Food Bits

Water makes up 75% of your body weight. Water is your friend. I know water can make you feel full and help lose weight. But water helps with carb issues too!

I discovered this by accident.

Saturday was a bad carb day for me. Really bad. I went to bed hungry friday night. We were up late and went grocery shopping late and I just didn't feel like eating that late so I went to bed hungryish. not bad, just a little. I woke up with a god-awful sinus headache and did NOT want to eat with it. So I didn't.

Around 11am ish or so, we went through JitB and I got a chicken club salad. Low carb. Go me. I was trying to be really good. Mostly because we were meeting Jason's parents, sister, and nephews for dinner - at an italian place. I sensed doom coming.

We got home around noon. We were doing stuff at home, and I was getting an awful sweet tooth. And we were watching Food Network. Ace of Cakes. SUGAR. I went and got my leftover carmel sundae out of the freezer. I did not listen to the three bites rule. i did not remember the rule about not eating while watching tv. i ate the rest of my sundae. ALL of it. (Sonic Carmel Sundae)

Around 2:30 we get the call - the dinner @ 4:30 has been moved up. We are eating nowish. So to the italian place. I tried to be good - i ordered a salad sampler - three types of salad: spinach w/ basalmic vinegar, mozz, and italian spices (good!), a chicken artichoke heart salad (MMM!) and soup. somehow my soup got mixed up and i ended up with a pasta salad instead. um...kay? I ate it. it was ok, not great. and i knew the pasta could cause problems. there wasn't much of it, but...i'd had ice cream. Doom.

Felt ok afterwards, and we went to the mall. in theory this was to walk stuff off, but really...there were supposed to be stormtroopers at the lego store. so...yeah. no stormtroopers. but throughout the mall was the smell of:

CINNABON!

oh dear. i resisted. i resisted. i resisted...and then i didn't. Jason and I split a cinnabon. with extra frosting. mmm.

20 minutes later i am dizzy. i feel sick. the world is spinning. ugh.

Jason took me to a kfc. there we ordered a buttload of grilled & original chicken (10 pieces of each) and a water in the largest size glass they had. they gave us the water first. by the time they gave us the chicken i'd FINISHED the water.

and it helped. 30 minutes later i was fine. water flushes sugars. good to know.

water. it is your friend. drink water.

I have a scale now.

We got it from Target. ordered online (cause the local one didn't carry it. bastards.) It goes up to 400lbs. we got one so big so Jason could use it too.

It didn't work for him. Errors out. His current goal is to be able to use the scale. I approve of this. He's doing good about not snacking. And it totally helps that we hardly eat out now.

I CAN'T eat out, really. try doing next-to-no-carb at mcdonalds. Go ahead, try. HAH.

The scale arrived last friday. I stepped on it. 264. :(

I have been very careful about what I eat. This morning...258.

WOOT!

Tricks i'm using?

#1 - stick as close to no carb as possible. I'm allowed 60 a day, but I try to leave it out, so that the little things like condiments and splenda packets don't cause issues. This works well for me, and I have more energy without carbs. Odd, but true.
#2 - water, water, water, water. and tea. and crystal light. all things that use WATER. Water is going to get a post of its own
#3 - meat. the trick is not to replace carbs with meat. meat is still high cal. i stick to mostly veg. Deepthi would be proud of me. But when i feel like i just need FOOD...I don't pile on more salad. That way lies salad burnout...which leads to not eating veggies, and bad carb days with weight gain. ick. instead, that's when i pull out the meat. i'm slowly learning to balance this so I don't get to that point. Meat makes me feel full, you see. It's filling.
#4 - three bites. I read about this in a south beach diet holiday/party cookbook. I was looking for low carb recipes. That kinda failed. But it was talking about how on special occasions, dessert happens. And this isn't a bad thing..you just have to be careful. it talked about how, when you want something sweet, you GET it. And you eat three bites and set it aside. You wait 15 minutes and then ask yourself if you want more. If so, you eat three more bites and repeat. I got ice cream friday after work. a carmel sunday. i had three bites. after 15 minutes, i concluded that the ice cream craving was gone and it went into the freezer. three bites is awesome.

Jason went off to play Arcane Legions this morning, and I headed to Rivals to demo some SJ Games. Nobody showed to mine, but Jason's gonna be busy all day. So I cleaned house...and then....COOKED.

I'd bought the ingredients for my broccoli salad so I made that. Only I left out the bacon to try and make it healthier.

http://www.recipezaar.com/broccoli-salad-392715 (note: I recently got my first review! They loved it. YAY! I'm inspired to put some of my others up there.)

I always mix up the dressing in another bowl and pour it over the brocolli mix before mixing the whole thing together. And I pour it to one side. This is so I can then pour part of the un-dressed broccoli mix back into the dressing bowl, mix it, and get the dressing remnants out.

I did this, but still had some dressing bits. It's impossible to get them all out. So I shrugged, and threw some raisins and cashews in the dressing bowl after my salad was put in the fridge to chill. Maybe a quarter cup of each. And mixed. They were good...just coated enough to be slightly sticky and have the flavor - but not enough to SEE the dressing.

However, at this point I was TOTALLY smelling that apple cider vinegar and I wanted to do something more with it. And something way lower calorie/carb then my raisin cashew mix.

Green beans popped into my head. I don't know where. And so I opened a can of green beans, drained them, and popped them into a skillet. Then I used some of my leftover red onion and sauteed it with them. I added a bit of apple cider vinegar when the onions started to get translucent and mixed it up. Later, when the onions were carmelizing, i pulled it off heat and used more apple cider vinegar. There's no sauce to this, the vinegar cooked off almost immediately.

While I was cooking my beans, I was thinking about all the recipes I'd ever seen with beans AND nuts. I thought about mixing in my raisins and cashews, but decided that was a) too high calorie, b) something jason wouldn't help me eat, and c) a little too strong a flavor.

Inspiration hit. I opened up my fridge and found the spagetti squash i'd cooked friday. I heated up about 1/4 cup of that. I paired it with 1/4 cup of my beans and then sprinkled some cashew/raisin stuff over it and MIXED it.

omg yum.

then, just for fun, because now i was thinking italian, i sliced up a couple tomatoes in thick slices. I put them on top of a pam-sprayed baking sheet and sprinkled them with salt & pepper. Then i covered them with mozzerella and liberally sprinkled italian seasoning over them. Stuck them in the oven for about 5-7 minutes at 350 and MMM. the tomatoes hold together well but have that roasted flavor, and the cheese is melty and YUM.

So I had a couple slices of tomato to go with my little faux-pasta dish.

*content and happy* I do love cooking when I get the chance. :D

Breakfast: left over fajita meat w/ onion & pepper, cheese.
Lunch: Fajita with rest of meat/onion/pepper, cheese, sour cream (1 carb), & tortilla (10 carbs). 3 deviled eggs (where 1 = 1/2 egg). deviled w/ mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, paprika.

Breakfast: Scramble - egg, ham, mushroom, onion, pepper. Also, 1 tomato, sliced and salt/peppered. - 7 carbs

Lunch: chef salad at the pub. 1 piece of garlic bread (10-15 carbs, estimated). om nom nom.

Dinner: Fajita. Grilled chicken with carmelized onion & bell pepper, mixed with fajita seasoning. on a low carb tortilla (10g) with cheese, salsa (2g), and sour cream (1g).

Breakfast: 1 egg, 1 piece of bacon
Lunch: Taco salad: meat, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, salsa, olives, onion
Dinner: 3 hamburgers, with spicy chipotle mayo (no carbs!) spread on them and a piece of cheese on top of each. om nom nom.