Saturday 24 July 2010

Brunch: Does this look familiar? It should. It's identical to last Saturday's brunch. Except I had 4.5 strips bacon total this week.

Lunch: I knew we were going to a party later, so I kept it light.  I made a mocha smoothie with part of a banana, leftover cold coffee, almond milk, high-quality cocoa powder, a scoop of whey protein powder, and a scoop of no-sugar-added vanilla ice cream.

More from lunch.  These peaches are so tasty!

Party time! We were invited to Kat & John's to celebrate John's birthday.  It was a lively gathering in their lovely garden.  They had a taco truck parked in their driveway when we arrived, and they were serving up made-to-order taqueria food.  So flavorful and festive!

Kat provided lovely trays of vegetables spread out around the party, and there were chips and as much guacamole as you could ever want. I am powerless in the face of excellent guacamole.

Mmmmm, tacos! (I meant to order al pastor, but said "carne asada" instead. So Mr. Handsome-and-Handy got one of these, and I went back and got an al pastor pork taco.)

I also had a wedge of Thing 2's ginormous quesadilla, with red salsa and guacamole.

Not pictured was one of Kat's clever ideas for beverage: water with slices of lemon and lime and sprigs of mint. So refreshing and tasty!

There were several options for dessert. I was drawn to the adorable mini-cupcakes! I had one that was like a brownie cheesecake. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and I split another one later on, because I really wanted to taste more.  He went for the main birthday cake, and the Things each got a helping of that very chocolatey one.

We all enjoyed the party, and it was fun to have my family finally get to meet a blogger friend!  (Thanks again, Kat & John!)

Hungry? Hard to believe, but I did feel hungry a few hours after all that. I tested blood glucose levels to make sure it wasn't a false hungry, and it was okay. So I had some milk and this packet of nuts.

Friday 23 July 2010

Breakfast:  In the interest of pampering myself a bit, I decided to pick up breakfast on the way in to work.  I went to Whole Foods and made myself a "breakfast salad": a bed of spinach and some grape tomatoes, a few pieces of roasted potato, some of the egg casserole (egg, cheese, ham, spinach), a bit of the sausage & peppers (mostly peppers), and bacon.  This was really pretty; it's too bad the picture turned out so dim.  And tasty!  I like the way the spinach wilted a little under the hot food.  To drink, a strawberry Olade, which I liked a lot better than the lemon Olade.  It tasted like strawberry lemonade, so a little sweet but a lot tart.  Yum!  This held me a long time...it was 5 hours before I noticed I was hungry, and another hour before I started getting hangry...

Mugs of coffee: I had three of these today.  Two from home, with the almond milk and half-and-half, and one at work with just half-and-half and inulin powder.

Lunchtime: Yes (*sigh*), at my desk. 2 oz. leftover pork and chili beans, salad. That tangle of green in my salad bowl is broccoli sprouts, an impulse buy at Whole Foods.

Dinner, part 1: Got the call from the family; they had eaten already and I was on my own for dinner. I was super hungry when I left work today, and I still had a cheese stick and an apple that I hadn't eaten. I was tempted to eat them in the car, but I made myself take the 5 minutes to sit by the fountain and eat them in a more leisurely fashion. I'm happy that I was able to catch myself here and see the eating-in-the-car as the false economy that it is.

Dinner, part 2: I was still hungry when I arrived at home. I had 2 little cups of nuts (1 shown) and 1 glass of Merlot. (Some people see pink elephants...)

Still hungry an hour or two later. Dessert? 1 slice flax toast with peanut butter and sugar-free jam, 8 oz. non-fat milk.

Thursday 22 July 2010

Breakfast:  Whoops.  Still "learning" to stop before I snarf down my breakfast, I guess.  I had 1 slice of flax toast with about 2 Tbsp peanut butter and 1 Tbsp of sugar-free apricot jam, plus the usual (coffee+almond milk+half-and-half) x 2.

A note: I'm finally trying what my doctor suggested a couple of months ago and cutting back my metformin to one 500 mg tablet per day.  I'll be taking this at night, since dinner is typically my larger meal and my morning numbers are still not quite where I want them to be.  We'll see how this experiment works.  

