Before and after photos ~ Rachel and Dave

Sorry I’ve been MIA since we left for vacation. I can’t seem to get back into the swing of blogging…Dave is always reminding me to post and then I forget to do it!

Anyways…as Dave will tell you down below, we are going to my cousin’s wedding at the end of the month. I assumed I needed to go shopping for a dress, because I didn’t think I had anything in the closet that would work. Well, I peeked in the closet and saw a dress that I bought years ago and have never worn. It never really fit me…and if it did fit me, I (for whatever reason) didn’t feel confident enough to wear it. Well, I tried it on. It fit. In fact, by the end of September, it might even be a little loose…but I will work with safety pins if I have to. I was so excited that I could wear this dress because I seriously love it. The thought of shoe shopping for it didn’t thrill me, but I would deal with it!

That whole dress situation…coupled with Dave trying on (and getting rid of) all of his clothes…made me want to do before and after photos. I knew my physical changes weren’t quite as dramatic as Dave, but they were still something. So I dug up a couple of pictures and tried on the old clothes. With my weight loss, the most dramatic change is in my butt and legs. I put on the size 22 jeans I was keeping as a frame of reference and they were, um, a tad LOOSE. I had some serious droopy drawers. The dress was a bit big too. So all in all, I felt pretty good about all of that! Check out the evidence below.

I can’t wait to wear my fancy dress and the awesome shoes I got to go with it and stand next to my handsome husband who is going to be stylin’ at my cousin’s wedding in a few weeks. Just wait until you see THOSE pictures!

Oh yeah…as of weigh-in this past Saturday, I’m down a total of 58lbs since the beginning of February!

And now it is my turn!!!  Alright so this past weekend we went through all of my clothes in the closet.  The reason being is I had a fair amount that were too big and people kept telling me as such.  Plus in Weight Watchers they tell us not to keep the too big clothes for that “in case you need it again” way of thinking.  All that does is give you an excuse to relapse.

So we were going through everything.  Rachel’s cousin is getting married at the end of September and that meant I had to try on dress clothes as well.  Now first off, I HATE dress clothes.  I get to work in t-shirts and jeans and I could not be happier.  But I digress.  So it was time to try on the dreaded dress clothes.  Everything was a bit large which was not bad honestly, it was a nice confidence booster.  Then we go to the suit and shirt I wore to Rachel’s step brothers wedding in 2009.  If you look at the picture the suit and shirt were tight back then.  On that note I will let the picture speak for itself.

So needless to say it does not fit anymore.  It also means I had to go clothes shopping which always sucks.  But Rachel and I came up with a really cool outfit for me that I am excited to wear and will share once pictures of it surface!

Also this past weigh in I was down 3.4 pounds for a total loss of 82.2 pounds!!!!  Rockin!

Vacation is over ~ Dave

So Rachel and I made it through the insanity of our vacation and the few weeks leading up to it.  And as nice as it was to not be at work and to be relaxing, I am also glad to be home.  But let’s recap.

Rachel’s dad planned a vacation for his family which included her dad and step-mother, biological brother and his daughter, her step-sister and her husband and daughter, her step-brother and his wife and their son and daughter and us.  We got in our car and headed down to St. Augustine for the first leg of the trip where we met everyone but Rachel’s brother who was flying.  It was a long drive and a bit stressful especially when Rachel was behind the wheel.  She is a bit of a crazy driver but is much less vocal than myself.  Then the next day we hit the “outlet” mall before the final leg of the trip to Palm Beach.  I put outlet in quotes as it no longer means what it used to.  Most if not all the stores are just regular stores with a small clearance section.  When I was growing up an outlet mall meant it was all close out specials and sales.  We did pick up a few things, Rachel found some new clothes at Lane Bryant and she learned she was a smaller size than she thought!!  I got a new Star Wars t-shirt in my soon to be smaller size (it is so close to fitting) and of course we hit up Yankee Candle and grabbed some Coconut Bay candles though one broke in transport.  I also had to hit up a 7-11 for a slurpee which was a childhood favorite.  I got the Strawberry Lemonade and the first words out of my mouth were it tastes like Sugar and Diabeetus!

