Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a p

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Ugh. I think I've found the amount of wheat that makes my stomach unhappy: 1/4 package of beef pasta hamburger helper. I used up the one box we had tonight, and now I feel jumbly and gassy (I'm sure you didn't want to hear that). Definitely no more plates of pasta for me. However, I did an excellent job of disguising a hamburger helper as a healthy meal, Bill didn't even know until I told him. I added a cup of diced tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, red and green peppers, radish greens, Mrs. Dash, garlic salt, and onion powder. I topped the whole thing with 4 cheese-Italian blend Sargento 2% shreds. Not half bad. Not that I'm ever going to be making it again though. However, I had been feeling pretty good lately, even with small amounts of wheat consistently, and wondering about how much I could tolerate, and this was it. Ugh. Give me back my fruits and veggies.

The remainder of my lower carb day went very well. I ate about 30% carbs, 30% protein, and 40% fats, it was a bit higher carb than I was going for, but it was the first day. I had sunny side up eggs (my newest egg thing!), bacon, a small slice of cantaloupe, and a spinach, onions, tomatoes, and feta mix. My morning snack was greek yogurt, wheat bran, and strawberries with a pinch of stevia (although I'm not sure I needed it) and 1/2 oz of mixed nuts. My lunch was chicken and cauliflower in cheese sauce, carrots and celery with black bean hummus, and a slice of cheddar. My afternoon snack was half of a homemade bran bar, a mozzarella stick, and some cocoa coated almonds (I need to learn to make those!). I felt pretty much full and satisfied all day. It was a long day and I was snack hunting when I got home from tiredness, but I caught myself quickly and made a large cup of tea instead. Yay!

Now, I just need a workout. I'm think about a short bodyweight circuit followed by a chort interval training session. Five exercises, 30 sec. each, 30 sec. rest three times would be 9 min. I can warm up for 2 min before, oh, and do my push-up sets from hundredpushups.com. Jump on the bike, 1 min to warm-up to the bike, then 30 sec fast, 1 min recover 6 times, and perhaps another minute or two to cool down. Then, a complete full body yoga stretch. Yay! Now, 5 exercises, I'll pick Project Mayhem classics: lunges, flutter kicks, get-ups, dips, plank rotations. Excellent and not too over-stressful workout.

Tomorrow I have to get up early and leave early, so I need a plan now for my morning workout, and I probably should pack some of my lunch too. Good, I found a bodyweight circuit I can do for 10 min in the morning, and I'll do a jumping jacks warm-up. Now I should go make lunch.

  

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Today's quote is from Thoreau.

Yesterday was my veggie/fruit experiment. From the time I woke up until dinner at 5:45pm, I only ate fruits and vegetables (and a couple of additions derived from fruits and vegetables). I also ate whenever I wanted. It was an interesting experiment. I never felt hungry but I never felt really satisfied either, I kept wanting more. I guess that's the protein/fat sensation of fullness i was after. I ate a ton, although it was only about 600ish calories. Here's what I had:

For breakfast I had cut-up mixed strawberries and cantaloupe and cut-up and sauteed in olive oil with Mrs. Dash radishes and onions.

For my "meals" (which I just picked at all day) I had spinach and sliced strawberries with balsamic vinegar; apples, carrots, and celery with simply orange with pineapple juice to coat them; salsa made of processed tomato, onion, and garlic and eaten on chunks of red and green peppers. I also had a bowl of cut-up carrot and celery sticks, some cucumbers and grape tomatoes, a large cantaloupe slice, and an apple. Everything tasted good.

Unfortunately, in the evening, I was so famished for the nutrients I never got, I nearly went overboard hunting for them. Therefore, I definitely need protein at least at my main meals to survive in a day. However, if I need to snack on something or I want to go a small period with few calories, I can cut my snacks back to just fruits and vegetables and eat quite a few of them.

Other than the experiment, food is going well. I'm putting my whole menu back to a lower-carb/higher-carb alternation, but not really low carb either time. I'm aiming for 40% carbs on the higher days and 20% carbs on the lower days (which is about 160-180g high days and 120-140g low days including enough fiber). I'll aim to do tougher workouts on high carb days and quick but intense ones on low carb days.

I also need to stretch EVERY time I workout. I tend to ignore stretching which then causes soreness and lack of progress, BAD!

There. I'll post more tonight when I get back to a normal schedule of sorts, since I had a small group ministry meeting yesterday, I didn't get home until late, and then we took a walk, ack! Maybe I'll even go home a bit early today, as I have to come in early tomorrow, we'll see.

