Monday 29 November 2010

Well, I'm back

Well, it was a lovely holiday break. We enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving with family, and we had a lot of fun celebrating Mr. Handsome & Handy's birthday (bowling, dinner out, cake!). There were indulgences, mostly worthy (hello, stuffing and sister-in-law's amazing homemade pumpkin roll cake!), and some of the mindless munching (a little grocery store birthday cake at the celebration is fine, but did I really need it the next day, too?).  I didn't keep very close track of veggies and fruit and water for the challenge, but I think I was pretty close most days.

I did stick with my exercise, though.  Wednesday and Thursday were slug-like (other than a "playing catch" session on Thanksgiving that ended with a ball slimed with dog poo that also got on our jackets - talk about your exercise buzz-kill), and I didn't get in my hugely long run/walk, but oh well.  I got in some really good stationary biking, though, and a nice 4-miler while breaking in the new orthotics.

But anyhow, I'm back, and I might not be screaming, but I did gasp at the scale. I know some is probably water from too much carb and salt, but whatever. It came for the party, and had a lovely time, but now it has to go home. ("Home" being somewhere other than on my person.)

Lori and Debby and my Tinsel Vixen crew are being a good influence on me.  Today, I ate as clean as possible and tracked my food and fluid intake. I fired up the calorie/food tracker on my phone again, printed my old food log, photographed. I figure things need a bit more scrutiny for awhile.

Breakfast:  Tomato cheddar omelette, usual toast (with my homemade no-sugar-added cranberry sauce - yum!) and 3 mugs of the usual coffee.  Wheeee!

Lunch:  1 cup of 2% Greek-style yogurt, 1/2 cup of my cranberry sauce, 1 cup of broccoli with about 2 Tbsp Tuscan dressing.

Cautionary tale:  I made my cranberry sauce after Thanksgiving, having forgotten about the cranberries on the day of the feast.  (That's okay, I just used a little bit of regular and focused on the gravy.)  I had this jar of erythritol, a sugar alcohol, and it doesn't dissolve very well.  So I figured, since I was making something that I was going to boil the heck out of, I'd go ahead and use it.  I didn't quite have the full cup, so I used some stevia packets, too.  The sauce turned out great, very tart (my facial muscles get a great workout when I eat it).  HOWEVER, even though erythritol is not supposed to have the unfortunate gastrointestinal effects of other sugar alcohols, such as maltitol, it did cause me to bloat quite a bit and I had a very uncomfortable afternoon and early evening.  So I need to use this as a condiment, not a full serving of fruit. ;-)

And some pecans.  Guesstimating about 1 oz. here.

Snackage:  2 Tbsp chia seeds in tea, plus 1 apple.

Dinner: Surf & turf!  Guess the chef was cooking hungry tonight.  Est. 5 oz. of steak without the bone, steak sauce, 18 shrimp sauteed with garlic & butter, green salad with 1/2 avocado and some Italian dressing.  I also ate about 5 pistachios and drank a few sips of Mr. H&H's birthday beer*.

*No, Biz, this wasn't the Bourbon County stout.  I did buy it for him, but UGH!  NASTY!!!  Mr. H&H, who likes stout and likes bourbon, didn't think these were two great tastes that taste great together.  So to compensate, I got him some Spaten. :-)

Pre-bedtime workout:  30-day shred, level 1.  Other than subbing a less high-impact move for the butt kicks and jog-rope for the jump-rope jumping, I followed along quite dutifully.  I used 10 lb dumb bells for most things, except those side lunge/lateral raise moves and half of the squat-shoulder press set.    It didn't totally kick my posterior, so I guess my Wednesday class has made me stronger.  Yeay!  I estimated that this burned about 111 calories.

