Days 57 - 60 (Week 4 Thursday and Friday)

Monday Morning Weigh In:
I lost 3 pounds this week!  I can't believe it.  I've lost 11 pounds in 8 weeks and now I'm only 2.5 pounds away from my goal weight!  I'm really happy with the way I've been losing weight.  Not a lot at one time and I really don't feel like I'm on a diet.  I cheat.  I eat twix bars.  I substitute out things I don't like for things that sound better.  I drink.  But I do everything a lot less than when I wasn't "eating clean."  It feels great to have made this progress.  In fact, today a male friend of mine asked me if I lost weight.  I didn't think my weight loss was noticeable and I really enjoyed getting that compliment from my friend.  

***Now since it's been so many days since I've blogged, I can add that three separate friends have come up to me to tell me it looks like I lost weight.  Feels great to know that my hard work has been noticed.  Thanks friends!

DAY 57

I did not follow a meal plan today.  


For breakfast, I had my "go to" breakfast.  Whole wheat english muffin with peanut butter and bananas.  And I look lots of pretty pictures for your enjoyment.  

Also, MJ made a smoothie for breakfast, so I drank about 1 sip.

For snack 1, I had my "go to" snack.  A slice of whole wheat bread with almond butter.

My new best friend, Mr. Almond Butter

Folded up, ready to go!

I had another snack later, because they were giving out free FREE free chocolate pudding at work.  I looked at the label and recognized everything, so pudding I did eat.


For lunch I had leftovers from when we went out to dinner the night before.  Essentially, I had some rice and veggies left over, so I added my own cooked grilled chicken to make it a meal.  Yum!

For snack 2, I ate some grapes.  No picture, but they were green.


Dinner
Tonight for dinner I decided to make pizza!  I wanted to reward myself with some food that I love and show that anything can be healthier and still taste good!


I open up my good ol' clean eating cookbook and find pizza in the index.  SHOCKINGLY the page numbers are wrong.  Seriously???  Where are the editors to check for these things?!  I flip through until I find the pages and essentially find out that if I don't feel like cooking my own dough (which I certainly do not want to do) then it's just a matter of finding pre-made whole wheat dough and putting whatever topics I like on it.  The cookbook also comes with a website for more pizza ideas.  I'm excited and check out the website they've given me.  And, the link doesn't work.  You go ahead and try it and tell me - www.cleaneatingmag.com/pizzacombos.  No go.  @#%$!$.  Seriously?  Seriously.  Edit this sh!t.  You are editors, after all.  


Apparently my grocery store doesn't have any whole wheat pizza dough.  We compared calories for our other options and picked the next best thing, and then bought a can of diced tomatoes (better than a jar of sauce), mushrooms and peppers for topping, part-skim mozzarella cheese and lots of spices.   Delicious!

Also I had a glass of wine.  Red wine.  

DAY 58

My goal today was to do a meal from week 4 meal plan.  I even went to the grocery store to buy everything last night.  But I woke up late and had 20 minutes to get dressed and get out the door, so if it wasn't already wrapped (i.e. bananas and granola bars) it wasn't coming with me. 

I started my day with a banana and a very large coffee.  My first snack was a Health Valley Double Chococlate Chip Granola Bar.  It was pretty good for a healthy granola bar. 


Lunch

As I said before, I didn't have time to pack a lunch.  I ventured into Mexican place by my office.  But remember, I vowed never to eat a ridiculous taco again. I saw that they had a special "tofu fajita."  Call me crazy, but I tried it.  Crazy!  Essentially they were 2 small tortillas with grilled onions, peppers, tofu and some cheese.  They were..... eh. ok.  Just ok.  I would never order them again but I didn't keel over and die.

When I got home I found out that those muffins I made went bad.  Guess failed didn't pass my "last a long time" test.   

My sister in law, Bethany, had been telling me about these things called VitaMuffins, so I finally looked for them in the grocery store.  I could read all the ingredients so I bought a box of VitaMuffin Deep Chocolate Muffin Tops.  I opened up the box and threw one in the microwave for a few seconds.  It was pure deliciousness.  Enough so that I made Michael Jordan try one when he got home.  Okay half of one - I ate the other half.  With a big glass of skim milk.  Delicious Delicious Delicious!!!

Dinner

For dinner I made another salad - spinach, grilled chicken, pistachios, craisins, blueberries, blue cheese, raspberry walnut dressing.  Yum! 

