Falling off the horse.

When I was in 3rd grade I had a friend named Keenan Jenkins. We "went out" for, like, a week. I don't actually remember what that means, besides holding hands and hanging out at recess, hahaha! In some proceeding summer of 4th or 5th grade, I went over to his house. His parents owned horses, and he and his brothers loved to ride bareback. Well, I had been riding horses since I was four (because my Grandpa Robbins owned a ranch with lots of horses), but it was always in a saddle. So at Keenan's house, riding bareback was going to be a new experience. Luckily, he didn't make me try to do it alone. He let me ride behind him. And it was fun, for about the first five minutes. Then I started to slip slowly off. I don't remember any dialogue, just images and sensations. I fell off the horse, and I took poor Keenan with me. He landed a little better than I did. I fell off, onto my side, in a patch of mean thistles. It hurt, besides getting the wind knocked right out of me. The funny thing is, I cannot, for the life of me, remember if I tried riding bareback again that day, or if I just watched my friend ride his horse without falling off of it.

Goals in life can be just like riding bareback on a horse. You've got the groove for a little while, and then unexpectedly, you fall off. And that's life. You're going to fall off, no matter what. But it's important to get up, and try again.

Doing Shred at my mom's house was almost too easy for me. All the foods I needed to eat were there already, and she has a treadmill in the basement. Well, I am no longer at my parents' home, and I fell off of the horse named Shred.

Now, this is not a post about my defeat, because I do not see myself defeated. Shred is not a punishing diet change in any way. If you fall back into a bad eating routine, don't feel discouraged, because you can go back to the things you've learned while doing Shred, like eating healthy food and consuming proper portion sizes.

I'll explain what's happened to me.

Friday was the big travel day. I had packed snacks, both for Alice and myself, so that I could eat on my time schedule successfully, and eat the healthy foods I wanted to eat. That part of my trip was successful. Then after Ben picked us up from the LA airport, we went to Wendy's, where I ordered a small green garden side salad and a small baked potato. So eating out was also a big success. The problems didn't start until we actually got home.

See, Ben ate at his parents' house a lot during the three weeks I was gone, so there wasn't really anything food-wise (besides rice and beans in our food storage) for me to make or eat. So we had to go out shopping. Which we totally did, but after only buying half of what I needed for ONE WEEK of Shred eating, it was really expensive, and Ben suddenly wasn't as convinced as he was before. But at least I had the foods I needed to make a healthy dinner.

Then Saturday came, and we needed to finish shopping. I planned out my week, wrote down all the foods I would need, and we did round two of our groceries. I knew I had to stream-line my menus so that we were buying the most common kinds of foods to eat. And I knew that I needed to plan for three people, so I did. Ben was happier knowing that he was included in the food bought both days, something he had misunderstood the night before.

Saturday night, my Shred menu said that I was allowed two pieces of cheese pizza (4-inch wide crust, 6-inch long slice). And this, my friends was where it all came undone. Saturday night, we also wanted to go to the drive-in down in Santa Maria to watch the double feature of Noah (with Russell Crowe and Emma Watson) and Non-Stop (with Liam Neeson). So on our way down, Ben and his brothers Steven and Michael and I, stopped at Little Caesar's and picked up two Hot 'n Ready pizzas.

At the movie, I ate too much, because I was distracted. I made myself sick. Those slices of pizza were more like 6-inches wide, 8-inches long than anything, and they had pepperoni's all over them. And I ate three slices, not two. Oh dear. Did I mention that we had also brought nacho cheese and tortilla chips to make nachos? I didn't? Well...we did. And I had a serving that was two portions bigger than I should've eaten. Oh yes, I was very, very, very sick.

But that is not where the carnage stopped.

Sunday was Fast Sunday. For Mormons, that's the first Sunday of the month where we start a fast with a prayer so that we can have a purpose to our fast, and then we don't eat or drink anything for 24 hours or for two consecutive meals. So, as you might guess, I knew this was going to be difficult for me. Well, I chose to fast for two consecutive meals. And I did. After church, Ben, Alice and I always go over to his parents' house for Sunday dinner. And I knew this would be tricky.

