Herbal Life Reviews: calorie counting

I had to get a thyroid ultrasound today, so I didn't have breakfast (appt was 11:30am, got done 12:30pm, humph) in order to not risk some reflux. Was mighty peckish when I got out, so I headed to a local bagel place.

There, I ordered an all-the-veggies-you-got scramble with ham and cheese. (veggies = mushrooms, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, spinach, and broccoli.) I had 2/3 of that. Had tomato slices instead of potatoes/grits/oatmeal as a side. Had coffee and water. Totally did not touch the lovely Everything bagel that kept winking seductively at me. Brought it home for hubby and me to share tomorrow AM--or just for him. Haven't decided. Will see what I want after I get up.

Breakfast today racked up 652 calories, says my nutrition tracker. Good thing I didn't eat it all!

Will admit hat the cheese and ham made me thirsty and, being someone who really hates to drink plain water unless I've sweated up a storm and am dying for it, I was glad to have my package of TRUE Lemon products delivered (the lemon, lime, and orange kit). I'm sipping a tall and cool one with the lemon as I type.

Have any of you tried the fruit trick with water? You know, adding whatever fruit(s) you have handy--berries, tropical, kiwi, crushed apple, whatever--in order to make water more interesting? I'm gonna macerate some pear and try that next time I get some pears.

What have you tried?

Calorie Blooper and Scale Neener

My scale has a sense of humor.

Yesterday, I went 315 calories over my 1800 self-imposed limit level, but I weighed in back in the 264's (264.8). It's like it knew yesterday was weigh-in day and it played a trick on me, and today was done with the joke. ; )

Anyway, here's my food update for today:

Breakfast: egg whites with 1 slice 2% Kraft American cheese; two and 1/3 Diet-To-Go Apple Pancakes with Smucker's Sugar Free syrup; coffee, water. It's under 500 cals, so it's fine, and got me the energy for my Pilates workout. ( Last week I had veggies with my pre-Pilates breakfast, and got some bowel rumblies as a result, so no broccoli/spinach/asparagus pre-exercise!)

Post exercise snack: sugar-free vanilla grande iced latte from Starbucks. (I gotta look it up, but it's like 150 or less).

Lunch: I had a yen for comfort food, so I got Cuban style black bean soup, boiled yuca (cassava, a starchy root vegetable near-and-dear to the Cubans), grilled chicken breast (not comfort food, but wanted protein), and romaine lettuce with salsa for dressing. Roughly 500, but I need to Spark it.

So maybe I'm up around 1000 or 1100+, which would leave me 600-700 for supper or supper/snack. I'm having a yen for apple and peanut butter, so I need to factor that in and still get my fruits veggies.

Since I exercised hard, I should have burned enough to make up for yesterday's overage.

A Good Dose of Energy, A Nice Bit of Calm--No Food Freaking Yet!

This will be my sixth day of restarting my healthy eating. The scale is pretty static, which is fine. I think I dropped a bit of water weight at first, and now the slower fat-burning should begin. As it should.

I am not eating low-cal, so I don't expect to see pounds MELT away. I am keeping to 1800 cals (more or less, I don't stress if it's 50 or so over or 50 or so under). This has been MAJOR for me, as I have not been able to do these many days of on-plan eating in a long, long time. Mentally, I just got to a place where I could begin again, and here I am.

Hydration is good, but I do think given it's summer-hot here, it could be upped. On training days, I work HARd. On non-training days...meh. But I did burn some cals yesterday after class doing a lot of lifting, bending, pushing, etc, with some housework. I had AMAZING energy despite too little sleep for too many days.

I think if I can just get to bed earlier and get some rest, I'll see the scale move swifter. I've noticed in the past there IS a relation between sleeping long and well and losing faster.

My Pilates trainer took pics of me yesterday. She often compliments my form and another trainer also comments on how I have good form. And they don't add "for a fat person". :) (I do try hard, given the obstacles of my belly/other-fat.) My main problem is a shoulder hitch (my brother does the same, and I think it's from years of asthma--and asthmatics will understand what I mean about the "trying to breathe posture".)

She wanted to document me yesterday, and I let her take pics to show my hubby. It was a new and strange thing to see myself in the poses. Of course, like many obese women, I think of myself as NOT AS BIG as I am when I can't see myself. But the camera doesn't give room for self-delusion. This is part of the reason I take (and post) more pics of myself now. I need to be REAL and SEE what the damage of overeating is.

