Eating Out & Weight Loss

I want to start by saying, I'm still on the 50 miles challenge and I got in 10 miles tonight, 8.80 miles on the bike and 1.20 on the treadmill!
I call that a win-win for tonight!

I lost 1.2 lbs this week, while I'm happy with any loss on the scale, it could have been better, but sometimes life just happens, like crazy schedules and 2nd and 3rd jobs getting more busy.

I ate Pizza Buffet twice this past week, and Cracker Barrel and I managed to lose. I don't want people to think you can eat out and show weight loss all the time, but I'm managing to do so. When I say pizza buffet, one plate of the lowest cal pizza which is Taco Pizza for me, I eat 3 slices, I scrape off all the meat and cheese and replace the lettuce, tom. onion, I add in some red pepper, and about a teaspoon of marinara, hey it's still pizza buffet :) my salad has one scoop of dressing, everything else is calorie free veggies, no dessert pizzas, puddings, or potato salad. That meal weighs in at around 660 calories, while it isn't ideal, it's a nice "break" from work and counting cals for a moment. It's do-able especially if I go to the gym and have reasonable other meals that day. It's all about the planning!

My Cracker Barrel meal use to be the veggie plate of 6 veggies, (I could justify 6 because it was too hard to only pick 4, plus one or both toddlers were eating off my plate) I realize now that was just an excuse. 3 years ago, my order would have been: dumplings, mashed potatoes, hashbrown casserole, maybe even two servings of HB casserole, corn, green beans, biscuits and corn muffins, I like both so it was always a toss up, but typically I liked the corn bread better, that is until I read the cals in those bad boys, like almost double what a biscuit has in it! So now I don't eat them. My meal the other night went like this: veggie plate of 4: green beans, carrots, brown beans, and dumplings (I shared dumplings with Bre) I did eat a biscuit and a corn muffin. I called that my splurge meal of the weekend!

I am loving Logan's Roadhouse right now, I get the broccoli and a veggie skewer and a mushroom skewer, I eat one roll, and wipe off all excess butter that is on it, next time I'm going to ask for some with no butter. That meal is about 600 cals also, not horrible for a night out! here is what my plate looks like:

I'm learning on this journey of mine, things I would have never done without, insert cheese on everything, is that if you can't taste it when it's on a sandwich or on a taco salad or a coney dog, then why spend the cals on it? I've been coming up with ways to cut 100-300 cals a day and it's working.

I know I can do better, but am happy with the way things are going, I'd love to get where I'm consistently losing two pounds a week, but I know that means a much more strict diet, so we shall see.

I'm feeling great, and excited to see where I'm at by Halloween, I'm gonna guess I will have lost another 14 lbs by then!