Monthly Archives: December 2011
Christmas Shopping!
Today I thought my weight would go up a little more to balance out from being sick, but to my surprise it was exactly the same, even with the cookies and cookie dough yesterday 
Here is my weight chart…
Again went through the day with no plan so here is my actual food log for the day…
For breakfast I was hungry for french toast. I make it with 1 egg, 1/4 c unsweetened almond milk, 1 tsp vanilla and cinnamon and 1 slice of healthful arnolds whole grain bread, you can use your favorite bread. Then I used sugar free syrup on it but you could cut up fruit (bananas, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, or cooked apples etc) and put a dab of cool whip on top too.
Then we went Christmas shopping all day. I was behind since I was sick last week. But we got it all done! Well, I have one more thing to get and then I am done!! Now I just need to wrap everything!
So for lunch when we were out and about and my DH wanted Arbys and that actually sounded good to me too so we went to Arby’s we both had a Roast Beef Classic with horsey sauce. NO fries or anything like that. Just the sandwich.
Then when we got home I wanted cookies. So I ate quite a few unfortunately but they were yummy! I had 6!
For supper we had turkey sausage with peppers and onions and sauce.
I make my own version of sauce since there isn’t as much calories, fat, sugar and sodium in my version. I use a can of crushed tomatoes and 1 T of Wildtree spaghetti sauce seasoning.
Here is the finished product. I had 1 and 1/2 links of the turkey sausage and peppers and onions and sauce with some cheese on top. The turkey sausage is Shady Brook and you can hardly tell a difference between that and regular. It is delicious!
That is all for today! I notice I did not have a lot of fruits or veggies today. That sometimes happens when I don’t make a plan.
I have my meal plan already made for tomorrow. I made sure I put more fruits and veggies on my plan for tomorrow. I also have my exercise session planned for tomorrow. It is so nice to feel good again!
How was your weekend?
Birthday Dinner and Baking Cookies
Let’s start with my weight chart for today. And yes it went up even with as few as 900 calories yesterday. My body is just balancing out from not having much food when being sick, which is fine. That is what your body does and I expected my weight to go up some. It still isn’t anywhere near my red base line and probably will still go up a little more before leveling out.
Here was my plan for today…
I still haven’t added exercise in yet from when I was sick. I just want to make sure I am giving my body enough rest so I don’t have a relapse with my fever from being run down. I probably won’t add it back in until Monday.
Here is my actual Food Log for today…
This morning for breakfast I had a slice of toast with 1 Tbsp peanut butter and 1 tsp honey with a dash of cinnamon and some Grey Earl Tea Kcup with honey.
Then for lunch we ate leftover pot roast (remember 8 inch salad plate).
Today I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies and a batch of white chocolate chip cookies with craisins. These are both of my favorites. So I did have a couple of bites of dough while baking and I had 3 cookies afterward to taste! These are on a small tea cup saucer.
Tonight we went out for some friends’ birthdays to Outback Steakhouse. I was going to have rice but decided on a salad (did not eat the croutons and only about 1/4 of the dressing)…
1 slice of the honey wheat bread with a pat of butter…
and a 6oz Steak with steamed veggies…
Very delicious dinner out and a great time catching up with friends!
Afterwards when we got home I thought to myself I could eat some cookies for dessert. But then I decided to check in with my hunger levels like I had you practice the other day. I decided my hunger level was at about a 6 which means I am just satisfied so I did not need any cookies. I figured I could plan them in for tomorrow if I wanted to have a couple then. We did have a glass of wine to unwind and toast to my DH’s birthday today! Happy Birthday Honey
That is my day today — thanks for reading
Do you have trouble with baking cookies and eating the cookie dough? One thing you can do is chew sugarless gum to deter you from putting the cookie dough in your mouth. Do you have another way to avoid mindless nibbling when baking or making dinner? Please share!
Ease Back Into Eating!
I am having more of an appetite today and my fever is down so I decided to post my day, just to update. Since I had a few days that I did not eat much, I want to ease my system back into eating so I upped my calories but did not go completely up to my normal plan which is around 1300-1400 calories.
Let’s start with an update for Thursday (yesterday). I had a banana for breakfast and then I ate my first normal meal in days, pot roast. I made it in the crockpot. An easy delicious meal that you can put in in the morning and it will be done when you come home! Contains good protein, veggies and starch all together!
Here is my updated weight chart. Weigh-ins for Tuesday the 13th through the 16th include my sick days. So tomorrow and a couple more days I will expect to go up a little until my weight balances back out.
Here it is from Thursday for the week by week view.
Today I ate what I was hungry for so here is my actual food log for the day.
Today for breakfast I had a banana and when I packed my lunch I threw in Chicken noodle soup since I knew I kept that down when I ate it a couple of days ago and I also took a healthy choice meal in case I felt good and wanted a little more than soup. This gave me a choice for lunch.
