First of all I just wanted to say thank you for all the supportive comments you guys made yesterday. I do feel a little bit better today. Talked to my son (ok, twice a day so far) and he sounds a little better. His roommates went out to a big party the first night and came back to the room about 2:00am, but still had to get up for early orientation activities. He said they were moaning all morning about how terrible they felt. Good grief! I told Nick to try to get through a semester and if he still hates it there in December he can come home and get his basic requirements done at the community college and then transfer to a different 4 year college for his Junior year. Hey, that would save us some bucks as well. So, we'll see.
Ok, weighed in today and just as I thought I'm the same weight - 174lbs. On the positive side, I did end the month of July at 176lbs, so I guess you could say I'm down two pounds in one month, which is better than ending the month at 176lbs, or going up! So that's a positive. While everyone was gone yesterday I made the lemon coconut bread which turned out really well. I think it comes out moister if you don't bake it the full 40 minutes, I think mine was in there about 25 - 30minutes. Less dry that way. The lemon flavor is really good and I think I might like it best so far as well. I'm thinking for Fall we should try it with some pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice baked in. I think I told you my youngest son is trying to cut down on his sugar because of all my "evil of sugar" rants, so he requested his school lunch have no cookies. The first day his lunch looked a little sparse,which made my think about Dawn's peanut butter cookies. Decided to make a batch of them yesterday afternoon as well. I left them out to cool and when my boys got home they ate all of them but two! So I might make another batch of those and hide them somewhere for Kyle's lunch. Unfortunately I don't think I can eat them. I know that cookies are my weak spot and I KNOW I wouldn't stop at just one.
Rosie suggested I post my food so maybe you guys can see what might be slowing me down. Sounds good to me so here goes:
Breakfast: Two cups of regular coffee with powdered stevia & heavy cream & benefiber first thing in the morning. Wait about 2 hours then have two eggs scrambled with 1/2 slice chopped onion, a little mozzarella cheese, two slices of bacon put on one small smart and delicious WW tortilla.
Lunch: Two left over grilled chicken tenders and one slice lemon coconut bread right out of the oven
Snack: About an hour later a chocolate Jay Robb shake with a scoop of amazing grass, in unsweetened vanilla almond milk
Dinner: Spicy ground chicken sliders on a plate (about three), green beans from the garden, two sliced tomatoes with basil, olive oil and two fresh mozzarella slices. We eat around 6:00pm.
After dinner: One cup decaff coffee with stevia powder and 1/2 & 1/2 with two squares of Lindt 85%.
According to my Food Tracker my totals for the day are: 55 carbs, 6 sugars, and 27 fibers
You guys are awesome! Thanks for the help and hope everyone has a great day!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Tuesday 8/30 - little depressed
The hurricane came and went here this weekend. After all the media hype, it was really not much more than a bad rainstorm in my area. Like I predicted we lost our electricity. The power company sucks around here and it doesn't take much for us to lose it. Luckily though it was only out for for about nine hours. It took another four hours after that to get our internet and tv back on. Yeah Comcast! We did lose a big branch from one of our trees and had a ton of little dead branches that shook out on to the gound and stuff like that. Everything is pretty much cleaned up and back to normal now.
Yesterday I had such a sad day. Had to take son number three over to his college and drop him off. The college is only about an hour away but he is going to live on campus. The thing is Nick is such a homebody and even though he chose this college over another one that is closer to us, he was miserable all day. I wish he had picked the college he could commute to. One problem is he had requested an alcohol free floor at the dorms, but the college said they had SO many requests for that floor that they couldn't accommodate everyone. What?! New freshman are actually being responsible enough to request a non-partying atmosphere and instead of the college thinking, "this is great, lets set up more non-alcohol floors and maybe a whole building" they say "oh sorry, we only have a few of those spots open for studious people so everyone else will just have to make do with the party people". Not only that, they didn't have enough rooms in general so he he got "tripled". That's when they put three people together in a two person room until something else opens up. His roommates seemed friendly enough as they lined up their ten shotglasses on their dressers, but they just couldn't be more the opposite of Nick in every way. So anyway Nick was pretty miserable yesterday and that made me miserable. What a long, sad drive home I had.
The good thing is that even though it was a hard emotional day, I didn't go off the BFC!. Yeah me! The bad news is, I've been weighing myself everyday this week and haven't seen any loss in weight all week. Tomorrow is my official weigh-in but I doubt that there will be anything different tomorrow. This is getting a little depressing. and I'm just not sure what else I can do to get this weight moving. How long does it take to get over a stall? I've only lost 1 lb in basically a month! Blah! Don't worry though, I'm not going to quit. I'm definitely going to keep with what I've been doing because, you know, what else can I do? So, sorry to be so depressing today. I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow. On looking at the bright side, everyone in my house (expect my college graduate) went back to school today. That gives me a little more time to myself! Yeah! Maybe I'll go try that lemon coconut bread that Rosie posted. I that that was a great idea! I love lemons! Thanks for reading and I promise I'll try to be more positive on my next post.
