Just me, trying to live a healthy and happy life
Oh Lord! They have the most wonderful cheesecake on QVC right now! Oh crap, it looks soo soooo good. Oh Lord, it’s times like these that I would love to just throw it all away and just EAT EAT EAT all I want whenever I want!
But nothing tastes as good as fit feels, right!? Hmm don’t know if I believe that right now! Haha. But I’ll get over it!
I love popcorn, but don’t snack on it very often anymore because of the extra carbs.
But I still regularly look at popcorn bags at the grocery store trying to find a low calorie snack. Most times, the calories are just too high. I mean 6-8 servings per bag!? I am afraid that we’d be tempted to eat several servings!
But today at Whole Foods, I found a 4 oz bag of Good Health Natural Naked Popcorn. Four 1oz servings at 120 calories each.
Excellent!
I had planned on eating 2 servings which wouldn’t be terribly bad at 240 calories, but I decided to stick with only one serving and save room for some fruit afterward.
So it tasted very food. Light not too salty. I suppose those wanting a full buttery flavor might be disappointed, but I enjoyed it. It is not something I would buy on a regular basis, but I would buy again for a good healthy snack. What I really should be doing is popping my own popcorn. I bought a jar of organic popcorn weeks ago, and still haven’t tried it!
From the book The Biggest Loser Simple Swaps: 100 Easy Changes to Start Living a Healthier Lifestyle:
“We’re told what’s acceptable and what’s not by others. But listen to your own voice. Figure out what works for you.”
By Jen Eisenbarth (Biggest Loser Season 3)
I found the book at the library, and started to read it last night. This quote jumped out at me. It’s so true. Everyone has their own opinion on how to lose weight and be healthy, but in the end, all that matters is your voice. Your voice might not be loud and strong at first, but eventually, you will get to know your body and what makes you feel healthy. And my voice is singing!
Phew, I know I wasn’t supposed to weigh myself, but I admit it. I am obsessed. Okay, now that’s out of the way.
I woke up yesterday AM and I felt really good. I felt invigorated with a little bit of muscle soreness from the night before. I felt thinner! But I weighed myself and the scale still reflected 165. Yes, it was .4 less than my last weigh in, but it was still not where I wanted to be.
Okay, so this morning, I woke up, feeling the same! Feeling GOOD, so I just HAD to weigh in. (obsessed, yes, we already know that!) and yay! 163.6 pounds. Yes!
I found the Cooking Light Way to Cook: The Complete Visual Guide to Everyday Cooking at my local library. What a gorgeous book, loaded with incredible color photos just like in the Cooking Light magazine. While the book isn’t large sized (it is thick but not large) the step by step photos are not small. They are large enough to see details.
As stated by many other reviewers on Amazon, it is more of a reference book, as opposed to a cook/recipe book, although there are a few basic recipes scattered throughout.
There’s 480 pages of detailed instruction on many basic and not so basic cooking techniques, along with descriptive summaries for many food ingredients like oils, fish, cheese, salt. Lots of how to’s like how to bone a chicken, de-vein shrimp, seed a pomegranate, and freeze foods. And of course, in Cooking Light style, the nutritional data for each recipe is included. I love that! There was a
“seasonal produce guide” in the back of the book, along with an “ingredient substitution” and “metric equivalents” guide.
I considered purchasing a copy of this book myself, but decided not to. Yeah, I learned a few new techniques and ideas from reading through the book, but it’s really geared toward a newbie home cook. I’m certainly not an expert, but don’t consider myself a novice cook. Plus, I already own lot cook books with detailed techniques, like the Cook’s Illustrated books. So, along with Google, I can usually figure out what I need to learn.
I did notice some yummy recipes in the book, and I found them online on the Cooking Light web site. Here is one favorite:
Spiced Pork Chops with Apple Chutney
So, bottom line, the Cooking Light Way to Cook: The Complete Visual Guide to Everyday Cooking is a perfect book for someone just learning how to cook. It is also a good choice for someone without a prior collection of reference cook books.
If I were just starting out, I think I would choose this book in place of the any of my other reference cook books, like Cooks Illustrated. It’s got everything you need in one book, with gorgeous photos, and basic non-intimidating details.