Our nacho fixin's were still at his parents'. A whole unopened bag of chips, half of another, and most of a jar of cheese con jalapenos were there, just waiting on the kitchen counter. I watched myself take a small bowl, fill it with chips and cheese, and wondered who on earth was controlling my body. But that was my dinner. And I had a second bowl right after. Followed by a small bowl of rice to sop up the remaining cheese in the bowl. I was horrified. What's happening?! I was internally screaming at myself.

But the horror show had one last act. When we got home that evening, there was a frozen pizza in the freezer. Which we cooked and ate, over a funny show called Space Dandy that is just goofy. I wondered to myself what I was going to do, and tried to remind myself that tomorrow was a new day, and that I would just have to start over.

Well, today IS a new day. I woke up, made oatmeal for breakfast for Alice and myself (Ben was already at work at this point), put 1/2 cup of mixed berries on my oatmeal, drank an 8 oz glass of lemon water (the water here is absolutely disgusting, the chlorine makes me sick, literally), and decided to type up this blog post. I don't want anyone to think that Shred is easy, because it's not. You have to work at it, and I am not perfect at it. I had the biggest mess-up in three weeks for the past two days, but I didn't let that stop me. I am trying again.

Because that's all you can do. Try, try again. :)

Going home.

Vacations are fun. They give us a little boost when we're feeling low on energy. Three weeks is a little long, but I have enjoyed my time here with my family. Something I really enjoyed is the fact that I have lost fatty weight, that I have lots more energy and feel happy, and that I am able to go back home with the new fresh perspective on healthy eating and food in general. Believe me when I say that I never thought this was going to work for me. I never thought that I would be able to lose a huge amount of weight in such a short period of time. Today isn't my weigh day, but my weigh day is going to be a little hard for me to do since I will be back in California and Ben and I don't have a scale. Yet. ;)

The grand reveal about being on three weeks of shred is: I have lost 15 pounds in three weeks. The first week I lost 9 1/2 pounds, the second week was 3 1/2 pounds, and this third week I lost 2. On a general average it's healthy to lose about 2 pounds a week if you're on some sort of weight-loss program. So as long as my weight is moving down, I'm not too fussy about how much I lose at a time.

My sister-in-law wanted me to share a couple recipes that I use, so here are a couple meal favorites.

Lemon-berry fruit smoothie

One and a half cups skim milk or almond milk

One scoop of vanilla protein powder

One small container blueberry yogurt, low-fat or fat-free

1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries

1 cup frozen blueberries

1/8 cup lemon juice

One large handful of spinach leaves

Makes 2 servings.

Tomato bisque soup

1/2 can progresso tomato bisque soup

1 cup shredded lettuce, dark leaf

2 tablespoons low-fat or fat-free cottage cheese

Heat soup, add lettuce and cottage cheese, stir together. 

How badly do you want cake?

Don't get me wrong, I think cake with lovely thick, rich vanilla cream frosting is super delicious. And I love velvet cakes and cheesecakes. But I don't think that I do anymore. I'll explain :)

Sundays are always a difficult day to do anything on your own special schedule if you're a Mormon (which I am). We have a three-block church meeting that lasts for about three hours, and so that makes doing Shred a little difficult on Sunday. However, I just take an easy snack with me (a one ounce mozzarella cheese stick and half of an apple sliced) and I make sure to eat meal right before church, and a meal right after so that I am staying on schedule with the whole "eating every one and a half hours" thing.

Well, yesterday both my married siblings were home visiting as well (I'm here for two more weeks, so is my sister, and my brother was up for the weekend). So besides church, I was very distracted, in a good way. My day started out pretty normally. I ate a quick breakfast before stepping out the door, made sure that I had a snack fixed for both my toddler and me (which I would be eating in the middle of Sunday School), and went to church with my whole family. It was when we got home that my food schedule literally fell apart. Church started at nine, so it wasn't until about twelve-thirty that we got home (I met a couple old friends I had graduated high school with and we chatted for twenty minutes, to the chagrin of my siblings who waited in the car with my daughter. Haha, sorry guys :) ) I ate pretty soon after we got home, a tomato bisque soup with shredded lettuce in it. But then, I got distracted with my sister and adorable nephew, with my brother and his darling wife, and with an awesome homemade slide that consists of three mattresses on the stairs, and slippery pajamas (I watched my three-year-old, helped by my sixteen-year-old brother, slide down with increasing glee each time).

