Diet tips

People ask us all the time since we have started this diet "What are ya'll doing?"  So I decided to give a few of our tips. And please understand, we are a family that loves to eat.  The more decadent the better.  We are like most people out there.  We were on prepetual diets that failed constantly.  I have even taken diet pills.  Yes, they worked, but within two years I weighed more than before I started.  My husband and I were really concerned over our weight as well as our children's.  We have lamented over this for a long time but nothing seemed to work.  When we started this diet (actually my husband started first) the kids and I thought it would be like so many other times he sai,d he was going to loose weight. It would last 3-4 days,. No weight loss. He gets aggravated and gives up, leaving us unable to stick to the diet because to drown his sorrows he wanted the biggest, most fattening hamburger he could get.  After a week of this diet he was loosing weight, he was excited and not giving up.  It took the kids and I about a week before we got excited.  Once we knew he was going to stick to the diet, we knew we could.  So the whole family got on the band wagon.  We all started eating 1200 calories a day with very low carbs and very few sweets.

We basically eat meat and veggies. But occasionally, we do have ice cream or girl scout cookies or what ever we are craving AS LONG AS WE HAVE THE CALORIES FOR IT.  Especially with the younger kids the rule is if you have the calories and want to eat it, then eat it. But we have noticed on the weeks we eat more sweets we tend to lose less weight.

The first month we stuck to the no carbs or sweets. No breads, pasta, rice and very little fruit. Except for Christmas day we did not stray from that for the first month. Then the second month we did an occasional ice cream cone from Mcdonalds or smoothie  Only about twice that month.  By the end of January, Joe had lost 35lbs and my self and the older two had lost almost 20lbs.  Audrey had reached her goal of 12lbs and Camille had lost 15lbs.  Not bad for 2 months of dieting.

It has become easy to follow.  We check calories before we eat the food so we know how much we are eating.  Several times we have decided "it's not worth the calories".  My son, Royce, has decided he can't eat a peanut butter ball again. 110 calories per ball. You know how many we used to eat at Christmas. The whole container. Can you imagine how many calories we were consuming.  The same thing with Girl Scout cookies (the 4 girls are GS so we have tons of cookies in the house this time of year) We ate the serving size - not the entire box (like we did in years past). 4 thin mints for 160 calories, 2 samoas for 150 calories, 2 tagalongs for 140 calories.  One morning after I got off work, I ate 2 tagalongs and 4 thin mints and enjoyed every minute of it.  I did go 100 calories over my calorie goal but it was a conscious choice to do so and I don't do it every day.  Usually we are way under our calorie goal.  In fact, I had to make a rule in the house that the kids have to eat 1000 calories a day.  Sometimes, at the end of the day, they have only eaten 500-600 calories. It just depends on what we eat.

We try to keep the meals around 300-400 calories. It's become a game to try to get supper the lowest amount of calories I can.

We still have gravies and spaghetti sauce. We just eat it over spaghetti squash or cauliflower.  We eat almost no bread.  Anything you would eat on bread, we now eat on a salad.  Oh, and we discovered yogurt dressings.  Much tastier than light or fat free dressings.

We try to eat high protien meals because protien keeps you fuller longer. Some people worry that my younger kids and teens aren't getting enough vitamins.  But trust me we eat so much more healthier than we did before.  We would go all week without eating a vegetable before we changed our way of eating.  The kids don't drink milk like they used to (we went from 8 gal a week to less than a gal). But we do eat cheese sticks and yogurt.  We love to snack on baby bell cheeses. Light or regular.

We eat more fresh veggies these days. But don't think you can't afford to eat healthy. Now that the entire family is on the bandwagon, we are saving a lot on groceries.  I'm not buying junk food and we are eating a lot less, I mean a lot less.  1200 calories as opposed to 2000-3000.  Big difference.

We also eat a lot of  Schwan's food.  Very easy, quick and convienient.  They have a Live Smart line that is very low cal and healthy but there are also other things that are low cal.  I get the cheese burgers, corn dogs, pepperoni rolls and meatball sandwiches.  These make a quick low cal lunch for the kids.  I also enjoy the English muffin turkey breakfast sandwich.

I hope this helps some. I know I've been long winded but just trying to share what we do.  Trust me if our family can do it, anyone can.