Slow and steady wins the race...

Hi, guys! So at my WW meeting yesterday, I finally hit my 10% goal. FINALLY! After only 6 months!!! (haha)... I have lost a total of 22.2 pounds (a bit over my 10% goal, so yay!), and I have noticed a lot of other changes:

• I sleep about 8 hours now and then I wake up... sure, I can go back to sleep, but I don't have to in order to feel human!
• I am using my "hunger monitor" a lot more nowadays. If I'm not hungry for dinner, I don't eat dinner. (This is important because I usually eat a really big lunch when I get home from school and sometimes I'm just not hungry for a big dinner.)
• I have gone down a size in shirts (I look more in the L sizes than the XL sizes now!, which feels great after last summer's brief foray into the Women's sizes department), my pants are fitting better (and I bought a pair of size 14 designer jeans!!!), and I bought a size L dress for the first time in my adult life. Score! Some of my super cute things that I plan to take to Spain are getting a little loose (like my adorable yellow A-line sun dress with pockets, and my super cute floral print smocked bodice dress [oh, please don't get too big, my favorite favorite dress!], and my black cotton shrug that I'm not even bothering to take to Spain because it hangs off me!), but I suppose that's why Spain has tailors, right?
  
• I have food hangovers. Yep, that's right. If I eat something bad (ice cream, fast food, pizza, etc.), it makes me crave more of it the next day. Are we sure there aren't drugs in food? haha When that happens, I start my morning off with oatmeal, coffee and fruit, because it fills me up and I don't want to think about food. Usually after a workout or a busy morning, the hangover is gone.

If I could sum up the 10% loss in a word it would be: process. I didn't track every week. I had a 5 pound gain while I was working on my PhD exams. I overindulged after a bad day (or ten). I stayed between -18 and -21 pounds for about 6 weeks... I'd go up a little, and then I'd go down a little. But I got there! (and you can, too!!!)

One major change that I've made since starting WW is that I just don't cook very much. As you have seen on my blog, I love to cook, but it's simply inconvenient to whip up recipes for one person, especially if I am not hungry enough to eat a 10PP dinner four nights in a row.

Now, I just try to meal plan for smaller meals and remixable ingredients. For example:

• For meals this week, I plan to have Hungry Girl's BBQ Chicken Salad once or twice.
• Then, I'll use the leftover ingredients to make Danica's and TJ's sweet potato nachos. Maybe with a pack of tuna on the side for 2PP because I don't plan to use all the nachos ingredients.
  
• Then, I'll use the leftover tomatoes (not a huge tomato fan, so I use them sparingly) to make some pasta with tomatoes, basil and cheese.

And there you have it, a week of meals for one without buying out the produce section!! How do you meal plan? Do you concentrate on your proteins and build meals around them (one night for seafood, poultry, lean beef and vegetarian), or do you just go with what looks good? I'm dying to know. :)

Also, I need more advice... I am getting ready to spend two weeks packing up my apartment into a storage unit, then moving back to my folks house (3 states away) for a month before leaving for Spain. For about 2 weeks, I won't have cooking equipment, plates, cutlery, or perhaps even a microwave. I will have a stovetop, an oven and a fridge. How would you cook quick and healthy meals so as not to spend each night going through a drive thru?

So that's pretty much it, folks! I know that this blog has fallen into horrible disrepair, but when I felt pressured to keep producing recipes, I had to ask myself whether or not it was more important to add to the interminable dross of low GI or healthy recipes on the net or to focus on cooking just what I want to eat and nothing more. It seems that you guys have survived my choice. :)

On the subject of blogging, however.... my friend Eric just finished a person challenge: he posted a "Song of the day" to his Facebook and Twitter every day for one year to try to establish the soundtrack of his daily life. Well, I'm no music buff, but he suggested that I adapt his challenge to my new life in Spain: blog everyday about what I'm doing, what I'm seeing, what I'm experiencing, and maybe what I'm eating. I am thinking about accepting the challenge and will keep you posted if I do decide to blog my life in Spain.