Food eaten:

• Breakfast: 2 scrambled egg whites, 2 tbsp. Pace Chunky salsa, 1/2 sliced avocado, 2 cups coffee. Calories: 265.
• Lunch: Large salad with mushrooms, broccoli, green onions, peas, baby corn, 1 oz. shredded cheese and vinaigrette dressing. Calories: 344.
• Dinner: 6 oz. baked chicken breast, brown rice pilaf, small side salad with artichoke-Parmesan dressing and pumpkin pie pudding. Calories: 620.
• Snacks: 2 sesame brown rice cakes; 2 stalks of celery with cream cheese. Calories: 220.

Exercise:

• Cleaning, vigorous – 65 minutes. Calories burned: 280.
• Walk around neighborhood – 15 minutes. Calories burned: 54.

Calories consumed (1449) – [(BMR (1580) + calories burned (280)] = -411

My calorie consumption was bass-ackwards yesterday, with the biggest meal coming at the end of the day. I know better. Long before the big breakfast diet became a fad, I’d seen that a larger breakfast and a smaller dinner make a huge difference in weight loss.

No doubt that accounts for the lack of movement on my scale this morning. Grumble.

Today I’ll adding a slow jog into my treadmill time. I’m so out of shape that I’ll be happy to just manage a couple of 1-minute intervals interspersed by walking, sweat soaking through my Ping Golf workout shirt. . Now let’s just hope my chest doesn’t give me a black eye in the process.

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Food Log: 07282008

• Breakfast: 2 scrambled egg whites, 3 pieces turkey bacon, 1/2 tomato roasted and topped with 2 tbsp. Parmesan cheese. Calories: 265
• Lunch: Baked potato topped with 2 tbsp. shredded cheddar, 1/4 c. non-fat refried beans, 2 chopped green onions and 2 tbsp. salsa. Calories:
• Snacks: 2 stalks celery stuffed with 1 tbsp. cream cheese each, 2 c. watermelon chunks. Calories: 203.
• Dinner: 6 oz. glazed ham steak, 1 c. steamed broccoli and cauliflower, 1/2 c. green beans, glass of white wine. Calories: 409.
• Total calories consumed: 1,224.

Exercise:

• Light house cleaning, 30 minutes. Calories burned: 108.
• 15 minutes on treadmill at 3 mph. Calories burned: 71
• 15 minute walk around neighborhood, 2 mph. Calories burned: 54.
• 15 minutes calisthenics (squats, crunches, side lunges and push-ups). Calories burned: 75.
• Total calories burned: 308.

Calories Out - Calories In = Weight Loss
1580 (My BRM) + 308 (Calories burned exercising) = 1888 (Calories Out)
1888 – 1224 = 664 (Calorie deficit).

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Food and Exercise Log 07242008

• Breakfast: Scrambled eggs (1 whole egg, 2 egg whites) topped with 2 tbsp. salsa and 1/2 avocado, sliced; 2 cups coffee. Calories: 284
• Lunch: Massive bowl of homemade pho soup. Calories: 384.
• Snacks: 2 c. watermelon chunks; 2 brown rice cakes; non-fat latte (16 oz.). Calories: 311.
• Dinner: Grilled sirloin (4 oz.), vegetables cooked in packet with Pam (1/2 c. each zucchini, mushrooms, onions, green pepper), 2 c. fruit salad dressed with lemon juice and 1 tsp. honey. Calories: 485.
• Total calories consumed: 1,464.

Exercise:

• 1 hour light house cleaning, 65 minutes. Calories burned: 222.
• 20 minutes on treadmill at 3 mph. Calories burned: 95
• 15 minutes calisthenics (squats, crunches, side lunges and push-ups). Calories burned: 75.
• Total calories burned: 392.

Calories Out - Calories In = Weight Loss
1580 (My BRM) + 392 (Calories burned exercising) = 1972 (Calories Out)
1972 – 1464 = 508 (Calorie deficit).

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Food and Exercise Log: Diet Date 07232008

Now, ordinarily I’m not much of one for such governmental interference, but let’s face it: keeping track of the calories in various foods could challenge even a math whiz’s memory. And, sure, even if you don’t live in NYC you can still ask for a restaurant’s nutritional information, but that’s no help when you’re sitting in your mini-van with a cranky kid who’s demanding French fries now. That’s when I tend to just order and hope I’m guesstimating the correct calorie count.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s run into such problems, because the folks at Coheso have developed a brilliant little food calorie counter that lets you carry nutritional information for over 35,000 foods in a portable calorie calculator which features a full QWERTY keyboard and number pad. That includes over 500 brand-name items you’d find in the grocery store as well as 250 menu items from restaurants and fast-food places.

