WEIGH IN DAY #3!!!!!!!

I am so excited to tell you all that I weighed in today! I lost 4.2 pounds!!! WOOOHOOOO!! Which now brings my weight to 251 pounds with clothes on!!!!!! I am so so so so (one more) SO happy! This is such a great program!! Thank you to everyone for your continued support! I can't wait for my next weigh in! I did switch it up this week by adding more cardio and weights. I love how I feel and I love how I can notice a change in how I look!!! YAY!!!

Day 17

Today is day 17 wow! Let's see today I did some Kettle bell, and stair stepper, ouch! Kicked my Boo-TAY! Oh and I added 50 squats a day, I am beginning to think I hate myself! LOL! Eating is still right on track YAY!! I can't wait for weigh in! YES!!! I NEVER thought I would say that! Tonight for dinner I made chicken enchiladas in casserole form. They looked like Caca but, they tasted amazing and were only 350 calories! WOOP WOOP!

The pictures on the left are my before and the pictures to the righ of the first pic and third pic are two weeks later

Day 15

Today my family and I went to a town here in Oregon on the coast, Newport. It was SUCH a beautiful day. I wanted to set myself up for success so we didn't leave until after lunch and I packed my mini meals, we also planned our dinner at Subway. Well much to my dismay Subway missed the memo that included my plan and they were OUT of EVERYTHING!! So of course being the rational woman I am, I ordered my food( which I got for around 400 calories after recalculating got my water sat the family down and promptly excused myself to their restroom for a quick cry. I was just so disappointed..... But when all was said and done it is just fuel and not fun. SO I put my big girl panties on, sucked it up and had a great time with my family. I guess I just figured of all the places to feel safe, there are CALORIES and hidden NO NO'S everywhere! I am so glad that I now have the tools to readjust and get on the right track! I'm still going STRONG! YAY!!!!

WEIGH IN DAY #2!!!!!

DRUMROLL AND FANFARE please!...... I LOST 4.4 Pounds!!!! WOOOOHOOOO which now makes my weight 256.0 pounds!!! I was thrilled! I can't believe I have lost so much! I am planning on posting new pics tomorrow! It has been a great week and my goal for this week is to add more weights and cardio!!! I really do feel like I am transforming. I can honestly say I don't believe I will ever go back to the way I used eat! my life HAS changed FOREVER!!!

Day 12

Let's see so tonight at my bible study one of the ladies came over to me and told me that I looked as though I was slimmer :D I was thrilled! Even though I had many friends tell me I look great! Which is SO encouraging and sweet, this lady had NO idea of what I have been doing, so it affirmed my commitment that much more. I don't quite know how to explain why this program works so well, except that I eat frequently and include high levels of protein. Why oh Why didn't I do it sooner! Oh well, I can't worry about that, I can only rejoice that I am finally LOSING, and I AM SO HAPPY doing it!

Day 11

Yesterday was a bit of a strange day for me, I woke up late and missed my first meal. But, then it turned out to work fine I just spaced the rest out two hours and found myself on track by dinner! Things are getting so much easier, I have a TON of energy, my skin is looking pretty and to TOP all of that off I am wearing Jeans today that I haven't been able to wear FOREVER! YAY!! I have such an amazing support system, here on my blog, with my friends and family and at work. I am so BLESSED! I have PTA tonight and I made pulled pork for it, I am not having ANY of it! WOW! That is a change LOL!

Day 9

I cannot believe it has been NINE days since I started this journey! I really do like this new way of living. Yes, I still have cravings, yes, it isn't always easy planning out my entire day of food. But, with practice I have found that I believe I could absolutely live this way forever. I would say that the part of this I miss is having side items with dinner LOL! But I could if I didn't make such decadent meals, I like those for now so I will just have to have my side item 2 hours before and three hours later :D

This week I intend to add even more exercise than I did last week, with the goal of 30 minutes of cardio every morning and 15 minutes of strength training every evening. I am loving my new ENERGY! I wake up early and feel great all day, well except when the Oregon "sunshine" gets to me :D

Well, I am still going folks and I feel fantastic about it! I hope you all have an amazing week!

Kim's Turkey Chili

Ingredients: Servings: about 5 Serving Size: One Cup

1lb Ground Turkey
1 Can Black Beans
1 Can (4 oz) Green Chili's
1 Medium Onion
2 Cloves Garlic minced, or pressed ( I prefer pressed)
2-3 oz of tomato juice
Cumin
Chili Powder ( to taste)
Pepper ( to taste)

Drizzle olive oil in a large skillet over medium to high heat. When oil begins to smoke add onion, and ground turkey until brown. Then add garlic, cumin, chili powder and pepper. Stir together. Add Chili's, black beans, juice. Simmer 15 -20 minutes! ENJOY!

