Dangit

Cold weather has hit. I'm eating everything that isn't nailed down.... and I'm drinking lots of hot sugary drinks. Yikes, gotta put a stop to this bad behavior! I have another doctor's checkup next week, so that should be a motivator..... <>....

Pasta Fun

I've always been a big fan of using pasta dinners to experiment on new ways to eat your veggies. For the last few nights, I have made some really tasty "throw it together" pasta dinners that are also super-healthy. Hooray for cleaning out the pantry!

Pasta Fun #1:
Chicken tenders
Button mushrooms
Canned, no salt added stewed tomatoes

Saute the chicken tenders in a little olive oil, with minced garlic and black pepper. Toss in the mushrooms and saute as well. Once these are mostly cooked, add the undrained can of stewed tomatoes and basil and oregano to taste. Simmer until the liquid cooks down, serve over whole wheat pasta of your choice.

Pasta Fun #2:
Frozen chopped spinach
Cannellini (Great Northern) beans

Saute spinach in olive oil and garlic. Add drained and rinsed beans. Cook on low, adding black pepper and basil to taste. Add olive oil as needed to keep a slight liquid consistency. Beans will soften a bit, and that's when you'll know it's ready. Serve over whole what pasta of your choice.

These were both delicious, and have a few added nutritional benefits... they're both very low in fat, with most coming from the omega 3-rich olive oil. And, as long as you buy low sodium canned stuff, there's very little sodium overall... you CAN cook without adding any salt!

Ehhhhh

I did weight myself after all today. It wasn't pretty, but it could've been a lot worse. After my awesome triumph of last week, I'm now back up by 1.6 pounds. Not devastating, but it certainly didn't make me do a happy dance. I know what caused it... and I am trying to be better.... though I did eat a leftover cookie today. Yum.

Shame, Shame

Oh, it's been a bad week diet-wise. I think I'm going to take a pass on weighing-in this weekend, cuz I just know it will be disappointing.

I ate out a lot this week. Eating dinner out once or twice a week can be okay, if you made good choices at a restaurant and work to make up for it elsewhere. But, this week I think I did dinner out 4 nights in a row followed by a not-so-healthy catered breakfast and a moment-of-weakness bag of kettle chips for dinner. And, I was *not* good about ordering when I had those dinners out. Fish and chips? Spinach and artichoke dip?

Uh oh, the cold weather makes things tougher cuz it just makes me want warm comfort food... usually involving cheese or butter.

So, I will make it through Thanksgiving and the brotherly visit this week, then get back on track. Bear with me....

Holla!

I lost a pound and a half over the last week. Hooray!!!!! And I didn't exactly make the best food choices - there was a work pizza lunch, and a grilled cheese day - but those bad lunches were balanced out with some lighter dinners, and a good variety of physical activity.

For those of you The Biggest Loser fans who like percentages, too, you'll be glad to know I've lost 6.1% of my total body weight so far this year.

I'll take it!

Sweet AND Crunchy

Another snack tip...

I have already professed my love for Quaker Quakes, their flavored mini snack cakes, but now I have found their snack-world "little brother"... Quaker Mini Delights. The "Chocolately Drizzle" flavor is great! These tiny little multigrain cakes, each about the size of a quarter, really are drizzled with chocolate sauce. Like the title of this post says, it really does satisfy both of those snack desires.

These little guys are part of the low-cal snack pack trend, but 100 calories just aren't good enough for Quaker. No, these are 90 calorie packs! So the whole pack is a little 2 point treat, perfect for an after-dinner snack!

A Cafeteria Classic

Growing up, Fridays were my favorite day of the week, lunch-wise at least. Because in mostly-Catholic Upstate New York, that meant the school cafeteria skipped the usual mystery meat and instead offered either fish fillet sandwiches, cheese pizza, or my beloved grilled cheese and tomato soup. Yum! Nothing says comfort on a cold day than a good grilled cheese sandwich and a big bowl of steaming, creamy tomato soup.

But, that childhood favorite is not exactly diet-friendly. So I've worked up a little WW-friendly update that I am slowly becoming addicted to...

