Video Update!

PASSWORD IS: healthupdate

11 Weeks Random Chatter from Christie Stearns on Vimeo.

I posted the Vimeo video here since it is higher quality. If you are also a YouTuber, you can see this video on YouTube HERE.

I had to end the video abruptly, so here is the proper ended and also a shoutout to my friend April.

Proper Ending to 11 Week Video from Christie Stearns on Vimeo.

Again, password is healthupdate, and if you would prefer to check this out on YouTube you can do so here.


.

Things I've Been Eating at 2 1/2 Months

A commenter said she would like to see more of what I've been eating at 2 1/2 months out. The thing is, a lot of it is the same stuff I've already shown. But I really should be better about documenting my eating out experiences and anything new that I eat also. Here are a couple of things from this week and a rundown of my typical diet at this time.

Egg Bites

Finally got around to trying a couple of Shelly's Bites! We made the Breakfast Bites and the Denver Bites. They were pretty easy to make... somewhat time consuming (at least to me, who hates cooking) just because of chopping everything up. But Ian chopped up most of it the night before :) We made a whole tray of one kind for him and a tray of the other for me - this way we were able to use the whole carton of eggs we bought. They are delicious! We cooked them for the 30 mins stated, but they are a little overcooked so next time I'm thinking 25 mins. This is a great thing to make up on weekends so that Ian can grab-and-go for his weekday breakfasts. As for me well, I just like them cuz they're yummy.

The World According to Eggface is a great recipe blog and she shares nearly 50 varieties of her Bites recipes (many are not breakfasty, either!) and all other kinds of awesome recipes that I can't wait to try.



Grilled Chicken Fillet from KFC

I needed to grab something quick while out and I spotted KFC. I knew they had some grilled chicken options so I decided to investigate. I got this chicken fillet for $2.49 ... it was well seasoned and juicy. Not at all plain as I thought it would be. I also got a honey mustard sauce and used just a little of that to add extra flavor... it was delicious. A great drive thru option. I was able to eat the whole thing and I think it was about 3 oz.


Red Robin BLTA Croissant

Found this pic on the web because I didn't take one. Several notes - I do not get tomato - I do not get avacado - I add cheese. This was one of my faves before surgery so I ordered it again this past week when out to lunch with a friend. It came with watermelon (bummer, I prefer the cantaloupe) and fries. What I was able to eat at 2 1/2 months out - One HALF the sandwich but with the bottom part of the croissant and all the lettuce removed. Basically I ate the meat and cheese and some of the top part of the croissant... plus two large french fries. I brought all of the rest home (including just two more french fries), gave the watermelon to my husband and had another meal, just the same, later on.


Other Foods @ 2 1/2 Months

I am still eating a lot of the same things. Some meals I eat regularly are:

- Premier Protein Shake (usually 1 a day for breakfast)
- 1 Wheat Thins Flatbread Cracker with 2 oz of tuna or chicken salad on it
- 1 Wheat Thins Flatbread Cracker with cream cheese spread, 1 slice turkey, 1 slice american cheese on top
- Hormel White Chicken Chili (about 4 oz) with shredded cheese on top
- 2 Egg Bites (listed above)
- 1 scrambled egg (or egg beater equivalent amount) with 1 Morningstar Farms vegetarian sausage
- 1 light mozzarella string cheese with 1 slice turkey breast
- 1 light mozzarella string cheese with 1 oz peanuts
- 2-3oz chicken breast or turkey meatballs with campbell's cream soup of some kind, that has been cooked in crock pot
- 1 Asian-style beef skewer
- 6 grilled shrimp
- 6 cold shrimp with cocktail sauce
- Homemade flatbread pizza
- 1/2 a personal size frozen pizza
- 3 tyson chicken nuggets with a tablespoon of ranch
- sugar free pudding with protein powder added
- Snack Plates from Starbucks (I've posted about these) - 1 snack plate gives me 2-3 meals
- turkey pepperoni or turkey lil' smokies with a light string cheese
- fruits and veggies - very few and not with every meal. Still not enough room for too much of them.

In general I am eating 2.5-4 oz of food depending on density and consistency.