Around 11:00, I had some hot green tea with 1tsp of honey.
I then felt pretty good so I decided to have the healthy choice meal instead of the soup, around 1:00.
Drank G2 throughout the day.
Then around 4:00 I had 4 Ritz crackers.
Then at 8:00 we had our subway! Mine was my usual Veggie Delight!
Not a very exciting day but I did eat a little more today. This weekend I am planning on making cookies so that will definitely be a challenge.
How did everyone do rating there hunger on a scale from 1-10?
Still Sick
Hi everyone,
I am sorry but I am still sick! So there isn’t much to report. Losing weight — yes, but not how I want to so I am not going to do my usual post for yesterday or today. Let’s put it this way I mostly drank G2, had a few crackers, a piece of toast and chicken soup yesterday. And so far today I had a banana and G2.
I just wanted everyone to know that I didn’t abandon you and I will get back to posting when there is something to post
While I am sick what you could do is practice rating your hunger levels on a scale from 1-10. 1 being starved and 10 being full to the point of sick. 5 is neutral. When you think you want something to eat rate yourself on the scale and then decide if it is food you need or something else. I try to eat around a 3 (tummy growl) or 4 (feeling empty in stomach). Ask yourself if the hunger is located in your stomach or in your mouth or head. If it is located in your mouth or you keep thinking about something it is probably a craving or a physical desire or emotional need.
Try it out and if you want to share your finding please post comments.
Hopefully I will have a regular post soon with meal plans and weight charts!
Under the Weather!
First thing first, the weight chart. I weighed in at my lowest weight so far this December
My sore throat and feeling run down yesterday turned into a little more than that. Fever went up at night and was sick to the stomach in the middle of the night. Today I still had my fever but it was a low grade fever for most of the day. When I have a fever though I do NOT feel like eating. I guess the saying is true, “Feed a cold, starve a fever.” So in those cases I just listen to what my body wants and go from there. So tomorrow’s weight chart might show a drop but I do not get too attached to that number because I was very low in calories today. This means that once I start to eat normal again, it will tend to bounce back up quickly.
Here is my actual intake for the day…
So throughout the day I had some crackers and drank G2 to stay hydrated.
Around 2:00 or so I did have a high protein cookie.
Then a few Ritz crackers later in the day. Short and sweet today. Just not feeling the best. This is NOT the way I recommend to lose weight
80/20 Rule
I am going to start the day with the weight chart… my high weight this time is definitely lower than last weekend!
Now we just have to work on the lower weight being lower than last week
Here is my plan for today…
Here is my actual food intake for the day.
Today I woke up with a sore throat and a headache. My plan was for Kelly to come over to walk at 8:30. We were going to go 5-6 miles. But I didn’t feel well enough to go out in the cold and walk so I canceled! Yes, every so often this will happen, it is life. I try not to let it happen too often though
My throat was starting to hurt last night so I did plan for my green tea with honey in the morning. I started my day with green tea and 1 teaspoon of honey…
I was not very hungry in the morning, must have been the cold starting! So I didn’t have my breakfast until around 10:30. Since I wasn’t feeling very hungry I only had 1 egg and 1/2 piece of toast and my orange. I figured the orange would help my sore throat!
With my breakfast I took 2 Nutriferon (this helps your immune system). When you are starting a cold or anything, you take these to help it go away quickly or better yet not start at all.
Around 12:30 I then had a high protein hot chocolate and 1 of the peanut butter and marshmallow treat.
Here is my baby, Cole, not feeling well, so he snuggled up with his Daddy
My parents asked us to go to Mom’s Dutch Kitchen for lunch so I had planned to have a burger no roll but my Mom had a gift certificate that could only be used for dinners so I had broiled haddock, 1/2 baked potato with a pat of butter and 1T of sour cream and a salad with sweet and sour dressing.
I didn’t eat all of this, I ate about 2/3rds of the fish, one pat of butter and a tablespoon of the sour cream. I brought the rest of the haddock and the other 1/2 of baked potato home for lunch tomorrow.
Now when I was making the decision of what to eat at the restaurant, what helped me was that I had seafood planned for supper. Looking at the menu I wanted a lot of different things – French Fries, wraps, waldorf salad (high calorie/fat dressing). But you have to choose your battles. If you go out all the time, pick a time where you can splurge but then be diligent 80% of the time. We go by the 80/20 rule at Shapes to Come!
We ate around 2:30 and I wasn’t that hungry for dinner so I just had a snack around 6:30. My Mom brought me some chocolate cookies 1 with a cherry cordial kiss, 1 with a coconut kiss and 2 with hugs on top. She brought me 4 (the holiday season is in full swing!). I ate 1 cookie and had green tea with honey for my throat.
