Month: February 2013 (Page 2 of 2)

I didn’t quite stick with my menu today, because I got busy and forgot to have my morning snack. You see, we had to finish dipping the candy that we hadn’t dipped yesterday because we ran out of chocolate. By the time we were done with that, it was time for my 10:30 class and then it was almost 11:00 and I eat lunch at 11:30 or so. So I had the morning snack in the afternoon, after I went skiing for half an hour. So then I had my afternoon snack in the evening. Anyway, here was what I ate today:

Breakfast: oatmeal with walnuts, soy milk, cutie

Lunch: tuna salad on home made bread; tomato soup

Snack: Slimfast; small banana

Supper: left over chili; left over cauliflower; bread; soy milk

Snack: pudding

I also had another small piece of bread some time in there, which wasn’t planned, but I was feeling munchy and, at least, it wasn’t sugar. By the way, I drink Slimfast, not because of its role as a diet drink, but because it is a quick source of protein after a hard workout, plus I absolutely love the texture – kind of like egg nog, but cappuccino flavored. And what sugar it has is balanced by a lot of protein, so it doesn’t set me off on a sugar binge.

Here is some information that should be useful to everyone. Did you know what some expert out there considers the 20 healthiest foods? I don’t think they are necessarily in order of importance.

1. Broccoli

2. Eggs

3. Kale

4. Salmon

5. Carrots

6. Berries (any kind)

7. Tomatoes

8. Walnuts

9. Lentils

10. Bananas

11. Almonds

12. Avocados

13. Quinoa

14. Extra virgin olive oil

15. Green tea

16. Oats

17. Black beans

18. Sweet potatoes (better for you if eaten with olive oil, for some reason)

19. Grass-fed beef

20. nonfat yogurt (I assume this includes Greek yogurt, which is higher in protein.)

So, how many of these do you consume on a regular basis? Maybe make it your goal to consume more of one of them each month, unless, of course, you really don’t like it, or it is too expensive. For instance, I like avocados, but I seldom buy them, because they are expensive and I’ve ended up with some that turned out to be bad when I cut into them, and that is a huge waste of money. Grass-fed beef also tends to be expensive if you eat a lot of beef.  It couldn’t hurt to teach the kids to love these healthy foods, either!

Very good day, today. I got all my exercise bouts in and stuck to my menus. I played for a funeral at 10:00, then went back to work and had a cooking lab in the afternoon where we made mashed potato candy. I didn’t try any, but I brought some home for Dad and he said they were very good!

This was the menu today. Another tasty day:

Breakfast: oatmeal with molasses; V8, soy milk

Snack: banana

Lunch: romaine with dressing and dry roasted edamame; egg and 2 egg whites, fried in olive oil, canned peaches (a lot like yesterday, I know..)

Snack: bread with almond butter; orange fizzle

Supper: chili over just a little mashed potatoes; cauliflower; bread; diet ginger ale (I substituted the potatoes for the soy milk I was supposed to have – I wasn’t going to have potatoes, since I was having home-made bread, but they looked so good… and they were.)

My snack tonight is oatmeal again. I have to choose between banana bread, cinnamon, and maple and brown sugar. Hmmmm….

It helps me to write this report at the end of the day. It confirms my resolve to have a good evening. So, if you get bored with them, skip them. I won’t sneak anything really important at the end!

In case anyone is wondering, we ended up getting probably 3 inches of snow. We also got some rain first, so the snow was on top of a layer of what turned into hard icy slushy stuff. It isn’t really slippery, but it doesn’t come off the sidewalk, either. I guess we have to wait for a sunny day to work on that. I suppose I could salt it, but it hardly seems necessary, since it isn’t really slippery.

Still haven’t even been tempted to have any sugar, even though my receptionist made home-made donut holes over the weekend and they looked and were (people said) very delicious. But I just knew that I couldn’t have them, so I didn’t even want them. You wouldn’t think three or four days would make such a difference, but I can really see in the way I look that I’m off sugar again. My face looks healthy again – much less bloated-looking and a healthy color.  I don’t notice the changes right away when I go back to eating sugar, but it doesn’t take long to notice the changes once I stop eating it.

Sweet potatoes baking in the oven for supper. Can’t wait!

I thought I’d just give a run down of my menu, in case any of you are thinking of making menus. To me, this is a really yummy day.

Breakfast: oatmeal with a few golden raisins and walnuts thrown in; a cutie

Snack: SlimFast (cappucino – my favorite!)

Lunch: romaine with dry roasted edamame and dressing; 1 egg and 2 egg whites with chunks of bread, fried in a little olive oil (I call this Eggs Plus), a serving of canned peaches in juice.

