So as I promised in my first post, I am going to post every Sunday about some of the things I ate the week before. My goal here isn't to give you a meal plan to follow. It's just to provide some yummy meal ideas.
Weight loss needs are very different for every person. My recommended calorie levels aren't the same as yours or any of my other readers', and there are other methods of weight loss out there that don't count calories that may work for you.
My goal with these posts is just to report--like Lois Lane. But with red hair. So anyway here goes--
With the cold weather and the snow, this would have been a good week for soup. Oddly, I ate some cold things for dinner. Here's a look at some menu highlights and snacks from this week. Photography is not my strong point, so I'll be using images from the sources of the food.
Nature Box Banana Bread Granola was my breakfast with a container of plain Oikos Nonfat Greek Yogurt most mornings. This granola is amazing. It has dried banana, raisins, coconut, sesame seeds and walnuts. I've already talked about Nature Box before, and I'm sure I will again. If you want to check it out, use this link and enter SHARE10 when you order to get a discount off your first purchase.
My favorite snack of the week was Pipcorn in White Truffle. Pipcorn is whole grain mini popcorn. It's light and it's every bit as good as the stuff you make in the microwave. One serving is a massive 2.5 cups, and it has just 120 calories. The White Truffle is very light. I couldn't have picked out that it was truffle. It just tasted like "Yum" and "Yes, please" to me. They have other flavors, too. Rosemary. Sea Salt. Kettle. I think they had Gingerbread for the holidays. I don't think it's sold in stores. It seems to be an online thing.
So I don't always know what to make of Gwyneth Paltrow. She seems kind of all over the place to me with like country music singing and then having her GOOP project and being an actress and having a cookbook and practicing underwater basket weaving (one of those things she did not actually do--YET!). She kind of reminds me of when you're a kid and every day you want to be something new. I want to be a ballerina! I want to be a teacher! I want to be a pilot! I want to be a dinosaur! Etc. etc. But one thing I'll say for Gwyneth, lady makes good salmon. The Salmon With Sriracha Sauce and Lime from her cookbook is amazing. Don't be scared of the sriracha. This dish has bite but it's not killer hot. We ate ours with broccolini, but you can put any veggie with it and have a starch too if you fancy. Click here for the recipe on Self.
That's Quinoa Pilaf and Seared Scallops that you're looking at. You can find it here at Eating Well. Okay before you think WUT. SCALLOPS. We very rarely eat scallops at home. This recipe just looked too good to pass up. It's scallops, oranges, almonds and herbs with quinoa. If you haven't had quinoa before, it's a seed that has all of the nutrition of a whole grain. You say it like KEEN-WAH. And if you're me you say it as if you're a ninja and everyone looks at you funny. Can't help it though QUINOA is fun to say! And this meal is a fun treat. If you're not up for scallops, make some chicken breast tenders and toss them in. Or just make the quinoa as a side.
This is seriously one of my favorites right now. It's Chopped Ham & Apple Salad with Creamy Parmesan which is right here at Eating Well. It's got some greens, some radishes, some apples and ham. Save this one for when you make a ham or make a ham special for it. It's fantastic. I ate some for lunch and then there was a half serving left for lunch so I mixed a serving of shredded cheese in it and ate that with some whole wheat bread the following day.
Mediterranean Cauliflower Pizza! This unique one from Eating Well is like pizza but with cauliflower as the crust. It's a really unique idea and has sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella and black olives on top. I'm not sure it will pass for pizza for people who don't like cauliflower. Even with their magical powers to make healthy food taste like it's bad for you good, even Eating Well can't make cauliflower taste like a Pizza Hut pan pizza. BUT! It's still tasty.
And here's the thing about weight loss--you can eat the Pizza Hut pan pizza if you count the calories and eat what's available in your day. If you want it, eat it, but eat it in moderation. Sensible portions! Which leads me to the rest of this blog post....nice segue, eh?
The key to eating when you're adopting skinny eating habits -- I don't say dieting, dieting is something you do for a week and then say oh to hell with this and then eat a bag of Oreos --is to control your portion size. All of the foods I listed above have under 500 calories per serving. But you have to eat the serving size. A whole bag of Pipcorn, 3 cups of Banana Bread Granola, seconds of the ham salad is overeating.
Your body doesn't give a free pass to healthy food. It isn't like oh hey quinoa, you're full of whole grains come on in all you want. We'll make room here behind the spleen. Excess calories turn to fat, so it's important to control your portion size. Eat what you love. Love what you eat, but eat the right amount. Here's a couple of tips to help you out:
1. Get out your measuring cups. Yeah, it sucks to measure everything, but eventually you can eyeball it. I can pretty much tell what 1/4 cup, 1/3 cup, 1 cup, etc of food looks like. I still measure things like whole calorie salad dressing and whole calorie mayo just to be safe because i used to drown my food in those things.
2. Put the bag away. Don't eat snacks out of the bag. Get your snack measured out and set aside and then put the bag away. You WILL eat more than you should if it's out of the bag. How can you ever know how much you ate?
3. Find out how big your utensils are. If you don't like to measure, get out your big spoons for serving and your ladles and so on and get out measuring cups and find out how much is in them all at once. You can pretend like you're doing experiments in a laboratory if you feel like it. I totally have.
4. Divide it up when you buy it. When you get home from the grocery store, open up your bags of pretzels, crackers, nuts, whatever you eat that's nibble sized and pre-measure it into ziploc bags or reusable cloth bags like an ecoDitty bag or a Lunchskins bag if you're eco conscious. Then, when it's time to snack or take something with you to go, you have it measured out to the perfect amount. You can even put your premeasured snacks back into the box bag, etc to make them easy to store.
5. Put color on your plate first. Colorful foods are your veggies and your fruits. Whatever you're eating, put those babies on first. Then put your protein on and your starch if you're having one.
6. Or just buy portion plates like these:
These Portion Control Plates from Colors_Of_Life on Zazzle come in a bunch of different patterns from modern to traditional. Your big section is for your fruits and veggies and the little sections are for your starch and your meat. They also have a four section one, but I like the three better personally. Now remember, the goal isn't to see how much you can cram into the section. This isn't like a 1950s how many boys can fit in a telephone booth game
None of that on your plate! Use the markers as a sensible guide.
There's six to get you started. I am sure there are other tips I can pass along the way. Tomorrow we're going to start looking at the chambray shirt I promised you at the beginning of this blog. And we're also going to talk about not the importance of not being mean girls. It'll be
See you then. =)
TL;DR Version: I ate food this week. Quinoa is fun to say. Portion control is important. Don't make your plate into a phone booth full of men in white t-shirts and khaki shorts.
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