As if that’s not already helpful enough, the device not only tracks your calories in, but it serves double-duty as a calorie counter tracking those you burn through exercise, too. With the ability to store up to 12 months of a food diary and enter 1,000 of your own food items’ nutritional info, it’s a powerful aid to weight loss and fitness. And, for you techno-geeks, you can even export your data to your PC to report and chart dieting progress.

Now that’s a brilliant solution to a lazy dieter’s problem!

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Calorie Counting On The Go

I’ve simply redefined what “normal” is around here.

For the next four weeks, I’m cutting out all gluten, dairy and refined sugar from my diet. I won’t be including those things at dinnertime, either. I will still include meat at dinnertime, but not the endless stream of red meat that he’s used to. Oh, no: we’ll be having fish and chicken most nights, with red meat limited to one evening per week. On those nights, I’m going to serve a vegetarian main dish while grilling up a steak on the side for him. Me? I’ll skip it.

Yes, I do hope to lose weight in the process but my big motivator at this point is to clear up my ever-present allergy symptoms: the itchy eyes and ears, scratchy throat and head congestion that plague me every single minute of the day. There’s just no way to feel good and energetic when you’re constantly sneezing and blowing your nose, after all.

So this morning’s breakfast is a simple one that is perfect for busy mornings since most of the work is done the night before. No cooking’s required, although you can certainly warm it up if you’d like a hot meal.

Living Oatmeal to Go

- 1 cup steel cut oats (not the rolled, flat kind!)
- Water
- Chopped, pitted dates
- 1 tablespoon milled flax seed
- Almond milk
- Stevia (optional)

Directions:

1. The evening before, place oats in a container or jar and cover with water. Soak in the fridge, covered, overnight.
2. To prepare in the morning, drain in a colander and rinse, then place in bowl.
3. Add chopped dates and sprinkle with flax seed.
4. Top with almond milk and sweeten to taste with Stevia.

I wish I’d known about this recipe on those mad mornings when I used to drive my son to school while he ate a dry bowl of sugary packaged cereal in the backseat so we wouldn’t be late, then dashed by McDonald’s for my own breakfast after dropping him off. This would’ve been a much better alternative for both of us!

We had ours along with freshly-squeezed orange juice this morning, thanks to my juicer. Have I mentioned how much I love that thing?

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What’s For Breakfast?

Breakfast consisted of two eggs, fried, served alongside a rasher of bacon and a slice of buttered toast. Fine, I figured, I can handle such high calorie fare for one meal. Besides, wasn’t it nice of him to cook? I shambled from the bed to the sofa to get some work done online between bouts of sneezing and coughing. I figured those things, at least, might burn off some of the calories from breakfast.

But come lunchtime, he dashed out and returned with double-cheeseburgers, large fries and vanilla milkshakes, and I began wondering if I wasn’t going to be adding GI problems along with a mild cardiac infarction to my list of maladies. I ate half my burger, thanked him, and fell asleep on the sofa dreaming of broccoli while he tried to cheer for his favorite football teams without waking me. He finished my meal while I slept.

Dinner time on Sunday is 8:00 p.m. at our house usually, a schedule so predictable you can set your Vacheron Constantin watch by it. We feed our son first, then usually my husband and I enjoy a quiet, sometimes candle lit dinner together. Not this time. I was simply too tired, so once again he donned the chef’s hat.

Which means, he called out for pizza. “Man pizza,” I might add: the meat-lover’s edition on which even non-veggie vegetables like onions are considered blasphemy. Can’t have them taking over the pizza real estate that’s wholly reserved for meat, meat and more meat (along with two other meats, too).

I ate half a slice of pizza and fell back asleep. Steamed carrots and peas had joined the broccoli dancing around in my dreams, while my stomach seemed to be keeping a counter-rhythm with a strange series of gurglings, burbles and shudders. As I dozed, my husband managed to polish off the pizza — all of it — followed by a bowl of ice cream.

Around midnight, I finally lurched off the sofa to head back upstairs to bed. My husband followed along, burping and farting the entire time and muttering about whether he wanted a quick snack before going to sleep.

