Well, I did it. Everything I set out to do to be clean and careful on Turkey Day worked out. I ran 5 miles on my treadmill this morning and after eating an apple, walked into Thanksgiving with a 500 calorie deficit. That helps! I ate my two crackers of crab dip and did all the things at dinner I said I would. My dessert cookies turned out to be delicious.
My sister hosted T-giving and was gracious about the fact that I BYOB (brought my own slice of whole grain bread). Also, my dessert cookies were determined to be good tasting by not just me but my husband, mom, sister and niece. And so, I survived! And it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. It really, REALLY helped to have a plan in place beforehand. I'm not sure if I would've walked in with no plan that I would have made such good decisions. I would've been overwhelmed with the smells and feelings of holiday celebration. Crisis averted!
So, now, about these dessert cookies. The recipe comes from the November 2010 issue of Oxygen magazine:
Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 20 cookies (not 24 like the recipe says)
1 cup unsalted almond butter, stirred well (I couldn't find unsalted almond butter so I went to the health food store and churned some up in their machine, actually I sent my husband to do it which could be a blog post in itself)
3/4 cup Sucanat (a derivate of sugar, it stands for sugar cane natural, grainy texture by itself but great for cooking)
1 large egg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
3 oz. dark chocolate (70% cocoa or greater), broken into small pieces
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together first five ingredients until blended. Stir in chocolate. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto parchment lined baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.
* I should note the cookies will be extremely soft and mooshy at this point. They harden up once they cool, so it doesn't mean they are not done if they are squishy.
Let cool on baking sheets for five minutes (10 is better). Remove to a wire rack and let cool for 15 more minutes.
110 calories, 8 g fat, 1.5 g sat fat, 10 g carbs, 1 g fiber, 3 g sugar, 2 g protein, 55 mg sodium, 10 mg cholesterol
What makes these cookies good is that they are clean. There is not one ingredient that will spike your blood sugar out of control and they are filling because they have protein in them. Also they are gluten free for those of you who are sensitive.
The magazine makes a special note to say researchers have found that the dark chocolate's antioxidants may bind with the protein in milk, so think twice about drinking milk while eating dark chocolate if you are eating it for the antioxidant benefits.
They taste enough like a "real" chocolate chip cookie to pass as a dessert you could share with others. My family seemed to enjoy them and noticed that they were very filling for a dessert item.
I would definitely make these again.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Doppelganger Drama and Stuffing Myself Like a Turkey
So, about the time I embraced my Facebook account, it was "Doppelganger Week". I didn't know what a doppelganger was and I sure as heck wasn't sure why all my friends suddenly greatly resembled celebrities in their profile pictures. Figured it out. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out who my celebrity doppelganger might be. I do know that I apparently have a doppelganger that lives in Salem because for years I have been mistaken for this alleged girl...I wonder if I met her if I would think we looked alike. To others, we look identical.
Anywho, this week my husband and I were watching "Rules of Engagement". And my husband blurts out that he is looking at my doppelganger - the wifey one, Megyn Price. The one from Grounded for Life. I had to take my hand and fish my jaw up off the floor. HER?! Seriously?!? WHY?!? I don't think much of her (maybe because she's me?) and was even more shocked that I just don't see it at all. Before copping a serious girl-itude I decided to sit with the information for a bit...and while I was sitting I frantically Googled her. Whenever she comes up the words "smart" and "hot" follow quite often, okay, my feelings are becoming a little more lukewarm to the idea. My mind is churning and I admit to myself, I have a tendency to not see myself clearly. EVER. I either think I am way better, but usually way worse than I currently am but rarely am I dead on. The only thing that really sets me straight for a brief time are photographs/videos and comments made by my husband. He knows me better than anybody, he knows my personality, feelings and struggles and he's very honest with the best of intentions and doesn't let the fact that sometimes I freak out at the comments sway him in his honesty. I appreciate that. So, I take it in. Megyn Price. My Doppelganger. Shocking but I'm trying to make peace with it until...he then says "well, she's a bigger gal and so are you". Sorry, girl-itude took over at this moment before rationalization could. I believe I started to foam at the mouth while my eyes became as big as saucers and my head started to rotate around on it's axis. "WHAT. DOES. THAT. MEAN"??? What he meant was that I'm not a 4'8" waif but a 5'7" fit girl. But I was already in full-on doghouse-flipout mode and there was no going back. That killed an hour in the name of proper self-perspective. Ah the joys of being an estrogen driven super freak. I need to work on seeing myself a little more realistically and also not turning into said estrogen-super-freak every time a comment about my physical being is on the table and being horrifically misconstrued by me and my warped perspective. Yikes.