We got to the Marriott in Palm Beach and got checked in and moved in.  We were sharing a 2 bedroom villa with her dad and step-mom and the siblings with kids all shared a 3 room villa.  From our room we could see part of the pool and a sliver of ocean but from the 3 room it had a full ocean view.  Thankfully this was also the party room as once the little ones went to bed they would sleep through near anything!  Here is a picture of the view from the party room.

The rest of our vacation went like this.  Wake up, workout or jog, breakfast, pool, lunch, pool and beer, dinner, drinking and games.  It was a hell of a routine to upkeep I will say that.  All hat lounging at the pool was tough.  For the most part Rachel and I stuck to our points as best we could.  Beer got the best of me though and once I got drinking I also got snacking.  But we were on vacation so I was not sweating it honestly.

As for exercise we did the following.  One morning we went to the beach and walked and did jog a little bit in the surf.  It actually was not too bad and we did not hate ourselves for it.  The next day we went to the resort gym which was very very hot.  There was little moving air and it just got stuffy in there really fast, so we went the one time only.  I started the Couch to 5k program I downloaded: Zombie 5k.  It is a cool game as not only does it train you for a 5k, but it also has a story to it.  I was able to finish two days of the Zombie 5k and each day walked and jogged 2.3 miles average.  Two other days Rachel went out walking and jogging with me and that was fun.  The only downfall to this outdoor activity was that come 7am it was close to 90 degrees outside and probably 85% humidity or higher.  I would come back soaked from head to toe.

One night Rachel’s dad and step-mother watched the little ones so all of the siblings could go out together.  We walked down the street to Johnny Longboats.  It was a typical seafood bar/restaurant on the beach.  It was fully opened to the air flow from outside and the decor was your typical “fancy” dive.  The food was also rather good and I did okay.  I got a boil which was tasty except it was drowned in some thick butter sauce which actually detracted from the taste.  Rachel had the grouper in a bag and she loved it and we ended with a key lime tart which was good except for the neon green sauce that was on top of it.

Thursday we had to check out and our trip took us to Orlando for a night to see some old friends.  We met everyone at Raglan Road which is our favorite destination in Downtown Disney.  It was great to catch up and see people, but sadly our trip was at an end.

Friday we drove back and here is where things got interesting…  First off traffic was a steady nightmare, no one could figure their head from their ass and they surely showed it while driving.  Second off, our lunch meat had gone south a day or two previous so we had to toss it.  This meant food on the road.  We toyed around in the Weight Watchers app to look for something that was okay that sounded good.  We settled on Popeye’s as I loved it when I lived in Florida and you can’t get it in NC.  Plus the points value was not horrid.  Keep in mind it had been about 9 months since we had fast food and it was tasty, but so salty!  Well my body rejected it once we got home.  I thought we had just visited Mexico and I drank a few gallons of the water.  Never ever ever again!  I will say my body is happy to be back to our normal food intake.

Happily our lives are back to normal.  We did weigh in and I was up 3.4 pounds.  For two weeks that was not bad and it all ended up being water weight as that plus more has since dropped off.  I have also completed week 1 of Zombie 5k but the GPS on my phone can’t handle the track at the gym and therefore my total mileage is rather off.  If I had to guess I would state I have hit just over 7 miles in the 3 days I did the program.  Rachel is promising a post on Friday so here is to hoping.

Zoom zoom zoom ~ Dave

I had a hard time thinking of a post.  My brain is mush recently and our vacation is less than a week away.  I need this vacation!!  I have busted my ass this year at work and in life and I need some me time.  Granted my me time will involve running on the beach in the mornings.  That should be fun though both of my older pairs of Brooks are about to have holes in the bottom, so it does not matter which one I ruin.  (Goodbye shoes, you served me well!)  And I am going to do as much as I can in our room with my core and legs, squats and planks here I come!!!  But I digress.

