More March Madness

Oh, Easter, how could you do this to me?

Wow. March turned out to be even harder than February. After a full 31-day month, I only lost an additional 5.6 lbs for a total loss of 26.8 lbs. I am grateful for the progress I've made, but it's been so much slower than I'd been hoping for. And this month I have no one to blame but myself. [My daughter Sarah has lost 33 lbs in just two months, though. You go, girl!]

In my last post I shared the issues I'd faced during the first half of the month, and I thought it would get a little easier after that but, alas, it was not meant to be. There were more challenges ahead. I had prepared myself to face them, but I hadn't counted on getting sick again or the way a lengthy illness weakens my resolve.

I actually started pretty strong. After accidentally ordering breaded wings at Chili's on our way home from our last trip to the Valley (March 2nd), I was pleased to find that my cravings were minimal and I easily got right back on track. However, I think my little cheats on the hors d'oeuvres served at parent-teacher conferences on March 10th were a bridge too far.

At the end of my school day six days later, I found myself having those vague feelings that I wanted something different than the usual low-carb fare. I wasn't sure what I was craving, but somehow Chinese food sounded like it might be satisfying...maybe because Mark had tried to talk me into going to China Wok Buffet a few days earlier.

It went like this: "Let's go to China Wok." Me: "They don't have anything I can eat." Mark: "They have chicken-on-a-stick." Me: "I don't know what they marinate that in. And why would I pay nine dollars to eat chicken-on-a-stick at a buffet?" Mark: "They have a salad bar." Me: "A nine dollar salad-bar salad?" End of discussion.

My plate at China Wok Buffet on Wednesday, March 16th.

Note the chicken-on-a-stick on top in the very center.

In the end, urged on by my vague cravings, we went to China Wok for dinner that night. I did make the very best choices I could, foregoing my favorites: chow mein noodles, fried rice, orange chicken, and crab rangoons. Instead, I ate the seafood bake (which tasted safe, just seafood, vegetables, and cheese), seasoned green beans, beef and broccoli, chicken and broccoli, pepper steak, and--of course--chicken-on-a-stick. For dessert I took a couple of pineapple chunks from the salad bar. Which, by the way, did not have any salad greens available. 

Usually, when you've been low-carbing for awhile, you can tell if there's any unwarranted sweetness in your food, and I didn't really detect any. Still, it's possible there were thickening agents in some of the sauces, so I won't do this on a regular basis. I can truthfully say it took away the cravings and I was able to quickly get back to eating right, but I did hit a plateau. The needle on the scale stayed stuck for the next nine days.

Then I caught another cold. That's right. Just 32 days after the little head cold I had in February, right before my sister's wedding, I was hit fast and hard by a horrible chest cold. And it hit exactly three days before our next trip to the Valley to attend a concert and spend a day at the Renaissance Festival. I was NOT happy about the timing. This one sapped my energy and made me short of breath, and it was accompanied by a deep cough, not to mention the really, really bad attitude I developed.

My Chicken Piccata plate at Olive Garden on Friday, March 25th..

Nonetheless, we made our trip (having already spent $80 per person for our tickets) and I made up my mind to have fun and stay with the eating plan I'd decided upon. My first challenge was dinner at an Italian restaurant when we got into town. My nephew and niece and their spouses were attending the same concert, so we all met to have dinner together at Olive Garden before the show.

Skimming past all the pasta selections on the menu, I found a yummy dish called Chicken Piccata (530 calories, and probably very low in carbs). The grilled chicken was covered with lemon-garlic-butter sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, and capers. On the side was Parmesan-crusted zucchini. And, of course, there was the unlimited salad bowl (I picked out the croutons and tried to ignore the delectable scent of the unlimited baskets of garlic bread sticks).

And then came the trial of the Renaissance Festival.

Lunch at the Renaissance Festival: roasted chicken and mashed potatoes.

For breakfast the next morning I had my usual pre-made deviled eggs, which had frozen in our hotel's refrigerator and were kind of nasty even after warming them in the microwave. Oh, well...

The Arizona Renaissance Festival goes from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. They don't allow you to bring food inside, so unless you're willing to go out to an ice chest of food in your car and miss out on maybe an hour of festival fun (I'm not), once you're inside the gates you're kind of dependent on the offerings of the festival's food vendors. 

