So Far So Good ~ Rachel

Well, I stuck to my plan on Tuesday and Wednesday REALLY well…Thursday was a little challenging.

I put my food journal down below for you all to see…nothing too exciting really. Lots of hard boiled eggs. I now make 1.5 dozen every weekend for the week! Both Dave and I LOVE hard boiled eggs and the dogs like them too! And they are super easy.

Last night was a bit interesting. We had planned on going to a Chinese restaurant with our friends Kirsten and Andrew. My plan was to have some steamed dumplings for an appetizer and then choose a “healthy” dish and eat half, saving the other half for dinner tonight.

The weather here was so perfect that we instead went to Ballymor Irish Pub so we could sit outside. There are 3 “problems” with that:

(1) They have Strongbow, my favorite hard cider, that you can only really get on tap at Irish pubs. I had a 20oz pint and left it at that. I figured it would have the same amount of points as beer  but couldn’t confirm that so I just assigned it 10 points plus, which is the equivalent of two 12oz regular beers.

(2) The food is INCREDIBLY yummy! They have these curry chips…basically hand made potato chips with a slight curry seasoning on them, served with a horseradish sauce. I *may* have had a bunch of those. The last time I was at Ballymor I had the shepherd’s pie which was AWESOME but this time decided to go with fish and chips. Dave ended up talking me into the fish sandwich….which is basically the fish and chips but you get one piece of cod instead of 2 and it’s on a grilled hoagie roll. As I had tasted Dave’s fish and chips last week, I knew their fish was awesome…and it was. So, while I could have maybe made a better meal choice, I decided that I love this pub way too much to just get a fancy salad. I did, after all, have a lot of points socked away.

(3) The portions are HUGE…that one piece of fried cod on my sandwich was easily 12oz and probably more. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it was an entire pound. I ate it all. It was a challenge but fried fish doesn’t reheat well so I didn’t want to waste it. But fish is good for you…the only bad parts were the friend breading (which honestly wasn’t too thick) and the hoagie roll. Oh yeah…and the mustard seed tartar sauce.

Before dinner, I had 19 points left for the day plus 46 weekly flex points. I’m pretty sure I didn’t use them all at dinner but I’m going to pretend like I did, just in case!

When you have a restaurant that you absolutely LOVE, do you throw all caution to the wind and get what you really want? I could have made a better choice, but I was in no mood to. I could have eaten less, but I didn’t want to waste it (and really didn’t want to stop eating).

Next time (because there will be), I will take pictures of the food…I got a smaller and much more portable camera that now lives in my purse. I might become one of those bloggers that takes pictures of her meals. At least the good lookin’ ones!

Have a good weekend everyone! Oh yeah, here’s what I ate the past 3 days..lots of fast and easy to grab stuff since I was in the office 2 days.

Tuesday’s food: Triple Venti Skinny French Vanilla Latte (4), 2 slices oatmeal bread (4), 2 hard boiled eggs (4), 1 Tbsp light mayo (1), cup of fresh pineapple (0), 3oz frozen salmon filet (5), frozen veggies with a Laughing Cow wedge (2), Beef stew with mushrooms (9) over 56g egg noodles (6), pudding cup (2), banana (0), Skinny Cow cone (4)…41 points plus total

Wednesday’s food: Kashi oatmeal packet (3) with fresh strawberries and Splenda (0), leftover beef stew over egg noodles (15), 2 hard boiled eggs (4) frozen veggies with Laughing Cow wedge (2), pudding (2), 5oz turkey tenderloin (5) with mushrooms and Carolina Mustard BBQ sauce (1) and frozen veggies (2), Skinny Cow cone (4)…38 points plus total

Thursday’s food: 2 hard boiled eggs (4), strong cheese (1), Lean Cuisine Butternut Squash Ravioli (7), pudding (2), banana (0), another hard boiled egg (2), Vitatop muffin (3)…curry chips with horseradish sauce, 20oz Strongbow, Fried Cod sandwich with tartar sauce and more chips…points plus total unknown so I’m just going to assume (and hopefully be way overestimating)  84 points which is everything I had left.

Choices ~ Rachel

Like I said in my weight post, I’m down 1.8lbs this week. How? For the life of me, I have no idea! I decided to share the choices I made this week with you in an effort to (a) put myself a little further out there,  (b) show you all that it’s not about perfection and (c) open my eyes to the bad habits that can oh so easily creep back in. So without further adieu, I give you my week of choices:

Tuesday: This was a day of good choices. I hit the gym for 30 minutes of strength training and 30 minutes of cardio and I ate right, staying within my points. Did I need the triple venti skinny latte from Starbucks? Probably not. But the only points come from the milk so I can’t say it’s a bad choice. I usually make good choices on Tuesdays since I come from my Weight Watchers meetings feeling empowered.