I went for a half hour swim on the way to work today.  The swimming itself went okay, but I scared the poop (figuratively, if not literally, Brooke! ;-) out of the guy I tried to split lanes with, and I was chided by the aqua fit instructor for not getting a verbal OK before getting started.  I usually do, and I thought he noticed me sitting there on the edge when he came along to make his turn, but he was all heads-down and into his swim and I wasn't sure how to address him. No harm done (except to my pride), and lesson (begrudgingly) learned. A minor blip, but it nevertheless put me into a bit of a funk.

Post-swimmy snack: Chia-green tea porridge and one square of dark chocolate.  Even this didn't "defunk" me.

Debby asked about chia seeds.  They're a great source of a lot of good stuff.  MizFit did a guest post over here on Cranky Fitness about all the good qualities of chia seed, and I was convinced that I had to give it a try.  It may have been coincidence, or maybe just getting more fiber in general, but my LDL cholesterol finally dropped below the "ruh roh" number after I started consuming it regularly.  I liked that it has protein, packs a lot of fiber, and has more omega 3 than flax seed, and you don't have to grind it up to get the omega 3 goodness. (I still love the flax and use it to add volume to oat bran and protein pancakes.)  Some people don't like the texture chia makes when it gets wet (MizFit provided other ideas for consuming it in this post), but I do; it's like comfort food.  I don't care for it in soup, but sprinkled on salad or made into a porridge with tea (green tea, of course, for maximum superfood-i-liciousness) works for me.  Oh, and I love it in coffee, too.  But by mid-morning, I've usually moved on to tea.

I buy mine at Whole Foods.  My Whole Foods has it in either the way-out vegan food, nuts, and bulk bin aisle, so I get extra tempted to buy nuts or dehydrated kale or other strange new foods to try.  I prefer the whole seeds, but sometimes the ground fiber supplement chia is on such a good sale that I feel like I have to buy it instead.  I don't like the texture as much, but it is lower in calories per serving.  Many people buy it online.

The defunking called for some serious measures: Sushi lunch with a work buddy!





Japanese food is so beautiful.  And don't you just love all the little dishes?  We were at this tiny table, and I had to laugh at all the little dishes crowding around on it.  And better yet, someone else was going to wash them!

We split the tempura and I had some tuna sashimi with shredded radish, ohitashi (cooked spinach-which I think was supposed to have fish flakes, but perhaps they withheld them for the gaikokujin), miso soup, and chicken teriyaki on a salad. I ate pretty much all but the salad...it had gotten a little wilty and the dressing was more mayo-tasting than I usually care for. My work buddy is a savvy lass, and she was therefore not surprised when I whipped out my cell phone and explained this was my "weird food journaling thing".

"The 72% Solution" for afternoon snacking:  Had the 6 pieces and peanut butter.  Yum.

Dinner: Thing 2 is so fascinated with my photo food journal.  She wanted to take a picture of tonight's dinner.  I had salad with Italian dressing, 4 oz steak with steak sauce and grilled onions, and cauliflower with olive oil and garam marsala.

...and a little wine for the whiner.

Dessert:  Nuts (cashews removed after photo by Thing 2, our "curly nut" squirrel) and one of Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's chocolate chip cookies.  I hopped on the stationary bike at home for 22 minutes to mitigate the blood glucose effect and to help improve my mood.

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

What's Eating Me:  All of these things (the exercise, the food) helped a bit to make me feel like I was caring for myself and cared for by my family.  But I still felt kind of funky.  So I poured it all out to Mr. Handsome-and-Handy.  Telling him about the pool incident led to me venting a bit about feeling like I'm not fit enough, followed by will-I-ever-achieve-my-crazy-ass-athletic-dream?  (Poor husband, having to listen to all that.  Maybe I'm descending into perimenopause madness or something?)  I had felt really good and confident about spin classes and BodyPump, running and swimming.  But this summer, I've been taking Pilates, which is crazy-hard for me.  It's the day right before BodyPump, but that changed to "Cardio Sculpt," which the instructor is gleefully making harder than her old BodyPump class; and this week she was on vacation and the substitute did a completely different, faster paced routine with bosu balls and hand weights and tons of ab work.  She had the studio looking like the deck of a fishing vessel there at the end, all of us flopping around on the floor and gasping.  "Summer of Core" is shaping up to be anything but peace and love, but I might at least be able to do a well-formed roll-up at the end of it.

