Sugar and I had a breakup

My love affair with sugar has been almost life long. After my first experience with it, I've been hopelessly devoted ever since. That is, until yesterday. Yesterday was the last straw, and was in no way "refined" as sugar so claimes to be.

It's been over a month since I've eaten starch or sugar. Yesterday I did. I ate pizza, and caramel, and cookies and laffy taffy. It was very tasty, but not to last. I came down off of all those carbs hard! My head hurt like it hasn't in months, and to top it all off, I had to stop in the middle of giving report to the next nurse to go barf in the garbage can. It was fabulous.

I don't know what's become of my relationship with sugar. Maybe it's part of getting old (ya know, cuz 24 is so old.)? Maybe it's that for almost 1 1/2 months I haven't let my blood sugar sky rocket to the moon like that. Whatever it is, we are so over. No more refined sugar or starch for me. At least not without it being accompanied by some good wholesome protein. My glycemic level is officially staying low.

Good bye sugar. I wish I could say I'll miss you, But i don't know that I will.

I heart weekends

We had a lot of fun this last weekend. We started our Saturday off with our first run together ever. We found out very quickly that Ryan's legs really are much longer than mine. But the run went well. Then I started my chili for the ward Chili Cookoff that evening. I doubled the recipe, and it just barely fit into the biggest pot I have:

This is my intimidating game face for all my fellow chili competitors.

and me and my giant vat of chili.

Somehow with the doubling of the recipe it ended up being really tomato-ey. I was really disappointed. Of course my chili has to end up crappy when I'm competing with it. But I stayed confident at least some people would like it.

We had a really great turn out. Apparently last year we had only 6 entrees for the competition. This year we had 15! The Elder's Quorum (Ryan) was in charge of the activity. It all ended up working out, except we had to make more ballots and we ran out of lemonade. We had a lot more people than originally planned.

I'm posting all the pictures of the people there so Aubry can steal them for the Relief Society Blog. (remember you can click on them and make them big.)

The winner was our Bishop. His chili was pretty fabulous and kind of barbeque-y. Very tasty. I voted for it myself.

My chili came in dead last with three votes--one of which was mine.
Someday I'll recover from the rejection.

After the cookoff, I met up with some of my family members to go to Nightmare on 13th

Ryan opted out. Haunted Houses are not his thing.

Here's everyone waiting in line.

I got everyone's scared face while we waited in line. I don't think they'd let me take pictures inside. and I don't take good pictures while running and screaming in terror.

Giardia and Kell

Mom and Dad

Me and Loufa

This guy was busy freaking every body out that was standing in line.
I asked him for his scared face too. This is what I got.

It had been a long time since I'd gone to a haunted house, and it was a lot of fun. They put so much detail into that place! It's amazing. and scary.

I lost my phone somewhere in the mayhem. They say they usually find whatever gets lost, but I still haven't heard from them. Bummer. I hate losing my cell phone.

I still have most of that huge pot of chili. Apparently people just tasted and didn't go back for more. We plan to force feed it to the family during Laura's Halloween party on Saturday. It'll be great! Just wait till you see Ry and I's costumes!

11 lbs and 2 pant sizes

As an update from my previous post about my delayed drops: I sent another email to the company explaining my situation and telling them I was unsatisfied with the service I had received. They replied by telling me that I could restart the drops without starting over, and that they were canceling my shipment and refunding my money.

So the decision was kind of made for me to stop the drops and start the maintenance phase. At first I didn't know if I was okay with that. I still wanted to lose 4 more pounds. Then I stepped back and realized I was just being greedy. I had already lost 11 lbs in 2 weeks and I was back in my skinny clothes which was my main goal. So I got over it.

Something that helped me along was when I bought jeans yesterday. Over a month ago, my mom had bought me a pair of jeans when we were out shopping. They were a size 10, the biggest pair of pants I'd ever bought. I even bought them like you're supposed to buy jeans--a little tight because they stretch out. After deciding to do this diet, I ended up taking the pants back for a gift certificate in hopes that I'd be buying a smaller pair with it later. So yesterday I did just that. I bought the exact same pair of pants only in a size 6!!! yay!! and they fit perfect! no squeezing into them or anything! It's nice to be back in the pants I was wearing when I got married.

Another thing I've enjoyed now that I'm in the maintenance phase, is the change in motivation I've had. I don't know how to explain it, but I don't want to go back to the way I was eating before. I really like fresh foods and fruits and veggies. I also now know I have the will power to not eat things I don't need.

But don't get me wrong, it was no picnic getting here. I am so glad I only did this for 18 days. I got so tired of the same foods over and over again. I was tired of being hungry all. the.time. I don't know how people do it for up to 40 days.

