Well, this was my first week using MyFitnessPal to count calories and I am happy to say that I have lost 1 pound. I did my official weigh in Saturday morning and I was down to 190. Woohoo!! It's hard to stay under my calories if I don't exercise every single day. That's hard because I don't have extra time every single day to do so. I am soooo busy!! Time just gets away from me. I guess the thing to do is look at my overall weekly calories in vs. calories out and not my daily report. As long as I have a deficit of calories at the end of each WEEK, then I will lose weight, right? That's the idea anyway. We shall see! So far, I like the site and it's very user friendly. It also helps that I have friends who have joined and we can keep up with each other that way. Makes it nice to have someone who is holding you accountable. I went to FitClub this morning and worked my butt off. I love it! Wish I could do it every day!! Just need an extra hour or three in the day. ;o)

Because I like to torture myself, I stepped on the scale this morning. Morning time is when I normally weigh myself and I try to do so without clothing. This morning when I stepped on, I was pleansantly surprised by the number. I was 209.2. That is only 0.2 lbs to go to get to 208! That rocks!!! I think the lowest I can remember weighing in my adult life was 196 lbs, so I am anxious to get there. However, I don't want to push myself too hard or deprive myself too much because then I'm just setting myself up to fail. I really want to be successful in this. I so want to be healthy and feel good about myself. It's more so those reasons that I want to lose weight than to just be "thin".

I was really proud of myself last night and feel I made a really good choice at dinner. We decided to go to Olive Garden since my oldest had basketball practice and we needed to run some errands before hand. So we went to dinner early (4:30pm!). It was awesome because there were no people there! Now I understand why old people go out to dinner early. Anyway, normally when we go to Olive Garden, I get the lunch-size portion of Chicken Alfredo and I get an extra little thing of sauce so I can pour half on my pasta and use the other half to dip breadsticks into. Now we all know that alfredo sauce is like the worst thing you could ever eat if you are hoping to lose weight. In the lunch-size portion alone, there are 990 calories! Insane. That is almost a whole day's worth of calories when you add in salad and breadsticks. So anyway, I decided to do the soup & salad combo and I chose to get the light version of their salad dressing. I really couldn't tell a difference in the taste of the dressing and the kids ate it non-stop like they normally do, so I know they couldn't taste a difference either. So I had one bowl of pasta fagioli (130 calories) and a couple of bowls of salad w/low cal dressing (around 200 calories) and 2 breadsticks (280 calories). So my whole meal was only around 610 calories, give or take a few. I saved myself at least 400 calories, and that isn't even including if I were to eat salad & breadsticks with the chicken alfredo, which I always do.

So even though I haven't lost tons of weight, I'm proud of myself for making healthier choices and I am hoping that when my kids see my example, they will follow. I feel so much better just doing healthy things for my body. Now if I could just get on track with taking vitamins. I wish they didn't make me so darn sick.

Starting weight: 214 lbs

Current weight: 209 lbs

Goal weight: 175 lbs

OK, so I am pretty darn proud of myself and have to brag a little. Normally, when I go to Subway, I get a footlong sandwich because I like to EAT and feel full. Well, today, I decided that instead of eating a footlong which has at least 640 calories (which doesn't include condiments), that I would get the 6 inch and a bag of chips. So instead of eating 640 calories, I consumed 460 calories. I was pretty proud! I also resisted the free cookie that came with my meal and I saved it for my oldest to eat when he gets home from school. So not only did I burn 240 calories this morning on the treadmill, but I also ate 180 calories less than I normally would've eaten at Subway in the past. So I have banked 420 calories today! Woohoo!!! I feel so excited! I know that dinner will be high calorie. We're having chicken parmesan, but I'm making some changes to that recipe as well. Instead of using the entire egg to dip the chicken into for the breadcrumb coating, I am going to just use the egg white. I am also using low-fat cheese and splitting a chicken breast with my husband instead of eating an entire one all by myself. So there are changes being made around here, that's for sure. And I feel like because these changes are small and I'm still not really depriving myself, that they will last.