see how we do.

Recap of Day 11:

Breakfast: Oat bran pancakes, nonfat latte w/ nutmeg & cinnamon

Lunch: 1.5 sausages, cottage cheese

Dinner: A few bites of chicken breast

Snack: 1/4 cup nuts

Exercise: Zumba (1 hour)

I had to fast for some bloodwork this morning, so I didn’t get my normal “eat within 30 minutes of waking” routine. I grabbed some oat bran pancakes for after the bloodwork, but didn’t get to eat them until around 10am. I think it threw off my whole day, because I wasn’t hungry for most of the day and didn’t really eat much.

As I put this together, I tried to remember what I had for dinner tonight, only to realize that I didn’t actually eat anything substantial. I was running around trying to get C fed and pick up the house before friends came over (they were watching C for me during my Zumba class), and I grabbed a few bites of the chicken I fed C for dinner, but didn’t actually make anything for myself. I wasn’t feeling exceptionally hungry at that point, nor am I now (I’m usually never hungry after exercising). I had some nuts when I came home from working out, so perhaps that was enough. I guess I’ll let my body tell me when to eat and not force it.

I was up 2.4 lbs today – a result of overindulging at Sausagefest (our friend’s annual sausage tasting party) and a late weigh in this morning. The extra salt/fat from the sausage undoubtedly has me retaining water. The higher weight with a later weigh in is just a given for me – that’s why I always try to book doctor appointments first thing in the morning. :) Hopefully the extra calories from yesterday will help rev up my metabolism and mean more losses in the next few days.

Today marks the beginning of the “Cruise” phase for me. This means I add non-starchy veggies back in to my diet alternating days between protein only days and protein/veggie days. We have a good supply of asparagus, zucchini and artichokes on hand, as well as a variety of frozen veggies. I was hoping to start the day out with a spinach and cream cheese fritata, but my plans to prepare it last night were dashed by the evening being spent with a sick kid instead. Waking up this morning, it just seemed like too much work when I was hungry.

Review of Day 8:

Breakfast: Greek yogurt (Fage… yum!) with bee pollen and 1 1/2 Tbsp oat bran, two fried eggs and coffee with 1/4 c skim milk. I forgot to increase the oat bran to 2 Tbsp today (as the diet calls for). Oops.

Lunch: A few cubes of zucchini & some grilled chicken as a snack. Later, we tried the new turkey burgers protein style from carls jr. Although we ordered them without mayo, we didn’t expect the weird ketchup/pickle mixture they added instead. After scraping off the sauce and adding some spicy mustard, it tasted pretty good.

Dinner: Rotisserie chicken & broiled asparagus.

Exercise: on the exercise bike as I type!

Water: lots. and lots. and lots. I tried a new 0 calorie flavor enhancer called mia (?). I got the mango peach flavor. It’s yummy! Although I think I like plain water better.

C seems to be resting well tonight. Yay! We ran errands all day and must have worn her out. It’s been a busy day. I sorted through my closet and found a bag of goodwill clothes to donate. I added it to the pile in the garage, then we loaded everything in the car and set off to make a large donation to goodwill. My closet and garage are less cramped and we get a tax write off. What could be better?

Then we went in search of a card table for my sewing and crafts. After two failed attempts, we finally found it at, no that than, walmart. I also found a snow cone machine for C, only to discover it was missing pieces when we got home. Ugh. Return it tomorrow I guess.

After we got home from errands, I spent some time in the office sorting through the misc cords, wires, chargers, headphones and computer paraphernalia. I assembled another bag of donations and sorted everything else in to labeled gallon size baggies. At the end, the donation bag was fairly small, but we managed to gain quite a bit of space just by organizing it all. I’m always amazed at how much better everything fits together when it’s organized.