If you haven't taken "before pics", I encourage you to do so. They won't let you fool yourself if you're so inclined (like so many of us).

When she emails the shots to me, I'll maybe post some. It's tough. I mean, I'm wearing skin-tight capri-leggings and a paper-thin t-shirt. But, if it helps another fatty fatfighter get into the gym or Pilates studio, it'll be worth it. How often do you see a morbidly obese woman doing a teaser move on the Cadillac? Hmm?

Today is my 27th wedding anniversary, so it's unlikely I'll post again (unless hubby takes a nap between activities, and he's so gung-ho over World Cup, I'm lucky to pry him away from the flat screren hahahahah). The World Cup was on in 1982 when we were first dating (the first month of our mad, mad love), so it is notalgic for me to have an anniversary with it.

My appetite feels calmer in the last couple days. I don't feel the raging mad desire to stuff. I hope it continues (but I know that's a wild wish). It's nice to eat 1/3rd of my usual breakfast calories and feel okay. I want to stay low for B and L, cause dinner will be our festive event.

I wish you all a happy Friday and a great weekend. Please treat yourself kindly. Eat beautiful produce. Drink lots of clean water. Hug and kiss your loved ones. And remember that no matter how much space you take up in this world, you are unique and valuable and worthy of love and appreciation.

later....

Fat to Fit Blog Hop Thursday: Journaling In Better Nutrition...can get tricky!

As my regular readers know, I got back to Sparking, which include using the SparkPeople Nutrition Tracker (a lovely online tool for food journaling). I have found it really useful, not just to track food, but to track holes in my nutrition, since it tells you as you enter your meals how you are stacking up not just in carbs/proteins/fats, but in assorted nutrients (and you can customize).

As a middle-aged, post-menopausal woman, I wanna know that I'm getting enough calcium and vitamin D. And I wouldn't have realized I'm chronically deficient in zinc, folate, B-12, and potassium had I not sparked. (I can't eat shellfish/seafood, and I won't eat organ meats, and I limit my nuts/seeds for caloric reasons, so I tend to have issues with areas where those are the major suppliers of particular nutrients.)

Thanks to Sparking that journal, I have been able to target my supplement intake to what I need, not just shove some in my mouth "just in case." I love doing the report after supper and seeing where I need to boost nutrients--and am most happy when I meet goals in most categories. But knowing where the holes are lets me know if I need a B-complex or just a B-12 dot, if I need to have more romaine or spinach, if I should add a beef dish, if I need to pop a Citrical-D max. I do find that I have to take zinc. Period. I have almost never ever made my zinc nutrient RDA, so, yeah, I take liquid ionic zinc. It tastes truly hideous, but I do it, cause I suspect at the bottom of my chronic skin and thinning hair issues may be this chronic zinc deficiency.

Because I was low on potassium yesterday (I usually am, and most Americans usually are), I had some banana with dinner and coconut water with lunch on Wednesday. This morning, I added a banana-skim-milk-raw-cocoa-powder smoothie to breakfast to get magnesium/calcium/D/potassium (all nutrients that a lot of people fall short of, including me if I'm not careful with meal planning).

So, what is the tricky part in the subject header?

Well, no nutrition tracker that I've ever used is comprehensive for all users. If you buy stuff ready-made, you better have the ability to deconstruct that chicken salad or beef stew or whatever it is you bought to get the components (unless someone posts a generic you just go with).

Today, breakfast is a delivery meal from Diet-To-Go that I'm using to get me through the first few weeks of the Summer Slimmin' Challenge. (See badge on top of my sidebar for info). While the Diet-To-Go site has some nutritional info, it doesn't give it for the major nutrients (just the "top label" ones, fat, sodium, carbs, protein, calories). It doesn't give me the nutrients in my Eggs Florentine with soy sausage and asparagus, which, given there's spinach, milk, and eggs in there, should be nice. I know it's high protein (44 grams) and low-carb (6, and hence me having the banana, heh, cause I didn't have toast), but not how much of vitamins, minerals, etc.

That diminishes the usefulness of my journaling (in terms of health), although I still will know the calories and major categories that most dieters care about.

Still, I want to know that I had enough folate or B-12 or magnesium. It matters to me.

So, the convenience of diet delivery meals makes for inconvenient food tracking. Hey, Diet-to-Go! Make it easy for Sparkers who use your food. Give us the lowdown. BETTER YET: Contact SparkPeople, you Diet-To-Go administrators, and give them your meal titles/info and side dishes and the comprehensive nutrient breakdown, so that these can be added to the food database there. Who knows? You might get a lot more subscribers through that huge online community (of millions of fatfighters!)

