So yesterday was one of the happiest days I’ve had in a long time. I couldn’t really explain this pure bliss I was in. It was like this overwhelming feeling of happiness took over me and the only thing I could do was keep repeating how happy I was over and over. I felt like I was going to explode. It was wonderful! What was not wonderful is how hungry I kept on getting despite feeding myself what seemed to be like typical portions (if not more). I had no time to count calories so I just tried to listen to my body (I totaled it all up this morning so you can find the totals at the end). Let’s see where that got me…

BREAKFAST

2 ww waffles with Barney Butter, cherry preserves, fresh blueberries and plain oikos with coffee

I made the waffles by following this recipe from Food for Living. I added some slices bananas to the batter as well because I love the extra natural sweetness they add. This breakfast was delicious. The waffle recipe is a good one – these were nice and moist!

[485 calories]

After breakfast, Adam and I got to some major spring cleaning. This was our first time really cleaning our place since the kitchen remodel was completed. Adam scrubbed the bathrooms and everything in the kitchen while I made sure the rest of our place looked great. Around 1pm I got hungry but had no time to make lunch just yet, so I grabbed a peanut butter chocolate chip “granola bar.”

I did not sit down for this but I did try to savor it slowly and really eat it mindfully.

Per your request, here is the recipe:

Grease a 9×13 pan with shortening
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1/2 c melted butter or margarine

3 cups oats

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup coconut

2/3 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds

1/2 cup honey

1 cup choc chips

2t vanilla extract

1/3 cup wheat germ

2T sesame seeds

Combine butter, brown sugar, peanut butter, honey and vanilla in a large bowl.
Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pan and pat down using a fork.

Cook @13-18 minutes just until edges are golden brown.
Score into squares and leave in pan until fully cooled.
Freezes well in Ziploc.

Note from Melissa: You may cut down on sugar and honey if too sweet. (I used 3/4 cup brown sugar and a little less honey) However, I wouldn’t recommend cutting out any of the butter–I’ve tried it and they don’t hold together as well! ENJOY!!!

Here is the kitchen, post a good scrub with a few added personal touches.

Check out the new fancy toaster oven (in the left corner) my parents got us as a gift. This thing is so crazy awesome. Thanks guys – we love it!!

The place was spotless and our neighbors (who are about to start their own kitchen remodel) were really impressed with how well we did. They have the same ugly kitchen (and bathrooms) we had so they knew exactly how far we’ve come. Anyways, the marathon cleaning sesh made lunch taste extra good!

LUNCH

Ww toast with sardines, avocado, S&P and lemon juice – such a creamy topping over the crunchy toast. Yum!

Simple salad: mixed greens, shredded carrots, cucumber

[307 calories]

After my quick lunch, Adam and I decided to go out and finally enjoy the beautiful weather. I got a strong craving for papaya salad and Adam never had lunch, so we ended up at the Island Hopper for a snack (?) for me and a super late lunch for him.

Green papaya salad – (from the menu) choice of the Thai lady, green papaya, carrots, long string beans, and tomatoes mixed in lime juice and Thai spicy sauce, topped with crushed peanuts

[300 calories?]

It looked beautiful but it was a little too sweet for me. I ate most of it because I was craving this dish but didn’t love it. At some point I realized I was eating food I wasn’t really enjoying so I stopped. It was also around the same time that Adam suggested with finish our meal with some froyo from Red Mango. You don’t have to ask me twice to eat dessert!

Small froyo (1/2 original, 1/2 cocoa) with raspberries and sliced almonds

Red mango sweetens their froyo with stevia and I found it to be a lot sweeter than Berryline’s. Still delicious, though, and although I prefer Berryline, Red Mango is closer so I’m probably going to end up there more often. I don’t discriminate against froyo joints too much.

[~170 calories]

Eventually it was time for dinner (hours later, don’t worry!)…

DINNER

Adam was out with his friends and I wanted something super simple. We were basically out of all fresh veggies and proteins so I was pretty happy with how my dinner turned out with such limited resources. Some cooked wild rice and fresh basil on its last leg were the inspiration for dinner.

I followed this recipe from EatingRD (blogs came to the rescue today!) to make some pesto out of the basil, then mixed it with wild rice, shrimp (defrosted, already cooked), cauliflower and peas (all defrosted). Topped with a little extra freshly shaven parmesan cheese.