I’m sure the day could have been spent in a more indulgent manner, but getting things organized is one of my greatest pleasures. I love the feeling that things are all in place and knowing where to look to find something. I know this ideal is short lived – as C grows, she gets more curious and things disappear, but maybe I can instil some of those organization skills in her as well. Am I dreaming? Eh, maybe, but it’s mothers day, so I figure I can live the dream today of all days. :)

Just finished 30 minutes on the bike. They flew by while I blogged. Maybe that’s the key to getting exercising and blogging done – kill two birds with one stone!

Happy mothers day to all the moms out there, and especially to my own!

This post comes a day late. I wasn’t really intending to, but took yesterday off from my updates. C’s cold always seems to get worse at night (probably because she’s laying down and all the gunk builds up in her head). We put her down to bed and I ran to the store to pick up some supplies for low-carb desserts. I was feeling a sweet tooth (probably because of all the salty foods I had yesterday) and needed to satiate it. When I got home, I could hear her crying as I put away groceries. Ben’s attempts to sooth her weren’t working and she seemed pretty miserable.

Having already given her acetaminophen at bedtime, we tried everything we could think of to soothe her. She didn’t seem too congested, but she was frantic any time we tried to lay her back down to sleep. Since this wasn’t the norm for her, we gave in to her a little more than we normally do and held and rocked her. She continued to cry as we did this, so finally, we moved her in to our bed to lay down and watch her favorite video – Baby Signing Time. This calmed her down immediately, but she still wanted to cling to me and got upset if I wasn’t holding her. Again, not the norm for our “always on the go”, very independent baby. This went on until around 11:30 pm, when we could give her a second dose of pain reliever. She went down without a problem after that and slept until 9am this morning. It was nice having a full night of sleep after several nights of interrupted sleep, but the evening cuddling shot my plans for dessert, as well as my opportunity to get 20 minutes on the exercise bike in. All of this coupled with fatty, salty sausage-y goodness at a friend’s annual sausage tasting party meant I had another gain this morning – 2.4 lbs to be precise. My thought is that it can be attributed to the water retention from the extra salt, as well as the late weigh in this morning (9am versus 7:30am). But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll post more about it at the end of Day 8, since that’s where all of this really belongs.

Getting back to Day 7 – I was down 0.8 lbs in the morning! Woohoo! That made up for the gain of 0.4 the day before, plus some.

Breakfast: oat bran pancake (the last one from the large batch I made)

Lunch: ground turkey with bell peppers and onion (yum), cottage cheese

Dinner: SAUSAGE! These were not the low fat, low sodium variety, and, in all honesty, probably contained sugar (it’s incredible to me that most pre-packaged sausage does), so I was prepared for a gain from tonight. Throwing caution to the wind, I indulged and had 3 sausages last night, coupled with some spicy mustard and a bit of sauerkraut on the side.

Snack: Jello pudding cup (fat free, sugar free). Not really sure this is an “approved” Dukan food, but looking at the ingredients, all seemed ok, so I went with it.

Exercise: As mentioned above, my evening was spent attached to C, so no cardio exercise was had. However, I did spend about 40 minutes walking through Walmart while shopping, so I think that should could for something!

I feel like I may have eaten more than this yesterday, but I can’t seem to remember exactly what, so I’ll leave it at that for now. I’ve considered (and will most likely) journaling throughout the day as a draft so I can track this stuff more easily.

And now, onward to mother’s day… we’ll most likely get some outdoor activity in with C, although the weather isn’t cooperating with us as we’d like it to. Our sunny days have been covered with gray clouds and the threat of rain. Oh well, we’ll find something to do together regardless.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Moms out there – be it kids, step kids, “adopted” kids, kids to be or furry friends you call your own.

Well, after several days of losses, I was up 0.4 lbs this morning. Not a happy thing to see. It was bound to happen eventually, I just didn’t expect it during this initial “attack” phase. This is supposed to be the quick fat loss phase… the “shed everything you can” phase. There’s more about it on the official Dukan website.

