I went for Deb's delicious muffins! They came out perfect - go so well with Greek yogurt! The recipe is a part of the 30 Day Reset Plan booklet! Did I mention Deborah Murtagh is quite a cook?
Yes, while on this plan any woman can learn how to cook - because in addition to recipes in the booklet, there are video posts and recipes in Facebook group for the 30 Day Challenge created by Belinda McDonnald - an award winning chef in New Zealand!
Let me tell you about my results for week 3. Day 20: down 5.5lb (or 2.5kg) and less 7.5 inch (or 19.5cm).
This is by no means dramatic and I am not under 200lb yet, but I am moving in
the right direction and there’s definitely less inflammation in my body.
I also have identified emotional reasons for eating sweets and carbs - it is
manifestation of my nostalgia for a feeling of being a little girl who could
have less restrictions (for Russian chocolate candy and cakes mostly), and
aromas of Russian bread products that are also nostalgic triggers.
I am
thankful for gained understanding what a healthy serving size of a meal
actually is and how different foods interact. I am curious to see what results I will have in
10 days and how smaller size clothes will fit.
P.S.
Would be also fun to adjust my Bitmoji below so she looks reflective of a
lighter me😂
Yesterday I went to tint
my eyebrows and eye lashes. My beautician said, that my skin looks so good and
asked me if I was doing something different. So I told her that I am eating
differently. She proceeded talking about the Magic Pill on Netflix and we ended
up agreeing that I will sent her a link to Deborah’s introductory video.
While
saying our goodbyes she said that it might happen that in 4 weeks when I see
her again she might be doing the program. So exciting!!! We shall see how the
fabulous news about treating our bodies to good nutritious food spreads
around.🙂👍🏻
*
Disclaimer: If you click on any of the links in my post and go on a shopping
spree, I will get commission. Just thought it would be fair if you knew. :-)
How Supportive Friends and Relatives Can be of Healthy Way of Eating?
My eating according to Deborah Murtagh's prescription was progressing nicely, including trying out some new recipes. Deborah is quite a cook - she has her own cooking courses on Teachable (check that out)! I am famous with my children only for my cooking and maybe a couple of my girlfriends back in Russia, so to cook Deborah's way I went on Amazon to get these two babies:
Oh, did I mention that downloadable materials for the 30 Day Challenge offer a handful of easy to do recipes? Who knows, maybe I like many women who are taking this challenge together with me will love to cook again - these recipes are so delicious and food looks just gorgeous.
Anyway, back to my own experience with support system, meaning family and friends. I went to visit my daughter and her family at the end of week one of the challenge - 6 hour drive from my place, which I do it every 4 weeks.
But this time it was very special - my granddaughter turned 2 years old on that Sunday, February 9. I was a little concerned as my daughter is married to a Pakistani man (dietary differences with my usual almost Russian way of eating, given I live in Atlanta area), and both of them being very tired as this is their first child, so there’s a pizza and breads in general in their diet in addition to visits to Indian restaurants.
So I took my own food with me, my food scale and Russian celebratory dishes from a local Russian store. Plus two Russian cakes. On Saturday dinner at my in laws for my son in law’s birthday went fine - not crazy reaction to me putting my plate on the scale.
Yesterday was another meal together- at my daughter’s house and in laws came too. No reaction to me refusing enchiladas but they did try to shame me into eating birthday cake -
‘you are not even going to eat cake for your granddaughter’s birthday?’ I said ‘that’s exactly why I brought the cakes, and it’s a real pleasure watching you enjoy my Russian food and cakes too’. I survived!!! No cakes 🎂, just program food!!!!
I started the challenge on February 1st at 206lb. It was the day after colonoscopy, in preparation for which all raw vegetables were removed from my diet on January 24th, with my weight being 208lb. Week one was up and down one pound and on February 10 my weight was 204.5lb.
Week 2 was 0.5lb going up and down and at 205lb day 15 morning. However I noticed that there’s considerably less if any white substance in inner corners of my eyes in the morning and through out the day, as well as my left ankle is less stiff (two surgeries in 2003 and 2004, scar tissue). No excessive gas either.
I was gladly celebrating those changes! The morning of day 16 the scale is at 202.5lb!!!! I hoped 'whoosh' effect was happening but I will take any reduction in my weight. I hope to be under 200lb on day 30, but I am not stopping there, as my long term weight goal 154lb. The women in 30 day challenge Facebook group celebrated great work our bodies are doing together with me and generously commented and liked my post!!!
* Disclaimer: If you click on any of the links in my post and go on a shopping spree, I will get commission. Just thought it would be fair if you knew. :-)
I tried to do keto or simply no carbs no sugar for a year without systematic method developed by a professional, just reading online and getting confused by having to meet macros.
Started at 212lb on January 1, 2019 and got down to 200.5lb by mid June, but this was a very stressful year in family life and at work and I found myself being very discouraged by not getting into ‘onederland’ (below 200lb that is) and slowly but surely giving into cravings and scale being at 209 by the end of January 2020 (hence a year old pictures - just 3lb shy of starting weight a year ago), when I noticed a post with Deborah’s video shared by a friend of mine in my Facebook news feed.
These are the materials I downloaded once I signed up, but wait, there is more! For women who signed up for 30 day challenge Deborah and a group of her volunteers (customer service, practically, all of them went through the challenge and the 8 weeks program to beat menopausal weight gain) run on Facebook! There were over 10K of us for February 2020 (the pic if from a couple days after the challenge was over and some of of the members were already removed from the group).! What a great community of supportive compassionate women!