So...what is my crazy-ass athletic dream?  Gradually doing longer and longer triathlons, until I either finish an Ironman event or just get fed up with the hassle and get it out of my system.  I don't even know why I want to do this; it's hard work and painful and long-term (not to mention expensive). (See "descent into perimenopausal madness.")  So, yeah, I'm taking it with a grain of protein powder; as Mr. Handsome-and-Handy said, "Well, I want to be an astronaut...."  I guess the good part about my dream is that remote as it seems now, I can at least take it in stages appropriate to my life right now.  I can't just quit my job and train for longer triathlons.  I refuse to let triathlon training take me away my family, who gets precious little of me now: I already work full-time outside the home and have to take some time each day for at least my bare minimum, 30 minutes x 5 days fitness requirement.  So it looks like I'll be doing sprint distance for awhile, at least until the Things turn into Surly Teens Who Do Not Need Mom Anymore.  (Yeah, I know, that's when they'll need me the most, paradoxically. ;-)  I feel like I need to get faster (so I can fit longer distances into the time I have) before I can move up to Olympic distance (.93 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike, 6.2 mile run).  But even that feels depressingly far away at this point.

Well.  This is a bit more than just a food log today, but I think I just needed to put today in context.  Sometimes when things are eating me, I'm eating things.  Which doesn't really serve my crazy-ass dream well, does it?

Wednesday 21 July 2010

Breakfast:  2 oz chicken, 1 slice flax bread with butter, morning pillfest, and 2 mugs (1 not shown) coffee with almond milk and half-and-half.  Thing 2 saw me making breakfast.  "Did you take a picture of it?" "No, not yet."  1 minute later, an iPhone edged into view.  "Here, Mommy.  Just wanted to remind you."

Pre-workout snack:  This is a Clif Mojo Dipped bar, the one with peanut butter.  It was okay.  I think I bought it because it was on sale.  It was sweet, crunchy, mildly nutty, and mildly chocolatey.  There are other bars I like better that have less sugar, although 11 grams pre-workout is okay.

Post-workout lunch:  Salad with 2 oz chicken and 1/2 cup chili beans.  The sauce on the beans was almost like a BBQ sauce, not at all fatty like regular chili, so I "deglazed" the bean container with rice wine vinegar and some more chipotle Tabasco.  It made a nice dressing!

Late afternoon snack:  Yum.

Dinner: 4 oz. grilled pork chop with BBQ sauce, Brussels sprouts and tomatoes (for a well-ROUNDed meal, har har) with a drizzle of olive oil and some fresh ground pepper and a sprinkle of garam marsala (oh my gosh, that was tasty!), and a glass of nonfat milk.  

Dessert: Extra-crunchy peanuts and 20 semisweet chocolate chips. Yum!  I used to be a Snickers fiend.  A couple of weeks ago, I popped a mini-sized one that the kids got at a birthday party in my mouth, and it tasted...like not what I wanted to be eating.  I spat it out and had some peanuts and chocolate chips instead.  Baby-steps perhaps, but I was glad that my palate had shifted a little.

Tuesday 20 July 2010

Breakfast, part 1:  Kind bar and coffee (1 of 2) with almond milk and 1/2 and 1/2.  Needed to fuel up for my trip to the gym.

And Kind bar? Cut it with the pity party.  I enjoy your nutty taste as much as I love the macronutrient breakdown: 210 calories - 15 grams fat (9 monounsaturated), 11 grams carb (2.5 fiber and 7 sugar), 10 grams protein. This brand has mostly bars with fruit and nuts, but they're a little higher in sugar (from the dried fruit) than the nuts-only variety. (Their Nut Delight is also quite tasty.) When I eat bars, I typically have them as a pre- or post-workout mini-meal.

Mid-morning snack (post-workout):  3 hours later, I was hungry! (I know, had to be to eat something that looked like this, eh?) To the one serving of chive cottage cheese, I added 1 Tbsp chia seeds and a generous sprinkle of all-purpose seasoning.  This was tasty!  I liked that the chia kept some of its crunch, and the gel that happens when you add chia to liquid (which I actually like) blended in with the cottage cheese texture.

