Evaluation

It 's been going on for about a month now: exercise six days a week, every early morning, starting at 5-ish.
We have a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, a little sugar, some milk, usually a cup of coffee or two.
Oatmeal is for our cholesterol count; it's not a diet item. On the weekends we have veggie omelets. Delicious!

Lunch usually consists of either a cup of soup, a multi-vegetable mixture topped with red wine vinegar or a spoonful of dressing, a sandwich on ww bread, or some grilled chicken or turkey breast -- or a duo-combo thereof. If there is cake or cookies in the teacher's lounge, I'll take a tiny piece but that is very, very rare. Sweets are not my downfall.

I even make the soup. Lean cut beef in the slow cooker with fresh veggies for vegetable soup, chili with turkey meat and fresh tomatoes and red, green, and yellow peppers.

Weekly I prepare a vegetable tray with peppers, squash, cucumbers, green onions sometimes, broccoli, cauliflower, grape tomatoes, black olives, banana peppers, and a bed of greens -- spinach and romaine.

Snack often is an apple, sometimes with peanut butter. Sometimes I have a banana or an orange or a half PB sandwich. During the day, I snack on a 1/4 cup portion of protein trail mix, mainly nuts and seeds.

Black coffee, unsweetened tea, quarts of water...
At night hot green tea, occasionally a glass of red wine.

Food selections and portion control seem pretty good so far. Sounds good, huh?

But I'm thinking I get in trouble at suppertime. Everything is early, earlier and earliest, so by the time school is out, I am hungry. Hungry! If we go get pizza, I eat a half (a small pizza at App's is not really small.) If we have tacos, I have five of them. And a diet Pepsi.

Okay, I cook. If we have spaghetti, I have two plates, with cheese and butter, a little sauce. If chicken and noodles are on the menu, I have seconds, mainly because of the noodles. I love any pasta, noodles - packaged or homemade, rice, bread, and French bread is the treat of all treats! Chinese food, have to sample so many dishes! I roast potatoes with olive oil to make "fake" french fries. I whip potatoes with skim milk. Broccoli with a little fake butter, sauteed squash in sesame oil, plain green beans, corn, snow peas, steamed carrots..... stuff like that.

Later snacks can be popcorn (with salt) or once in awhile a trip to the DQ for a small vanilla frozen custard. I eat the cone. Of course.

I have not lost any weight, well, maybe one pound or two, so my lack of weight loss has to be due to the portion sizes in the evening.

So, for this week, I am making a concerted effort to minimize suppertime dishes and servings.
One serving.
Only.
No late snacking.
A little experiment to see if that makes a difference on the scales.

Next week I might try cutting way back on ... salt. Well, maybe not.

Yay, Patty!
You can do it!