Why do I end up tempting myself?

Last night I made a sugar free Texas sheet cake, but it was after 8pm. It took all of my effort to not lick my fingers and to not take a taste of it. Tonight there is a literacy night as Isabelle's school and we preordered Chick-fil-a, before we started this competition. Now I just get to watch my family eat it, unless I want to loose a couple of points for eating it. Why do I do this to myself?

Day One Down

Since being in my last competition, I have become slack again as far as eating sweets. Last month was a bit rough with not being able to work out either. Today I have turned a new page as far as competing again and cutting back sweets and working out as I like to. I have missed working out and enjoy the warmer weather, it lets me do more outside comfortably. While I was grocery shopping today the chocolate bars were on sale and I almost bought some, momentarily forgetting I am not eating them right now. Last time I lost a point due to eating a lifesavers and I don't want a repeat this time. I also almost ate a chocolate chip or two that was in my kitchen cupboard. This will take a little getting used to again, but I know I can do it. I look forward to it. I hope the rest of the group does as well. I wish you all success...but just not quite as much as me ;)

Helpful serving information

Fruits
•one banana
•six strawberries
•two plums
•fifteen grapes
•one apple
•one peach
•one half cup of orange or other fruit juice

Vegetables
•five broccoli florets
•ten baby carrots
•one roma tomato
•3/4 cup tomato juice
•half of a baked sweet potato
•one ear of corn
•four slices of an onion

New Rules

Every 20 minutes exercise= 1 point (Can get as many points as you can on this one)

Every 2 servings of fruits and veggies (1/2 C is a serving, except lettuce is 1 C) = 1 point (Can get as many points as you can eat on this one, and if you have questions about your serving size, google it)

1 point for 10 minutes of scripture study

1 point for reading a conference talk

1 point for drinking 64 oz of water per day

1 point for not eating after 8pm

1 point for taking a multi-vitamin

2 points for every pound you loose

Take away a point for every serving of candy and desserts that you eat, unless they are sugar free or made with a sugar substitute

Take away a point for every 8 oz of soda that you drink

Take away a point for every serving of fast food that you eat (i.e. McDonalds, Wendi’s, Burger King…)



To join the competition, each competitor must put in $2 for the 4 week session prize during the 1st week. If you don’t, you will be dropped from the competition for that 4 week session. If you choose to drop out of the competition, you forfeit your money. You may compete as an individual or as a team. If you compete as a team, you must indicate that by the 1st day. If a team wins, the prize money will be split between the two of them.

Round two

There are a few of us that have begun another round of competition. This one goes in four week intervals and has a few different rules. We have different ways to get more points. I am excited to be doing this again. I hope it is awesome!!!!

And the winners are...

Seriously, who are they?

It's the last day and I got my prize!

I went to ladies night at Deseret Book and won a 2 lb. box of See's Chocolates! It couldn't have been better timing. It'll be great to celebrate the end of our 3 months of suffering with that. Don't worry, I won't eat it all in one sitting. I don't want to gain all the weight back that I worked so hard to loose. Good luck on the weigh in, everyone. Think "light" thoughts when you step onto your scale.

How many more days?

Seriously, why is the last week harder than the first week? I've lost a lot of motivation, I'm staying strong, though. Well....mostly. Maybe I'm making it harder on myself by making sugar cookies and not eating them...or going out to lunch with friends and they get this awesome dessert for their birthdays (Happy Birthday Amy and Nicole) and I just watch them eat it...or I go to Maddox and eat 3 of their yummy rolls when I shouldn't have had any. I even cheated and got my hair cut to help get rid of another pound. That's what it has come down to.
By the way, for those of us that are LDS and choose to fast, did you realize that our first day of freedom is fast Sunday? I can't handle it! This definitely has been harder for me, or maybe I just can't remember the beginning.
Wait, I just thought of something...They change fast Sunday to the next week because of conference. Yay! That makes it a little easier. I love it when things just come into your head like that.
Well, I hope everyone else is doing better than me and staying strong. Keep it up!