I studied all the options online beforehand. There's the traditional giant turkey leg, of course, but I don't care for those. Too many small bones and ligaments. I love the cream of broccoli soup, but the bread bowl it's served in is out of the question, plus the soup is probably thickened with flour or cornstarch. So I settled on the little meal in the picture above. I figured it's better to cheat on a natural food like potato than on something with white flour. And I was glad to see that the mashed potatoes were made with the red skin still on, since the skin is where all the nutrition is located.

A look inside the case of The Chocolate Shoppe.

And, of course, there was a planned cheat. It is our time-honored tradition to end our day at the Renaissance Festival with a fat slice of chocolate-covered cheesecake on a stick. However, Sarah and I knew that would be way too many carbs and probably the death of our weight loss for the foreseeable future.

The shop offers nothing sugar-free, so I quizzed the shopkeepers regarding which of their chocolaty treats would contain the least amount of sugar. We considered the Strawberry Bowl, the Queensberries, and the Lusty Wench, and they agreed the Lusty Wench probably had the least chocolate and, therefore, the least sugar. It was $3.50 for a cluster of three strawberries, or three clusters for $10.00. So I took the nine-berry deal!

The Lusty Wench. Yes, I ate all nine of them and savored every bite!

On our way back to our mountain home, we stopped at the Carl's Jr. in Globe, where I got my usual lettuce-wrapped Super Star. I honestly prefer my burgers without the bun these days, and Carl's Jr's lettuce wraps are the best.

For dinner: my Super Star lettuce-wrap from Carl's Jr.

At this point, I was feeling pretty good about how I'd controlled my diet on this trip. However, fighting the cold and cough while pushing myself through a long day of walking in 80+ degree heat had really taken a toll on me. By the time we got back home around 10:00 that night, I had no energy left and fell right into bed. When I woke the next morning, I felt like I'd been run over by the proverbial train. And I'd totally forgotten that it was Easter.

My son, a high school senior and my last child still at home, reminded me that the Easter Bunny hadn't dropped off a basket yet, so I dredged up enough energy to assume the role of Easter Bunny, probably for the last time. Luckily, I had shopped for the guys' Easter baskets a week before I got sick. I wasn't too tempted by the chocolate bunnies and other goodies I was loading into the blue Easter grass until I divided the bag of chocolate malt eggs between the baskets. By the time I was done, I'd eaten four of those deliciously crunchy little eggs.

That evening we had the whole family over for Easter dinner. Sarah and I wanted to be good, so we didn't include corn or rolls in our meal, and I didn't glaze the ham (I don't like my ham sweetened anyway). However, Sarah's husband Chris did make us some mashed potatoes, using red potatoes with the skins left on, and I ate mine buttered instead of with gravy. Still, it was another cheat in a long line of cheats over consecutive days.

I continued to feel awful for the entire week following Easter, with no energy to cook or even plan meals. Each time I passed the Easter baskets on the kitchen table on Monday and Tuesday, I found myself snatching another malted egg from a basket (probably a dozen in all), until I finally banished the baskets to the guys' bedrooms. On Tuesday night I picked up a frozen pizza for Mark and a TV dinner for myself. I searched for the lowest carb count I could find, but it still had a small mound of mashed potatoes and gravy (with a texture like glue, so I didn't even enjoy it).

A low-carb dinner at Golden Corral Buffet, March 31st.

That's when I finally realized it was time to put the brakes on regarding my flirtation with high-carb foods and seriously get back to eating healthy. So that's what I did on Wednesday, March 30th. On Thursday we went back to the Valley yet again, for the third time in one month, but I stayed firm in my renewed commitment. We stopped at Carl's Jr. in Mesa for my lettuce wrap lunch, and for dinner before the long drive home, we ate at Golden Corral Buffet, where I had only non-breaded, non-starchy vegetables (drizzled with cheese) and a little meat, with strawberries, a chunk of pineapple, and sugar-free chocolate pudding for dessert. And now my cold has finally started to lighten up a bit. 

And a low-carb dessert from Golden Corral (with a bit of seafood salad).

I'm back in a good place now, at the start of a brand-new month and a brand-new opportunity to peel off a few more pounds. Here's hoping that I finally reach and pass the 30-lb milestone in April so we can get on to the before-and-after photos and seeing how many inches of myself I've lost!