Now to the real task at hand - preparing for Thanksgiving. Here's the deal. On a typical Thanksgiving I would eat a family's worth of servings of my sister's amazing crab dip on buttery Ritz crackers as an appetizer. Then, although I'm really too full to then have a Thanksgiving dinner, I would then proceed with modest amounts of turkey, larger amounts of mashed potatoes, yams, rolls & jelly and whatever else wandered onto the table. And don't forget dessert. A very healthy serving of dessert. Stuffed like the turkey on the table. And if I was currently on a too-restrictive diet at the time, then much, much more of the above food in the name of a cheat day. I'm sick just thinking about being that full. So full it hurts to move.
So, all my posts regarding clean eating and leaning out by all means do not mesh with the above scenario. Thanksgiving is not my privelege to cook this year, but even if it was I wouldn't subject my poor family to turkey, plain sweet potatoes, lots of vegetables, and perhaps a clean dessert of some kind if you could call it dessert. As much as I want to live my edible life a certain way, I certainly don't get preachy with others about it. To each his own, ya know? My problem is how to take care of myself on this food focused day. I'm thinking it through, making a plan and whatever I decide I'm making a promise to myself to stick to it in the name of my goals.
Turkey is fine. No skin, I don't like gravy anyway and I prefer white meat. Nada problem. Mashed potatoes are out. That's one of my favorites. It's going to smart a little. Candied sweet potatoes are coming to the party. I could eat a potato as plain as possible and try to avoid the candied part. That's going to smart a lot. Scrape the yummy stuff off so I can eat the plain tasteless part? Awesome. Stuffing, don't care for it, thank goodness, a gimme. Rolls and my sister's homemade jelly. I won't do it. Because even the wheat muffins are white bread in a tan disguise. Hmph. I'm tempted to bring a piece of my own whole grain bread just to have a sampling of the homemade jelly. I might budge on that one as long as I bring the bread. Crab dip. What the heck am I gonna do about that blasted crab dip?! I eat it twice a year. Thanksgiving and Christmas. I feel physical pain when I imagine not having any crab dip. So, I'll compromise. I'm bringing reduced fat Ritz crackers (unclean, but with the dip it makes the "perfect bite" and if I'm going to do it, let's do it right). I will have two. One for fun and one to bank in the memory. And no, the crackers will not be piled to the ceiling. Lastly, dessert. Nothing on the dessert list is even remotely clean. But as I sit here and think about it, nothing on the dessert list is something that I will feel really disappointed if I can't have. That's interesting, because I always would eat dessert and usually a lot of it. And yet it's not that high on my priority list. I probably will want to have something and I don't want to look exclusive of the group by not partaking. My solution is to bring a clean dessert to contribute and then just eat that. I've decided to try a clean cookie recipe: "Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies". Clean and easy to control the calories and nutrients. Plus, since it's not a pie, it doesn't compete with the other desserts and could easily be sampled by others if preferred or just skulk away in a Ziploc into the night.
So, I feel good about this plan. The important thing is to stick to it. I will get to have a couple of unclean treats, food I truly look forward to. I will eat clean otherwise and just not waste my appetite on food that really doesn't matter that much to me. I work way too hard busting my tail in the gym to just throw it all away on food that doesn't matter. This is a huge step in the right direction for me and I'm determined to stick to it.
Wish me luck...
