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Archive for the ‘Diet’ Category

Serves: 8 1 cup servings
Ingredients

* 8 oz whole wheat elbow macaroni
* Cooking spray
* 1 cup chopped onion
* 1 cup shredded carrot
* 2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic
* 1 package of Yves Meatless Ground
* 1 cup tomato sauce
* 1 cup fat-free milk
* 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
* 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 1/2 cups fat free shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cook pasta according to the package directions, omitting salt and fat; drain. Lightly coat pasta with cooking spray.

Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add onion and carrot, and sauté 4 minutes. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add ground beef substitute; cook 3 minutes, stirring. Add tomato sauce cook for 2 minutes or until most of liquid evaporates.

Add pasta to beef mixture in pan, stirring to combine. Spoon pasta mixture into an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray.

Place milk, flour and nutmeg stir with a whisk until blended. Cook over medium heat 2 minutes or until thickened, stirring constantly with a whisk. Add 1 cup cheese, stirring until smooth. Pour cheese mixture over pasta mixture; stir. Top evenly with remaining 1/2 cup cheese. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

4 Points per serving

Freezes well.

If I have any men that read this blog, you might want to skip this entry.  It deals with that subject that most men find icky.  The monthly cycle that makes us women able to create a life…or as I call it since I am never going to have kids: “the completely unnecessary once a month painful bleeding session that makes me crave a hysterectomy.”

Ever since I “became a woman” and was blessed with the ability to create a life I want nothing to do with, I have had very painful cramps.  I’m not talking “take a midol and get over it” cramps, I’m talking “miss a day of school/work because I am throwing up uncontrollably due to pain” cramps.

At fifteen I was diagnosed with Dysmenorrhea and put on birth control pills.  Glory Be Hallelujah  they worked and I was able to resume a normal life.

Somewhere along the way I stopped taking them.  I don’t remember when or why…it might have been when I was too old to be on my mothers insurance.  Because the cramps were caused by a health condition the pills were covered by insurance so that might have been part of it.  At any rate I stopped taking them and the pain eventually came back.

As I gained more and more weight my periods became very irregular.  I would go for months without a period and then bleed for a couple of weeks and then go another three months with nothing.  After the initial pregnancy scare, I didn’t miss my period at all.  It was quite nice to go a long time without a period but when it finally showed up it was HEAVY and it HURT!  But being the kind of person I am, when the period disappeared I would put the pain to the back of my mind until it started up again so I didn’t go to the doctor about it.

Fast forward to me losing about 50 pounds and my periods regulated to once a month again.  Now that it was a regular occurrence again and at my husbands insisting I saw my doctor about getting on the pill again.  She said no.  See, I had this little nasty smoking habit and rightfully so, she did not feel right about putting me on the pill given the increased chance of blood clots in smokers at my age.  She told me if I quit smoking she would gladly write me a scrip but she had actually seen it happen to her patients that were smokers so she was gun shy.

So that was that.  I learned to live with it.  I have  system, and if it works correctly I don’t have that much trouble with the cramps.  If I catch it at the first twinge and preload with Advil, I can avoid major pain and function like a normal person.  Sometimes however, the cramps start while I am sleeping and I either don’t wake up or I am too tired to get out of bed to go get the advil and that is when the trouble starts.  I used to keep an advil on my bedside table until my dog decided it looked tasty and that was the end of that.

I have quit smoking for the most part but I will have an occasional cigarette(Vegas anyone???) and I’m so paranoid of blood clots that I never re approached the subject of birth control pills.  So I live with it.

If you haven’t guessed I am on my period this weekend.  And I have done nothing.

I had such plans for this weekend.  I was going to go to the track and try to walk/run a 10K and I was excited about it!  I was going to go dress shopping for our vow renewal.  I was going to go out to breakfast with Rob and his parents for Father’s Day.

I woke up on Saturday with cramps in full swing.  I took my advil and Rob put me back to bed.  He said I had an hour to sleep and let the advil work before I had to get up and get ready for the breakfast with my father in law.  I couldn’t get back to sleep but I tried.  Finally I got up and hauled myself in the shower and got dressed but I was miserable.  As we were about to head out the door I just couldn’t do it.  I knew I would be no kind of company and I wouldn’t be able to eat anything so tearfully I asked if Rob minded if I stayed home.  Of course he didn’t, he understood and put me back to bed before leaving for breakfast.

