15th Weigh-In

Sometimes you just know; you don't know how you know because logically the numbers look good on paper but something in your gut tells you not to expect a loss before you ever even step on the scale.  I was exhausted last night after we got home from the store and cleaned up the house and I had written down every little thing that I ate so after adding up my calories my mind felt quite certain that there would be loss but somewhere in my gut I knew there wouldn't be.  I don't feel like I did anything wrong this weekend; I may not have walked 14 miles last week but I certainly burned some calories and I may have had two chocolate truffles but my count was under the mark and yet somehow I was surprised by the number on the scale this morning.

In a way this makes me living proof that the more you lose the harder it is to lose more.  What I mean by that is, when I was 287 lbs a simple week of counting my calories and floor exercises was easy enough and brought in my single largest loss to-date.  Yet now here I am, still very much over weight, but definitely having to try harder to lose anything.  Ok, to be fair to myself I did lose half-a-pound and that's nothing to snub my nose at.  It's certainly better than gaining, I know, but this goal of being under 250 lbs has been looming in front of me now for pretty much this entire month and, dammit, I want it!  This is good ... this is a source of motivation to try harder, to have a really solid kick-pants week with a 2.5 lb loss or more to get me over this hurdle.  Losing weight is starting to feel less like a slow-and-steady marathon and more like a series of sprints; well if the hare had managed his time better he could have easily beat that tortoise.  I got this ... we're good.  I'm on track and this is going to be a good week, just you wait 'enry 'iggins!

Now here are a few pointers for home made hummus from the food bible:

1. Don't try to make it in a blender.  It works ok and if you have the world's greatest blender then you might be alright but I can clearly see why the book tells you to use a food processor.
2. The book calls for tahini and says you can sub with creamy peanut butter if needed so I did because tahini is $7 a can.  The peanut butter added a flavor that I'm not used to in hummus and didn't particularly care for.
3. If you buy store bought hummus with garlic in the middle (like I do) use a few more cloves of garlic than what the recipe calls for because without it the recipe is very garlic-light.
4. If you're not trying to watch your sodium and you like food that's a little saltier add just a pinch more than called for.  I didn't do this and the hummus was fine without it but it could have used a smidge more.  Be sure to account for added calories (though they're very small between the garlic and salt).
5. Consider using veggies to replace the pita chips for a lower carb alternative and, frankly, I think sliced cucumbers add some much needed moisture and fresh taste to the overall bite.
6. Finally: Consider adding some other flavors in the form of herbs and spices.  I didn't do this either but I think the next time I try to make hummus I'm going to add a dash of cayenne pepper or some chopped parsley to it.

For the record, I love hummus and the recipe in the book was really good even with the peanut butter but these are just a few ideas to make a great recipe even better.



Food:
7 glasses of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 Fiber One bar
1 serving home made hummus w/pita chips
1/2 sweet potato (cut and baked into fries)
1 A-1 Swiss Burger (from the book, orgasm on a bun!)
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Daily Caloric Intake: 897



Activity:
We got belated Christmas money from my parents this weekend so tonight we went non-grocery shopping.  We hit Kohl's in the mall first, walked alllll over then hit a different Kohl's because they had a cookware set that we had seen online and wanted to check out.  We spent a good hour or more in there carrying cases of pots and pans to the scanner for price checking and eventually decided that we just didn't have the budget to get what we really wanted.  From there we hit Target and picked up some cutting mats, a veggie steamer, and a few other small kitchen items and then walked around there until it closed.  All-in-all we spent about 3 hours and $55 but we had fun and it got us off the couch.