Wednesday: I ate 2 Weight Watchers ice cream candy bars and 1 Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich today. I also picked up a rotisserie chicken from the store for dinner. Another bad choice? Not weighing out the correct portion. Oh yeah, and eating some of the crispy skin. That was my brother’s favorite part of the roasted chickens we had when we were kids. Maybe I was making up for all the times he got the skin instead of me? It wasn’t even that good!

Thursday:  First bad choice? Didn’t go to the gym. I can’t remember my excuse but that’s exactly what it was. My next bad choice came later that night. We had dinner with Dave’s sister’s family and his Mom to celebrate her birthday. Marlene made stuffed shells. I had 7. I’m not going to beat myself up over that one even though I probably could have done with about 4-5. Should I have eaten that piece of Texas Toast? Hell no…one slice is like 8 points. Should I have eaten the birthday cake? Sure…the first slice. I knew we were having birthday cake and it’s my favorite (chocolate cake with whipped cream icing and buttercream decorations) so I had planned for it. What I didn’t plan on was taking a piece home and EATING IT LATER THAT NIGHT while we watched a movie. The right choice would have been to drink some water since I wasn’t hungry. I made the wrong choice and ate cake…when I was already full. Geez.

Friday: I made it to the gym…60 minutes of Zumba that kicked my butt from here to Mexico. The day goes downhill from there. First bad choice? Not tracking anything except my breakfast. This bad choice continued through until this morning. Yep, 4 days of not even pretending to track my food. That night we went out to dinner and got BBQ. Instead of getting the one meat platter with 2 sides, I got the 2 meat platter. Instead of getting a salad or veggies, I got the cole slaw and fried okra!! Sheesh. At least they were veggies….sort of.

Saturday: First bad choice? I didn’t go to the gym. I woke up to my computer going all kaplooey (nasty malware got a hold of it) so I was stressed about that. Dave called from the dog park and informed me that Kharma was missing a chunk out of her ear and asked if I wanted coffee. Instead of saying no thank you I’m going to the gym like I planned, I said yes please and I’ll see you when you get home. Dave took care of the malware, I cleaned Kharma’s ear (she wasn’t missing a chunk…she got into some sticky substance that matted it down), and then I proceeded to putz around doing who knows what. That night I had plans to go out to dinner with a friend where I was going to get a healthy salad. The short version of the story is that I had a flat tire, Monica’s fiancee changed it to the almost flat donut and after filling it with air, we ended up at a pub within walking distance of the apartment in case the donut went flat on me. Did I get a salad there? Nope. What did I get you ask? The bacon bleu cheese burger with fries. Oh yeah, and we split a piece of cheesecake. Doh.  I completed my evening with two giant glasses of sangria. That was the only part of my original plan I stuck to. After all, you can’t have a girls’ night in (complete with painting nails and watching Bridget Jones AND Mamma Mia!) without sangria.

Sunday:  The malware was back on my computer. I think Dave brought me coffee again (not just coffee….the fancy stuff with actual points). Dave got us Taco Bell for dinner. Did I make the right choice and get the fresco menu items? Nope. I got a Mexican pizza, a 7 layer burrito and some double decker taco with sour cream oozing from it. Oh yeah, and as if that wasn’t enough, pintos and cheese. I actually couldn’t eat those. They were a snack on Monday.  It’s like I got all out of sorts and decided that I deserved to make the wrong choices because I was *having a bad weekend.*

Monday: Sadly, this was yesterday and I don’t remember much about it. My first bad choice? Not going to the gym. I’m pretty sure my choices the rest of the day weren’t fabulous.

See a trend here? Making a choice to skip the gym is BAD. Not tracking my food is BAD. Getting off of a routine and being stressed out…well, I need to cope a little bit better than I did this past week.

After re-reading all of the above, I can say I am quite disgusted with myself. And believe me, it’s not easy to admit to the internets and all you readers out there that I ate like 3 ice cream treats in one day…and to be perfectly honest, they were probably within 30 minutes of one another.

So this is the start of a new week of making better choices. I choose the gym. I choose tracking my food. I choose making better choices when eating out. I’ll revisit this later this week to let you know how I am doing.

PERSISTENCE….NOT Perfection.  That’s what I keep telling myself anyways.

