August 2008

It’s cloudy out, we have an appointment with our accountant in a little while and THEN we have to go to the DMV once again. So, I wanted to do an update before we left for our fun-filled day. We were pretty busy yesterday; we had to go all the way to our credit union in Kingston to pick up the title to our Mercedes. Thankfully they had it because it would be a project and a half to get a replacement.

Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but a semi-healthy breakfast treat or after dinner dessert:

2 Stella D’oro Anisette Toast cookies (90 cal, rounded up) topped with: 1 Stonyfield Farm lowfat vanilla yogurt (130 cal), 1 TBSP (7g) slivered almonds (40 cal), 72g fresh strawberries (25 cal) and 15g Reddi-Whip (45 cal) for 330 calories. I let it sit in the fridge for about 15 minutes before I ate it so the yogurt had a chance to soak into the cookies a little. YUMMY!

Being we were out, my lunch consisted of a tall Starbucks banana chocolate Vivanno (270 cal) and fries with honey mustard dressing (8000000 cal). Then we went to a mall I haven’t been to in about 15 years and I bought a ton of stuff that I’ll post pics of later. We stopped at Walmart on the way home and I found these nonstick baking sheets:

I use Reynold’s nonstick foil or parchment paper for almost everything I pop in the oven on a baking sheet, so I think these will come in handy for saving a lot of wasted foil or paper. And they were only $10 bucks, so even if they work for a few months it would be worth it.

I was very tired when we got home, so my favorite “go to” meal saved the night:

4oz ground turkey breast (120 cal) on 1 Martin’s 100% whole wheat potato roll (80 cal) with 7g red onions (8 cal), ½ cup mixed lettuce (3 cal), 2 thick tomato slices (20 cal), 1 TBSP Hellmann’s olive oil mayo (50 cal) and ½ teaspoon yellow mustard (3 cal). I usually have pretzels or some sort of potato with my turkey burgers, but I thought that string beans sounded good. So, I steamed 1 cup string beans (40 cal), then tossed them in ½ TBSP unsalted butter (50 cal) and a little Mrs. Dash tomato/basil. Perfect little quick supper for just 374 calories. And yes, I even count the “3 calories worth of mustard” lol. I pretty much count everything except for herbs and spices. I’m sure food manufacturers do a good enough job of rounding down on calories, so I pick up the slack by staying accountable for everything I know has a caloric value. 5 or 20 calories here and there can add up pretty quickly.

My BodyBugg results for 8/28/08:

Went to sleep at 8:30PM
BodyBugg reset at 12:00AM
Woke up at 4:30AM
10:30AM: 911 calories burned
8:19PM: 2105 calories burned
End of day: 2406 calories burned

I wish I took a walk yesterday, but oh well. Hopefully I’ll get to take one today. I’m going to do another update later on. Much, much later. I can tell it’s going to be one of those days… again. At least it’s Friday and a holiday weekend at that!! WOO HOO! The tourists and weekend warriors will be going home Monday! YAY!! lol

Well, off to our appointment… anyone want to go for me? lol

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Our cat Cleo had 4 kittens yesterday! She’s one of the 4 strays we brought to NY from Georgia. Her brother Stewie is the one that’s missing, but he’s neutered and now their other sister Bonnie is missing too! Ugh Things have been unusually hectic around here the past few weeks, so cooking, counting calories, working out and everything else that I routinely do is out of focus at the moment. We just hired an entire staff of employees for the first time, plus all the other things that I’ve mentioned in previous posts. Consequently, I haven’t had time to do updates as often as I’d like to. Sometimes I need to prioritize and even though I love blogging, it’s really only my hobby, so I have had to put it on the back burner quite often lately to give attention to other things that are going on. But like I said before, things will settle down after Labor Day and return to normal.

When I woke up yesterday, I was craving radiatore pasta again. So, I made a pot of sauce in my cute little “single-serving” saucepan. I picked up a set of them the other day; I also got 2 mini frying pans that are big enough to cook just one egg in or something else similar in size. I love single-serving cookware; I can’t stand making a big pot or pan dirty just for my itty bitty portions lol.

The tomato sauce (the tomato is for size comparison):

1. I added 1 minced garlic clove (5 cal), 30g diced red onions (15 cal), and a little bit of water to the saucepan; I let it simmer for a few minutes
2. Then I added in 1 can Red Pack no salt added tomato sauce (80 cal), dried oregano, and fresh basil from my AeroGarden and let it all simmer for about 20 minutes

When the sauce was done, I started boiling 2oz radiatore pasta (210 cal). When it was done, I drained it and added it back into the pot with about ¾ of the tomato sauce, plus ¼ cup + 2 TBSP Shop Rite fat free ricotta cheese (75 cal) and 2oz Polly-O full-fat mozzarella cheese (160 cal). I stirred it all together and then transferred it to a single-serving oven dish; added 1 more ounce of Polly-O full fat mozzarella (80 cal) to the top and popped it into the preheated 375F oven for about 12-14 minutes.