The stats, per my tracker, are as follows:
2462 calories consumed
- 111 burned
2351 net calories  (current budget is a reasonable 1800 - so yep, I was way off)
59% from fat (163.3 grams, 52.1 grams saturated)
21% from carbs (131.9 grams total; 38.5 grams fiber and 56.8 grams naturally-occurring sugar)
20% from protein (125.9 grams)
4 servings veggies, 2 servings fruit
8 cups of water, mostly in tea (with coffee, there was probably another 3 cups)
A "no sugar added" day - yeay!

Yawn!  I won't be doing this level of scrutiny forever, but I think it will be useful for a little while.

Tuesday 23 November 2010

THANK YOU!

The good news from Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's eye appointment yesterday is that the eye pressure is back to normal and all of the restrictions (riding in a car, driving, exertion, reading) are done!  He has a bit of fuzziness, but the doctor said that ought to clear up when the dilating eye drops wear off.  Follow up appointment in a couple of months. WHEW!  Thanks, everyone, for the good thoughts, prayers, etc.!

Breakfast:  Cheddar + tomato omelette, flax toast with sugar-free jam, 2 mugs of the usual coffee.  (Grocery store's hazelnut flavor.  Yum!)

Mid-morning snack:  Handful of raw almonds.

Lunch:  Broccoli (about 1 cup steamed) with Tuscan dressing, cottage cheese, and a cutie orange.

I put all-purpose seasoning on the cottage cheese.  (But not peanut butter.  Just wanted to show some of my cubible "pantry".  Doesn't everyone keep spices and huge jars of peanut butter at work?)

I also had a handful of walnuts.  That's the great part about being "AmazonGalOfTheForest": a handful of nuts is a pretty good amount.

Later afternoon:  Some of my dry roasted wasabi edamame.

On the drive: 3 sugar-free Jolly Ranchers.

While Mr. H&H was at the doctor appointment (I had to drive him there), I got my orthotics for my shoes (yeay!) and went to 3 Bees (double-yeay!) for a double sugar-free "Pumpkin Spice" latte.  Oooo, it was good.  I asked what they put in it, and it's just vanilla syrup and pumpkin pie spice.  They had sugar-free vanilla syrup, so I was in luck!

Before picking up the kids, we got our Thanksgiving shopping done at Costco. We also got some dinner.

Dinner: I stripped the toppings off the crust on a few of these and nibbled a little on one of the end crusts.

I had some of the enormous caesar salad - brought the rest for lunch.

I also had a couple of the wings and some skin off of the rotisserie chicken.  We stripped the meat off the bones and saved it, and I made a nice batch of homemade chicken stock with the carcass.

Had some dessert, too....

Not shown:  8 oz. of milk after my evening workout after everyone went to bed.  I watched the rest of the movie "Billy Elliot" (loved it!) while riding the stationary bike (1 hour!), and then I did 15 minutes of strength exercises with my 10 lb dumbbells.  This included a 30 second plank with good form, 1 minute wall squat (oooo, that was tough!), and 1 minute of bicycle crunches.  I did some 1-legged deadlifts with both dumbbells, but my form left a lot to be desired.  Next time, 1 dumbbell and a prop for the back foot.  Plie squats went fine, as did all the arm stuff (bicep curls, tricep things, shoulder stuff, and chest flys and presses). So I ended up a little short on sleep, but oh well.

Monday 22 November 2010

Potter Prattle

Lori:  I think you'd enjoy the books.  While I especially like the Fantasy, I am picky about good writing and some of it is just horrid.  (I tried listening to the Twilight series to see what all the fuss was about, and I just couldn't finish the first book.  Let's just say it was a little TOO embarrassingly like what a young teen would write in her journal, all that mooning about Edward and the like.  I know I wrote like that back then in my journals...*blush*.  If someone had been *forcing* me to listen, I probably would have ripped my ears right out of my head without so much as a whimper.)  I'm a huge Tolkien fan, and I love the Harry Potter books just as much.  You're spot on about the audience, though; it seemed to me that each book is written to an audience about the age that Harry is in each book.  Therefore, Book 1 has a younger "voice" than, say, Book 7.  I love her imagination, her references of classical mythology, the whole "hero quest" theme going on, and especially the humor.  It's not *flawless* - I disliked Harry's pity partying in book 5, and several of the longer books had parts that dragged a bit, but taken as a whole, WOW!

