Weigh In Wednesday

I can't believe it's Wednesday already. It's not as good as it being Friday but better than Monday. This week I lost the 1.6 lbs. that I gained last week. YAY!!! Several people have emailed & ask what exactly I eat so I decided to do a post & incorporate it with Weigh In Wednesday.  I'm not an expert but I know what works for me. I've been reading a lot about healthy foods & exercise & just how you should eat & all that good stuff. Remember back when I talked about how aliens had invaded my body? Yeh, well that's just more evidence. I've never read a Shape magazine in my life & now I have a subscription! Crazy!

These pics are all iPhone pics & they're in no particular order.

First up: Turkey & Cheese Roll up
I have this for a snack sometimes. I've been trying to cut out all the processed crap in my diet & I've done really well with it but I haven't found a lunch meat alternative. I buy the Oscar Mayer Delifresh Honey Smoked Turkey Breast. I also like that it doesn't calculate calories & servings by ounces. It tells you a serving is 6 slices & it's 50 calories. In the pic above I used 3 slices of turkey & used 1 slice of reduced fat Provolone cheese (50 cal.). I think cheese gets a bad wrap. Yes, it has calories but it's also a good source of calcium. I've said before I think the reason my "diet" has been successful is because I'm not doing without anything that I really want. I LOVE cheese & there's no way I could cut it out.

Next up: Egg sandwich
This one was a scrambled egg on 2 pieces of 100% whole wheat bread with a little grated cheese. I've found that using grated cheese on stuff is a good way to have your cheese but still keep the calories down. I never use a full serving. I eat this for breakfast & I've been known to have it for supper too.This morning I had an egg sandwich & instead of cheese I put peanut butter on the bread.

I really like oatmeal too. I add ground flax seed to it & a spoonful of peanut butter or almond butter. I also eat multi grain English muffins with peanut or almond butter. I love it.

Salads:
I eat a ton of them. This one has a boiled egg, part of an avocado, tomatoes, bell peppers (yellow & red) & green onions. I've always eaten a lot of salads but I've also always eaten a LOT of dressing. I love ranch, blue cheese & honey mustard. All FULL of calories. I've started using this dressing.

 

It's something like 15 calories per serving. Perfect for me who can't stick to just 2 tbls. of any dressing. It really is good & it's cheap too. We also use it to marinate chicken breasts.  This is the lettuce I've been buying.

I like to buy it at Sam's because it's cheap & seems to stay good longer. Sometimes I get it at Walmart. They have organic. I like that it's a mix of different lettuce.
This was just a small salad that I had as a "side" dish. Lettuce, yellow bell peppers, dried cranberries (LOVE those in a salad) & a few dill pickles on the side. You do have to be careful with the cranberries because they have a lot of sugar. Again, I don't eat a whole serving. I could sit & eat the whole bag in a sitting though.  I use lots of different things in my salads. I like the pouches of Sweet & Spicy tuna, sometimes I'll throw in a couple of slices of the honey turkey, sometimes we buy frozen fajita meat & make fajita salads & I use salsa for dressing.

I've been eating wraps for lunch at work pretty much every day. I don't have a pic. I use whole wheat tortillas & put a slice of cheese, a serving of turkey & sometimes I add chopped bell peppers or tomatoes or part of an avocado. I love avocado's. I'm sure you know they're a good fat. Normally, if I make a salad at night & want avocado I put half in the salad & save the other half for my wrap the next day. I add a little bit of honey mustard to the wrap too. Not much though. With that I have a serving of Special K crackers & a few dill pickle spears.

Another snack that I've come to really like is Greek yogurt. I like the vanilla, strawberry & caramel. I like to add fresh blackberries to the vanilla & strawberry. SOOOO GOOD!

Then there are regular things:

Burgers! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Dean's burgers. I ALWAYS buy whole wheat buns. I've learned that you have to be careful with this. All buns are not created equal. Great Value & Sara Lee buns have well over 100 calories per bun but Holsom has something like 80 calories. I read labels like crazy now. More cheese! I buy Pepperjack, Colby & Provolone regularly because those are the ones that my Walmart has that are reduced fat & only 50 cal. per slice.

The other day I made pasta salad. I use whole wheat pasta. This time I used bow tie. I bought a bag of frozen veggies. There was squash, carrots, cauliflower & broccoli. I cooked it on the stove with olive oil & several different seasonings & garlic. Then I mixed it with the pasta & some Zesty Italian salad dressing. It was really good. 

I really like sweet potatoes too. I bake them as a side dish, I bake them & load them up with salsa, black olives, cheese, avocado, etc. for a meal & we've started making sweet potato fries. We just slice up the sweet potatoes & put them in bowl with olive oil & salt & then bake them. OMG! Sooooo good!!!

I buy the Skinny Cow ice cream bars. 100 calories & great for a sweet tooth.

I only drink one Dr. Pepper every other week or so. That's been so much easier than I expected it to be. I drink a ton of green tea. I buy the Tazo Iced Green Tea bags from Starbucks. I've tried the Bigelow but I don't care for it nearly as much. I don't think they have spearmint in theirs. I bought the Passion flavor tea bags the other day at Starbucks & I love it too. I drink a lot of water with lemon. At least 70 ounces a day. During & after Yoglates I drink Poweraid Zero. The grape is the best to me.

After a run I have a glass of chocolate milk with no sugar added Nesquik. Sometimes I have that for a snack as well. I usually buy either skim or 1% milk. It depends on which has the farthest date. Milk is too expensive to waste. Speaking of, why is milk so expensive?? It's not like the cows can go on strike! Anyway, I've read a lot about how chocolate milk helps your muscles recover after a workout. I'd drink it after Yoglates too but it's time to eat dinner when I get home.

Speaking of Yoglates, Dean's Godchild emailed me yesterday & asked me some questions & said she was thinking about trying it out. Today she sent me an email that said "OMG, just did a class. Pretty sure I died a little! Going back tomorrow! Yikes!".

Something else that has helped is the Fooducate app. Someone told me about it & it's so great. You can scan the bar code of food or enter it by name & it "grades" it for you. Something may be an A- & it tells you what's wrong with it, the serving size & calories, etc. This helped me a lot to figure out the stuff that's advertised as being good for you that aren't. Like cereal bars, Special K chips, etc. I figured anything Special K made would be ok. Nope. The Wheat Crackers are ok but the chips & bars are a big no-no.

I actually eat fruit too. This has been the hardest for me. I like a lot of veggies & have no problem eating them but fruit is another story. I like strawberries, grapes & blackberries & not much else. I'll eat a banana if it's in something. I can cut one up & put it in yogurt or oatmeal & it's tolerable but you won't find me chowing down on a regular banana. Oranges & grapefruit I like but they fall under the category of "Too much work". I don't like to work for my food. For example, boiled crawfish & boiled crabs. I like both of them but they're too much trouble. I do like bananas in smoothies. Oh & FYI - if you want to freeze bananas you need to peel them & cut them up then put them in the freezer. Not just take a bunch of bananas & throw them in the freezer. That makes them peeling them too much work. So fruit is what I need to work on most but at least I've made progress.

What good, low calorie stuff do y'all eat?

My workouts since weigh in last week are:
Thursday - Yoglates (1 hour)
Friday - 34 minute run & I swam 30 laps (300 meters in my pool)
Saturday - Off day
Sunday - 32 minute run & I swam 30 laps
Monday - 35 minute run
Tuesday - Yoglates class (1 hour)

Toodles!