Week 9 Results

Another week, more results! Today's results are very odd. See for yourself:

Katie

Current Weight: -23.4 lbs. (This week: -1.4 lbs.)

Tony

Current Weight: -30.8 lbs. (This week: -7.4 lbs.)

Yes, you read that correctly. According to our scale, Tony lost 7.4 lbs this week. He weighed himself multiple times to make sure the scale didn't go crazy on him. Don't ask us how Tony lost so much weight; we have no idea. Perhaps he overestimated the amount of calories he had at catered and pot luck work lunches; perhaps he got more activity than normal; perhaps all of his snacking (mainly junk food though) kept his metabolism up. Who knows?! Either way, that's what the scale said (I saw it myself!) so that's what we're going with.

Some of you may remember how disappointed I was at Week 2 when Tony lost 5.8 lbs and I lost only 1.4 lbs. Since my weight loss this week is the same as Week 2, and Tony's increased dramatically, you are probably thinking I'm super disappointed and depressed and am fighting feelings of wanting to give up.

That is absolutely not the case.

I think the big difference here is that I can better see the big picture than I could at Week 2. We're nine weeks in, just over two months, and my total weight loss is 23.4 lbs. That's awesome!! Plus, I'm really close to getting to the next 50 lb mark on the doctor's scale:

Obviously the next 50 lb mark is not 100 ;)

Tony just made it to the next 50 lb mark today. I just checked my weight on the old website we used to use, and it's been over two years since we were at this weight! That is fantastic and is something to celebrate.

Another reason I am not upset by Tony's rapid weight loss is that it is extremely abnormal to lose 1 lb. a day. It's not something that can be continued indefinitely and I am guessing his result next week will not be that fantastic. At least, I am hoping so! Today I really am fine with the extreme difference in our results but if this continues for multiple weeks, I may not be feeling the same way!!

I know last week I said there would be three posts and I ended up posting just two. This week's second post will be the first anniversary trip recap I promised for last week. Stay tuned!

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken

This recipe is so easy! It is great for those who work outside the home or on a busy day when you will be gone for part of the day. Since I am currently unemployed, I am home most days but I was gone from 4:30-6:30 p.m. for an appointment yesterday. Tony usually gets home between 5:30 and 7 so I wanted dinner to be ready once we were both home at 6:30. Slow cookers work great for that!

My mom has been making this recipe since I was a teenager. I've always liked it and have been making it since I got my first apartment at 22. Tony is a big fan as well! I had not calculated the nutrition facts before so I was pleasantly surprised to see how low cal it is! Especially with all the protein. You can't beat a low calorie, protein-packed meal like this.

Ingredients:

3 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast
1½ cup salsa
½ cup peanut butter
4 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp ground or grated ginger

I know what you're thinking: in what alternate universe are peanut butter and salsa eaten together?! But trust me on this! The peanut butter gives the dish a good Thai peanut taste and the salsa mixes well with it. If you like chicken and like Asian food, particularly Thai food, you will like this!

Close up of the sauce ingredients

Place chicken in slow cooker.

Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl; mix well.

Pour sauce over chicken.

Cook on high 4 hours or low 7-8 hours.

All done! I took a large spoon and separated the chicken into 8 servings in the crock.

Serve with rice.

Look at that steam and how it shreds itself so easily! Yum! We didn't even need the knives I set on the placemats.

Nutrition Facts per serving:

Calories 280

Total Fat 11g

Saturated Fat 1g

Polyunsat. Fat 2g

Monounsat. Fat 4g

Trans Fat 0g

Cholesterol 98mg

Sodium 864mg

Potassium 3mg

Total Carbs 9g

Dietary Fiber 1g

Sugars 4g

Protein 37g

Vitamin A 6%

Vitamin C 11%

Calcium 4%

Iron 7%

I used regular soy sauce. If you are watching your sodium intake, using low sodium soy sauce would reduce that a decent amount.

Here is the link to the printable recipe for those who prefer a nice clean recipe without photos and comments :)

Enjoy!

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Week 8 Results (With Measurements!)

Tomorrow marks 8 weeks since we started this weight loss journey, which means measurements results today!