Yesterday I had such a sad day. Had to take son number three over to his college and drop him off. The college is only about an hour away but he is going to live on campus. The thing is Nick is such a homebody and even though he chose this college over another one that is closer to us, he was miserable all day. I wish he had picked the college he could commute to. One problem is he had requested an alcohol free floor at the dorms, but the college said they had SO many requests for that floor that they couldn't accommodate everyone. What?! New freshman are actually being responsible enough to request a non-partying atmosphere and instead of the college thinking, "this is great, lets set up more non-alcohol floors and maybe a whole building" they say "oh sorry, we only have a few of those spots open for studious people so everyone else will just have to make do with the party people". Not only that, they didn't have enough rooms in general so he he got "tripled". That's when they put three people together in a two person room until something else opens up. His roommates seemed friendly enough as they lined up their ten shotglasses on their dressers, but they just couldn't be more the opposite of Nick in every way. So anyway Nick was pretty miserable yesterday and that made me miserable. What a long, sad drive home I had.
The good thing is that even though it was a hard emotional day, I didn't go off the BFC!. Yeah me! The bad news is, I've been weighing myself everyday this week and haven't seen any loss in weight all week. Tomorrow is my official weigh-in but I doubt that there will be anything different tomorrow. This is getting a little depressing. and I'm just not sure what else I can do to get this weight moving. How long does it take to get over a stall? I've only lost 1 lb in basically a month! Blah! Don't worry though, I'm not going to quit. I'm definitely going to keep with what I've been doing because, you know, what else can I do? So, sorry to be so depressing today. I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow. On looking at the bright side, everyone in my house (expect my college graduate) went back to school today. That gives me a little more time to myself! Yeah! Maybe I'll go try that lemon coconut bread that Rosie posted. I that that was a great idea! I love lemons! Thanks for reading and I promise I'll try to be more positive on my next post.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Friday 8/26 - Keep Going!
Thanks for all the encouragement you guys! I was a bit frustrated on Wednesday weigh-in because I only went down one pound, and that's after two weeks of NO weight loss. I am definitely not giving up though! I just have to get over this stall that I'm in. Everyone's encouragement and tips sure help! After my weigh in on Wednesday I decided to make another batch of Dawn's famous coconut bread. I took Rosalies advice and added an extra egg to the mix, plus I used 1/4 tsp of stevia powder instead of Truvia. This time I made the cinnamon instead of the Cocoa. I actually like it better. For some reason this bread (its not cake or anything) keeps me satisfied much longer. Yesterday I had two slices of it in the morning with some Natures Hollow on top plus some scrambled eggs with cheese. I ran a bunch of errands all day and didn't get home until about 3:00pm. which was really too late for lunch, so I had another two slices of the bread. Then for dinner it was a pork chop and some green beans and my after dinner coffee plus two Lindts. I wasn't even that hungry at dinner or at all the rest of the night!
So the things I'm tweaking this week are:
-Drinking at least six full glasses of water in addition to my stevia iced tea and my coffee every day
-Eating coconut bread with my eggs in the morning to keep me full longer
-Incorporating a Smart & Delicious tortilla into lunch. (I didn't like them that much before but find them to be much better fried like a quesadilla)
-Only having heavy cream in my morning coffee. After dinner I'm switching to half & half
- weighing myself every morning, even though it will only count on Wed. weigh-in day
Hopefully this will shake things up a bit and I'll have a loss next week.
The other news is we are apparently getting a big hurricane this weekend. This Irene is supposed to hit the East Coast at about 8:00am on Sunday. I'm about 3 hours inland so I think we will just see a bunch of rain and wind, so I've got to make sure everything loose is secure on my deck and in the backyard. Plus I have to make sure I have enough propane in my grill outside in case we lose our electricity (that's what usually happens to us-with Hurricane Isabella we lost it for a week!) and we need to get some extra gas to run our generator too. My son Nick was supposed to move into Towson University this Saturday for his Freshman orientation but the college just posted on their website that they are postponing move in-day until Monday morning because of the Hurricane. Towson is just north of the Inner Harbor of Baltimore where the Chesapeake Bay comes in. They say the Bay waters may overflow and cause problems in the city, so the college is taking precautions. I'm actually glad because I would rather have Nick here with us when the storm hits. I'm such a mother hen type.
I hope everyone on the coast stays safe and Pattie I hope you secure your beach house and come home before the storm hits!
So the things I'm tweaking this week are:
-Drinking at least six full glasses of water in addition to my stevia iced tea and my coffee every day
-Eating coconut bread with my eggs in the morning to keep me full longer
-Incorporating a Smart & Delicious tortilla into lunch. (I didn't like them that much before but find them to be much better fried like a quesadilla)
-Only having heavy cream in my morning coffee. After dinner I'm switching to half & half
- weighing myself every morning, even though it will only count on Wed. weigh-in day
Hopefully this will shake things up a bit and I'll have a loss next week.
