TT Thursday : Week 11 Weight Loss Challenge and Watermelon Fruit Salad, HW coach’s advice

TT Thursday : Week 11 Weight Loss Challenge and Watermelon Fruit Salad, HW coach’s advice

Yay!  I lost three pounds and am off the plateau.  I am very happy with my weight loss this week. Last week I was 233.7 and this week I am 230.5. I can’t claim to be totally good as this week was my birthday and I ordered a tiramisu to celebrate.  I did fast for one day (by accident.  I forgot to eat!  I never forget to eat.) and that started the fat cells popping again.

I promised that this week I’d give you some useful things so I hope this helps.

As you know, since I completed one 6% challenge on HealthyWage, I have started a new one, Going for Goal Jackpot Challenge, and Kate M. is the coach again.  Start weight is 233.7 and goal weight is 219.7.  This challege is a bit different than the last one because HealthyWage is being much more proactive in help you lose weight sending little emails giving suggestions for setting goals. Kate is once again giving some good and some fun suggestions.  She suggested a watermelon pizza!  So I went browsing to find some.  I found it’s apparently a thing now including sites that rant about it not being a pizza, lol.  Duh!

Watermelon Fruit Pizza from Six Sisters’ Stuff Grilled Watermelon Pizza from MyRecipes Vegan Watermelon Pizza Dessert from the Cookie Writer

And for fun, on the Rachel Ray show, they made a mini Watermelon grill  (so cute! — great for kids and parties)

What’s your Daily Food Plan?

Before the challenge even started Kate asked us to state our Food Plan whether Keto or Vegan or whatever and then to write out daily food goal. Then put it somewhere you will see it frequently.  Your goals may look different than someone else’s as someone use a point program like in Weight Watchers.  Other people depend on the type of diet they’ve chosen like going Vegan would mean quitting meat.  You should make the goal specific to you and not just something on a list.

  • Write three (or whatever) daily food goals
  • Post them where you can see them (on the refrigerator,  a post it on your computer, etc)
  • Do them

My three goals

  • No soda and lattes only once a week
  • Cook or make something vegetarian at least once a week  (this means a cookbook or class or video as I’m not much of one to make something with vegetables.  More of a throw the meat into the frying pan or oven kind of a person
  • Make my own smoothies or lemonades rather than buying lemonade or juice from the store. Experiment with ways to make them without sugar or sugar substitutes.

On a later date, HealthyWage suggested setting a 2% weight loss date.  I put that under my goals.  That means I have to be 229 by 8/30/18.  Actually I’m hoping to be there a mite sooner like by Sunday.

Raid your Pantry

So on this HealthyWage challenge, they sent me an email asking me to raid my pantry — find all your snacks (cookies, chips, whatever), read the package for the serving size and then rebag them into serving sizes.  So if your serving size says 7 raisins, then that’s what you put into the bag.  That way you will have serving sizes available when you’re feeling peckish instead of eating the whole container.  However, since this is my second challenge, on the first challenge I stopped buying snacks so I don’t have any.  Well except for that giant bag of dark chocolate bark that Sumiko bought me.  It’s in the freezer and hopefully will remain there…. dun dun dun ….

  • Find all your snacks
  • Read their package for single serving quantity
  • Divide the snack into small packages containing only one single serving

Breakfast

One of the goals HealthyWage wanted us to do was breakfast everyday and they suggested reading the article, The Science Behind Breakfast.  However, breakfast is just not one of the meals I eat regularly.  Studies on breakfast and mental acuity/memory have been split, some showing a breakfast advantage and some showing it doesn’t matter whether you eat breakfast or not according to The Effects of Breakfast and Breakfast Composition on Cognition in Adults. I don’t even like mornings.  I like omelettes but it’s more of a brunch thing for me …. ok, I admit it.  I eat omelettes at lunch.  I like them.  Who wants to waste food on sleepy taste buds before you’re even alive?  Although a nice slice of pie is good for breakfast.  Or a double chocolate muffin.  Or a brownie.  All washed down with a milky coffee.  hmmmm.  Now you see why I don’t eat breakfast while I’m off of carbs.  Ok, suggestions for healthy breakfasts are .   No granolat bars:  If you’re making your own granola bars, that’s one thing.  But if you’re buying them, they are overloaded with sugar — real fruit is better if you need the sugar hit.

Healthy Breakfasts

Do Don’t
  • eggs
  • whole-grain breads or cereals
  • 2T of peanut butter or other butter
  • fruit
  • yogurt
  • smoothies
  • orange juice
  • coffee
  • granola bars
  • bacon
  • hash browns
  • sausages
  • biscuits and gravy
  • processed cheeses
  • pies
  • muffins
  • drench anything with syrup, honey or sugar

 

They also wanted us to share some pics like where we post our goals, where we have our scale, and before pics to go with our after.  I did take a before pic but I’m not showing anyone — not even after.  It’s just for myself. And most recently the latest goal is to set up a tracking system to track your weight, your food and your exercise.  I watch all that but i don’t write it down.  Thinks about it.  I started to but I found the weekly blogging helps me keep track.  More than anything you guys keep me on the up and up.

I hope today you found something useful.  Let me know what kind of information you like in regards to weight loss, food or something like that and I’ll see what I can find on it.

It’s close to midnight so I’ll wrap things up as I want to finish on time today.  Once again I am doing good on the smaller 6% goal and I am still playing catch up on the big goal for 65 pounds loss — that last plateau cost me so I am running to catch up.  I am ok though as I’m pleased with the way things are going.

 

 

The Science Behind Breakfast
Rush University Medical Center

The Effects of Breakfast and Breakfast Composition on Cognition in Adults
Rachel Galioto and Mary Beth Spitznagel, Advances in Nutrition, 2016 May; 7(3): 576S–589S
a literature review of many breakfast studies

HealthyWage Disclosure: I generally sign up as an affiliate for things whenever I can.  I am signed up as a HealthyWage affiliate.  If you join through the links above, I’ll get a commission.  However, they also have a friends link, if you join up by clicking this friends link, it adds a $40 to your HealthyWager award if you complete your goal and $40 to my HealthyWager award if I complete my goal.  We don’t get the $40 if we fail.  I think the $40 is for HealthyWager challenges only and not the other ones like the 6% individual challenge or the team challenge. The HealthyWage affiliate link doesn’t matter if anyone succeeds but there is no benefit for the friend, just for the affiliate no matter what kind of challenge they join. I think joining through the friends link also lets you view your friend on the dashboard: you’ll see their name and what % they’ve lost so far but not the actual weight.  That’s private unless you make it public.  So far I have earned $0 commissions and no one has joined on as a friend.  If I do earn anything, I’ll post it just so you know.

10 Replies to “TT Thursday : Week 11 Weight Loss Challenge and Watermelon Fruit Salad, HW coach’s advice”

  1. Way to go. I’m so proud of you. You’re staying focused and on track. Not easy to do.

    Lots of great tips in the post of what to and what not to do.

    Have a fabulous day and weekend. ♥

  2. What??? No bacon??? Haha. I hear ya. I am more of a coffee with excess amounts of creamer for breakfast type person. If you look at the label the stuff is full of empty calories. And then I eat brunch around eleven. Now watermelon pizza – that’s a great idea (thank you!) Hope you had a fabulous birthday! Cheers to progress!

    1. Thank you for the birthday wishes! Yeah, I’m also a little coffee in my milk — in Japan, they actually sold that as coffee milk and you could get it anywhere — although it was very sweet. I don’t really do sugar in my coffee. I like creamers though because they have all those flavorings like Hazelnut. So cool. If you make a watermelon pizza, take a snap — would love to see it.

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