Recipe of the Week: Broccoli-and-Ham Breakfast Casserole

My last two breakfast casseroles were a big hit in our house (at least for me) so I tried a new one this week. This one was adapted pretty closely from this recipe from Kalyn's Kitchen -- the only major changes were that I added diced ham and substituted Egg Beaters for some of the eggs. This tastes a lot like a broccoli and cheese omelette, so if you like that sort of thing, then I think you'll like this one as well.

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Broccoli-and-Ham Breakfast Casserole
Makes 6-8 servings, depending on how big you cut them and your specific ingredients
(When cut into 8 servings, ~150 calories per serving)

• 3 cups fresh broccoli, florets and some stems (about 1 big broccoli crown, cut up)
• 6 oz. diced ham*
• ¾ cup shredded reduced-fat Colby Jack cheese (or similar reduced-fat cheese)*
• 3-4 Tbsp. green onion tops (or 1½-2 Tbsp. dried chives)
• 6 whole eggs
• 1½ cups Egg Beaters*
• Seasoning salt, to taste
• 2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese

* NOTE: Ham can be omitted, if you like. The original recipe doesn't even use it, but I found diced ham that is only 20 calories per ounce, which works out to about 15 calories per serving, which I figured was perfectly fine for a little extra protein and hammy goodness. You can use any kind of shredded cheese in this that you like. We've been using mostly reduced fat (2% milk) shredded cheese, but we did see a full fat "mac n' cheese" blend at the store that would be delightful in this. If I had been able to do the math in my head and known that this was pretty low-calorie for one of these casseroles, I would have used that instead. But anything is fine, really. Go nuts. I love cheese and don't judge anyone for their personal cheese preferences. Also: I used plain old "regular" flavored Egg Beaters in this, because that was all I could find at the store, but pretty much any flavor will work here. Three cheese or Florentine would both be great. I recommended cheese-and-chive flavor last week, but it looks like they don't make that kind any more, so ... sorry, I guess?

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 7¼"x11¼" baking dish with cooking spray (optional). Cook broccoli in about 2 quarts boiling lightly-salted water for 2-4 minutes or until desired doneness. Drain and rinse in cool water. If desired, chop into smaller pieces. Arrange broccoli in the bottom of baking dish. Cover with ham, cheese, and green onions. Open whole eggs into a bowl and break the yolks. Add Egg Beaters and seasoning salt and LIGHTLY beat just until blended. Pour egg mixture over ingredients in baking dish. Lightly stir with a fork just until combined. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350°F for 35-45 minutes or until eggs are set and lightly browned. Remove from oven, allow to cool, and cut into servings.

Recipe Time!

I don't talk about it on the much because it's boring, but way back at the beginning of Lent I "gave up" white carbs (sugar, flour, potatoes, and rice) and by Easter I'd lost a bunch of weight -- about 25 pounds. It's been a weird experiment for me because I love sweet and salty snacks at night, but I've been trying to keep up with it and so far I'm down close to 40 pounds. So, um, yay? Except I'm getting into that scarily familiar territory where LoseIt! tells me I only get a frighteningly small number of calories per day. Eek!

Generally I don't buy into "low carb" diets because it seems that a lot of people do it "wrong" -- or, at least, in a way that seems weirdly unhealthy. You know how I love bacon, but in general it doesn't sound like a good idea to eat rashers of bacon at every meal. Some people at work do that and I fear for their cholesterol levels. Although I do love me some bacon IN MODERATION every once in a while.

I'm not really following a specific plan on this particular diet, but if I needed to but a name to it, I'd probably say it's something like "South Beach with Butter." We've mostly been eating more veggies in general, trying to eat more protein, and I've been trying to eat fewer than 100g of carbs every day (which is about 1/3 of what the USDA recommends for a 2,000-calorie diet). I'm maybe not eating as much fruit as I should, but I am eating a lot more vegetables more regularly than I was before, so I'm calling that a wash.

One of the things I've been doing is eating a lot of eggs with turkey sausage or low-fat ham for breakfast. I know the jury is out on eggs (go ahead, do a Google search on "are eggs healthy" and look at the wide range of responses you get), but I watch the rest of the fat that I eat and keep an eye on my cholesterol, and I think that eating two hard-boiled eggs a day is fine. I have been eating mostly Eggland's Best brand eggs, or organic eggs, and when I eat scrambled eggs I usually mix in some egg substitute (that is largely because of calorie considerations, but they're lower in fat and cholesterol, so it certainly helps).

But it gets boring eating the same thing every day for weeks on end, so I decided to start mixing it up lately. Via Pinterest I found a website called Kalyn's Kitchen that features a lot of South Beach recipes, and I've been using her basic instructions as inspiration for "egg casseroles" that I can make ahead and reheat for breakfast. These are the last two that I made -- they're really good so I decided to share them in case you get likewise inspired. (BTW: I would check the ingredient labels on the individual products you're using, but these dishes are also gluten-free the way I made them.)


