I love watching the food network! I’m not much of a culinary Queen, so watching many of the shows gives me that cooking fix.

I especially love all of the challenges — extreme birthday cakes, character cakes, outrageous chocolate creations. I have no idea how they do it! Fascinating.

The other day I was watching the Ultimate Wedding Cake challenge — one lucky couple will choose from six cakes. The winning cake will be featured at their wedding, and the lucky chef wins $10k. Not bad!

So I’m watching the show. One cake, a six-tiered chocolate dream, will float above a sea of truffles and caramel. Another orange chiffon cake is being soaked in grand marnier then covered in a white chocolate ganache. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Then comes the commercial break… Weight Watchers! Come on! They were hawking their online program. I know people that swear by Weight Watchers. I’m not knocking it. But do you really need to interrupt one’s cake bliss with an ad for weight loss?

I prefer to watch my glutinous cooking shows in peace. White chocolate ganache, mascarpone cheese, truffles and all.

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And apparently we need to lose some weight.

I finally saw one of the Queen Latifah commercials for Jenny Craig. I’d been bracing myself for them, because I have really mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I was tempted to jump out of my seat and shout, “TRAITOR BITCH!” at the television and then shove a forkful of cheesecake in my mouth in a really pissed-off way for emphasis. She is The Queen. The final word on living large and looking good while doing it. She’s smart, funny, articulate, down-to-earth and dripping with glamour. It would be hard to watch her turn skinny on us. Our heroine, melting away. If our leader of the fat girls is bailing, then who do we have left? Mo’Nique? I’m sorry but she’s the anti-model for the overweight. She doesn’t make you stop and say, “Hell yeah, I’ll have another margarita.” She makes you kind of want to go purge the margarita you’ve already drunk and then go jog around the block. Not really the picture of health to me. So, who then? Emme? She’s too QVC to take seriously. So, it’s back to The Queen.

When she told us that it was OK to embrace our curves and be who we are, we listened and applauded and stuffed our breasts into her Curvation Limited Edition bras for the cure. Now she’s telling us we need to lose some weight and get healthy and I for one am skeptical of her method, but listening to the message.

Her commercials have a different slant (as I’m sure you’ve heard), touting a healthy lifestyle rather than the aesthetics of weight loss. I’m all for that. But, when I did Jenny Craig after the birth of my second child, their food was loaded with preservatives and artificial sweeteners. Back then, cooking wasn’t an option on the JC program. You bought their pre-packaged food and ate it at their intervals (supplementing with your own salad greens and their dressing) or you drank their meal replacement shakes and supplemented with your salad greens (and their dressing). Then when you met your goal, they smiled, handed you a cookbook and sent you home to fend for yourself. If I were doing Jenny Craig commercials, it would have worked to sell people on a different weight loss program. Now here I am cooking this delicious meal of baked salmon, butter and herb couscous, and tossed salad with home-made vinaigrette for my family, and lookie! I get to eat something called “Cookout Style Chicken & Beans” that I just pop into the microwave. In other words, I didn’t find Jenny Craig to be compatible with the life I was leading. I did lose weight on it, though, I cannot deny that.

The truth is, I’ve been plotting my own lifestyle changes. This has been a scheme underway for quite some time. I just needed the right time to commit to it, and that time was approaching quickly anyway.

In the past three or so years I: got pregnant, had a c-section, found out my belly was torn to shreds by that baby and left me with THREE abdominal hernias, had them repaired, ripped the mesh out of one of them, had that repaired, and then was on paxil for two months after my mother died which led to another 7 pound weight gain added onto that pregnancy weight I never lost to begin with. I am coming up on one year after that last operation. The one year mark is really important because it means I am 100% healed. I plan on seeing my doctor the first week in April before I proceed with my plans, just to make completely sure that everything is healed.

If I get the green light, then I will be enrolling back in tae kwon do. That’s my exercise goal. Go to tae kwon do and work through the belts. Lots of short-term goals in there, but my long-term goal will be that coveted belt noir that I almost earned seven years ago, but then had to move. If I can’t do tae kwon do, then I will need to find another exercise outlet. Maybe yoga. Maybe Curves. I don’t know yet.

My first weight loss goal is to get down to my pre-paxil weight. My second will be to get to my pre-pregnancy weight. That’s a total of 15 pounds. I’ll reassess after that. Keep in mind that I’m not The Queen. There will be no truth or honesty here. Don’t expect any real numbers or photos posted to document my progress. I’m not planning on keeping you all updated on this, unless some funny or shocking stories happen along the way. I’m just a chicken-shit with a pasty white blubber belly behind a Powerbook, after all. I do not want to be a MILF, but rather a “Mother I’d Like to Ride a Bike With,” or maybe a “Mother I’m Not Embarrassed to Be Seen at the Beach With.”