Anywho, this week my husband and I were watching "Rules of Engagement". And my husband blurts out that he is looking at my doppelganger - the wifey one, Megyn Price. The one from Grounded for Life. I had to take my hand and fish my jaw up off the floor. HER?! Seriously?!? WHY?!? I don't think much of her (maybe because she's me?) and was even more shocked that I just don't see it at all. Before copping a serious girl-itude I decided to sit with the information for a bit...and while I was sitting I frantically Googled her. Whenever she comes up the words "smart" and "hot" follow quite often, okay, my feelings are becoming a little more lukewarm to the idea. My mind is churning and I admit to myself, I have a tendency to not see myself clearly. EVER. I either think I am way better, but usually way worse than I currently am but rarely am I dead on. The only thing that really sets me straight for a brief time are photographs/videos and comments made by my husband. He knows me better than anybody, he knows my personality, feelings and struggles and he's very honest with the best of intentions and doesn't let the fact that sometimes I freak out at the comments sway him in his honesty. I appreciate that. So, I take it in. Megyn Price. My Doppelganger. Shocking but I'm trying to make peace with it until...he then says "well, she's a bigger gal and so are you". Sorry, girl-itude took over at this moment before rationalization could. I believe I started to foam at the mouth while my eyes became as big as saucers and my head started to rotate around on it's axis. "WHAT. DOES. THAT. MEAN"??? What he meant was that I'm not a 4'8" waif but a 5'7" fit girl. But I was already in full-on doghouse-flipout mode and there was no going back. That killed an hour in the name of proper self-perspective. Ah the joys of being an estrogen driven super freak. I need to work on seeing myself a little more realistically and also not turning into said estrogen-super-freak every time a comment about my physical being is on the table and being horrifically misconstrued by me and my warped perspective. Yikes.
Now to the real task at hand - preparing for Thanksgiving. Here's the deal. On a typical Thanksgiving I would eat a family's worth of servings of my sister's amazing crab dip on buttery Ritz crackers as an appetizer. Then, although I'm really too full to then have a Thanksgiving dinner, I would then proceed with modest amounts of turkey, larger amounts of mashed potatoes, yams, rolls & jelly and whatever else wandered onto the table. And don't forget dessert. A very healthy serving of dessert. Stuffed like the turkey on the table. And if I was currently on a too-restrictive diet at the time, then much, much more of the above food in the name of a cheat day. I'm sick just thinking about being that full. So full it hurts to move.
So, all my posts regarding clean eating and leaning out by all means do not mesh with the above scenario. Thanksgiving is not my privelege to cook this year, but even if it was I wouldn't subject my poor family to turkey, plain sweet potatoes, lots of vegetables, and perhaps a clean dessert of some kind if you could call it dessert. As much as I want to live my edible life a certain way, I certainly don't get preachy with others about it. To each his own, ya know? My problem is how to take care of myself on this food focused day. I'm thinking it through, making a plan and whatever I decide I'm making a promise to myself to stick to it in the name of my goals.
Turkey is fine. No skin, I don't like gravy anyway and I prefer white meat. Nada problem. Mashed potatoes are out. That's one of my favorites. It's going to smart a little. Candied sweet potatoes are coming to the party. I could eat a potato as plain as possible and try to avoid the candied part. That's going to smart a lot. Scrape the yummy stuff off so I can eat the plain tasteless part? Awesome. Stuffing, don't care for it, thank goodness, a gimme. Rolls and my sister's homemade jelly. I won't do it. Because even the wheat muffins are white bread in a tan disguise. Hmph. I'm tempted to bring a piece of my own whole grain bread just to have a sampling of the homemade jelly. I might budge on that one as long as I bring the bread. Crab dip. What the heck am I gonna do about that blasted crab dip?! I eat it twice a year. Thanksgiving and Christmas. I feel physical pain when I imagine not having any crab dip. So, I'll compromise. I'm bringing reduced fat Ritz crackers (unclean, but with the dip it makes the "perfect bite" and if I'm going to do it, let's do it right). I will have two. One for fun and one to bank in the memory. And no, the crackers will not be piled to the ceiling. Lastly, dessert. Nothing on the dessert list is even remotely clean. But as I sit here and think about it, nothing on the dessert list is something that I will feel really disappointed if I can't have. That's interesting, because I always would eat dessert and usually a lot of it. And yet it's not that high on my priority list. I probably will want to have something and I don't want to look exclusive of the group by not partaking. My solution is to bring a clean dessert to contribute and then just eat that. I've decided to try a clean cookie recipe: "Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies". Clean and easy to control the calories and nutrients. Plus, since it's not a pie, it doesn't compete with the other desserts and could easily be sampled by others if preferred or just skulk away in a Ziploc into the night.
So, I feel good about this plan. The important thing is to stick to it. I will get to have a couple of unclean treats, food I truly look forward to. I will eat clean otherwise and just not waste my appetite on food that really doesn't matter that much to me. I work way too hard busting my tail in the gym to just throw it all away on food that doesn't matter. This is a huge step in the right direction for me and I'm determined to stick to it.
Wish me luck...
Saturday, November 13, 2010
An Apology and a Fresh Start
Well, I've done exactly the thing I hate about the blogs I've been excited about. They just stop. They get this momentum happening that is exciting and fun and I tune in each week to catch up on the latest and bam. Nothing. Cyber-abandonment. It's irritating and I've gone and done it to you.