Snack: banana; orange fizzle-wizzle

Supper: pulled pork on a diet bun; sweet potato; soy milk

Snack: sugar free pudding

Just for the record, that is about 6 1/2  servings of fruits and vegetables

So far, so good. I decided to give up sugar starting Friday, but I didn’t plan to really curtail my eating until Monday. So I had a bit too many pieces of home-made whole grain, no sugar added bread yesterday. But, despite that, my weight didn’t go up. But yesterday I also updated four more weeks of menus, including all my favorite dinners, and alternating amongst several different lunches, but having the same basic breakfast – oatmeal and fruit. So I was excited to start on them today. It is almost bedtime and I’ve stayed on the menu perfectly today. We had barbequed pulled pork on a diet bun for supper and looked forward to that all afternoon as it was roasting and we were inside working on taxes. Dad was ready to eat it about 4:00, but I made him (and myself) wait until at least 5:00. It tasted every bit as good as it smelled.

Something funny and totally off the subject. I’ve been reading a book entitled Coop (as in chicken coop not co-op), by Michael Perry, that author from New Auburn. It is a stitch, if you get a chance to read it. But he was telling about his daughter who is about 7 years old and being homeschooled. She has exactly the same problem you guys did with “Is that a city, a state, or a country?” He relates one whole conversation in a very cute and amusing way, but it sounds EXACTLY like conversations we had many times in the car. It must be a homeschooling problem! Be forewarned, Amy!

Why is it that when they predict a big snow storm, we are disappointed if we don’t get it? I mean, we get all excited and then feel let down if we are spared the awful weather and all that shoveling and such. Must be part of being a Wisconsinite. At any rate, they were saying 8 inches between tomorrow morning and Monday morning and Dad said he just heard only 2 inches.   So, we sit and wait. I can’t imagine we would have enough to call off church, since it isn’t supposed to start until almost morning. After I get home from that, I have no worries, since I walk to work. I might add that, after a fairly low-snow start to the winter, things have picked up and we’ve been getting some snow every day or two, which will help the moisture situation a lot.

I’m sitting here at the computer as I make two sided copies of arrangements for choir tomorrow at church. Because it is inkjet, I have to wait for every single one to dry before it can do the second side, so it is a time-consuming process to do 16 copies of three songs. But I really haven’t anything all that important to do tonight. Dad is at the youth center. He just sent a gal over for an egg and 1/2 stick of butter so they can make cookies.

Hope all is well where you are!

I’ve known for some time that I can’t eat sugar. I’m addicted to it, plain and simple. But do I stop eating it? No. Well, maybe for a while. But then I start letting a little in here and there and pretty soon I’m back to where I was before. And, unbelievable as it may sound, wondering why I can’t lose weight. I feel like such an idiot. But then I remember that these behaviors are all the characteristics of an addiction.

I’ve just gone through a couple of weeks where I felt so listless and unmotivated and almost depressed. Every day I would try to do better, but never did. My weight loss from last month is almost obliterated. I thought it would help to write down the sugar I ate, as though seeing it would help me stop. But nothing, and I mean nothing, will make me stop once I start.

So, here I am again, promising myself that I will not eat sugar again. I will not put a molecule of table sugar in my mouth. And I’m believing myself, sort of. But then there is that little voice that is saying, mockingly, “Yeah. Been there, done that.”

Please pray for me. I’m so frustrated that this is so hard for me. I’ve been struggling with it for years and never coming out on top for long. I have all the head knowledge I need (and then some.) And I also have a real desire to help other people with weight problems, but I need to get victory over this myself first.

Okay? Okay. Now I’ll go back to being “Mom, who has everything under control.” 🙂

I’m sitting here waiting for a piano student to arrive. Just the one this evening. We had a beautiful snow during the day today. It started around noon and we got at least 3 inches before it stopped mid afternoon. I broke out my skiis and went for a ski around the snow-covered lake. It was still really gloomy and with all that new snow, it was almost impossible to see a path to follow. But I had fun enjoying the new snow and getting some exercise, rather than sitting around inside eating, as has been my behavior lately.

Well, here it is February. I always think of February, not January, as the coldest month because years ago Dad would go to men’s retreat in the middle of February and that was often a 35 below zero weekend that all us wives had to deal with on our own. But, no matter what February throws at us, it is followed by March and then April and then can enjoy another warm season. Come Monday, April 15 will be only 70 days ago. It seems like the 30 days since we had 100 days left have gone quickly.

Tomorrow is high school honors choir audition day in Eau Claire. I have 4 kids to play for, but they are all in the early afternoon. I also have a funeral to play for at 11:00, so it will be a rather busy day. Sunday, of course, is Superbowl, so I have the Superbowl party at work at 5:00.