Katie: Week 39

I remembered!...

Current weight: 131 pounds
Last week's weight: 132 pounds
Total weight loss: 39 pounds

Okay, so "Last week's weight" actually means my weight from two weeks ago.  Sorry I skipped last week!  It was a super busy day and I kept remembering to post and then forgetting and then right after we turned off the computer that night I remembered again that I was supposed to post.  Then of course I had every intention of posting the next day, but it just didn't happen.  Last week was a little crazy!

My husband is in the process of interviewing at optometry schools.  So last week on Wednesday we stayed up until 1:30am packing and then at 4:00am Thursday morning we left to get on an airplane and go out to a school interview.  So, yeah, Emily is totally right that it's been a little slow around here and I am totally to blame.  But things in my life and at my house haven't been slow at all!

And do you know what all this busyness and life-planning means?  Stress eating.  And lots of snacking.  So I was delightfully surprised to see the scale greet me with a lovely little 131 this morning.  It was a very nice surprise.  Because when we got home from the airport on Sunday night I weighed myself and came out at 135.  Gah.  Anyway, it's nice to weigh 131, but I don't know that I've really earned it.  But I like it, so now I've got to try and not go backwards again.  And I know you're probably all thinking, "Why would you be going backwards?  You're home from your trip now.  You can get back into your regular routine."  Well, that's the thing.  We just finished one of three of these school visits.  As in, we still have two more ahead of us.  And we haven't said yet in blogland where these interviews are, but let me just say that a couple of them live in the land of really good barbecue and if you think a weight loss goal is enough to keep us from trying a plate of that, you had better think again.  Anyway, so I've been pretty busy and stressed about all that lately.  Although, now that we have the first trip finished, I don't feel nearly as stressed about our next one since we have some sort of idea of what these trips will be like now.

Moving on...

This is totally unrelated to all that, but can I ask your opinion(s) on home-cooked meals?  See, here's the thing.  Bryan and I always eat food at dinner time, but usually we don't really "make dinner."


At the playground yesterday:
Mom #1: What're you guys making for dinner?
Mom #2: Cooked barley with vegetables.
Me: Nothing.

It's true.  We never make dinner!  Usually we end up thinking of some quick thing to make or we just have sandwiches or a salad or a bowl of cereal or something.  Mostly this is just because I'm lazy.  And also because I have yet to find the balance between making the dinners I grew up making (which made enough for about seven people) and making dinner for just the two of us and my tiny little one year old.  It's nice to have real meals, but sometimes it seems like kind of a waste of time and food and money to make a whole meal that usually ends up going moldy before we can finish the left overs.

(Enter twenty people telling me to freeze leftovers.)

Well, our freezer is pretty full as it is.  So we might do this sometimes, but this is not really my point in mentioning all this anyway.  So I'll keep moving on to my point.

The week or so before we left on our trip I got tired of the regular last-minute something to eat and decided we should plan actual meals to make and eat.  And we did.  And they were delicious.  And I gained at least a few pounds.  Really?  I gained weight on real food?  How disappointing!  Isn't "real" food supposed to be healthier?

Well, I know that pasta and muffins and things tend to have a lot of calories.  So it makes sense to me, but I was pretty disappointed that my homemaking goal was making me digress from my weight loss goal.  Anyway, it seems (for me at least) that things always come back to the struggle between finding good healthy nutrient-rich food that's yummy and that actually fills me up instead of just eating low-calorie food that fills me up, but doesn't have all the nutrients and vitamins I need.  Any thoughts?