Ham-and-Egg Casserole
Makes 4-8 servings, depending on how big you cut them and your specific ingredients
(When cut into six servings, ~250 calories per serving)

• 1 Tbsp. olive oil or butter
• 8 oz. diced ham
• 1 large bell pepper, diced
• 6 large mushrooms, chopped
• 1 cup assorted shredded reduced-fat cheeses*
• 2 Tbsp. shredded Gouda*
• 2 Tbsp. green onion tops (or 1 Tbsp. dried chives)
• 5 whole eggs
• 1 cup Egg Beaters, cheese-and-chive flavor
• Seasoning salt, to taste

* NOTE: You can use any kind of cheese in this, really. I didn't have enough of any one kind of cheese so I used a mixture of reduced-fat 4-cheese Italian blend and reduced-fat 4-cheese Mexican blend, plus that little extra bit of Gouda because I love Gouda. You can leave the Gouda out, obviously. I don't recommend using fat-free cheese for baking applications, as in my experience the texture gets "plastic-y." YMMV.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 8"x8" baking dish with cooking spray (optional). Heat oil in large skillet. Add ham, pepper, and mushrooms. Saute until vegetables are softened. Drain if necessary, then spread in the bottom on prepared baking dish. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then cover with shredded cheeses and green onions. Open whole eggs into a bowl and break the yolks. Add Egg Beaters and seasoning salt and LIGHTLY beat just until blended. Pour egg mixture over ingredients in baking dish. Lightly stir with a fork just until combined. Bake at 350°F for 25-35 minutes or until eggs are set and lightly browned. Remove from oven, allow to cool, and cut into servings.


Chorizo-and-Egg Casserole
Makes 4-8 servings, depending on how big you cut them and your specific ingredients
(When cut into eight servings, ~175 calories per serving)

• 1 Tbsp. olive oil or butter
• 6 oz. chorizo, chopped (about 2 links -- made with turkey preferred)*
• 1 large bell pepper, diced
• 1 can (15 oz.) diced tomatoes with green chiles, drained, rinsed, and patted dry*
• 1 cup reduced-fat Mexican cheese blend (or cheddar)
• 2 Tbsp. green onion tops (or 1 Tbsp. dried chives)
• 5 whole eggs
• 1 cup Egg Beaters, Southwestern flavor
• Seasoning salt, to taste

* NOTE: Turkey chorizo is hard to find. I couldn't even find any in my local Wegman's, and they have everything. So if you're using regular chorizo (as I did) and you're watching your total fat, you might want to swap out one of the whole eggs for the Egg Beater equivalent. I would not go too crazy here, though, as I don't think Egg Beaters set as nicely when baking as real eggs do. Also, this dish as prepared is slightly spicy -- not super spicy, but it does have a nice Tex-Max kind of spice. If you want it hotter, you can use hot chorizo (I have been told such a thing exists) or you can use chili-seasoned tomatoes or even tomatoes with jalapeños. If you want it less spicy, you can use regular diced tomatoes, or serve it with a little bit of sour cream on top.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 8"x8" baking dish with cooking spray (optional). Heat oil in large skillet. Add chorizo and pepper. Saute until pepper is softened. Drain if necessary, then spread in the bottom on prepared baking dish. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then cover with tomatoes, shredded cheese, and green onions. Open whole eggs into a bowl and break the yolks. Add Egg Beaters and seasoning salt and LIGHTLY beat just until blended. Pour egg mixture over ingredients in baking dish. Lightly stir with a fork just until combined. Bake at 350°F for 25-35 minutes or until eggs are set and lightly browned. Remove from oven, allow to cool, and cut into servings.

12W12S12: Fast Food

Lost another 3 pounds last week (as of Saturday), so I'm down 14 pounds since I re-started. And again I must ask: what the HELL was I doing? But I am not complaining, because it's been easy to fall right back into my old good habits. I mean, once you know how much a cup of cereal is and how many calories are in a bagel or what have you, it's pretty easy to get back into the routine.

The one big thing that has been different for the past week is school. I have classes two nights a week from 6-9pm, so I go right from work to campus. Traffic and "commuter lounge" microwave availability are always variables, so I have been eating out on class days. And I can't tell you enough how much I love that so many fast food restaurants make their nutrition information available online so I can plan ahead.

Yes, I know that fast food isn't "good for me," and it's definitely not something I am PROUD of doing two night a week, but as I mentioned -- there are variables. I never know if I'd be able to reheat something once I got to campus, so packing my dinner in advance is a crapshoot. And I eat lunch kind of late most days, between 2-2:30, so I'm not really in the mood for a "big meal" at 4:00 when I leave for school.

So, like I said, I've been using online menu and nutrition information to plan ahead. The two closest restaurants to my class building are Boston Market and Wendy's, so that's where I've eaten dinner so far. Comparing my meals there is like comparing apples and oranges, because they're just different kinds of cuisine, but I can say that their websites have been infinitely valuable to me, as far as meal planning goes.

It's also kind of nice to have myself on a plan where I can "treat" myself like that without having to feel guilty. Boston Market has a very nice array of meals for 550 calories or fewer, and their food is pretty delicious. (I'd actually like to find a recipe for their vegetable stuffing, because I could eat that stuff all day long.) Wendy's is a little trickier, because that's more "traditional" fast food, but they also have an online too that simplifies things.

Now that I have a better handle on the traffic situation from work, I'd like to try some different places and see what low-calorie (or at least "more sensible") options they have. Last night I saw a Panera Bread, an Arby's, a McDonald's, a Chinese place, a pizza shop, and an Outback Steakhouse. At least two of those places (Panera and Arby's) have calorie-counting tools on their websites (I just checked).

It's nice to live in the future, sometimes.

12W12S12: A Lunchbag Full Of Random

Lost another 3½ pounds (as of Saturday), for a total so far of 11 pounds. Whoo hoo! And again I wonder: if I was able to lose 11 pounds in two weeks by simply eating like a normal person, then what in the holy hell was I doing before? The mind, she boggles.

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Today is my first day of grad school classes, and in packing my lunch this morning I realized something: I tend to pack the most random things in my lunch. Not "random" in the sense of "junky" or anything -- although we have plenty of that stuff in the house, whose siren songs I have thus far mostly been able to avoid succumbing to, thank goodness -- but just random. Weird. I like variety in my diet, so even though I tend to eat the same things in the same amounts repeatedly, I try as much as I can to not eat the same thing two days in a row.