The other news is we are apparently getting a big hurricane this weekend. This Irene is supposed to hit the East Coast at about 8:00am on Sunday. I'm about 3 hours inland so I think we will just see a bunch of rain and wind, so I've got to make sure everything loose is secure on my deck and in the backyard. Plus I have to make sure I have enough propane in my grill outside in case we lose our electricity (that's what usually happens to us-with Hurricane Isabella we lost it for a week!) and we need to get some extra gas to run our generator too. My son Nick was supposed to move into Towson University this Saturday for his Freshman orientation but the college just posted on their website that they are postponing move in-day until Monday morning because of the Hurricane. Towson is just north of the Inner Harbor of Baltimore where the Chesapeake Bay comes in. They say the Bay waters may overflow and cause problems in the city, so the college is taking precautions. I'm actually glad because I would rather have Nick here with us when the storm hits. I'm such a mother hen type.
I hope everyone on the coast stays safe and Pattie I hope you secure your beach house and come home before the storm hits!
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Wednesday 24 and down 1 measly pound
Hello everybody,
So it's weigh in day for me and like usual I was expecting big results after being super careful this week! I was rewarded with dropping one measly pound! It's kind of strange that I'm not losing more. I made sure I had no grain carbs at dinner or after, I upped my water intake even though I drink a lot of stevia iced tea during the day, and I'm always below on my sugar and carb counts. Plus I've got my fiber count to go pretty high each day, at least 25g a day. Also......, I never cheat! Jorge says you can do this diet and lose without exercise, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to do some kind of exercise to get past this plateau! Darn it!! School starts back up next week, and except for my college graduate, that is back home looking for a job, everyone else will be out of the house! I must find some sort of exercise to get going with next week. Maybe I should join a class. I know Kay does Zumba and Dawn goes to Curves and Rosalie walks. Does anyone else do any exercise program that they love? I'm imagining that its like the eating plan, and if you can't find something you really enjoy doing, you won't do it! I think joining a class would be the most fun and motivational. For me the main problem about joining a class is the drive. I'm about a 25 minute drive to anywhere (I'm a bit in the country) and having to drive that far to do a class everyday and then come back home is a big block of time. Thinking about cranking up the Wii Fit again, but exercising at home by myself gets boring, See how I can come up with great excuses??! Oh well, not sure about the exercise thing yet but one thing for sure is that I'll stick to the diet, keep going forward, and not give up.
The other big news around here is that we experienced an earthquake yesterday. For those of you living in earthquake areas you are probably thinking, big deal a 5.9. The thing is we never get anything like this on the East Coast. So when something like this happens here it becomes big news but somehow I managed to miss the whole thing!! My son and I were in the car running errands and shopping for his college supplies. (He leaves Saturday -sob!) I stopped at the bank and ran inside to take care of a business check, and everyone starts asking me if I'd felt the earthquake. Huh?! What earthquake? I guess when you are driving in a car you don't notice vibrations or anything. For the rest of the day everyone in all the stores was talking about it. It originated down in Virginia and could be felt up and down the East Coast. Very weird for us! My son was so disappointed!! He wants to know why we always miss everything!! Other than our cell phones being out of service for a couple hours there was no other evidence of an earthquake back at my house. Anyway that was the "excitement" here.
Ok, back to work and figuring out how to shake off (note the earthquake humor there) this extra weight! Hope everyone has a great day!
So it's weigh in day for me and like usual I was expecting big results after being super careful this week! I was rewarded with dropping one measly pound! It's kind of strange that I'm not losing more. I made sure I had no grain carbs at dinner or after, I upped my water intake even though I drink a lot of stevia iced tea during the day, and I'm always below on my sugar and carb counts. Plus I've got my fiber count to go pretty high each day, at least 25g a day. Also......, I never cheat! Jorge says you can do this diet and lose without exercise, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to do some kind of exercise to get past this plateau! Darn it!! School starts back up next week, and except for my college graduate, that is back home looking for a job, everyone else will be out of the house! I must find some sort of exercise to get going with next week. Maybe I should join a class. I know Kay does Zumba and Dawn goes to Curves and Rosalie walks. Does anyone else do any exercise program that they love? I'm imagining that its like the eating plan, and if you can't find something you really enjoy doing, you won't do it! I think joining a class would be the most fun and motivational. For me the main problem about joining a class is the drive. I'm about a 25 minute drive to anywhere (I'm a bit in the country) and having to drive that far to do a class everyday and then come back home is a big block of time. Thinking about cranking up the Wii Fit again, but exercising at home by myself gets boring, See how I can come up with great excuses??! Oh well, not sure about the exercise thing yet but one thing for sure is that I'll stick to the diet, keep going forward, and not give up.