Debby:  Oooo, I've been very interested in hearing the books read!  I'll have to check out the DVDs and have a listen.  I'm glad they had the same fellow reading all of the books, because from what I've heard, people really liked his voice.

As for the "war movie" factor...that is a good question!  I think because with previews, you have such a limited time to build interest, and they're going to use the action sequences...which tend to be the battles.  Conflict drives plot, and the last book is set during "wartime," so yeah, there are definitely more battles, culminating with the big showdown.  But you're right, the stories are so much more...each one is more of a mystery story than a battle story, and even in the final book, it's the 3 kids trying to solve puzzles so that they can defeat Voldemort.    And while I admire Hermione's cleverness, it seems more of a neutral trait in these books...you see wizards and witches using their cleverness for both good and bad purposes. Ironically enough - as much as the "war" aspect comes into play in the movie - courage trumps might every time in this story.

Party Thoughts

Lori, can I say that this post really resonated with me?  Especially this part:

"I don’t believe in deprivation, but I also know that is is okay to *not* want something."

I've been going to a lot of kids birthday parties lately, with lots of active stuff going on, and afterward there has been veggie snacks or salads and pizza and cake.  The kids' parties always have tons of cake, and then they get to passing it around to the grown-ups.  I'm not a big cake person - unless it's gourmet or homemade - and believe it or not, most of the time I just don't want the cake.  And I'm okay with that...I'm usually not the only one saying "no, thanks" so I don't stand out in the crowd.  But I find the assumption that people are "being good" or "oh, you're on a diet?" to be kind of annoying when one refuses cake.  Or even, as I heard at another recent party, "Oh, you don't like cake?  Wish I didn't!"  I guess I could take a piece, smush it around with my fork, and then throw it away, but that seems kind of wasteful.  On the other hand, this strategy might make other people feel okay about their really wanting a piece of cake.  I've been on that side of the issue, too, going for the cake with gusto when others were politely declining it...and yep, I too made annoying assumptions about it being from fear of getting fat or from being on a diet, but now I realize it could be for any number of reasons.

Well, we seem to be at a lull in the birthday party season, so perhaps this is a moot point for now.  At Thanksgiving, I'll be with both people who eat with gusto and people who eat until they feel full and then stop, and no one pushes food.

Now if it was only okay to want to wander off and take a nap after Thanksgiving dinner...    

Monday, Monday...

Oh, yeah, the food! Monday went pretty well. Packing a lunch ahead of time was really helpful.

Breakfast: Representative photo of what I grabbed for breakfast, because I was in too much of a hurry to take a photo. I had 1 slice of my flax toast, some almond butter, and some sugar-free jam. I waited to get to work to have the coffee.

At work: I had my chia coffee right away, then another cup with some almonds about mid-morning.

Lunch:  When I was prepping lunches on Sunday, I went ahead and fixed up a salad with lettuce, celery, and yellow bell peppers.  I put the sliced tomatoes and feta cheese into separate containers and tossed them in with the Tuscan Balsamic dressing when I got to work.  Oooo, that's good stuff!  Jane, you're going to looooove having a Trader Joe's!  I also had some cottage cheese and apples (kids' leftovers, chopped and tossed with lime juice, then sprinkled with cinnamon I keep at my desk).

A digression:  When one of our grocery stores closed (corporate restructuring), about 10,000 people petitioned Trader Joe's to open a location in our town.  For 10,000 people in our area to agree on anything is a minor miracle.  Anyhow, they responded by stating that a location in our area was not in their business plan.  We have about 30,000 people in our general area, which is isolated by a small mountain range from the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Yet, right on the other side of the hill, there are TWO Trader Joe's locations in San Mateo that are within 5 miles (if that - I'm probably overestimating) from each other.  Hmmm.  Anyhow, we eventually got a New Leaf market, which is like a mini Whole Foods. Their hot food bar comes in handy at times, and their produce is really good.  Otherwise, kind of expensive for general purpose shopping.  OH, and they have my Clemmy's and they are really wonderfully supportive of local programs, such as the Health, Environment, Agriculture Learning (HEAL) program at the schools.

