I’m also moving this blog. I’m tired of the lack of template options on “free” wordpress, as much as I love the platform (I still use it for all my hosted sites), and so I’m heading back over to blogger. Update your bookmarks to Noms for the Long Haul. On March 11–a year to the day from when I found out I was pregnant–we begin anew. 30 pounds down, 30 to go. Come with me!

Oh, and since some of you haven’t heard from me since last year–

Please meet Jesse. Born 11-11-09 at 9 lbs 11 oz. Now three months old and absolutely beautiful.

But I stood on the scale after my shower and it very cheerfully told me that I weigh 190 lbs. When my husband and I got married, I weighed about 220, and on the day I made a decision to stop the insanity, as Susan Powter used to say, I weighed 215; that was around my birthday.

Now I don’t need to diet, and I’m maintaining beautifully in spite of slip-ups like last night. It’s nice to have freedom to eat, but I absolutely cannot regress to binge girl.

Until I return to keeping track of these issues, I will be blogging about pregnancy at http://thedoodlemaiers.wordpress.com — come see me there, and see you in December or so!

Plain and simple, though, it was through m own carelessness that this happened, and while I’m not exactly prepared, I’m not exactly upset, either. Hubby is a bit more disoriented, but we’re getting there.

I still believe that natural family planning (which we’ve been using since 2005) is a very safe and effective way to get pregnant or avoid getting pregnant. It’s just very important that if the latter is your goal to check for ovulation signs BEFORE you wind up in the frisky, not after! And at least my knowledge of my cycle tipped me off that I could be pregnant even before a test could. In that respect, I was both pregnant and not pregnant until I got a confirmation of one thing or the other, a situation which we laughingly called Schroedinger’s Baby.

So anyhow, this blog is still about learning to eat right again. And it’s even more important now that I’ve got someone else along for the ride. My goal is to come out on the other side in even better health, and when you consider that I was eating some 6,000 calories a day up until last October, I think the odds are pretty good that I will.

Oops.

16 years and 50 weeks after the last time I got one of these…

Also, my body fat reading was lower today than it has been in the short time (about 10 weeks) I’ve been able to measure it: 41.5 percent.

I like these milestones! And each one is a victory!

Now, when last I weighed in, I had just crossed the 10 percent threshold, and I’ve been frittering around that line during the 7 weeks since. I had hoped to have lost 30 lbs by February, but I couldn’t shake the bad behavior until I STUCK myself to the program, which I started doing last week. Wasn’t much to show for it last Friday, but this week:

This week, however:

Weight Tracking Summary

I have been down as low as 190 this week, so I’m quite sure that magic #25 is in my sights for next week, as long as I don’t do anything squirrely.

Ingredients:

• 10 oz mixed greens (1 bag)
• 1/4 cup(s) shredded carrots
• 1 large tomato(es), coarsely chopped
• 2 large cucumbers, peeled and chopped into 1″ dice
• 1 large sweet red pepper, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup(s) frozen corn kernels, cooked and cooled
• 1 oz Cabot 50% Reduced Fat Monterey Jack, shredded or finely cut up
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup(s) fat-free Italian salad dressing
• 12 oz grilled chicken breast strips (the frozen, precooked kind), cooked without fat

Toss the vegetables together along with the dressing and vinegar. Divide into four bowls, top each with 3 oz. chicken and the chips if desired. Serves 4!

A note about the cheese: Buying reduced fat block cheese actually gives you more control in using cheese to add flavor and fun. (And Cabot knows how much I love them, so another shout-out to them.) With a little practice with a kitchen scale, you can learn to slice off about a half ounce at a time. Take two of these slices, cut them in half lengthwise, and then chop the cheese along the length into “grated” size pieces. Then toss them into the vegetables. (This technique is also good for generating just enough cheese for a small, light quesadilla, a great thing to make on the side for the kids.)

And yes, did I mention that I create these kinds of salads regularly? Sometimes I think I could do an entire book of tossed-up lightness.