The other big news around here is that we experienced an earthquake yesterday. For those of you living in earthquake areas you are probably thinking, big deal a 5.9. The thing is we never get anything like this on the East Coast. So when something like this happens here it becomes big news but somehow I managed to miss the whole thing!! My son and I were in the car running errands and shopping for his college supplies. (He leaves Saturday -sob!) I stopped at the bank and ran inside to take care of a business check, and everyone starts asking me if I'd felt the earthquake. Huh?! What earthquake? I guess when you are driving in a car you don't notice vibrations or anything. For the rest of the day everyone in all the stores was talking about it. It originated down in Virginia and could be felt up and down the East Coast. Very weird for us! My son was so disappointed!! He wants to know why we always miss everything!! Other than our cell phones being out of service for a couple hours there was no other evidence of an earthquake back at my house. Anyway that was the "excitement" here.
Ok, back to work and figuring out how to shake off (note the earthquake humor there) this extra weight! Hope everyone has a great day!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Saturday - August 20th
Well I made it through what I like to call Birthday Week around here. Two of my son's have birthdays within two days of each other, even though they are four years apart. Kyle's was on Wednesday and my second oldest, Ben, turned 20 on Friday. When Kyle was born (two weeks early) I made it out of the hospital the day before Ben's birthday and I told him that Kyle wanted to come to his party so bad, he was born early! This diet has encouraged Kyle to get healthier with us and he has cut his sugar use way down, so on his birthday I made him that "no sugar, no flour" chocolate bean cake and truvia ice cream. The cake was really very moist, chocolately and good! Even my one picky son,Nick, tried a little piece and then went back for another! It only makes one 9" layer and it doesn't get super fluffy or high, but I'd probably make it again as a healthy alternative for the boys. I only had a sliver of it, just because I didn't take the time to figure out all the carb/sugar counts that were in it because of the beans. Anyway, for Ben's 20th, I made a big red velvet cake with mascarpone icing. It's from a Bobby Flay "Throw Down" recipe. (We LOVE watching food network around here!) It looked amazing, but I'm not sure how it tasted because I didn't have any! It was my first time making a cake without tasting the batter that got on my fingers or anything. It was more than a little tempting to do it too!!
Reading everyone's blogs I've come to realize that most of you are either at your goal weight or almost at your goal weight. I think that is AWESOME! I started on April 6th at 197lbs and as of last Wednesday's weigh in I was 175lbs. So I have lost 22 pounds so far. I want to get to at least 150lbs so I still have at least 25lbs to go! I think that is why I have to be extra strict with myself, and not cheat or anything. When I get down to where you guys are I can be a little more flexible, like bringing brown rice back into the picture or something. My husband and I were talking the other day (he is on the diet also) and we were saying that if we went off this diet tomorrow there really isn't anything we would run out and eat! In other words we haven't been craving anything, which is a bit weird! Its also why we are hoping this is one diet we can actually stick to forever! In a way its almost turned into a little game of trying to find replacements for things we love. When we want pizzas we make those little pita ones that I put on our grill outside. The other night we wanted Italian food, so I made a batch of homemade Italian meatballs and substituted ground pork rinds for the bread crumbs. We ate them with a Caprese salad (mozerrella, a few tomatoes, and basil from my garden). Did not miss the pasta, which is odd because I had some kind of pasta dish at least once a week before this all started.
All of you are very inspirational to me in losing this weight! I love reading about your ideas, the products you use, what works or doesn't work, and love hearing how the weight keeps going down. Keep up the good work everyone and keep blogging to encourage those of us that are only half way through our journey!!
Reading everyone's blogs I've come to realize that most of you are either at your goal weight or almost at your goal weight. I think that is AWESOME! I started on April 6th at 197lbs and as of last Wednesday's weigh in I was 175lbs. So I have lost 22 pounds so far. I want to get to at least 150lbs so I still have at least 25lbs to go! I think that is why I have to be extra strict with myself, and not cheat or anything. When I get down to where you guys are I can be a little more flexible, like bringing brown rice back into the picture or something. My husband and I were talking the other day (he is on the diet also) and we were saying that if we went off this diet tomorrow there really isn't anything we would run out and eat! In other words we haven't been craving anything, which is a bit weird! Its also why we are hoping this is one diet we can actually stick to forever! In a way its almost turned into a little game of trying to find replacements for things we love. When we want pizzas we make those little pita ones that I put on our grill outside. The other night we wanted Italian food, so I made a batch of homemade Italian meatballs and substituted ground pork rinds for the bread crumbs. We ate them with a Caprese salad (mozerrella, a few tomatoes, and basil from my garden). Did not miss the pasta, which is odd because I had some kind of pasta dish at least once a week before this all started.
All of you are very inspirational to me in losing this weight! I love reading about your ideas, the products you use, what works or doesn't work, and love hearing how the weight keeps going down. Keep up the good work everyone and keep blogging to encourage those of us that are only half way through our journey!!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Wednesday 8/17 and nothing!