All I can say is I'm sorry and I won't do it again. I'm going to find regular, reoccurring time to carve into my busy life that makes my blog a part of it. Because I love my blog. It's therapeutic and helps me get back to the task at hand. And I appreciate the feedback my readers have given me thus far. I know to varying degrees, we are all in this together. There are parts of a woman's cuh-razy mind that are universal.
So, let me give you the catch-up: I stopped the Courthouse Nutrition Plan. It was nothing personal. Financially, I needed to cut the $50 a month. But it wasn't exactly a hard breakup. After six weeks my weight was virtually the same and although it looked like my body fat percentage was starting to decrease, I just felt like my caloric intake was still up in the air and that at times, my NT was as baffled by me as I was with myself. Lots of people exercise a lot. Lots of people try to lose weight. They see this more than anyone else I know. So why were my calorie needs a mystery? I've met some other people at the gym that have had really great results and others who are in my boat. I guess it is just like anything else - if it works for you, it's golden. If it doesn't, there IS something out there that will. Ya just need to find it.
I did learn from it that I need to consume more calories. Especially if I want to run half marathons and take vigorous classes and weight lift and do all the things I wanna do physically. No 1200 calories plans for this girl.
So, my search continues. In the process I've found a few things that are helpful.
1. I went on vacation and literally all bets were off. No structured workouts - instead I swam in a resorty swimming pool and walked beaches. It was lovely. My eating went from clean to very, very dusty to extremely filthy. It tasted great but for the first time, I felt icky from it. And the changes that type of eating makes to my body are almost immediately noticeable and I felt icky about that too. For once, it wasn't worth it to eat whatever my heart desired. Hmm. Interesting. The quote "it doesn't taste as good as being fit feels" rang true for the first time.
2. My interest in weightlifting and now leaning down with diet inevitably lead me to the website bodybuilding.com I feel that this website is brimming with my peeps and their generous offerings of experience and advice. It's nice to have a forum of people that subscribe to the same set of guidelines I am applying to myself to achieve the same general form of physique. A bodybuilder's lifestyle I have apparently gravitated toward and am comfortable living. Who the heck knew.
On this site is an area called "Bodyspace". Kind of a MySpace for fitness types. I ran across a profile called "chickentuna". This gal has an awful lot of people who are inspired by her and the name is actually what led me to check her out. I instantly thought of Jessica Simpson and her "Chicken of the Sea" debacle. But this lady named herself this because she eats super clean and people razz her all the time for eating tuna and chicken a lot. Her website is currently my motivation. I don't want to be as extremely lean as her. I actually am shooting for a lean physique but with a layer of softness still on it. But what motivates me is she speaks the cold, hard, ugly truth: If you eat crap, your body will look like crap. It's true and the closer I get to being lean, the more I realize how much it's true. It's disappointing as all get out, but true nonetheless. People who say it's just calories in and calories out and it doesn't matter what the calories are composed of are dead wrong. Try it, you'll see. Anyway, I find that all I have to do is say to myself "chickentuna" and I've got some much-needed motivation in times of trial (which are often these days).
3. Jamie Eason. God Bless Jamie Eason. She's a hot chick with a bodybuilder lifestyle and she offers up all kinds of advice for living the life. Her recipes and tips are saving me. And because she walks around looking like my idea of physique perfection all days of the year, I trust what she says much more than someone who looks nothing like "goal" but claims to know what they are talking about. I just read an interview with her recently and uncovered another ugly truth: she states that to really get that impeccable, lean body, you really can't schedule in "cheat meals/treats". It needs to be pretty much never that you indulge. I needed to hear that because unfortunately I am one of those people that suffers from every cheat meal/treat I eat. I just don't have the bodily resiliency to have it not metabolize into a big old mess onto all of my hard work. It's also a huge letdown of truth, but I needed to have it spelled out for me. That is not to say I will never eat crap food ever again, but I can't sit here and complain about lack of results if I'm eating whatever I want 2 out of 7 days each week. The silver lining is the more I eat clean, the more I truly enjoy some of these clean foods and it actually isn't grueling to eat like this anymore. I think the key is to just keep consistently doing it and it becomes your "new normal". The reset button we try to do with crash dieting but don't do it right or give it enough time to stick.