  

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

SUPERDUPER26 3/31/2009 8:44PM

I've considered doing that before, but never actually got around to pulling it off! Sounds like it has potential, but maybe some cheese on that salad or yogurt in a smoothie might make a nice difference... I'll have to give it a try and see what I think! Report Inappropriate Comment

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Ah, Sundays. It is my day of rest and relaxation, for an hour of church, however prior to that is an hour and a half of choir rehearsal, and after that is food shopping, food taking care of, laundry, cleaning, and anything else that needs to be done. Although, I usually still feel pretty good because it is very much a system for me, and the OCD in me likes the process of having the same things happen every Sunday. Today, though, was a little more annoying than usual. I had some issues finding the sales I wanted at the grocery stores, and had to buy some non-sale essential type items, which always annoys me. Fortunately, with my stockpiling, those items are fewer and fewer. Anyway, I got a little stressed out and did a little impulsive-shopping-eating with a marked down Reese's brownie (oops!), and I had already had a few too many goodies at church coffee hour, and I feel a bit bad about getting off diet, ack. However, I have a plan to try an increase my fruits/veggies now that things are coming back into season (in season somewhere anyway, we still have a few snowpiles in Mass). I am going to spend 1 day this week (Tuesday) where between waking up and dinner I can eat whatever I want, so long as it is a raw, non-starchy vegetable or fruit. No cooking, no dried fruits, but no limits. If I'm hungry, I eat more. I'm going to allow carrots, but other starchy veggies like corn and potatoes are out. I have no bananas, but they would be out too. However, I do have red and green peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, radishes, apples, strawberries, and a cantaloupe ($0.79! couldn't resist). It should be an interesting experiment. I won't be having any extra proteins on that day until dinner, so we'll see how I feel. However, if I feel hungry, I can just eat more. It could go either way. I like experiments.

This week's shopping trip was disappointing money-wise because my savings weren't that great. I bought some printer cartridges at Target because they were on sale with a gift-card deal, so that cost a lot, but less than if I waited for the cartridges to run out and had no deal. I also needed a prescription, so I did use my giftcard right away and it was like getting the prescription for free plus a couple of cans of Bill's low-cal Progresso soups (with coupon). Whole Foods keeps putting on sale the Food Should Taste Good Chips for $2, and I keep printing the $1 off coupon, so I got another bag of $1 awesome chips! Most of my WF run was veggies and bulk items. I have chickpeas again though! They did have organic apples for $0.99/lb, which is an awesome price for conventional apples, so I bought some. It is apparently second apple season where stored apples aren't going to make it much longer and need to be sold off quickly. Whatever, I like apples, and I could always make more applesauce. I think I may need more applesauce soon.

My Big Y trip was annoying, because the sales I saw didn't seem to match my notes from their flyer quite right. Only one type of colgate was on sale, and it was gone. There were no colgate tootchbrushes on sale. the wrong brand of hummus was on sale. I also hit two sales I wasn't prepared for and had to search for the coupon (fortunately, I bring the whole coupon organizer and it is somwhat alphabetical, but still annoying to hunt in the middle of an aisle!). However, I did buy a number of important BOGO sale items, and found these great chocolate coated almonds from Emerald Nuts (sale and coupon) that are delicious! Just one or two is perfect for a chocolate craving too. Between store sales ($33.71 saved) and coupons ($7.75 saved) I still saved 49% off wholesale costs. My Stop and Shop experience was all about the items I had to buy because I need them, and I had coupons expiring for some of them, and all of them are expensive, but will last me months and months (so I keep telling myself that while looking at the bill!). I did manage to use my save $4 for a trip over $40 quite easily! Stop and Shop also had the meat deals, ground turkey for $1.99/lb and boneless, skinless chicken for $1.79/lb (wow!), so those were bought in excess, but are now in the freezer. They also still had 2lb of strawberries for $3.99, so I bought those again, and quite a few red potatos ($0.99/lb). Overall, I saved $18.91 on sales and $12.25 in coupons and reusable bag credits (even though the stupid bagging kid couldn't figure out how to use my bags well, and put things in the plastic bags which I then had to put together in the cloth bags, aah!), which was 33% saved. Not too bad, not too great.

Anyway, time now for Menu Plan Monday. This week is all old favorites, I'm tired of new recipes for a while, and I think Bill is too.

