Post Thanksgiving Update and Weight In!

So I've made it past 2 of the 4 major holidays, leaving only Christmas and New Year's left to conquer. Thanksgiving was great, filled with lots of family and delicious food, and the best part about last week is that I lost 1.5lbs! That's right, I lost weight during Thanksgiving! The secret you ask? I treated last week like any other week. Thanksgiving Day I didn't graze all day and had a small portion of everything. For my family's traditional fast food lunch, which we have because we're too busy cooking dinner to make lunch, I had a Carl's Jr. Famous Star with no cheese and no mayo and only ate ¾ of it. Friday I was back on track and even took my boyfriend to the Superwoman Boot Camp post-Thanksgiving Burn Da Bird Workout. When asked to comment Alex said "no" with further harassing Alex had this to say about boot camp "Boot camp was a difficult and rewarding experience. It continues to impress me that Desiree hasn't missed any sessions in the months she has been going." Awwww how sweet! Although, truth be told, I did miss the Friday session after the midnight showing of Harry Potter but that's it. Before I start to ramble too much, my main reason for posting is for another weigh in. This morning I weighed in at 197.5 lbs., which means I hit my goal of being under 200lbs! So far I've lost a total of 26.5 lbs! I was actually pretty shocked that I made this goal. The first part of the month was very slow .5lb- 1lb a week and then the past two week's I've lost about 4lbs. There is something just SO satisfying about weighing less than 200lbs, some mental threshold where above 200 I'm Super Fat, and below it I'm just Fat. Whatever it is, it feels damn good. So by New Years I want to be below 190, which will be a challenge, but I know I can do it!

Holiday Craving

It's that time of year and I've been craving pumpkin pie, one of my all-time favorites. No longer being a slave to my cravings I started searching the internet for some lower calories alternatives and couldn't find a recipe that I was totally in love with. So being the budding pastry chef that I am I decided to take a stab at my own recipe for a crust-less, lower fat, and lower sugar pumpkin pie. Surprisingly after taking out the crust, fat and sugar my version still had the same flavor and texture of a traditional Pumpkin Pie. I liked it SO much I've already made another one.


Ingredients

 ½ cup Splenda's Brown Sugar Blend

½ cup Splenda

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 eggs

2 cups canned pumpkin

3/4 cup Skim Milk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

In a mixing bowl, combine the Splenda, Brown Sugar Blend and flour. Add eggs; mix well. Stir in the pumpkin, milk, vanilla and spices. Mix until well blended. Pour into a 9-in. pie plate sprayed with Pam non-stick spray. Place pie plate in a 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan; add of hot water to pan until the water goes half way up the pie plate. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50-55 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. If you cut your pie into 8 pieces each slice is about 130 Calories, and if you like you're slices a little bigger and cut the pie into 6 pieces and each slice is 175 calories each.


P.S. A small slice of Marie Calendar's Pumpkin Pie is 390 Calories!


 

By Failing to Prepare you are Preparing to Fail

So my week with no added sugar was challenging and went better than expected considering I didn’t really set myself for success. The first day went excellent, day two was going great until I got home and realized that my step-dad had made franks and beans for dinner. The baked beans third ingredient was brown sugar, and although it smelled really good I had no problem saying no and looking for something else to eat. This is where I hit my first problem; I hadn’t done any shopping to prepare for this goal! First I was going to make a sandwich but my wheat bread had added sugar, then I was going to have soup but that contained high fructose corn syrup! Which was really annoying, who knew that the devil of all sweeteners was in soup! I ended up making a low fat whole wheat tuna noodle dish which surprisingly was really tasty and nutritious. This was the pattern of my week because I hadn’t planned for this I was consistently eating the same thing over and over again, I ate the tuna noodle dish three times last week, or I ended up eating something with added sugar for lack of another option. So my plan is to attempt this goal again the week after thanksgiving. My goal this week is to do cardio on all my boot camp off days!  

Whole Wheat Tuna Noodle Pasta
1 Tbsp Butter
3 Tbsp Flour
2 cups of Skim Milk
1 Cup of dried whole wheat pasta (I used bowtie)
1 Cup Frozen veggies ( I used peas, carrots, and broccoli)
1 6oz Can of Solid White Tuna drained
Salt and Pepper to taste

First start by cooking your pasta according to package instructions. When the pasta is almost done start your sauce. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in large sauté pan, once melted, sprinkle flour in pan and whisk until butter and flour form a paste. Once the paste turns from white to a pale yellow add half a cup of milk and keep whisking until the milk thickens. Stir in a cup of milk continuing to whisk and as the sauce starts to thicken add in frozen veggies, tuna, and remaining milk. Let simmer till veggies are cooked. At this point you can add more milk depending on how thick you like your sauce. Once the sauce is ready toss in the cooked pasta and you are all ready to go! This meal is about 330 calories a serving.

