Weight Gain

As everyone knows, I'm pregnant and therefore have been gaining weight. I totally understand the need to gain, but as I weighed myself this morning I actually had to fight back the tears of my new found weight (5 pounds heavier than last month). I realized I must be doing a few things wrong. First, I believe I'm putting too much weight on too fast (although my doctor says I'm still within the normal range). This frustrates the heck out of me for a number of reasons. First, before I got pregnant I lost a bunch of weight (like 55 pounds). So I really didn't want to gain any more weight than necessary during my pregnancy so I didn't end up back at square one. Two, I currently exercise at least 5 days a week, but usually 6 days. I go walking for about 40 minutes then I come home, stretch and do some light strength training for about 15 minutes. If I'm exercising every day, then why the heck am I gaining weight so fast?! I want half a pound a week, not a full pound a week! This leads me to the conclusion that it must be the food, I'm eating too many dang calories.

Food must be the problem. When I was dieting prior to pregnancy, following a good healthy diet was actually pretty easy most of the time. However, since I got pregnant, the thought of some foods makes me sick, while the thought of other foods makes me want them, NOW. For example, I used to eat at least one or two apples every day, but then I got pregnant and apples never sounded good to me. It's only been since last week that I can eat apples again. Then there's seafood. I used to love eating good fish like tilapia, salmon, tuna, and shrimp. Well, not so anymore! I've tried it a couple times just to see if I can eat it again, but no, it still makes me want to vomit. It has now been 5 months since I've eaten any kind of seafood. Now lets not forgot the stuff I have to have all the time, like sugary treats. Prior to pregnancy, I rarely ate them. Now, I crave it all the time. I don't have any other weird pregnancy cravings like pickles and peanut butter (actually pickles make me gag now) all I crave is sugar in different varieties. And yes, I often give in to this craving. But I justify it by thinking "Well, I pretty much eat low calorie, healthy foods the rest of the day, I drink plenty of water, and I exercise every day, so this cookie won't kill me," but apparently it does.

So, what do I do to slow this crappy weight gain? I'd love to say that I'll just stop eating sugar treats completely, but I know that's not going to happen. I can cut back, but not get rid of them completely. I guess I'll just cut the calories more in the rest of my diet and up my exercise as much as I safely can. Unless you've got any better ideas? How did the rest of you women fight too much weight gain while you were pregnant? Also, if you're willing to share, how much weight did you gain in your pregnancies and how much came off within the first month (you know, from baby stuff and water weight)? I need some comfort here people.

More Success

Today was my second time going grocery shopping from sales and coupons. I got $75 worth of groceries for $45, so I saved $30! And this time it only took me an hour total to plan my menu for the week and go through the ads and coupons. I'm up to making $30 an hour now, pretty good!

Also this week, I made a homemade pumpkin shake. I just used milk, vanilla ice cream, and a couple tablespoons of pumpkin from a can. It was actually really good. Tomorrow I'm making pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, yum!

So I had an idea today. I love pumpkin stuff so much and I really like to carve pumpkins (even though I totally suck at it) so I think it would be fun to have a "Pumpkin Party." All the refreshments would have to have pumpkin in them and the activities would have to involve pumpkins. Obviously carving pumpkins is a fun activity, but for those of you out there that are way more creative than me, do you have any fun games/activities that we can do involving pumpkins in some way (even if it's using fake ones)? And, if you're into pumpkins and would like to come to my party (don't know when I'll do it yet) please let me know, I'd love to invite you!

Autumn Project - 1st Attempt Successful!

My first attempt at part of my "Autumn Project" was a success! Today I spent 2 hours going through grocery sale ads and coupons, then created a meal plan for the week based on what was on sale. I was introduced to this awesome website, http://theobsessiveshopper.net/, which is where you can go, put in your area and pick the stores you want to look at. It then tells you all of the sales they have going on and coupons you can print out (thanks for the tip Lisa!). I did have to download the coupon printing software (took all of two minutes) and then I was able to search through manufacturer coupons that are good at any store.

Anyway, just from the coupons I printed out, I saved $15 (and that part only took about 15 minutes). After I printed out coupons, I then looked at the four main grocery stores that I go to to see what kind of sales they had. I made a list for myself in Excel with the Store, Item, and sale they had going on. In half of the cases, I was able to find an item on sale AND have a coupon on it (this saved me another $15). For those of you new to this like me, Walmart will match anyone's price and honor coupons. The only thing Walmart doesn't honor is buy one get one free sales (found this out the hard way today). Anyway, I then took my shopping list and created a meal plan based on what I already have at home and what I was going to buy on sale/with a coupon. Then I added a handful of things I needed that were neither on sale nor had a coupon for, but were necessary to complete my recipes. Finally, I took my shopping list (which I printed out from Excel to make things easier for the teller at Walmart for price matching), my coupons, and the ads (which I had just received in the mail two days before).