While that baked, I sautéed 1 cup Birds Eye broccoli florets (30 cal), 1 cup Birds Eye mixed stir fry veggies (40 cal) and 1 cup string beans (40 cal) in a nonstick pan with 2 teaspoons olive oil. When they were done, I sprinkled 1 TBSP pecorino romano cheese (20 cal) over them and tossed it all together.

I had some leftover tomato sauce, so I put it down on the plate and put the veggies on top of it:

Everything comes out to 835 calories; a very big and satisfying meal but it could easily work as 2 meals if you use half of everything or just save half for another time. Oh, by the way, I made the iced tea with 2 cups tea (4 cal) and several drops of liquid stevia. If you like “sweet tea” as they call it in the south, you will LOVE iced tea made with stevia for a lot less calories. It tastes nearly identical to it! My family always made homemade iced tea with just tea and sugar, never added lemon, but after living in Georgia for 2 years I found out that it’s called “sweet tea” lol, who knew?

My BodyBugg results for 8/26/08:

Went to sleep at ???
BodyBugg reset at 12:00AM
Woke up at ???
12:20PM: 1249 calories burned
End of day: 2474 calories burned

We didn’t get to go on a walk, too much commotion with new babies in the house. Anyway, I’ll try to do another update later tonight. I had an excellent night’s sleep last night and actually woke up 4 lbs lighter. I think a lot of my water retention goes hand in hand with my poor sleeping habits. Whenever I sleep through the night and get an adequate amount of rest, I always wake up feeling light and fluffy; as opposed to waking up feeling like a sack of potatoes. lol Definitely getting better though and I’m sure as things get back to normal in the next week or so I’ll feel even better.

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Hi \ /

I haven’t done an update in a couple of days! It was one of “those” weekends. My stomach is very upset at the moment. Not sure why; just another one of my episodes I guess. I did a lot of moping around and shopping this weekend. Just when I start to feel better mentally, I start to feel worse physically. Ugh!!

I burned a lot of calories yesterday and didn’t even go on a walk or anything special. We went to the mall for most of the afternoon. I had Starbucks for the first time ever! It was really good. I got a ‘tall’ double chocolate chip frappuccino. It was REALLY yummy, but hard to drink; the chips kept getting stuck in the straw, so I got bored of it halfway through and threw it out lol. My husband got a blended lemonade, which was really good too. We felt kind of out of place ordering; every other customer seemed like such a pro, but my hubby and I looked like the biggest coffee-newbs ever!! lol I didn’t think I’d actually like anything from Starbucks and figured it was just over-hyped java juice, but it’s actually very yummy and I’m glad there’s not one close by ’cause I’d probably get addicted to it and have to find a way to work a 400 calorie beverage into my daily menus LOL. I’ll definitely go there again though. I want to try everything they have! Except for the 600 calorie muffins lol.

My BodyBugg results for 8/24/08:

Went to sleep at ???
BodyBugg reset at 12:00AM
Woke up at ???
4:14PM: 2156 calories burned
End of day: 2862 calories burned

Not bad for no formal exercise!

It’s the afternoon now on 8/25 but I’m just getting around to yesterday’s update lol. Dustin and I went on a walk early this morning around 7:00AM and thought we could beat the rainfall, but we weren’t that fast. By the time we got to town, it was pouring, so we called my mom to come pick us up. While we were waiting by the post office, the town police officer pulled up to talk to us. Everybody knows everybody in a small town lol. He offered us a ride, but my mom was already on her way. He was laughing at us for not realizing it was going to rain any minute lol! Guess we won’t try to race Mother Nature ever again, eh!

While we were at the mall yesterday we went to Target where I found a bunch of Hello Kitty stuff *glows* and this cereal that someone mentioned on TDP the other day:

It has 15g protein, 4g fiber, and 190 calories per serving even though it’s not made with all whole grains. I was excited to hear about it, because Kashi GoLean is the only very high protein cereal that I have found thus far, so now I have 2 in my collection — YAY!! I had 1 sevring of it (190 cal) with ½ cup skim milk (45 cal) for 235 calories yesterday. It’s delicious! It tastes JUST LIKE “Cinnamon Toast Crunch”, only with a different texture. Loved it! And it doesn’t bother me at all that it’s not 100% whole grains; with so much protein and fiber, it’s basically got everything that you would get out of whole grains anyway.