What's really interesting is that a local (and much beloved) store owner retired and sold her family's much beloved grocery store to a family from the other side of the hill. (They opened a deli AND bought another local landmark as well.)  When New Leaf opened, people wondered how it would impact the other store.  New Leaf hired said retired store owner when they opened, and she promoted the new store.  Things that make you go "Hmmm."  (Or "yawn"....Back to the food!)

I also had some walnuts.

On the way home, I had a sugar-free Jolly Rancher candy.

Dinner:  Skinny steak (with sauce) and broccoli.

Experiment #1: Fruit at end of dinner to discourage further snacking.

This Cutie orange has a sticker that reads "Thankful for Cuties!"  One of my cuties was taking the photo!

I also had a sugar-free Lifesaver mint.

Hmmm, I still wanted the nuts.

I also had these pieces of peppermint bark.  (For the record, the Halloween candy "Cow Tails" is revolting.  I spat out the nibble I took.)  And then I made some hot tea.

After everyone else went to sleep, I jumped on the stationary bike and rode for 40 minutes.  My hill interval program was for 30, but I was watching Billy Elliot on Netflix instant view and got into it.  The music was especially good for stationary bike riding.

Mr. Handsome-and-Handy update:  Mr. H&H's eye seems to be doing a bit better, but his vision is still poor in it.  (And his legs got sore from too much sitting - I noodged him to jump on the stationary bike for a bit.  "It's low impact, and if you put it on a low setting, you'll be moving yet not have too much exertion.")  I'm taking him to a follow-up appointment today.  I think if the driving thing goes on much longer, we'll have to do some sort of carpool re-arranging.  Drop off is no problem, but pick up?  That could get sticky.  So far, we've been using after school care, but that gets expensive.  Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts & prayers - much appreciated! :-)

Thursday 18 November to Sunday 21 November 2010

Why One Should Never Think One Has It All Under Control, or "Stuff Happens":  Finally our new windows are done and the general stress level should have been going down in our household.  We got some new bamboo blinds for the back door. They have some "safety" features that came undone, and one of the pulleys at the top came unsnapped. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy went to fix it, and the pulley snapped back out and shot right into his eye! Ack!!! Nothing got stuck, but his eye got injured. I hopped on the phone and got him right in to see his doctor. He had to see the eye doctor, and it turns out he's got some swelling, bleeding around the iris, and scratching on the cornea.  It was more serious than I think either of us originally thought. He had a follow-up appointment on Friday, and there was some improvement, and they'll take another look at it on Tuesday.

So until the doctor says so, we're stuck with things like "no driving," "limit car travel" (thank goodness we didn't have travel plans for Thanksgiving!), "no reading," and "lots of rest - no heavy exertion." Which has led to the unusual situation of the normally industrious Mr. Handsome-and-Handy planted on a couch watching TV (and resting the injured eye as much as possible), eating snacks & drinking beer & such, and trying to not perish from boredom...while I ended up doing all the stuff he normally does during the week.  As most of you already know, we're truly "opposite family," in that I work outside the home and he does everything else. Having to do his stuff, too, has shown me how spoiled I've gotten by this arrangement. Poor guy has to get popped in the eye to get a break around here...well, it would be more of a break if it were pain-free and free from fear for his eyesight.  We're all a bit strung out over it.  I sure would appreciate any prayers/good thoughts/and the like for him.