First let’s start off with the weight loss.  I weighed in without Rachel this past weekend as she was in Bethesda for a conference.  It’s a shame she wasn’t there.  Because I lost 3.8 pounds. That brings my Weight Watchers total loss to 41.8 and my overall total to 75 pounds even!!!  Woo go me!!  And I am slowly catching up to Rachel for weight lost on WW, muahahahah.  Though I will say she is amazing and keeps kicking ass and taking names on her weigh ins.  I am noticing a trend where I have a big loss one week and the next a very small loss, rinse and repeat.  Annoying yes, but at least I have recognized the trend and am not getting flustered by it.

As I was reading my daily sites today I cam across this image:

Look at that folks and let it all sink in!  Really think about what the diet industry has trained people to think and eat!  It’s ridiculous and infuriating!  On top of it there was an article about how fast food could be healthy and I think Rachel wanted to post on that.  But then I found this damn OP-ED about how the Double Cheeseburger from McDonald’s is the best thing ever!  http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_greatest_food_human_history_5bikMtD5ZJ50x1KMCyGfTJ  NO NO NO NO NO!!!  And some of the topics this hits on are true and maybe I do get on my high horse about fresh produce and foods.  But one thing it infers is that the average person does not have time to prepare dinners from fresh food.  This is not true.  Rachel and i both work and she finds time to make our dinners ahead of time.  I make breakfast in the morning after getting up early and taking the dogs out.  Now yes there are some cases where there is not time, I will admit some people really do have it hard, but there is always a point in time where you could pre-make some meals and have healthier options.

Okay off the high horse and on to the title.  I will make this quick as I do not have all the details.  So I had an idea and told Rachel about it.  She likes the idea.  My goal is once I figure out my goal weight and I reach it, we go on a trip somewhere awesome with a jungle or mountain forests and we find a zip line place to go through or over said forest/jungle.  Heights scare the crap out of me when standing, but sitting it’s not an issue and being strapped into that harness sure will help.  So that is my goal!

Have a great week folks, I know i will as we get to go to Beer, Bourbon and BBQ on Friday night!  Woot!!

Ice Ice Baby ~Rachel

I had to go to Bethesda, MD for a work conference so I missed my Weight Watchers meeting on Saturday. I’m pretty sure that the scale moved the proper direction but I’ll post my official numbers next Saturday (Disclaimer: We are going to the Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ Festival Friday night and I intend to partake in all of the “B’s” so weigh-in might not be too stellar…oh well, YOLO).

My reason for this post is to talk about running. More specifically, the injury I seemed to have acquired before I even began my Couch to 5K training.

I got it in my head that I was going to train for a 5K…there is a Color Run in Charlotte in mid-October that I was aiming for. I got pumped up about it. I posted about it on Facebook and told the world (ok, just my FB friends) that I was going to do it. I downloaded several apps on my phone and was about to start figuring out a training schedule.

And then my foot started to hurt. This wasn’t the normal plantar fasciitis pain I’ve become so accustomed to and can work with. This was pain on the top of my foot that I’ve not felt before. I decided to test it out at the gym and attempted a 2 walking laps and 1 jogging lap rotation. Well, by the end of 15 minutes, it hurt like hell. I did, however, discover that jogging wasn’t so bad. My big butt was jiggling/bouncing A LOT when I jogged and while that was kind of uncomfortable, it was bearable and I was able to ignore it after awhile. Too bad I didn’t have a sports bra that could hold my ass in. Anyways, the damn foot was screaming at me. Dave insists that my shoes were the problem since they were old and badly in need of replacement. We went out and bought new shoes (incidentally, I got the same Brooks Dyad 7’s in a different color scheme). I then tried doing one of our early morning walks with the dogs…by the end of it, I felt crippled. I then went to Bethesda and only wore my big clunky Danskos. I did some walking but it was relatively low impact as it wasn’t exactly power walking. My foot started to feel a little better so I thought my injury was maybe getting better.