“Do you realize,” I asked him, “that you haven’t had anywhere near a serving of vegetables today, but you’ve managed to take in a week’s worth of meat and dairy, and probably two weeks’ worth of fat?”

“Great, isn’t it?” he belched.

Then he headed to the kitchen to polish off the last of the oatmeal cookies. Because, you know, they’re grains, and grains are supposed to be good for you, he said.

Nice to know he suddenly cares.

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My Day Of Man Eating

I’ve always been partial to Healthy Choice meals, if I’m going to eat frozen, pre-packaged food, that is. Hey, they give me a dessert so what’s not to like?

This one’s a bit different from the HC meals I’ve tried before. It comes in a bowl which claims to “steam fresh in your microwave.” You simply pop the whole thing in and cook: no venting required. Let it sit when it’s done, then lift the inner bowl with the food in it and pour that into the bowl below it where the sauce is, stir and enjoy.

I bought the “Grilled Chicken Marainara” flavor which has a mere 250 calories and 4 grams of fat. (The sodium content is 550mg, around 23% of the RDA.) It’s surprisingly good: the penne pasta and sauce are delicious, the chicken is all white meat and, although there’s not much broccoli, what’s there is good. Despite being 30 cents more than, say, a Lean Cuisine, it tastes better, too. The pasta’s not mushy and the chicken actually looks like what it claims to be.

The thing is, I couldn’t help wonder what I’m supposed to do with the steamer basket. It basically looks like a small plastic colander, complete with vent holes. I tend to dislike products that are over-packaged, but I don’t see any way Healthy Choice could accomplish the steaming effect without using this bowl.

Still, I hate the thought of just throwing it away. Then I noticed that the steamer bowl’s right about the same size as the base of a 9-inch flower pot. Heck, I’ve got plenty of those, many without the little trays that go beneath them. Sure enough, I checked and it fits!

That’s one flowerpot which will no longer be marring my deck with loose dirt. Nine more to go.

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Healthy AND Helpful

Breakfast

Egg Beaters “cheese and chive” flavor, 1/2 c. (cooked in non-stick pan)
1 slice Cassava melon
1 piece rye toast sprayed with that fake butter spray
1 glass buttermilk
3 cups of coffee (gotta have it!)

Lunch

1 skinless, boneless chicken breast
1 small zucchini
(both cooked on my George Foreman, sprayed with Pam)
1/2 apple, sliced
1 slice rye bread with 1 wedge Laughing Cow skim cheese spread on it
2 glasses iced tea sweetened with Splenda (Neeeed caffeine!)

Snack

Other half of my apple, sliced
1 glass buttermilk

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Back on the Low-Fat Track

Of course, I’m still keeping my fat intake low — with the exception of some nachos late last night. I hadn’t taken an Alli before eating them, though, which is no doubt why such a high-fat food didn’t trigger those nasty side effects.

My diet yesterday:

Breakfast

Eggbeater omelet with diced tomatoes and onions
1 piece light rye toast with “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” spray
1 apple, sliced
8 oz. buttermilk

Lunch

1 can tuna in water, drained and mixed with:

- 2 tbsp. reduced fat Hellman’s
- 1 stalk celery, diced
- 1/2 tomato, seeded and diced
- 2 green onions, chopped finely
- 1 tsp. yellow mustard
- salt substitute and pepper to taste

Served on 6 saltine crackers

Snack

1 c. diced Cassava melon
1/2 c. low-fat cottage cheese

Dinner

3 oz. pork loin roast seasoned with garlic and rosemary
1 baked potato
“I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” spray
1/2 c. steamed greens with shallots
Splash of balsamic vinegar for seasoning
1 slice watermelon

Late Night Boo-Boo
12 Tostito chips topped with
2 oz. shredded cheddar
2 tbsp. sliced jalapenos
2 green onions, chopped

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All’s Well With Alli

2 slices rye bread, toasted (Calories: 164. Fat grams: 2.2)
“I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” spray, about 12 sprays (Calories: 5. Fat grams: 1)
1 cup diced cantaloupe (Calories: 54. Fat grams: 0)
8 oz. low-fat buttermilk (Calories: 98. Fat grams: 2)
Coffee, black (Calories: 0. Fat grams: 0)

Total calories: 321
Total fat: 5.2 grams

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Lowfat Breakfast #1