I was kind of surprised. I switched from just clean eating to this carb cycling version of clean eating, and saw the scale go lower. I was at 169 yesterday which is down three pounds this week. I would not expect this to be water weight since the diet changes were not that drastic, also, I have been getting my 2-3 Liters of water faithfully for months now. Who knows, but it is nice after that stable 172 for so long on a diet.

Unfortunately, when you start to replace some fat with muscle, I seem to burn fat from the inside out, from muscle toward the skin. Which is leaving some skin hanging in weird places with a good layer of fat, no longer firmly attached to the muscle. My abdomen most notably is no longer big and taut, but a funny shaped pooch. My inner thighs also no longer look attached, and look worse, I think than they did before. Which makes it all the harder to limit dairy to two days a week, so I have been sneaking some skim milk in my protein shakes, but hey I am a young women, I might need it. I hope the skin shrinks by next summer, goal date for bikini. My boobs are shrinking too, and new sports bras are going to sink my budget.

ah, apologies for not blogging in a while! here are a few updates:

meals: i have been, for the most part (i.e. not yesterday, where i kind of had a lot of almond butter, like 6 tablespoons!), recording my diet and exercise, and keeping it pretty clean. like some others, i find protrack very difficult to use and i don't really have the time to enter in all the different foods i eat which are somewhat out of the ordinary. for a lot of my foods i don't know the whole breakdown anyway since i'm not much of a packaged product consumer. i end up having to look it up on calorie count online, and at that point i might as well just add it to my log there rather than protrack.

So i figured the best way to start something like this is to let people know who I am. My name is Shannon, im a 31 year old mom of 3 daughters- 12, 10 and 5 in a couple weeks. I also am newly married and have an 8 year old stepson. I run a homedaycare so in addition to my own children I have quite a few others that fill my days and keep me busy! Sure makes the days go by fast but definately makes it hard to think about workouts and eating properly. My meals need to be, not only healthy for myself but something all the children will eat, while at the same time keeping within my licensing guidelines and offering certain food groups at certain meals. It's a good thing i am fairly organzied and love challenges! lol :)