Monday, July 30, 2012

FAIL Day

So today was not a totally successful day. I started out wonderful- had all 4 of my bottles of water in by 4:00 this afternoon (the very minimum that I strive for a day). I ate a few protein bites for breakfast because it was grab and go. Not the best choice, but I simply did not plan enough time this morning. The older boys started morning football practices, so it is no longer me getting up and out the door. Protein bites it was.
Took my carrots for snack and made it through the morning at work fine. I never once went back to the kitchen- it was safer that way in case there might have been bad food back there! I only worked until noon, and was starving when I got home. I had the last leftover piece of fish from the other night and a big salad. It's all good at this point. Then I started hitting the protein bites throughout the afternoon. Not good. I really love those little balls of oats and peanut butter and shaved chocolate! But I think it set me up for a binge.
I had to get to the store to get sandwich fixings for the boys for lunches, and I also dropped them off at the local county fair on my way to the store. I had already made chicken burgers from the chicken breasts I ground up yesterday, and I made regular burgers for the guys, but I didn't get any sides done yet. I decided to run through McDonalds and grab some cheap fries for with the burgers. And I had a huge craving for the new chocolate chip frappe that I had discovered right before I decided to eat clean. I got one. And it was good.
Then onto the store where I got everything I needed. I knew better than to walk to the back corner. The bakery is back there. The liquor room is also back there, and it is a wonderful place, but that is of no importance to this story. I knew I should have stayed away from the bakery. I can not resist the donuts in this store! I can pass them up in almost every other place I have every shopped, but not here. I can't explain it. I walked back there and this box of donuts was in my cart before I knew it! I had reverted back to the 'old me'. I was thinking that I could eat one on the way home, hide the rest while the boys were gone. I could eat one more for dessert, and maybe sneak one in the morning before I got them up....

That is how I roll when it comes to my sugar addiction.
I checked out and got out to the car with my groceries and saw my frappe cup sitting there. Immediate guilt. I knew that I could not mess up twice. I put the bags in the back and drove home. When I got in the house, I was pretty much over the desire to binge on the donuts and gave them to my husband just to get them away from me. Not that HE needed them either, but I was only thinking of myself at that point.
Disaster avoided.
The frappe was a FAIL, but not the donuts. Not today.
Made more Paleo mayo. First batch....FAIL. Second batch made it. I used 2 tbsp of lemon juice this time instead of 1 lemon juice and 1 cider vinegar. Did not like it as much with all lemon. It wasn't cold yet, so maybe the taste will change.
Made my lunch for tomorrow. It will be an even earlier morning, and I promised the boys I would drive thru Dunkin and get them a coffee and a sandwich in the morning because I have to drop them off way early for practice. I am fully aware that I am using Dunkin as a coverup for the fact that I am going to leave them at the locker room at least 30- 45 minutes before anyone else will show up. That is just how my schedule is going to work tomorrow. A bit of a FAIL, but that technically doesn't count until tomorrow.
I used a yellow squash, my mandolin, and the larger julienne blade. 
 I only shave down until I start seeing the seeds. The rest of the squash either gets cooked or taken up for the chickens. These shreds get cooked with some water and I use them in place of pasta. I over cooked these a little, so they will not resemble spaghetti noodles. They will just be squash. FAIL.
I put them in a dish with one of my chicken burgers and that will be my lunch. I also packed some strawberries and plums, a bag of carrots for snack, and a sweet potato brownie that I made the other day.
The flourless zucchini brownies I made last week were delicious. These sweet potato ones....not so much. FAIL.
I am trying to choke my way through them (no one else here will touch them!). I hate to waste them, so I have been trying to think of a way to make them taste better- besides smothering them in chocolate and serving them with a can of whipped cream.
I decided to go ahead and use up a few of the bananas that I had tossed in the freezer to save them from rotting. Turns out that about 5-6 frozen bananas, 2 sweet potato brownies, about 2 Tablespoons of Natural Peanut Butter, and a splash of almond milk (to get it mixing smooth) all thrown in the food processor, can make a pretty mean ice cream type substance!
Finally success!
And tomorrow is another day.