So anyway, it's meant less online time and blog time, and my "part time job" of self-care has taken somewhat of a back seat to family care.  My weekend feeding and exercise were not stellar, but I have met my challenge team's goals of at least 3 fruits or veggies per day each day, and I did at least 30 minutes of exercise during the past 3 of 5 days. (Not to mention the incidental exercise of laundry, grocery shopping, and impromptu kickball games in the front yard.) I plan to get my exercise in the evening for the next few days, but am aiming for simply "minimum daily requirement."  I need to do some strength exercises tonight or tomorrow night to make my goal of 2 "strength days" next week. I missed my long run/walk, though, and I'm bummed about that.

Thursday 18 November

Breakfast:  1/2 English muffin, tomato + cheddar omelette, 2 mugs of the usual coffee.

Lunch:  Green salad with herbed feta cheese and Tuscan dressing and an apple.  Yes, someone made a Trader Joes stop on the way in - I drove past after my gas station stop, and noticed that they opened at 8 a.m., not 9 a.m. like I always thought!

Dessert:  20 grams of Green & Black's.

Afternoon snack:  Plain 2% Greek-style yogurt with 7 blackberries and 5 grapes.

And some plain almonds and unpictured yet worthy 1x1 cookie square things (1/2 carb serving).

2 sugar-free Jolly Ranchers before driving home.

Dinner: Steak with steak sauce, cauliflower with olive oil + lemon pepper + garlic powder

And some mac nuts before popping in a sugar-free mint lifesaver.

Before bedtime, my stomach was grumbling.  I had some more macadamia nuts.

Friday 19 November

I'm going to try to reconstruct from memory here...it was off-camera most of the day:

Breakfast:  1/2 light English muffin with almond butter and sugar-free jam, 2 mugs of the usual coffee.

Mid-morning snack:  Dish of macadamia nuts

Lunch:  We went out after Mr. H&H's appointment to "The Carvery," a Hoffbrau-inspired cafeteria style eatery.  Or, as we dubbed it, soul food for Northern European Americans.  He got a roast beef sandwich and clam chowder and carrot cake; I got the turkey leg dinner and ate about 1/2 cup of stuffing and about 3/4 of the turkey leg meat and gave the rest to the Mr..  I also got a side of veggies, more of a garnish really in proportion to the rest of the food (although it probably was about 1/2 a cup).  I did partake of a few bites of carrot cake.

Dinner:  Kind of snacky, since I wasn't super hungry and we had another appointment in the evening.  I can't remember exactly what I ate.  I know I had a cup of carrots after we got home from an evening appointment, and I'm pretty sure my "fruit/veggie" item was an apple with cheese.  I'm sure I ate some nuts, too.  Oh, and all of the cheese off of 2 pieces and end-crust (with butter) off one piece of leftover pizza.

Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 November

Completely off-camera.  We had our usual Saturday morning breakfast with bacon and eggs and pancakes.  I really liked my Lori-inspired pancakes today!  I took 1/4 cup of flax meal + 1/2 scoop of vanilla whey protein powder  + 1 egg + about 1/8 cup of regular pancake batter + 1/4 tsp baking powder + splash of almond milk + 1 drop of orange extract + 4 chopped raw cranberries.  To my delight, the cranberries cooked up and added a nice tart flavor to the pancakes, and the pancakes themselves cooked up very well.  Dinner was, if I recall, rather snacky - I think I just made some basic salad and apples with almond butter for me - since Thing 2 had a swimming birthday party in the evening and they had pizza after the swim.  (And this really tasty variation on a caesar salad: romaine lettuce, caesar salad dressing, chicken, avocado chunks, and I think it was cotija cheese, although any dry, sharp cheese would be really good on this.  I had this salad + stripped a piece of pizza.)

On Sunday, the kids had donuts and we had eggs + chorizo.  Later in the day I had apple and a really huge chopped salad with lettuce, tomato, carrot, celery, yellow bell peppers, broccoli, shredded cheddar, and chopped salami.  For dinner, kids had broccoli and "lunch items" (little frozen burger for Thing 2 and PBJ for Thing 1) and I made chili with 1/2 cup of canned chili, 1/2 cup of salsa, a dash of mustard, and some diced cheddar cheese.  (Mr. H&H got to go to his brother's house for a change of scene...his brother recovering from a herniated disk, so they're quite a pair these days.)