DAY 59 (Week 4, Thursday/Friday)

Today I really did make an attempt to follow the meal plan.  After all, I'm so close to finishing and bought all the foods to Thursday and Friday!  But, I accidentally switched what I was doing half way though the day, so I created a little Thursday/Friday mutant baby.  Oh well.

Breakfast: 1 hardboiled egg; 1 apple, 1 slice whole-grain bread, 2 tbls natural almond butter (Friday)

I liked having so many things for breakfast.  I ate the egg at home and then spaced out the rest of the breakfast during the morning.  I prefer snacking to having a large meal.

Snack 1: make ahead watermelon freeze (purée 2 cups watermelon chunks with 1/2 tsp fresh lime juice; freeze in a small cup with stick to make freeze pop); 1 cup low fat milk (Thursday)

This sounded way too complicated for a morning snack, and I wasn't about to try to bring a frozen watermelon freeze pop to work.  So I just ate watermelon.  Just plain old water melon.  No need to complicate things.  Skipped the milk.  I don't bring milk to work.

Lunch: 3 oz grilled chicken, 1/2 cup spinach, 1/4 cup each green and red bell pepper, 1 tbsp red wine vinegar, 1/2 tsp fresh ground blakc pepper on 1 whole wheat tortilla; 1 cup low-fat milk (Friday)

I simplified this lunch: threw some chicken, cut up peppers, and lettuce onto a wrap and sprinkled some red wine vinegar on it.  Wrapped it in some tin foil and threw it in my bag.  Super fast because we had left over peppers cut up from our pizza the night before.  This didn't taste like anything really.  Just a different way to eat a boring salad.  Skipped the milk.  I don't bring milk to work.  Still.

Snack 2: 1 cup blackberries, 2 oz goat cheese, 4 multigrain flaxseed crackers (Thursday)

I obviously replaced the blackberries with blueberries.  For the goat cheese and crackers, I bought this flavored goat cheese (olive and... something) that was low cal and spread it one some crackers.  Didn't really love it.  Ok didn't really like it, but I survived the 4 crackers.  I'll probably let that one expire... quickly


Dinner: Meh (Neither)
 
My dinner plans were spoiled because I got held up at work.  While I was stuck at work, I had an apple and another health valley granola bar.  

When I finally got home I was exhausted and decided I was only patient enough to make some eggs.  I whipped up some eggwhites with mushrooms, orange peppers and part-skim mozzarella cheese.  

Then I passed out from exhaustion.

 

DAY 60 (Week 4, Thursday/Friday)

I was a little discouraged today because most of the things I needed to complete the Thursday/Friday mutant child day are gone now.  I made do with what I had and ad-libbed the rest. 

Breakfast was supposed to be: 1 banana with 1.5 tablespoons natural almond butter; 4 hardboiled egg whites (Thursday)


This breakfast failed because we had no bananas or hardboiled eggs left.  I made a "go to" almond butter bread slice and called it a day.

I think we've seen this before...

Snack 1 was supposed to be: 1 pear, 1 oz goat cheese (Friday)
 
This snack failed because I didn't have a pear and didn't want to eat goat cheese without crackers.  So I replaced the pear with an apple and ate a mini twix bar.  A mini one I swear!!

Lunch: 2 cups torn Boston lettuce, 3 ox tuna, 1/4 cup each chopped carrots, celery, cucumber, scallions and basil with 2 tbsp red wine vinegar and 1 tsp evoo; 1/2 cup brown basmati rice

This lunch failed because I didn't have time to make rice.  I ate the rest of it, and it was horrible.  Just tasted like soggy red wine vinegar leaves.  Horrible.  I ate some of the tuna threw it out.  

I had a few cubes of cheese and crackers instead.  And 2 mini milky way bars.  Mini ones, I promise!!!

Snack 2: 2 tbsp hummus, 10 carrot sticks, 4 multigrain flaxseed crackers (Friday)


This snack actually didn't fail, per se, but I did upgrade it.  I ate hummus with snap peas and carrot sticks.  No crackers. 



Dinner: Nope (Neither Thursday or Friday)

MJ and I decided that since we actually had time to sit down together and eat dinner and watch some March Madness, neither of us wanted to cook.  We ordered in some thai food.  I had 2 steamed veggie dumplings, some Chicken Pad Thai and some Chicken Pad See Ew.  Mr. Jordan consumed twice as much as I did.  Good lord, why can't he gain weight???

For dessert I had a nice glass of white wine and split a vitamuffin top with MJ.  Perfect dessert after a not so perfect day.   

Sorry it's been so long between posts.  I promise to do better.