Saturday, July 28, 2012

Clean as Can Be

....for a beginner.
I thought I would do a post on what I am eating as I am finding/learning my way through this new-to-me way of 'clean eating'. I'm sure there are some set rules out there, but I'm not really one to follow the rules to a 'T'. My stoutly stature should be proof enough for that! From what I have read online in the past few weeks, eating clean means eating things that are in their basic form with little or no processing or modification. I am just doing the best I can with keeping sugar and processed food out of my mouth.
I have been doing fairly well all week since the office kitchen cookie incident. Uh, incidentS- there were 3 cookies involved. I have been finding that as long as I have a few go-to simple meals, then I am not really tempted to grab just anything. 
One example from the other evening: Got #2 Son's football physical appointment done, stopped in Dunham's to get #1 Son's shoes for football, and then couldn't get them to leave that sports store! They were browsing absolutely EVERY STINKIN isle and messing around and it was getting late. It was on the verge of storming for the 4th or 5th time that day and we were 30 minutes from home. I did NOT feel like cooking dinner when I did finally make it home, so I drove through KFC for a bucket and some sides. Was it extra-crispy? Yup. Did I eat it? Absolutely. But I only ate one piece of chicken with a small pile of potatoes and gravy. Did I learn something from that meal? Yes. 
So here is how I am going to deal with days/nights like that. I always have a bin of lettuce in my fridge. I buy the 'good stuff' for me and the iceberg for the rest of the house. That is the only kind they will eat. I usually have some cooked chicken ready to go also, but sometimes it is all I can do to choke down another chicken salad. So I am making sure to have tuna available to make the salad I talked about in my last post.

My mayo! This stuff rocks! I was so proud of myself for making it (after 2 sort of expensive fails) that I tried to get everyone here to love it. Turns out, they are more fans of Miracle Whip (yuk), so they were not impressed. The little amount I did get made seems to be disappearing faster than I expected (which proves that SOMEONE other than me actually DID like it a little) , so I will be making more tomorrow. My absolute favorite quick meal to make right now!

 So here is where I am going to explain about the cheese. Like I said, I do not know the 'rules' about eating clean. I'm pretty sure that cheese is typically not on the list of clean foods. I know dairy is not, and I can forgo the milk and ice cream. I can not and will not totally erase cheese from my diet. I do not eat nearly as much of it as I used to, and can go days without having any. I just can't face total cheese extinction at this time. (There will be no chocolate extinction at this time either :)
Breakfast this morning was 3 eggs, some peppers and onions, a little bit of cheese, and leftover quiona.

 This picture does not do it justice. I need much practice with my food photography skills! This was just the wrong setting on Instagram. It was a very delicious dish! 
Dinner tonight was equally as good! I made grill pouches with tilapia (my husband's favorite fish) and swai (MY favorite affordable fish). Seriously, no more Van de Kamps for this chick.
Simple seasoned with a squirt of fresh lemon, a sprinkle of pepper and garlic powder, and a drizzle of olive oil is absolutely perfect! I made some oven roasted cauliflower and added a side of garden squash. I also had a side salad which was probably not needed. I was stuffed! 
I buy both of these kinds of fish at Aldi in the frozen section. They come out to be about $1-$1.25 per fillet. I am sure they are not nearly as 'clean' as eating fresh caught fish (which we have had a few times lately), but I do have to feed myself AND my family. I also have to make things that my family is willing to try. They absolutely love this fish made this way, and usually I make other pouches with potato cubes and diced peppers and onions for on the grill to go with this fish. I am trying to stay away from potatoes as much as possible, so I passed those up for the cauliflower tonight. Thank goodness, I was very strict on my kids trying and eating many types of vegetables from the time they were toddlers, so I really don't have to make meals around picky eaters. I am NOT a short order cook. They have been told more than once, 'If you don't like what I made, you are more than welcome to make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.' Period. Very rarely has that ever been acted upon.
So that is basically it. I am just trying to keep it simple with chicken, turkey, and fish, and making sure my vegetable intake is about 3 times more than the protein on my plate. I have been indulging in a few clean treats such as zucchini brownies, sweet potato brownies, and some protein balls/bites, but I guess it is not enough to hurt me too much-yet. As of Friday morning, I was down another 2 lbs from Wednesday- a total of 4.4 lbs since Monday. At some point I know I will have to back off of those treats, especially later in the evenings or they will literally come back to bite me in the butt. For now though, they are keeping my sugar cravings at bay while my body (and my mind) adjust to this new way of eating. 
One day and one meal at a time.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Office Hell

Yesterday started out wonderful. I had an 11 hour shift ahead of me, so I had to prep food for the day. I made my morning protein smoothie:

1/4-1/3 cup Chobani plain nonfat yogurt, 1 cup sliced strawberries, maybe 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla Almond Breeze milk, a scoop of protein powder, 2 tbsp ground flax seed, a large handful of baby spinach leaves, and 1/2 cup of water or however much it takes to get it to mix well.
This has been my standard breakfast for some time now (when I actually get around to having breakfast). It takes a few minutes to make it, but I can easily drink it on my way to work. I like to have good apples on hand so I can get at least those 2 servings of fruit in early.
I prepped my food for the day to take to work. I took baby carrots, zucchini tots (post on those soon), and celery with peanut butter for snacks. For lunchtime I took chicken and salad, had a few of the zucchini tots, and a flourless zucchini brownie. Sounds nice and clean, right? 
 I drank my smoothie and ate my apple on the way in the car and about 10 am I went back to the kitchen to get a few zucchini tots for mid morning snack. Little did I know, it was the office manager's birthday, so I walked into the kitchen to find this:
O. Em. Gee. My nemesis: gourmet cupcakes from a local bakery. Now don't get me wrong- I love plain bakery cupcakes just as much as the gourmet ones, and truth be told, if you put ANY cupcake in front of me I can inhale it in 2 seconds flat. It's a sickness. I know. But THESE cupcakes were sitting right in front of me for the taking! I grabbed my snack and got the hell out of there. All morning long, I had to listen to the girls talk about the cupcakes in the back, how one was going to skip her lunch and eat a cupcake instead, and how someone had tried the double chocolate one and it was the best thing she had ever tasted. Besides all of that talk, in my mind, I was VERY well aware of those cupcakes sitting back there. Thinking back on it now, it really is sad that those stupid things took up so much of my thought process yesterday morning. If I wasn't wondering how good the chocolate pretzel one would taste, I was psyching myself up to NOT give in and scarf one down the next time I went back to the bathroom.
Lunchtime came and I had to sit back there, at that table, in front of those cupcakes, and eat my lunch. But I never once made eye contact with them. Not once. A few others were cutting some in half to try half of one, half of another, talk, talk, talk, cupcake, cupcake, cupcake. It was torture. But I did it. I ate my flourless zucchini brownie and I resisted those damn cupcakes. I even rejoiced a little when someone said that the chocolate covered pretzel on top of the chocolate pretzel cupcake was stale.
I made it through lunch, and had 6 hours left. Just as I was planning on going back to get my afternoon snack of carrots, one of the girls came around the corner and excitedly announced, "There are cookies back there now!". SON of a biotch.
Can it get any worse??
It did. I ate one. And then one more on my next bathroom trip back there. And then one more on my way out the door at the end of my shift.
Fail.
It was like something took over and I wasn't even thinking anymore. They just jumped into my mouth. On the way home, I was tired, defeated, and it was getting late and I was hungry. My boys all ate dinner at other places, and my husband was going to eat the leftover steak (shocker!) and potatoes for dinner. I didn't even want to eat at that point. I knew I needed to even though it was after 8. I remembered that I had bought a few pouches of tuna for quick grabs, so I mixed one with some of the Paleo mayo that I made the day before (another post later) and put it on top of baby spinach leaves, with a tomato and some thin red onion slices. I also sprinkled on a little shredded cheddar. I don't care how 'clean' or 'unclean' cheese is considered- I will probably NEVER give that up. Anyway, that salad was awesome. A perfect cap to a good day gone wrong.
I then had to have my last zucchini brownie and then the celery and peanut butter to help curb my urge to snack some more. I don't know if the cookies set something off in my mind that made me want to eat more sugar, or if I was subconsciously thinking that I already 'blew it' for eating clean that day, so I might as well keep going. Either way, I was okay with the choices I made for snacks, even though I know I didn't REALLY even need to eat them.
So that is what a day with my sugar addiction looks like. I am working on breaking the addiction, and I know that even though I have every intention to eat clean, sometimes there are going to be bad choices made- especially at the beginning. I have to make good choices at the grocery store and not buy things that will trigger my addiction, but yet, I do need to buy some snacks for the rest of my family.
On a good note: I work at a medical practice, so I have a nasty habit of weighing myself. Every. Single. Morning. On Monday morning, I was at my all time highest non-pregnancy weight. That is what kicked this clean eating in to high gear. The good thing is that yesterday (Wednesday), my weight is down 2.4 pounds since Monday. I'm sure there was some bloating involved and maybe some extra water weight that day, but I have been doing this daily scale thing for the past year, and I am used to the ups and the downs on a daily basis. Like I said, it's a nasty habit. I am just happy it was a 'down' and it is encouraging to me to see that.


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

First Post


This is kind of a test post. Trying out mobile Blogger and adding pictures.
This was dinner tonight:
Chicken salad and a side of fresh cooked beets.
You can see at the top of the picture, there is a steak on a plate. Well, that was what everyone else had. Along with potatoes. With butter. And sour cream. I have to say that I did prefer what I had for dinner over what they had. I've never been a huge steak fan. I have been a donut fan. And a cookie fan. And a buy-the-bakery-cake-with-the-most-frosting fan. Actually, just thinking about bakery frosting makes my mouth water a little. It's so sad. Things like that make me question myself when it comes to eating clean, but I am trying to take it one day at a time. Yesterday was great except for the 2 cookies I shoved into my mouth when no one was looking. Today was much better. I only shoved one in. Just kidding. I stayed clean all day! I feel like I deserve a reward, so I am eating a brownie. Ah yes. It is a 'clean' brownie and it is delicious. I will post about those soon.