Part of the system I have when I get bad cramps is to sleep.  If I can get to sleep, even for a half an hour, the cramps and nausea are usually gone when I wake up.  No such luck yesterday.  I read in bed to try and get my eyes tired but I just couldn’t fall asleep because I had to keep running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes or so(yes, not only am I gifted with pain, heavy bleeding and nausea but I also get diarrhea.  Nice.)  Finally I got up and got a bucket to bring to bed with me, the throwing up portion was inevitable.  After one round with the bucket, Rob came home and I was starting to feel a bit better but since I never fell asleep I was still left with an overall sense of ickiness.

I was starving but the thought of food repulsed me.  Rob had brought home some food for me so I chose the least offensive thing(a biscuit) and ate a tiny portion of it before laying back down.  A few minutes later my stomach woke up and demanded more food so I had a little more and some diet sprite to settle the stomach.

To make a very long story short (too late!), I have not counted my food this weekend and I have certainly not walked or run.  While I think being in pain like I get is a legitimate excuse for taking the weekend off, I still feel horrible about it.

My 10 K is in two weeks and while I know I can easily walk it I was hoping to be more prepared with the running and this was a wasted weekend.  I feel useless and guilty and just blah.

Tomorrow I will start anew and all that but today?  Today I feel like a failure.

People at work have been telling me I’m an inspiration.  Not gonna lie.  It feels really good.
I don’t know if I mentioned this or not but my friend and co-worker Julie is my inspiration in the weight loss/fitness game.  Last year we both decided we were going to run the Wharf to Wharf 10K in July.  I think we had like five months to train and we both got very excited and gung ho.  We both started the Couch 25K program independent of each other and after a while I got discouraged with my lack of ability to run and decided I would just walk the darn thing.  Julie kept training and ended up running most of the race with her sister.  I walked it and finished in just under 2 hours.  Jewels finished in under an hour and a half if I remember right.  I was very proud of her and kinda disappointed in myself for not keeping with the training like she did.
After the race we both lost a bit of focus and she and I both gained a bit of weight.
Julie regained her motivation while I floundered and she has lost over 50 pounds.  She has gone from a size 18 to a size 10.  She rocks!!
The reason I tell you this story is because not only is she my inspiration, she is responsible for saving me tons of money as I go through my own weight loss journey now.
In an effort to purge herself of all her “fat clothes” since she knows that she will never ever let herself get that big again, she is giving them to me!  I’m not talking a couple of pairs of jeans here, I’m talking about a full wardrobe of shirts, jeans, sweats, capris, dresses and track suits.  In sizes 18 to 14 so I have will not have to keep buying clothes as I shrink!  How awesome is that??
How is this significant to today’s story?
Because this morning I put on a pair of 16 capri’s with a 14/16 size tee shirt and they FIT!  SIXTEEN!!!!  I can’t even remember the time I was a size 16!  I think I was in my early 20’s and it was when I was on my way back up in weight.  Wow.  Now, I’m not officially a sixteen because I have some jeans of hers that are a sixteen that are not even close to fitting but I do in fact, now fit into a pair of 16 pants that didn’t fit a month ago.  I am over the moon!!

We just pulled it out of the package and have been randomly weighing items in our kitchen and oohing and ahhing over it.  I can’t wait to be able to accurately measure my recipes again! 

Okay, time to go weigh stuff. 