So that's my update on my hcg diet. I'm technically still on it, only I'm in the maintenance phase where I can't eat starch or sugar. So if any of you have any good low carb recipes, send em my way! (when I can eat carbs, the first thing I'm going for is a chocolate chip pumpkin cookie. I've been craving one like you wouldn't believe.)

Bridget Grace turns 1!

Sunday was the Birthday party for our niece Bridget. She made out like a bandit! It was fun to hangout with the fam, and enjoy a nice evening. I think everyone had a good time. There was lots of smiles and laughter. After leaving, Ryan said to me, "I like your family, they're fun." I've gotta post my pictures so that Brenna can steal em off my blog! :) (if you click on them, they get huge! so you can save them as a larger picture.)

The whole party was rubber ducky themed. It was super cute.
Bridget even got some rubber ducky themed presents.

People chillin and eatin.

Told ya she made out like a bandit.

The cute birthday girl. (I wish things didn't get so fuzzy when I crop a larger picture)

Me and my favorite neice!

Presents!

I don't remember what was going on, I think Mikey was quoting something.
But it's a cute picture.

They're such an adorable family, all cute and smiley.

Mom decided to give some of Bridget's presents a try...

The other side of the circle.

mmm... birthday cake.

Some footage of the party.

Singing the birthday song.

Brenna- Sorry I don't have that many pictures of everyone at the party. I'm pretty sure your mom took a picture of every family member with Bridget.

Frustration

I'd just like to vent a few things:

1st: All vaccines have risks of adverse reactions. They just do. Everyone's body is different and will react different ways to things. It is YOUR responsibility to get educated on the risks and benefits and decide for yourself what you want to do. So get vaccinated, don't get vaccinated, just shut up about it either way.

2nd: The HCG protocol says you need to do the drops and diet for at least 23 days to reset your hypothalamus. I only ordered 15 days worth because I only wanted to lose 10-14 lbs, and I didn't care as much about resetting my hypothalamus. But after a few plateaus in my 15 days thanks to too fatty beef, I decided to continue to the 23 days. Of course, I had to get more drops to continue. So I ordered some more drops from a different company than the first set (it was cheaper), and paid lots of extra money for 2 day shipping so it'd get to me before I ran out of drops. Well, I ran out of drops on Saturday and still the drops had not arrived. So I waited til yesterday: still no drops. I wasn't too worried about sat/sun because the HCG stays in your system for about 3 days after stopping the drops. That's why it is part of the protocol to continue the diet for 3 days after stopping.
I emailed the company, and they told me that somehow the drops had not been shipped, and they were overnighting them to me. Well that's just great, except... I will have no hcg in my system tomorrow. I'm pretty sure from reading the protocol that that means I'd have to start all over again. I don't want to start over! I just want to lost 4 more lbs! 4!!! and make it to 23 days! That's only 7 days from when my drops ended! I am really peaved that I didn't get my drops on time. I'm peaved I paid lots of extra money for nothing. I'm peaved I have to have these drops I don't even want anymore. I'm peaved I didn't break 130 lbs, I haven't been less than 130 lbs since high school. I'm just peaved!!!

That is all...

Witches Night Out 2009

This year I went to Witches Night Out at Gardner Village with my sis, and three of my nursing school friends: Rachel, Christie, and Nina. We had a lot of fun browsing the stores, getting decorating ideas, people watching, and dancing. Loufa and I kept getting way ahead of everyone. Apparently we're pretty fast walkers. At one point Rachel, Christie, and Nina tried to book it fast enough to lose us, but to no avail. We're too fast. :) We saw lots of really interesting, and some pretty cool costumes. I wish I could have gotten pics of the best ones. The place was packed! Christie and I ended up jumping the long line for the women's restroom for the vacant men's room. An employee happened along around the same time, and said he'd just make both bathrooms women's since there were so many women out that night. We were total heroes.

The day before, we went to Saver's after school for witch costumes. There's lots of neat stuff at Savers...

(I got all the pictures above from Christie's Facebook photos. I did the editing and cropping.)

Then there was the actual Witches Night Out:

We wanted at least one picture while it was still a little light.
We hadn't met up with Nina yet.

Here's the full partay:
Left to right: Nina, Christie, Laura, Me, Rachel
Browsing the quilt store.
Nina won a free table runner at this store!
There were witch figurines like this all over the village:
Nina and Laura seemed to really like this one...
We took this picture for the nursing graduation slide show.

Doing the Macarena

And the Robot

After dancing ourselves to hungry, we stopped at Arctic Circle.
They were just about to close, but let us order from the drive through window.

"Would you make a pregnant woman a hamburger?" -Christie


and to finish it off, This is Nina, doing the "C-walk". (I dunno, it's like a West Jordan thing or something... ) he he!