This was a wonderful combo together!! PS – I used the 2T pine nuts and 2T EVOO, 1/3 cup parm and about 1T water to thin it. The pesto was fabulous. Can’t wait to make a gorgeous sandwich with the leftovers.

Dessert – another pb choc chip “granola bar”

I wanted to keep eating these (they are SOOOO good) but remembered that I already had froyo earlier in the day and this was my second bar. I popped some gum in my mouth, drank some water, and cuddled up with a blanket on the couch and tuned into the Biggest Loser. I was super proud of my will power!

Here is the kicker. This morning I calculated the nutritional facts for these “granola bars” and realized they are 485 calories EACH!!!!!!! I knew these tasted rich but I had no idea how rich they were. I ate 970 calories worth of “granola bars” in one day. Ugh!!!!! This brought the day’s total to 2,700 calories. I wanted to die the second I saw this number because I really thought I handled myself well throughout the day. I really thought I ate intuitively and mostly healthy. WRONG! This is where the conflicting thoughts in my brain kicked in. I felt so defeated after seeing this total but at the same time felt I didn’t do anything wrong. The only mistake I made was to not calculate the nutritional info for these bars earlier. Of course if I knew how truly indulgent they were, I would have treated them as such. Perhaps I would have cut them in half or at the least would have stopped at just one. This kind of reconfirms my belief that calorie counting is important. I did listen to my body and it told me to eat 2,700 calories and not because it needed them but because I distributed them poorly. If I ate that amount of calories every day, I would (not so) slowly but surely gain weight! I tried not to cry over spilled milk, as they say, but I did feel uneasy. This was supposed to be a healthy day after my night out on Friday, with another planned treat for Sunday afternoon, and it clearly did not work out this way. I’ve had the whole day to think this over and I am much more calm about it but I did feel a little rough for a few hours. Any thoughts on the subject? Does this show you the power of calorie counting or proves why you hate it?

BREAKFAST

Power bran muffin with a sliced persimmon and nonfat yogurt

Lots of textures and tastes!

LUNCH

Thai food leftovers. The papaya salad was still crazy spicy but so yummy

SNACKS

3 things I’m obsessed with – TJ’s ww Tuscan bread, avocado + baba ganoush

I actually had some more bread with baba ganoush after dinner as a snack. The stuff is my new crack – my Barney Butter de jour if you will.

A little piece of fudge with walnuts at the office…

DINNER

Dinner was one creamy concoction – risotto with cauliflower and walnuts (based on this recipe, which I found through Tri to Cook). I used only 1 cup of dry arborio rice but added some cooked wheat berries, inspired by this recipe. I also only used 1t of EVOO (for toasting the rice), 3 oz of brie and walnuts instead of almonds (we ran out of sliced almonds). This was SO indulgent tasting!

It was actually overwhelmingly creamy (Adam thinks that’s crazy talk ), so mid-eating I decided to add some fresh cherry tomatoes to the bowl. What a great addition! The tomatoes added such freshness to the dish. I still managed to eat only 1/2 of this bowl.

Soon after dinner, I found room for dessert!

I ate 3 out of the 4 cookies in the package. These guys are so much yummier (and junk ingredient free!) than oreos. The cookie is actually chocolaty.

After the kitchen designer left, Adam and I watched 5 episodes of season 3 of Entourage. We just couldn’t stop. Have you seen the show? We’re addicts here!

All right kids, I’m off to work! Happy Tuesday

Knowing that I will be going to Sweat Box tonight, I wanted to do some yoga during lunch. Unfortunately, my gym moved the Monday lunch time yoga to Wednesday with no notice (they just changed the schedule!). So what did I do? I went home and did some on demand yoga from Exercise TV (Comcast on demand). If you haven’t tried on demand workouts from your cable company, give them a go. A lot of them are really great!

BREAKFAST

2 (frozen) banana multi-grain waffles with peanut butter and 1/2 apple

This was the last fruit we had in the house. We are in desperate need of a trip to the grocery store!

LUNCH

I was going to buy lunch since we had nothing in the house, but since I ended up at home, I decided to get creative with whatever we had. I found a little piece of pizza dough in the fridge, an open can of diced tomatoes, an open can of chickpeas and some greens. Voila – a grilled flatbread pizza with mixed greens, chickpeas, tomatoes and Goddess dressing was born!