Shopping at Walmart did take longer than normal, but then again I don't normally shop at Walmart so I didn't know where everything was, plus the place was crazy busy. In the end I got $110 worth of groceries for only $61, a total of $49 in savings! Not too bad for my first attempt at shopping the sales and clipping coupons. I guess this is like making $24.50 an hour.

Now, I did get a few things I don't normally get (like some holiday treats that were on sale), so the jury is still out as to whether or not I will actually lower my overall budget for the month. Either way though, I do feel pretty good about my first coupon/sale experience. In the end, I probably would have bought those holiday treats anyway, just because I'm craving them like crazy, but at least this way I saved money. :)

Fun Stuff and “The Autumn Project”

This last week I've had the opportunity to do quite a few fun things. Here's the fun list from the week:
1st – I went to the What a Woman Wants Expo with my mom. Okay, so I was honestly a bit disappointed with the vendors there (specifically there's a really yummy bread vendor that has been at every expo I've ever been to at the Sandy Expo Center and they weren't there), but it was still fun. My favorite booth was a game booth where they sold all kinds of card and board games. I got two new games, Five Crowns and Ticket to Ride. Both are way fun and I recommend them!

2nd – I went to Oktoberfest at Snowbird with my mom. Again, I was a little disappointed with the lack of vendors there, but there was still some cool stuff. They had the Yo-Yo World Champion there who was doing some cool tricks, a German band with all kinds of fun instruments and German songs (lots of polka and yodeling type stuff), and of course, yummy Brats (although I won't be eating one again for the rest of my pregnancy since I paid for it that night when I was throwing up). The best part though was when we took the tram (a big box with 50 people in it hanging from a cable hundreds of feet above the ground) up the mountain to 11,000 ft. Then we hiked down a bit and rode a ski lift back down (which takes 22 minutes because we were so high up). It was actually quite beautiful, a little scary that high up, but fun.

3rd – Adam and I went to the Barnum & Bailey Circus with our friends Megan and Dan. Adam and I hadn't been to the Circus in years so that made it that much more fun. My favorite part was probably the dog show (it inspired me to try and train my dogs to do cool tricks) and the seriously cool disappearing tricks. Adam really liked the disappearing tricks too. Seriously, how do you make an elephant, tiger, person, etc. disappear when the cage they're in is off the ground? Way cool.

4th – My friend Megan and I went to the Miley Cyrus concert. I haven't been to a concert in three years, so this was way fun. Plus, it was Miley and as nerdy as this is, I love her! It was pretty cute to see all the kids there and how excited they got. Miley put on a great show, even though she had the flu. At one point in the show she had to run off stage to go be sick and her back up singers had to finish the song without her. Then they took a 5-10 minute break and then she came back on and finished the concert. So, thanks Miley for putting on a great show even though you were sick!

That's been my busy, but fun week!

Now for my new project, which consists of two parts. It's Autumn (my favorite season!) and that also means it's pumpkin season! I love everything made from pumpkins: pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin cake, pumpkin everything! So, my first part of the project is to try a few new recipes this Autumn. What I will do is make a different pumpkin recipe at least once a week and then I'll post the recipe I used and the results of my recipe. If I have time, I'll try to even do two new pumpkin recipes a week (maybe one treat and one dinner type recipe). If any of you have any really good pumpkin recipes, please send them my way!

Second part of my Autumn project is to use coupons! I know that doesn't sound very exciting, but I've never been a coupon clipper before and I've never been into looking at the grocery store adds. Prior to being a “housewife” I also worked 50 hours a week and I went to the grocery store on my way home from work, which ever store was the most convenient, even if they were more expensive. Since I've been staying home I've been able to cut our grocery budget in half just by planning in advance dinner every night so I just buy what I know I'll be cooking. Now I want to see if I can cut my grocery budget even more by paying attention to sales and coupons. So, for you more experienced budget shoppers out there, please send me your secrets! One thing I'm planning on doing is making a list of foods I buy regularly and what the “average” price is for these items. That way when I see a sale ad or coupon for one of these items, I'll know if it really is a good deal and if it's worth buying a lot of this item on sale. I'm a huge Excel fan, so I'll be making myself a nice little spreadsheet, possibly even breaking it up by the stores I regularly visit. If any of you have ever done something like this and are willing to share, please do!

I'll continue tracking my spending and compare my October and November grocery spending to my August and September grocery spending (Quickbooks is my favorite tracking tool! It is a must have!). Wish me luck on my two-part “Autumn Project,” and please send me any tips or recipes you have that can help!