I went to the gym this morning and did: 10 minutes Arc Trainer, 5 laps around the track (0.25mi), 15 minutes Elliptical, 5 laps, 10 minutes Arc Trainer. My foot actually felt ok during all of this. I talked to Dave’s trainer. She told me to ice it, even if it was a stress fracture (which I am worried about). Dave talked to Brandy later in the day and was instructed that I should do an ice bath. Sonofabitch, I was not happy to hear that. Dave had to do it a couple of weeks ago and was not shy in talking about how awful it is. So I did the ice bath…15 min in, 5 min walk, 5 min in, 5 min walk, 5 min in, 5 min walk, 5 min in, 5 min walk. This is me with my foot in Dave’s beer brewing bucket full of ice:

 

 

 

 

 

For the record, it was NOT fun.

Only time will tell what the problem is with my foot and how long I won’t be able to train for a 5K. I’m taking this one day at a time and hoping that it starts to resolve itself. If not, I’ll go to a doctor, I guess. I already have a walking boot if I need it (thank you, plantar fasciitis). When I can start training for a 5K, I will. I’m hoping I can do one in October. But if not, I’m sure I will have plenty of opportunities in the spring. Until then, I’ll just keep at my cardio at the gym (the machines don’t bother my foot) and do no-impact stuff. At least with every delay of training, there will be less of me to jiggle/bounce as I do run 🙂

Sometimes there is not much to say ~ Dave

So I think I blew my new post wad last week.  But honestly there was not much going on this past weekend and so far this week.

I was only down 0.8 pounds, but that is fine as it was still a loss.  The reason being Friday was a party with our of town family and it was all pasta based food and a salad.  I did eat salad!!!  Oddly Rachel did not comment on it since it’s still rare for me to eat one.

So Saturday was weigh in and Rachel had a bridal shower to go to.  I did nothing except watch some TV.  It was kind of nice but it was not a Saturday as we did not have date morning.

Sunday I jumped on the scale and dropped the 2 pounds I should have on Saturday.  Damn pasta!!!!

The week has been quiet thus far which is good.  Rachel goes out of town tomorrow so that means it’s just me and the pups.  It also means no date Saturday again as she will not be back until after 7pm.  But it’s all good because our vacation is right around the corner.

The week in workouts ~ Dave

Not sure if this will be a regular thing or not.  But will do it at least this week.

Monday:
30 minutes on the stationary bike with 8 pound medicine ball lifts
3 laps around outside of building at work for 1 mile

Tuesday:
2 laps around the building at work for about 2/3 mile
30 minutes on stationary bike with 8 pound medicine ball lifts
3 sets 20 reps leg press @ 250 lbs
30 minutes track time (2 laps jogging, 2 laps walking intervals)

Wednesday:
2 laps around outside of building for about 2/3 mile
5 minutes warmup on spin bike
5 exercises on tabata intervals:
Rope throws
Squat thrusts
Step ups
Kettlebell swings
Russian twists

Thursday:
2 laps around outside of building at work for about 2/3 mile
30 minutes stationary bike at full throttle
20 minutes track time (2 laps jogging, 2 laps walking intervals)

Friday:
15 minutes stationary bike at full throttle
15 minutes track time (2 laps jogging, 2 laps walking intervals)
15 minutes on spin bike

Rachel joined me at the gym on Friday for the workout except she did 15 arc trainer, the track for 15 and 15 on stationary bike.  Then while I showered she did some leg stuff to try and help her knee.  She can be a big wuss, but I love her and she did awesome!!!!  I was very proud of her for keeping up.

