Trying to go Vegetarian a Few Days a Week!

At WW this past weekend, our leader talked at length about trying to go vegetarian for at least ONE day a week.  Surprisingly, when she asked how many of us have never went vegetarian for an entire day only about 3 of us raised our hands.  Maybe the people not raising their hands were just as shocked at the few of us that hadn't tried it!  Our leader also said that WW healthy guidelines only suggest 2 servings of protein a day.  Funny because I've thought I was supposed to have one at EVERY meal and most of the time with a snack too. Yikes! 

Well, I'm a meat cutters daughter.  My dad has been a butcher since I was born and is well known where I live for being a butcher.  I grew up eating steak and prime rib on a regular basis.  In 5th grade, we ate out 5-6 dinners a week and what did I order?  A t-bone steak, baked potato with ranch dressing on it, dinner salad with ranch and croutons and cheese, and texas toast.  WTH?  Yeah, I gained over 30 pounds in less than 9 months.  And obviously I'm still bitter that my parents even LET me do that (and this was the year that after school snacks were peanut buster parfaits from DQ or McDonald's french fries or a crisp meat burrito from Taco Time).  That was a bad, bad year.  And I promise I will never allow my kids to eat that way EVER.  Anyways, sidetracked, but that was definitely what spiraled into 20 years of bad eating habits and obesity.

Every week when I plan our dinners, I grab my meat recipes I want to use that week and then decide on side dishes.  But it always starts with the meat selection, always.  One thing I know about vegetarian meals is they can be equally unhealthy if you are eating a ton of white carbs and cheese and fats so I didn't want to be tempted to do that and I just am not a fan of ground meats or substitutes like morningstar crumbles, I'd rather just leave the meat out all together.

So today I will be making my favorite pasta dish without the turkey sausage and substituting whole wheat pasta.  Tomorrow we will have Boca Burgers for dinner with sweet potato fries. I actually really like the Boca burgers but I've only prepared them for a quick lunch, so fingers crossed my kids enjoy them too as a dinner. 

At lunch today instead of having a turkey sandwich I had just a veggie sandwich and a bowl of my homemade tomato basil soup and it was really good but I had no protein at lunch.

I haven't been blogging much this past month and part of it is I've done some really dumb things as far as my weight loss (eating two cupcakes a day, defrosted my last box of Samoa cookies and ate 5 yesterday, defrosted my leftover raspberry cheesecakes and ate several) and I haven't seen the gym in weeks either.  I've been losing and gaining the same couple pounds for nearly 3 months so I decided to look for inspiration on the internet, someone that was inspiring and I found two great blogs, priorfatgirl.com and dashingdish.com!   Check them out if you aren't already familiar with them and as soon as my weight loss starts moving in the right direction again, I'll be back!

Favorite Things for August

Here are some of my new favorites, enjoy!

Favorite New Blog: Styleberryblog.com
Shawna is a super mom that is a photographer, home stager, super organized, party planner, cloth diapering, baby food making lady and she just is now pregnant with baby #2 after some infertility struggles.  Check her out!

Favorite New Cupcake: Annie's Eats Red Velvet Cupcakes
OMG, so divine I even ate 2 on Monday:(  And then I decided for kicks to throw the recipe into Weight Watchers recipe and it spit out a big 12 points a piece (my batch made 18 cupcakes)!  But worth it, I need to go trash the last 10 I have because they are not diet worthy:)

Favorite New Office Accessory: Rag Bone Bindery According Photo Book

I saw this in the Oprah magazine and I love it!  It now sits on my desk and motivates me to work hard to give my kids financial stability:)

Favorite New Drink: The Pioneer Woman's Iced Coffee

To die for!  So cheap to make!  A few of my friends said the recipe looks too complicated, huh?  You dump ground coffee into a container with cold water, let it soak for 8 hours, strain through to a pitcher.  Seriously, it takes less time than a trip through the Starbucks drive through and now I save $4.65 each time!

When someone tells you their struggle with infertility and PCOS, what advice do you offer?

I read an article a few minutes back in one of my magazines about people who are always offering up advice when sometimes the person on the other end is just venting or isn't wanting advice.  Sometimes I'm guilt of that and especially when it comes to infertility and PCOS.  If my friends even begin to mention it's been X number of months of trying and they still aren't pregnant I want to start shooting off questions

It's been a while! Oops!

Work is busy, busy!  Which is AWESOME!  I'm very proud of myself for having as much sales in 5 weeks as I did the first 6 months combined this year.........and can you believe I did that working from home!?  I officially gave up my office and moved everything out by the end of July and it feels really great.  My head is finally clear and I can focus on what has to get done each day instead of dreading stepping foot in the office.

One little hiccup I'm experiencing is my husband's giving me guilt trips when he is off work (aka basically laid off for a week or so at a time)

Dueling Ducks? Potty Training a 1 and 2 year old Simulataneously!

Oh yes, potty training not just 1 kid, but 2...at the same time.  We first bought a singing potty, what the heck was I thinking?  Instead of going potty, they played with the fake handle, the toilet seat lid, the little cover that you can flip down so boys don't pee everywhere and basically anything else but sit on it and go potty!!  Then I saw the Baby Bjorn pottys but at $31.99 a piece at Target, I quickly scanned the aisle for the cheap ones.  $15.99 a piece and ladies and gentlemen.........

Recipe Review: Winners and Losers for last week!

I'm on a cooking binge this last week and it looks like it's going to continue this week also.  I love cooking from scratch and I love trying new things and I found a few winners this week!

Weekly Weight Watchers Weigh In: Yay, a good loss!

Don't get too excited, it was 1.2 lbs, but for me, that is AWESOME!  I went to the gym twice and on Friday I had planned on doing an hour and a half hike with Dylan in the Ergo.....well trying to strap a 28 pound tall toddler in that thing is tough.  I couldn't do it.  He looked content but the strap that goes around your waist area pretty much squeezed through all my fat like it was trying to slice me in 2!  I need to order the Ergo extender but still, that much weight pulling on the belt, so not comfortable.  I guess it's time to save up for a hiking pack from REI before we miss out on the rest of the summer hikes.  So anyways, we headed to the zoo and I pushed my Bob stroller around for about an hour.

I read a client's sister's gastric bypass blog this weekend and she mentioned how she had to have the surgery because she had PCOS and it made it impossible to lose weight and now she is 320 lbs.