And the Winner is.....

Me!!!!!!!! Yesterday was the final day of our Biggest Loser contest at work (otherwise known as the Pray 'n Weigh) and I was the Biggest Loser! I lost 3.34% - 8 pounds - in the month of May. I'm taking the contest winnings - a whopping $24.00 - and heading to the local thrift store to see how many outfits I can get for $24.00. I'll have to post my results later - nothing gets me more excited than a good deal. I really wasn't sure I was going to win - I had resigned myself to losing, actually. I was really sure that another woman would win, and I was trying to figure out a way to be kind and gracious about it, so it was a real shock to find out that I had pulled it off after all. The last Biggest Loser contest I didn't even come close to winning, so I was doubly pleased.

After the big weigh-in I was due at a luncheon. *Sigh* The battle continues.... The lunch was at O'Charley's, which is notorious for being tough on a dieter, but I did some research, formulated a plan, and stuck with it. I had the 6 oz grilled salmon, and when I asked them to replace the rice pilaf with broccoli, they were more than happy to oblige. Very nice! The salmon and the broccoli were DELICIOUS, albeit quite salty. I've been drinking a ton of water to try to flush the salt out, but my rings are still fitting a bit tighter than normal. Not a big fan of salt.... The meal came with a salad, and I asked that instead of dressing they bring it out with some lemon wedges. I squeezed the lemon over the salad, shook pepper all over it, and loved it - YUMMY!!!! It's even better with lime, but I didn't really think to ask for lime for some reason. If you replace dressing with lemon or lime, think of the calories and fat you'll cut out! Not to mention you get to enjoy the light, fresh flavor. Plus, you'll never get scurvy!

So how did I lose the 8 pounds, you ask? Just careful eating, plus a sincere attempt to be more active. Here's an example of my daily eating:

• First thing every morning I eat a very small handful of almonds. I eat them before I even have coffee. They start your metabolism going, plus give your body some good fat, which helps you keep full AND combats belly fat. There's usually 10-12 almonds in my handful.
• Black coffee - no cream, no sugar. This took a while for me to get used to. I used to load it up with several heaping spoons of sugar AND a bunch of half 'n half. I tried it that way a few days ago and almost gagged - now that I've gotten used to it black the sugar and half 'n half was just way too sweet.
• I eat breakfast at work, usually around 8:30, three and a half hours after I get up. I alternate between plain yogurt and Kashi vanilla oatmeal. I mix some frozen berries into the oatmeal - yum! Into the yogurt I mix berries, GrapeNuts, and a couple of teaspoons of all natural peanut butter - again with the good fats theory. The trick with the peanut butter is to stick with the all natural. Teddy was always my favorite, but Skippy makes one that is SUPER creamy and delicious and you don't have the oil separation issues.
• Lunch: salad with a bunch of veggies - usually whatever I can pull out of my garden - topped with a bit of hard cheese and a cut up veggie patty. Morning Star makes a veggie patty that they call the "chicken patty," and it's really, really tasty. If I'm out of salad, I eat a veggie patty or two dipped in mustard. As for the dressing, I keep bottles of olive oil and a few different vinegars at work. I drizzle on the oil and vinegar of choice (my favorite is malt vinegar) and throw on a bunch of pepper.
• Snack: I try to snack every afternoon, and usually have either a piece of fruit, or some carrot sticks, or a bag of microwave popcorn. No butter, no toppings, just plain old popcorn.
• Dinner: this is my hardest time of day. Oh, the food! And I'm starving!! But the C-man is trying to eat healthy, too, so we've been eating a lot more fish, and usually whatever the family eats, I just skip the starch and load up on more veggies.
• Nothing after dinner. Nothing. If I even eat one crumb, it's like my mouth becomes a gaping black hole, sucking in every piece of food within a 30 foot radius. I think I ate dust bunnies with mayonnaise one night...
• No drinks but water. I had been drinking Vitamin Water - love it!!!! - almost every day, but the cost is too high - both in money AND in unneeded calories.

So that's it. Pretty simple in words, pretty hard in practice. But I'm doing it, and I'm loving the results - I can fit into some clothes I hadn't been able to wear before, and I have energy!! Yes, ENERGY!!! I wake up feeling ALIVE and ready to take on the world! I can stay up later and get some housework done!! Not that you can tell that today, of course. By Saturday morning my house looks like a bomb went off. A bomb filled with dog prints and laundry. Dirty, dirty laundry. But now that I'm eating healthy foods and LESS food, I feel ready to tackle the housework. I may even go to WalMart with both children later. Wait a minute, didn't I write a post about that?????