Emily's Wedding

I wanted to post about Emily's wedding the other day but ran out of time Saturday and was too upset yesterday.  Today I have my game face back on and I am ready to kick it to the curb!  This week is a transition week in my weight lifting program and so it is mostly cardio.  I only have one weight training video I am doing this morning and I plan on getting as much cardio in this week as I can.  My mom has the day off of work today so I am planning on going over after lunch and we are going to play Zumba world party on the wii in the afternoon.  And now without further ado: Emily's wedding.

While Emily was busy making wedding plans and organizing the flowers, decorations, and times, I was busy working hard to fit into my dress.  I was super excited because I bought a size 10 dress!  Yea!  My smallest size to date.  In the morning I was really thinking that I was going to skip my morning workout since it is the hardest workout of the week: burn intervals, a combo weight lifting and cardio exercise.  But I powered through the hour and I am glad that I was able to finish.  I totally collapsed during the burpees though!  NOT my favorite exercise.  Here is my victory picture, can you tell I'm exhausted?!  No energy for fun poses ;-)

After exercising it was getting ready to go (the girls were flower girls so I had to get them all fixed up too).  The wedding was at the Temple and was at 1:00.  Not the best time for the kids since it is right through lunch but I just fed them snacks the whole time and they did fine.  It was great going to the Temple and letting the kids run around the fountain and smell the flowers.  Lily loved going to see the Temple and kept saying "Look it's an angel!"  I don't have the professional photos yet you you get the candid shots Matt took.
After the ceremony we took pictures outside and let the kids run around some more.

My dress fit almost perfectly!  (cleaned up pretty nice from the picture above haha).  I love the dresses for the girls.  Emily had everyone pick out their own dresses which was nice but also a little bit stressful trying to find green dresses after Christmas!  I wish I could post some more pictures of the family photos, but I don't have those yet so we will just have to skip on over to the reception.

There is Emily holding Chloe, and of course yours truly.  By the time the reception started at 6:30 the kids were rapidly deteriorating but we were able to keep them occupied for a while with the food and with dancing.  Lily doesn't like loud places and there were tons of people at the reception (as one would expect) and it was a little loud for her but I was proud of her for doing so well for so long.

 Chloe was great too.  She loves to bump heads with her Grandpa.  That is my father in law/ Emily's Dad and Chloe always has a smile for him.  Lily is a bit shy around Grandpa so he loves giving Chloe lots of attention. 

Here is a more formal picture of the three of us.  I think I was messing with my hair right before this was taken that is why my arm is up in a funky position.

All in all it was a great day, although exhausting for everyone.  We left the reception early, around 8:00 because the kids were spent.  Both of them fell asleep in the car within about five minutes!

As a last picture I thought it would be interesting to compare pictures of me at my sister's wedding last July to me at my sister in laws wedding last Saturday!  I wore a size 12 dress to my sister's wedding which was too small for me.  I really needed a size 14 since I didn't lose as much as I thought I could.  Bad Idea to buy a dress two-three sizes too small for me!

My hair is totally messed up from the wind in the picture on the right!  A little too wispy.  anyway, here is a full body shot:

You can read about my sister's wedding last July and see some more pictures HERE

152 and Angry

source

I had a really good week this week.  I exercised every day, played with the kids outside, and ate healthy food. I felt good and thought I was on track this week to hit my goals.  So why then did I weigh in at 152?!?  That is 5 pounds higher than last weeks weigh in.  FIVE POUNDS!  How did I gain five pounds last week?  I thought I was doing good by staying off the scale but apparently it did more damage than good.  The only day where I didn't stick to purely healthy choices was yesterday when my Sister-In-Law got married.  Even then I didn't pig out!  I ate moderately and I had one piece of cake which I shared with Chloe.  Nothing that would make me gain five pounds!

I am so angry and so upset.  I figured that with yesterday not being as good as the rest of the week I would probably see 147 again at the worst because I really thought I was on track to reach 145 this week.  This is the last week of phase 2 for my weight lifting program.  Phase three starts one week from tomorrow and when that is done I can't wait do switch back to cardio being my dominant exercise instead of weight lifting.  This is just killing me.

I am going to start tracking again right away.  I am thinking of just throwing out this weigh in, because there is no way that I really gained five pounds last week.  I should have weighed myself Saturday morning but I wanted to be good and make it the whole week without weighing myself.  Maybe I will weigh myself on Tuesday and take that weigh in as my official weigh in.  I just have to not think about it until then, a virtually impossible task.  Might as well ask me to not breathe for two days.

Yesterday I felt thin, beautiful, happy, energetic, and excited.  Today I feel fat, depressed, and lethargic. I feel like I will never reach my goal and like I have been stuck around 150 for way too long.  Nearly three months after first hitting 150, here I still am.

Creamy Orzo with Butternut Squash, vegetables and "fries"

This is a dish that I have come to like the more I make it.  It is pretty simple and filling especially if you like butternut squash.  And if you don't, you just might after trying this recipe!  You can buy butternut squash fresh during the winter months when it is in season.  The recipe only calls for two cups of squash so I always make fries out of the rest of my squash.  It is a very healthy variation on the french fry.  Because it is squash and not potatoes, it doesn't get crunchy  like a potato would.  It gets soft, but the outside is similar in texture to an oven baked french fry.  I like them, and I think you will too (especially if you already like butternut squash!)  If you can't get fresh squash or want to save the time it would take to cut up the squash you can get pre-cut squash in the freezer section.   This is also a Weight Watchers recipe that I discovered while I subscribed to weight watchers.