Anyway, visit other blogging fatfighters/health-seekers in the Fat to Fit Blog Hop:

Go ye and hydrate, move, laugh, and lose!

Happy fatfighting this Thursday!

Summer Slimmin' Challenge: My Meals in Pics and a New Low Weigh-In Milestone! Party like it's 2002!

I was VERY VERY happy with my visit to the scale today, my fourth day into the Summer Slimmin' Challenge. Very. I'll tell you why ....later.

I did fine with water and calories yesterday, but I didn't exercise (felt a bit unwell). Got my bloodwork done for my endocrinologist, so will be half-anxious/half-eager to see what THAT looks like. (I have hypothyroidism form Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Metabolic Syndrome.) Shopped for some meals at a local gourmet market. (Expect my vegetarian diet meals to be delivered tomorrow afternoon.) I posted on most of the challenge blogs. ( I will only post on blogs that update and will start to see which support me and only support those that support me. Hey, it's gotta be reciprocal.)

So, what did I eat that I haven't posted pics of? This:

LUNCH After Pilates on Monday: I was feeling mighty hungry, so I headed to a local Mexican eatery (with really good, authentic tasting food that has a nice fresh taste and is one of my faves). Instead of my usual bingeyness, I chose shredded chicken breast tostadas. You get two. I ate one of the tostadas and all of the beans, white meat chicken shreds, lettuce, cheese, and drizzled sour cream (they make it and it's very liquidy). I had 1/2 cup salsa (there's 1/4 cup in the pic, but I had more. I cup romaine lettuce, plain. A Starbucks sugar-free vanilla latte, grande size. Cantaloupe water. Arizona Blueberry no-carb green tea . Man, was that good. And about half of what I usually have at that restaurant. Total: 741 calories.

Dinner on Monday was a frozen meal: HEALTHY CHOICE chicken parmigiana with broccoli and apple crisp (basically an apple cinnamon compote with some oatsy granola-ey stuff sprinkled on top). It was surprisingly tasty. I added some parmesan to the chicken and broccoli. I had a cup of cherries (organic, numsy) and a cup of Blueberry No Carb green tea over ice. Had cantaloupe kiwi water. Total: 613 calories. Monday's Caloric total: 1809.

Because I had bloodwork at 1:15 pm, I couldn't eat breakfast. So, I had brunch at around 3pm. Curried Chicken Salad (fruity and so good) on a bed of 4 cups of mixed lettuces. One cup lentil soup with 1/2 tsp EVOO. Blueberry No Carb green tea. Pineapple water. Calories: 616

I was really tired in the PM after not sleeping a lot for two days. So, before dinner (after a nice nap) I had a cup of hot tea splashed with organic half n half. (Even though we are having a hot spell with some record breaking heat, I craved a hot cuppa). It felt so luxurious and comforting. I had a cup of lentil soup with 1/2 tsp EVOO and some raspberry pineapple water. Calories: 187

About an hour later, when I felt less groggy-icky, I had my meal. was gonna make some eggs, since I missed breakfast, but my hubby hadn't eaten his Starbucks sandwich. I took the " guts" and nuked them to get them hot and the cheese melty. (It's black forest ham with a bit of frittata with cheddar on top.) Nice. And gave me protein, as the rest of my meal was vegetarian. And fabulous. On the green rectangular plate: spinach and portabello mushroom orzo and ratatouille. SO GOOD. Raspberry pineapple water and more tea to drink.

I didn't take a pic, but I had a half-cup of Tasti D-Lites chocolate frozen dairy treat as dessert. It's sugar-free, lowish-carb and low-calorie. And felt like such a splurge. Yum.

Dinner calories: 950 Tuesday Total Calories: 1753.

I still didn't sleep as much as I needed, but got more than yesterday, so hurray. I got on the scale to see if the salty "guts" I had with dinner made me bloat. The scale was down: 264.2

That is my lowest weigh-in since starting this blog in May of 2007, which you can confirm by scrolling way down my sidebar to see the stats I've kept for three years. That's lower than what I weighed in January of 2003, when I got weighed and measured for fat, etc, at a local gym. I'm happy. :)

My First Four Summer Slimmin' Challenge Meals: And I went for Convenience BIG TIME!