I was pretty proud of my creation!

I ate it like a giant doughy wrap. Mmm…

Some overindulging on cookies last night meant that I wasn’t really hungry for snacks all day today. I did eat an almond stuffed medjool date (unpictured – the pic came out super blurry) at some point in the afternoon. This brings me to…

DINNER

Since I am going to Sweat Box tonight (see how I’m saying I’m going… not “hope to go.” Yeah, I’m so going!! ), dinner was super early (Adam was going to a Bruins game tonight, so it worked out perfectly). I followed this recipe for stuffed peppers, subbing quinoa for brown rice (much quicker cooking!) and omitting the onions.

Bella’s pictures are so much prettier. She’s a genius with a camera The peppers were pretty yummy. Adam especially enjoyed them since he has a mild obsession with black beans. This is how I get my man to eat vegetarian dinners once in a while. The cheese helps too

And then the cookie monster in me came out. I plopped myself on the couch with the giant tupperware container of the leftover cookies. Bad, bad idea. Here are a few of the whole wheat peanut butter M&M cookies, just for the visual. I definitely ate a lot more than these 2 (can’t tell you how many, because I didn’t count! Maybe 5?). These are leaving my house tomorrow. No more temptation!!

No more eating for the rest of the night. I’m off to get ready for Sweat Box. Weeeee

Yesterday morning I dug deep into the fridge and, freezer and combined a whole bunch of leftovers to create this wholesome lunch:

In the mix: leftover brown rice, leftover mushroom sauce, tiny bit of leftover grilled chicken + rest of opened packet of TJ’s black lentils, frozen peppers + frozen peas. I defrosted the frozen veggies straight in the pan (took just a few minutes), then added the rest of the stuff to the pan to combine. The flavors worked great together, and it took literally less than 5 minutes. Closeup…

This morning I was faced with the same dilemma – buy lunch or get creative. I dug into the freezer for a protein and found some lagostino tails. I defrosted them in the sink under cold water while making breakfast, then threw them on an EVOO sprayed pan to warm them up and combine them with cajun spices. So here is what’s for lunch today: romaine lettuce, cajun lagostino tails, cucumbers, fresh zucchini, black beans, tortilla chip crumbles, salsa. Can’t wait!  

Getting cozy together

Operation “empty the freezer + fridge” is underway in our house, and I think I’m doing quite well so far. There is no reason to buy lunch – you can definitely make a nutrious meal in minutes with a little creativity and some help from your freezer

Sorry I’ve been MIA.  I kind of went crazy with food the last few days and it’s hard to blog when you don’t feel very good about yourself.  Also work is insanely busy so I haven’t been able to go to the gym yesterday and won’t be able to go today either.  That’s too bad because I really want to restart this whole healthy living thing and exercise really helps.  Anyway, I just wanted to say that I miss you, and here are some pics of yesterday’s food (as always, scroll over for descriptions).  My meals were healthy but there was a lot of unpictured junk in between (cookies, nuts, Barney Butter out of the jar!).  Barney Butter is trouble by the way… I don’t know if buying it in jars was a good idea.  Maybe I should stick to the little packets, although they are definitely not as good.

Speaking of coffee… well, tea actually.  Tina was nice enough to email me and let me know about a Tea Tasting and Pairings Event that Starbucks is hosting for all media/bloggers here in Boston.  They originally were going to host it at 11am on January 29th (a Thursday) but I think they may switch it to a brunch spot so maybe an noon on January 31st (Saturday).  It will be held at 755 Boylston St.  Do any of you Boston bloggers want to join me for this?  I would love to meet some of you in person!!  Please let me know if any of you plan on going… I’m being shy and don’t want to go by myself.

Onto food… this is going to be quick!

