Great Weekend & Super Cleanse

I had an awesome weekend.  I got to relax and be lazy AND be productive.  I got some quality time in with hubby too.  I love spending time with him.  We didn't do too much but just being together and having those three days where we didn't have to work was really nice.  Saturday we went up to the 'rents house and hung out with them for the day then went to dinner.  Hubby got fried chicken with two sides and the three of us got the vegetarian platter which is basically four sides.  I got the potato salad, greens, beans & rice and macaroni and cheese.  I ate the macaroni and cheese and packed up everything else.  I'd filled up plenty on corn bread and earlier I'd caved and eaten some baked Lays with wine at mom's house so that was plenty.  1,548 cals for the day.  Not bad.  Everyone else cleaned their plate.  The rest of the weekend was spent at home.  There was grocery shopping, homework, laundry, dishes and putting garage shelves together.  We also did fun stuff like play a board games, watch movies and roast hot dogs.  One thing we didn't do is have sex.  Hmmm.  We are in another dry spell.  Normally that spells trouble for a relationship but that might not always necessarily be the case.  Everything else with us is good so I'm only worried about it at this point because of things I read and hear telling me that I should be concerned.  I'll continue to ponder this, I'm sure.  I went to the gym Monday morning and did the Elliptical and got some good stretching in.

I started taking Super Cleanse on Thursday night.  I was still desperate to keep my system moving, not really knowing if this would work on me but hoping that it would.  What can I say?  This stuff is awesome.  Thank you, thank you thinplse for suggesting it!!  I took one Thursday night.  I didn't go Friday but by Saturday I went twice in one day.  I went Sunday, Monday and this morning.  Good solid BM's.  The kind I wish I could just have normally.  What a huge difference it makes in your weight loss efforts when you can have regular bowel movements.  Forget laxatives.  These are the real deal and better yet they are safe for long term use.  The bottle says not to use it for more then 30 consecutive days whereas with a laxative I use it once and my system is messed up and dependent on it.  I plan to take 1 or 2 every other day through the weekend because we are going out to dinner on Saturday then I'll give it a rest.  I don't plan on overusing it.  I don't want to make them part of my daily weight loss maintenance routine.  I still plan to watch what I eat, keep up the fiber snacks and I REALLY REALLY want to try to be less afraid of drinking water.  I'm not going to just eat what I want whenever I want and then rely on this pill to get it out.  Chances are, I'd still end up gaining if I used it as an excuse to pig out every day and I don't want to abuse it.  It'll be my way of purging but safely and not on a regular basis.  Ideally, I just want to use them when I go out to eat because that's pretty much the only times when I tend to over do it.  They will be great to take on vacation too because my constipation is usually even worse when I'm traveling even though I'm eating and drinking more.  It feels good not to feel backed up and heavy.  Now that I've been going daily I can see that part of the reason that I gain is simply because I can't take a freakin' dump and get rid of what I've eaten.  Simple concept but my body doesn't want to cooperate on it's own so I'm glad I have this as a back up.  Now for the downside.  Flatulence.  Not out of control but when it happens it's pretty bad.  Air freshener is a must.  Hubby decided to give the pills a whirl too.  He's already regular so he just took one at night two days in a row and ended up going 3X in a day.  What a pair we were!!  I've been hanging onto my comfort zone weight by my fingernails over the last couple weeks and this has been a really useful tool in helping me maintain and lose some.  I'm back to my magic number today.  112!!  It's still early so we'll just see how it goes with these and I'll be sure to keep you updated.

UGGG...back to work today.  And it'll be a long day because I have school.  All the kiddos are back to school today so traffic sucked and on top of that there was rain.  It's muggy and rainy which is really weird for this neck of the woods. 

Comments:
Em: How do you determine your calorie budget?

When I was actively in weight loss mode I set my budget at 800. I bumped it up to 1,000 for maintenance mode because I wanted a more reasonable number for the long term. I also didn't want to feel like a total failure for being above calorie budget ALL the time. It felt a little piggish at first but I figured if I was able to maintain with a 1K target then that's where I'd keep it. I use an app for tracking calories and had to sort of tinker with it in order to get it off of some ridiculous number like 1800 that they want to recommend. I felt that about 50 over 1K is a good buffer and then the app automatically adjusts it up or down by a few pounds based on what I enter for my weight on each given day.