It's gotta' look good!!!

Today I put on a pair of my jeans and they honestly looked like crap.  Baggy where they used to be tight - in front AND in back!  I've never been one to not have an ass, so having mine get smaller is a HUGE deal!!!  I've still got plenty to share, but it's not ENORMOUS like it used to be!  In fact, before I lost weight sometimes I'd turn around and smack my poor kids with it by accident!  They became very wary of standing behind me!  Hee hee......

I tried on my next size down of jeans (the same style, just a size down) and they're too tight!  AIGH!!!!!  I'm going to have to go jeans shopping again!  Hey - I'm not complaining, but losing weight is getting expensive!  I'll reward myself with a new pair of jeans when I hit my next 10% goal - 153 lbs.  I'm getting close to that!  We'll see what I'm down to tomorrow morning.  I'm pretty excited!!!!  In the meantime I'll do what I can to make my jeans look good.  Maybe if I dry them on high heat for about 3 hours they'll shrink???  :)  All I know is having the reward of a good looking pair of jeans will definitely get me to my next goal FASTER!  I'm no fashionista - but now that I've got my smaller body to play with It's gotta' look good!!!!  :)

So, I went to the gym today and started lifting weights.  Nothing too dramatic or heavy - but just getting in there and getting the routine down again.  The workout I do is from The Fat Burning Furnace.  It is a relatively short workout - about 20 - 30 minutes.  It's heavy weights for as many reps as you can do - up to 12.  When you can comfortably do 12 reps you add more weight.  This seems to work well for me.  I'm not the type of person that wants to spend hours in the gym - I want to get in and get out.  I hurt my rotator cuff over Christmas so I can't do anything over my shoulders, but I'm doing what I can and I'll just keep going to Physical Therapy to get my shoulder back into shape.  Something exciting happened when I was at the gym!!!!  When I was in the locker room I caught a peek of myself in the full length mirror and DAMN - I am looking good!!!!  I was totally checking myself out!  This is definitely starting to get fun!

I didn't share this with you (didn't want to sound like I was bitching), but Scott was gone again all week.  :(  He left on Monday morning to head to Southern NH again for work and he just got back late this afternoon.  He took one look at me and said he could tell that I'd lost more weight.  YAY!  :)  I'm so happy he's noticing!!!!

So, today COULD have been a bad day of eating.  I started with the usual (coffee & oatmeal), then I went out to get my hair colored.  I thought briefly about bringing some lunch with me (my appointment was at 12:00), but for some damn reason I DIDN'T!!!!  As I was sitting in the chair with color on my hair I started to get hungry - as in SERIOUSLY hungry!  I was wishing for my big bowl of lovers from yesterday (CHOCOLATE!!!!!).  Well, instead of panicking I asked Michelle for a Special K bar & a banana, which she had.  (We did the color in her home kitchen, so it's not like I was raiding her work snacks or anything!!!  AND she HAD been offering me the Special K bar earlier....).  Those snacks got me through the lunch hour, then I went to the gym, then I headed home and made the most AMAZING looking salad I've ever seen!  I even took a picture of it to share it was so good looking!  In fact, I took a picture of my breakfast too!  (OK - the REAL reason I took these pictures is I have a new iPhone 4 and the quality is AMAZING!  No more washed out looking pictures for me!!!!  Now they're gonna' look all professional or something!!!)  By saving myself with a snack earlier I was totally able to derail my thoughts of pigging out!  Unfortunately I ended up eating pizza for dinner - which isn't the healthiest choice in the world, but oh well.....  I bought one of those pizza kits from my kids' old school and my friend, Kristin, dropped it off at my house this afternoon.  I was bound and determined to eat another killer salad for dinner BUT Preston had chapped lips and couldn't stand the thought of eating pizza!  So - being the good Mom that I am I let him have my chicken (mixed with some brown rice) & I ended up eating 2 slices of whole wheat pizza.  THEN the little stinker didn't really end up EATING the chicken, so I ate that too!  (Yes - I did squats for that one.....)


Anyhoo - back to my perfect salad....  As I was looking at it I was thinking to myself that the key to EATING healthy is 'It's gotta' look good!'  When I make a meal that looks like my salad did today I tend to take my time and savor it.  I really was making sweet love to that salad!  It was really nothing too special - spring mix, smoked mozzarella, dried cranberries, Lean-Mean-Fat-Grilling-Machine boneless skinless chicken thigh (SO TENDER!!!), jalapeno almonds & my delicious maple syrup / balsamic vinaigrette glaze 'dressing'.  If you've never had a balsamic vinaigrette glaze before it is SO good!  I don't use dressing anymore at all!  In fact - I am a creamy ranch dressing convert!  The glaze I use is called Blaze and I buy it at Costco.  You can also get it Amazon.com. It only has 20 calories for 1 T. and zero PointsPlus!  Something about drizzling it over my salad just makes it look so..... GOURMET!  AND I save a TON of points by just using this with 1 T. of maple syrup instead of 'real' dressing.
 

Another thing about 'It's gotta' look good!!!!' is definitely presentation!  When I was single and doing Weight Watchers I made a point of taking my Smart Ones and transferring it to a small plate.  This served 2 purposes.  1. It didn't look like some crappy TV dinner and 2.  It looked like I had a LOT of food!  In fact, I very rarely use my big plates!  I have some smaller 'lunch' plates that I use for most of my meals.

So - It's gotta' look good!  I'm definitely taking the time to make sure I look good before I go out.  Back when I was 210 lbs I honestly didn't give two shits about how I looked.  I think I mentioned before that I had just given up - I didn't care.  Losing over 50 pounds has had such a positive impact on me.  I care what I look like - but not for others.... for ME!!!!  I'm proud of myself.  I've worked hard and I deserve to look good!  My kids deserve to be proud of me!  I don't want them to remember a fat Mom that can't keep up.  I want them to remember a HEALTHY Mom that THEY can't keep up with!!!!  Taking the time to look good, and to make my food look good, is definitely a step in the right direction!

Nutritional Diary 3/4 Total PointsPlus - 40!!!  ACK!

Breakfast:
     Jenn's Coffee (2 PP)
     Jenn's Oatmeal (5 PP) + 1 c. raspberries (0 PP)

Lunchish Snack:
     Special K chocolately pretzel bar (2 PP)
     banana (0 PP)

Late Lunch:
     The PERFECT Salad!  2 c. spring mix (0 PP) with: 1 oz. smoked mozzarella (2 PP), 1/2 oz. jalapeno smokehouse almonds (2 PP), 4 oz. boneless, skinless chicken thigh (3 PP), 1 T. dried cranberries (1 PP), 1 T. maple syrup w/ 1 T. Blaze (1 PP)

Dinner:
     2 slices whole wheat cheese pizza + 2 pizza bones (13 PP)
     2 oz. boneless, skinless chicken thigh (2 PP)
     1/3 c. brown rice (2 PP)
     1 Weight Watchers English Toffee Ice Cream Bar (3 PP)

Snacks:
     1 1/2 c. fresh cherries (0 PP)
     Jenn's Coffee (2 PP)

I didn't use all of my weekly points (I have 7 left), so I'm feeling pretty good!  I did two Zumba workouts and lifted weights once.  I'm excited to see what the weigh in reveals!