The First Day Is in the Bag

Getting started is often the hardest part of changing your habits. I saw this in action first hand yesterday as I rolled out my plans for low carb eating and exercise. I was prepared. I have done my homework. I collected a variety of recipes to get me through the induction phase of the Atkins plan, done the necessary shopping for that menu and even provided healthy choices for snacks.

Yes, I’m a snack eater, mostly in the evenings. I don’t know why it hits me then. It’s an ingrained habit that has transpired over years. I finish working for the day, sit down in front of the television and I need to snack. Maybe “need” isn’t the right word but you know what I mean.

Anyhow, after a nearly perfect day of less than 1400 calories and just 19 carbs, I indulged. At 9:00 at night, I opened a candy cane of Reese’s peanut butter cups and ate them…all. What was I thinking? “It’s New Year’s Day- I’ll start the diet tomorrow.” Naturally that kind of thinking won’t get me very far at changing my old habits.

I did exercise yesterday however. We purchased a Kinect for our Xbox 360 for Christmas and a couple of games. The one I thought I would like is Dance Central and I was right. I love to dance. As a matter of fact, that’s how I met my husband but that’s a story for another blog post. Anyway, I like the way the game teaches you the moves. You can choose the difficulty level and you can spend as much time as you need to, learning the moves, before you actually “perform.” It helped immensely that I kicked my hubby’s butt at it!

The game is meant to be played for fun so it doesn’t give you and stats on calories burned or anything like that. While I’m a statistics geek and like to know those things, the beauty of the game is that it IS fun. You don’t notice the time passing. You just enjoy the game. And BTW- no, this is not a paid endorsement. I would tell you if it was.

So this morning, I hesitated before visiting the bathroom scale, fearing it would reprimand me for my Reese’s infraction and that retribution would be swift and gruesome. I was surprised to see a nearly 4 pound loss! I tried the scale several times, even moving it to different locations in the room to make sure it was right. The reading never faltered. I weighed 255.9.

Obviously I am delighted with the outcome but I know to continue my late night, unhealthy snacking would only be tempting fate. Fortunately, I believe most of the left over Christmas temptations are gone now.  I am looking forward to today’s round of Dance Central and the Curry Chicken and Indian Spiced Cauliflower I am making for dinner. 

Hope you are doing well in the early days of setting and achieving your goals.

How Many TimesCan You Start Anew?

The answer to that question for me is as many times as it takes. After getting through all the stressors in my recent past that were the excuses I used for not eating healthy, I found myself ready to go, willing to get back on my low-carb diet and begin exercising again but there was a problem. During the preceding couple of months, I had loaded up the house with carb-rich foods like pastas and rice. We were between paychecks as hubby only gets paid twice a month so I couldn’t go shopping for the healthier food choices I needed. So while I tried to limit my intake, anyone who knows how low-carb works knows that if you're eating carbs like pasta and rice, tit throws everything off.

Well hubby got paid yesterday and I spent over 2 hours running from store to store with a very specific list. I got all my shopping done and spent another hour putting it away. I have a 5 week low-carb menu plan all written out on, of all things, a Betty Crocker recipe wall calendar. So today I begin anew...again.

I am not terribly bothered by this reboot. I wish I done better but I know that beating myself up won't get anything accomplished except to make myself feel bad. There's no point. So with menu in hand and pantry well-stocked, I am ready to start again. I launch this latest effort from a dismal starting point of 256.6. Not the highest I've ever been but considerably higher than where I had struggled down to earlier this year.

Still with the better part of six weeks planned out and on hand, I should be able to see some considerable progress before the holidays get here. And that will give me a solid start of good eating habits going into the dreaded food-tempting holidays. I will be looking into low-carb options for some of our holiday favorites and will share them here as I find them.

Good luck with your fitness goals. It's never too late to start anew!


PS: Adde at 7:30 tonight. My first day back on the low carb wagon and I consumed just 13 net carbs and don't feel humngry in the least.

P Is for Practice Makes Perfect

When it comes to weight loss, Lord knows, I’ve had plenty of practice. I’ve been losing weight for years. The problem is I keep gaining it too. Like many of you, I have tried many different methods to control my eating and my weight. Sometimes this involved mild attempts at starvation that naturally resulted in binging when my body could no longer handle the lack of food. I have tried diets that focused a single food such as the grapefruit diet and the cabbage soup diet. I’ve tried different plans like counting calories, counting grams of fats and currently counting carbs.

I’ve also tried exercise. I am not a natural athlete. I did not come from a family of physically active people. Activity of this nature takes great effort for me. I do not enjoy the physical strain, getting sweaty (remember, I live in a moderately southern locale with no air conditioning) or the muscle pains that come from working out with a body used to a sedentary life. Still I have tried. I have used a treadmill mill vigorously for months, taken exercise classes like basic step, Zumba and aerobics. I have used a swimming pool and had partners who walked with me 3 to 4 times a week for months.