Lunch at the park. I love this lunch bag. For the longest time, I had an old freebie project reward one from my former company. I finally retired it and bought myself a *pretty* one. (We actually ended up replacing our travel toiletries bag with a similar one, but with blues instead of purples.) Anyhow, the eats were "chili veg," a lovely melange of 2 oz. leftover taco meat, 1/2 cup chili beans, and 1/2 a package of frozen Tuscan veggies (broccoli, mushroom, red bell pepper, and onion). I rinsed the veggies before putting them in the container with the other ingredients. Oh, and I "Bizzed" it up a bit with some chipotle Tabasco I found in the breakroom!

Mid-afternoon snack: This meeting of the Nut-a-Holics Not-so-anonymous is now called to order!  Refreshments today are apple and mixed nuts. (I'm reaping what I sowed here, all the macadamias and pecans were gone...)

How far do I take this "blog what I eat" business?  Here's the sugar-free cough drop I had when my throat got scratchy and gave me a coughing fit.

Glad I snapped a photo of this, to remind me to tell you about the 3 bites of corn I ate...

Dinner: 4 chicken legs (1 leg partially shown above).  I also ate some bits of chicken skin picked off of the leftover pieces I was putting away for tomorrow (because it doesn't reheat all nice & crispy in the microwave anyway),  Of course, I added BBQ sauce.  And then my lovely salad, as shown plus "facon" bits (not shown) and Italian dressing + vinegar.

I then dragged out my computer to put this entry together so I would call it a day with dinner. :-) Night, all!

Week of Eats: Monday 19 July

The verdict: So far, so good!  I'm enjoying this photo food diary blog, and I plan to keep doing this for awhile.

Pre-run breakfast:  I was going to eat a ginger chew, but then I thought of bananas.  I ate the little piece and froze the rest for smoothies.

Post-run breakfast: Spackle, yum!  It felt very nourishing.  1/4 cup oat bran, 1/4 cup flax, 2 Tbsp peanut butter, and about 2 Tbsp sugar-free maple syrup.  Plus 2 mugs of coffee with almond milk and half-and-half (2 ounces:1 ounce ratio) and supplements/metformin.

Mid-morning snack: Chia in hot tea.

Breakfast-for-lunch by the fountain:  2 slices flax bread french toast leftovers with 2 Tbsp peanut butter and 2 Tbsp sugar-free maple syrup, 2 strips leftover bacon, and 1/2 cup blanched broccoli.  (Not my usual side for food like this, but I needed a veggie in there somewhere!)

Post-lunch walk: The part of town where my office is located comprises residential and commercial buildings, so there are lots of pretty landscaped areas to enjoy.  I like walking down this corridor between apartment buildings.

Snack time:  I tried the Goji Berry strip this time.  It had more orange taste to it than the lime strip (as one would hope), but I finally figured out what the bitterness in both strips was like: grapefruit!  There is none in this strip (or the ginger-lime one), but I think they grind up the entire orange, and the pith + fruit flavor and the goji berries gave it a bitter citrus flavor.  So if you enjoy grapefruit without a lot of sweetener, you would probably like these.  I don't care for grapefruit, so I won't be buying these again.  (The mac nuts were still pleasantly salty but the pepper didn't add anything for me.)

More snack time: I didn't need this. I just had a yen for some chocolate.  (I've tried the raspberry and the espresso flavors, and I strongly prefer the raspberry.)

Dinner: Taco night! Mr. Handsome-and-Handy cooked up some ground beef, onion, and grilled and chopped red bell pepper, then added the taco seasoning mix. I toasted a couple of low carb tortillas (14 net carbs and 22 grams of fiber altogether!), and put on some shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese, 4 oz of the meat + veggie mix total, lettuce mix, salsa, and some plain Chobani. (Sour cream was dated 7/8...ew!) I ate 2 pita chips...yes, with the "cheese hats."

Dessert: Mr. Handsome-and-Handy made homemade potato bread with the new bread maker (we wore out our previous long-suffering one making pizza dough). I had a little sliver (not shown) with butter, but this stuff was begging to be toasted. I also had the piece shown in the photo. (Um, yes, the smaller piece. Not the loaf.)

