Seven weeks down and the scale is sitting around 255 — that’s roughly 10 to 12 pounds from where we started. Happy healthy wife and happy healthy mother-in-law both say they can see the difference. I haven’t really noticed it myself yet, but I’ll take their word for it.
Week 7 had some real highlights. The diet pizza surprised me — chicken breast instead of pepperoni, loaded with mushrooms, bell pepper, onion, and spinach on a wheat crust with store-bought sauce. Did it taste like a pepperoni pizza? No. Was it still good and filling? Yes. Sometimes that’s enough. The hong shao chicken wings (红烧鸡) were a hit as usual, and the garlic mashed cauliflower keeps getting better — 20 minutes in the steamer this time made it much easier to mash and the whole family approved, even the son who will never fully admit cauliflower can replace mashed potatoes. The green bean casserole with the homemade bacon cream sauce was loved by everyone, and the tomahawk and lobster from Mother’s Day actually gave us great leftovers to work with, which was the plan all along.
Now here’s the interesting part — next week we’re not trying to lose weight at all. Week 8 is maintenance week, where we eat at the calorie level we’d eventually maintain at our goal weight. The idea is to reset the metabolism so it doesn’t get too comfortable running on a deficit. Two snacks instead of one, bigger dinner portions, more rice. Then next week we go back to the calorie deficit and hopefully the weight starts moving again with a fresh reset.
It feels strange to intentionally eat more after seven weeks of cutting back, but that’s the plan and we’re trusting the process.
Stay tuned to see if maintenance week actually works.
