Nothing good ever happens at a Chinese buffet.

Ugh. I hate these posts. I'm sure you hate reading these posts, but I have to get it out there. Feel free to skip it all together.

This weekend I logged into sparkpeople on my iphone and pressed the weight tab. Why did I do this??!?! What did I see? The weight entry from July 1....which happened to be the exact weight I saw on the scale on Saturday morning. A whole month. I've wasted a whole month by slacking off. Now, I haven't been eating terribly, but I haven't been eating great. I've also been a complete and total slug. One more month has passed that I'll never get back.

I wish this yucky post ended there, but it doesn't. Seeing that I "lost" a whole month on this journey really sent me into a tailspin. A tailspin right into bad choices. I even let myself get talked into a Chinese buffet last night! Nothing good ever happens at a Chinese buffet. I couldn't even tell you what I ate, not that you'd want to hear it anyway. For the last two days, I haven't even logged my food, something I've done consistently from February 2, the day I "restarted." I couldn't even weigh today because I just knew that the weight would be even higher. To make matters worse, I keep catching myself saying , hey, you're going on vacation anyway, just "restart" when you get back. If I do that, though, I'll gain tons of weight while we're gone and be even more discouraged when we return. So, that can't be an option.

So, that's out there....

In other news, we had an awesome weekend otherwise. Swimming, a movie with the kids, and a great dinner out with friends.

Epic #FAIL!

So, as you can probably tell, the whole "take picture of what you eat" thing was an epic fail. It worked for a day, but somehow I keep forgetting to take pictures. The good news is, I've been making much better choices these days. So, I'm going to report Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday Eatz:

Monday:

Breakfast: Banana and fiber one bar
Lunch: Kashi frozen meal (lemongrass coconut chicken), fresh pineapple and strawberries
Dinner: Greek pita with homemade baked falafel, tzatiki sauce, onions and peppers, spinach, and tomato and white acre peas
Snacks: coffee w/ creamer, dried fruit crisps, peach, mini size three musketeers, 100 calorie almond pack

**For those of you who aren't familiar with Pam's blog From Apples to Zucchini, check it out. Her recipes are AWESOME! WhenI made her baked falafel patty, my husband came in and said, "Courtney, I hate to tell you this, but someone threw up in the oven." I was pretty sure, then, that we were not going to have a successful dinner. He really prefers meat anyway, so I was unsure he'd like it to begin with, then, with that comment, I knew we were done for. Surprisingly, he LOVED them :) Yay, Pam!

Calorie total: 1397

Tuesday:

Breakfast: fresh peach, coffee w/ creamer, fiber one bar
Lunch: Turkey sandwich from Jimmy John's w/ cukes, hot peppers, mayo, sprouts, lettuce
Dinner: Broccoli slaw w/ light italian dressing and parmesean cheese, morningstar farm chick'n patty on a sandwich thin w/ ketchup, some pizza crust (oops)
Snacks: doughnut (office party, shouldn't have had it), dried fruit crisps, 100 calorie almond pack

Calories: 1639

Wednesday:

Breakfast: **this was at an office party...another one** fresh watermelon and berries, 1T hashbrown casserole, small serving of french toast casserole
Lunch: Salad w/ shrimp, roasted vegetables, balsamic dressing, pine nuts
Dinner: Ham and potato bake, broccoli slaw w/ light zesty italian dressing
Snack: Special K crackers w/ cheese

Total calories: 1491

So, all in all, not bad. Some bad choices, but I was within my calorie limit every day, so that's good. The frustrating thing? No weight loss this week. Zero. Nada. Nothing. I'm trying so hard not to get discouraged, but it's not working. Sorry for the epic fail on the picture taking :(

Sunday's Eatz!

Here goes the experiment of photographing what I eat every day. Already there were some slip ups, but that's ok :) I'm getting there. Sorry about the picture quality. This was with my phone camera. I need go get a better one.