(Hint, hint, publishers…)

Today I cooked two meals for myself, even though my husband was home. When I cooked breakfast, he was out for a walk getting breakfast elsewhere. When I cooked dinner, he had already gone to bed. It’s ok, there will be leftovers for him tomorrow. What I figured out today was that half the secret to being a good cook is having the right tools.

Over Christmas, I had asked for, and mom had sent, good omelet pans. I’ve never been a fan of egg-based dishes, but my husband loves eggs and always orders an omelet when we go out for breakfast. So, I started doing research on them around the same time I started having a 2-egg breakfast as part of my “at-home breakfast” weight watchers routine. Cooked without fat, 2 eggs are 4 points and really work as a “filling food.” (My preferred on-the-go breakfast is a Fiber One oats and chocolate bar, but I’d really like to figure out what aspect of those things upsets my lower GI tract sometimes and figure out a decent substitute with the same filling power. )

Anyhow, back to the eggs. As I ate eggs more regularly, I found myself experimenting with them more, and became very curious about making omelets. Enter Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Cafe, a lavish cookbook focusing exclusively on breakfast, which recommended that readers get a good omelet pan and learn how to drag a spatula through the center of the cooking eggs while tilting the pan to get the uncooked egg to flow through. That made no sense unless you cook omelets too, but anyway. I hadn’t figured out the trick even with the handy guide, after trying since Christmas, to making a real omelet. Which I did, today. It was filled with Cabot reduced-fat cheddar and Canadian bacon, and when I loosened the edges and folded it all together it was a work of beauty that flipped right out onto my plate.

That, along with some buttered toast and jelly, made for a hearty 11 point breakfast–late as it was, practically a brunch. So when midday — 4ish–arrived I actually had the Fiber One bar and a quick low-fat hot dog for a 5-point “lunch,” and I snacked on radishes and carrots through the afternoon as well.

But then I got it into my head to make Skillet Cincinnati Chili with Spaghetti out of The Best Cover & Bake Recipes, and it did not disappoint! Redolent of cinnamon, cocoa, chili powder, allspice and cayenne, it certainly packed the promised wallop on the taste buds. Best of all, a single serving is 8 points… and of course I couldn’t resist adding more of the Cabot reduced fat cheddar to it as well, for 2 more.

At any rate, 26 points for the day and I feel very well-fed. Even spoiled. I should have had more vegetables than the snacks, to be sure, but tomorrow I’m going to make my super special balsamic chicken and avocado salad.

After peaking at 24 pounds lost, I took a weeklong trip to San Diego–for a work event–and fell HARD off the wagon. That, and a new school schedule (I’m working on my master’s degree), and feeling frustrated and put upon at work… led to…

Binge eating again.

I’m so mad at myself, and I know that’s not productive. It’s like I’m two different people, the one who’s conscientious and healthy versus the one who will shovel as much food into my gullet as it will take.

So I’ve gained 6 of the 24 pounds back during these three weeks, and in the interest of transparency, I guess I need to punch all my counters in the face and set them back to 18 pounds.

But I also have to give credit where it’s due. Concerned folks over at @wwtweets have been shooting me notes — you’re too quiet on this front, how are you doing, etc. Even my husband hasn’t noodled me about not checking in with him about my progress, partly because I haven’t gained any inches per se during this backslide, I guess. But…

I’m upset with myself, but in trying to get back with the program this week, it worked ok for two days, and then four days of stupid.

So I’m going to focus again on the blogging, not bingeing cogntive approach.  Geneen Roth writes that “binges are ways in which we allow ourselves to go unconscious, to get away from the concerns of day to day life and plunge into oblivion for a few minutes.” She suggests that we find other ways of meeting this need.

She encourages us to take a 15- minute plunge, with examples like reading two chapters from a book, etc. My fifteen minute plunge is going to be blogging. Fifteen minutes blogging a day. And here’s hoping, that you, dear readers, will share your fifteen minutes with me.