BEST FOOD OF THE DAY

It’s really a tie between an awesome risotto and no pudge brownies with dried cherries (I just added about 1/2 cup into the batter).  I had 2 of these babies as they came out of the oven.  I wanted even more but got a hold of myself

Now the risotto with porcini mushrooms and mascarpone… I came across this recipe on Kelly’s The Pink Apron blog and it sounded right up my alley.  I immediately put it on my to-make list and last night was the night to execute this beauty.  Risottos are a little work intensive because you have to constantly stir them to make them creamy.  Also, for some reason, mine always take more broth that the recipe calls for (like double!) so it takes that much longer.  The result, though, was well worth it!  It was absolutely incredible!!  My serving (I went back for a little more after finishing this):

A few modifications on my part… I used vegetable broth instead of beef, because we had a box open.  I think beef would be really nice here, though, so when I make it again I’ll use beef.  Also as mentioned I used like double the broth (just keep adding 1/2 cup at a time until it’s nice and creamy… read: not crunchy).  Lastly I didn’t use shallots, because of my onion aversion   Last comment on this: Cooking Light nutritional info says a serving is under 200 calories, but that’s definitely wrong.  I did a quick and dirty calculation and it’s at least 280.  Still amazing for such an indulgent tasting dish!  Oh, and the mascarpone is really key here.  It instantly made this risotto super creamy! 

OTHER EATS:

Total calories for the day: 1475

WORKOUT

I took a great Stability Ball class (bootcamp type class, using the bosu, stability ball and medicine balls) and then finished off with another 30 minutes on the elliptical.  I think I finally stretched all those muscles!!

Off to work!  “See” you later

A few things I wanted to mention in today’s post…

1. Did you hear that the FDA published a warning about a possible salmonela contamination of peanut butter and peanut butter containing products?  Read this article if you haven’t heard about this yet.  I figured since most of my pb is from a while back (and I’ve already consumed quite a bit of the stuff and am, well, still alive) I’m good, but I’m not quite sure what to do about the brand new box of Peanut Butter Puffins I just bought last week.  Should I return it?

2. I mentioned before that I receive newsletters from eBrandAid.  I received an interesting article that you may also like.  BrandAid summaries 7 worst junk ingredients to avoid, including Sodium Nitrate, Apartame (found in Equal), Acesulfame-K, artificial food colorings, MSG, Trans Fat, and Sodium Benzoate.  Do you read food labels to make sure this junk isn’t in your food?  Do you care?

3. I love the Biggest Loser show!  I find it motivating at times, but I’ve also been guilty of eating ice cream and cookies while watching the show.  The transformation of the people on the show is amazing, although I do think working out for 7-8 hours a day and eating the bare minimum is a little crazy.  I guess it is a reality show, after all.  Anyways, this year the Biggest Loser partnered with General Mills to launch the Pound for Pound program, which will donate 10 cents’ worth of food to a food bank in your area (based on your zip code) for every pound you lose.  For those of you who are still trying to lose some weight, this could be a nice way to also give back a little… and maybe it will motivate you to work a little harder at the gym or pass up that cookie at the office.  I registered since I would like to lose weight.  Want to join me?

Ok, now that we’re done with “business” let’s get to today’s eats

BREAKFAST

I am very (!) low on fruit at this point so today’s breakfast came about because my grape tomatoes were on their absolutely last legs.  I made a delicious omelet made with 1 egg and 2 egg whites, grape tomatoes, 1/4 avocado, 1/2 black bean cake, 1/2 oz american cheese.  On the side I had 1/2 of an english muffin which I burnt.  Oops!  And of course a large cup of coffee with skim milk and agave nectar.

The perfect bite!

YOGA!

I wanted to ease myself into working out today and referred to my trusty cable box for yoga suggestions.  I tried the Yoga Fitness Fusion Plus – a 45 minute workout that seriously kicked my butt!  I was sweating like crazy!  My husband opened all the windows in the living room because I was dying and at some point I threw the tank top off of me because even that thin of a fabric was killing me (don’t worry, I was wearing a sports bra )  Seriously I felt like I was in a hot yoga studio!  If you see this in your on-demand menu on your cable box, I highly recommend that you try this out.  It was challenging but a lot of fun!  Yoga workout stats:

• Duration: 0:45
• Calories burnt: 263
• Ave HR: 119, Max HR: 188

Oh and my workout inspired my husband to try yoga too!  He realized it’s not a whimpy workout and will improve his flexibility.  I’m super excited about this.  We’re going to buy him a cheap yoga mat and try another workout from the cable box.  He’s not ready for a yoga studio yet.