For breakfast, I had one scrambled egg on a multi-grain sandwich thin with a slice of cheddar and 1T of brummel and brown.

Lunch was a sandwich thin with one morningstar farm Chik'n patty, 1T shredded cheese, 1T ketchup, corn salsa, and fresh pineapple.

Later, the boys and I made cookies. I did not eat the whole plate :) I did, however, eat one and some batter, so I counted two.

Dinner was SO yummy. I made greek chicken pitas with homemade tzatziki sauce, peppers and onions, spinach, and tomato. The pita was a joseph's pita, 60 cals, lots of fiber. It's yummy! I'm an addict! On the side, I had fresh pineapple and strawberries.

Calories for the day totaled 1490. Not pictured is a cup of coffee with half and half, a few of my kids' fries from McNasty, and a jello mousse cup. All were accounted for in the final total :)

Struggling

It's probably obvious from the lack of posts lately, but I'm struggling. For the first time in many weeks I had an all out binge. Stress was definitely the trigger. I'm working hard on getting it back together and I PROMISE to blog more often. It seems that I do so much better when I blog regularly.

I'm also seriously considering taking pictures of everything I eat for awhile. Maybe if I have to show you what i'm eating, I'll think about it before I chew it. Think it'll work?

How are all of YOU doing?

You know that's not normal, right?

First off, HI!!! *waving* I've not dropped off the face of the Earth, I've just been bogged down with..well..life, I guess. Work has been much more hectic than normal and my family has been on the go for the past few weeks. Thank you to everyone who wrote an email or left a comment wondering where I'd gone. You guys are awesome and make a girl feel good :) I apologize for being a bad blogging buddy. I've been reading all your blogs and keeping up, but not commenting much. This is my promise to do better!

Surprisingly enough, I haven't been too bad, eating wise, during my short hiatus. Fourth of July was rough, we had a cookout with some friends and I know that I went over my calorie limit. It's the FIRST day since February 2, though, that I didn't track my calories. I'm kicking myself for that. Other than the cookout, though, I've done pretty well. I think my fluid balance is FINALLY evened out after coming off that medicine.

A have an old "new" friend at work. She and I have always been pleasant, but lately we have gotten closer. We've gone to lunch several times and tend to chat a few times a day. One day last week she and I were having a conversation at work about weight loss. We are both plus sized women and, I think that gives me a little more freedom to discuss things with her in the weight/food arena. Is that odd? At any rate, I was telling her about the frustration of seeing a "gain" after coming off of a diuretic and how it was messing with my mind. She asked me how many times a day I weighed and was FLOORED when I replied that it was at least three. She doesn't own a scale. It really shocked her when I told her that, sometimes, if I don't like what I see on the scale at night, I'll try not to eat dinner or at least eat lighter so it will be a better number in the morning. That's when she said it. The question that really hit home with me.

"You know that's not normal, right?"

Well...yes, I guess intellectually, I *do* know that's not normal. The problem is, it's become *my* normal, and it's not healthy. Not at all. It's become so routine to me, though, that I can't imagine it any other way. This is why in Deb's Freedom Challenge, one of my goals is to weigh less often. I can't say I won't weigh every day, but hopefully not multiple times. I'm doing ok with this goal.

Another conversation that hit me hard recently was with my brother. He was in town for a short visit and we went to lunch together before he caught his plane back home. We were talking weight loss and such. He and I have never really discussed it much until recently. He works out all the time, is in the military, and has always been in pretty good shape. He's in medical school now and so we've been discussing healthy habits more often. I can't for the life of me remember what prompted him to say it, but he said, "I think you have a mild eating disorder." My initial gut reaction was denial, but about thirty seconds later, I thought...well, yeah, obviously!

I share these conversations with you because they are all part of my journey to get healthy, both physically and emotionally. "Knowing is half the battle," as GI Joe says. So, now I need to figure out what to do with this information about myself!

So, do any of you have any quirky weight loss habits?