So this week was pretty cool for the most part.  I turned 36, we had a three day weekend, I walk/ran two unofficial 5K’s and I ran a whole mile.
Yup!  Remember the post where I realized I couldn’t run a mile yet.  Well I can now!
It began last Thursday when it was raining.  I was supposed to walk on my lunch but it was POURING outside so I didn’t end up doing it.  Instead The Hubs took me out to lunch and I made good choices.  By my afternoon break the skies hadn’t cleared but the rain had mostly stopped so I got changed and told myself I would at least go for a quick walk.  I walked for a minute and a half before I started running, telling myself I would stop whenever I felt like it, at least I was moving.
Prior to this I had only been able to run for five minutes at a time, so in my mind I was shooting for five minutes but after the five passed I felt I could keep going so I did.  After 12 minutes of running the only reason I stopped was because my break was over.  Don’t get me wrong I was glad to stop but I felt I could have gone a little bit longer.
The unfortunate part of the run is that my GPS doesn’t work in the cul de sac I run in by my office so I wasn’t able to see what my distance or speed was, just my time.
Friday I had a chiro appt so I took that as my rest day since I had a pretty big adjustment.
Saturday I got up, got dressed and headed down to the local middle school.  I had no intentions other than just to walk/run until I wanted to stop.
I walked the first five minutes and then took off in a run.  Knowing that I was able to do 12 minutes on Thursday, I did push myself a bit more than normal and after 13 1/2 minutes according to the GPS on my phone I had run a mile from the time I started running.  I was elated, but I was also exhausted so I walked the rest of the time, finishing 3.1 miles in a little over 43 minutes.  Pretty exciting stuff.
Sunday the Hubs had to help his dad chop down a tree in their yard so I decided to tag along and try out my MIL’s treadmill.  I hadn’t used a treadmill since last August when we were on vacation in Vegas and I was trying to keep the buffet’s from doing TOO much damage to my waistline.  As I remembered it, it was WAY easier to run/walk on a treadmill than it was outside, so I was excited to try it again.
Well, I managed to walk/run (mostly walk)2 miles in about 35 minutes and by the time I was done I was DRENCHED!  Literally dripping and my tee shirt was sopping wet.
I guess because I have trained myself outside, it is harder for me to do it on a treadmill now.  It’s so weird but after I was done I knew I didn’t want a treadmill.  I like to mix up my pace depending on my music and it was too hard to keep upping and lowering the speed.  I’ll stick with my outside walking thankyouverymuch!
After that my friend Paula took me out to lunch for my birthday where I may have made poor choices but the first thing I did when we got the food was cut it in half and set it aside.  And as for the strawberry margarita, well it was my birthday!!! 
Monday, since I was so disappointed with my performance on the treadmill I boogied back over to the middle school track and completed another 5K.  This one was done by running five minute, walking five minutes, running five, walking five and so on and so forth.  My finishing time was only a minute more than the last time so that was encouraging.
As for the rest of the week I have been getting my run/walks in on my lunch breaks.  More walking than running because I was trying to give my body a bit of a rest after the weekend.
Today however, I completed my longest consecutive run.  Fifteen whole minutes.  Only two minutes longer than my last one but still!!!  This is HUGE for me.  For so long I didn’t even think I could do FIVE!  I hate to pat myself on the back but DANG! I’m psyched!

So tell me when was the first time you felt like a real runner?

Sooooooooo…I gained at my weigh in today.  One pound.
As I stepped on the scale and saw the number, my mind immediately started in with excuses.  “You should really hold off and weigh in tomorrow.”  “You drank a whole bottle of water when you took your advil at four this morning, you don’t normally do that.”  “You are on your period, you should really wait a day to see if the bloat goes down.”
And while these are all true, here are some more facts:
I did not track my food all last weekend.  I didn’t cheat per say but I did a lot of “a bite of this here” and “a taste of this there” and we all know how that goes.  I also only exercised 3 times this week and one was kinda half assed. 
So while I AM in fact on my period and retaining water, I don’t think that is to blame for my gain.  I let myself get lazy this week and I am paying the price for it on the weigh in.
While it would be easy to delay the weigh in one more day to see if that pound will drop off, that defeats the whole purpose of having a weigh in day right?  I need to hold myself accountable for my actions and let’s face it, this is going to happen from time to time.  I am human and since this is a lifestyle change I have to realize that as long as I don’t let myself spiral out of control, once in a while I will show a gain.  As long as it is only ONCE AND A WHILE I am okay with that.  It sucks but that’s life.

Back from our trip to Santa Cruz.  If you want to read about the actual trip you can Click Here to view my regular blog.

Okay, so I didn’t always make fantastic decisions but I did make a large series of good ones.  The Subway finder app for my iphone kept changing locations on the subway sandwich shop that was supposed to be the closest and I never ended up finding it the entire trip.  Stupid free app. 

