BL Diet, Days 3, 4 & 5

So the weekend totally trashed the diet. We BBQ'd at a friends house on Friday, had breakfast at a diner on Saturday, and dinner at an Italian place on Sunday...there's no way I could follow the plan! So we took the weekend off. But...I started again on Monday!

At the beginning of this thing, I was following everything to the letter, making sure I followed meal plans as well as I could, but not, just a few days into it, I've realized that doing that it harder than it should be. I'm adjusting things for foods we don't like (or I don't want to make) and have all of these cross-reference notes all over the place (Swap lunch day 3 with lunch day 21! Swap protein of day 4 with protein of day 17, leaving veggies!) and it's just a pain. So now I go through the meal plans and just look for what I'm in the mood to eat and make. It's a little complicated since I need to make sure we have the ingredients for the recipes, but it's easier in terms of figuring out what's for dinner.

So things are going ok! I haven't weighed myself since the evil 3+ weight GAIN, but think I'll do that tomorrow and see how things are going. I don't feel any lighter, but I'm happy with my food choices, so there's that. :)

And here are some food reccomendations from the book:

1) Portobello Mushroom Pizzas. Essentially this is just using a portobello mushroom as the base, adding marinara sauce, lean turkey sausage (cooked & crumbled) and low-fat mozz cheese. Baked for 6-8 minutes. Really yummy and only 100 calories each!

2) I just ate a chinese cabbage salad with homemade dressing. It was must tastier than I thought! The dressing had a lot of ingredients, but it turned out well. I can see it being a pretty good marinade too.

3) I've decided that my favorite snack is either the apple and string cheese or the laughing cow cheese with a slice of whole-wheat bread. I like cheese.

4) the turkery burger was awesome. easy and tasty and totally didn't feel diet. It's the diet trifecta!!

Now it's time to figure out what's for dinner...

Photo Flashback--June 2005

(Note: Day 3 of the BL diet will come tomorrow. :))

Photo Flashback time!

In June 2005, a couple of us came up with an idea to have a huge water balloon fight at a park near our local bar, lemmings. We stopped in for a drink or two before-hand, and decided to just have a fight there, in the bar.
Well, not IN the bar, really. We made some rules about not being able to throw balloons at people in the bar, but since there were water guns as well, we ended up getting things kind of wet. Luckily Matt the bartender was a really good sport and we made an effort to not get things going inside as much as possible (which can be hard in the heat of battle).

The picture below is one of favorites from the day...you can see Dave and Brent hiding from each other, both waiting to let loose with another water balloon.It was a super-fun day, and I highly recommend a childish, water-filled day next time it's warm out. :)

Day 2

So I made it through Day 1 and learned a couple of things:

1) Jicama is weird. I'll eat it IN things and in small quantities by itself, but 1 cup of sticks? By itself? Eh, I couldn't do it
2) Same thing with tomatoes. I love them warm and IN things, but I wasn't a huge fan of the tomato salad
3) Hot sauce makes plain chicken awesome
4) Trader Joe's Thai green beans are spectacular

And thus far today, I've learned
1) greek yogurt must be an acquired taste. it's just kind of odd and
2) mushroom soup is pretty tasty, even if it looks kind of gross. And it's tastier with pepper.

I weighed myself yesterday so I'd have a starting point and plan on checking daily just so I can see how things are going. Today when I weighed myself, I was down 3 pounds! And, yes, that's got to be water-weight, but still...yay! :) I do NOT expect the same amount of loss tomorrow, that's for sure.

So here's the meal plan for today, Day 2. I swapped out the breakfast for another breakfast (greek yogurt, oatmeal, and a banana) since my bananas were ripe enough and also swapped out the lunch for a different day's lunch (mushroom soup, a slice of bread, and a wedge of cheese) since I didn't want to make or find sushi. :) Especially brown-rice sushi!

Breakfast

1 serving Banana Nut Oats

½ cup fresh blueberries

3 hard-boiled egg whites

8 oz fat-free milk

Tea or coffee

Snack

6 tablespoons creamy hummus

2 medium stalks celery, cut into sticks

Lunch

6 pieces California roll brown rice sushi

1 asian or bosc pear

Ice water or iced tea

Snack

PBJ: 2 slices Ezekiel whole grain bread with 1 tablespoon natural peanut butter and 2 tablespoons sugar-free black cherry all-fruit spread

Ice water or tea

Dinner

Doc’s Chili

1 ½ cups chopped romaine lettuce with ¼ cup sliced bell pepper, ¼ cup sliced cucumber, and 1 tablespoon low-fat vinaigrette

Ice water or iced tea

Jump Start Day 1

Ahh, Day 1. When you still have the best of intentions and you follow everything to the letter. Well, I'm trying.

Below is Day 1's menu, if you're curious. :)

So far I've only adjusted it a bit (adding a little bit of chocolate to my milk and using frozen fruit instead of fresh) so it's going well. The hardest part? I'm HUNGRY. I'm allowed to eat every 3 hours but I'm not used to eating limited portions. At least I know where my problem lies!

I made little lunch bags yesterday for today's meals which worked out really well. I'll have to do the same for tomorrow...

Breakfast

1 Ham & Cheese Breakfast Melt--YUM. I'd make this again every day.

¾ cup fresh blueberries--I didn't have fresh, so I had frozen. And added splenda.

8 oz fat-free milk--I added a touch of chocolate. I don't like regular milk.

Tea or coffee--neither

Snack

1 large apple--I had a small/medium apple. It's not really apple season.

