Leida

Here is my Halloween without a Nightmare the Morning After:  

1. I will start my Halloween with a workout with or without my wee one.

2. Candies might be a staple, but so is the nutrition-packed, anti-oxidants rich pumpkin! I will wash & toast pumpking seeds for healthy snacking, and one of our pumkins was already half frozen and half pureed to become stews, muffins and soups in the future!

3. We will eat a protein packed mushroom omlette for breakfast and low cal pumpkin soup for lunch

4. Before we head out for a trick and treating session #1 in the local Recreation centre, we’ll squeeze in a family play in the pool.

5. We will do session #1 trick and treating and session #2 (neighborhood) at as fast a pace as an impatient 3 y.o would want.

6. We will have a nice nutritious dinner before doling the candies out ourselves.

7. We will not steal our child’s candies, and everything we will have left over will be split into 2 even piles that we will pack away very sturdily and stash in a secret and hard to reach location, and take to the office 1 week later, when everyone else’s offerings had run out and people are ready for more!

8. We will try to have our candie fix with the dark 70+ % chocolate instead of the less healthful sugary treats, and we’ll try to stay under 250 cals from treats.

9. We are going to rent a couple of cool movies to watch while giving the candies away to keep us occupied instead of munching & leave the candie bowl in a place remote to the couch

10. We will go to bed happy, and will not beat ourselves up if something didn’t go According to Plan! We’ll just plain forget about it.

11. We will make our Sunday a day of exemplary eating and slip in an extra hour or two of a good fast walking or hiking or doing anything else fun and active!

I decided to learn to make my own bread simply because it sounds like fun, and the smell is awsome. The problem is, that when I calculated my recipe (which tastes great!) even when it’s made with Splenda, and most butter is subbed to canola, a slice (and a pretty thin one) is still more than twice the clories of the commercial whole-wheat bread. Ie ~200 cals vs 80 cals. Most calories come from flour itself. Does anyone know how the industry ‘lightens up’ their loaves? I am guessing it has to do with making them puffier and making smaller amounts of dough to raise heigher? Also, how do they keep the bread soft for a few days? I am going to check a few books from the library to see if they have the answers, but I am curious if anyone knows.

So, on Saturday, I did my first serious run, exploring the trails in my new neighborhood. I went a wee bit too late to see the sunrise over the hills, so next weekend I will try it 15 or so min earlier.

It’s not as spectacular as my old places, where at some point I ran out on the bluff above the river, and could run trails on the terrace, but it is a good trail, that winds between the houses for a while, and then cuts between the two parts of the private golf-course for a bit, so you can see alot of the suburbia, plains taking off in the distance, and, if someone got up earlier - a glorious sunrise.

There is quite a few possibilities to extend a run (I was aiming for 30 min, but when it came close to 40, I did a couple of loops around our cul-de-sack to add it to 45).

All and all, I think it will be very nice, and I am looking forwrad to exploring it!

In the weightloss news, this month is shaping up as rather tough for keeping food on track. Housewarming party for 40 people or so on the 12th, United Way Bake Sale on the 15th (that’s where the leftover cookies from the HW party go, thankfully!), United Way Taste Of on the 6th of October and my daughter’s 3rd birthday party on the 10th.

So, I am putting my plans on hold for the moment, and will restart with a stricter diet in mid-October. Meanwhile, I will just try to stay under 120. I am having my doubts about it being wise to go lower than 117 anyway, since I am just not at my best that low. We’ll see.

From time to time I succumb to checking those calculators out… like your “Ideal Weight” and “Caloric Needs” on the numerous websites.

Do you know what’s my ideal weight is? 140-158 lbs if I go with the large build and 130-148 lbs. My before photo on my profile page is taken at 148-150 lbs. Does THAT look like an “ideal’ weight to you?

And my caloric intake? 2000 calories? Ha! The moment I go over 1,400 I gain 2 lbs overnight.  I guess it coordinates with their idea of ideal me… at 150 148 lbs!

I am sorry, but I personally think that my ‘ideal’ weight is 115-125 lbs. And my ideal caloric intake = my BMR at ~1350 calories a day.

Heh, it almost if the authors of those tools are working for the food industry or something…. :)

Aww, one of those… haven’t had them for a while, what with the cruise and a few extra pounds. But now the protective pounds are gone, and the pangs are back with a vengeance. Now, I expect the hunger in the afternoons, that’s normal, but when the pangs come in in the mornings, that’s the worst, because then the whole day can turn into one hungry blurr!

 It’s 8 am, 4 hours since I had my 280 cal breakfast, and I am hungry even after a snack of 1/2 grapefruit and a small Granny Smith.

Well, well. Welcome back, hunger! Chewing gum to the rescue, and hope it’s not going be one of those hell on earth after lunch days, when I start thinking about shewing off a corner of my desk. It kindda looks like tofu, you know.

Folks, I was wondering if anyone has the same problem as I do - not being able to incorporate enough proteins in their diet? For months now I am averaging 20% prots a day, with 60% carbs.

I do what they say - combine all food groups at every meal and snack, but I am always short on proteins!

I am looking at my food logs and it seems that it’s my breakfasts that kill me - I do oatmeal with banana and something else (like cocoa powder or raisins), and it always comes very heavy on carbs. I barely eat any grain sides nowadays, but lots of friut and veg, and still I can’t shift up from the 20:60 ratio. What I really would want to see is ~30% proteins.

I will be trying to alternate oatmeal breakfast with 2 eggs + veg breakfast starting this week to see if that will help me.