I am going to bed early tonight. Still not feeling 100%.
How was your weekend?
Holiday Treats, Peanut Butter and No Plan!
Weight chart for today:
Staying pretty steady – let’s hope it stays steady through the weekend !
Another weekend is upon us. Today (Saturday) I did not make a plan. This is usually not a good idea especially if wanting to lose weight. For maintenance I don’t always plan ahead but if my weight goes up then I plan a few days to get it back down.
Here is my actual food intake yesterday. A little higher in calories than normal. But to put it in perspective I burned 2049 calories yesterday for the whole day so I really ate to maintain.
My friend, Kelly, came over to walk and brought me some holiday cheer! They are Wolfgang peanut butter and marshmallow eggs. If anyone knows my eating habits they know one of my favorite things is peanut butter and marshmallow! Thank you Kelly! I will enjoy I will ration them and not eat them all at once!
We walked around 7:30 and it wasn’t too cold. Burned 470 calories — I know it says 486 but I didn’t take the picture right away so it is showing a little extra calories.
After our walk I had breakfast, I chose a mini bagel with peanut butter, banana and honey with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Yes peanut butter and banana is another yummy combo!
Then I had a grapefruit and Keurig Hot Chocolate as a snack in between breakfast and lunch.
For lunch I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — hmmm, I am starting to see a pattern for today! What all can I combine with peanut butter?
Sorry about the picture — a little blurry, and I wasn’t even wine tasting
and I also had some nachos. These are made with Red Hot Blues from Garden of Eaten. These are delicious and made with blue corn. The sour cream is Daisy Light Sour Cream.
I had to (not really HAD to but really wanted to) try out my delicious treats from Kelly for dessert!
YUM! They were delicious! I think I will have two more tomorrow!
For dinner I made sweet and sour turkey meatballs with No Yolk noodles, pineapple and sweet and sour sauce. The turkey meatballs are Fit and Active from Aldis, they are very good!
This was made with leftover noodles from the other night. I also had an orange. As I look back I noticed not a whole lot of veggies today and lots of peanut butter. I will plan for more veggies tomorrow.
That was my Saturday. We had planned to go to the Chriskindl Market in Mifflinburg but our Coley needed us to stay home with him because of his tail issue (the reason he was at the vet the other night). So maybe next year!
I hope everyone is having a good weekend.
What do you combine peanut butter with?
Daily or Weekly Weigh in?
First off I will start with the weight chart — nice and steady today, weighed the same as yesterday. This is my daily weigh-in chart. As you can see weight fluctuates and when you are trying to lose weight it can get frustrating. But I am here to tell you that all that matters is that you are trending downwards. What I mean by that is each week that goes by, that you are trying to lose weight, your high weight and your low weight should tend to be lower each week. If that happens you are losing weight. The ups and downs are a part of it!
Now if you are one that is all about the numbers on the scale and any fluctuation puts you over the edge, then I would suggest to weigh yourself weekly instead. Here is what my weight chart looks like for the week…
So for example this chart shows that I weighed myself Dec 1st and when I weighed myself Dec 8th you see the 1 pound drop. Ahhhh, how nice and tidy is that? You don’t get all the bumps along the way. But a word of warning, if you do weigh yourself once a week don’t get too discouraged, if you have been doing everything “right” and you don’t see a loss, it could be that it was a day when your weight fluctuated up.
And also remember that this is how you are going to live forever so it is all about the long haul anyway. You are going to live a healthier lifestyle so what does it matter if you lose 20 pounds in 2 months or 4 months, you are headed in the same direction and are going to be living healthier anyway!!!
Here is my plan for the day…
Here is my actual:
Started my day at 6am to do the treadmill. Did my run/walk routine for 40 minutes and burned 311 calories.
Here is my calories per minute average for the workout which was 7.2 calories per minute.
When I sit on the couch or at my desk, my calories per minute is 1. ONE calorie per minute! Think about that — if I am watching an hour long television show I will burn 60 calories — hmmm, how many handful of chips can I eat in one hour at 100 calories per handful? Puts it into perspective doesn’t it? Yikes!!
For breakfast I made what one of my clients calls an “Egg McDorie” It is my version of the McDonald’s breakfast sandwich. But you save many calories doing it my way! McDonalds version is 560 calories, my version is 250 calories! I heat my mini bagel and cook my egg first – I break the yolk so it gets hard and doesn’t ooze all over when in the sandwich…
Take the bagel out when toasted and flip the egg…
Then assemble your sandwich with the bagel, egg and bacon… YUM!
Oh and don’t forget my juice with my breakfast…
To cook the bacon I use the Pampered Chef ridged stone and microwaved the bacon. I do a lot up at once and then just keep it in a baggy in the refrigerator. Easy to use for a quick BLT sandwich or on a salad etc.