So, Your Majesty, you asked us in the fatty bourgeois to follow you in your quest for better health and a lower BMI and I will. If you’ve determined it’s the time to put down the fork and lace up our walking shoes, then I’m with you. But, I’m doing it differently, because, slap me for saying this, I think the whole Jenny Craig thing is a gimmick, one that will eventually come back to bite you in your shrinking ass later on. A year down the road, we’ll be graced with unflattering photos of you across the tabloids, with captions screaming of your OUT OF CONTROL WEIGHT GAIN! And asking what happened. You’ve kept the media at bay about your weight all this time with your self-confidence and unwavering talent, but once you let them in they’ll never leave. This, Your Highness, is opening the castle doors wide, bridging the moat and rolling out the red carpet for them. This is a mistake you’ll only recognize later.

I’m staging my own better health revolution and the masses consist of only me. I will meet my goals, but without aspartame-laden beverages and desserts. Without $10 chicken and noodle casseroles that somehow don’t need refrigeration and contain nary a recognizable ingredient on the side of the box (Eeew! On what planet exactly is that healthy?), and I will start right after Easter.

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I can’t believe its been 4 weeks since I started my weight loss journey. This week however, I will not be discouraged as I find the scale has not budged at all this week. Sigh. I still hold steady at 10 lbs. The scale does not however, reflect a lack of trying. I have not strayed from my Weight Watchers Flex Point diet, not even one tiny morsel of a cheat point was used.

So, what gives?

According to About.com, I just may have hit an early plateau:

Obstacles to Strength, Endurance and Weight Loss
Almost everyone reaches a weight loss plateau at some point in their fitness lives. The reason is that the human body works hard to keep energy intake and output in balance. In other words, your body does not like to lose weight (not a revelation, huh?). After your initial weight loss, your progress will slow down and eventually stop even though your exercise and food intake is consistent. The bottom line is that the very efforts you make to burn more calories may eventually slow it down.
Problem 1. Lowering your calories too much
Fact: It takes calories to burn calories. When you decrease your food intake, your body simply lowers its metabolic rate in response. This still allows the body to function properly, but ultimately your body requires fewer calories which creates hunger and prevents you from losing fat.

Makes sense, my body may be onto me; putting my brain into starvation and survival mode, but, could that be happening so soon? Or perhaps, it was because I had a respiratory cold last week and wasn’t able to walk or exercise or is it because I am so hyper-aware of my food, I might not be eating enough, suggesting it is indeed an early plateau?

This week I’m going to start with varying my exercise program and kicking it up a notch with exercise in general. Thank goodness this stand-still will not getting in the way of my determination, given that I’ve already made my goal of 10 lbs. weight loss a month, I’m lucky to have reached my goal. Hopefully, I’ll have some loss to report next week.

In the meantime, as promised, here is my one month pictorial update:

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Feeling more and more MILFy everyday. I’ve lost another 2 lbs., which is way cool because that marks a significant milestone, the 10 lb. mark. 40 lbs. to go and it just seems so much more attainable that 50 lbs. for some reason. I can finally see myself getting back to pre-pregnancy weight, even if it took 4 years, at least I’m doin’ it!

I feel like Weight Watchers Flex Plan has been an invaluable training tool, but I can almost predict points and figure out what I should and shouldn’t eat without even punching it into their online database. I do it anyway, because it makes you just that much more aware when you write it all out (or type it in my case).

I was starting to get worried because I wasn’t feeling so hungry this week; it seems to be getting easier. However, considering I am still losing weight and not that hungry it proof positive that my body is adjusting.

The last 3 nights have been the first nights in months that I slept the whole night through. I have battled insomnia for most of my adult life so this is a major benefit and joy for me.

I know my next goal will be to integrate some sort of strength building regiment into my schedule. I really need to do crunches. God, I hate crunches.

Stay tuned next week — I’ll post my one month photo update!

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My mother gave me sage advice when I was a wild-child teen: “The people you are most attracted to, are the people that are bad for you. The ones you don’t desire are the ones that are good for you.”

That probably comes as an insult to my husband, but have no fear my dear, I truly feel like I got the best of both worlds with my significant other. However, I am finding that her advice is applicable to my diet. The things that look good and are pretty and charming to be around but have no substance are not what’s good for me on my diet. The ugly shit, the stuff I’m not attracted to and that in which I have no emotional connection to and no desire to indulge in is the shit that’s good for me.

