Day 4-Friday (the late late long edition)

Friday was a major Nutrisystem fail day. Not because everything I ate tasted bad, not because I went off the rails and ate something I wasn't supposed to, but because it's really hard to follow the plan if you're not: (f)unemployed, a stay at home mom, a work from home type or work in an office with a fridge and equipment. Basically if you have a set schedule or are able to be home to work the plan around your schedule you're all set. But if you have to be mobile it's hard. Here's what happened Friday.

First of all sine I am a work at home type I don't have to get up with an alarm. This occasionally is a good thing for me as I have trouble sleeping (and I'll level with you readers a lot of it is my husband's insanely loud snoring.) If I find myself awake for a while in the middle of the night, I reclaim the time after DH goes to work and the place is silent. This however, can make timing meals on the plan tricky. If I was going to be close to home all day I could work it but as it turns out I was not going to be anywhere near home for the majority of the day. And on top of it, I slept late. I didn't have time to get to the gym and do my usual 45min-1hour. Breakfast was very late-10/10:30.
Breakfast: Pancake mix. I'm no stranger to pancake mix. As a matter of fact I am partial to Fiber One's add water and mix pancake mix. Looking at their nutritional stats, they line up pretty much the same except Fiber One has a crap ton of sodium in it. The odd thing regarding the nutritional stats is that even though Nutrisystem knows you have to add milk they don't factor that into the stats. There's a note at the bottom saying to add x amount of calories etc to the stats for the milk. Wierd. I was expecting what I get from Fiber One. The batter was very thin and when I ladled it into my nonstick pan (which I spritzed with I can't believe it's not butter spray, and the stats are pretty much all 0's) it spread everywhere. No nice pancake circle for me. And they stuck to my nonstick pan! They were a little bland. I had sugar free maple syrup which the plan lets me add. Now things in the land of timing went wonky.
Friends of mine were getting married at City Hall and then we were going to eat and celebrate after. We were to meet up around 1 meaning I had to be on the train by 12:30. If I only just ate my breakfast 2 hours before I was supposed to leave, what was I to do about lunch. Heck, I hadn't finished breakfast (dairy and fruit had yet to make an appearance). And, I had to get ready and take care of some of my work at home work. By the time it was getting close to noon I still hadn't had the rest of breakfast so I ate a yogurt (FYI-I pretty much rock the Yoplait light varieties. oh, and their light parfaits, yum) and a banana. Since I have some hard boiled eggs in the fridge for quick protein (something I did before nutrisystem; quick breakfast for me, quick snack for DH at night) I ate that too, as an advance on lunch.
By the time all was said and done at City Hall and we sat down to eat at the South Street Seaport it was after 3. Shouldn't I be having a snack by now? Picking something to eat was tricky so I just had a teeny tiny salad. Very teeny tiny. How was I not starving? My brain must have kicked up the "scuck it up for the happy couple gear" into overdrive. I did however warn them I was going to me Ms. No Fun. The salad was just lettuce a few tomato wedges and a few cucumber slices. Sure there were healthy sounding things on the menu but to be safe and stick as close to the plan as I could I stuck with the salad. It was only day four after all. Now, I could have had a Nutrisystem lunch entree however, I opted not to get any of Nutrisystems lunch bars. I don't like the idea of meal as a bar, but that's the best mobile option they have. Perhaps I should have gotten a few just for these situations and sucked it up. I just happen to prefer real food.

Now, we celebrate.
Nutrisystem doesn't recommend alcohol while one the plan. That makes total sense; it may be fun but it's a boatload of empty calories. I can survive being the teetotaler. And I do; I stuck with seltzer all night. At one point I did get a shot of vodka which I poured into my seltzer with the lime I decimated.
It is no fun being the teetotaler around people who have been drinking for hours; but for the happy couple I was happy to oblige.We didn't get home until 11ish, so dinner was out. And as a bonus for dinner-turns out I couldn't eat it anyway as it had mushrooms in it and since that's not something I expect in cheese ravioli I didn't look at the ingredients well enough. I happen to be super allergic.
I will give Nutrisystem a super kudos though. The plan I signed up for gave a week free. But even though I picked every last thing in the ginormo box of food for the month they randomly selected the free week. That week had a lot of read meat/pork-which I haven't eaten in 15 years and mushrooms. I called them up, explained the situation and they asked me what I wanted instead. Picked a few things to replace and when I asked how I should return the ones I can't eat they told me to donate them. They didn't bother to exchange them-and no charge for the replacements! Or for shipping them! That is most excellent customer service-and I do not say that often. Hopefully I can make a second swap in the same shipment. I would say if there is a limit and they won't do it or they will charge me-I'll see what frozen diet entrees I still have in the fridge have similar stats and have that instead. I can adapt. Hell , look at Friday. I adapted the crap out of this day. Granted it was unhealthy being under 600 calories but I survived. =)
Oh, I ate the dessert-Oatmeal raisin cookie. It was pretty good. Definitely a little hint of I'm a diet cookie taste, but satisfying nonetheless.