Progress is good! As most of you know, I had hit another wall early in November and had begun to feel really poorly about how I looked and how I felt from day to day. Sam has been extremely challenged as well. Since running his Ironman, he has gained about 50 pounds. What is most important, he is not feeling well and has injured his back, so is not sleeping well and it is severely impacting his quality of life.
Well, since deciding we would “Get back on it” as of November 6th, it has been a hectic couple of weeks! In the past ten days, we attended a UGA Football game, I have traveled on business and have worked late most every night for over a week. In times like these, sometimes you can just use a little help! Luckily for me, in this case, my help came from family. My sweet Sister-in-law Laura was willing to help me out.
Since our schedules have been so crazy and we needed to stay on plan, Laura has been helping us out by doing my grocery shopping and cooking for us over the past two weeks. Although she was a little apprehensive at first, and I think overwhelmed her with all of my “plan rules”, I think she has finally found her groove. I am seeing her progress so quickly, that I told her she has seriously found her calling. I can see a future business blooming for her. Let me add too, that Laura is an excellent cook. She had a great foundation as a former school cafeteria worker and has good knowledge of healthy cooking because of cooking for my niece, who is Diabetic.
Laura has learned how to limit carbs and schedule the number of days in between heavy starches and red meat, and believe me, that can take some getting used to! She also said that she is learning to adjust recipes she found so that they are salt-free and low sugar, but it has been challenging. She has even made sure that buys enough of everything we will need for the entire week while also helping us to conserve our costs by checking our stock and planning around what we already have. She filled in the gaps with fresh fruits and veggies and weekly dairy.
It has been awesome to have Laura do the grocery shopping while I focused on work. It’s been terrific to have enough food cooked for the entire week, with easy grab and go options that I can create lunches and dinners from. It has been such a relief during these stressful weeks!
Let’s be honest Sam still needs a good amount of to keep him on schedule and I usually help him pack up his food for the day or tell him what he needs to do at each meal. He is in the beginning phase where your cravings and “wants” can easily sway your judgement and ability to stay on track. I have been able to just give Laura an outline of what our week should look like with some menu suggestions, and then wallah- it is there! She even cut up extra veggies for adding to salads and she labeled everything so we can easily see what we have to choose from.
While I am not sure how long Laura will be up to the task, or how long we can afford to have her help out, we sure have gotten spoiled with it all. With all she has learned these past two weeks, she is also now following the plan (along with my niece, Amanda). The big benefit for it all is that it is working like it always has. I am down six pounds so far and Sam has lost twelve pounds! If we can keep it up, I know we will be feeling much better and I will be back to a more comfortable place in no time. It really is just science!
A BIG THANKS GOES OUT TO LAURA! I love you and appreciate you very much.
Stacie