When everything is going right, I have been able to shed more than a few pounds but let something happen to upset the apple cart and I’m thrown off my game. It seems any disruption in a newly developing routine, even a couple of months into it, is an excuse to fall completely off course and revert to old patterns. Yes, practice make perfect.

However, in spite of some dietary straying this weekend due to a currently stressful financial situation (yes, an excuse – I know!), I am still determined to keep trying.

This morning I weighed in at 249.9. So, considering the bad weekend, that’s not too bad. I had my low carb breakfast, a dish I will share below, and feel ready to face the week. In addition to maintaining a strong commitment to eating low carb this week, I am pledging to exercise at least 4 times for a minimum of 30 minutes each time. Practice makes perfect.

Sausage & Egg Casserole

8 oz. bulk pork sausage

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

3 eggs

1 oz. heavy whipping cream or half & half

Break the sausage into crumbles and brown. Cut the cream cheese into small chunks and add to the sausage. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes to melt the cream cheese a bit. Add the cream and stir to keep cheese from sticking and cream from scalding. When most of the cheese is melted, add the eggs. Stir to break yolks and blend. Keep stirring until eggs are done. Serves 2

Net carbs per serving 1.5

O Is for OMG!

I’m overweight. There is no other way to look at it. You can’t be a woman, 5’ 6” tall and weigh well over 200 pounds and not know that you’re overweight. It is no secret to me. But I have had a few OMG moments, usually involving mirrors or photographs.

I don’t own a full-length mirror. The only mirrors in my house are in the bathrooms and they only reflect from the shoulders up. No – I didn’t have them specially designed to do that though I would if I could. They are over the sinks and that just happens to be where they are placed. This has allowed me to live in ignorant bliss about what the rest of my body looks like to the rest of the world.

I had an OMG moment recently when I used a public restroom that did have a full-length mirror. I was in total disbelief. I don’t know where I thought those 250 pounds were hanging out at but apparently they are hanging out all over because the creature staring back at me in the mirror was huge! Mammoth!

There I was, or some carnival-house-of-mirrors version of me, in jean shorts, a t-shirt and sneakers looking like a blue-clad version of the Stay Puft  Marshmallow man. There was a definite roundness to the middle of me and my arms hung in curves around my girth instead of dangling down beside me.

Lets’ not even talk about my face -that round orb with no neck that seems to begin where my shoulders leave off. Yes, I had an OMG moment. It reaffirmed to me in a way no number on a scale could that I really need to do something.

So in my continuing (and seemingly endless) efforts to shed the Stay Puft Marshmallow man, who is masquerading as me, I am still pursuing the low-carb diet. This week I tried a wonderful Spinach & bacon salad with dressing that I will share with you. Having come from the old school of “FAT IS BAD,” I was taught to trim away fat and soak up the extra grease off of my bacon. So when I read that I was supposed to use the bacon grease to make the dressing, I was skeptical but it was…OMG! Delicious!

Here is the recipe:

Spinach Salad with Hot Bacon Dressing

1 bag fresh baby spinach

1/4 c chopped onion

4 slices bacon

2 hardboiled eggs, chopped

1/4 cup vinegar

1 tsp Splenda

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook bacon and allow it to drain on paper towel but keep bacon grease in pan. Add vinegar, pepper and Splenda to bacon grease. Stir and heat slowly until boiling. Tear spinach into salad sized pieces and toss with egg, onion and crumbled bacon.

Immediately pour on hot dressing and toss lightly.

Yields 2 servings

Total Net carbs: 5 grams per serving

N Is for New

I think I need a new scale. I know in the early days of following a low carb diet you can see some significant weight loss but my scale said 249 this morning. I tried it three times to be sure. I just don’t feel as if I’ve lost 6 lbs. since Monday and usually I can feel that kind of weight loss. Oh well, I am not going to obsess about it.

Yesterday morning I made a new recipe, sausage and egg muffins for breakfast. I used Johnsonville Four Cheese Italian sausage because the recipe called for Italian sausage and these are my favorite kind. I loved them though the husband was unsure. He’s a little quirky sometimes. If he’s expecting a certain taste and doesn’t get it, he then judges the dish not to his liking rather than judging the dish on its own merit without expectation. He expected the typical pork breakfast sausage and when it wasn’t, he thought the dish tasted “off”. Personally, I enjoyed it immensely. The recipe calls for you to bake the eggs. I’ve never cared for the texture of baked eggs in the past but this dish really worked. Here’s the recipe:

Sausage and Egg Muffins

6 oz. Ital. sausage

6 eggs

1/8 cup heavy cream

3 oz. cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Spray large muffin pans with cooking spray. Cut sausage links and place them 2 to a tin. Mix eggs with cream, salt and pepper. Pour into tins over sausage. Sprinkle with ½ cheese, layer on remaining egg mixture and top off with cheese again. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until eggs are done.