Ian's 2 Month Progress Update

Today is my husbands 2 month surgaversary :) He did EXACTLY the same as me --- 50 pounds!!!! So proud of him!!! It's funny how differently it went for us but it turned out the same in the end. He lost almost the same amount in his first and second months whereas I lost way more in my first month and not much the 2nd month (it's picking up again now though, yay!)

His total loss = 50 lbs. Loss this month = 24 lbs. Total inches lost = 31.5 ... Inches lost this month = 8.75.

Now on to his progress pictures! On the left is starting, middle photo is 1 month, righthand photo is this month.

He says he really hadn't been feeling like he was making a whole lot of progress this month - even though I was telling him he looked smaller - so he says the photos and measurements are an absolute must so you can see the difference. Once he saw those things he could really see it and he says without that he would have been discouraged. He is happy to report that he continues to feel stronger, have more energy and be less tired. He is still feeling very happy that he had surgery.

Starbucks Chicken & Hummus Snack Plate

I thought I already posted this but I guess I didn't! I tried a different snack plate at Starbucks - the Chicken on Flatbread with Hummus. This is a lower calorie, higher protein snack plate than the Protein Plate. I absolutely LOVE this snack plate. It's delicious.

The chicken strips in this snack plate are very flavorful and tender - absolutely delicious. The veggies included are cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, and cucumber sticks - that's right those are cucumber! The hummus is really good too.

I am able to eat all the chicken and a couple veggie sticks as one meal, then as another meal I finish the veggie sticks and hummus and have maybe 1-2 bites of the flatbread dipped in the hummus too. I ignore the tomatoes because I don't like them.

This is a great on-the go option.

I've actually had this one 3 times this month because it's just so darn tasty. The only one I haven't tried yet is the fruit & nut one - which I'm sure is tasty too but it has way higher calories and fat so not sure if I WANT to have it... since these other two snack plates are both good optons and tasty anyway.

A New Love Hate Relationship

We decided to break up with our old analog bathroom scale. It was not accurate and not very readable. Simply changing how you stand can make it fluctuate 5 pounds or more. I was getting along okay because I was doing all of my official weigh-ins at the gym... but my poor husband was getting pretty frustrated not having any clue where he was at in his progress.

Yesterday we went out and purchased this baby:

Weight Watchers Body Analysis Scale by ConAir

We all know that during this process we can hit stalls and get frustrated when we don't see a change. I was particularly interested in having a scale that would show more than just our weight. This calculates body fat percentage and weight of fat, body water and bone mass. How cool! I've never had a scale that did this before. It also has 4 user settings so we can each set up a profile with our height, age, and gender... and it stores our weigh-ins under our user profile. Here was my very first reading this morning:

I did this with clothes on and my phone in my hand (to take the picture after)... this should be close to what I would weigh at the gym except I didn't have my gym shoes on. But sometimes I weigh at the gym barefoot if I am about to go swimming. I will be going back to the gym tomorrow so I plan to weigh at home first in my whole outfit and then at the gym to see how close they are to each other.

At the moment I am a bit frustrated. My issue with home scales has always been consistency - if I get on it 3 times in a row, I expect it to give me somewhat close to the same number all 3 times. When we were trying scales in the store, we did this... and this scale gave me the same # 3 times in a row. However this morning, it's a different story. I got anywhere from 248 to 251. I know in the grand scheme of things 3 lbs is not a big deal, but when you want to know if you lost weight this week, it CAN be a big deal. I think I will just plan on taking the average of 3 times on the scale, but this time I just took the heaviest weight result since it is still a loss from last weigh-in on Wednesday.... I think the biggest problem is our bathroom floor just isn't quite level enough. Maybe I'll try it downstairs in the kitchen and see if that does any better.

New Clothes & Closet Space

First order of business I would just like to report that I lost 6 more pounds! I've been doing a protein shake for breakfast every day for a little over a week now and it must really be helping. My tummy really likes it in the morning anyway because it doesn't seem to want food right away.... and adding the extra 30 grams of protein into my day seems to be very beneficial to the weight loss. My current weight is...

