November 2007

Well, actually, yes I can LOL. My theme today was “Breakfast Day” — Breakfast food is so awesome any time of the day, isn’t it?

My tongue has felt weird all day, see: ? I guess I burned it eating soup last night and didn’t realize how bad it was. Now I have that icky feeling on it. My poor taste buds I’m sure I killed off an entire colony of them! lol

I had the last of the whole wheat carrot raisin muffins I made for a snack today. Now I have to find an applesauce muffin recipe that I can hack the heck out of to get it the way I want LOL. My mom bought Ocean Spray Craisins the other day. WHY? lol Cherry flavored? With added sugar. I think I’ll just stick to regular dried cranberries. I’m sure the Craisins are delicious though.

It’s around 11:14PM and I’ve only had 1025 calories today. Geez… I’m so tired that I just want to go to sleep early. (Early by my standards lol) I didn’t finish everything on my menu yesterday or today! I better get on the ball tomorrow. I’ve been so busy the last couple of days that I’ve been eating my meals and snacks too far apart. I spend WAY too much time posting on boards and reading blogs all day long LOL. My husband and I share a 6′ desk that holds both of our huge monitors, so we are sitting by each other nearly 24 hours a day. He’s usually coding away while I’m pretending to work lol. Working at home has a lot of drawbacks but the perks are pretty good too!

I went on my elliptical for like 10 mins today at highest resistance. It wasn’t a planned routine but I figure a mile here and there is a good thing. So I hop on my “hamster wheel”, as I like to call it, whenever the mood hits.

I made a huge veggie omelet for dinner with Egg Beaters, veggies, almond cheddar flavor cheese, and fat free sour cream on top. The almond cheddar cheese was awesome in it; it melted perfectly! And the whole entire meal was only 400 calories:

Dustin said it looks like a smiley face LOL It does! haha

I tried pumpkin butter on my toast this morning — very good! A lot like apple butter but with the flavor of pumpkin pie! Yum! I think I’ll try some experiments on chicken and fish. Oh come on, that sounds fantastic and you know it. I have a jar of unopened plum sauce too, hmm, I need to look into what I can use that for. I hear it’s very tasty.

Today’s menu:

Thursday November 29th – 1200 calorie day
Theme: Breakfast day (Breakfast foods all day long)

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Today was a “2800 calorie day” today and I’ve had so many delicious things so far and still so many to go LOL. I’m sure a lot of people wonder HOW I could possibly eat 2800 calories? My response: With pleasure! But I don’t think I’ll be able to finish all of them today; I couldn’t even finish the chicken soup with veggies and whole wheat bowtie pasta that I made for dinner:

I used low sodium chicken broth that I found in Whole Foods, made by Pacific something or other, I threw out the box. It was very good to me but my mom added salt to hers. I guess I’m just used to low salt/no salt added things being I avoid sodium as much as possible. I’d love to be able to use it a little more often but I blow up like a balloon!

My husband had chicken wings *sigh* He did eat the carrots and celery I cut up for him though! Luckily, I was never big on hot wings — they are ok when I’m drunk but my vein repulsion keeps me at a safe distance most other times lol.

I made 2 small pots of the soup; 1 for me and 1 for my mother. I filled my soup bowl up as seen in the picture and there was still half a pot left. I also started to get full halfway through eating it, so I guess I only ate about half of it between what was left in my bowl and what was left in the pot. I should have saved it to eat again tomorrow but I already have tomorrow’s menu planned and I don’t make changes unless I really want something else lol.

I was also surprised by how easy it was to make 2 small sauce pans of it. The prep time was less than 20 minutes, between chopping and dicing. After I cooked the carrots, celery, onions, and chicken down in 1 TBSP of extra virgin olive oil; I added the broth, water, pasta, and other veggies and let it simmer on low for about 2.5 hours. Yum! I need to make soup more often, it’s so filling and you can load so many veggies into them! Not to mention affordable too — you could probably make a week’s worth of soup for only $5, depending on the meat you use in it. I think I’ll try to make a Minestrone soup or something next. Hmm… the possibilities are endless.

I didn’t exercise today I’ve felt kinda blah all day. I woke up earlier than usual and it’s been cozy in the house all day — you know, the perfect temperature to fall asleep at any given time, when your eyelids start to have that burning sensation and you want to curl up on the couch and take a nice Autumn nap? hehe

I usually can’t sleep unless it’s very cold in the room and I have a very bad habit of sleeping with a fan on. Being cold raises your metabolism as your body works extra hard to keep you warm, so that’s a plus at least. A lot of experts actually recommend lowering the temperature while you sleep for the purpose of raising your metabolism. Maybe that’s why I have a pretty good burn rate? LOL If only!! My husband Dustin, my mom, and our 7 kitties would be high-tailing it to the nearest Alaskan igloo if that were true! lol That doesn’t sound like a bad idea anyway, I love cold weather — I can’t stand warm, humid weather! I’m like a penguin

Ohhh… alright… I guess I’ll go have some pizza now I talked me into it. LOL </sarcasm> I could be awakened in the middle of a deep sleep to eat pizza and I’d gladly oblige! Unfortunately, the frozen NY style pizza we buy that’s imported from NYC will have to do until we get back to NY… the Atlanta suburbs have few and far between REAL pizza places Sorry folks, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Domino’s are NOT REAL PIZZA!! Never have been; never will be!

The “Eddie’s” we buy frozen tastes remarkably good for being frozen. You set it on the racks by itself on 500F for 4 or 5 minutes and it comes out almost as good as fresh-from-the-oven NY pizza. Almost.