So, has anyone succesfully dealt with this before or is working on it now?

Hello everyone, I am back (well, if you still remember me that is).

I hope everyone is well and doing great, and to anyone who is new to the site - hi and welcome to the great community! I  went to the beautiful Britsh Columbia to visit family and catch a cruise to Alaska with my husband of 10 years to celebrate our anniversary.

 I brought a few extra pounds back from the cruise, of course (but hey, those cakes were delish!).  But I also swam, hiked (the hike to Mount Roberts above Juneau was particulary beautiful), excersised and it was tons of fun!

I’ll wait till my regular weigh-in day on Tuesday to register the exact surplus (~5 to 6 pounds), but I am starting to work on losing the pounds right away. My husband has the weigh-in on Saturday, so I will now how much he came up then.

The first order of the day is to restore 3 meals + 2 snacks ~1,500 cals eating plan and gradually get back to regular 1.5 to 2 hours activity a day.

And, I’ve got one of the best compliments on that cruise - my husband told me that my cooking (healthy and lean) can easily compare to what we were served on the cruise by the professional chefs. And that it’s definetly better than my mother’s and my mom in law’s. (Hey, I love them both, but it’s nice to hear, right?)

Lol, who wouldn’t run to restock the kitchen after such lovely encouragement and try yet another cool recipe from Eating Well or search library for an interesting cook book?

Hugs, and let’s keep cooking, excersising, having fun and being beautiful!

Hi folks, I was away for most of this week, but my husband had a more or less Italian experience being left with a large Lasagna for his dinners.  I have no idea if he stayed under 190 lbs, since he forgot to weigh-in, but we’ll know next Saturday, lol.

I’ve also tried making pizza crust for the first time -it’s a breeze, actually, turned out really well whole-wheat and all, we LOVED it with marinara sauce, basil and eggplant topping! I will DEFINETLY make a healthy pizza again (my husband already earmarked a healthy taco pizza recipe for me) - and I should find a good recipe for marinara sauce since I love everything that can be made from scratch to be made from scratch.

I only photographed my pizza, my lasagnas NEVER look good, so, I will skip the photos this time 

With all the crazyness of the RL after coming back from the trip, I think I will skip making this week any sort of a cultural theme, but I will take a photos of anything that looks interesting. Mostly I will be going for ‘chilled’ items, like gazpachos, smoothies and salads, since we have a heat wave! I hope that these lighter fare will help with my couple extra pounds I brought back from my field trip and my husband’s ‘barrier breaking’ weight.

All right, our Chinese/Asian inspired week came to a close! My husband picked 2 lbs - don’t know if it’s salt in the soy sauce, or my magnificent talent… but he still managed to hang on to 1 lbs loss from last week. But, jokes aside, we both love asian style cooking and agree that it lends itself perfectly to the healthy lifestyle!

So, the week started with a deviation from Asian food! I decided to finally use up the last of the apples from our apple trees, and made them in a compot with a bit of frozen berries, a touch of sugar. I served them with creps as Sunday branch. Lol, been fighting that extra pound ever since! Hope to see it gone by Tuesday!

But then we got right on track with the noodle salad my husband was asking me to make for a while. Yellow peppers, carrots, peas, a bit of ham, seasame oil, red pepper flakes and a bit of soy sauce… Yam!

Here, we have some vegeterian fried rice (nothing deep fried or egg-related). Basically, just a nice stir-fry of veggies and mushrooms with brown rice. Hubby had it with the left-over vindaloo, and I just ate it by itself:

Next day I did some ginger-honey broiled salmon to go with the rice, with a zuccini and red pepper side. I liked the combination, but my husband thinks that my regular broiled salmon (lemon-juice, red flakes, freshly ground pepper and oregano) is better.

Deviation #2! My dear toddler asked for macaroni and cheese in a midst of a tantrumus night. I have no idea how to make them, so I had to pull the recipe from the Cook Healthy Today cookbook. Here we go, a healthy baked macaroni and cheese with Swiss cheese and light cheddar/mozzarella for one toddler. Of course she took one bite, and said : yaki! Then another bite and said yami… but still husband had to finish the plate (another clue to the mistery of those 2 lbs gain!)

Something we were eating for a few days: Sweet and sour chicken. I basically marinated the whole cut up organic chicken and made it into one long-lasting dish. We both liked it - I have a weakness for sweet and sour:

A busy night cheat: Russian pelmenis pretend to be Chinese dumplings. Really, the dfference is insignificant, and we still have some of our home-made pile of pelmenis left, so… we decided to call them dumplings, and give me a night out! The filling is all extra-lean meats, beef, pork and lamb. Italian sausage meat is the only non-lean inclusion there.

Finally, tofu and spinach in a ginger-peanut butter sauce. A lovely recipe, really, but tofu is tofu. I find it difficult to cook and present well. I am always on the look-out for okay tofu recipes, and this is one of them.

Next week: Mexican! I will start my report with telling all about me cooking ~80 portions of 3 different chilis for my Run for Cure charity sale, and let you know if we will be eating chili for the rest of the month, or if I managed to sell some!!!

I look at the weather, and I think the time has finally come for the first family trip to the beautiful Rocky Mountains this weekend! Our little one is not yet 3 y.o., so we just go to a provincial park with a lovely long biking pathway which can accomodate a stroller for a tired tot. Not a sternouse climb, but it’s mountains, and it’s a healthy and yammi picnic, and it’s SPRING! Are you going on an outing this weekend? Where will it take you?