I have done well so far. This week, I weighed in at 191 which is 4 lbs. lighter than I was last week. Yep, this loser feels pretty good about herself. It hasn’t been easy, there were nights I was hungry and sometimes my mind would wander with thoughts like, “I could be hit by a limo with a rock star in it tomorrow, and my last days will have been lived out sleeping with the uglies (ugly food).” How many times in the past has that caused me to fall off the wagon and then life zips by at breakneck pace only to find me with the same largish butt. This time, I’m not going to drown my sorrows in cookies I don’t appreciate because I allowed myself to believe my alter-ego.

Weight Watchers Flex Plan rules by the way. It’s fun and motivating and it makes sense. Most of all, it works. Today I noticed a tid-bit that puts it all into perspective:

If you lose 1 lb., that is equal to 4 sticks of butter being removed from your body.

If you lose 5 lbs., that is equivalent to losing a sack of potatoes off your body. (I’m almost there!)

If you lose 10 lbs., that is equivalent to losing 8 medium cantaloupes off your body.

If you lose 25 lbs., that is equivalent to losing 3 gallons of milk off your body. (Think of what it must feel like getting rid of that heavy load? I’m currently walking around with almost 6 gallons strapped to my body!)

So, MILFs and DILFs, as we head into week 2, keep your eyes on the prize. If you are currently tracking your own progress on your personal blog, email me at jessica (at) imperfectparent (dot) com and I will feature some of you over the coming weeks!

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As I confessed last week,I have been eating like a person on death row. In fact, I have been eating like every brownie, hamburger and cookie will be my last. I think I’ve managed to gain 8 lbs. over the last two weeks. I try to rationalize it — surely weight that has been put on so quickly will quickly melt off, right? Right? Someone? Anyone?

I signed up for Weight Watchers today and chose the flex points plan. Prescott and few others from The Imperfect Parent forum and our Cranky Mama blogger have said they would join me. This is so exciting! Some are deciding to go with Spark People because it’s free and for comparison’s sake because I’m such a big Weight Watcher’s Online fan. WW is such a no brainer. The plan I’m doing, you just enter your weight, your goal weight and it assigns points to whatever you eat. They provide a database of thousands of foods, or you enter the nutritional information if they don’t have it pre-loaded and it tells you how many points you used up. I get 25 points for my daily ration. If I exercise, I get points back. Sweet!

I am going to start off with an aerobics class 2X a week. I’ve heard that if you start off too aggressively, you’re more apt to quit. Sounds good to me! Twice a week it is! I also have an exercise bike in my bedroom that I found after releasing it from the burden of carrying clothes.

In effort to motivate, I am compiling a list of reasons to lose weight. Tony Robinson, the motivational speaker, said on a morning program the other day that in order to lose weight, you must have a very personal and really compelling reason to lose weight or else you’re doomed. Here are my 5 reasons, but I would love for readers to participate and add to the list:

1. Sleep better
2. Have more energy
3. Wear skinny jeans
4. Live longer
5. Not have to unbutton my pants while sitting at the computer a long time

The down and dirty details (as well as my complete humiliation) after the jump…

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Hold onto your stretch jeans, Jenny Craig! Throw away your Spanx!

According to a USA Today article, Americans can lose weight by?�? simply putting their minds to it.

If?�? we would just decide to eat less?�? our waistlines would diminish.?�? TA DAH!

I hate to throw a wrench into modern journalistic reporting, but?�? I have decided that many times.

Didn’t work.

I’ve put my mind to losing weight about gazillion times in my almost 43 years and it has gotten harder with age to even remember what I’m trying to eat or not eat, let alone have the weight actually fall like a boulder off a cliff.

Geez, I feel silly for thinking all these years that it had to do with genetics, hormones, health, environment, media, exercise, motivation and actually doing something to counterbalance it all.

I think I’ll just add “putting your mind to it” to the list of things I tell my kids about eating right. I’m sure glad that modern life and schedules don’t sometimes lead us to the drive-thru and that Chips Ahoy bribes aren’t sometimes the way to get to talk on phone for five minutes.?�? I’m glad that my teens and tweens listen to everything?�? I say and do not buy the junk food in the school cafeteria.?�? I’m glad neither of my kids will want candy on Halloween.

Before you comment out the whazoo telling me that all you do have to do is put your mind to it, there are many more variables than that involved, and putting your mind to it is just step one.

Step two is now not reading silly articles that profess to have a simple answer to an age-old very complicated problem for millions.?�?

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