What I Eat ~ Rachel

Since my last post was about chocolate and bacon, I thought it would be good to have a reality check. I don’t eat like that too often. My day-to-day menu is quite boring, actually, but it’s healthy and filling and easy. Lately, this is what I eat:

Breakfast: 2 egg whites, 1 egg, 1oz of lean breakfast meat (bacon or sausage) or 1.5c of mushrooms, 1 slice of whole wheat toast, and 1/2Tbsp of either butter or peanut butter.

There is also always coffee or tea with some half & half. I can’t get through a day without my hot beverages. I don’t need the caffeine…I just really like my hot beverages 🙂

Mid-morning snack: light string cheese, 1.5c fruit (today was watermelon)

Lunch: Chicken salad in a high-fiber tortilla wrap…the chicken salad is 1.5oz of white meat, 1.5oz dark meat, a handful of chopped green peppers or cucumber, a hefty sprinkle of cinnamon, and 1Tbsp mayonnaise (full-fat Hellman’s) plus 1.5c of fruit (today was cantaloupe).  I always buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store on Sunday and pull it all apart so I just have to weigh 3oz out when it’s time to make my lunch! It’s super easy, and it’s only $5 for the chicken, which will feed me the entire week.

Afternoon snack: More fruit (today was 2 peaches) and a yogurt. I’ll write a whole separate post about my favorite yogurts some other time.

Dinner: I work (3) 10-hour days and commute 1.5 hours total each day…so, since cooking dinner and eating at a reasonable hour is impossible, I have to precook and plan easy foods. There is always a taco night…I cook the taco meat on Monday or Tuesday night and we usually eat it Wednesday or Thursday night. There are always two “cupcake” nights…If you don’t know about Emily Bites’ Cupcakes, you should click on that link immediately for an example. I make 12 cupcakes on Monday night. Since we each eat 3 cupcakes per meal, that’s two nights of dinner! Friday night is always a very simple protein and veggie since we weigh-in the next morning and don’t want to be laden with sodium. That leaves me 3 nights where I get to actually cook meals and try recipes. I haven’t been too adventurous lately, mostly because of time, but I’m hoping to post more recipes here as I find good ones! I also want to point out that we always have a vegetable with our dinners but we rarely have a starch/grain…we find that we do better in the evenings if we stick to protein and vegetables. Every now and then, we’ll have a little bit of potatoes or rice, and we rarely have pasta, but it’s always a real serving…not a Paul Bunyan serving!

Dessert: I usually have a few points leftover in the evening for “dessert.” Sometimes it’s a beer or glass of mead. Sometimes it’s some sort of ice cream treat or frozen yogurt. We like to have 1/2c of Edy’s Slow Churned Vanilla Bean ice cream topped off with mixed berries that I’ve frozen and then nuke. Sometimes I nuke the fruit too long and the ice cream becomes soft serve. Dave hates it when I do that!

Honestly…I’m happy with all that food. And I have NO IDEA how the hell I ate the portions I used to eat. That 1/2c of ice cream would have been laughed at before…as I shoveled it into my mouth. Now? It still looks kind of pathetic (hey, I love ice cream!) but in a tiny bowl it doesn’t look ridiculous…and when you drown it in berries, it’s downright awesome! And satisfying!

So, that’s kind of a birds’ eye view of my eating habits. I’ll come back another time and tell you all about yogurt. And I promise, I’ll post about real food versus frankenfood. When you start reading food labels, you start going blind! DO you know what propylene glycol is? No? Well, I’ll tell you all about it soon.

 

The Birthday Plague ~Rachel

All of sudden, my husband goes to the gym every day and is posting on our blog way more than I am. He also does laundry, cleans, and empties the dishwasher. Step back, ladies, he’s taken 🙂

And me? Well, I’m still trying to finish my dissertation. I also clean, meal plan, prep lots of food, and cook most of our meals. So there’s that.

Anyways…

My 34th birthday was on Monday. Our good friend (and my former roommate), Mary Beth, came down to Raleigh from Philly for the weekend to celebrate. There was a lot planned. I was even watching my aunt’s dogs while she was at a wedding (in Philly, of all places…small world). I had mapped out the entire weekend so I could have fun, be a good host to Mary Beth, and take good care of Lucky and Twinkle.

