Slacking off a little

I forgot to bring home the forms that I use to write down my food. I have not written my food down for a whole week. I'll start fresh on Monday.

My nutritionist wants me to stay between 1600 - 1800 calories a day. Guess what? Food has a lot of calories and I've had to streamline my food choices. All my dairy products are non-fat and I gave up butter for Smart Balance. I downloaded the Weight Watchers Core Foods guide and follow it for my food choices. I only eat bread once a day (bread is forbidden in the Core Foods program) and eat moderate amounts of unlimited grains like quinoa and rolled oats.

My husband brings home these fabulous bagels from a bakery near our house. My nutritionist says they have the calorie equivalent of four slices of bread, which they do, but I let myself have one on the weekends.

I eat 4 oz of lean meat (salmon, chicken, lamb) once a day and usually have non-fat cottage cheese at night. Three servings of fruit, steering away from bananas and two generous portions of vegetables: spinach, carrots, green beans, broccoli, occasionally asparagus.

Now if I can stick with this plan, I lose weight. But lately there's been some temptation. Pumpkin pie and molasses cookies. I had two slices of pumpkin pie for two days in a row and three molasses cookies on Thanksgiving night. Eating sugar can boost your triglycerides, which is not good. But sometimes I eat first and think later. 6 cookies with orange frosting - Oh my God, my triglycerides! How about those triglycerides.

Some people advocate taking a break but I gain weight so easily. Weight is much easier to gain than to lose. So I have been doing less of those breaks.