The soup is still soup, but now rather than getting a regular cream of tomato soup (full of fat and sodium) I now get an organic, fat-free, low sodium version. It's very light, and a little bit sweeter, but still really tasty in its tomatoey goodness.

Instead of a greasy, crispy grilled cheese sandwich - with lots of butter and white bread - now I opt for a quick and easy quesadilla. Using just a little fat-free cooking spray, I warm up a whole wheat, fat free tortilla and fill it with about a 1/4 cup of shredded light Mexican-blend cheese, sprinkled with a little cumin. Really tasty, and perfect to rip into pieces to dip into the soup.

Yum! And it's all much lower in fat and sodium than the original... and about 9 points for the whole lunch. Not bad!

Progress.... The Kind That Hurts

Well, I just got a really good sign of the progress I'm making..... I've passed a certain milestone on the scale (yippee!) which means that WW has now reduced my daily points target (boo!). I knew it was coming, and this particular benchmark only means 1 less point (about 50 calories) per day. But still!

It's nice validation, though, cuz in the whole year-and-a-half plus that I've had this blog, this is the first time I've made enough headway in order to get to this next level of WW play. Finally!

That's a First!

Wow. I actually LOST weight on vacation! And this was a vacation at my parents' house - land of huge portions. Hooray!

I've been losing half a pound here and there over the last few weeks, so I've now passed 11 pounds lost total. The best thing is that I'm actually starting to feel it, cuz my clothes are fitting better. That's always motivating, too, to actually see visible progress.

I'm back in town now, and back to counting my points. Stay tuned.

Not So Bad

I did end up losing .7 lbs this week, so I've now erased all of that vacation gain and have started working on losing overall again. Good news! But I still feel like I've been hovering in the same range for weeks.... because I have! So I feel like jump-starting things again, and that means I have to be more disciplined. I've got 2 weeks before I go on another vacation again, but it's just to my parents' house again and I can ask them to keep my diet in mind when they're meal-planning. Back to work....

Rough Week

This has not been a good week for dieting. I've had a stomach bug since Thursday... which I caught in either one of two ways:

(1) it's possibly something contagious that is going around our office. Now that we have all 12 of our staff sitting on top of each other in a single room during office renovations, we've become a pretty gross petri dish.... there's a head thing and a stomach thing going around, and I got the stomach thing.

OR

(2) something that I ate on Wednesday, a day which featured TWO catered buffet meals from two different caterers, majorly did not agree with me.

I have a coworker who came down with pretty much the same thing, but he also has both of these potential factors at work, so who knows? Maybe it's a bug that also didn't agree with that gross salmon I made the mistake of eating at lunch.

Either way, that's already way TMI for all of you folks, but.... that's the roundabout way of saying that my tummy's been upset, so I have not been eating normally. And, you know me, I use any excuse possible not to exercise, so there's that too.

So far, the scale is okay and it looks like I'll still just be hovering around the same place I've been for weeks on end now. Which is okay... but I sure would like to see the scale moving again. Which means I have to get moving again. Blech.

Back on Track

Woohoo! I've lost 1.2 pounds this week, which has mostly erased the vacation damage. Proof yet again that vacation food is not the same as at home food, even when you are trying to be good. Hopefully this next week will erase the rest of the damage, and then I can get back to actual losing!

A Good Substitute

I love crunchy snacks. Potato chips and I have had a life-long love-hate relationship.... and it's very hard for me to resist the temptation of getting a little bag of chips to go with my lunch. I've become a Baked Lays fan, but sometimes, when my deli doesn't have Baked Lays in stock... I face a real dilemma. I crave a crunchy, satisfying snack, but I should not eat real chips with all their grease, fat, sodium, and cholesterol.

Luckily, this week, I took a risk on something new and found a great alternative to potato chips: Crispy Delites fruit chips! Hooray!

This little bag of goodness contains an entire pound of fat-free fruity goodness - packing lots of fiber and Vitamin C but no added sugar or crazy processed ingredients. I chose the cinnamon apple variety, and these dried fruit chips were tasty, filling, and - most importantly - they had a really satisfying CRUNCH.

Plus, unlike with regular chips, I found I could eat a few and be happy putting the bag down until later, so I actually snacked on these for a whole afternoon. With Utz or Doritos or something, that whole bag would've been polished off in about 3 minutes or less...