Of course, interspersed in there was some gratuitous snackage, like "meat doggies" and nuts and such.  But I did make a point of eating my veggies, so it wasn't a total wash.  I also got in the pool at the party on Saturday evening (more of a rec swim than a workout, but I did as much treading water as possible to keep moving) and got on the exercise bike on Sunday.  We had quite a bit of rain and wind and even a little hail from the storm that moved through and dropped a sprinkle of snow on Debby. :-)  Which kind of wrecked havoc with outdoor stuff, but we all did enjoy a nice game of kickball with one of the neighbor kids.  (I'm a little nervous about playing baseball in the front yard with the new windows....)

Any Harry Potter fans?  How was the movie?  I'm one of the nuts that would go to the midnight book store events (er, for books 5-7, anyway...went the Amazon route for books 1-4) and stay up all night reading them.  I'm not sure, though, when I'll be getting to see the movie.  (Kind of hard to get amped up for part 1 of 2....)

Holiday Hoedown Reboot: Wednesday 17 November 2010

...Please wait while "Pubsgal Eats" is rebooted.

For your listening pleasure, press 1 for "Girl of Ipanema" or 2 for "Summer Samba".

[Imagine selected soundbyte here here]

...Thank you! Reboot is complete. Have a nice day!

So I was debating on whether to jump in the "way back" machine and get out my old paper logs and use those, or to continue with taking pictures. Taking pictures won!

Breakfast:  We ran out of flax bread.  (Update on Thursday: They had it at Trader Joe's!!!  Which opens at 8 a.m., not 9 a.m.  I so did not need to know that.)  So I had 1/2 of a Thomas' light English muffin (ooo, I've missed those!) and egg + chorizo scramble.  2 mugs of coffee with almond milk and half-and-half.

Mid-morning snack:  I ate this at 11 a.m.  "Nut Delight" Kind bar stats: 210 calories, 16 grams fat, 14 grams carb (4 fiber, 5 sugar), and 7 grams protein.

Today was CardioSculpt day, and I wanted to do my comparison test regarding the blood glucose lowering effect of a full-on strength workout.  Pre-workout, at 12:15 p.m. (75 minutes later), my blood glucose level was 104.

Class was intense!  We did lots of all-the-way-to-the-floor lunges and such.  I used body weight alone for the leg work (it was work enough) and 8 lb dumb bells for everything upper-body.  (A little light for chest and back work, just right for biceps and triceps, a little too heavy for shoulders but we didn't do many reps so it worked okay.)

I tested again at 2 p.m. - following class, shower, walk back, get lunch out of the fridge.  Post-workout blood glucose level was 100 (3 hours after eating).  This only shows a decrease of 4, but the exercise may have prevented a higher climb in the post-snack numbers, because the fat, fiber, and protein content in a Kind bar would definitely have a different effect than, say, eating something that was all carbohydrate.  I will choose a rest day and repeat the eating and testing pattern to see how it compares.  These experiments are turning out to be really interesting!

Lunch:  So I was really hungry by the time I got to eat!  Like Biz does sometimes, this was a "throw stuff in the lunch bag day."  I had an apple and 2 cheese sticks.

These peanuts, too.  Roasted but unsalted.

And Brussels sprouts with veggie broth.  Yum!

Afternoon snack:  About 1/4 cup dry-roasted wasabi edamame.

Dinner:  Was not quite ready yet when I got home.  Mr. H&H and the Things had done a Costco run and had gotten some mac nuts.  I had this + 1/2 of the dish Thing 2 didn't finish.