Ok, I'm getting a bit frustrated now. I weighed in today and again lost nothing!! The good news is that I didn't gain, but come on! I've tracked my food all week with the Fitness Pal food tracker that Dawn talked about (which I really like) so I know I've never gone over 2 servings of carbs at a meal, in fact kept my carb servings to usually only 4 or 5 a day, and my sugars have never gone over like 8 per day! Plus, my fiber has been way up all week, usually 25fibers or over per week. I'm at a loss here. Must I exercise daily to lose anymore pounds?! Maybe I should get one of those scales that weighs the half pounds and stuff to see if I'm at least losing a little bit. I really want to get out of the 170's and back into the 160's. To get to my goal weight of 150lbs I still have 25lbs to go, so its not like I'm close or anything. Ok, enough ranting. I'll keep on going and hopefully all of a sudden there will be a huge drop. I remember I was stuck in the 180's for awhile too, so maybe this is how my body works: stuck, stuck, lose!
In other news, now I see why you guys blog more often than once a week. It's a lot easier to answer people that way. Cuddlefish asked about the flavor of the BBQ sauce. I used to make the same sauce when I wasn't on the BFC except I used brown sugar and molassess. Without those two ingredients it has a bit more of a vinegary taste because it's not as dark and sweet as it was. I still think it has more of a sweet and spicy taste, than vinegary, I use smoker bags to cook my meat and when you combine the sauce with the smokiness of the meat it makes the whole thing sweet, spicy and smokey. I'll tell you one thing, the ketchup you make first does not taste like your usual ketchup and I wouldn't use it for a ketchup replacement except in recipes that like this. It's only good in the BBQ sauce.
Today is my youngest son Kyle's 16th birthday! When my husband and I started this diet he said he wanted to cut out sugar too. He does it somewhat. So, for Kyle's birthday I made him the chocolate cake that Cuddlefish had on her blog. It's sugar free and flour free, plus has small amount of sugar free icing. I'm also making the stevia vanilla ice cream to go with it. Even though it should be BFC friendly I'm only going to try a small sliver of the cake to see how it turned out. I'll report back! We are heading off to a small water park for the day. I ordered some Natures Hollow Raspberry Jam (too pricey!) and am using Smuckers natural peanut butter for a PB&J sandwich to take along. Wish I could find some of the BFC products around me! Does anyone know of any good stores on the East Coast? Well, must get moving, maybe the swimming today will get a pound off!!
In other news, now I see why you guys blog more often than once a week. It's a lot easier to answer people that way. Cuddlefish asked about the flavor of the BBQ sauce. I used to make the same sauce when I wasn't on the BFC except I used brown sugar and molassess. Without those two ingredients it has a bit more of a vinegary taste because it's not as dark and sweet as it was. I still think it has more of a sweet and spicy taste, than vinegary, I use smoker bags to cook my meat and when you combine the sauce with the smokiness of the meat it makes the whole thing sweet, spicy and smokey. I'll tell you one thing, the ketchup you make first does not taste like your usual ketchup and I wouldn't use it for a ketchup replacement except in recipes that like this. It's only good in the BBQ sauce.
Today is my youngest son Kyle's 16th birthday! When my husband and I started this diet he said he wanted to cut out sugar too. He does it somewhat. So, for Kyle's birthday I made him the chocolate cake that Cuddlefish had on her blog. It's sugar free and flour free, plus has small amount of sugar free icing. I'm also making the stevia vanilla ice cream to go with it. Even though it should be BFC friendly I'm only going to try a small sliver of the cake to see how it turned out. I'll report back! We are heading off to a small water park for the day. I ordered some Natures Hollow Raspberry Jam (too pricey!) and am using Smuckers natural peanut butter for a PB&J sandwich to take along. Wish I could find some of the BFC products around me! Does anyone know of any good stores on the East Coast? Well, must get moving, maybe the swimming today will get a pound off!!
 | |
| Here are my three youngest boys being goofy at the beach -brothers are like that when they are together! The birthday boy, Kyle, is on the left! |
Monday, August 15, 2011
Monday August 15th
Hello,
My effort to post more often than Wednesdays didn't go over so well this week, but I'm sneaking in a little post here to prove to myself that I can do it. I started using Dawn's Fitness Pal food log and after a bit of effort, even managed to get it on to my Blog page. I think I have it set to public so that anyone that feels like it can check my foods. I really like the way it works! It's easy (which is important to me) and doesn't take much time to log in your foods! (also important) Once you have a bunch of stuff you usually eat logged in, the food tracker remembers it and you just have to check off your normal foods to add to your daily totals. This is probably how all the food log things work that most of you use, but it was news to me! Anyway in doing this I realized that my lazy breakfast meals of Cheerios with almond milk and truvia a week ago were big trouble. One little cup of Cheerios would not fill me up, so I'm sure my bowl (which I didn't measure at the time) was more like 2 1/2 cups. Those, added with my coffee with Benefiber and my chia seeds, was actually throwing me up to three servings of carbs in the morning! Three servings for Cheerios?? Forget it! I started back on eggs and a carb balance whole wheat mission tortilla in the morning, with some coconut bread thrown in too. Much more satisfying and lower carbs, higher fiber to boot! Anyway I used to log my foods by writing things in a little journal, but I like this food tracker better.
