At 42 years old.

Here’s what you should know…

First, I’m overweight.  I’ve struggled with it for a while, but like most ‘fat people that can’t lose weight’, I haven’t really cared.  Sure, I get winded walking up and down stairs.  I struggle with touching my toes.  Carrying around a couple hundred pounds is indeed exhausting, not to mention adding my kids to that, too.

But, society tells me, be happy, right? Or…

You only live once. Or…

It’s a sign of a good marriage that you’re fat and happy..it means you love each other for the inside and aren’t superficial. Or…

All food that tastes good is unhealthy. Or…

Food that is good for you is expensive…and tastes like…well, vegetables.  Or…

Diet plans are expensive.  Or…

Packaged meals don’t lead to success.  Or…

You are what you eat.  Or…

You won’t succeed.  Or…

What happens when you start eating real food again? Or…Or…Or…

Y’all, the list goes on.  And on.  And on.  And on…

So, I happily begrudgingly agreed to go on this plan with her.  She needs to be healthier, she said, and quite honestly, I want to live to be 100 so I can see my kids babies since we waited so long to have children.

I’m going to review it.  Honestly.  I should have started yesterday since I started the diet yesterday, but I didn’t.  So, hindsight is 20/20.

I’ll stick to reviewing a day behind for now and give you a day by day update.

***

I got my box on Saturday and it came two boxes.  A cardboard box for shelf foods and a chest for frozen.  I took the chest to my moms because I knew our kiddos had music lessons and we had more stuff to do.  We picked it up Saturday night and then I dropped the contents in my deep freeze outside.  I put the cardboard box in the house.  I would deal with that Sunday.

Sunday, I got up, ate as much bad food as I could because…what’s one more day?  (Don’t look at me like that, you do it too.) . I unpacked my box and my heart stopped.  Nutrisystem can’t pack.  I knew it.  This food was gonna be horrid.  Y’all, they put FROZEN stuff in the cardboard box.  I looked all over the box and could not find a ‘From Frozen’ direction or ‘Keep Refrigerated.’  Which concerned me.  I avoid shelf-stable items like the heavy stews with sodium because even though I eat bad, I don’t like foods that don’t have an expiration date and could more likely be referred to as MRE’s.  Something about eating those without the fancy little MRE toilet tissue tells me I’m going to be cruising for a bruising later…if you know what I mean.

I picked up the phone. I almost started with “Umm, you sent me frozen food in a non-frozen box to save money and now you get to re-ship it…” but I didn’t.  Because something inside of me said that would be dumb.  Glad I didn’t.  Because those 6 or so items I got in that box are shelf stable.  Lasagna, a cheeze pizza, and two other bags of food that literally felt squishy and like what would be in my child’s diaper when they were younger.

But…then comes Monday.

I woke up, determined.  I weighed myself.  It was Monday.  I was going to own it.  And here goes, for the whole WIDE world to see.  225 pounds y’all.  225 pounds is 5 pounds less than when I was pregnant with my daughter.  8 months pregnant.  I’ve had 2 c-sections and my stomach never fixed itself back.  I’ve compounded this problem with my food and soda addiction.  I’m a Texas girl.  I eat Chick-Fil-A and drink Dr. Pepper and Sweet Tea as if it’s the only menu options.  I love my Whataburger. I eat tacos.  I love red meat.  I love all things white.

Step 1 is all about admitting it.  So there it is.

Monday’s breakfast was the cinnamon streusel muffin.  Let me stop you here and explain to you something before I get into this review.

Normally, my mornings have had a very consistent schedule.  I get up, get the kids out the door and drop them off at school.  I stop at one of three places:

Chick-Fil-A:  I order two breakfast fillets, a large vanilla iced coffee, and a large sweet iced tea (for me to have for the rest of the day).

Starbucks:  I order a Bacon/Gouda breakfast sandwich with a Venti or Grande White Chocolate Mocha.

Scooters: I order a bacon breakfast sandwich and a medium or large Caramelicious.

See a trend here?  I love my coffee.  Not normal black-coffee.  I love my little bit of coffee and a large amount of sugar/cream coffee.  I also love my sandwiches and meat.

Okay, now that you have that visual of my normal schedule…back to my muffin.

 I opened my muffin and nearly cried.  I’m a big girl y’all and this muffin made me sad.  Have you ever seen one of those little mini cupcakes?  This thing is about 1 1/2 of those.  I immediately thought to myself:

This is NO WAY to start Monday.  I’m going to starve. No wonder I’m going to lose weight.  They aren’t going to feed me!  But…that said, let me reassure you…it didn’t taste bad! I was surprised that it actually tasted good, given it probably has the shelf-life of a Twinkie.  It was a little dense and slightly dry, but shockingly, I wasn’t starving after.

I forgot my water out the door – and my veggies, so I stopped at RaceTrac and picked up a 32 oz. bottle of water and a small cup of coffee and used about 2 tbsp of half and half (and no sugar).  Yeah, I died a little that it wasn’t sweet like I like, but it wasn’t terrible!

Snack-time came around and I was supposed to drink a shake.  8 oz. of water and 4 oz. of ice.  I made it and drank it and it wasn’t terrible, either. These shakes are actually pretty good. I didn’t like mixing it with ice. I would have preferred to blend that, but it was manageable.  And the chocolate is actually pretty good.  If you’re nervous with shakes, this isn’t a bad option.  These don’t have a weird smell and they are decently filling.

I continued to drink water (Nutrisystem requires 64 oz. a day) and I usually drink more than this, but it’s usually in sodas, so I continued to drink water…and pee.  (Lots of pee’ing y’all.)

Lunch came around and I had a chicken noodle soup option.  Taste wasn’t bad, it was tolerable.  It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad and thankfully it was about 8 oz (the size of a 1 cup measuring cup for perspective), so I didn’t have to eat too much of it.  But, the size DID intimidate me because I kept thinking I needed more food than this.  I got through it and was surprised to find I wasn’t hungry.  However, if I would have had my veggies, I think I would have been more satisfied.  I’m not much of a veggie person, so I was looking for simple.  Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and baby carrots.  Baby steps, ya’ll.  More water, more water.

Snack in the afternoon was the chocolately pretzel bar.  I liked this one. It reminds me of those little Star Crunch Little Debbie cakes you had as a kid.  It was surprisingly filling which I felt was good because I was worried about making it to dinner.  Again, keep in mind I forgot my veggies. 🙂

The drive home started and by the time I got to my half-way point…

I.

Was.

Starving.

I stopped and got a spaghetti squash (and may have debated eating it raw in the car) and some baby carrots.  I ripped open the bag of baby carrots in the car and started going to town.  I was hungry by this point.  After a cup of those, I was fine (and didn’t want any more).

Dinner came for the kids and I made them their cauliflower pizza (which I debated sneaking a slice) and then warmed up my BBQ Seasoned Chicken.  This was one of those MRE items in a bag that it just meat and you’re supposed to add a multi-grain roll to it.  I didn’t have one of those, so I cooked some spaghetti squash and ate half a cup of that and then proceeded to eat the chicken.

Never.

Again.

This one sucked.  It probably would have been better had I eaten with a roll.  It was VERY flavorful, but almost too tangy.  It needed something to cut it.  And, I needed like half of that.  So, I ate half and decided to take that off my list for the future.  Like…forever.

I got more water than I needed for the day and I missed two whole vegetables.  I walked ~7,000 steps for the day, too.

I’m excited to see how tomorrow will go.  I’ll give you a review of the food tomorrow and where I’m at with weight and overall feelings!