Time To Change Things Up…Again

      2 Comments on Time To Change Things Up…Again

OK, time to get back to regular posting. Or at least, somewhat regular!

Somebody in our house had a big birthday this past weekend, and it wasn’t me.
Jamie turned 16 on Sunday. Forgive me while I lament about my baby growing up way too fast…

Now he’s officially a driver, and thanks to my father-in-law, he even has a set of wheels.

It was a pretty hard secret to keep, but he didn’t know that he was getting vehicle until Sunday, when my father-in-law presented him with a birthday card that included the title to his father’s old car. I had Jamie convinced that he was getting nothing, and he even got to the point where he was asking about a summer job so that he could save up to buy a car. I probably should’ve let him do that instead, but my father-in-law really wanted to give him this vehicle. My husband’s grandfather passed away almost 3 years ago, and I know it makes my father-in-law very happy that Jamie is driving the car.  (And by the way, if you have an Apple product, you might notice that Jamie has the “emoji” car that comes up when you type the word “car” when writing a text. 😛  That cracked me up when my friend pointed it out to me.)

 

After we presented him with the car, I asked Jamie where he wanted to go for his birthday dinner. To my surprise, he decided he wanted to go all the way up to Mexicantown in Detroit for authentic Mexican food. (I honestly don’t know if it’s truly authentic or not. It’s what we have here in Detroit, and I know I like it.) Jamie was in a good mood—of course— and he even willingly posed and smiled for a few pictures.

Some nice young woman sitting on the other side of the room from us actually took that group picture for us when she saw me trying to do a selfie with my impossibly-short arms. Wasn’t that nice?

Now that hockey season is over for both kids, lacrosse season has begun. As mentioned in previous posts, I am managing a brand new lacrosse team. The kids are having a lot of fun, although I’m a bit nervous, because my kid has decided to be goalie. 😮 Dude, getting hit with one of those balls hurts! Jamie had his first high school game of the season earlier this week, and the boys played very well and pulled out a win against a team that had beat them last year. That actually ties them with all the wins they had last season, ha ha! 😉

JJ is now in the middle of tryouts for spring hockey, and with that always comes some form of drama. I’ve had this blog for going on six years now, and it has definitely seen its share of hockey drama. Thankfully, I am much wiser now than I was when Jamie was going through his early hockey stages. Now I can just kind of shrug it off and say, “Whatever happens. He’ll play somewhere, nd it will be fine.” And it will!

So that’s the update on my kids and their lives. I also have some other good news to report: the auction, which I had mentioned in my last post had been canceled at the last minute by some rather irresponsible (in my opinion) folks, has now been rescheduled! Of course, that means I’ll be busy again for the next month and a half, but my role is much less now, because we aren’t serving dinner (since we already paid for all the food once, but still had to refund the ticket money). Most of my work now will be centered around registering and checking people out the night of the auction, and I can handle that.

Our historical society is coming along nicely. We are working on all the red tape to create a non-profit organization, but at the same time, we’re working on scheduling our first true “social“ event. It’s going to be so much fun! I’m really looking forward to that this summer.

With all that said, now is a good time to talk about my health and eating habits. As I mentioned when I posted last Saturday, they haven’t been stellar, but I’ve been taking steps to try to make positive changes. I mentioned that I was trying to cut down on my carbs, and I had reduced my sugar intake. Well, a little bit. I still have my Hershey’s kisses every day at lunch. 😉

When I weighed myself Monday morning, I was less than excited with the results.

A 2-pound gain after a night of Mexican food was probably to be expected, but it’s still frustrating. For the last five years, January, February and March have consistently been the time of the year when I’ve lost weight. Clearly, it’s not happening for me this year. On the other hand, I believe this is the first time in five years that I haven’t been training for a big race in the spring. In 2013, I trained for my first half, in 2014 and 2015, I was training for a marathon.  I skipped 2016, but in 2017, I was training for what to date is my best half marathon finish. I have to think that training helps me lose that weight in the winter, so there’s at least a partial explanation.