Final day of the Biggest Loser Competition....

is APRIL 3rd, 2010!!!

Easter day will be free of any sugarfree rules or guilty consciences (when you just can't say no to that Cadbury bunny or those innocent lil' jelly beans).

So make this final week the best one yet, and I hope all the BL rules won't go completely to the wayside once the competition is over. *Sigh.

Final official weigh in is on April 3rd or morning of the April 4th, so keep that blood pumping until then. Happy Easter!

ONE WEEK!!!!

That is all that is left. ONE WEEK, seven days, 21 more meals, however many more hours since I don't really know what time it ends in one week. BUT STILL not that long left. Hang on, do all your Wii fit plus workouts you can!! Go all out and make the most of it. Good luck!!

Sweets just aren't as sweet

Since I have been out I have eaten sweets again. I have to be honest, there are VERY few things that taste as good as I remember them tasting. Hot chocolate is about it. So when you get down and think mmm, I miss those sweet trashy foods, just remember it really isn't worth it and they won't be as good as you think they are. Good luck, you are almost done.

Sweet Points

So I finally gave in last night but it was for a good cause. Me and my wife celebrated out 10th anniversary last night. We went to a classy restaurant that we went to when we were first dating, a restaurant that was at the top of the RIO hotel in Las Vegas. I didn't order a dessert but the waiter brought out a plate with a trio of different desserts, so I couldn't turn down the nice gesture. One of the desserts did have fresh fruit on top, so I did get some of my fruit in eating it. We did get plenty of walking in after words to burn some of the calories off.

2 and a half weeks left and I'm out

This is really disappointing to tell you all but I am having to withdraw from the competition. A little over a week ago we found out that I had an ectopic pregnancy and it is doing a number on me. While I thought I would just be out for a week it has now been one and a half weeks and no sign of improvement. I can't exercise, nor can I take any vitamins, under doctor's orders. I have had a hard time eating anything let alone all of my fruits and veggies and I forget to drink all my water. Most of my days are spent lounging since it hurts to do much of anything other then sleep. Which even at times that has been hard because the pain wakes me up at night. SO, I am releasing myself from the stress of not getting my points and I am stopping. While I have a legitimate reason, I still feel that I am quitting. This has been a rough time and while Jenny has been very supportive I feel that I am letting her down. I'm sorry Jenny. I wish the rest of you all good luck and I will keep looking in on everyone via the blog. Keep up the good work.

not enough time

well as everyone is talking about this competition winding down I have a slight fear that I am not going to meet my weight loss goal. I have decided that its not the end of the world though because more so than losing weight I needed a jump start on living "healthier" there have been so many bad habits I have picked up over the last few years that have caused me to gain weight. It has been nice to see the rules from the point system show me what I was doing wrong. I think these rules will be in place for me long past the end of this competition. So thank you all for motivating me to actually do this and see the positive change it could make in my lifestyle.


p.s. go wii fit plus

Chuck-O-Rama

Seriously, who named this restaurant?! We went to eat there for dinner with my husband's family tonight. It was rough, with every turn there were tempting foods that beckoned to me to come and partake. I walked by fountains that ran freely of highly carbonated beverages. Ah it was rough, but I stayed strong, even while getting ice cream for my children and cinnamon pull-a-parts. I hope I don't have any more family functions to attend there until after this is over.

I found my tape measure!!!

I have been working on improving my weight for over a year now. Last year I was able to lose a little more than 30 pounds. I joined this competition to help me jump start this year for the rest of the weight I want to get rid of. While I didn't know where my tape measure was in Jan I did find it in Feb. I was able to compare my stats from Dec of 08, so at the time it was 13 months from the previous measure and from Dec to Feb I lost over 17 inches. I measured myself again this morning. I have lost an additional 5.25 inches, most of which is in my waist. The best thing about this for ME is that I am losing the majority of my inches right where I want to drop them. This is a first for me. My waist is usually one of the last places to release the weight. I am also toning it too. I was glad to find that tape measure so I could see just how much I have improved. I wish I had found it in Jan so I would know total results during our little competition. I look forward to taking my measurements again next month.
While I am the one sweating away the pounds and cutting out junk that isn't good for me, I want to thank Wendi for putting this together to help me get over my slump from the end of last year. I also want to thank Jenny for helping me stay strong!! Thanks ladies, I appreciate it!!!