Katie

Current Weight: -22.0 lbs. (This week: -3.0 lbs.)

Bust: -2.125" (These last four weeks: -1.375")

Chest: -1.875" (These last four weeks: -1.0")

Waist: -1.5" (These last four weeks: -1.0")

Hips: -3.5" (These last four weeks: -1.25")

Thigh: -1.25" (These last four weeks: -0.0")

Upper Arm: 0.375" (These last four weeks: -0.375")

Total Inches Lost: -10.625" (These last four weeks: -5.0")

Tony

Current Weight: -23.4 lbs. (This week: -3.0 lbs.)

Neck: -0.875" (These last four weeks: -0.0")

Chest: -3.75" (These last four weeks: -2.0")

Waist: -1.25" (These last four weeks: -0.75")

Hips: -2.5" (These last four weeks: -0.0")

Thigh: -3.5" (These last four weeks: -0.5")

Upper Arm: -2.0" (These last four weeks: -0.5")

Total Inches Lost: -13.875 (These last four weeks: -3.75")

I am totally shocked at our weight loss this week. It has only been five days since our last weigh-in and personally, I did not do very well with the eating. I did more snacking than necessary and was over my calories most days. My only theory is that perhaps last Wednesday we were retaining water from all the sodium-filled restaurant meals we ate on vacation, and then lost the water weight while we ate home cooked meals almost every day these last five days. Who knows!! Regardless of the reason, I am happy with the weight loss. We're both past the 20 lb mark now, which feels really great!

I plan on posting twice more this week. One post will be a recap of our anniversary trip (with photos!) and the other post will be a slow cooker recipe that I am making today!

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Week 7 Results

We made it home from our first anniversary trip last night, and this morning we did our weekly weigh-in! As expected, results were not fantastic since we ate pretty poorly during our trip. But a loss is a loss so we'll take it!

Katie

Current Weight: -19.0 lbs. (This week: -1.0 lbs.)

Tony

Current Weight: -20.4 lbs. (This week: -1.0 lbs.)

Sometime over the next week or so, I will post about our trip and include photos. Next Monday is another weigh-in along with measurements results again!

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

First Anniversary!!

Today is our First Anniversary! To celebrate it, this post will have a bunch of pictures from our wedding day, one year ago today! Getting Ready

The First Look

Group Photos

  

The Ceremony

The Reception

First Dance

Cake Photos

Bouquet/Garter Tosses

The YMCA!

The Required Rings Photo


Here's to many more years to come!!

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

First Anniversary Trip

How has it been a year already?!

Our first anniversary is this Monday, July 16! I really can't believe it has been a year already. Didn't I just walk down the aisle with my parents to marry my husband? Didn't we just have our first dance and cut the cake? Didn't 170 of our family and friends just celebrate with us? No?? Huh, could've fooled me! ;)

The first anniversary feels like one of the significant ones so I wanted to go on a trip to celebrate. Next July I could possibly be pregnant, so who knows if we could take a trip or if I would enjoy a trip. So it seemed like this was a really great time to go on an anniversary trip.

We didn't want to spend tons of money and at the time we planned the trip I only had about 3 days of vacation available at my job, so we knew a week long trip was not an option. So that ruled out anything faraway. I had been tossing around this idea in my head for months but wanted to find a Groupon Getaway or Living Social Escape deal to make it more affordable. I found one a month ago, so we scheduled our trip just a month before our anniversary! We will be leaving Saturday and spending Saturday night in Buffalo, NY. It is about a 6.5 hour drive through Canada, assuming both border crossings are quick. We will then spend Sunday through Tuesday in Niagara Falls, ON, which is just 30 minutes from Buffalo. The Groupon was not valid Saturday nights, so we had to find an alternative. ;)  It is perfect though, because a few years ago we saw a special on the Food Network or Travel channel about the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, where buffalo wings were invented. We said at that time that we should go to that restaurant someday. So now we will!

Horseshoe Falls from the Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls, ON

Tony has never been to Niagara Falls or New York. I was in Niagara Falls for roughly 18 hours on the way to New York City in April 2000 for spring break with my family. It was very foggy and we couldn't see much, and of course we didn't do much in the city since it was just a stop on the way to our vacation destination. So we are both really looking forward to the trip! I just finished our itinerary for the trip and am now moving onto the packing list.