Between dinner and dessert, I had more starch carbs than I usually do, so I tested at 1.5 hour after dinner. 150! Yikes! Looks like no more potato bread dessert for me. After the bedtime routine with the kids, I tested again, and it was still at 120 (3 hours post-meal). I wasn't going to be burning this up in my sleep. So I hopped on the stationary bike and rode a little bit. I went 5 minutes at resistance level 1, 5 at 3, and 6 at 6. It only took 16 minutes of mild exercise to bring it down to 92. Whew!  Once again, I'm in grateful awe of the power of mild exercise in helping manage blood glucose levels.

Week of Eats: Sunday 18 July

(Or, The Day My Meals Defied Gravity! Note to self: Be more mindful of other people's necks, because photos emailed to the blog from my phone cannot be rotated in the HTML code....)

"Made to order brunch," said Mr. Handsome & Handy. More typical of Saturdays at Casa de Pubsfolk.  Experiment observation:  Seeing me taking pictures of what I eat has made the Things very curious about this new angle of Mom's food nuttiness, and their curiosity opened the door for me to talk about how it helps me (in a way that paper or computer journaling didn't).

(Please to imagine the above image rotated)
Here's my plate: 1 egg with 1 grape tomato and minced chive and 2 tbsp extra sharp
cheddar, 2 slices flax French toast with sugarfree syrup, 3.5 bacon (2 on plate, .5 while prepping, and one more after I ate all this stuff - I have a weakness for bacon).  3 mugs coffee with half-and-half, almond milk. One of those mugs mightve had a skosh of Bailey's Irish Cream.  The red drink is Crystal lite fruit punch.

The garnish on the egg was just to make it look pretty on the plate, but it ended up tasting great, too!  One grape tomato and two chive stems were perfect for a single egg.

Lunch: Part of Thing 2's leftover hot dog, and a salad with mixed leaf lettuce, tomato, leftover fried chicken (1/2 breast), 1 slice leftover bacon, caesar dressing, and a sprinkle of shredded romano cheese.

Lunch (2) - Grapes and half an apple.

The same half an apple; I ate this with peanut butter.

Mid-afternoon: Iced coffee (almond milk, coffee, splash of Bailey's)

Mid-afternoon: 7 sugar-free gummy bears.

Mid-afternoon:  Package of extra-crunchy peanuts.

Dinner:  This is the smart (but not frugal) thing I did yesterday - bought a pound of local, fresh King salmon at the harbor.  I didn't measure, but this was about 1/4 of the fillet, so approx. 4 ounces.  Oh, it was fabulous!!!  I grilled it with lemon juice, pepper, salt, rosemary, thyme, and a fine shredding of frozen butter.  We had green beans on the side, and some red wine to drink.  (Yes, with fish.  I'm a rebel that way.)

Not shown:  About 3 ounces of cooked hamburger that the kids didn't eat.  They don't care for fish, but at least we didn't get the usual "Eeeeew!  It's stinky!  Aaaaauuuugggghhh!" chorus.  (They do this even when it's not an item on their own plate.  *sigh*...)

Evening munchies:  "Hello, my name is Pubsgal, and I have a nut problem." (Pecans and macadamias picked out of the mixed nuts jar.  Shhhh, don't tell Mr. Handsome-and-Handy that I picked out all the good ones. ;-)

Evening munchies:  I had two pita chips with margarine.  (We're out of butter+canola spread.)  This was after taking a bite out of a day-old donut hole, chewing it a little, and then spitting it into the trash and throwing away the other half.  (So not worthy; what was I thinking?  And no photo...you're welcome for sparing you that. ;-)  After the pita chips, I emailed all the day's photos to the blog and found some other things to do than haunt the kitchen.  Argh.

What I learned today is that photo-blogging what I'm eating is helping me be accountable.  I was saved at least once by a too-lazy-to-photograph feeling.  It has also helped with "stealth eating."  I still sometimes eat things in the car (far less so during the past couple of years, though, than I used to do), or eat when everyone else is occupied at home, or in the privacy of my cubicle.  This is making me "eat around others," at least virtually, and I think it helps quite a lot.  (Foodie McBody had mentioned this as one of the benefits, and she's so right on.)  If I feel like I want to hide something I'm eating, should I really be eating it in the first place?