Yields 3 servings

Total Net carbs: 2.3 grams per serving

I used 2 full Italian sausages, added 1 egg and a pinch more cheese to stretch this to 4 servings.

The bacon cheeseburger recipe I tried was less impressive and will need a major overhaul. It just wasn’t flavorful enough as written. I won’t share the recipe since in my book it was a flop. When I get it right I’ll post it.

Still getting over a summer cold that has settled in my lungs, I didn’t exercise yesterday but I have plans of doing so today. The cold seems much better this morning – it doesn’t hurt much when I take a deep breath. Also on the agenda is some house cleaning, a little time out on the riding mower before the jungle takes over and canning tomatoes.

Yes, in the 90+ degree weather, I am canning. I’m not sure why tomatoes have to ripen in the hottest time of the season but they do so I will be blanching and canning all morning. 25 lbs. will go into salsa and 25 lbs. into diced tomatoes with garlic, basil and oregano. Yummy!

L Is for Low Carb Menu PLanning

I’ve been away for a while, in part because I completely fell off my plan and I really didn’t want to come here and admit it again. We’ve been hit by scorching heat for weeks. Because my home is more than 100 years old and we cannot afford to install central air conditioning, we only have window air units in a couple of rooms. The room I can use to exercise is not one of them. With temps in the 90s for weeks and the heat index well above 100, I gave up exercising. Coupled with the 4^th of July holiday weekend spent out town followed by oldest son’s 18^th birthday and high school graduation party 2 weeks later, I’ve managed to gain back 10 lbs. Disappointed in myself does not even begin to cover how I feel.

My husband called me from work earlier this week to say his company was starting another round of their version of “The Biggest Loser” and he decided to go for it. Since it is always helpful when your spouse is on board with weight loss plans, this got me a bit fired up again.

I spent the better part of the day researching low carb meals I could actually live with. In the past, I’ve had trouble with this because in order to make recipes taste decently, low carb meals often call for expensive, exotic or specialty items. These can be hard to find or way out of my budget. I’ve tried using Atkins Baking Mix and few other products, low carb bread. These things just don’t taste good – to me. Plus, they ARE expensive.  So I needed a menu plan I could live with and I think I’ve put one together.

It is my hope to try out these recipes and then report back here the next day on how they turned out and include any tips I discover for making them easier or tastier.

I am also starting to exercise again though moderately in the heat. Wednesday I did 32 minutes of the Wii “Walk It Out” and remembered how much I enjoyed that.

I am starting out at 255 again, as of this past Wednesday and the 2 days of low-carb & exercise has me down to 251 today (Friday). I am encouraged.

Yesterdays’ Lunch: Cucumber Tuna Boat

3 cucumbers

1 6 oz can tuna

2 hardboiled eggs, diced

1/2 cup Cheddar cheese, shredded

1/2 cup celery, diced

1/4 cup mayonnaise

2 Tablespoons dill relish

1 Tablespoon chopped onion

1 Teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 Teaspoon salt

Cut cucumbers lengthwise and de-seed. Cut a small slice off the bottom to make cucumbers lay flat. Combine remaining ingredients in mixing bowl to make tuna salad and spoon into cucumbers. Serve immediately.

Yields 6 servings

Total Net carbs: 5 grams per serving

This was delicious! I omitted the relish because I have never been a fan of it. I don’t generally make things where I worry about presentation for just myself but I have to say, sitting down to eat this, I felt like I had indulged. I suppose you could simply slice the seeded cucumber and mix it in with the tuna too but there’s was something fun about feeling like I had catered to myself a bit. I will be having this again today and I’m trying it out on the hubby. I don’t have 6 people to feed in my house at one sitting and I can’t afford to waste the leftovers. Whenever I make this, it will last for 2 or 3 days, depending on how many of the kids are home for lunch that day.

Today I am trying sausage and egg muffins for breakfast though there is no “muffin” involved and bacon cheeseburger with a side of broccoli for dinner. I’ll let you know how those turn out.

K Is for Kill the Cravings

I have talked about being a foodaholic in a previous post. Not only do I enjoy food, I sometimes find myself craving food even when I know I should not be hungry. I know these feelings occur for me when I am bored or anxious. Knowing the cause is a great first step but it is only the first step to battling the cravings.

You don’t want to wait until you’re in the middle of a craving crisis to realize you are unprepared to deal with it. If you know you have triggers and they are unavoidable, say, stress, for example, you need to be prepared. None of us can completely eliminate stress. We can be prepared for it. I know I tend to crave chocolate and chips when I’m in one of those frames of mind. I am keeping some 100 calorie packs of cookies in the pantry for when the carb-demons come calling.

I am not likely to reach for celery sticks when my brain is screaming CHOCOLATE!  Having something around that will satisfy the yearning without undermining your diet is the smart approach.

In a side note, I have recently started a low-carb diet and have experienced a radical reduction in eating impulses. I will keep you posted as to how this goes.