True to Sunday standards, my mother made a pot of tomato sauce yesterday. One of my favorite ways to eat sauce is with bread, with nothing else. It’s like cheese-less pizza:

2 slices Martin’s 100% whole wheat potato bread (140 cal) with ½ cup mom’s tomato sauce (90 cal) for just 230 calories. Honestly, I do not know how many calories were in the sauce, so I just guessed lol. I know she uses olive oil, but not too much and never adds sugar or anything like that. So, I guess that sounds like a reasonable amount of calories for just half a cup. If she measured anything, maybe I’d know for sure, but she never measures anything when cooking. I used to be the same way, but that method didn’t work so well for me LOL.

The bread and sauce combination is SOOOOOOOOO YUMMY! It makes the bread really moist and soggy — which I LOVE. I could eat this like 10 times a day. The tomatoes and basil are naturally sweet; heavenly! And it’s actually very healthy for you too; whole grains, fiber, protein, plus all the tomato and garlic benefits. Perfetto!

I’ll do another update later (much later) tonight. We have an appointment this afternoon. I’d like to complete my walk now that the sun is out, but if I don’t, that’s ok too. We’ll see what happens!

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Our kitty is still missing and my in-laws were supposed to arrive today, but they canceled and rescheduled at the last minute. So, now we don’t know if or when they are actually coming to visit. Wonderful. And to add insult to injury, I feel sooooo puffy and yucky. I know that the water weight will come off quickly when I resume my lifestyle with a more consistent deficit, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. Like gaining 4 lbs since yesterday. I know for a fact that I did not eat 14,000 calories over my maintenance calories; I didn’t even eat anywhere close to 3500 calories over in the past several days. But sodium is not my friend. So every time I overdo sodium and/or calories, it’s about 3 or 4 times as dramatic on the scale for me and being I have had so many “free days” so close together this summer, I never fully recuperated from the beginning of June. It typically takes me about 5-7 days to “deflate” from a free day, but taking time off the entire summer hasn’t given my body the time it needs to balance out my water weight. I fully accept responsibility for the true fat gain — which my husband doesn’t think occurred, he believes it’s all water weight — but I know my body and I know my issues with fluid retention make it seem much worse than it really is. I’m not complaining, because I don’t mind weight fluctuations; I’m used to them but I do hope to get to the bottom of my swelling and edema issues. Like my new doc said, this can’t go on like this forever. Ah well, all in due time. Right now, life is just being life. No worries.

Our sleeping schedule is so erratic at the moment; worse than ever. I’ve been taking short naps and haven’t had a full night’s sleep in I don’t know how long. I’m sure this is contributing to my equilibrium being out of whack. My body hasn’t had a chance to rest and “reboot my brain” as I like to refer to it as. My stomach has been on the fritz and my walks have been making me extra puffy immediately afterwards. It’s all relative I’m sure; poor sleep, stress, water retention, sodium, unhealthy foods, etc. When I found out my in-law’s weren’t coming, it was sort of the last straw for this week of chaos and I haven’t felt like finishing the projects that I started in our house or even finishing shopping for things I wanted to get. I’ve been just lounging around for the past few days, except for our walks to town. I’m sad about Stewie, our kitty that’s missing. I’m going to finish our redecorating projects this weekend though. I hope.

I didn’t cook anything today, I just grazed. One of my snacks/mini meals was this plate of yumminess:

1oz (30g) Snyder’s unsalted mini pretzels (110 cal) with 4 TBSP (24g) PB2 powdered peanut butter (108 cal), 1 plum (30 cal) and 1 Stonyfield Farm lowfat Mocha Latte yogurt (130 cal). This was a great mini meal/snack for just 378 calories! I haven’t had PB2 in a long, long time. It’s delicious, but I don’t eat it that much anymore. I’ll explain why another time. I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it’s just one of those things that I decided I probably shouldn’t have in my menus that often; for now anyway.

My BodyBugg results for 8/22/08:

Went to sleep at 3:00PM
BodyBugg reset at 12:00AM
Woke up at 8:00PM
End of day: 2676 calories burned

I haven’t worn my heart rate monitor on our walks, it’s always in the same range, so I haven’t bothered. We’re going to go shopping today. Maybe it will cheer me up. I doubt it though. I think I’ll go cook a batch of chicken breast now. I’ve had a menu I’ve been wanting to make a few days, maybe I”ll actually get around to it today.

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