Colors of the Rainbow ~ Rachel

Weight Watchers is focusing on fruits and vegetables right now in meetings. Personally, I feel like they should focus on fruits and veggies when our options for them are more challenging (ahem, root veggies in the winter) but I guess we should be focusing on them all the time.

Our first challenge was to fill half our plate with produce for at least one meal each day. That’s a lot of produce! Since I tend to eat smaller meals throughout the day, I tried to make sure that I got a fruit and/or veggie at each meal and if it was dinner, that they took up at least half of the plate.

Our second challenge was to eat 3 different colored fruits and/or veggies each day. Below is a list of what I have eaten for the week.

Tuesday: 1 cup blueberries, 8 oz watermelon, 1 banana, 1 small tomato

Wednesday: 1 cup blueberries, 8 oz watermelon, 1 peach

Thursday: 1/2 banana, 8oz baby bella mushrooms

Friday: 1 cup blueberries, 2 small purple plums, 1 banana, 7oz watermelon

Saturday: 1 small tomato, 1 cup purple grapes, side salad from Chick-Fil-A

Sunday:  sweet potato fries (do these count?), 1/2 cup blueberries

Monday: 1 cup blueberries, 8 oz pineapple, 3 roma tomatoes, 1/2 avocado

Apparently, when I eat fruit, I eat it at the detriment of veggies. I was never really a fruit girl but have been learning to love it…and even crave it. But I don’t see enough green on the list above.  I think I need to check my rainbow again this coming week and make a more conscious effort to include veggies. Part of the problem is not meal planning but luckily my menu is set next week!

You should try and eat a rainbow every day! Below is a graphic (click on it for a larger version) of the colors we should be eating and here is a link with a little bit more scientific information in it. My personal favorites? Blue and red…hooray for lycopene and antioxidants!

Food Journal 3/20-3/22 ~ Rachel

Here are my good eats for the second half of my week…the “bad” half of the week…but tune in to the next post for the good news!

Saturday, 3/20  (Daily points used=33/30)

Breakfast: english muffin (1), Light Laughing Cow wedge (1), egg (2), 2 turkey sausage links (2) and Vitatop muffin (1);  Lunch: cucumber (0), 8oz skim milk (2), string cheese (1), Attune bar (2);  Snack: Mini Babybel (1) and Vitatop (1);  Dinner: 2 pieces of homemade pizza (~16);  Dessert: WW ice cream candy bar (3);  Exercise: ~2 mile hike with Darwin in Umstead park

*I wasn’t hungry before my hike so I ended up with two snacks instead of lunch…it was just a weird eating day to begin with.

Sunday, 3/21  (Daily points used=42/30)

Breakfast: english muffin (1), egg (2), Light Laughing Cow edge (1);  Snack: string cheese (1), Fiber One bar (2);  Dinner: Baked ziti (9), 6 meatballs (6), slice of Texas Toast (4), salad (0), Light Ranch dressing (2);  Dessert: BIRTHDAY CAKE (15);  Exercise: nada

*I was not hungry for lunch and knew we were having an early dinner. I did ok with hunger today despite the weird schedule. The slice of Texas Toast was totally not worth 4 points. The birthday cake was awesome but I felt a little sick by the end of it…my body hasn’t had processed sugar like that in 2 months! The birthday cake was also probably more than 15 points but I have no way of really knowing. I think next time there is birthday cake, I’ll make sure to have a smaller piece…and one without “flowers”

Monday, 3/22 (Daily points used=45/30)

Breakfast: 3/4c egg beater (2), mushrooms (0), Canadian bacon (1), 1 oz Dubliner cheese (3), Attune bar (2);  Lunch: Caribou Northern Lite Latte (3), Fiber One bar (2), granny smith apple with cinnamon (2);   Snack: 1 oz Food Should Taste Good Multigrain chips (3);  Dinner: Brixx Wild Mushroom pizza on whole wheat crust (27);  Dessert: Moody Blues concert (0);  Exercise: nada

*I was on the road during “lunch” time so it was all finger foods that could be in the car. I thought I was making a decent choice at Brixx but when I looked the pizza up later after the Moody Blues concert (which, BTW, was awesome), I about fell over. I could not believe that the pizza was 27 points! I’m guessing they douse the thing in EVOO and then cheese. I can’t figure out where else the points could come from because the crust was thin and the only other things on the pizza were mushrooms and arugula. Good thing I planned for something like this and saved up my flex points! Now I know to get the Mushroom wrap the next time (12 points)! Holy cow was that an eye opener for me. It really does help to plan ahead of time and acquire nutrition facts before you go out!

