Progress to Celebrate - Kinda Sorta

Last night we had great Thanksgiving dinner. We had traditional Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes covered in gravy. We added some #plantstrong dishes as well. I added the Sweet Potato Bowl from the Engine 2 Diet. I also saw some really good looking recipes on +forksoverknives (Forks Over Knives Plant-based Thanksgiving Recipes post). I was going to make a couple of them then realized we had way to much food so I just picked the Brown Rice Casserole with Lentils. So we had that for dinner.

I have to say I really liked both the casserole and the sweet potato bowl which we used as salad(the small plate in picture above). I think I previously mentioned that I was going to be #plantstrong -ish. Times like Thanksgiving, Christmas I intend to have meat. Or I should probably phrase it that I won't feel guilty if I choose to eat meat on any given occasion as a one-off. So I had some turkey but you can barely see it on that plate. I cut way back on the volume of 1) the meat and 2) the stuffing. That stuff is *so* dangerous - it is so good it tempts me to enter the zone, the shark feeding frenzy zone.

Actually though the salad and casserole were so good the turkey just became another flavor in the mix of food I was eating. Quite enjoyable that way really. I also found that when I started picking in the kitchen after Mom left that have the option to either pick the turkey and stuffing or the casserole I was aware enough to choose eating the casserole - okay so I also picked from the Turkey. Busted. I have to say though it was far less than if there would have been no casserole available.

I was a little worried about my weigh in this morning because of the large meal, the meat I ate, the picking I did while cleaning the kitchen. To top it off I didn't wake up hungry this morning which normally means that I ate too late last night and hadn't completely digested. It also generally means weight gain on the morning weigh-in. This morning though it was different. I actually lost weight:

Okay, so I only lost .6 pounds which isn't huge and could be judged to be a measurement error. The trend, I must stress, continues downward and that's important. The fact is that even though I ate alot, enough to satiate but not win the Buddha Trophy mind you, I still lost weight. I take that to mean that one the exercise I continue to do is building muscle, thereby burning more calories. More importantly probably is the fact that I eat more veggies than I ever have. Which means less calories even though I can eat large quantities of food, and it also means faster digestion. Yes, the candle is burning in the bathroom.

Clarification

Those of you that have been following this blog know that I weighed in at 185 pounds on August 25th and that I have been using that as my starting weight. So based on that I've only lost 24 pounds (let's ignore rounding off). What's the deal, dude? Trying to claim success without actually succeeding? A good question that I decided to answer so I started digging a little more closely into +myfitnesspal (website) and discovered the reason it says:

lost 0.6 lbs since his last weigh-in! Robataka's lost 25.6 lbs so far.

At some point prior on or prior to June 15th I weighed in at 186 pounds. As you may know, I was taking nutrition classes with Melissa the onsite Dietitian and Hyland. In one of the classes she introduced us to myfitnesspal and gave us a demo on how to use it. I believe I went home that night, installed it on my phone and weighed in. So really I have only lost 24.6 pounds from when I actually started this years journey.

I will continue to use the 185 pound weigh in largely so I can celebrate losing 25 pounds again. Nothing wrong with celebrating your achievements! Kinda. Sorta.