I was able to find a local sandwich shop that was able to accommodate my demands of “on the side” and “very light on” very well.  They only had white bread unfortunately but I did the best I could.  Not to mention the fact that I didn’t touch one bite of boardwalk food.  To be fair, the funnelcake and deep fried twinkie stands were closed but I would have been able to resist them, I am sure of it.  I did resist corndogs, deep fried cheesecake, slurpies, and pizza.

In fact, thanks to bringing my own portioned out servings of Kashi Go Lean Crunch and bagel thins I wasn’t hungry at all on the boardwalk and wasn’t that tempted.  Gooooooo pre planning! 

The one thing I did give in to was a delicious turkey melt sandwich at the bowling alley near the boardwalk.  We had a coupon for a free round of bowling and by the time we were ready to use it I was quite hungry, and the selection at the bowling alley snack bar wasn’t that great.  So we had a Turkey Melt but I did get it on whole wheat and I got a side salad instead of fries.  Plus the hubby and I split it so maybe it wasn’t too bad right?

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the sandwich shop again and got another sandwich for dinner.  My husband had requested chicken wings but they didn’t have any so instead I got what they called spicy bread sticks.  I am not a fan of spicy foods so I figured I wouldn’t be tempted.  Um…yeah.  All it was, was cheese bread with a couple of jalapenos on top.  Once I had one bite and realized it wasn’t spicy I overindulged.  I admit it.  I didn’t want to but by the time I realized I was doing it I had already wolfed down half of the bread sticks.

So I didn’t lose any weight this week.  I didn’t gain either though, so I am happy with that.  I would have loved a loss but I was dreading a gain so I guess it worked out okay.

What was awesome about this trip was how many observations I had about the things I can do now that I couldn’t before.  There was no way I could have ever done all the walking on this trip with the ease that I did it.  We parked the car at the hotel when we checked in and didn’t move it again until we left.  Every place we went we walked to and while everything was in walking distance, it was still a bit of a hike and not something I would have been able to do without my back hurting when I was heavier.

What I noticed the most was that I didn’t sweat.  I know that sounds like a very weird statement but when I was heavier I sweat All. The. Time.  Just sitting here like I am now and typing I would have been sweating.  But this trip we walked all over here and there in fairly warm weather and I didn’t sweat!  I did a little bit while bowling but that was it.  It’s not something that I think about on a daily basis so I had to sit back and realize that other than when I exercise, I haven’t really sweat like that in a long time.  This is encouraging.  It used to be downright embarrassing.

I was also able to hoist myself up onto the pony’s on the merry go round with ease as well as not being embarrassed about how I looked while bowling.  They sound like stupid little things but they all add up.  I even ran up a flight of stairs just because I could!  Hah!

Even the hubby commented on how proud he was of all the things that I could do this trip without complaints and such.

It really is a good feeling.

Down one pound this morning according to the old scale.  The bad news is of course, that it is only one pound.  The good news is that it is still a loss AND it is my TOM so to actually lose while getting my period is pretty impressive as far as I am concerned.

This puts me down 7 pounds in four weeks of following starting WW.  So it isn’t as fast as the weight initially comes off on low carb but I’m cool with that.  One, because there was a cheat weekend in the equation, but most importantly because I haven’t felt deprived.  I haven’t had the urge to cheat aside from that first weekend, which I did mostly out of habit really.  If I wanted something I had a little of it and I counted it in my points.  Also, there are a lot more low cal/low fat alternatives for things than there are low carb.  When I initially lost the bulk of my weight via low carb it was at the height of it’s popularity and there were options everywhere.  Now, not so much.

At any rate I still managed to lose a pound after losing a tooth and being on my period.  Not too bad right?

When I was 27 years old I was put on blood pressure medication.  At TWENTY SEVEN years old!  Okay, granted I was well over 300 pounds at that point but I didn’t feel like I was.  I was married to the love of my life, I had a job that I absolutely adored and a dog that fulfilled all my maternal needs.  There was nothing wrong with me as far as I could tell so why the hell would I need BP meds.  Those were for old people under tons of stress!