I have a few theories on why this might have happened:

- Eating too little. I haven’t been very hungry since starting this diet. The protein has been really satisfying and it hasn’t taken much food to fill me up. It’s possible I’ve fallen below the minimum calories needed to keep my metabolism up. Short term, though, I wouldn’t expect to see such an impact on metabolism.

 

- Too much milk. One difference I’ve seen on this diet is that skim milk is allowed, so I’ve been drinking milk throughout the week. Mostly adding it to my coffee in small quantities, but on Wednesday, I had a full 12 oz, and on Thursday I had a latte. Perhaps the extra cumulative carbs from the milk have negated my low-carb diet. I avoided milk today to see if it makes a difference tomorrow.

 

- Fruit water. I make my own “fruit infusion” water at home – basically water with fruit thrown in. As it sits (in the fridge), the water takes on the flavor of the fruits. It’s quite refreshing! I had some strawberry water in the fridge that I’d avoided the first part of the week, and started drinking over the past few days. Again, I’ve avoided fruit water today. I’m guessing this wasn’t the issue, but who knows.

 

- Too much oat bran. Although the website says you can have 1.5 Tbsp of oat bran daily, the recipe for oat bran pancakes I have uses 2 Tbsp. So, I’ve been eating 2 Tbsp of oatbran daily. However, this has been the case since day 1, so I doubt this is the reason for a sudden increase in weight.

 

- Building muscle. This was actually Ben’s first thought. After that Zumba class and the additional exercise this week, he thought muscle might be a possible reason for the increase. I agree this could be a possibility, given how sore I was the next day after Zumba!

 

- No reason. The official website site says if you don’t see any further weight loss after Day 5, to move to the protein & veggies phase. I guess this just happens sometimes. So if I don’t have any more losses tomorrow morning, that’s what I’ll do. It’s really only one day less than I’d planned.

I probably should have picked one variable to change and see if it impacted things, but the changes were simple enough to make, so I just eliminated everything I thought might have been the issue.

One thing I did notice is that my body fat percentage (calculated electronically on my scale) dropped 1.7% since yesterday, indicating a 3 lb drop in body fat. This could make the building muscle explanation more plausible. I’ll admit, I’ve never fully believed my scale on that stuff, as I’m sure there’s a large margin for error with the method of calculation. I haven’t done measurements recently, so I’ll give those a shot tomorrow morning and see if I’m down in total inches.

Today was more of the same food wise, except for dinner. We had dinner at a friend’s house – he made some yummy pulled pork with peppers and onions. Dukan allows a small amount of veggies as seasoning, and this was the perfect amount.

Breakfast: Oat bran pancake & eggs (1 more yolk than I’m supposed to have)

Lunch: Rotisserie chicken, ground turkey with taco seasoning, yogurt cheese

Snack: Lowfat Keifer (8 oz)

Dinner: Pulled pork, nonfat cottage cheese

I haven’t gotten my 20 minutes of exercise in yet today – the exercise bike awaits. Not sure if the bed will trump it tonight, though. I’ve been pretty tired today. Again, C was up many times last night – she seems to be coming down with a cold and couldn’t breathe very well last night. She seemed pretty miserable. Normally I try to catch up on sleep while C is napping on days like this, but she had trouble napping today, too, so I didn’t get much time to catch up.

Did some laundry today and the dryer was not kind to my clothes… especially my jeans. I didn’t pay attention to the setting it was on, and it dried my clothes considerable more than I usually do. Again, not a great feeling to try to put my previously baggy (stretched out) jeans on and have them be quite snug. It was encouraging, however, that I was able to put them on, despite them being well shrunk! It only took about 30 minutes for them to stretch out to a more comfortable fit.

We have a sausage tasting party tomorrow – it’s not a part of the low fat regimen prescribed, but after a week of lean meats only, I figure one meal will either not impact much, or will rev my metabolism to help me burn more next week. I guess we’ll find out!