What wasn’t planned was me getting the flu. Last week, around this time, I got a sore throat but didn’t think much of it. It was a bit worse on Thursday but I managed to have a nice time at the monthly birthday lunch at work. By 2pm that afternoon, I was a mess. My throat was worse, my head hurt, and I had muscle aches that were actually interrupting my concentration. I left work early that day. By Friday morning, I had a fever of 101.3…my normal temp is somewhere around 97.6 (lower than the average person) so I knew I was really sick. We picked MB up at the airport that night and by the time we got home, I pretty much went to bed, not knowing what the weekend would bring. Well, I was feeling a little better the next morning and seemed to have broke my fever so off we went to Weight Watchers. I was down more than 2lbs…which was shocking to me because the scale at home said something else. The topic of the meeting was “Is it worth the points?” I’ll get back to that in a minute.

I felt human enough to go to dinner that night with our friends Keith and Monica. I did not want to miss my birthday dinner. It was at J Betskis, the German/Polish restaurant in town that is AWESOME! It’s my second favorite restaurant in town. And not only that, the month of July is PIEROGIE-PALOOZA. People, let me explain something here. My maiden name is Italian but I am more Polish than anything…and I have the pierogie gene. Trust me on this.

Well, I think dinner may have had some medicinal properties because I getting better and better by the minute. Dave and I shared the pierogie appetizer, I had the pierogie entree, and the table shared the pierogie dessert. We also shared something else. I’ll get back to that in a minute, too. The appetizer was 3 different pierogies: bbq pork, ox tail, and potato/leek. The ox tail was my favorite…there was a strong cinnamon flavor to it and I’ve been on a cinnamon kick these days. The entree was so complicated that I’m not sure I can even explain it. Let me try…they were stuffed with eggplant, some other vegetable, and quark cheese. On top was an arugula pesto, fresh corn, and some sort of almond puree/sauce. It was really tasty…maybe a little too much going on, but very tasty. It tasted a lot better than it looks:

I “borrowed” this from J Betski’s FB page

The pierogie dessert was pierogie stuffed with swiss chocolate, raspberry something or another, and hazelnut…and it was topped with a raspberry mousse and whipped cream. The entire table shared those, so I had 1/2 of a pierogie. The table also shared this:

I “borrowed” this from the J Betski’s FB page, too

This is the chocolate torte. It is chocolate, sea salt, caramel, and bacon. This is the best dessert I’ve ever had in my life. Grandma, if you are reading this, I’m sorry. Don’t take it personally. Your desserts are right behind it. But LORDY this was a RELIGIOUS experience! And yes, I’ll repeat that for you in case the picture doesn’t speak enough words: CHOCOLATE, SEA SALT, CARAMEL, and BACON!

So…when I said I would “get back to that later,” here it is: My pierogie-palooza, birthday dinner was WORTH EVERY SINGLE POINT.

Of course…I’m now in the red for points this week. I need to earn 5 activity points by Friday to get back in the black. I probably will since we see Dave’s trainer on Friday. But even if I wasn’t, that dinner was worth it. Totally worth it.

Who said you couldn’t enjoy decadent food and lose weight/be healthy? I’ve lost over 46lbs since February…and I did it while enjoying chocolate and bacon 🙂

Links and food and stuff ~ Dave

Hello again!  I am posting twice this week since Rachel can’t seem to get it together long enough to make a post.  She has been rather busy with work and her birthday weekend last week.  And now we are coming into a few weeks of absolute insanity.  It will be interesting to see what our weight loss does these next 4 weeks.