I'm so glad I have a new, much healthier weapon in my arsenal in the ongoing battle for healthy but satisfying lunches during the week. Thank you, Crispy Delites!

Back to Reality

Hell Month is over... I've survived 2 out-of-town weddings, a Gala, a board meeting, 2 other big events, and a short vacay with my family.

Now I'm back, and life finally gets back to normal. I did fairly well in all the stress, only gaining 1.7 pounds. (Not bad compared to 2 years ago, when I gained TWELVE pounds in all the stress.) I hope to erase that damage by Monday's weigh-in.

So I'm starting back in full force again today, journaling and eating better stuff. And I HAVE to make myself exercise, cuz I know that's the magic solution to making the weight come off faster. Stay tuned...

Tough Time....But Doin' Okay

This is the hardest time of year for me for dieting, other than Christmas week. It's Gala time! So I'm working very long hours and am not really able to run out for long to get good, healthy lunches.... in past years, I've actually gained 12 pounds in the month leading up to the event. Yikes! Not this year, though. Even though I'm taking the week off of journaling my points, cuz I barely have time to breathe yet alone track everything, I'm still losing. Hooray! Slowly but surely, the pounds are coming off - at a rate of about 1/2 pound a week. I can live with that.

Better yet - I had good results at my dr's appointment yesterday. Hooray! I love not being scolded....

NW vs. the Gym

When I woke up early this morning, I planned to go down to the gym. But, in a happy turn of events, I decided to head out to the mailbox with my Netflix before going down to the treadmill. And that's how I learned that it was a gorgeous sunny September morn in DC, with a chill in the air and a lovely breeze. So, I skipped the gym and went for a walk in the neighborhood instead.

I really enjoy walking outside so much more than the boring machines. The city was sleepy and quiet this morning, and I decided to explore a bit of the 'hood north of my place that I don't usually visit. There are some stunningly beautiful quiet little streets along Connecticut, and the early morning is the perfect time to discover these quiet little nooks.

I tried to MapQuest my route to show you all, but turns out MQ doesn't like it when you walk the wrong way down one-way streets. They can't map a walking route if a car couldn't do the same. Ah well, I still clocked in 2.27 miles, which is more than I would have done in the gym. Not only do I prefer walking outside, I usually pick longer routes that keep me walking for more time than if I was just trudging on the treadmill.

Clearly, we have a winner! As we ease into fall, thank goodness, I'll be heading back out on the streets more often!

You're Not Worth It!

Ah, Au Bon Pain Southwest Tuna Wrap, I hate to say it. But we have to break up.

With your 900 calories and your 51 grams of fat, you just no longer fit into my life. It's a toxic relationship for me, and I know you're not going to change who you are. So, I have to cut you off. Sorry.

In fact, I don't think we should even be friends. I will probably still hang out with some of our mutual friends, like the low-fat soups and salad varieties, but I promise I won't make them choose between us.

Hope you have a good rest of your life. But, for my own health, I don't ever want to see you again.


Dangit! I hate when I don't look up the nutritional value until AFTER I eat something!

Believe It Or Not

Honest to goodness, these things taste like Snickers!

Image courtesy of SlimFast.

A Shiny New Look

Au Bon Pain has redesigned their web site, and I like it! The nutritional info is even more accessible, and I like the layout a lot better. Thank goodness ABP has some good choices for me on those days when I just have to get out of the building and grab lunch.

Not on the DL, Sadly

I just got my blood work back from my physical. Sad. My cholesterol went WAY up. Last time I had it checked, about 3 years ago, it was a nice, shiny, happy 182 or so. But now? Yikes. 262. That's not a number I'm proud of.... so I've got my work cut out for me. I'll have to go back for follow-up blood work in 3-6 months, and I've got to get that number down.

Dad's very interested in hearing all my stats now, cuz he wants to make sure I don't have the same experiences he had. Even though my cholesterol was high, I'm happy to report to him that my triglycerides are good, my blood glucose is normal, and that my HDL - the good cholesterol - is actually really good. It's just that my bad cholesterol is really bad. :-(

So, I shall soldier on, trying to live an increasingly fat-free life....