An hour and a half went by, and I didn't remember to eat. Another hour and a half went by, and I was too busy to notice. Five o'clock came around and then it hit me. A throbbing headache, and a stabbing pain in my stomach. I looked at the clock and I realized that I hadn't eaten in over four hours. Frantically, I got up, looked at my notebook where I keep my daily menus, and saw that I had missed a meal and a snack. I notified my mom and asked her anxiously what I should do. She told me to remain calm, that we would all be having dinner in a few minutes, and that I should just have very small portions of dinner, and then try to get back on my menu. So that was what I did. I began feeling better right away after I had eaten and had lots of water.

Then came the cake. The fantastical and splendorous St. Patrick's Day cake that my mother had worked on for hours, consisting of one layer velvet cake, dyed green, one layer cheesecake, normal off-white, and another layer of velvet cake, dyed green also. It was covered in a thick, cream cheese frosting, and decorated with green chocolate shamrocks. Mom and I had decided a week ago that we would each have a very small slice each. So I was mentally prepared for a very thin, and what I anticipated to be very delicious, piece of cake.

I ate every single bite of that small slab of green and white cake. Sugar! It tastes so good! turned into Wow, this doesn't taste as good as I remember. turned into Holy crap, I'm going to be sick. And then that cake that had started out tasting magically delicious, turned to ash in my mouth. I don't know why I ate that whole piece. I don't know if stopping halfway through would've rendered me just as sick. But I can tell you right now, that my body did NOT like what was happening. I had been eating clean for a little over a week, and then suddenly, WHAM, I hit my poor body with a whole load of processed sugars and fats. And it couldn't take a hit like that. I felt miserable. And I felt totally bewildered as to how I thought that eating a piece of cake was a good idea in the first place. I spent the rest of the night in pain and sickness, and I knew that I probably would never really want a bite of cake again, let alone a whole piece, no matter how small!

This morning I was trying to remember how good the cake tasted, but that sensory memory is overwritten by how awful I felt in the aftermath. Honestly, I can't remember how good it was. And I saw that cake in the fridge this morning, and felt a little nauseated.

I think I have been cured of cake. :)

I am a believer!

There comes a time in your life when you will hit rock bottom, whether its physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. And when you do, there is nowhere to go, but up. My body has always been a difficult one with which I have to deal. I gain weight easily, I grow facial and neck hair (and I promise, I have always been a female ;] ) and it takes me twice as long to lose weight as it does for other people. All the while that other girls were eating whatever they wanted and running a couple miles and managing to lose five pounds in a week, I had to practically starve myself by living on carrots and celery, and work out for at least an hour each day. At one point in my young adult life, I was running five miles a day, and living on Slim Fast and salads, just to keep my weight where it was. From the age of 13 to the year I turned 22, I was obsessed with my weight and how "fat" I looked. Honestly, now when I go back and look at pictures of my teenage self, I see a kid who was hardly overweight at all. How did I see so much fat there, when now all I see is how thin I looked? Perception is very weird, and totally in our heads.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, rock bottom. :)

My rock bottom was about a year long. I had worked up a numbness to the way I physically looked and emotionally felt. I had stopped caring. And it was obvious. I didn't really take care of myself. I ate whatever I darn well felt like eating. I would wear the same clothes for days. I wouldn't shower until my husband couldn't stand my smell anymore. It was bad. Some days I would just stay in bed all day. Some people say this looks like depression, but it wasn't that. This was an active decision on my part to just stop caring. Period.

Then we moved to California. I had to start meeting new people, and I would often be in the position where I was around younger people. I cracked jokes about my age and my weight, and I was a little stunned to find that instead of making fun of me (which I was prepared for), I got a lot of positive feedback. "You're not that fat." "You can just start exercising!" "You're still young, you can be healthy!" This struck me. Deeply.