Except Mini Babybel Light cheese. I could eat that every day for the rest of my life and never get sick of it.

But if you look at my lunch bag, you'd never guess that all the stuff in there was meant to be eaten by the same person in the same day: cereal and milk for breakfast; fruit cup for morning snack; Lean Cuisine for lunch; cheese and V8 for afternoon snack; a 90-calorie extra-fiber granola bar for evening snack-slash-dessert (because I have class tonight, and I know I'll need something sweet-ish to get me through). Doesn't that sound ... like a lot of strange stuff just thrown into a bag together?

OK, maybe it isn't that weird when I write it all out and explain it, but it seemed weird to me when I packed it this morning. Although I guess it shouldn't, because my daughter took a "lunch" to school today (actually, it was breakfast -- the school provides breakfast and lunch but I guess since she sees me packing a lunch she figures she needs to take one, too), and her lunch consisted of cereal, cheese, and a whole-fruit snack bar (the kind that is made from real apples and stuff, with no added sugar, and counts as a serving of fruit).

Like mother, like daughter, I suppose. At least since I changed my diet, she is picking up some good habits.

12W12S12: Magic Diet Miracle Trick

I lost 7½ pounds this week, by following the one simple magic diet miracle trick of not eating pizza bites at every meal. Seriously, I know that is a HUGE loss for one week, and that it's an outlier, and that any weight loss going forward will be smaller and more consistent, but DAMN. What the hell have I been doing for the past six months, if just eating like a normal person for a week helps me drop 7½ pounds?

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One of the things that is always helpful when you're on a diet is knowing how to cook. I don't mean "tear open a package of rice and heat it up in the microwave," either -- although of course we do our fair share of that too -- but more of the "look at what sorts of random things you have in the fridge/freezer/pantry and throw together something that tastes good" kind of cooking. I would never argue that I'm any kind of gourmet chef, but I hope I never take for granted how easy it is for me to take one thing from Column A and another from Column B and yet another from Column C, throw in some herbs and stock, and come up with a meal that is delicious and satisfying and totally diet-friendly. (Plus, we very rarely have leftovers that go to waste.) This is what I came up with yesterday for dinner (we're having leftovers tonight - as always, see notes below the recipe for particulars and substitutions).

Sausage, Bean, and Vegetable Soup

• 1 Tbsp. basting oil
• 1 lb. spinach and feta chicken sausage
• 8 oz. package chopped celery and onion
• 4 oz. shredded carrots
• Herbs: rosemary, oregano, and fresh ground black pepper
• 2 cans seasoned petite diced tomatoes, undrained
• 2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 qt. vegetable stock
• about 1 package assorted frozen vegetables

Heat oil in stockpot over medium-high heat. Cut sausage into smallish chunks. Add sausage, celery, onions, and shredded carrots to pan. Season with rosemary, oregano, and pepper to taste. Saute until sausage is cooked through and onions are translucent, about 10-12 minutes. Add tomatoes and stir well. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat to simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Add beans and stock. Adjust heat as necessary. Cook for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to simmer and cook for an additional 30 minutes. Add frozen vegetables. Cook for an additional 10 minutes or until vegetables are cooked through. Serve.

NOTES: Use whatever kind of sausage you have on hand, obviously. We only ever buy turkey or chicken sausage these days except for special occasions. If you cut your own celery-onion-carrots, you want about ½ cup of each. You can use chicken broth instead of veggie, and we used whatever leftover previously-frozen veggies we had in the fridge from previous meals, so we ended up with a lot of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and squash in there, plus a few random corns. Green beans (especially Italian ones) would be delicious -- perhaps with a can of dark red kidney beans substituted for one of the cans of cannellini beans. Almost a minestrone!

My math says there's about 200-225 calories per cup of soup, depending on how lean your sausage is and what's in the veggie blend you use. We served ours with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese on each bowl, with a side of warm rosemary rolls. Delightful!

12W12S12: Amateur Food Pr0n

This is going to be the phase of my diet where I take pictures of everything I eat, isn't it?

We started on Monday. And by "we," I mean "the lot of us," because I have this thing where I won't make multiple meals just because one of us -- or, in this particular go-'round, two of us -- are on a diet. One of the reasons why this particular "lifestyle change" (because I am already getting sick of writing "diet" and it's only Day 3) worked for me before and why I have faith that it will work going forward is that it's based on "everything in moderation" instead of "not eating anything that tastes good." So, if my kid wants to have teatime on a Sunday afternoon, then by hook or by crook, I will find a way to be able to enjoy teatime and not feel the least bit guilty about it.

PS: Stella d'Oro breakfast treats? They really are treats. And neither my kid nor my husband are particularly fond of them, so I am going to get that whole bag ALL TO MYSELF BWAHAHAHAHA. But what can I say? It's pretty easy to stick to your diet when it openly involves cookies, you know?

The only thing I'm really doing different this time is that I am trying to get as much buy-in as possible from my husband, which means that we're doing a lot of "convenience" cooking. As in, "let's see what we already have in the fridge and see what we can count as a serving of vegetables." On Monday we passed on the traditional New Year's Day pork-sauerkraut-and-mashed-potatoes dinner because EW! and instead had stuffed shells and this salad I concocted out of assorted kitchen fixin's: iceberg lettuce (which keeps surprising well when your refrigerator is set at like 35°F, bee tee dubs), shredded carrots, shredded cheese, and bacon bits, with some "crunchies" that I found in the fridge and a couple of croutons apiece. Plus balsamic vinegar -- just balsamic vinegar, plus salt and pepper -- which is my very favorite salad dressing.