To recap the week thus far:

Five days in and I’m feeling great! Down 0.6 lbs this morning, 5.1 lbs since Sunday morning. It’s amazing how quickly you can fall in to a new routine with a little motivation. I’ve been getting a minimum of 20 min of exercise daily, and usually greatly exceeding that, sticking to protein, eating my daily oat bran allowance and getting lots of water in the past week. I’m hopeful that I’ll get down to a healthier weight and stay there. It’s all about changing habits and not slipping back in to old ones.

We got a little more creative with food today – started the day with an oat bran pancake, some coffee with skim milk, homemade yogurt (this batch turned out much better). We went to a playgroup this morning, stopped by the grocery store and C passed out on the way home. We had a late lunch when C woke up – rotisserie chicken and cottage cheese for me, frozen veggies, fruit and chicken for C. Dinner was ground turkey with taco seasoning (it was cinco de mayo, afterall) mixed with cottage cheese. Yummy and filling.

I got about 30 min of exercise in on our stationary bike tonight. I’m surprised at how sore I am still from zumba last night. It was a great work out! The yogurt I made didn’t come out quite as thick as I like, so I’m in the process of straining some tonight to make yogurt cheese, and I’ll strain some more tomorrow in hopes of getting something that more closely resembles greek yogurt.

One thing I’ve been surprised by is my lack of appetite. I’m actually struggling to remember to eat – an issue I’ve seldom had before (especially outside of busy season). All the water is helping to keep me full, too. It’s something I’ve known all along I should be doing, but it’s hard to force yourself without motivation to do it. I’m bad about remembering to drink water throughout the day, so I end up filling my water bottle and downing it right away, then refilling and forgetting about it for a few hours. Then repeat. It works for me.

C is having issues sleeping tonight – we think it’s teething pains. She usually sleeps through the night with little issue. Tonight she seems to be waking every hour. Aside from the fact that her cheeks are bright red and she has dragon breath tonight (which also coincides with her teething), we’re waiting on all of her molars to arrive still. They’ve been slow to get here. So, it’s more likely than not that teething is the culprit. We gave her some pain reliever a few hours ago, but it didn’t seem to help. We’ll switch over to ibuprofen next if she continues to have issues. That usually does the trick for her.

Looking forward to the weekend. This week has been busy!

Down 2.5 lbs this morning!

With the babysitting gig yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to go on my walk with C (the diet calls for at least 20 min of exercise a day), and even though I’d spent the day chasing after toddlers, bouncing a baby to sleep and climbing up and down stairs for an incredible number of diaper changes, I wanted to make sure I got my required exercise in, so I spent 25 min on the exercise bike last night before bed. I guess the extra effort made a good dent!

Today was another day with toddlers -  three to be exact. Once again, it was a FULL day. I took leftovers from yesterday with me today, and I realized mid way through the day that I probably should have restocked before leaving for the day. It got me through, but out was a bit boring and could have used more variety.

Breakfast was an oat bran pancake again. I modified the basic recipe, and was impressed with the results. I added vanilla extract and an egg yolk, and it rounded the recipe out really well. Nonfat yogurt for my morning snack, cottage cheese and grilled chicken for lunch, more yogurt for an afternoon snack, and more cottage cheese and grilled chicken for dinner. Like I said, today was a bit lacking in variety.

Tonight was my first session of zumba, and it was insane! An hour of fast paced dancing. I was exhausted, but invigorated, by the end. It was so much fun. I’m amazed that my abs are already a little sore from the work out. It didn’t even feel like we worked on abs! I’m excited to go again next week. I may even check out some of the zumba classes offered at 24 hour fitness so I can get more than one class in a week.

Attempt # 2 at yogurt tonight. I know where I went wrong before, first and foremost bring that I tried to accomplish it while watching C! I have not been mastering multi tasking lately. Tonight, I set timers at every step so I’d remember to check on things as they progressed. I gave myself a little bit too much time at both the heating and cooling phases, but luckily I checked early and was able to avert any crisis. I’m hoping for some yummy yogurt come morning.