We had ribs with BBQ sauce one night last week and it reminded me that I wanted to give you my BBQ sauce recipe. I got it from a book called "The Low-Carb Barbecue Book" by Dana Carpender. She has a lot of recipes but she does use Splenda and molassess so I had to change those up to keep this Belly Cure friendly. It starts off with homemade sugar free ketchup which I didn't have so I kind of combined the two recipes: Here it goes:
Kansas City BBQ Sauce:
2 1/2 cups plain tomato sauce
2/3 cup of cider vinegar
1/4 tsp of powdered stevia (you could add Truvia packets to your tastes)
2 TBS minced onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground allspice
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/8 tsp. pepper
Combine all this in a food processor first as it is the "ketchup" Next take:
4 TB butter
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 chopped onion (sweat the garlic and onion in butter a bit before adding remaining ingredients)
2 Tbs lemon juice
Your already made above ketchup
4 TBS Worcestershire sauce
2 TBS chili powder
2 tsp cayenne pepper (or more or less depending on how hot you like it)
1/4 tsp salt
The book calls for 2 TBS blackstrap molasses but I left that out and added a bit more stevia if I thought it wasn't sweet enough.
Let everything simmer for a a while on the stove and then its done.
Thats it. I do like to cook (when I'm in the mood of course) so I don't mind making up a double batch of this and sticking it in the fridge or freezer, but it may seem like too much trouble to someone that doesn't like to cook.
I'm off to the grocery store to get supplies. I feel like I am at the grocery store every other day! Keeping this family of six full is a never ending task! Sort of like the never ending task of laundry -which reminds me the dryer guy had to order a part so my dryer won't be fixed until this Wed. or Friday!
Have a great day everyone!
My effort to post more often than Wednesdays didn't go over so well this week, but I'm sneaking in a little post here to prove to myself that I can do it. I started using Dawn's Fitness Pal food log and after a bit of effort, even managed to get it on to my Blog page. I think I have it set to public so that anyone that feels like it can check my foods. I really like the way it works! It's easy (which is important to me) and doesn't take much time to log in your foods! (also important) Once you have a bunch of stuff you usually eat logged in, the food tracker remembers it and you just have to check off your normal foods to add to your daily totals. This is probably how all the food log things work that most of you use, but it was news to me! Anyway in doing this I realized that my lazy breakfast meals of Cheerios with almond milk and truvia a week ago were big trouble. One little cup of Cheerios would not fill me up, so I'm sure my bowl (which I didn't measure at the time) was more like 2 1/2 cups. Those, added with my coffee with Benefiber and my chia seeds, was actually throwing me up to three servings of carbs in the morning! Three servings for Cheerios?? Forget it! I started back on eggs and a carb balance whole wheat mission tortilla in the morning, with some coconut bread thrown in too. Much more satisfying and lower carbs, higher fiber to boot! Anyway I used to log my foods by writing things in a little journal, but I like this food tracker better.
We had ribs with BBQ sauce one night last week and it reminded me that I wanted to give you my BBQ sauce recipe. I got it from a book called "The Low-Carb Barbecue Book" by Dana Carpender. She has a lot of recipes but she does use Splenda and molassess so I had to change those up to keep this Belly Cure friendly. It starts off with homemade sugar free ketchup which I didn't have so I kind of combined the two recipes: Here it goes:
Kansas City BBQ Sauce:
2 1/2 cups plain tomato sauce
2/3 cup of cider vinegar
1/4 tsp of powdered stevia (you could add Truvia packets to your tastes)
2 TBS minced onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground allspice
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/8 tsp. pepper
Combine all this in a food processor first as it is the "ketchup" Next take:
4 TB butter
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 chopped onion (sweat the garlic and onion in butter a bit before adding remaining ingredients)
2 Tbs lemon juice
Your already made above ketchup
4 TBS Worcestershire sauce
2 TBS chili powder
2 tsp cayenne pepper (or more or less depending on how hot you like it)
1/4 tsp salt
The book calls for 2 TBS blackstrap molasses but I left that out and added a bit more stevia if I thought it wasn't sweet enough.
Let everything simmer for a a while on the stove and then its done.
Thats it. I do like to cook (when I'm in the mood of course) so I don't mind making up a double batch of this and sticking it in the fridge or freezer, but it may seem like too much trouble to someone that doesn't like to cook.
I'm off to the grocery store to get supplies. I feel like I am at the grocery store every other day! Keeping this family of six full is a never ending task! Sort of like the never ending task of laundry -which reminds me the dryer guy had to order a part so my dryer won't be fixed until this Wed. or Friday!
Have a great day everyone!
 |
| Doing a practice picture here of an eggplant growing in my garden |
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Thursday August 11
I missed my Wednesday weigh in because I decided to take everyone up to the lake yesterday while the weather was good. This means a wild start in the morning packing up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinks to take with us, plus coordinating girlfriend arrivals. Since I usually blog on weigh in day I decided to wait until today to do all that. Turns out it was daycamp day at the lake and it was pretty full with day campers from the area going on field trips, bummer. It was still nice to be outside for the day and I brought my Kindle along to read plus we also managed a nice hike up to the Falls while we were there.