A few months ago, I was looking for ways to help me jump start weight loss and get me motivated. I mentioned a couple posts ago that it was my mom that introduced me to Shred, although at that time, I was skeptical and just listened out of curiosity. I had been planning to buy some herbal pills off of Amazon.com that claimed to help suppress appetite and help you lose weight in a normal amount of time (in a year, you could lose 90 lbs). Then about a week before I was scheduled to travel to my parents' house, I talked with my mom again over the phone, and she convinced me just to try Shred.

Today, being Saturday, was my weigh-in day. Today marks one full week being on Shred. And I have lost, in total, 9.5 lbs IN ONE WEEK. I haven't been taking magical weight-loss pills, I haven't been exercising five hours a day, I haven't even been starving myself. I have been eating six to seven small meals every day that are healthy foods, drinking lots and lots of water, and exercising for about 40 minutes five out of the seven days of the week. I told my husband Ben, who has been skeptical this whole week, about my weight loss, and now he is totally on board, ready to buy the book so I can have it when I go home in two weeks.

You can change your body and you don't have to become a gym rat or half-anorexic. It's time to take back your health, if nothing else. If you don't really have weight to lose, then at least look at Shred and see what health benefits you can receive. You will learn how to eat healthy again, you'll be able to train your body to recognize when you are actually hungry, and YOU will be in control of your cravings of sugar and fatty snacks.

If I, who have genetics and hormones working against me, can do this, you can do this too. :) I believe in you!

When your eyes are bigger than your stomach.

We've all been there. You're trying to eat healthy, you're following a set meal plan, and when you've finally got the food made and sat yourself down at the table, you look down at your plate and realize how little food you've got sitting there. Wow, you think, there is no way this is going to be enough food for me. How on earth is this going to satisfy my hunger? Well, that's what I thought this morning as I looked at my breakfast of two egg whites on one piece of un-buttered whole-wheat toast. Oh, and there was also a small orange that replaces the grapefruit I was supposed to have.

So as I'm looking down at what looks like a completely un-satisfying meal, I think to myself, Know what? If this doesn't fill you up, there's a snack in 90 minutes. Just eat it, drink your giant plastic cup of water, and you'll be all right. After six full days of being on this eating schedule, I know that while the food portion may seem small, the giant drink of water helps you feel full and non-deprived. And you know what? I was shown again that what my eyes see, and what actually fills my stomach, are two different things.

It may be a little daunting to face a small breakfast and wonder how you'll get through the day. It totally was for me for the first couple days. But the Shred "diet" is all about retraining your body. Truthfully, after I ate the egg whites on the piece of toast, the orange, and drank the water, my belly was comfortably satisfied. And I didn't feel deprived.

And you know what? My snack is now five minutes away as I'm writing this post. :) And I'm not even that hungry yet. I'm actually feeling very satisfied from breakfast. :)

Til next time!

The results are in!

The reason I started this blog was to show myself, and maybe some people in my life, that changing eating habits IS possible, and fixing your life IS possible. I will be updating this blog in real time, so that my life as it changes can be seen. This isn't a "here's where I used to be and now I'm here" success story blog. I've seen those and they give me absolutely NO motivation. 

My dear mother introduced me to Shred, a healthy lifestyle change that is supposed to retrain your body how to eat and what to crave. I am on week one, day six of a six week cycle. 

The first day I was skeptical. Me, change eating habits I've had for three years? Me, lose weight? Me? My head was full of doubts. Not me. Not me. I had trouble believing I could do it. But I'll be hungry. But I'll crave sweets and carbs. But I'll have to pee every 20 minutes from all this water I have to drink, that sure is inconvenient. But I have to write down and plan menus for all my meals, every day? That's hard! I'm not a planner!

Still, I have to give myself credit for trying, even though I whined throughout the first day. I stuck to the menu plan I had written down. Shred is all about eating every 1 1/2 hours, so you end up eating small meals and snacks all through the day. And your exercise is about 40 minutes long, whenever you find time to do it. I can watch two episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" on Netflix in 40 minutes. You drink a large glass (or in my case a 20 oz plastic cup) of water with every snack and every meal, too.