Monday: taco salad with black beans in the meat (Low carb for Bill)

Tuesday: oregano chicken, mac and cheese, salad

Wednesday: beef pasta hamburger helper (gotta use it up while I'm on wheat!) with lots of veggies (trying to make it healthy as possible)

Thursday: couscous using frozen zucchini and grape tomatoes and radish greens

Friday: chicken, rice, and broccoli using the white sauce I froze a few weeks ago

Saturday: chicken parm with spaghetti and salad

Sunday: Pad Thai (always a favorite!)

Mmm, lots of comfort food. That's good, I could use comfort food this week (TOM!). Time to get laundry and start dinner!

  

Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary

Friday, March 27, 2009

Tonight, I have one of the best quick and easy dinner recipes that my husband absolutely loves. Keilbasa and tomatoes over green beans. You might notice that all these things are usually fully cooked or just need to be heated, thus, quick and easy. I chop the keilbasa into half circles and fry them up in a frying pan for a bit, then add a can of tomatoes, whole, stewed, diced, whatever you want (we did whole tonight, I cut them with the spatula), spice with chili, garlic, and onion, and tonight I threw in cilantro. Serve over green beans (frozen or fresh and steamed). I served it tonight with chickpea salad: chickpeas, cucumber, celery, cherry tomatoes mixed up with a little bit of yogurt, red wine vinegar, italian salad dressing mix and Mrs. Dash. Delicious, not Bill's thing, but he ate it.

I did a couple of strength workouts off of exercisetv.tv tonight, then remembered I'm supposed to do my push-ups, so I did them. Next time, I have to remember the push-ups first. I made it though, 5 sets of 12, 13, 10, 10, 15. On Sunday I'm meant to do an exhaustion test, meaning one set of however many I can do in a row.

I finally solved the secret of the cottage cheese pancake: bisquick. Yeah, not the most healthy, but not much was used. My pancake was huge, for a normal size one, I would suggest 1 egg white, 1/4 cup cottage cheese, 1 tbsp bisquick (mine was double, and it was like 6 inches across). Great with frozen fruit, heated to make a sauce.

I've discovered something new at breakfast, this is technically the second time I've tried it. I fry an egg or two (over easy-medium), and saute some veggies like spinach, onion, and tomato, then eat them together. A nice change. Maybe I'll do it again tomorrow.

I almost had a major issue at work with my obnoxious machine where I thought it may need to be sent to Washington, but I think I solved that problem with a minor adjustment (which involved taking apart and putting back together part of the inside), and now I really just need to solve one more issue and tweak. That's good, because I think my boss wants it usable yesterday. I ran around like a maniac all day, and next week is not going to be better, especially with a lab meeting likely on Tuesday, aah!

The nice weather has finally showed up, but it may rain this weekend just to mess with us. I hope not, I want to run!

  

Words can sting like anything. But silence breaks the heart

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Dinner tonight was chicken and asparagus in a creamy garlic sauce. Pretty easy cooking, and I used up the last of the fresh on-sale asparagus. Next week it will be broccoli, $0.99/lb! Anyway, the sauce was essentially minced garlic in homemade stock boiled, then I strained it because Bill doesn't like garlic pieces (oh well!), then added heavy cream and Italian mix cheese. However, the cheese got clumpy, so next time I'm just adding Parmesan. It tasted good though! We had my tiny crispy baked potato pieces and a salad along with it. Bill didn't have anything to say, but he did seem to be enjoying the sauce, so I'm taking that as a plus.

I did a strength workout tonight, mostly legs, mostly squats, ouch. I ended with 10 min of cardio tabatas. Those things are tough man, really keep you moving. I also participated in a challenge to get 100 close-grip wall push-ups in today, completed, yay! I didn't really stretch, hmm, probably should do yoga tomorrow morning, we'll see how I feel. If I feel good, maybe I'll jog on Wii Fit.

I feel great about my eating. I was barely hungry between my meals and snacks today. I think threatening my stomach with plain carrots if it complained worked. I'm also enjoying my black bean hummus, delicious. I used up the last of the ricotta and the last of my fresh strawberries, although I still have some cottage cheese left to finish, and plenty of frozen berries. Apparently berry-picking doesn't start until June! I need a longer growing season.

Work still has some issues, but I'm hoping to resolve them ASAP, if I can get in touch with the one-man tech support from the "mom and pop" company that makes my equipment. No current plans for this weekend. If the weather isn't too cold, I may walk down to the local market on Sat. morning as my morning workout and pick-up whatever veggies they have. We'll see.

Anyway, gotta run, drink tea, get sleep.