Ignorance is Stupid

As I've demonstrated, packing a lunch and eating at home for dinner is somewhat of a challenge for me. I would say on an average of three nights a week I don't get home until past 8pm. This means unless I pack dinner, which I don't think I've ever done, I'm eating out two to three nights a week. So I decided to post my own tips for eating out mindfully. First I wanted to illustrate what I used to eat multiple meals a week maybe even a twice in one day. I knew what I was eating was bad for me but I was really ignorant to HOW bad it actually was.

Desiree's Old Regulars

Carls Jr.- A Big Carl with Crisscut fries and a Coke Zero = 1360 Calories, 87g Fat, 94g Carbs

Chili's- Half of the Skillet Queso and Chips for an Appetizer, and The Big Mouth Bite Burgers = 2340 Calories, 154g Fat, 164g Carbs

Wienerschnitzel- Two Chili Cheese Dogs and Chili Cheese Fries = 1220 Calories, 72g Fat, 167g Carbs

Cheesecake Factory- Chicken Costoletta = 1238 Calories, 35g Fat, 62g Carbs


On average I would say that I was eating something like this a least once a day, so I was eating almost a whole daily allowance of calories in one meal every day! Even if I made good choices the rest of the day I was probably eating over 2500 calories a day. So the world and my life aren't perfect and I still am eating out several times a week, less than I used to, but still something I do most weekdays. Given that fast food and restaurants are filled with nutritional pot holes, I find that the best tool is knowledge. If the nutritional info isn't available I won't eat there. Luckily, since several states passed laws requiring restaurants to post their nutritional facts for national chains, this information is pretty much widely available. Along with finding out the nutritional facts for everything I eat, I also am controlling my portion size. For example at Chipotle I get a chicken burrito bowl with black beans, fajita veggies, rice, salsa, guacamole and lettuce, which runs at about 635 Calories. So I only eat half of my burrito bowl. If I modify my order and leave out the rice and guacamole it is 355 calories and I can eat the whole thing.

 Desiree's New Regulars

Chipotle- ½ Chicken Burrito Bowl = 317 Calories, 28g Fat, 58g Carbs

Taco Bell- 1 fresco chicken burrito= 340 Calories, 8g Fat, 50g Carbs

Wendy's- Small chili= 220 Calories, 7g Fat, 22g Carbs

Togo's- ½ Turkey and Avocado= 320 Calories, 13g Fat, 37g Carbs

La Bou- House Salad with Half of the Dill Dressing = 210 Calories, 18g Fat, 7 Carbs

Food journaling has been really helpful in keeping helping to keep myself accountable. Doing some research into what I used to eat or for something I'm craving, finding out the nutritional information before I eat has helped me from making some horrible food choices. It has even helped me to stop craving some of the food I used to eat. I will never look at restaurant food the same way again.


P.S. if you add up all of the calories of my new regulars it's still less 900 calories less then what I used to eat at Chili's

The Not So Sweet Challenge

All right so the water goal went well week before last, although now that I'm drinking more water, I'm also using the restroom more but it's nothing that I can't deal with. So as you may have noticed I didn't have a goal last week and that was because it was a crazy busy week. The goal this week is something I've been looking forward to, because for me so far I think it will be the hardest. My goal this week is to not eat anything with added sugar. You would be surprised by how many seemingly non offending foods have added sugar, like whole wheat breads, nonfat yogurt, and even ketchup.

There are many different kinds of sugars, some are added to foods and some occur naturally in foods like fruit and milk. Three common kinds of sugar in our diet are fructose, which is in fruit; lactose, which is in milk; and sucrose, found in table sugar. I am focusing on added sugars because the main difference between naturally occurring sugars and added sugars are nutrient value. Naturally occurring sugars tend to be high in nutrients and low in calories while processed foods are low in nutrients and very high in calories.

Like I mentioned before added sugar can be hiding in seemingly healthy choices and nutrition labels don't make a distinction between naturally occurring sugar and added sugar, so in order to find added sugar you have to read the ingredients list which even then is tricky because there are so many different names for sugar. 

Other names for added sugar include:
•    Brown Sugar
•    Corn Sweetener
•    Corn Syrup
•    Dextrose
•    Fruit Juice Concentrates
•    Glucose
•    High-fructose Corn Syrup
•    Honey
•    Malt Syrup
•    Molasses
•    Raw Sugar
•    Sucrose
•    Sugar
•    Syrup
So wish me luck this week will be a challenge for sure!

I Got Down and Dirty on Sunday

So I've been putting off posting because I wanted to post about the Merrell Down and Dirty Mud Run 5K that I did on Sunday with photos included but alas they still haven't posted the pics so I will post those as soon as they are available. So first off I have to give a shout out to my friends Katie and Peter who stuck with my slow ass the whole course. Our finish time was 1:07:54 I would say I ran 1/3 of the race and walked the rest. It was unbelievably fun and I really enjoyed running outside trails, even though they were more challenging. The obstacles and mud really helped to break up the monotony of running. I really don't think I will ever be a long distance runner, but I definitely see more 5k's and dare I say 10k's in my future. I know I wouldn't have been able to run any of this course 2.5 months ago and that it can only get easier from here if I keep on setting athletic goals for myself.