Nutritional Information (approx. depending on brand)
Calories:220
Protein: 20

Day 8

So in all my excitement yesterday I forgot to put my new current weight! I now weigh with clothes on....very important to remember that 260.2 FABULOUS!!! This morning however I weighed 258.1 so also VERY AWESOME!! Many people have been asking me for some recipes and I wanted to start by posting one, that I made up from inspiration from the cook this not that cook book!

Chicken Pineapple Teriyaki Burgers.

You will need:
Boneless Skinless Chicken breasts
Teriyaki sauce
Pineapple Rings
Whole Wheat Buns
Red Onion
BIG green Leafy Lettuce

Start with the Chicken, I like to take mine and cut in half through the middle of the chicken so I am making a thin 4-6 oz cutlet.
Then in a very hot pan pour 2 tablespoons olive oil. When the oil starts to smoke add your chicken about 4 minutes on each side should do it.
Once the chicken is browned and yummy Spoon 2 Tablespoons of Teriyaki sauce on to each piece of chicken cook about 2 more minutes then turn off heat while you assemble the burger.

For the buns, i like to grill mine on the grill for a minute.
Then add Onion, Lettuce and Pineapple!
DELISH!!!

Total Calories 350
Protein 42 grams

Makes 4 serving from 2 store bought breasts!

WEIGH IN DAY!!!!!

Drum Roll PLEASE.........I LOST 6.8 LBS!!!!!! With CLOTHES on!! I CANNOT BELIEVE it! I was so overwhelmed with joy I asked the nurse if I could hug her! LOL! Of course she let me! It was so SO awesome! I so needed this to push me into my 2nd week! I am so thrilled and I know that as I get more comfortable with food I will also get more comfortable with myself. Thank you ALL for being with me through this first week and beyond! WOOOOHHOOOOOO I am going to go have a dance party with my kids!

Day 6

TOMORROW is WEIGH in day! Oh my goodness, I am SO nervous! What if I am retaining water? Or Gas? Oh my lanta! I hope I have lost weight. I don't think I look like I have! I am also super nervous about tomorrow night we are going to Chili's for dinner I am having the guiltless salmon it is only 375 calories and it has 51 grams of protein. But, the part I am scared about is, what if they lied to me and it is really like a million calories???? ughhh!!!! This is SO hard! I am having a mild freak out over this. I guess I could make it better if I do a quick workout before I go and Saturday morning? I will definitely post my weight tomorrow night (fingers crossed)!!!!!!!!

Day 5

So I am not thinking these posts are exciting but they are providing me a place to put my thoughts about this process so I figure it is very worth doing, so I can look back and see where I was at, and how I am going to get further! Today was a great day, I was encouraging my husband who was telling me that he was having some cravings and all of a sudden I had an epiphany! I said, listen food isn't suppose to be fun, it is suppose to be fuel. Yes, it can taste good, yes you may even want to have it again, but it is not meant to rule our existence, or be the source of entertainment.

I was at bible study tonight I went early even though I knew there would be food, but I didn't miss it, not even one little bit. I had eaten before I got there and I wasn't at all tempted. What exactly for all the years was I tempted by? Chewing? For me it was about seeing my friends. I had a great time and didn't feel like I missed out on anything! I am so glad I am on this journey! Thank you all for your tips and advice, keep it coming! I LOVE IT!!!!!

Day 4

Not a bad day at all! In fact today was a great day! I realized something tonight as I was sitting with my hubby watching tv. I have not been "FULL" one time on this program and I have not been "HUNGRY" either. HMMMM, have I ever just felt satisfied? I don't think so..... So I ask myself this question, how do I feel about that? My conclusion, I feel GREAT!!! I mean yeah, I crave things sure, I miss some things that I just can't mindlessly grab and nibble. But, it is a MORE than healthy trade to not feel sick after eating, or so guilty you just want to cry. Or so disgusted you want to throw up, but find your even to chicken to do that. So I am adapting to this new life, and I am thankful that I am not missing the old one. Thank you LORD! Seriously though.....why did I waste so many years on the mindless eating? I can't answer that one, maybe just maybe I will find the answer to that on this journey as well.

Day 3

Well hello to you all! What a great day I had! It was my first day at work on this program and it went very smooth! Ha ha ha, that beginning sounds very Dr. Suess ( I just got done reading it to my kids!) I digress, I thought it was going to be a HUGE challenge, and it wasn't. Two tips I have the attributed to my success today: The first and the most helpful was that I pre-planned my ENTIRE days worth of food. I put it in baggies calculated all of the calories and put it in my food journal, put the food all in one bag and then was able to get to it through out the day at my designated mini meals. Second I told everyone about this journey! It helped so much that everyone knew because in the staff room was a GINORMOUS cake!! Since everyone knew there wasn't even a moment that I thought about getting a piece. I am really starting to get used to this process and today I even felt full at dinner.