On day 4 I was down 1.5 lb from day 1, but I started a day after colonoscopy, so some accumulation of waste in the gut is expected which slows the scale down. Besides, I am 59 years old, which presents its own challenge regarding weight loss. So being realistic I hoped to arrive well into ‘onederland’ by day 30. Every mouthful is an act of self love!
I signed up for the program 4 days before my colonoscopy and 5 days before February 1st. Since I had to be on liquids only on January 30, I cooked broth from bones (see pic).
I used the leftover of that broth to cook soup from the print out, without meat and actually ended up with stewed vegetables rather than soup. I decided to use them as side dish for my meats.
I couldn’t have any fiber (read ‘free vegetables’) because my doctor had removed a couple of polyps and my gut needs to heal. I happily divided my veggies to trays so I don’t have to keep the pot in the fridge.
After I had a serving of veggies and meatloaf while watching Super Bowl I realized that I have no clue how much my veggies weighed. Came to 30 day challenge Facebook group and read again and again that ‘following instructions exactly’ means that I am supposed to eat exactly amounts of food listed in the booklet and not guess.
Makes sense - if we go to any doctor and get a prescription, we don't attempt to modify it, do we? NO, we follow it to the 't', of course. Eating right is no different. No worries, it was only day 3 for me, so Amazon I went and got myself a digital scale!!! So excited!
My lunch, snacks, and dinner got measured to the ‘t’. Amount of veggies looks like no more than 3 tablespoons, just the right measure of meat - on a plate that is 8.5 inch (or 21cm) in diameter. Berries and pineapple together make one serving of fruit, and Greek yogurt - one fat serving. I actually like measuring my food!
Oh, the scale is tiny- the size of my iPad mini. I just put it on the shelf with cookbooks. I planned taking to take my food and scales with me when I went to North Carolina for my granddaughter’s birthday the weekend of my first week of 30 day challenge!
* Disclaimer: If you click on any of the links in my post and go on a shopping spree, I will get commission. Just thought it would be fair if you knew. :-)
What would one consider a success in regard to weight loss? Well, it depends.
Back in July – August 2014 when I was still trying to cut all ties to my 3rd ex (hence the name of the blog) he got on a meal replacement shakes protocol to get rid of a considerable amount of weight. He was very enthusiastic about it but did not impress me.
In 2010 when we were dating he lost about 110 lb in short 4 months, only to gain it all back shortly after we got married that year. He encouraged me to contact his cousin who was doing direct selling of the product for this meal replacement protocol in one of those MLM businesses, where majority of distributors lose money.
I was not interested in selling anything but decided to give this protocol a go just for the heck of it. Even though I could not imagine drinking shakes instead of cooking and eating meals, the idea played well into my absence of desire to cook. I lived alone at that time, so no one but me depended on me cooking or not.
Obviously, I won that argument with myself, and after 30 days of doing shakes twice a day and having one regular healthy meal within 600 calories I lost 14 lb!!! This never happened to me before.
Needless to say, I was convinced and carried on for about a year, until a lot of circumstances in my life changed, including my son moving back in with me. Here are my results – pictures are worth a thousand words. Even though I was 18 lb away from my ideal healthy weight, I considered what I’d achieved a success in releasing my menopausal weight gain!
The changes in circumstances in my life which I mentioned earlier were super good ones, as well as super bad ones, also those that looked like a catastrophe at the first glance but later turned out to be really good ones.
They lead to 'let’s eat some Russian candy to celebrate'! Or 'let’s drink some Merlot with chocolate covered fruit from Walmart and watch Netflix to relax after a very stressful work day and to cope with loss and grief from shocking decisions my loved ones make'!
How do you think this turned out? Yep, slowly but surely, though not all of those 53 lb, but 75% came back – here are my pictures at 212 lb on January 1, 2019.
Did I mention that even when I started with meal replacement shakes I knew that way of eating was not sustainable? Well, I quit the shakes altogether finally in December 2019, when after losing about 12 lb in a year through combining shakes and whatever knowledge about keto diet I could master from the internet and Facebook, I got almost all of it back again.
My weight on January 1, 2020 was 207.7 lb.
You guessed it right – new year, and new resolutions. Then on January 5th father of my children died at 59 years of age from heart failure. I did not know that he had heart problems, so this was completely out of the blue for me. I am not a blood relative obviously, but he was two months younger than me…
I divorced him almost 30 years ago (read he was not any part of my life for that long), and his passing caused a lot of fresh pain and sorrow on top of old pain and sorrow. A couple more deaths happened around me in December and January, and my colonoscopy was scheduled for January 31st 2020. All of this put me into very reflective state of mind.
That is when I noticed a post on Facebook from my dear friend who had spent two years as a missionary in my city of origin back in Russia. I know her to be an honest and trustworthy person, so I clicked on the link to a video and could not stop watching till the end – about 40 minutes or so.
The woman with an accent I did not know was talking about insulin resistance and other health problems caused by excess weight, due to menopausal weight gain. At the end she invited any woman who wanted to change her health and life for the better to join her in '30 days one dress size challenge' – and I did!
She offers this program twice a year, so if you clicked on the picture above, you will get to her main program – 8 weeks program to beat menopausal weight gain. But here’s that video that I watched and was completely sold on.
* Disclaimer: If you click on any of the links in my post and go on a shopping spree, I will get commission. Just thought it would be fair if you knew. :-)
