Before and After

I promised I would share my before and after photos so here they are!

Yes, I AM wearing skinny jeans in the 2nd picture! I swore that I never would but I feel a LOT more confident even after losing less than 15 pounds! I do plan to continue my weight loss journey over on my regular blog Jersha & Dup and I'd love to see you there! We mostly post product reviews but we also share lots of great deals and I love writing about plus size fashion.

Final Weigh In!

I lost ANOTHER 2.7 pounds last week! That brings my total weight loss for this competition to 14.4 pounds! That means that I lost 4.82% of my body weight in the past 7 weeks! I am beyond excited and I am so motivated to keep working on my weight loss. Physically I'm not seeing a huge difference but I am feeling it. I actually went down a pant size (from 26 to 24) and I feel a lot healthier. I won't post my after picture yet but I promise it will go up sometime this week and I'll put it directly next to my before picture so you can see if I look any different.

I do want to say thanks to everyone who followed my blog and commented. Your comments motivated more than I ever imagined!

I met my goal!

Image Source: Chris Downer, used under CC license

If you remember my intro post, you'll know that my goal was to lose 10 pounds during this competition. Well, I'm here to shout it from the rooftops because I MET MY GOAL already!!! I'm currently at 11.4 pounds down from when I started. I feel GREAT! My jeans feel a little bigger (whoop whoop) and I have a lot more energy.

So what is my goal for this week, the final week of Win, Lose or Blog!? My goal is to lose another 2 pounds. It will be tough since I've averaged about 1.5 pounds per week but I think I can do it!

What is YOUR goal for this week?

What's for dinner?

In an effort to stay away from fast food (my biggest weakness), I'm making crockpot dinners this week. Today, we're having Crockpot Salsa Chicken Tacos. The recipe is below. I've never made this recipe before but I've read good reviews over on SparkRecipes. I'll update the post after we've eaten so I can tell you how we liked it.

UPDATE: We LOVED this recipe! It made much more than just 12 servings. We each ate 3 tacos (it was too good to stop at just one or two) and there's probably enough to make 12-15 more tacos. We used Chi-Chis flour tortillas (soft taco size) which are only 80 calories each (the calorie count below uses 140 calorie tortillas) so the calorie count was actually closer to 300 calories each. We HIGHLY recommend this recipe!

Ingredients

• 3 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 jar salsa
• 2 packages taco seasoning
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup (condensed)
• 1 cup sour cream
• 12 flour tortillas

Directions

1. Add chicken to slow cooker
2. Sprinkle taco seasoning over chicken
3. Pour salsa and soup over chicken
4. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours (I recommend 1 hour on high and then switch to low)
5. Shred chicken with forks about 1 hour before done
6. Remove from heat and stir in sour cream
7. Serve with tortillas (if you don't like tortillas, you can serve over rice)

Nutritional Info

Servings Per Recipe: 12

Amount Per Serving:

Calories: 363.4

Total Fat: 11.1 g

Total Carbs: 36.2 g

Dietary Fiber: 1.7 g

Protein: 29.4 g

NOTES:
You may use half the packet of taco seasoning or use reduced-sodium taco seasoning. You may also use reduced-sodium cream of chicken soup. Some slow cookers cook faster than others. The newer ones cook a bit faster and you may have to adjust your cooking time based on that.

The Scale Says... (Week #3)

I lost another pound last week! Let me say that I was worried that I would not lose anything because work was getting in the way of my exercise last week but then I went to the zoo last week. This may seem insignificant but our zoo has hills and we walked up and down then for 4 hours! I didn't burn quite as many calories as I thought I would in 4 hours of walking. According to my BodyMedia Fit, I burned 800 calories while I was at the zoo. Not bad but definitely less than I thought I would burn. I think that my zoo trip definitely helped me lose the pound that I lost this week.

Chores = Exercise?

We live in an apartment with no laundry facilities and no washer/dryer hookup so I usually only do laundry when we have 3 loads so I can save time doing it at the laundromat. This week was a little different, though. We still had 3 loads of laundry but we were also "house sitting" for my mom while she was on vacation, so we did our laundry at her house. Instead of doing 3 loads at once, I had to walk back and forth to put clothes in, take them out, check the dryer (I wasn't familiar with how long it took to dry), fold clothes, etc. I didn't really feel like I was doing much work but when I plugged in my Body Media Fit at the end of the day, I was pretty shocked (and excited) to see how many calories I burned.

I burned 3000 calories that day! I didn't do any other exercise that day except for a bit of "window shopping" so I was very surprised to see that number. Maybe now I'll be more motivated to do chores, lol.

And the Scale Says... (Week #2)

Sorry for the delay in getting this post out but I've been very busy! According to my Sunday night weigh in, I lost another 2.2 pounds last week! Again, I am quite surprised because I didn't get much exercise in last week due to my knee acting up. But I was determined to exercise so I still did simple things like lifting weights and shaking my booty when the radio was on. I also kept to my food plan as much as possible. All of this definitely paid off with another 2+ pound weight loss.

I can hardly contain my excitement! This weight loss is motivating me to get off my butt and get exercising and luckily my knee is cooperating now. My plan this week is to ride my exercise bike daily, try out at least 2 of my new exercise DVDs and hoof it up and down the hills at the zoo tomorrow with my mom and sister. I'm having a bit of difficulty keeping my calories down, especially with my husband surprising me with a chocolate milkshake from Sonic today. Doesn't he know that I'm trying to lose weight here?!? Oh well, one day won't totally derail me.