It is also easy to stick to your diet when you can go out to lunch to use up a gift card and you can find a drink on the menu that is light, something you'd drink anyway, and actually good. That's a "skinny mojito" from The Cheesecake Factory, of all places, and that whole giant drink is under 150 calories. I think I'm going to Google a recipe for this, because it was perfectly light and refreshing and delicious and I'd definitely drink that on vacation.

This salad, also from The Cheesecake Factory (from their Skinnylicious menu, which is smaller than their regular menu, of course, but pretty damned good, honestly), is much prettier than mine, and of course better, because I assume the chefs at The Cheesecake Factory actually know what they're doing: chopped lettuce, chopped bacon, chopped chicken, chopped tomatoes, chopped apples, corn (not chopped), and blue cheese (also not chopped). The regular menu salad comes with avocado, which I don't like, and I don't know what kind of dressing was supposed to be on this thing, but (1) there wasn't much of it and (2) it didn't really need it, anyway.

And the really best part? We still had calories left to have some tuxedo cheesecake, which was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Missing In Action!

Oh, this poor, poor spare emergency backup blog, being all neglected for lo these many months. So sad. But, alas, 'Raffi shall be lonely no more, for it is a new year, and you know what that means: a new set of calendar photos!

Cousins, January 2012

Cupcake, January 2012

I'm going to start posting the monthly calendar photos on the first of each month. Unless I forget, in which case I will post them when I remember to post them.

Also, we're restarting the diet effective today. This time my husband is 100% on board, so hopefully he'll help me stay on track (and I won't have to nag him too much to do likewise). We're still doing Lose It, because that has worked pretty well for me so far -- I mean, yes, I gained some weight back from my lowest point, and of course that is to be expected because I haven't been the least bit careful. No exercise, no tracking, nothing.

So, yes, we're jumping right back on the wagon. Right now we're trying to get our eating on track because in just a few weeks I start grad school and we want to be "in a good place" for that. We're going to try to fit exercise in somewhere, even if we just go back to the "dance like you're drunk at a wedding" plan. Wish us luck!

BTW, I will continue to insist until the day I die that this is not a "resolution." This is not something we're doing because it's the New Year and we're supposed to. Yes, I have lapsed some in my diligence, but as I keep reminding myself, I didn't gain all this weight in a few months, and it's unreasonable to expect me to lose it all quickly. I am still down 50 pounds from where I started, and that's a hell of a thing. I still want to get healthy and be healthy and stay healthy, which has always been my goal.

Journaling has helped me before, so I'm going back to it again.

12W12S11: Greek Stir-Fry

It's not really "Greek" and it's not exactly a stir-fry, but I didn't know what else to call this concoction besides "delicious." Possible substitutions are marked with asterisks.

Greek Stir-Fry
Makes 2 servings, about 550 calories each

• 3 ounces broad egg noodles
• chicken or vegetable bouillon cubes (optional)
• 2 tablespoons lemon vinaigrette*
• 1½ teaspoon olive oil
• 4 links (or about 12 ounces) chicken sausage with feta and spinach*
• 1 medium zucchini*
• 1 large yellow bell pepper*
• ¼ Vidalia onion
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary*

1. Cook egg noodles according to package directions, adding bouillon cubes to cooking water if desired. When done, drain and toss with vinaigrette. Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, preheat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Slice sausage into thin rounds. Add sausage slices to skillet and cook 1-2 minutes or until meat starts to brown slightly. Stir.
3. Slice zucchini into rings. Cut pepper and onion into strips. Season with salt and pepper. Add to skillet and cook 1-2 minutes or until vegetables begin to soften. Stir.
4. Add rosemary and continue cooking until desired level of doneness, making sure meat is fully cooked, stirring often. If necessary, reduce heat partway through cooking to prevent burning.
5. Divide noodle mixture between two bowls. Top with cooked sausage and vegetables. Serve immediately. Enjoy!

*Possible substitutions: Instead of "Greek" stir fry (which, BTW, is because of the feata-and-spinach sausage and the lemon vinaigrette), you can make this "Italian" by using Italian dressing or balsamic vinaigrette instead of lemon, and sweet or hot Italian sausage. If you want, you can swap out oregano for the rosemary, but I like rosemary and it will work fine. Also, I used zucchini and a yellow bell pepper (mostly for color), but you can use a yellow summer squash and any color peppers you want. You could also add a can of diced tomatoes if you wanted to and cook the liquid down by at least half (I often do that when I serve this with a heartier pasta instead of egg noodles), or serve Italian-style stewed tomatoes on the side.

Let me know if you like it!

12W12S11: Faked Beans

You know how sometimes in your darkest hour, when you didn't have a chance to go grocery shopping over the weekend and you don't really have two nickels to rub together anyway so you're eating out of the cupboard and the freezer until payday, sometimes you whip up something out of random ingredients and it turns out to be pretty darned tasty?

Yeah, me neither.

No, I'm kidding: I made up this sort-of BBQ beans dish out of stuff I found in the pantry, the freezer, and the cooler full of dry goods that I never fully unpacked from our beach vacation last year. And it's really pretty good. So here is the recipe:

Faked Beans
Makes about 4 cups

• 2 cans (15½ ounces each) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• ½ can Manwich sauce (about 1 cup)
• ½ cup barbecue sauce
• 2 tablespoons Heinz 57 sauce
• ½ pound Jenny-O turkey kielbasa, cut into chunks

Combine all ingredients in a crock pot and stir to combine well. Cook at high heat for 1 hour, stirring only as needed. Reduce heat to low and cook for an additional 1½-2 hours or until done, stirring only as needed. Add additional Heinz 57, ketcup, or barbecue sauce if needed. Reduce heat to warm and continue cooking until ready serve, or remove from heat, cover, and refrigerate over night. If necessary, reheat before serving.