Yeah, I am not in the running to be America's Next Top Chef. In fact, I blissfully swanned through my formative years without learning to cook. In fact, I shamefully confess that I skated right up to age 22 without learning culinary skills, and I only bothered when I met hubby and started experimenting with some light meals for him after our engagement. I still recall trying to make a custard with my best pal (who also wasn't much of a cook) and calling my elder sister to ask her what the heck a "water bath" was, and I still am not sure what a braising is.)

This is especially ironic since I love watching cooking shows--Giada, Mario, Gordon, The Contessa, Iron Chef, etc--where I have learned SOME stuff...

Yeah, sure, over the years I'd make some boxed stuff--remember those weird pizzas from Chef Boy-R-Dee you prepped at home back in the 70's?--and would do breakfast for my nieces and nephews (eggs and pancakes are easy, right). And I could prep sandwiches and heat up cans of soup.

But all those wonderful down-home Cuban recipes my mom made, I feel a lot of regret at not asking her to teach me. I really do. And I feel a little bummed that my ill health in childhood meant my mom would scoot me out of the kitchen with "don't get your hands wet"--another reason she never let me do laundry, a skill I learned from hubby after we got back from the honeymoon--as she believed it would make my asthma worse. (Old wives' tales.)

Pretty much, I still avoid cooking anything fancy or elaborate. I remember too vividly getting up from our dinner table when we were newlyweds and throwing out the food that came out inedible. I make great veggie lasagna. I'll make simple sauteed chicken or pork. I tend ot eat veggies with minimal heating (steaming, sauteeing, nuking). I have a tiny, inefficient kitchen with nearly zip counter space, which is only a hindrance since I'm just not a nifty, efficient cook. I manage the simplest of meals, that's all.

I've talked to hubby about maybe taking some cooking lessons--I'd have to take vegetarian, cause all the ones I checked on locally that are regular cooking classes, feature a lot of seafood--which I am terribly allergic to and hubby detests--and a lot of meat cuts I refuse to touch . (I have this raw meat icky-phobia.) So, I've done minimal research into finding a vegetarian cooking class for beginners, but the only ones I saw so far that looked promising were for raw cooking and I don't wanna go that route. My husband just wouldn't eat it. It would be a waste of time and produce.

Anyway, I've kept my meals so far very simple and convenience-based, meaning I am going to take a look at my stock of canned food accumulated over the last couple of hurricane seasons that have gone ignored. (I have to do a look-see every couple years for what canned goods have expired, and it's now early hurricane season and I have to do that.)

So, don't expect any Mario Batalli or Gordon Ramsay or Bobby Flay or Nigella Lawson beauties in my meal plans. Expect "ready in fifteen minutes" type of meals, until I can get those lessons. :D

Here we go:

Breakfast yesterday was437 cals (including supplements)--1 orange, 2 cups coffee with sucralose, 2 slices ww toast, 2 eggs scrambled, 1 slice 2% American cheese, Strawberry-water (I chop fruit into water to give it the fruit essence flavor.)

Lunch: 2 cups organic arugula with 1/8 cup of shaved parmesan, a can's worth of Amy's Chunky Tomato Bisque soup with 1/4 cup skim milk and 1 serving of FiberGourmet Rotini added; 1 cup Rainier cherries, strawberry essence water. Not shown: 1/2 scoop Any Whey unflavored mixed with 1 scoop BSN Dessert Lean cinnamon roll flavor protein (as this meal was not high enough in protein). Total count for this (including protein and supplements)--741 calories.

Supper: Healthy Choice Classic Meatloaf frozen dinner (my SparkPeople stats had me low on iron and folate, so I decided to have something with beef and have romaine), 1/2 cup spinach, 2 cups romaine with garden veggies (peppers, cukes, tomato) with 2 tbsp Annie's organic Sesame Goddess dressing, 1/2 cup raspberries, 1 cup watermelon (dang, it was so sweet), and cantaloupe-essence water. This supper was 622 cals.

Breakfast today: 3 egg white scrambled with chopped tricolor peppers and onions, tomato with EVOO (1 tsp), 1/2 cup mango, 1/2 cup papaya, 2 slices ww toast with 2 slices 2% American cheese, kiwi-cantaloupe essence water. I used Herbamare to salt my eggs (adds a bit of celery/herb flavor, which is nice). This breakfast was 455 cals, including the 9 calories for my supplements.

So, how was your first day and second morning in Summer Slimmin'? Are you cooking beautiful, produce-filled meals? (You must be better in the kitchen than I am!)

Happy day to you!

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