Stone that I use…
What is nice about this stone is that when the bacon is cooking all the grease falls down in the crevices and your bacon is not sitting in and soaking up the grease! And that goes for anything you are cooking! And no, no one is paying me to promote pampered chef products. This is just what I use.
For my lunch I had my chicken salad on romaine lettuce and tomato with 2T Greek dressing…
The chicken salad was made with the leftover chicken breast from the salsa, chicken and noodle dinner Wednesday night.
I also had a yogurt with my lunch, kind of as dessert…
At 3:00 I had my grapefruit and at 5:30 my biscotti.
Around 6:30 felt my blood sugar dropping so I had a protein bar.
Had supper around 8pm, it is Subway Friday so I had the veggie delight sub!
I was definitely hungrier today. Had some popcorn in the evening as my snack.
Do you tend to weigh yourself daily or weekly?
Start of Week 2 – A Loss for the 1st Week!
It has been a week since I started the blog. I am down 1 pound from when I started, even with the ups and downs and doing some holiday partying last weekend. Here is my weight chart for today…
I did not plan my foods today but I did log all my foods. Here is my actual food log for today…
When I woke up I did the treadmill for 64 minutes and burned 468 cals.
Breakfast was a mini whole wheat bagel with 1T peanut butter and 1T sugar free raspberry jelly.
My favorite sugar free jelly is Polaner jelly with fiber.
For lunch I still wasn’t all that hungry so I had a protein shake with strawberry banana yoplait smoothie. They are in a frozen pouch and I use half the bag (1 serving) mixed with 1/2 cup of water and shake packet and blend.
Nice and thick and filling! For my clients, you count this as 1 Fruit and a supplement!
I also had 1 oz (yes weighed) of cashews — another one of those need to measure/weigh foods.
Around 3 I had a grapefruit — just got a whole case from one of my friends!
We had to take our dog, Cole, to the vet so while we were waiting for him to get done we went and grabbed a bite to eat. We went to Carini’s pizza place. I had 1 slice of pizza and salad with balsamic dressing and I had 1 bite of bread.
Tonight I will I have a Keurig chai latte and that will be my day.
Even though I did not pre-plan today I was able to keep my calories down and eat pretty good. The secret to losing weight and keeping it off is to eat regular food that you love and you won’t even feel like you are trying to lose weight — it is a lifestyle change so you need to figure out what works for you FOREVER!
What foods would you put on your food plan?
Works Every Time!
Yesterday my weight was still up from the weekend so I decided to do what I tell my clients to do. I did a preconditioning day. A little detox never hurt anyone! So today the scale reflected my hard work yesterday, down 1.4 from yesterday Check out yesterday’s blog to see what yummy foods I ate to do my detox!
Not quite back down to Saturday but remember my goal is to MAINTAIN my weight through the holidays (red line is the base line) while still participating in holiday cheer! If I end up with a loss at the end that would be nice but that is not my goal! Maybe next month my goal will be to lose those dreaded last 10!
Anyway, here is my plan for the day.
and here is my actual
This morning I got up at 6 so I could do Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred. All you need is a mat, weights and the DVD and you are good to go. It is a short but intense workout. And there are 3 levels so as you get stronger you can move up in levels.
Since it is a short workout, I don’t usually burn a whole lot of calories so I like to add 20 minutes on the treadmill. This is a nice change from always doing 45 minutes straight on the treadmill. So I turned on my 80′s music
and did 20 minutes on the treadmill and my total calorie burn for the 30DS and treadmill was 355 cals.
For breakfast I made my juice and made 2 scrambled eggs with cauliflower and 1/2 oz cheese…
And to be clear, that is an 8 inch salad plate not a regular dinner plate. It looks bigger than it is… I use the smaller plate trick to think I am getting a nice big plate full!
I also measure my cheese. It is one of those high calorie foods that you have to be careful with…
I love my digital kitchen scale. It is a cheap one from WalMart but works great!
For lunch I had a wrap made with 2 slice of reduced sodium bacon, deli fresh turkey (6 slices), 1 T light mayo, lettuce and tomato with 14 fat free pringles.
For my snacks I had 6 biscotti, High Protein Hot Chocolate and a laughing cow cheese wedge.
After my treacherous drive home from work in the snow – I felt like I was in a snowglobe that was just violently shaken!! I couldn’t believe how hard it was snowing and how big the flakes were. The roads got slippery fast. But I made it home around 8pm and made supper.
It was chicken with salsa, cheese and noodles.
Here is my serving… on my small pampered chef plate
I was going to have chicken parmesan but I didn’t have any spaghetti sauce so I used salsa instead for a good Mexican dish!
After supper I had 1 oz of cashews and some hot tea.
Time to plan my meals for tomorrow!
Do you measure any of your foods? Which ones?