Adjustments: Obviously this recipe can be doubled, since all my measurements are based on halves. I guess you can use any kind of beans you want. I used cannellini beans because they're light in color and pretty plain in flavor and I had about 5 cans of them in the cupboard. You can use any kind of barbecue sauce you like (our was store-brand brown sugar), or make your own. I don't know whether the Heinz 57 makes a difference, but I used it so I included it in my recipe. You could use ketchup or extra BBQ sauce instead. I used turkey kielbasa because we had it but you could use any kind of kielbasa here (or maybe even chorizo or andouille sausage, and definitely hot dogs would work).

My math is fuzzy because I didn't measure everything exactly, but this makes about 4 cups of the finished product. I counted 1⅓ cups as a serving, and there are about 350-400 calories per serving using this recipe. Using lower-sugar BBQ sauce, lower-fat kielbasa, and smaller quantities of everything can reduce the calorie count if you need to. Enjoy!

PS -- I called these "Faked Beans" because they aren't baked (even though most of the baked beans I eat aren't either) and also because I "faked" this recipe out of cupboard ingredients.

12W12S11: Um

Yeah. I have not been doing very well. I'll just 'fess up to that now and we'll figure out how to deal with the guilt later. I'm not completely off the rails crazy, but I have been having a hard time staying focused and committed -- mostly, when I know there are candies or cookies anywhere around me, I just can't will myself to stay away. So it's like starting over every day.

At least I'm not giving up. At least there is that.

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Oh, hey, remember way back when I started this thing, and I said I was working toward the Wegman's "half-plate healthy" meal planning style? (See "Step/Week Eight.") Well, it turns out they might have been on to something, because the USDA recently changed the food pyramid to resemble that setup. Now it's "ChooseMyPlate" and, wouldn't you know it, half the plate is reserved for fruits and veggies. Even though I am not being 100% as careful and diligent as I should be, I still try to base on my meals on having plenty of fruits and veggies, so I am ahead of the curve here.

You know -- I know plenty of people don't care for the current President and First Lady, but I keep seeing Mrs. Obama on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel talking about eating healthier and making better dietary choices, and it's amazing how much of a difference this is already making in my house. Seriously. When I was a kid we had Nancy Reagan shouting at us to just say no to drugs, and I'm not entirely sure that it made a whole lot of difference. All it did for me was make me paranoid. But the Obama Administration's focus on positive reinforcement and good choices and activity and ownership of your diet is pretty refreshing, to me. Hopefully my kid will grow up with a better relationship to food than I had, with more of an emphasis on eating the right things and less of an emphasis on abstaining from everything. The concept of a "sometimes food" is pretty foreign to me, but it makes complete sense.

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No weight change since the last time. I am taking this as a good sign -- the "no news is good news" approach. I have not been exercising and I already admitted that I haven't been  uber-careful and I have been eating my feelings more than I am comfortable with, but I will keep at this until I get it right.

12W12S11: Restart

So. Vacation #1 for the year is over. I'm up 11 lbs. from my lowest point, when I switched over to the 1½ lb.-per-week plan. I'm not blaming Lose It -- this one is all me. I have not been as diligent about tracking as I need to be to continue to lose weight. And I want to, because I felt good on vacation, but I didn't feel like I looked my best, and when you're walking around Southern California with all the beautiful people, you really want to look your best.

So. As of today I am back on the 2 lb.-per-week plan (using today's weight) until I get back into fighting form. I have some allies in this -- they know who they are -- and whatever our goals are, we're going to try to reach them together. I still have a long-term goal in mind, but my short-term goal is to have to buy a new bathing suit before we go on Vacation #2 over the week of Labor Day. I want to see pictures of myself and not go, "Eww."

So. Restart. It's on again, like Donkey Kong.

12W12S11: Salad of the Week - Cobb Salad

I'm actually EXCITED about this salad, because I love me a good Cobb salad. Not that this one is going to be quite as good as the best, mind you, but it will be a pretty good approximation (assuming that you do not like avocados, which I don't, so you won't find them in this recipe).

• 2½ ounces Romaine lettuce (about 2 cups)
• 2½ cooked diced chicken
• 1 tablespoon bacon bits
• 1 hard-boiled egg, chopped
• 2 tablespoons crumbled reduced-fat blue cheese
• ½ cup grape or cherry tomatoes
• Choice of dressing (I used balsamic vinaigrette)

Like I said, this is an approximation, and to make it easily lunchbox-friendly, I used easy-to-find ingredients. Reduced-fat blue cheese crumbles might be the hardest thing to find on the list. If you want, you can probably use regular blue cheese, but of course I am trying to be careful of calories, even if I am only eating a salad for lunch. Note that  the "real" recipe calls for assorted lettuces including curly endive and watercress -- I went with Romaine here because it's easy, but you can just as easily substitute any number of pre-packaged fancy green blends. (I don't like weeds in my salad, so I try to keep it pretty simple.) It also calls for ½ an avocado, peeled, seeded, and cut into ½" chunks -- you can add that if you want to. (Blech.) Also, a real Cobb salad has fresh chopped chives -- I suppose you can use a small amount of dried chives if you want to, but I don't -- and you're supposed to chop the egg white and the egg yolk separately, and also seed and chop a whole tomato, but who wants to do that much work? You can always halve or quarter the cherry tomatoes if you're feeling fancy. And in a pinch, to make things even easier, you can substitute a reduced-fat blue cheese dressing for the blue cheese crumbles and the vinaigrette. (The recipe I linked to also uses Roquefort instead of blue cheese, and it puts the Roquefort in the dressing, which is homemade, and ... well, you can see how my version will work well enough to satisfy your Cobb salad cravings with like 75% less work.)