1 stick low-fat mozzarella string cheese

Ice water

Lunch

Turkey Wrap

6 baby carrots

1 cup jicama sticks

Ice water or iced tea

Snack

2 servings (4 pieces) Hummus Deviled Eggs

Dinner

5 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breast, grilled or broiled

8 medium asparagus spears, grilled or broiled

1 cup cherry tomatoes with 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil

8 oz fat-free milk

Jump Start

I bought a book recently, The Biggest Loser 30-Day Jump Start, with the idea to try some new recipes and to use as a guideline to help me eat healthier.

I read the book very quickly and found it really easy to follow. The ideas presented are all the same ones that you always read, but the good part of the book is that it's not a restrictive diet like Atkins or any of the other low-carb things.

They give 30 full days of recipes and food to eat and for once it's almost all food I'd eat! I've found that the meal plans are not as well-mixed as I'd like, but the food is interesting and the recipes are simple. I think I just need to mix up Day 7 with Day 14 (or something of the sort) so that I'm not eating fish 4 days in a row. :)

I went shopping today to get the first week's worth of food and, WOW. That was a lot of food. And a high grocery bill, but I'm hoping that a lot of the food can be used in the upcoming weeks. Yikes.

So tomorrow is Day 1. I've made the lunch and the snacks for both me and Bob for tomorrow and put them in lunch bags (hee) so we're all set. I just need to get up in the morning and make breakfast, which should only take about 5 minutes. Quick and easy! And it really is a good amount of food for the day.

My biggest problem is going to be cutting down on the diet coke. :)

Wedding Photos!

I don't have very many, and most are from later in the evening, but it was a beautiful wedding. :)

Bob and I are off to Wisconsin tonight so we can attend the wedding of Erin & Dennis.

3 1/2 years ago, Erin and I went on a cruise only expecting a fun little vacation and maybe a suntan, but she came back with something much better: the love of her life.

Dennis and his friend Walt were taking a vacation together too and the first night on the cruise, we met them in the piano bar and spent the night having drinks and chatting. Erin and Dennis hit it off and they spent most of the rest of the cruise together.

And now they're going to spend the rest of their life together!I feel so lucky to be there when they met and even luckier to be able to see them get married. :)

Monday

The first few weeks of my time off, I was super-productive and was getting a lot done: cleaning out closets, scrapbooking, making felt animals, and so on. Then...I got bored. And I did pretty much nothing, other than playing Lego Batman. :)

Now that I'm done with Lego Batman and have gone through my netflix movies, I'm starting to feel productive again.

Bob's been helping...he's taught me how to copper foil some glass beads that he uses for his pieces and has been bringing some home for me to work on. I did a bunch of larger ones last week and recently he brought home the "green box" of small beads. I've started on these and they're a bit more difficult! I don't know why, but the foil isn't sticking as well, but I'm trying my best. Hopefully he won't have to redo many of them!!I think I'll start scrapbooking again too. :)

Happy Easter!

I'm at my mom's for Easter this year and spent some time going through some old photos. This is so much fun. We laughed at our 80's hairstyles and the old house with it's shag carpeting and goldenrod appliances. What I woudln't give for some of the lamps she had back then...
In all of the photos I found a couple of Easter-releated ones:

Easter 1978. My sister and I. For some reason, all of the photos from when I was little cut off our toes or our foreheads. Lucky Jandy, she got it both this time!!

Easter 1980: A neighbor (I think) and me with the "Easter Bunny" (aka our neighbor Larry Ross). We were at an Easter egg hunt and I was wearing my awesome tulip coat. But apparently was afraid of the camera? I dunno.

I have more pictures to come. I found some good stuff here and could scan all day. But now I have to head upstairs to visit with the family.

Happy Easter!

Photo Flashback

I'm realizing that I've been avoiding my poor blog for a while now and am looking for something that I can do every week (at least) so that I'll post more often. I've found that if I write a little, it leads to most posts. :)

So...Photo Flashback time! I've only had a digital camera for about 5 years and don't yet have a scanner, so I'm currently limited to what I can post, but since I take pictures ALL of the time, I have a number of photos that I can post. So here's number one!

This is from a trip that a group of us took over Thanksgiving 2004. We spent 5 days in Amsterdam, eating pancakes, drinking Heineken, and walking around the city. This photo is from a moment when I was waiting for some friends in the square that was close to home--The Leidseplein. It was nearing Christmas so the lights were up in the trees and there was a list snow/rain falling. It was a nice, quiet moment, just sitting and enjoying the square.

Thursday Dinner

So I’m back on the cooking kick again. I spent a good amount of time earlier this week looking through cookbooks, trying to pick out healthy recipes to try out. After making a (huge) list, I went to the grocery store yesterday and bought all of the ingredients. And…only bought 3 things not on my list!! (pretty good for me, actually. Too bad one of the items was chocolate ice cream pops…)

Last night I made a recipe from my sister, cheesy chicken crescents. No pictures of that one (I forgot) but it turned out pretty well. It’s basically chicken, cheese, and onions rolled into crescent rolls and then covered in a sauce made of cream of chicken soup, milk, and cheese.

Easy peasy!

Tonight was white chicken chili from the Betty Crocker cookbook (page 543). It takes 5 hours in the crock pot and was really easy to put together. I’m not totally sure about whether it’s a repeat or not, but it’s healthy (about 400 calories a serving) and with cheese, it's not bad. Everything's better with cheese.

More dinners to come!!