Losing The Cow (with The 17 Day Diet)

Well, there are no excuses now. No medical reasons to sit on my carcass. No hot weather to keep me inside. No wiggle room in my jeans to seduce me into thinking I’m just bloated. Nope. It’s time to face the scale and admit it.

I’m fat.

Again.

I have a better reason than “Doritos taste good!” now, because obviously having twins is sure to expand your assage. (It’s a word, now.) Facts are facts, though. It’s time to eat salads and dream about brownies.

I ended up back on my blood pressure meds about two days after I wrote “It’s Postpartum Cardiomyopathy?“. I was in the hospital for about five days in March, too, because I was having dizzy spells so bad I could hardly function. So, just when I thought things were getting better, they got worse. This depressed me, so I mostly did nothing but wallow and cry and feel sorry for myself. While wallowing, I ate a lot of crap. Which made me gain weight and wallow some more. I felt crappy for months and months until finally one day, I had just had enough. I started counting calories and moving more, which doesn’t work, by the way, if you’re counting the calories of pizza and ice cream. (Yes, I did.) So, I gave up on that and gained back the whole five to ten pounds that I lost and ended up at two hundred fifty pounds. That’s a big girl. I’m five feet nine inches tall and I “carry my weight well” but you can’t hide two hundred fifty pounds. No, flabby arms, jiggly butt, and floppy tummies are impossible to conceal, unless I don a full body spanx leotard, but how would I pee? And what about my dinner plate face and my chin to the third power?

So, I heard about this diet from my mother-in-law called The 17 Day Diet. My father-in-law had lost a ton of weight doing it and both of them felt great. I thought it best to try it out since all of my ideas had failed miserably. Wallowing doesn’t *do* weight loss, and I wanted to break up. So we did.

I weigh in on Tuesdays, because Mondays are not my finest hours of the week and if I have a gain, I’ll just blame it on Monday, so I’ve always weighed myself on Tuesdays. Hey! Fun fact, right? I digress. On September 6, I weighed in at 250 pounds on the nose. That’s a nice round number to start on and I was nice and round, too. There are four cycles in The 17 Day Diet (T7DD), the last one being the maintenance cycle, which is supposed to last the rest of your life. T7DD is basically this: you eat healthy, you exercise every day, you lose weight. When you’re at your goal weight, you continue to eat healthy, you continue to exercise every day, you stay at your goal weight. Simple.

I started the first cycle on September 6 (thus beginning Operation: Lose The Cow) and 17 days later, I had lost 15 pounds. I’m now on cycle two and after 5 days on this cycle, I’ve lost another 3 pounds. This is the easiest diet I’ve ever been on. I’m not feeling deprived. I still eat all of my favorite foods, but I’ve made them healthier. T7DD even has a PMS Diet to go along with this for the weeks that you’re feeling more like a garbage disposal than a super model. All in all, I’ve lost 18 pounds and I’m really looking forward to the Holidays. My goal is to be down to my pre-pregnancy weight by Christmas, which means I’ll be wearing my old jeans, which means I’ll be in every picture that anyone takes. So there.

I have lots of recipes to share if you’re also eating healthier and looking to Lose Your Cow. Here is one of my recent favorites that I shared with a friend who is getting married soon and is following T7DD with me. She LOVED it. In her words, “THIS TERIYAKI SAUCE IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!! I would eat it on a shoe!!!”. I use this for chicken stir fry, broiled salmon, turkey burgers, and now, in this second cycle, on flank steak over salads. It’s delicious and easy to make. So what is it? It’s:

Teriyaki Sauce
(roughly 4 servings)

2 T. low sodium soy sauce
2 T. rice vinegar
2 T. olive oil
2 T. agave syrup (I use the dark amber because it has a good flavor like maple syrup.)
1 t. chopped garlic (I use the fresh stuff from the jar so I don’t have to chop garlic all the time.)

Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake together. Add in a little bit of red pepper flakes, too, if you’re feeling spicy!
Great on shoes!

I’m looking forward to sharing my before and after pictures, because the befores are that bad and the afters will be that good.

Are you being brave and attempting to Lose the Cow before the Holidays, too? Or is it just me?

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