Creamy Orzo with Butternut Squash
Yields about 3/4 cup per serving.  
Serves 4
Points Plus per serving: 7

Ingredients

	1 spray(s) cooking spray
	2 cup(s) uncooked butternut squash, cut into small cubes
	1/2 tsp olive oil
	1/8 tsp table salt, or to taste
	1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter
	1 cup(s) uncooked orzo
	1 1/2 cup(s) water
	1 cup(s) canned chicken broth
	1 tsp thyme, or 8 fresh whole sprigs (sprigs preferred)- you can substitute in sage leaves if you prefer
	2 Tbsp fat-free half-and-half
	1/3 cup(s) grated Parmesan cheese
	1/8 tsp table salt, or to taste
	1/8 tsp black pepper, freshly ground, or to taste    Directions Preheat oven to 425°F. Coat a small rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray. Peel and dice up butternut squash.  In a medium bowl, toss squash with oil and salt; spread in a single layer on prepared baking sheet, leaving space between squash cubes. Roast, stirring halfway through, until squash is tender and lightly browned, about 20 to 25 minutes. Meanwhile, melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat; add orzo. Stir constantly until orzo begins to smell toasty, about 3 minutes. Add water, broth and thyme sprigs; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until liquid is nearly absorbed, about 15 minutes.   I did not use thyme sprigs as you can see: no sprigs Remove thyme sprigs; stir in half-and-half, cheese and roasted squash. Season well with salt and pepper; serve.   Butternut Squash Fries Cut the remainder of you squash into "fry shapes".  Depending on how many fries you have, add 1-2 tsp olive oil.  Sprinkle generously with salt.  Bake in oven at 425 deg for about 25-35 minutes or until browned and soft.  ( I usually bake my fries at the same time as my squash for the recipe is roasting) Vegetables Add any of your favorite vegetables to complete this meal.  In the photo above I just heated up some frozen vegetables with olive oil and sprinkled some of my favorite seasoning on it.

Mid-Week

Three days down, four to go.  I am happy to say that I have avoided the scale for three whole days!  I do still wonder what my weight is, and I have to resist the temptation to step on the scale before I get into the shower, but I think that this is better.  I shouldn't weigh myself every day because this week my mood has not been dependent on what the scale shows me in the morning.  I have to confess that I have not been tracking very well.  I have been eating healthy and I have been measuring my food so that is the good news.  I still measure my oatmeal for breakfast, I measure 1 tbsp of peanut butter to eat with my apple in the afternoon, I count how many slices of meat I am putting on my sandwiches.  So I don't think that I am really going over my calorie limit, but I haven't forgotten about tracking and I do plan to be better about tracking in the future, I just seem to go through phases.  All last year was the same way.  I would have a month or so where I tracked everything I ate, then I would have a month where I tracked half the things I ate and then eventually I wouldn't track anything for a while, and then I would get back to tracking.  I just have to ride this phase out and I will eventually get really into tracking again.  Instead of beating myself up about not being as consistent with my tracking, I am focusing on eating healthy food and making sure that I don't over eat.  I am eating one portion size for dinner, I am still getting my regular snacks and I have not been eating any desserts or candy.  I haven't had very much in the way of junk food either.  The only junk food I have in the house that I eat regularly at the moment is BBQ chips, and I usually only eat those for lunch and not even every day.  For instance, I have only eaten chips with my lunch today, and the other days I had grapes and veggies with hummus!  On that note, one thing I should probably be measuring but am not is the amount of hummus that I eat with my vegetables.  That is really the only thing I have been splurging on lately, and at least it is a healthy thing to splurge on!  Focusing on choosing the healthy food is great because it gives me something to focus on and it makes me feel good about myself that I am making healthy choices and not going for the junk food.  For instance, I have been snacking on grapes, strawberries, sugar snap peas, Greek yogurt, apples, carrots, hummus, and string cheese instead of chips, crackers, gold fish, those muffins Matt made me buy from Costco, chocolate chips, and other various things that still linger around the house.

On a completely different note, I got my eyebrows waxed today for Emily's wedding on Saturday.  It was long overdue and I love the way they turned out.

Bushy eyebrows no more! 

Today was my rest day and so I made the most of it by going to a meetup and it was lots of fun!  Today is the first really nice day in quite some time and it was great to go outside and let the kids play outside and run around and hang out with other kids.  It was also nice to see some of my friends from the group I haven't seen in a while.  The two people I usually hang out with canceled due to sick kids so I was forced to meet new people and catch up with some of the others I haven't seen in a long time.  It was good for me, I don't always do well making new friends since after the basic introductions conversation tends to trickle out.  I guess I just really click with some people and with others I don't.  I think that is normal though.  And I like familiarity, so I like to hang out with people I know. 

We spent most of the afternoon playing around outside since it is supposed to get cold again tomorrow.  I always try to be more active on my rest days since I am not exercising.