I don’t think it all has to do with my lack of training, though. While I may not be running longer distances regularly, I am still running five days a week. I do my long runs with my girlfriends every Saturday, and I think the shortest we’ve run since January is 6 miles. Last Saturday we ran nine, and tomorrow I’ll probably run 10 with my friend Jennifer, who is training for a half in May. (It’s funny to think I’m going to go out and run 10 miles on a Saturday for pretty much no reason at all.)

After I sat down and took a look at my weight chart, I tried to determine what else might be causing my inability to lose my summer wait. One of the things that I realized is that, since December, I’ve been following the new weight watchers plan. This plan was pretty significant change in that a lot of foods that had previously been counted for points were now “free.“ For example, chicken breast, corn, and beans we’re all zero point foods now. And by the way those are three foods that I love and can eat a lot of.

It seemed so freeing to suddenly not have to worry about how much chicken or beans or corn I was eating. Oh, and eggs! Eggs became free, too! On the weekends, or whenever I was home in the morning, I would have three scrambled eggs with my coffee, along with a little fat free salsa and a couple tablespoons of fat free cheddar cheese. All that together was zero points!  Sometimes I would add my usual English muffin, or sometimes just half the English muffin, but I definitely began eating eggs pretty regularly.

And chicken breast…oh my gosh, the chicken breast! I just can’t even explain how much I love chicken breast. Here’s a good example: last Saturday night, we went with our church to a Toledo Walleye hockey game.

Before the game, we had a meal that was catered for our group. It was potato salad, pulled pork and grilled chicken sandwiches, along with chips and various toppings for the sandwiches. I was disappointed that there wasn’t a salad, but then I realize that I had the ability to make my own:

That’s a couple of grilled chicken breasts, with Romaine lettuce leaves, onions, tomato, and a slice of  provolone cheese, which were the toppings for the chicken sandwiches. I didn’t have any salad dressing, but I managed to make it work. And it was pretty good! So good, in fact, that I had seconds. For those keeping score at home, that meant I ate FOUR chicken breasts in one meal. I realize that chicken breast is all protein and pretty good for you, but as I look back on it, four was probably too many.

After looking back on what I’ve been doing for the last three months, I have come to the determination that the new Weight Watchers program is not working for me. I’m not saying that it doesn’t work for other people, but I am saying that I probably should not be trusted with any “free“ foods that aren’t carrots and cucumbers. Definitely not chicken breast, eggs, corn, and beans. 😮

Since I don’t have the ability to go back to the “old” way, are at least, not easily, I decided that I was going to take a break from Weight Watchers for a little while, and go back to calorie counting. I actually had a long stint calorie counting back in 2015-2016, and it worked pretty well for me for quite a while. I’ve been on maintenance for almost 6 years now, and I’m starting to come to the realization that you simply have to make changes in your life every so often, because your body gets used to things, and, at least in my experience, we tend to get lazy. I know all the cheats in Weight Watchers, let me tell you. And that’s probably not a good thing.

I started calorie counting on Monday, and I’ve been duel tracking, just to be able to compare. As I expected, the number of weight watchers points I’ve been eating isn’t nearly as many as I am allowed, when I keep within my allotted calories per day.  I’ll report more fully on it next week, after I’ve had a full week on calorie-counting.

That’s enough for now.  Thanks for reading!

2 thoughts on “Time To Change Things Up…Again

  1. Cindy R

    Happy Birthday Jamie1 16 is a great age, enjoy every day of this year!

    I’m not a huge fan of the freestyle program. It is to easy to add food here and there and justify it because it’s free points. I wish Weight Watchers had left the prior program as an option for those who were successful on it. I was on such a good roll and after January, 2018, I have been backsliding. Not good!

    Reply
  2. Meg B

    Happy birthday, Jamie!!! Wow, a 16 year old?!?!
    Too bad about the new WW plan. Sorry it didn’t work out for you. Hopefully you’ll figure out what works and feels right for you and get back on track. (Even if you are fabulous no matter what the scale says)

    Reply

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