Blahblahblah calorie disclaimer: Lose It calculated this at about 255-275 calories per serving before dressing, which would depend of course on the calorie counts in your chicken, bacon, and blue cheese crumbles. My ingredients came in at 265 calories, which included 95 calories for the chicken, 25 calories for the bacon bits, and 40 calories for the blue cheese. And I went with Wish-Bone balsamic vinaigrette for the dressing, with 60 calories per 2 tablespoons, which comes out to 325 calories total. (It makes a great marinade for chicken and steak, too, BTW.)

12W12S11: Salad of the Week - Chef Salad Recipe

Okay, here is the "recipe" I used to recreate the Chef Salad from yesterday:

• 2½ ounces Leafy Romaine salad blend
• 1 ounce low-fat honey ham lunch meat, chopped
• 1 ounce low-fat roasted turkey lunch meat, chopped
• ½ ounce Swiss cheese, deli sliced, chopped
• 1 large hard-boiled egg, chopped
• ½ cup grape tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons shredded carrots
• 1½ tablespoons sunflower kernels
• 1½ tablespoons light honey dijon salad dressing

The flavors are pretty much the same as yesterday's store-bought salad, although obviously theirs was a little prettier. I really enjoyed the sunflower kernels yesterday, so I decided to use them for "crunch" this week instead of croutons. You can use croutons if you prefer. (I like croutons better with creamier dressings like ranch and blue cheese, myself.) Yes, I actually weighed out the lettuce -- this weight comes out to a little over 2 cups, even though the bag says 3 oz. = about 2 cups. With my ingredients by my math and an assist from Lose It, this salad has 330-350 calories per serving, including the sunflower kernels and dressing.

Side note: I always forget how tasty honey dijon dressing is -- I generally prefer vinaigrettes or creamy dressing, but this particular brand of dressing (and the Newman's Own that I'll be using later in the week when I run out of Ken's) is very tasty, and I might start using it instead of mayonnaise on sandwiches this summer, if I ever start packing sandwiches in my lunch again. It will be nice on a ham-and-Swiss or turkey-and-Swiss wrap.

12W12S11: Salad of the Week - Chef Salad

I was going to do a soft-of Cobb salad this week, but I didn't have the chance to get to the store over the weekend, and when I stopped in at the Wawa this morning to grab a salad from the cold case, they didn't have any Cobbs left, so I went with a chef salad. I will get a better "recipe" together for tomorrow, when I make the salad myself, but here is a picture of the label from today's salad so you can see what I am working with:

I went with fat-free honey mustard dressing, and since this one is pretty low in calories (210 for the salad plus 60 for the dressing), I will also be adding in some sunflower kernels from the vending machine to get closer to 350 calories. When I "replicate" this for the rest of the week, I'll be using lunchmeat ham, turkey, and Swiss cheese, plus croutons. Again, "recipe" to follow.

12W12S11: Salad of the Week - Chicken BLT

I'm not much of a salad person, but I really want to not have to buy Spanx for the wedding, so I've decided to try an experiment and have salads four days a week. I'm also interested in seeing if having fewer carbs at lunchtime does anything for me -- I am not really a low-carb kind of person (give me pasta or give me death!) but I'm not exactly cutting carbs out completely, either. Breakfasts and dinners will be the same, and on Fridays and the weekends I'll keep doing what I've been doing.

Because I don't want to spend a lot of time dithering around getting stuff together in the morning, I'll be eating the same salad every day, with a different "featured" salad each week. This way, I can make up a couple of sets of ingredients in advance and just grab 'em and go in the mornings. Today I started with my own version of one of my very favorite fast-food salads -- the Wendy's chicken BLT salad, which you can't even get any more. Here is what is going into this week's version:

• ¼ head iceberg lettuce (head cut into wedges, to make it easier to transport and store)
• ⅔ cup diced cooked chicken (from the lunch meat section)
• 1 tablespoon Hormel real bacon bits
• 2 tablespoons reduced-fat shredded cheddar cheese
• ½ cup cherry tomatoes
• ¼ cucumber, diced
• 1 serving croutons (~30 calories or so)
• 1 tablespoon McCormick Salad Toppins
• 1½ tablespoons light ranch dressing

I am weird about crunchy stuff staying crunchy, and keeping my meats and veggies separate until I actually eat my salad, so I put everything into separate containers: lettuce in a ziploc bag; chicken, bacon bits and cheese in one container; tomatoes and cucumbers in another; croutons and crunchies in yet another; and I brought the whole bottle of dressing and keep it in the work fridge. This makes a really big salad, probably about 4 cups worth total, and I figure I got at least 2 full servings of veggies out of it (and probably 3, because it was at least 2 cups of lettuce). You could use whatever kind of dressing you like -- the light ranch I went with has 60 calories per 1½ tablespoons. I've gotten the Wendy's salad with light honey mustard and that was also very tasty. I've gotten used to not using a lot of dressing so this was perfectly fine, although if you like more you can always use more dressing or thin the ranch out a bit with a teaspoon of skim milk if you wanted to.

Next week I'm pretty sure we're going to have some hard-boiled eggs around, what with Sunday being Easter and all, so I think I'm going to do a version of a Cobb salad, with chicken, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, and blue cheese crumbles. Not sure of the dressing yet -- hell, I'm not even sure I'm going to actually stick to this that long, but I'm going to try to, in the interest of science -- but I think I'll go with a light red wine vinaigrette, because it's easy and usually delicious.

(Yes, I know this is deathly boring. Sorry. But I use this space to keep myself honest and to try to psych myself up when I am getting down. Ignore me, just like usual.)