So today I weighed in hoping to see a big drop (hoping the hike helped) and I was disappointed to find out that I am exactly the same as last week, 175lbs. In fact the scale hovered for awhile between 175 and 176 before it settled on 175! Now that is scary and disappointing! So now I'm left to figure out what I did wrong this week. One thing for sure I think I need to start writing down everything I eat again. I feel like I'm eating all the right stuff and not cheating at all, but obviously something is throwing me off. So starting today I'll begin charting my foods again.
To get off topic a little, I am feeling so annoyed this morning! It's not just the weight thing either. It sometimes feels like I am constantly bending over backwards for everyone else around here and its starting to annoy me (that or my hormones are acting up again). For example this week: My husband had been around a bit more this week doing some estimates and stuff on the computer for our business, which means every five seconds he is saying "can you help me for a second with this" and no matter what I'm doing I have to stop and show him how to use the computer again! Then my son Ben is writing a play for his old High School with his old High School English/Drama teacher and he wanted to know if they could meet at our house Wednesday to write, so I said yes and then made plans to go to the lake that day with my other boys to get everyone out of the house. In the meantime my dryer breaks down but luckily it is under warranty. When I call the repair guy they want to come Wednesday, which I say is no good because of Mr. Kemper coming over, so we schedule for Thursday. Tuesday night Ben tells me that Mr. Kemper had to reschedule for Thursday so now he wants to come to the lake with us but can he bring his girlfriend. Then my oldest son wants to bring his girlfriend and my youngest wants to bring his cousin. So now my little lake trip is a much bigger ordeal. Then this morning after my disappointing weigh in, the dryer repair man calls and says he can not make it this morning because the job he is at is taking longer than anticipated but wants to come in the afternoon. I can't do the afternoon because stupid Mr. Kemper is coming over to write with my son, so I have to reschedule for tomorrow where I now have a window of sometime between 8:00 to 5:00, instead of 8:00 until 12:00. To top all of that off I went outside to take a few pictures of my garden this morning and then I was going to try to take some of myself to post on my blog, and when I go out the door my son is all like, "where are you going with the camera? what are you taking pictures of?" Sheesh! I know that's not a big deal but I feel like I can't do anything around here without everyone knowing all my business! Then, as I start to take a couple pictures of the garden, my camera shuts down, because the battery is used up. I go in the house to get new batteries and they are all gone because the boys used them all up and just left the empty packaging behind!!! And that's just some of my daily life! So you see, it's been one of those weeks. I don't know about all of you, but nobody in my family knows about this blog. They know I'm doing the diet of course, but I haven't told anyone about your blogs or mine. It is the one place that is just for me without all of them know all my business, and I'm keeping it that way! Well, sorry about the rant, which was so off topic, but I do feel better know. Later I'll probably read this and think, "gee all those things are so minor what was the big deal?" but when you're in the moment its different. I will get batteries today, and put up pictures later this week. I'm going to try to blog more often also. Thanks for reading!!
So today I weighed in hoping to see a big drop (hoping the hike helped) and I was disappointed to find out that I am exactly the same as last week, 175lbs. In fact the scale hovered for awhile between 175 and 176 before it settled on 175! Now that is scary and disappointing! So now I'm left to figure out what I did wrong this week. One thing for sure I think I need to start writing down everything I eat again. I feel like I'm eating all the right stuff and not cheating at all, but obviously something is throwing me off. So starting today I'll begin charting my foods again.