Pleasantly Surprised

When Wendi asked if I wanted to do this, I knew it was something I should do but didn't think I could do it well. My husband didn't think I could do it well either and wouldn't even agree to be my partner. Yet, I've shocked us both and have been doing really well with the points and with loosing weight. I'm excited to brag about having to poke two new holes into my belt to make it tighter and for loosing weight. I've never lost weight before on purpose. It's been great, even though there's been a lot of suffering. Thanks Wendi and thanks to everyone else for competition and motivation. And the biggest thanks goes to my partner Nicole for her support and motivation and just willing to be my partner.

FIVE WEEKS

Last week was so slow!! I hope this week is better. I think part of it was that the workout program that I am doing had last week as a "rest week" while I still worked out for at least 40 minutes. I usually only did one work out every day. I am looking forward to being able to double up again this week on my workouts. It was hard this weekend too. We went up to my in-laws for part of the weekend. That house is always full of goodies and this weekend was no exception. There were chocolate Easter candy eggs, jelly beans, fresh chocolate chip cookies, soft and gooey, hot tamales, Twizzlers, soda and cheese cake and that is just part of the stuff that was in every nook and cranny of the kitchen and pantry. I am happy to say that I was strong. I didn't break, NOT EVEN ONCE!! Though I did think I was going to have a nervous break down part of the time that we were there. I usually hate leaving but I was glad to go when we did. Though there are still candy bars and other goodies here at the house, most of those are from birthday party treat bags and Valentines Day, it isn't so hard to resist the few things here at home. I still struggle with the habit of just tossing something in my mouth because it is there. Anyway, here is one more blasted week down and 5 more to go. Good luck, I know I need it too.

this week

While I said in a previous post that 6 weeks passes by fairly fast, this week has been tortuously slow. I felt as if it were Friday on Monday. It still keeps dragging on and on. I keep feeling like I am forgetting something this week and I have no idea what it is. I hope this isn't how March goes by, because if it is I will be very disappointed.

Sweet alternative

Remember me-- the confesses sugarholic. Well despite having baked 6 cakes, a batch of cookies, a pan of brownies, and rice crispy treats over the past 6.5 weeks I'd like to report I still have 100% of my sweets points. From the chat it seems like most people are doing really well with this. Way to go! I've found it way easier to just cut sugar out completely than to cheat every now and then. How about everyone else?

A friend of mine happen to go off sugar about the same time. On Saturday she came over for dinner and brought a delicious completely sugar free pie (only a little stevia to sweeten the whipped cream -- I didn't say it was low fat). The pie got me thinking about other things I could make with a sugar substitute. The thing is I'm a little unclear on what is an approved sweetener and what is a no no. I think back to the intense banter at the beginning of this thing and recall something about no sweets with processed sugar. What is processed sugar? Can we have raw sugar? What are sweeteners that don't fall in this category?

Let's just get this out in the open, is Splenda/sucralose okay? I was under the impression that anything ending in ose is a sugar but lots of things that are "sugar free" or have "no sugar added" have Splenda. I haven't been eating it but would have no problem diving back in if it is actually on the approved list. There are some sugar free popsicles sweetened with Splenda calling my name in my freezer.

I'm assuming Stevia/Truvia/other brand names of sweeteners derived from the stevia leaf are okay. There's also be a lot of talk about sugar free jello so I've assumed aspartame is approved.

What about honey, agave, or maple syrup?

Sorry for requesting a more detailed list. I hope I don't make anyone upset breaking the sort of don't as don't tell thing we've had going on. I just really have to know.