Anyway, officially today I'm back on track. As I tell my husband "it's me and chickentuna against the world". Maybe not, but it sure sounds good. :)
All I can say is I'm sorry and I won't do it again. I'm going to find regular, reoccurring time to carve into my busy life that makes my blog a part of it. Because I love my blog. It's therapeutic and helps me get back to the task at hand. And I appreciate the feedback my readers have given me thus far. I know to varying degrees, we are all in this together. There are parts of a woman's cuh-razy mind that are universal.
So, let me give you the catch-up: I stopped the Courthouse Nutrition Plan. It was nothing personal. Financially, I needed to cut the $50 a month. But it wasn't exactly a hard breakup. After six weeks my weight was virtually the same and although it looked like my body fat percentage was starting to decrease, I just felt like my caloric intake was still up in the air and that at times, my NT was as baffled by me as I was with myself. Lots of people exercise a lot. Lots of people try to lose weight. They see this more than anyone else I know. So why were my calorie needs a mystery? I've met some other people at the gym that have had really great results and others who are in my boat. I guess it is just like anything else - if it works for you, it's golden. If it doesn't, there IS something out there that will. Ya just need to find it.
I did learn from it that I need to consume more calories. Especially if I want to run half marathons and take vigorous classes and weight lift and do all the things I wanna do physically. No 1200 calories plans for this girl.
So, my search continues. In the process I've found a few things that are helpful.
1. I went on vacation and literally all bets were off. No structured workouts - instead I swam in a resorty swimming pool and walked beaches. It was lovely. My eating went from clean to very, very dusty to extremely filthy. It tasted great but for the first time, I felt icky from it. And the changes that type of eating makes to my body are almost immediately noticeable and I felt icky about that too. For once, it wasn't worth it to eat whatever my heart desired. Hmm. Interesting. The quote "it doesn't taste as good as being fit feels" rang true for the first time.
2. My interest in weightlifting and now leaning down with diet inevitably lead me to the website bodybuilding.com I feel that this website is brimming with my peeps and their generous offerings of experience and advice. It's nice to have a forum of people that subscribe to the same set of guidelines I am applying to myself to achieve the same general form of physique. A bodybuilder's lifestyle I have apparently gravitated toward and am comfortable living. Who the heck knew.
On this site is an area called "Bodyspace". Kind of a MySpace for fitness types. I ran across a profile called "chickentuna". This gal has an awful lot of people who are inspired by her and the name is actually what led me to check her out. I instantly thought of Jessica Simpson and her "Chicken of the Sea" debacle. But this lady named herself this because she eats super clean and people razz her all the time for eating tuna and chicken a lot. Her website is currently my motivation. I don't want to be as extremely lean as her. I actually am shooting for a lean physique but with a layer of softness still on it. But what motivates me is she speaks the cold, hard, ugly truth: If you eat crap, your body will look like crap. It's true and the closer I get to being lean, the more I realize how much it's true. It's disappointing as all get out, but true nonetheless. People who say it's just calories in and calories out and it doesn't matter what the calories are composed of are dead wrong. Try it, you'll see. Anyway, I find that all I have to do is say to myself "chickentuna" and I've got some much-needed motivation in times of trial (which are often these days).
3. Jamie Eason. God Bless Jamie Eason. She's a hot chick with a bodybuilder lifestyle and she offers up all kinds of advice for living the life. Her recipes and tips are saving me. And because she walks around looking like my idea of physique perfection all days of the year, I trust what she says much more than someone who looks nothing like "goal" but claims to know what they are talking about. I just read an interview with her recently and uncovered another ugly truth: she states that to really get that impeccable, lean body, you really can't schedule in "cheat meals/treats". It needs to be pretty much never that you indulge. I needed to hear that because unfortunately I am one of those people that suffers from every cheat meal/treat I eat. I just don't have the bodily resiliency to have it not metabolize into a big old mess onto all of my hard work. It's also a huge letdown of truth, but I needed to have it spelled out for me. That is not to say I will never eat crap food ever again, but I can't sit here and complain about lack of results if I'm eating whatever I want 2 out of 7 days each week. The silver lining is the more I eat clean, the more I truly enjoy some of these clean foods and it actually isn't grueling to eat like this anymore. I think the key is to just keep consistently doing it and it becomes your "new normal". The reset button we try to do with crash dieting but don't do it right or give it enough time to stick.
Anyway, officially today I'm back on track. As I tell my husband "it's me and chickentuna against the world". Maybe not, but it sure sounds good. :)
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