Veggies!

I'm finished with week 5!  I somehow lost another 5 pounds.  I thought my loss would be much less this week because it was like that much the week before.  Sometimes I doubt the scales at the clinic can even be right??  Craziness!  Now that I finished week 5 and am starting week 6, there are a couple huge new things.  Firstly,  I can have bars.  I did end up buying a box of Fudge Graham bars this week.  Are they the most delicious thing I've ever eaten?   After 5 weeks of packaged powder meal replacements... YES!   I can only eat one per day so I am going to eat them for breakfast.  This is ideal because I am really supposed to have my first MR within 30 minutes of waking up but with the shakes, I have to wait until I get to work, which is usually about an hour.  This way, I can grab my bar and eat it in the car in the morning.  It's perfect!  One bar replaces one meal replacement.  I still am eating 5 meal replacements a day (including bars), so now I have 1 bar, 3 regular MRs, and 1 soup MR.    The other big thing is that I can eat fruit and veggies now!!  5 weeks FLEW by and it seemed like yesterday when 5 weeks seemed forever away.  I guess that's a good thing.   So I am supposed to add in *up to* two 60 calorie servings of fruit, and 4 servings of non-starchy veggies (1/2 cup cooked veg, or 1 cup raw veg = 1 serving and is supposed to = 25 calories).  So if I eat 4 veggie servings (100 cals), and 2 fruit servings (120 cals), then I will be adding 220 calories to my diet.  I had been eating anywhere from 830 cals to 920 cals a day prior to this week.  SO my new goal is to eat right around 1050 calories with the added fruit/veggies. Here's the list of what we can eat that they provided us in class.

The dietitian told us we could start eating them last night, but I didn't want to drive to the store and basically all we had in the house was baby carrots so I chopped up 1/2 a cup of them and added them to my soup.   Tonight for dinner we went to Jason's deli and I ate a salad.  I'm so used to piling it high w/ boiled eggs, pasta salad, cheese, croutons, etc so it was hard to JUST put veggies... but I did it.  I chose dark greens and added mushrooms, peppers, zucchini slices, broccoli, cauliflower, and red onion.  I read online that Jason's Deli had a Fat Free Leo's Italian dressing that only has 10 calories per 4 tablespoons but I couldn't find it anywhere.  So I used the raspberry vinaigrette which was the next lowest calorie at 90 for 4T, but I probably only used like...maybe 1T... not much at all.  Then I put a couple dashes of vinegar on it.  The I mixed it up as much as I could. Doesn't it look yum??

 I wrote down a couple of dressing recipes off the internet that are very fresh/low cal/no oil dressings that should be good to use for my salads!  I will make each week and they should keep in the fridge for a week.  I love vinegar though, so if those don't work I know I'll be okay with a sprinkle of vinegar!! 

So I am excited about the program still.  I know I won't lose weight as fast now that I'm adding more calories but no one can healthily lose an average of 5lbs a week for extended periods.  Speaking of health,  everything was good at my doctor visit yesterday except for my liver enzymes in my labwork.  They were going up.  One of them was actually elevated out of the normal range so the doctor says I need to come back in a month and redo-labs and she will follow them.  She said unless they normalize I will need to modify the diet program.  Not exactly sure what she means, but I am just hoping the labs go back to normal and I won't have to worry!  

Did I mention that my cholesterol dropped 40 points in just a month???  It was normal the first time (under 200 at 180 something) but it was 140 something now!   Amazing....

This blog post is getting long but I just have one more thing to share.  I tried a new recipe w/ the potato soup MR this week- "pretzels", and boy are they good!  I eat them with mustard (0 cals).  I've made them twice now.  All it is, is a potato soup MR + 1T jiffy pizza crust mix (35 cal)  + water to a firm but wet dough.  Then I knead it a few times in a tsp of flour (9 cals) and roll it into 2 long ropes... shape like pretzels and bake at 350 for 15 mins.  I then spray them w/ pam butter spray and sprinkle w/ salt.  Definitely one of my new favs!!

Oh and another thing real quick-  eating all these extra fruits/veggies all of a sudden makes me feel like I'm eating SO MUCH.  It's going to take some getting used to, but I don't think i'll mind it.  I love love love most fruits/veggies and I know they are so great for me and I'm thankful that I do love them!    So anyways, they said I should lost between 2-3lbs from here on out w/ the added cals.  Guess we'll see in a week if they're right!