Thanksgiving, Reimagined

I mentioned last Monday that I had gained 1.5 pounds. Not the ideal way to start Thanksgiving week, obviously. However, I still was determined that even though it was Thanksgiving, I was going to not just maintain but actually lose weight. So, before the holiday festivities began, I mentally created a plan to make it happen.

First off was to conquer my mother-in-law’s Thanksgiving dinner.  Now, turkey I could take or leave, even though that’s probably the healthiest part.  But my big downfall is any form of bread. That includes stuffing.  And rolls. I really, really, really like rolls.

But…I had a plan.

I sat down to the table, and I looked at what was in front of me. Then, as I put things on my plate, I put typed them into a note in my iPhone.

Later, I actually took the time to log it into my Weight Watchers eTools via my phone.  What I found was that as long as I was writing it down while I was looking at it, I did a good job with accurately guesstimating the measurements. I’ve discovered that when I try to figure it out afterwards, when I’ve already scarfed it all down, I tend to remember my portions as being smaller than they actually are. 😉

After I had typed it all up in my phone, only then did I eat, and I have to say it was really good. I think having written it down allowed me to enjoy it more.  I even had two half slices of the pies I had made. They were damn good. Everything was within my point range, although I will have to admit that it helped that I ran 3.1 miles earlier in the day.

The next day I got up and made cookies.  Remember those oatmeal cookies I had been talking about last week? Yes the same ones that had helped me gain 1.5 pounds. 😛

I can’t deny that I really loved those cookies, and I wanted them again. But this time, armed with the recipe, I was able to figure out exactly how many points they were. I had assumed last week that my Weight Watchers point tracker entry for “two small homemade oatmeal cookies” were correct at three points. It turns out those little buggers were four points per cookie!

Holy crap! That was a bit of shock…what I thought was three-and-half points turned out to be 12!  Lesson learned.  But on the other hand,  they were still damn good. 😉 I think next time, I’ll try using the yogurt butter instead of regular butter, and we’ll see how they taste. For sure they’ll be less points!

While I was making those cookies, I was also making another pie to take to my mother’s house.  Yep…I had to do Thanksgiving all over again on Friday.  Oh boy!  Once again, I wrote down what I ate before I ate it, and then I enjoyed my meal.  I also enjoyed two more half-slices of pie. 🙂

The next morning I got up at 5:40 AM.  It was really hard. My bed was so very warm, and it was 27° outside. But I got up, because I was planning to run with my friend Katie—six whole miles!  It was hard to convince myself to actually drive to the Metropark when I saw the snow flying in front of my headlights, but I did it, and I’m so glad I did.  A little after 7am, Katie and I set out for a 3 mile out and back run.

It was cold, especially when we got along the water, but it was fun to run with someone, and especially Katie, because we had plenty of things that we could talk about.  We talked about weight-loss, and weight maintenance, and just all kinds of things. Before I knew it 3 miles had gone by, and we were turning around.

I can’t deny that I was working really hard to keep up with Katie, although I suspect she was probably going slow for me. 😉 But at the same time, it felt good. I was getting pretty tired toward the end. She asked me not long before we finished, “How are you feeling?” and I gasped out, “Like I’m ready to be done!”  But then we were done, and when I looked down at my Garmin, we had run six whole miles!  Considering I’ve only run longer than that one time (7 miles), I was pretty darn happy.

When I looked at my pace, it felt like it was pretty fast, although it turns out it was actually just a tiny bit slower than my last 6 mile run. Which is kind of funny because there was a point at which Katie and I were running  by our cars, and she looked at mine and said, “Is your light supposed to be on?”  I realized I’d left my dome light on, so I stopped and turn it off and then we started again.  It turns out that that ten or twelve seconds was the difference I needed to set a new PR pace, lol! But whatever, I still ran 6 miles!!

After our run I went home and grab the kids, and went to my friend Renee’s house. Our boys are about the same age and it was a lot of fun for the two of us to chat about running and all kinds of other things, while our boys went crazy. (Because they’re boys.)  I brought the rest of the cookies, and the boys scarfed them up, so that worked out well. 😉

Later that night, we decorated the Christmas tree with my husband.  While we were decorating the tree, we had homemade (by my husband) chicken taquitos, which were delicious. And then, because I wanted to, I had two more half slices of pie. Yes if you’re keeping score at home, that would be a total of six half slices of pie in three days. 😉

On Sunday, after a hockey game, I made my favorite white chicken chili, and at the request of my son, I also made homemade bread.  Dammit.

Did I mention how much I love bread?  Look at all that glorious bread. But I really, really, really wanted to lose weight this week, so I just told myself I would have no more than one and a half slices of bread (that’s six points!). And as hard as it was, I only had one and a half slices. I would even say one in a third because my “half slice” was pretty small.

The next morning I got up and ran 3 miles on the treadmill before the kids it even got out of bed. I love that feeling of having gotten a run in before the rest of the house is awake.

Once I got the kids to school I said, okay it’s time to weigh myself. I stepped on the scale and this is what I saw…

Yay! I did it!! I not only managed to lose the pound and a half I gained last week, but also a little teeny tiny bit more than that.  I was so happy I even did a little dance!  It wasn’t easy, but at the same time it really wasn’t hard. I had a plan, which was to watch my portions, exercise a lot, and track everything. I followed the plan, and it all worked!

I mentioned last week that I was going to get an after-Thanksgiving picture, since I had my before picture from Thanksgiving 2011. Here is last year’s…

And here’s this year’s…

Once again I cut out my mother-in-law, lol, but I don’t know that she’d really want to be on my blog. At any rate, I was pretty happy with this picture. I can’t deny that it’s a really cool feeling to look at pictures of myself and feel thrilled and confident, as opposed to seeing all the things I wish I could change.

Thank you very much for reading and for joining me in my journey through Thanksgiving 2012!