Flex points used this week=31/35  (though, it might be more b/c of that birthday cake)

I clearly need to work on my eating habits, specifically when it comes to handling days where my schedule is totally thrown off or for days when I’m not hungry for regular meals. I am still pop free which is nice. I only exercised once so I’m going to make it a point to exercise twice this coming week. I think I did alright for the rest of my goals. It wasn’t a perfect week by any stretch of the imagination. But this isn’t about perfection…it’s about persistence!

Food Journal 3/16-3/22 ~ Rachel

Here is my food journal for half of this week (my week runs Tuesday-Monday)…there is at least one trend…no exercise…I will get there though, I promise!

Tuesday, 3/16  (Daily points used=29/30)

Breakfast: Triple venti skinny vanilla latte (3), Attune bar (2);  Lunch: 2 Boca chicken patties (6), Turnip greens with garlic and 1 Tbsp of EVOO (4);  Snack: Cucumbers and baby carrots (0), Mini Light Babybel cheese (1);  Dinner: 2 oz whole grain pasta (3), 1/2 cup Classico triple mushroom pasta sauce with added baby bella mushrooms and the best pork sausage ever (seriously) from In the Red Farm and Dairy in Raleigh (7);  Dessert: WW ice cream candy bar (3);  Exercise: nada

*Tuesdays are always a little screwed up because I don’t eat before I weigh-in and it’s usually too late after the meeting to have a real breakfast.

Wednesday, 3/17 (Daily points used=30/30)

Breakfast: Bagel thin sammich with 2 slices Canadian Bacon, 1 wedge of Light Laughing Cow Cheese and 1 egg (5), 8 oz pineapple chunks in own juice (2);  Lunch: 2 oz whole grain pasta (3), 1/2 cup Classico triple mushroom pasta sauce with added baby bella mushrooms and the best pork sausage ever (seriously) from In the Red Farm and Dairy in Raleigh (7);  Dinner: 2 oz whole grain pasta (3), 1/2 cup Classico triple mushroom pasta sauce with added baby bella mushrooms and the best pork sausage ever (seriously) from In the Red Farm and Dairy in Raleigh (7)…this is not a typo, it is the same as lunch;  Dessert: WW mini bar (chocolate covered pretzel) (1);  Exercise: nada

*This was a weird day because I ended up being at Duke for a meeting a lot longer than expected…so lunch was late and dinner was late and I ended up eating the same thing for both meals. Oh well. At least it was tasty. Not enough fruits and veggies though. Oops.

Thursday, 3/18 (Daily points used=31/30)

Breakfast: 3/4 c egg beater scramble with cremini mushrooms and 1 oz Dubliner cheese (5), half a 15 oz can of organic peach slices in some sort of fruit juice (2);  Snack: half a 15 oz can of organic peaches (2) and Attune bar (2);  Lunch: Huge ass salad (0) with 2 T Light Ranch dressing (2), bagel thin (1) with WW cream cheese (1) ;  Dinner: 5 oz garlic lime marinated pork chop (5), sweet potato fries (6), zucchini (0) prepared with about 1/2 Tbsp EVOO (2);  Dessert: WW ice cream bar (3); Exercise: nada

*I had intended on making red potatoes for dinner, which are a few fewer points than the sweet potatoes. However, I was visiting my friends and their new bundle of joy (welcome to the world SJ!) and got home too late to prepare the potatoes…so they became Trader Joe’s sweet potato fries from a bag. I ended up using a flex point today because of this but I’m not beating myself up over it!

Friday, 3/19 (Daily points used=29/30)

Breakfast:  3/4 cup egg beater (2), 1 oz Dubliner cheese (3), Canadian bacon (1), chives (0);  Snack: Attune bar (2);  Lunch: Bagel thin (1) with serving of tuna (2) mixed with chives (0) and 1 T light mayo (1), 15oz can organic pineapple chunks in their own juice (3);  Snack: Vitatop muffin top (1);   Dinner: Lemony garlic shrimp (6) and brussel sprouts stir-fried with chili garlic sauce and cashews (4);  Dessert: WW ice cream bar (3);  Exercise: nada

*I ordered a shipment of Vitatop muffin tops because they are normally quite expensive in the store and I got a good deal online. Well, I got chocolate ones which should probably count as my dessert for the day. BUT, since they are so full of fiber and other good things, I decided to not treat them as a dessert. Am I just rationalizing the situation so I can still meet my goals for the week?