Late last year (which was only a couple of weeks ago, as of this writing) Steve had a doctor's appointment wherein he learned that if he were to drop some weight, he would ultimately be able to stop taking some of his prescribed medications. That would be pretty great, considering that he is temporarily unemployed and we will not have health insurance for much longer! For myself, I've gained back around 10 of the pounds I fought so hard to lose a couple of years ago. I won't lie, it's because I'm lazy and I like bacon cheeseburgers and french fries. I like them a lot. Gaining that weight back makes me feel bad, because I worked really hard to lose it and it's personally frustrating that I just gave up on all of it. Also, I gave away all of my fat clothes and don't want to buy bigger pants, so I knew I'd have to do something soon!
When he told me about wanting to lose weight, I offered to try and help him out by trying to lose weight at the same time. It would be good for both of us AND it makes it easier when one of us is NOT eating delicious stuff while the other is eating salad. That would mean that I'd have to work out with him, we'd try and figure out how to cook better stuff, and maybe not eat out as much as we do (the source of our bacon cheeseburger problem!) We decided to start whatever we were going to do at the beginning of the year because we had Christmas food to eat and would be going on vacation to eat delicious seafood, and we didn't want to miss out on that. So, when we found this at Sam's:
I'm getting tired of this rug, y'all.
we thought it would be a great way to get started on the whole thing. It had the added bonus of having almost everything included that we would need inside the box, you do have to buy vegetables, so there wouldn't be any days where either of us could use the excuse of "I don't feel like cooking. Let's go out to eat." We both agreed to try it and if it worked, great! Even losing 5 pounds is encouraging and this looked like the easiest thing to do to get started. If it works, hopefully it would encourage us to lose more weight on our own.
I was 100% gung-ho on this until I actually opened the box last night. My problem: I'm not sure I can do this. I have zero willpower and I really like food. Also, I tried Nutrisystem in 2007 and it didn't work because, to be honest, the food is not that good. Well, most of it wasn't good. There were a few things I actually liked, but once those things were gone I couldn't bring myself to eat the other stuff. I thought that doing this for 7 days would be easy enough, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it. So I'm going to write about doing it for as long as I keep up with it for two reasons: 1) If I tell you about it, I'm going to be accountable and 2) writing about it makes it seem more official! So, join me as I (try to) eat a week's worth of shelf stable foods in an attempt to lose 5 pounds!
The box contains 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, 7 dinners and 14 shakes that are supposed to energizing or are supposed to curb cravings. We'll see!
BREAKFAST: Day one (if you follow the little guide book) is oatmeal. I almost screwed this up, because I didn't read closely enough and thought it was cereal and almost ate it raw. I had to scrounge a microwave safe bowl at work to cook it. It actually wasn't that bad, which is encouraging. It also filled me up, so when it was time for the next thing, I wasn't terribly hungry.
Oatmeal doesn't photograph very well, does it?
SHAKE 1: Hungry or not, I wasn't going to deviate from the program so soon. The shake is chocolate-ish flavored, and you mix it with 8 oz of water. I forgot to take a picture of it, but it looked like a Slim Fast shake, or watery chocolate milk. We were supposed to eat some vegetables with this as a snack, but gross. No thanks. The shake was...not good. It wasn't terrible, but it had a very strong, bitter, artificial sweetener taste to it. It was also a little gritty, but I pounded it down as quick as I could. Blerf. The artificial taste will not leave my mouth, even though I've been drinking water. I'm pretty sure it also had caffeine in it, which makes me feel like my blood pressure has gone up instead of really being "Energy-Zing!" I don't know if it really curbed any cravings, or if not being terribly hungry before I drank it kept me from being too hungry. I didn't like this thing, but I have 2 of these a day all week. Lord, give me strength.
LUNCH: Lunch consisted of a "Fudge Graham Bar" and some grapes. The bar wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good either. I used to eat a Special K protein bar for lunch a lot, which this reminded me of, but it had more calories and didn't taste as good. Oh, well. It filled me up, at least. Technically, I'm supposed to be eating vegetables with this, but I couldn't make myself eat this bar with a vegetable. Unless the whole thing hinges on glucose levels or something, I can't imagine 35 calories worth of grapes could make much of a difference. I'll eat vegetables with dinner. Promise!
When I got home, I was feeling sick and head achy, but I don't know if that has anything to do with the food. I was also hungry, but I didn't want to try the craving curbing shake, because I could still taste the fake sweetener from the shake I had this morning. I decided to eat dinner a little earlier to see if I'd feel better.
DINNER: Lasagna with Meat sauce. Well, sort of. It wasn't bad at all, although it was mushy, a little bland and tasted a bit like Lean Cuisine. It had corn and possibly some beans in it, which was confusing because I've never had lasagna with corn in it! Eating really did make me feel better, so maybe I'm just not used to eating so little, or maybe it's all in my head! I have no idea. I ate a bag of steamed edamame afterwards which also helped. I'm not sure if that's a vegetable or a starch, but since it was something that came from a plant, I have decided that it took care of the 4 servings of vegetables I was supposed to eat today. One day down, six to go.
It's lasagna, I swear!
I really want some Goldfish crackers. I want them in a bad way.
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