12W12S11: I Am Weary, Let Me Rest

The last two weeks have not been good for me. I've been physically and emotionally exhausted: my husband is working that crazy shift, I've been busting my butt at work, we're trying to raise a four-year-old without someone getting killed, it's been raining like the end of days, the basement has been flooding, the roof was leaking, etc. It's just been one big disaster after another, my life, and I let being careful and diligent fall by the wayside.

Plus, let's be honest: I've been on a diet for almost a whole year. I am only halfway done. I'm hungry and cranky and I have days when I just don't want to keep track of every single morsel of food that I put in my mouth. I don't want to exercise, even though I've been doing my "dance like you're drunk at a wedding" aerobics plan, which I actually do enjoy. I spent most of last week vegging out in front of the television, trying to catch up on my TiVo and cursing myself for indulging in entire bags of popcorn and big bowls of cereal for a bedtime snack.

Yes: self-sabotage. I know. I know. Nobody is more aware of this than I am. Another setback, after it took me so long to lose that extra half-pound last time. But it's water under the bridge this time.

OK. So now I've gotten that out of my system and I am getting back to business. Dieting isn't easy or else there would be no need to do it, right? But I have a vacation coming up that I need to buy a bathing suit for, and I know that when we leave I will not be anywhere near my goal weight, but I want to be closer to that number than I am to my starting weight, even if it is only two pounds closer. Solider on, and all that.

And if I can stay the course and lose ten more pounds before we leave in a little over six weeks, then I am going to allow myself a total vacation when we are away. No counting, no tracking, no denying. I'll be walking around Disneyland and dancing at a wedding and swimming in the pool, so it's not like I'm going to sit completely still on my butt eating bon-bons for a week.

Also: if I can mose ten more pounds, I might not need Spanx under my dress. Which is as big a bonus as we can expect at this point.

12W12S11: Ch-Ch-Changes

You know how, when you start working out, they tell you that sometimes your weight will fluctuate a little bit, because you're adding extra activity, and that makes your calorie needs change, and your body responds differently?

Yeah. Since I started my regimen (and then went and changed it), my weight has fluctuated by almost ten pounds. Like, I thought you were supposed to lose weight FASTER when you exercised? It took me until today to get back even to my old low, let alone lose any additional weight.

Three weeks. Eesh.

Whatever. No point in kicking my own ass over it, except when I'm working out. I lost another half-pound, and I will take it. I'm going to keep up with the vitamins and the arms and the cardio (what I am doing now is what I call my "dance like you're drunk at a wedding" exercise plan -- I make a 30-minute iTunes playlist, different every day, and just go crazy in the living room, incorporating as much as I can remember from the videos I've been using, but mostly just dancing my butt off and actually enjoying myself).

I also switched LoseIt! over to the 1½ lb. a week plan, because trying to lose 2 lb. a week was only allowing me 1,198 calories per day, and that just isn't enough. I am tired and cranky and hungry all the time -- I think the exercising has changed my metabolism a bit (for the better) and I don't want to starve. In trying to lose 1½ lb. a week, I get an extra 250 calories (1,448), which is doable. My plan to use up the extra calories is as follows:

• Breakfast -- now 300-350 calories (up from 250-300). Make up the extra calories by adding more fruit (i.e., large bananas, larger serving sizes) or extra ½ cup of skim milk.
• Lunch -- now 300-350 calories (up from 250-300). Make up the extra calories by adding an additional serving of vegetables or an extra ½ cup of skim milk.
• Snacks -- No change. Calorie limit remains at "float." Make up an extra calories by adding extra nuts or an extra ½ cup of skim milk.
• Dinner -- No change. Calorie limit remains at 600.

I think this plan is going to be good, because I am getting extra calories, but I am also trying not to waste them. Right now I am getting half my daily calories from dinner, and I am trying to tilt that balance a little bit, get more calories earlier in the day. Not a whole lot -- I will get almost half my calories from dinner -- but I am hoping to make up the extra calories with smart servings of stuff. Fruits, veggies, nuts, milk.

Already I've changed a couple of little things. I switched over to unsalted pistachios instead of regular ones. I mixed the new nuts in with the old stash, so I am still getting a good mix. This won't change calories at all so it's kind of a weird thing to change, but I the lunches I eat (soups and Lean-Cuisine type meals) are salty and I am trying to watch that where I can.

Also, I went back to eating Chobani or some other Greek and/or organic brand when I have yogurt in the morning, instead of the light yogurt I was eating. I have no fundamental problem with light yogurts, and I might start adding mini-cups of light yogurt in to the after-exercise snack rotation, but I really think that the extra protein and fewer artificial things in the Greek yogurts are worth the extra calories. (Plus, they do taste really good.)

12W12S11: Suckitude

The last week and a half has sucked, and I have sucked at the last week and a half.

For starters, I went and put myself on that exercise regimen, which I absolutely did not adhere to for the entire week last week. I've been great about the vitamins, but I only actually managed to exercise three out of five days last week, and even then, I did not do everything I expected. I had an appointment with my chiropractor on Tuesday last week, and he recommended that I not exercise for 12 hours after my adjustment, so on Tuesday, following his advice, I took the night off. I did my scheduled workout on Monday and Wednesday, and on Thursday I did the cardio and arms, so I got at least 25 minutes of exercise on those three days.

On Friday, we went to out for fish fry (it being Lent and all -- I don't give anything up for Lent, really, but I do stick to the no-meat-on-Fridays rule, because I have intense Catholic guilt otherwise, which is comical because I don't go to church) and then met friends for ice cream. I had coconut custard ice cream, full fat and sugar, I'm sure, and it completely rocked my world. We came home and I pretty much went right to bed.

