Day Eight. Oops.

This week has been incredibly busy.  Not that I am using busy-ness as an excuse but when you are up at 5:30 AM and have no time to sleep until after 1 AM that night, it puts a damper on blogging abilities.  I also haven't exercised since Tuesday which has in turn made my muscles into jell-o pie over the period of 4 days.  Although, I have been eating right and this hasn't been easy when I am outside of the house for over 12 hours at a time.  Cheese still hasn't crept into my daily habits again, I haven't even thought about fast-food for a couple of years so that's not too much of a challenge, and I only had one baby-tiny whole-wheat roll with some hummus on Thursday. 

I do have to fess up and tell about my evening last night though.  Mirabel and I were downstairs watching Despicable Me (like always) and the part came up where Gru made the girls pancakes and it immediately ran through my head, "we have everything we need to make pancakes! Let's do it! Mirabel, do you want pancakes? GREAT! Let's go up stairs!"  And without even the slightest hesitation, I jumped online and found an old recipe for homemade pancakes and started whisking away.  Note: It is now an hour past bedtime and I am about to load my daughter with sugar so I immediately wondered how I could alter the recipe so the pancakes wouldn't be so terrible for us.  Also, as much as I cared about the healthiness of the pancakes, I wanted sugar. Desperately.  It had been a week since any significant amount of bread, potato, cheese, candy, or sugary substance, so I, indeed, felt sugar was in order.  Yet I talked myself out of most of it. 

I found the recipe on allrecipes.com and thought there was too much baking soda in the mix, so I used half of the called for.  I didn't want to have all of the cholesterol of eggs, so I used two egg whites instead of one whole egg.  I substituted the 3 tablespoons of melted butter for a Smart Balance Light spread and also substituted real sugar for this light fluffy crap I bought a while ago that you actually can't tell the difference with.  I would have used whole-wheat flour had there been any in the cupboard but I only had all-purpose so I ran with it.  I should also mention that I don't ever buy real syrup, but the sugar-free, maple-flavored stuff from Maple Grove Farms and this has significantly less calories as well as stickiness.  10 pancakes later--Mirabel had eaten two, I had eaten four and we split one more.  The left overs went into the freezer and I guiltily put Mirabel to bed with a full yummy-tummy, and proceeded to think about how much weight I would gain from these pancakes.

I'd like to think my brain and mouth conversation went something like this:
Brain- "Don't worry about it, you did really well all week with the exception of no exercise."
Mouth- "Ya. Thanks, but no thanks. If I've done so well, why did I just cram four and a half pancakes into my grill?"
Brain- "Your deserve a reward for your hard work."
Mouth- "Are you trying to tell me that I could eat a carton of ice-cream on Saturday if I ate vegetables all week?  If so, what is the benefit, wouldn't I GAIN more down below if I ate food in this manner?"
Brain- "If you feel so guilty about it, why did you do it?"
Mouth- "Woah, woah, woah now...I don't do anything without your say-so."
Brain- "Point taken."

I am going to continue this diet.  Actually, during my drive home on Thursday, I decided not to call it a diet but a lifestyle change.  I think this will benefit me in the long run since I don't want to return to old habits, but keep off whatever weight I lose...for good.

I have lost some weight to kick off my first week and I feel great about it.  I've lost 3 pounds which is a great head-start even considering the hiccup's along the way.  It's proof that eating right can change your life, regardless of how much you exercise.  Not to downplay exercise, but you can exercise all you want, but if you don't change what's going into your mouth, then you will not succeed at this. 

Change what you eat and change your weight.