Disclaimer:
I love reading cookbooks, like some people love reading novels! I am inspired by recipes, and enjoy learning ideas from cookbooks; I like putting my own spin on a recipe rather than exactly following it. Please keep in mind that my opinions might be completely different from the other home cooks.
Well, I am hoping that it has to do with my “time of the month” coming up soon. I can’t imagine that it’s actually “real” weight, but hey, a lot of this journey hasn’t made a lot of sense to me. Whenever I weighed myself and lost, it’s felt a miracle. Maybe my body is just adjusting. I don’t know.
But I am going to be okay, either way. When my body is ready, it will let go of more weight. I just have to be patient. I need to take it one day at a time. And I really need to stop focusing on the scale! I know I know! I want to weigh myself every day, but it’s not healthy to obsess on the scale. I need to just focus on each day, and try my best. That is what matters the most, not how much I weigh, but how healthy I really am and how good I feel!
So, I updated my “goals” over at My Fitness Pal, and my calories have been adjusted. I am still at 1/2 pound weekly goal and my calories are now 1690.
I worked out on the Wii Fit tonight, doing mostly strength and yoga. It’s funny how quickly the stiffness returns when you slack off for a short while. Tonight I feel so much more flexible and my range of motion has increased. Feels awesome!
Yeah, okay, it’s reality! A wake up call!
I was sick with a cold, so my fitness workouts went out the door and I was not always making the greatest food choices.
I “feel” heavier and the scale doesn’t lie. For about a day, I was as low as 162, and now I am back up to 164. But it’s okay. Today is a new day, a new start! I am already back to eating better, and I will start working out again. It’s not the end of the world!
Fingers Crossed!
I just calculated my spending amounts for food, comparing the total for dining out and groceries from month’s past to what I am spending now eating healthier. Surprisingly, the totals were fairly equal.
On average, I would spend about $700 to $800 per month for both groceries and dining out. It’s still the same now, but I am spending much more on groceries and way less on dining out. Yeah, I could be saving a whole bunch more if I tried to cut a few more corners and maybe not purchase so many expensive items, and I really should try a little bit harder to work on that!
Eating clean and responsibly is expensive, I don’t care what anyone says! :) But I figure that I feel so much better inside and out when eat this way, so it’s worth it, right?
I hope in the next 6 months or so, I will have a better handle on things, and hopefully, I can budget our food spending a bit more. We’ll see!
This wasn’t one of my better weeks. No, it wasn’t horrible, but I feel like my choices haven’t been the best.
First, getting a cold set me back on my workouts. And since I was feeling crappy from Friday to Wednesday, we had a couple take out meals.
The other day, we had Chinese, and while we ordered steamed chicken and vegetables, we still ate vegetable fried rice. No, it wasn’t the worst food to eat, but it surely wasn’t the best. I did freeze the rest of the rice so we could have it on a later date, instead of eating it the next day.
And then last night, we each ordered Chicken Parmesan with bow tie Pasta from a local Italian takeout. It was fantastic! But oh so bad, and oh such a huge portion! We did manage to split our dinners into two, so we could have the leftovers today for lunch, but then it’s like TWO bad meals in a row.
I told my DH that next time we are going to split ONE dinner between the two of us, so there will be no leftovers. I just hate eating like that two days in a row.
And I feel a bit more bloated and slightly bigger today. I know I am on the heavy side of the scale, but I will get back on track!
It scares me when I eat like that. It’s like I can’t stop myself. Take out Italian is not like the pasta I make here at home, where I top a smaller portion of whole wheat pasta with a lot of filling sauce! I feel satisfied with the portion, and I don’t feel the need to overeat or add more to my plate. When eating out, especially with Italian pasta, I want to eat the whole darn thing! I don’t feel full and I don’t feel satisfied.
I have been trying to figure out why, and it seems to partly psychological and partly the specific food on the plate. I don’t have the same drastic issues when we get takeout steamed Chinese or Greek stir fry. I think because white pasta isn’t very filling and there is not much tomato sauce. I don’t know what it is….but it really scares me because I can revert back to my old ways so quickly! I don’t like the feeling of losing control like that, but I suppose it’s good that I recognize that there is a problem and can face it while trying to find a solution.
I know I will always have this “addiction” but if I can accept my limitations and try to limit my exposure, I think I will be okay. Yes, I know I will be okay! I have to be okay!
Yes, I will be okay. I won’t give in and go back to my old habits!