Day one finished. I cheated a little by eating a couple no bake cookies my brother had made and felt a little bad, but I told myself to start again tomorrow. Then day two started, and I whined a little less. I felt satisfied after every meal or snack I ate. I cheated that night with a small bag of Cheetos I found in my parents' storage room and I felt bad, so I resolved to do better the next day. Day three came, and I didn't complain at all. I was feeling less tired and I found myself looking forward to each meal or snack. But I cheated that night too, with a couple banana nut muffins my mom had made. Day four and five, I was really hitting my stride. In fact, yesterday was day five. And I cheated last night with two bags of chips, a bag of fruit snacks, and a whole clamshell of strawberries. That's it, you idiot, I thought, you've ruined your diet. Looks like you can't change your bad habits after all. And I went to bed thoroughly disappointed with myself. 

Well as I stated before, today is day six. I woke up, thinking about the bad food choices I had made last night, angry with myself for being unable to avoid temptation. I'm going to weigh myself, I thought. Let's see how badly I'm failing. I stepped on the scale, ready for a heavy blow to my self-esteem. 

247, the display blinked, before it turned off. 247?! My mind was blown. 

Now let me explain a couple things. Although I have cheated at the end of almost every day, I followed every menu during the day strictly, drank tons of water, and exercised when I was supposed to. Next, my official weigh day is on Saturday. That's the day I started, and that's the day I first weighed myself, with no clothing. You're supposed to weigh yourself the same way each time. When I stepped on the scale this morning, I had clothes on, and I was two days away from my official weighing day. I was expecting more weight gain, because of all the cheating I had done this past week. But six days ago, when I stepped on the scale to get my starting weight, the number I had seen was 252. 

In five days of Shred, I have lost at least five pounds, maybe six, since I was clothed when I weighed today. EVEN after cheating almost every day. EVEN though I felt like I was failing. I have lost FIVE POUNDS. Just imagine if I hadn't cheated all those nights! I probably could have lost more!!

After seeing that, I knew I had to blog about this process, firstly because IT WORKS. Secondly, because seeing this process on virtual paper, is going to do wonders for me on those days that I feel discouraged. And thirdly, because I know that maybe my story could be motivation for someone else needing to hear that YOU CAN CHANGE and YOU HAVE CONTROL. 

You aren't starving yourself on Shred. You aren't depriving yourself. What you are doing is, eating small, appropriate portions often, excercising 5/7 days a week for about 40 min/day, and drinking a ton of water in healthy, non-overwhelming amounts, and cutting out unhealthy food. 

I am very excited to share this process! And I am so excited to see it working, because my motivation is now in overdrive from seeing results I wouldn't have had doing anything else. :)

Me :)

I am bad at blogging. It's not my strong suit. But I think I need to, for myself mostly, and maybe for others. 

Hello world :)

My name is Alexandra French, I am 27 years old, and I am addicted to food. I love deep dish four cheese pizza, salt and vinegar potato chips, ice cream, cake doughnuts, super sour warheads, and Dr. Pepper. When I am happy, I eat. When I get down about something I can't control, I eat. You get the idea. Food has ruled over me for almost four years. 

Rewind back to the year 2009. I was a size 6, the smallest pant size I've EVER worn in my entire life. I was 22 years old, a junior at Brigham Young University-Idaho. I was also single, until the last three months of that year. Back then, I had my body under my control. I exercised 6/7 days of the week, for about half an hour starting at 6 am. I drank Slim Fast for breakfast and counted calories. I was super happy about the way I looked and I felt great. 

I met my soon-to-be husband, Ben in October 2009. We married six months later in April 2010, and in June, I found out I was pregnant. And that was when I stopped caring about what I ate, oddly enough. For the first three months, I was sick every day, so I ate whatever I could keep down. The last six months I was in the habit of just eating whatever, so we ate out A LOT during this time. And I gained 50 lbs during my pregnancy. 

After I gave birth to my daughter Alice, I lost 30 lbs in a matter of a few weeks. But I retained about 20 lbs. But it wasn't the weight that worried me. It was my bad eating habits. All my good ones were gone, replaced with impulses to eat entire boxes of tacos, whole pizzas, and 3 liters of Dr. Pepper in one sitting. Over two years, I gained 90 more lbs. 

My daughter just turned three in February, and I am 100 lbs more than I weighed on my wedding day. :( My bad eating habits have brought me here, and I am done feeling tired, sick, and out of control with food.