I cried when I called my husband after leaving the doctors office to go get my prescription filled.  I complained that I was misdiagnosed, but the truth was the doc had given me ample time to try and get my BP down.  I just never took it serious for the reasons listed above.

In the years following that, I bought a BP monitor, dropped quite a bit of weight following a low carb diet and took myself off the meds once I felt I was regulated.  A huge step I know, but I still always ran on the low side of high.

After moving out to California in 2005 I gave my BP monitor to a friend at work who really had a problem with her blood pressure.  I didn’t feel the need to keep an eye on it anymore.  I had removed myself from a short term, high stress job and more or less maintained the weight loss so there was really no need.

After a couple years of yo yo dieting and gaining about 40 lbs back,  it seemed that every time I visited my doctor my blood pressure would be on the high side.  She would always mention it and I would tell her it was okay, it was just that I was nervous visiting the doctor.  After a few more consecutive visits with high BP readings and me insisting I was fine when I was at home she advised she wanted me to get another at home monitor.  I obliged and soon found out is wasn’t just because I was at the doctor that caused a spike.  The readings were getting high again.

Cut to current day.  While I haven’t dropped a significant amount of weight(only about 15 lbs now), I have added exercise.  Something I had never done while losing all the weight before.  In the last month I have exercised steadily and have found that not only am I dropping inches, but when I take my daily BP, I am exactly where I want to be. What is more amazing is that I have discovered is that the inches aren’t making me as happy as the blood pressure readings.

It’s amazing how as you age it becomes less about vanity and more about health.

Oh, but I still want to be hot and skinny.  Just a healthy hot and skinny.

Well, I started my new Weight Watchers journey last Monday. I’m doing it online so I’m not actually going into meetings or anything because I am that  lazy.

I chose my weigh in date as Friday because I know how I tend to want a cheat meal on Saturdays if we go out to breakfast. Don’t start, it’s just easier this way okay??

From Monday to Friday I managed to lose 5.5 pounds. Now before you launch the parade for me, I have a confession.

On the way home from work Friday night Rob and I stopped at the store to get some ice cream for him.  As we walked into Safeway, we were slapped in the face with a flier proclaiming and entire roasted turkey breast could be all ours for the bargain price of five dollars!   “Roasted turkey! I can have that with some veggies tonight and it would be really low point”.  I thought to myself as we made our way to the deli department. Smack dab in the middle of the deli display case sat the turkey breasts, all plump and proud among a sea of deep fried delights. As Rob left me to go see what kind of meat was on sale he told me to get the turkey breast and “oh yeah, get a couple pieces of the fried chicken. Just a couple of bites won’t hurt.”

My eyes lit up. You see, I am the type of person that doesn’t need to have my arm twisted when it comes to bad behavior.

Once he had walked off, I discovered it was much more financially beneficial to get the 8 piece bag of fried chicken than just a couple of them and who doesn’t want to save money in this economy??

You see where this is going right?

So yeah, I had a whole lotta fried chicken on Friday night.

Saturday morning we met my husbands parents at First Awakenings in Salinas for breakfast. I perused the menu and mentally picked out a veggie omelet made with egg beaters, but for some reason when I gave my actual order to the waiter it came out sounding a lot like “french toast”, it was the darnedest thing!

And in true to Kelly form, I didn’t stop there. We stopped at Nob Hill on the way home and while I picked up some WW frozen dinners for the next week, what we ended up having for dinner was nachos with the seven layer dip my husband picked up there.

I was finally able to reign it in on Sunday and have been pretty good ever since but I peeked at the scale this morning and I appear to have gained back 2 of the pounds I had lost last week. And rightfully so.

Now that the unpleasantness is out of the way, we can move onto the good news.

I am currently on week 2 of the Couch to Five K program. And it is HARD! I’m not letting that stop me though. I am determined to stick with this and by the time I am done I should be able to run most, if not all of the Heart and Sole 5K coming up in Salinas in May.

The very first training session was torture, and you only run for 60 seconds at a time!! Over the week it got easier yesterday we were up to 90 second runs and it kicked my butt. I know it will get easier, and in the long run I’ll look back and laugh about the fact that I though running for 90 seconds was going to kill me…but damn! It’s hard!!!

Okay, off to cook some sweet potato fries to go with my sandwich for dinner tonight.