In general, I like tradition, so I wanted us to do anniversary gifts based on the traditional anniversary gifts. The traditional first anniversary gift is paper. Since I am unemployed and neither of us could come up with something to give the other, I suggested we just give each other anniversary cards. It fits the paper theme, and a card is something Tony often forgets to give, so it will be special! I just hope he gives me a card that is from spouse to spouse and references "our" anniversary rather than "your" anniversary. For our wedding last year, I gave him a card that started with "For the man I love on our wedding day." Tony gave me a card that said, "The best part of today is knowing this is only the beginning. Here's to all of the stories, the laughter, and the love... today and every day to come." I'm not 100% sure that card was in the section of cards that wedding guests would give to a married couple, but nothing about it says "us." So I just hope he doesn't give me a card that says, "On your anniversary." ;)

Since we will be gone from Saturday morning until Tuesday night, our weigh-in will be next Wednesday instead of Monday. I am hoping all of the walking we will have to do will outweigh the extra calories we will most certainly eat. I am packing up individual servings of chips, dip, and pistachios for the car rides and while we're out and about. We will also be packing sandwich lunches in the cooler for Saturday and Sunday, so that will help.

This will also be our first big road trip! The longest we have driven together before is just 2.5-3 hours. Hopefully we don't kill each other from spending all that time in the car ;)

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Week 6 Results

Time for a weigh-in! The last weigh-in was two weeks ago due to our holiday plans last week. Personally, I did not do well with the calories. I was significantly over most days while camping and while at my parents' house. Most of the extra calories were from alcohol but some were from desserts that I don't normally eat. However, I got a fair amount of activity while camping and at my parents' house so that helped a lot. I was still quite a bit over on net calories, but the results show that the activity clearly helped with the weight loss. So now I need to use that knowledge to force myself to exercise more often! My problem is that I have always hated exercise and therefore it is a huge struggle to find the motivation to actually get up and do it. Most of my activity at my parents' house was swimming and treading water when we would take the pontoon boat out into the deep part of the lake. I love swimming like that but don't have anywhere to do it at my own house. So I will just have to make the time and find the motivation to exercise on a somewhat regular basis.


Here are the results since our last weigh-in two weeks ago!

Katie

Current Weight: -18.0 lbs. (These last two weeks: -3.6 lbs.)

Tony

Current Weight: -19.4 lbs. (These last two weeks: -3.4 lbs.)

So we're still losing weight steadily! I am happy with both of our results. We're nearing the 20 lb mark which seems like a bit of a milestone.

Next week's weigh-in will be on Wednesday. There will be another post on Thursday explaining why it will be two days late :)

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Week 5: No Results This Week

As I mentioned in last week's post about our weekend and holiday plans, we did not have a weigh-in today. I am at my parents' house all week and Tony is at home with the scale. Since I was not able to do a weigh-in this morning, he chose not to. So we'll hope for double weight loss next Monday!

It is a very, very unusually hot week here in Michigan, which is nice for the holiday. I am so glad I am able to spend all week at a house on a lake, although the water is already too warm! We have to go out into the deep water to truly cool off where the water is still cool about 4 feet under the surface. It's almost like bath water at the surface. It usually does not get like this until early to mid August. But after an unusually warm (and barely snowy) winter, a hot couple weeks in March, and then the hot temperatures we've had the last month or so, I shouldn't be surprised! But this makes me worry about what's to come in August and Labor Day weekend! Hot tub temperatures at the surface?! Ick!!

Tony will be here Tuesday night through Thursday morning and then Friday night through Sunday. I am looking forward to having him here for my second favorite holiday of the year. My grandma's cottage is right next to my parents' house so we will have almost 20 family members here for 4th of July dinner. My youngest sister is organizing a kickball game for the 4th along with a flip cup game on the end of our giant dock:

Yes, that's 9 sections of dock there!

So it will be a very fun week! I will see if I can post again later this week. Next Monday we will definitely have a results post!

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.