To get off topic a little, I am feeling so annoyed this morning! It's not just the weight thing either. It sometimes feels like I am constantly bending over backwards for everyone else around here and its starting to annoy me (that or my hormones are acting up again). For example this week: My husband had been around a bit more this week doing some estimates and stuff on the computer for our business, which means every five seconds he is saying "can you help me for a second with this" and no matter what I'm doing I have to stop and show him how to use the computer again! Then my son Ben is writing a play for his old High School with his old High School English/Drama teacher and he wanted to know if they could meet at our house Wednesday to write, so I said yes and then made plans to go to the lake that day with my other boys to get everyone out of the house. In the meantime my dryer breaks down but luckily it is under warranty. When I call the repair guy they want to come Wednesday, which I say is no good because of Mr. Kemper coming over, so we schedule for Thursday. Tuesday night Ben tells me that Mr. Kemper had to reschedule for Thursday so now he wants to come to the lake with us but can he bring his girlfriend. Then my oldest son wants to bring his girlfriend and my youngest wants to bring his cousin. So now my little lake trip is a much bigger ordeal. Then this morning after my disappointing weigh in, the dryer repair man calls and says he can not make it this morning because the job he is at is taking longer than anticipated but wants to come in the afternoon. I can't do the afternoon because stupid Mr. Kemper is coming over to write with my son, so I have to reschedule for tomorrow where I now have a window of sometime between 8:00 to 5:00, instead of 8:00 until 12:00. To top all of that off I went outside to take a few pictures of my garden this morning and then I was going to try to take some of myself to post on my blog, and when I go out the door my son is all like, "where are you going with the camera? what are you taking pictures of?" Sheesh! I know that's not a big deal but I feel like I can't do anything around here without everyone knowing all my business! Then, as I start to take a couple pictures of the garden, my camera shuts down, because the battery is used up. I go in the house to get new batteries and they are all gone because the boys used them all up and just left the empty packaging behind!!! And that's just some of my daily life! So you see, it's been one of those weeks. I don't know about all of you, but nobody in my family knows about this blog. They know I'm doing the diet of course, but I haven't told anyone about your blogs or mine. It is the one place that is just for me without all of them know all my business, and I'm keeping it that way! Well, sorry about the rant, which was so off topic, but I do feel better know. Later I'll probably read this and think, "gee all those things are so minor what was the big deal?" but when you're in the moment its different. I will get batteries today, and put up pictures later this week. I'm going to try to blog more often also. Thanks for reading!!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Wednesday - August 3
So we are back from the Outer Banks. I just love it down there and always wish our vacation was two weeks instead of one! The water was so warm this time, probably because of all the super hot weather the East coast has had this summer. I actually didn't find it too hard to stick to the diet while on vacation. Probably the hardest test was packing stuff to take down to the beach with us each day. We are usually on the beach 4-5 hours a day and it used to be a lot of snacking in the past. This time I packed myself a low sugar peanut butter sandwich each day, a jug of stevia sweetened iced tea and nuts, sunflower seeds, and slim jims to snack on while there. Dinners we had back at the house and those were all normal. My brother and sister-in-law and their kids stayed a couple houses down from us. My sister-in-law is seriously overweight. She cut down our diet quite a few times, saying how disgusting Truvia was and stuff like that. She is seriously addicted to soda, and has at least four regular cokes a day! I think she liked to talk bad about our diet just to justify what she was eating. We just ignored her and watched her drink her sodas and eat her chips in silence. The one night I had them over for dinner I had put a Pork Roast in the crock pot all day to make pulled pork sandwiches for dinner. It cooked while we enjoyed the beach. Before we left for vacation I had made two BBQ sauces, one regular and one sugar free and on pulled pork night I just put some of the pork in one sauce and some in the sugar free sauce and let everyone choose which they wanted. My husband and I just had ours on a plate without bread. My sister-in-law wouldn't even consider the sugar free one (was sweetened with stevia). I really feel bad for her that she won't try to help herself, but it's all about when you feel you're ready to get healthy I guess.
On the way home from the beach we spent a night in Williamsburg, VA. I just love it there! We had dinner out at a Carrabbas Italian Restaurant. They cook their meats on a wood fired grill and then add the Italian sauces and stuff! I've never eaten at one before and thought their food was delicious. They did bring bread and dipping oil in the beginning, and I broke off a 1/4 piece of bread to try it. Wow, it was so good, I almost wish I hadn't tried it because I then wanted more. Luckily my salad came before I lost control and went back for the whole bread basket.
So the weigh in today.....down one pound to 175lbs. That is really one lb. in two weeks because I didn't weigh myself at the beach. One pound in two weeks is really not that good but at least its down. I think at the beach I was much more active, swimming and walking a lot. I've really got to keep that up at home. Well, my oldest son decided not to do this diet with us anymore. His will power is next to nothing! Now he has decided to watch his calories instead, but said he would still try to stay away from sugar. I hope it works for him. I always make a whole grain choice with dinner every night for my other boys, and I've been buying high fiber wraps and breads, so at least my oldest son will have healthy choices. Next time I blog I'll try to list some of the stuff I use to see what you think and maybe I'll try to figure out putting pictures up.
I've just been catching up on the blogs and it looks like everyone has been doing really well!!
On the way home from the beach we spent a night in Williamsburg, VA. I just love it there! We had dinner out at a Carrabbas Italian Restaurant. They cook their meats on a wood fired grill and then add the Italian sauces and stuff! I've never eaten at one before and thought their food was delicious. They did bring bread and dipping oil in the beginning, and I broke off a 1/4 piece of bread to try it. Wow, it was so good, I almost wish I hadn't tried it because I then wanted more. Luckily my salad came before I lost control and went back for the whole bread basket.
So the weigh in today.....down one pound to 175lbs. That is really one lb. in two weeks because I didn't weigh myself at the beach. One pound in two weeks is really not that good but at least its down. I think at the beach I was much more active, swimming and walking a lot. I've really got to keep that up at home. Well, my oldest son decided not to do this diet with us anymore. His will power is next to nothing! Now he has decided to watch his calories instead, but said he would still try to stay away from sugar. I hope it works for him. I always make a whole grain choice with dinner every night for my other boys, and I've been buying high fiber wraps and breads, so at least my oldest son will have healthy choices. Next time I blog I'll try to list some of the stuff I use to see what you think and maybe I'll try to figure out putting pictures up.
I've just been catching up on the blogs and it looks like everyone has been doing really well!!
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