To give you an idea of the insanity:
July 19th – Dinner with Rachel’s family.  Rachel will be making a healthy dish so I will try to stick to that.
July 24 thru 27th – Rachel is out of town for a conference.  This makes me a sad Dave.  Our normal date Saturday will move to Sunday but it will just throw me completely out of whack.  Even the dogs will be a bigger pain than usual.
August 2nd – Beer Bourbon and BBQ festival in Cary, NC.  This will be our second year going and this year we are going with our best friends!!!!!
August 7th thru 17th – Family vacation in West Palm Beach.  We are going with Rachel’s dad and step-family.  It will be nice to just be on vacation and not have to worry about things.  But everyone there except Rachel, her father and myself, have no issues with weight and eat and drink whatever they want.  I get the feeling I will be waking up early daily to run on the beach and  I will be limiting myself to very little eating just to try and balance the higher fat foods out.  We also plan on finding Weight Watcher meetings there so we can go when we need to.

So yeah it will be crazy, but it all ends with a 1.5 week vacation which we desperately need.  Moving along…

So I am an internet addict.  I even play online games like World of Warcraft or Star Wars.  But I find a lot of information on the internet and it and sometimes a lot of support.  Recently though I have found myself on a few subreddits for weight loss.  To explain a subreddit is easy.  Ther eis a website called reddit.com, on this website you can find all sorts of pictures, stories, jokes, you name it.  Now reddit is so huge that it has these pages called subreddits.  Each subreddit is dedicated to a certain topic like weight loss, weird pictures, cute animals and so forth and so on.  (There are some dark places that would scare normal folks and I try to stay out of those.)  But on reddit there is a subreddit called loseit.  I surf there daily, it is a site of inspirational weight loss stories, of people looking for advice or congratulations and everyone is there to help each other.  So not only do I blog now, I also post on loseit!  If you click on the little alien below it will take you to the loseit sureddit.

And finally I want to talk about food, at least one in particular.  But I will get there with a very roundabout story.

So when I started Weight Watchers I was looking for ways to cut down on point usage.  I get a crap ton of points daily.  Weight Watcher points are what we use to count what we eat and how much we should eat.  As a mid-30’s male I get currently 68 points daily, 49 weekly points and I earn points by exercising (I have earned as many as 117 activity points in a week, that’s a lot.)  Well on a typical day I can’t eat 68 points unless I drink a few beers or eat crap like fast food.  (Those that follow us know we have not actually had fast food in about 4 months.  It even smells nasty to me now.)  So those were not really options and I just sucked it up to eating what I could and being healthy.  In doing so I also realized I needed more fiber and could not work out a way to get there and not eat a ton of bread.  That was when we found these little miracles of awesomeness.  (You can click the pic to see all of the products.)

These suckers are full of fiber and make the best sandwiches and tacos I have ever eaten in my life!!!  We find them at Harris Teeter but I am sure other places carry them and they also come in different flavors!  I want to try the Tomato Basil one which Rachel does not know and now she is probably going “WHAT?!” out of sheer shock.

And one last minor Non-scale victory.  Yesterday I busted my butt at the gym.  I did 30 minutes on the stationary bike at a high intensity while lifting a medicine ball above my head over and over for 1 minute intervals.  Then I jogged/walked the track for another 30 minutes alternating 2 laps jogging with 2 laps walking!  Let’s see Rachel top that one!

So that is about it for now.  Maybe one day we will get another post from Rachel, at least I hope so as this is more her blog than mine…

Uh oh! ~Dave

First off Happy Birthday Rachel!

But wait, what’s this?

What is that you say?  Why is there a big 10% image over here?  Because I have now lost 10% of my starting Weight Watchers weight!!!  That’s right as of this past Saturday I have dropped over 36 pounds on Weight Watchers for a grand total of over 70 pounds lost!!  I really don;t have much else to say right now as work is busy and I am also spending a lot of time on the loseit subreddit.  I find it inspirational to read people’s stories.

But I just wanted to stop in, share the good news and thank the Academy and my Mom and Dad and of course God and Charles Darwin and my wife!  Longer post later this week when I have some more time.