Hey, they also got some veggies!  Yummy stir-fry veggies (that's about a cup cooked) with a little stir-fry sauce (not too bad on the carb count - I think it was about 5 grams per tsp?) and scallops (4 oz. - I measured).  I also enjoyed a glass of milk.

They restocked the crunchy peanuts.  So I also had a little bit of peanuts.

Then I moved the mac nuts up to the top shelf and was done.  I'm pretty content with how the day went.  My only sweet was the Kind bar (no Halloween candy or chocolate), I kept out of the "meat doggies," and I ate (for me) a reasonable amount of nuts. 

Wednesday 10 & Thursday 11 November 2010

Wednesday

Breakfast:  The usual!  (The Mr. made the coffee, so I didn't get to measure the add-ins.  I think he has a lighter hand on the half-and-half than me.)

Had to share a picture from the mountain.  My phone camera didn't do it justice; the decaying fence posts have that pretty green moss on them, and the colors were a lot more vibrant.  Oh well.

Pre-workout:  Georgie.com's protein brownie, cold but thawed.  These things are growing on me...

The workout:  Luciana had us doing lots of stuff with medicine balls today.  One move, "The Rainbow," had us lunge on one side, come up and bring the ball in an arc over our heads, then lunge on the other side.  (On the lunge, we touched the ball to the floor.)  We also did lunges where we had to touch the floor with the ball on both sides, and we did these one-legged deadlift things.  Oh, and then there was the part where we had to do a sit-up, then toss the ball to a partner, and then catch it and do a sit-up.  Anyway, enough crazy stuff that I knew I'd be sore later.  (Oh, and I picked the right week to play hooky and go swim laps instead - there was a sub last Wednesday, and people didn't seem to care much for her class.)

Post-workout:  Leftover tri-tip with steak sauce, salad with Italian dressing and the rest of my dill pickles!

I also had some chocolate and a tablespoon of peanut butter.

Late afternoon:  I tried a new Kind bar.  This one was pretty tasty, but--and I can't believe I'm saying this--I think I prefer their plain nut ones.

Dinner:  Can haz cheezeburger?  Yes, and some carrots and beer, too!

Um...yeah, I know. (SOMEone dug it out of the freezer, but THIS one did not have to partake.)

And some nuts and pita chips.

Thursday

Breakfast:  The Things had Veteran's Day off of school, and so I made my own breakfast. (What?  You think I would go through the hassle of making myself omelettes every day?  Nah!)  I had a hankering for oats & flax spackle.  (And forgot to try to custardize them again.  Oh well.)

At work:  There were chocolate croissants in the breakroom.  So instead of face-planting into the box, I cut myself off a little piece.

Lunch:  I had an errand at the mall.  I could have drove, but then I would have missed out on a nice walk.  It seems really far away, but all my walking ended up being only 2.5 miles.  I hit the food court, and Panda Express was packed.  So I tried the Japanese place.  I got the chicken & tempura combo, no rice, over veggies.  Egads, this was a lot of food!

And here's what I couldn't finish.

Late afternoon snack:  Apple & peanut butter.  I also had a little truffle thingy off the Thursday tray.

Like I needed it?  I also had 20 grams of Green & Blacks hazelnut and current bar.  Most worthy.

Dinner:  Well, it started out innocently enough...

Hot wings, beer, and this was good: cauliflower with olive oil, salt, garlic, and smoked paprika!  Now, that's an amazing spice!  I thought it would be a specialty item, but they had it at the grocery store.  It has a rich, smoky flavor.  I think it would be really good in a bbq sauce or rub, especially for chicken.

Here's what the Things had for dinner.  (Yes, I'm kidding!)

Yeah, I know.  (Not shown was the Snicker bar I threw in the freezer and then ate a couple of hours later.  I thought I was so over cheap candy? :-/  )

Attempt at a diversion...

And again...

I did a little 15-minute express exercise DVD before bedtime.  Did it help?  Not as much as seeing "120" on my meter in the morning. :-(  Oh well, tomorrow is another day....