Unfortunately, when there is stress in your life and you don’t make the best food choices then that food can add the numbers to your waistline unfortunately. After going through an awesome weight loss journey, my world was turned upside town when my beloved grandmother passed away. That was my best friend. I miss her so much and just would eat this, or that and then the weight began to creep back on. Not a lot of it came back, but 15 pounds did over the course of the last year. I got to thinking, Grandma disliked so much when I was fat, I need to suck it up and make her proud of me.

So, this year, I have been doing just that. I am back to religiously counting my weight watcher points. I have cut out a lot of sugar and soft drinks. Even cut back on the amount of coffee I was drinking. Water is my choice of drink these days.

I am back on track and getting very close to where I was with my weight loss journey. Here is where I left off:

and here is where I am at as of this evening:

I am not quite there yet, but it is a huge step in the right direction. I am just thankful that I realized what was happening and made the change before it is too late. Diets do not work, it is the lifestyle change that works. Walking is definitely what helps as well as also Just Dance on the Wii – just saying!

I am going to add more recipes here as well that I have been cooking up over the last few weeks that are low in points. I will do a weekly update with my weight loss and tips that are helping me along the way. Summer will be here before we know it and we all know what that means – Bathing Suit time!

I get lots of questions and emails on how I create healthy snacks for my family. Most of you all know, that I started a healthy weight loss journey this time last year. It’s still going strong and I thought I would share with you some of my ideas that I do for my family.

At the beginning of each week, I go to the grocery store or farmers market. It depends on our schedule of the weekend to which location that I go to pick up our weekly produce. I select the veggies and fruits that I know we all will eat. I come home then and begin the big divide. I pack the girls lunch everyday so I use several small containers. Each container will get a serving size of either fruits or veggies. All these containers reside on our bottom shelf all week. I then will fix up four big containers of the fruits and veggies. The big containers are used for snacks here at home and the small serving size containers are used for packed lunches every day.

It does take time on Sunday’s to do this every week, but it is worth it during the week when the girls and I can just go to the fridge open and take out a quick and easy snack. Now, we also have a wooden cabinet that sits in our dining room. This is our dry food cabinet. I will fill that cabinet up with wheat thins, veggie crackers, baked lays, fruit snacks, peanuts, graham crackers and granola bars. The girls are allowed to pick one of these snacks when they get home from school and one before they go to bed. Now notice, they can go into the fridge unlimited to get the fruits and veggies, but we do limit them on the dry snacks. For the dry snacks, they are allowed to fill a bowl half way.

That is the big thing, it is all about portion control and teaching the kids early on. Now, listen up! Do you notice what types of snacks I have? I do not have little debbie cakes, cookies, and etc sitting around. All that carb, and high fat stuff will do is cause your family to be unhealthy, so why even buy it? Do not bring it in the house and you will not be tempted to eat it! It is simple as that. Make sure you have the healthy snacks and just keep doing this process each week. You will feel better about yourself (not sluggish) and you will lose weight in the process.

I am so trying to find new ideas for meals so I took a leap and used a couple ingredients I had here in the pantry. The ingredients included:

1. Tiger Sauce (I found this at our local grocery store)
2. McCormick Salt Free Garlic & Herb

I took a pack of fresh chicken tenders made from chicken breast. Poured the tiger sauce all over the chicken tenders, then topped that with the Salt Free Garlic & Herb all over.

4 chicken tenders = 3 points

I added the following sides:

Fresh cut cucumbers = 0 points
Bush Baked Beans = 2 points
Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce = 2 points

Total Points for Dinner Meal = 7 Points

Easy and fast meal that is so delicious!