254 lbs. Awesome. I am now a mere 16 lbs away from my lowest ever adult weight - 238 - which I weighed in February 2007. I remember the date because buying my car was my reward to myself for making it to the lowest weight ever. Unfortunately it did not last and instead I gained over 75 lbs in the past 3 years... I have to keep reminding myself that this time is different!

What this post is really about though is... clothes! I got a chance to go shopping with my sister in law the other day at a store called Cato's. I found some cute things!! The most exciting thing though is that I went shopping there before surgery and nothing would really fit. This time, I needed mostly their smallest plus-size, some in the second smallest. That just felt so good! And I also got some AWESOME accessories! I am so in love with earrings, and necklaces are growing on me now, too.

Here are a couple of my ensembles!

Pink tank top and an awesome necklace... which I love because I can wear it with pink, green, blue, or purple!

And these fun pink earrings! Love them. All of their jewelry was so CHEAP!

And one of my favorite new outfits...

I never knew I could wear yellow! I guess with the extra tan lately, I can. :) The necklace is so awesome too with yellow, grey, silver and black. It will also go perfectly with my size 12 dress ~ someday, when it fits ;)

Also got this very lightweight, short sleeve grey sweater that I just love... and it goes great with this outfit as well as many other things!

I like this because I've been getting cold a lot. With the rapid weight loss I just never know when I'm going to be chilled. It was 96 today but I was so cold in the movie theater that even when I left and walked outside, I kept this sweater on. Crazy.


I got a couple other things too but don't have any more pictures. When I get around to wearing them I will take some. Mostly just more earrings and necklaces... but also a grey pair of capris SIZE 20!!!!! That must be a fluke because everything else I'm wearing is a size 22. But it still feels awesome anyway :)

Now for my closet! Here is my current wardrobe...

Everything that was deemed too small the last time I tried everything on... now fits!!! And I added in just a couple more things that are too small now, hanging all the way on the left.

I also took over another section of the closet... it's only fair right? The man should not have 3/4 of the closet!!! :) The reason I did this is... I now have PANTS!!!!! Before surgery I only had one pair of jeans that fit. Now that I am able to wear size 22 again, I pulled out my storage bin in the garage and tried them all on.... they all fit except for one that ran small. So now I have tons of jeans and even some brown pants, dress pants, khakis, and capris! Oh and a couple skirts too!

It is so great to have these all fitting now! I am also fitting into some other cute skirts not shown here. I will have to do another clothing post soon!!

July 3rd Family BBQ

Super late in writing about this, oops! Our 4th of July celebration this year was a family barbeque and my aunt Carla's house. We love hanging out on her nice deck with its fabulous mountain view. As soon as we got there we had my dad take these photos of us which you might recognize from the weight loss surgery blog post.

I thought these pictures came out really cute and that's when I realized how much weight we had been losing, thus the comparison pictures I created out of them.

How about that mountain view!!! Pretty nice huh?

There was plenty of delicious food to enjoy including some fresh corn on the cob. Oh yum, had to have some of that! Well... one bite... but it was delicious. It was nice spending time with family and also getting a chance to meet my aunt's good friend Carol.

After dinner we got to enjoy an amazing sunset over the mountains AND saw a double rainbow in the pink clouds!

We hung around until late in the evening to watch fireworks from her deck. We thought it had turned out to be a poor view as all the ones we saw were small, far away, or blocked by houses. After an hour, we all decided to go home. As Ian and I were leaving my aunt's neighborhood, Ian noticed fireworks. We pulled over and had a fantastic view of the fireworks... our own private viewing!! It was lovely.

Here is a video of part of the finale...loved it!!

We did find out later that my aunt and grandma saw the whole thing from the deck and had a great view... so at least next year we know to stick it out! They started them a whole hour later than the announced time so we just assumed the ones we were (barely) seeing were them. It's so nice to have a good spot to see fireworks without being in a crowd of people.

We enjoyed our 4th of July. We had planned to also see fireworks on the 4th itself, but the weather was so bad here... and we ended up hiking instead, which you will hear about in the next post! Tata for now.