Today’s menu:

Wednesday November 28th – 2800 calorie day
Theme: None

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I try not to obsess over weighing myself, so I don’t pay much attention to what the scale says on a day to day or even weekly basis. I look at the month as a whole and if I weigh less than or the same as the previous month, I’m going in the right direction! So far it’s always been less than the month before, thankfully!

So I stepped on today before I ate anything and after I used the potty and I it said that I was nearly 3lbs LESS than I was yesterday when I weighed under the same circumstances. So, from October 26th (the day I started logging) to today, I lost 10.6lbs in about 33 days. There were some weeks I didn’t lose anything and even gain a few pounds, but in the end, it all balanced itself out.

I definitely don’t expect the rate at which I’m losing to keep up like this forever; I’m sure it will slow down considerably in the next few months. I mean, if it doesn’t, that’s cool too, but when it does, I’ll just cry LOL. Naa, I expect it because I’m mentally prepared for it. From day one I only wanted to lose 1lb a week, so I’m really surprised by losing way more than I expected. Either way, I’m happy! I’m in this for the long haul; no worries.

If I exercised as much as I plan to every week, I’d definitely be losing even faster. I’m glad I didn’t start exercising too much at first or else I wouldn’t have anything to upgrade to once it does start to slow down. Either way, I eat an average of 1829 calories per day. That’s actually LESS than my target maintenance calories. So I know that with continued strength training and increased cardio, I will still have a deficit as I get to a lower weight — it will just be smaller and take longer, but that’s ok. It’s more than ok. It’s sensible and healthy to do it slowly! There might even be a point where I’ll need to increase my calories to maintain my weight because I plan to have a very active lifestyle in the years to come. I’m much more active than I was 6 months ago and in 6 more months I’ll be doing even more activity. I’ve learned to take advantage of the power of movement. Maybe if I had been moving a little more all these years, I wouldn’t have gained as much weight in the first place. Ah well, lesson learned.

So, today was a 1400 calorie day and I don’t feel that hungry. So far I’ve had: breakfast, dinner, and one snack. I have days like this once in awhile where I would only have about 800 calories for the whole entire day if I didn’t pay close attention. Most days I have an enormous appetite. I guess it’s all balances itself out. Of course, after I get done writing this I’ll probably become ravenous and want to call for pizza. LOL

You’d think I’d be sick of turkey by now but I planned it twice today. I love turkey! And chicken! I don’t like veins though… I have to carefully pick out any that I see before I’ll eat it. Is that strange? Something about eating them just grosses me out. I’m sure I unconsciously eat them once in awhile though. When I’m feeling especially OCD I’ll take the time to search through each piece of meat first. hahaha This isn’t do anything to convince the world of my sanity, is it?

Tonight’s dinner:

I love La Tortilla Factory low carb wraps! I’m not a low-carb kinda gal but for 80 cals and no high fructose corn syrup, I’ll gobble ‘em up.

I like to eat my ice cream/frozen yogurt out of ramekins — makes it seem like a lot more and they are the perfect serving size.

That’s my chocolate frozen yogurt with organic chocolate sprinkles from earlier. Yum! I think I’ll save some calories and have nonfat frozen yogurt on scheduled days and leave the more fattening, sugary stuff for free days. Saves calories and cuts down on saturated fat. Plus, it tastes just as good to me. Don’t get wrong though, I still LOVE regular, full fat, can ya get just oneeeeee more scoop on that cone tower, good ole fashioned, creamy, finger lickin’, shirt messin’, ice cream!! hehe I grew up with a family business that served homemade Gelato, I wouldn’t wander THAT far from my roots! lol

Today’s menu:

Tuesday November 27th – 1400 calorie day
Theme: None

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I had such an eclectic menu today! I should have made the theme “International Day” but I guess I didn’t realize it at the time haha.

I had another homemade whole wheat carrot/raisin muffin with lite cream cheese for breakfast — MMMM!! I love them. I think next week I’ll make applesauce raisin muffins or something. I’d like to bake at one thing per week from now on. It’s so much fun! And if it comes out right, delicious, too! lol

I didn’t eat lunch yet — I went from breakfast, to snack, to dinner because of the time we woke up. We have a really erratic schedule, being self-employed and all. I’d like to be back on a “normal” daytime schedule though. I feel like I can get a lot more done when I’m up before sunrise.

I didn’t exercise yet either I’m going to eat lunch, go up and down the stairs for awhile, then hop on the ol’ faithful elliptical and burn, baby, burn!!! hehe Yeah!

I think I’m hooked on salads made with spinach and reduced fat blue cheese crumbles, look at the size of this thing! It was part of dinner, along with a quesadilla — oh my, so good!!

The salad, 140 calories for all of this:

Along with a quesadilla made with a La Tortilla Factory low carb wrap:

All of that goodness for only 537 calories! I impress myself sometimes LOL

I can’t wait to go workout; it feels really good. I never thought I’d look forward to exercising LOL What’s happening to me? AAAAAAH lol

After my whole wheat toast with almond butter snack today, I realized that “dry” foods, that are kinda hard to swallow fill me up the most. Not just because I drink more along with it, because I generally don’t, but something about the texture going down triggers satiety to me. Especially, peanut, almond butter etc., crackers, bread and any kind of sandwich that has dry meat in it. Hmm… maybe it’s just a coincidence or I’m strange lol. Then again, regardless of what I eat, I’m always hungry 2 or 3 hours after it anyway. *shrugs* Oh well. As long as I’m eating good-for-me things most of the time, no worries!

Today’s menu:

Monday November 26th – 2000 calorie day
Theme: None

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