Skinny Rules...3 Days In

So...I effectively chose the WORST week ever to start this. This week is parent/teacher conferences, and if you aren't a teacher, the week is very much like this:

I am going to do my best to abide by the rules as best I can in the next two days, but I'm also going to be realistic. I will be breaking the carb rule for dinner tonight and tomorrow. They feed us (the ONE awesome thing about conferences!) and I will definitely be taking advantage of a free meal. I will just try to be smart about it.

I have had some successes, the most notable of which is that I am down a pound! Yay! Another has been breakfast EVERY morning (though every morning it has been the same and looked like this):

Homemade peanut butter and apple slices

It appeases the "apple a day" rule AND the "protein with every meal" rule. Another success has been not drinking my calories. I had fallen into a bad habit of drinking pop whenever I got a headache, which was about every other day, but I haven't had a pop in several days now. I've still had headaches, but I'm managing.

Hands down, the hardest rule is the "no carbs after lunch" rule. EVERYTHING, it seems, is a carb. That means dinner should be protein and a veggie and that's it. The second hardest rule has been "no white flour," which means the black bean and butternut squash enchiladas I made Sunday were technically against the rule, because while it was a great dish for "make one day meatless," "eat protein with every meal," and "eat your veggies," I used the white tortillas I had on hand, which would be a violation of the rules. I should have eaten just the insides. But I definitely didn't.

This has been my favorite rule-abiding dinner so far:

Lemon pepper talapia + roasted green beans and garlic. YUMMY!

And yesterday, I made sweet potato, chicken, and quinoa soup. I forgot to take a picture, and truth be told, it wasn't that pretty, but it was DELICIOUS. This was again, technically, a violation, because both quinoa and sweet potatoes contain carbs. Now obviously, the carbs in those are better than, say, the carbs in white pasta, but they are carbs nonetheless. I said when I started this business that the carb rule was going to be the hardest one by which to abide.