Tonight we had another new recipe for dinner, it was DELISH. Turkey Meatloaf, ok so one of my kiddos liked it and the picky one, well he was picky! But the meatloaf really was good! It was made with ground turkey, eggs, panko, garlic and sea salt and pepper you could opt to top it with a red pepper and tomato chutney( I would LOVE) or you could go the kid friendly route and sprinkle the top with 1/4 Cup of Cheddar Cheese, which is what we had. For 1/8th of the loaf it was only 360 calories and I paired it with a roasted red pepper and Tomato soup from Trader Joes, for 100 calories total meal 460 calories!!!! YAY!!

I am really jazzed about all of the changes I am feeling physically and I can't understand why I didn't do this sooner? Maybe it wouldn't have really worked before now, maybe I just didn't think I could do it! I know can do this!

I am a little nervous about Friday, we are going out with some friends. I had thought about eating out with them but instead I think I will eat before and just have water or ice tea at the resturant. I just don't trust myself.....yet. Any suggestions?

Day 2

Here it is day two, I am starting to see small changes already in my eating. I have consistently stayed pretty full, and I really like eating every two and a half hours. I will say that I had a mini meltdown a little while ago, I was trying to figure out how to make fajitas and properly figure out the calories, carbs, and protein. What a PAIN!! It took me FOREVER!!!! I can only hope that it gets easier to calculate those numbers cause I was almost in tears frustrated! I did figure it out though and I believe I am pretty accurate. I think over time this whole process will be a lot less time consuming.

In an effort to make myself fully accountable I have decided to post my weights and weigh ins I weigh in every Friday with clothes. When I started trying to lose weight it was a couple of weeks before Monarch and I weighed 275 pounds. When I weighed in at Monarch I was 267.3 pounds. Which is great! So I will post this Friday what my "monarch" weight is.

Last night I left off telling you all that I was going to try a new recipe for macaroni and cheese. It was a success. We could all tell it wasn't regular mac and cheese but for a extremely healthy change and my new lifestyle it was fabulous! I recommend it highly. I am not sure I can post the recipe on here because it isn't mine, but if you are in need of it e-mail me and I will send it to you!

Thank you all so much for your support! It means so much to me and I know I am going to need all the virtual high fives I can get!!!!

A much needed transformation

Hello out there friends! I decided to start this blog ( well it was suggested I should :D ) to document an entire year of my journey from a morbidly obese woman to a healthy, happy, and average size person. I guess I will just start from the beginning. When I was 20 years old I was about 20 pounds overweight. I had kids, ate whatever I wanted, cleaned their plates and became a fairly inactive person, except for chasing my babies around. Fast forward to age 29 I am now 90 lbs. overweight and have been on every "diet" imaginable. My kids are now 7 and 8 and I am working full time, so I couldn't understand why the pounds were clinging on. I made a routine appointment with my Doc and told her all of my "issues" . After the appointment she explained that I had a very common condition in young women termed Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, and that I am pre-diabetic.

The only way to keep my symptoms at bay is to lose weight. Needless to say that scared the heck out of me!!! This condition not only makes it SUPER easy to gain weight, it makes it even harder to lose the weight, so she referred me to Monarch.

Monarch is a weight loss clinic here in my home town that is physician guided and very successful. The basic premise is built around eating small meals based off your body composition and caloric needs highlighting a high protein intake.

Today is my first day! So in an attempt to chronicle this HUGE journey to become 90 pounds lighter I am here blogging about it. I hope to inspire other people trying to lose weight while offering my thoughts, recipes, exercise attempts and pretty much any therapeutic venting!

My goal as I told you all earlier is 90 pounds. Today I felt like I was eating ALL the time. Its seems so strange that this is going to actually allow me to lose weight. Whenever I tried to lose weight before I was always starving!!!! Last night I did have a "moment" of panic. You see my dinner meal is the biggest meal of my day and it can only be around 400 calories. 400 calories may seem or sound like a lot, but for me it seemed impossible. Especially when I added up the amount of calories I used to consume. Luckily I found a recipe book that is AMAZING and offers TONS of recipes that I can eat just for dinner. It is called "Cook this, Not that" written by, David Zinczeko and Matt Goulding. I immediately wrote a dinner menu list for the entire week and tonight I am trying the Macaroni and Cheese. If all goes well it is 1/3 the calories we used to consume when eating mac and cheese and it meets all of my dinner requirements!

Thank you so much for your support in advance, I am still deciding if I should put pictures up as well.....hmmmmm let me know if you think I should also photo chronicle this journey?