Over the weekend I did get in a lot of walking while we were clothes shopping and grocery shopping, so I fully met my "free exercise" quota (I was hoping to get in at least 60 minutes per weekend, and I did about 3 hours). But I also had PMS last week, and I overindulged on the little "treats" that I allow myself to "sneak" every day -- like, it is entirely unnecessary for anyone to eat an entire box of Triscuits in one sitting. On the other hand: fiber. I could do worse than Triscuits, I suppose.

I have also been very, very tired and very, very hungry, in part because of the PMS, but also in part because of the time change, in part I am just not getting enough sleep, and in part I think because of the exercising. I know it's not a whole lot of exercise that I am doing, but I'm sure the cardio in particular is doing things to my metabolism. Good things, no doubt, but I need to be better about controlling those urges to snack, especially after a workout.

Also: nobody needs to eat Reese's Pieces for breakfast, even if they are damned good.

So it probably goes without saying that I did not lose any weight last week, but I will not get discouraged. I think I might be over-extending my own abilities with the workout plan, but I'm going to try to stick to it as much as possible. Here are my revised goals for the week:

• I will do the cardio four days a week, and I will do the 8-minute arms. If I feel up to it, I will do an ab or leg routine, but I will accept that cardio and arms is a good start.
• I will prepare a post-exercise snack of either a protein bar or a granola bar and string cheese, and I will do everything in my power to have nothing else but water. No sense in doing all this hard work only to blow it all with late-night snacks.
• I will get myself to bed at a more reasonable time every night. There is no reason in the world why I should be up until 11:00, or even until 10:30. I do better when I get enough rest.
• I will continue to remember that I am making a whole hell of a lot of progress here, and I will try to remember that every potential setback is also a potential opportunity to do better. I should not hang myself up on what hasn't happened, but on what already has.

I know I sound a bit like Stuart Smalley here, but affirmations work, and I need reminding that I am doing good work here. So: enough with the suckitude. Back to the good work.

12W12SP2 Update: Regimen

Y'all aren't going to believe this, but I've gone and put myself on a regimen.

I barely believe it myself, but it's true.

I've been thinking a lot, almost obsessively sometimes, about how I've stopped losing weight at the expected pace, and how my body is changing, and how I am not happy about all of the changes, and how maybe I don't really need those 10 M&M's I treat myself to when I am feeling a little eleven-o'clock-ish, and how it looks like it's going to be maybe another year before I get to my goal weight, and how maybe I'll never get there, and how maybe I can still get pretty close, and how it turned into 1:00 already and I still haven't finished my breakfast, and how I really wish I could shut up my brain sometimes and just be still and stop stressing ...

... and there it is. STRESS.

My chiropractor helped me make the decision, really. I had to have an extra visit last month because I have this thing going on where my hip is being all wonky. Not sore, not exactly, but stiff sometimes. Difficult. Most of the time it's fine, but sometimes when I am doing my cardio Pilates I can't do the moves quite right because my hip won't cooperate. And my chiropractor told me: "It's stress. Every change you make to your body is stressful. Some stress is good, and some is bad, but it's all stress, and you need to deal with it."

So I am. I put together a target exercise plan for the next four weeks, exercise every weekday, even Fridays, which I will stick to if it kills me, and it just might, because when my husband sees me working out for the first time, he will start laughing and then I will start laughing and then I will end up hyperventilating, but anyway, here is my exercise schedule (click to embiggen):

And based on feedback from both my chiropractor and Dr. Oz (as reported in First for Women, which I can't link to, and I can't find a direct link to this info on Dr. Oz's website either, but here is a pretty good summation), as well as general common sense, I am also taking the following vitamins:

• VitaFusion Gummy Vites (multivitamin), 2 gummies in the morning
• VitaFusion Fiber Gummies, 2 gummies in the morning (I take the weight management kind)
• Emergen-C Tangerine, 1 packet in water at lunchtime (click the link! free samples!)
• Trader Joe's Omega-3 Fatty Acids, 1200 mg fish oil, odorless, 1 gelcap at lunchtime (can't find direct link, sorry)

I'll let you know how everything turns out. Or if I turn into a goldfish.

12W12S2P: Under

As of my weigh-in yesterday morning, I now weigh 199.5 lbs. This is the first time that I have weighed under 200 lbs. in at least 5 years, and possibly in ten. This is, to put it mildly, a Big Damn Deal.

And I'm still not particularly happy about it.

Right now I am just not keeping up the pace I think I should be -- the LoseIt! plan I am following is the 2-pound-a-week plan. It is telling me I should be eating 1,202 calories per day or less, and even on the days when I don't exercise, I am usually well under that number. Over the last 10 days (not counting today), I have averaged 1,069 calories a day. Twice I was under 1,000 calories. This is not very many calories. I should be losing weight at a good clip.

But yet I am only averaging around a pound lost per week. This is still fine, I suppose, but it's not what I am hoping for. And I have been thinking recently that once I got under 1,200 calories allowed per day, I was going to switch over to the 1½-pound-a-week plan. It would allow me more calories, something closer to a "maintenance" plan -- gradually work my way back up to eating "normally" and take my time with the transition. It would have delayed my reaching my goal weight, but I figured it would make it easier for me to keep the weight off.

I'm not sure what to think about everything now. Part of me thinks that the reason why my weight loss has stalled out somewhat is because I am so restricted -- is my body going into "starvation" mode? If I switch over to the 1½-pound-plan, I'll get about 250 extra calories a day. Will that give me a boost, kickstart the weight loss again? I have heard of that working for other people. Will it work for me too?

I haven't decided yet, and I'm afraid to experiment just yet. For the time being -- or until I lose some more weight, I guess -- to stick with the plan I have in place, and see where it takes me. Obviously I'd still like to keep losing 2 lbs. a week, but I'll take what I can get.