SNACK

I was catching up on some blog reading after yoga and relaxing a bit.  Time was flying by in the morning and when I realized it was almost 2 pm I made myself a little snack: 2 AK MAK sesame crackers (love love love these!!), 1 with smooth Barney Butter and 1 with chunky Barney Butter.  I still can’t choose my favorite but I know I love BB that’s for sure! + an organic tangelo and yogi green tea.

Another yogi message for ya:

GYM WORKOUT

About 1 1/2 hours later I forced myself down to the gym.  I knew I wanted to get a workout in, but I was starting to feel a little hungry (it was around 3:30 by then).  I contemplated making lunch, digesting, then going, but sometimes if you just don’t do it, it doesn’t happen at all.  So I grabbed my stuff and went downstairs.  I knew that once I got there, it would be good… and I was right, my workout was great!

I did 5 minutes of the elliptical as warm-up, followed by a chest/shoulder/triceps/quads/rectus and abs routine from Jillian Michael’s Winning by Losing book.  I love Jillian on the Biggest Loser btw!  And then I did another 5 minutes on the elliptical as a cool down.  I originally was going to do a run as well, but decided not to force it.  It was a good workout already, no need to completely kill myself.  There is always tomorrow for that!  Workout stats:

• Duration: 1:07
• Calories burnt: 585
• Ave HR: 147 ; Max HR: 195

LINNER

By the time I showered after the gym, it was nearly 6pm!  Can I call that lunch?  We still didn’t go grocery shopping so I used rice leftovers and everything else came from the freezer and pantry: shrimp, broccoli, water chestnuts and 1 last roasted red pepper.  I added some Ponzo sauce to the mix.  It actually came out very delicious!

And I enjoyed 2 sweet sloops for dessert.  We love these things so much, they were our wedding favors!

DINNER

Since lunch was super late and we have practically no food in the house, I used some leftover yogurt (a little over 1/4 cup) to make another yogurt combo.  Sorry, you’re probably sick of seeing them by now!  They are SO GOOD though and I mix up the toppings !

We have 1/2 small apple here, 2 dried figs (all that’s left), some pb puffins (older box), almonds, hazelnuts and Erin Baker’s double chocolate granola.  It was light and delicious.  I’ve never really had breakfast for dinner before, but now I see why people do it! :green:

Total calories for the day: 1347

*edited to add* I just had the Pringles Baked Wheat honey butter stix.  These taste like sugar cookies.  Yum

So make that 1437 calories for the day!

Let’s get straight to lunch because it was kind of the highlight of today’s eats.  I couldn’t get the b.good southwestern chicken salad I just had a few days ago out of my mind (obsessed much? ), so today I decided to try one of their other salads.  If you’ve been following my blog for awhile you’ll know that I hardly ever buy lunch.  In fact, I’m not even sure if I’ve ever bought lunch since starting this blog!  That’s just crazy, because just a year ago I always bought lunch.  Anyways, today I bundled up and braved the cold to head to b.good.  I didn’t want to be too boring so I ordered the sesame-ginger chicken salad: mesclun, carrots, jicama, edamame, grilled chicken, sesame seeds, sesame sticks, orange-soy dressing.

The verdict?  It was good, but not mind blowing southwestern chicken salad good   I also went through a stage where I put Newman’s Own Light Sesame Ginger dressing on everything, so I think I ODed on that flavor.  Anyways, I still enjoyed it!

OTHER EATS OF THE DAY: 

Oops, I just realized I promised Lara I wasn’t going to have any sugary sweets today.  That’s actually why I made that little yogurt concoction for “dessert” after dinner, but alas a few hours later I totally forgot about my little goal and grabbed the guy above.  Love bars… mmm, best sh*t evuh!!

No workout today again.  My stomach hasn’t been my friend the last few days.  Hopefully tomorrow…

Oh, we’re going to Foxwoods Casinos in CT tomorrow night for the night, so I won’t blog until Saturday.  I’ll take lots of pics though and will do a recap for sure!  We’re going to a nice restaurant there so I’m sure there will be delicious eats to report about.  I’m not a gambler, but maybe my husband will come back a millionaire?!  Yeah ok.

*edited to add* How could I forget?!  Angela of Oh She Glows is holding an Honest Foods giveaway, so if you haven’t done so yet, click on the link and enter to win a box of their goodies.  I’m dying to try out their products (I search for them at every Whole Foods I ever go to… with no luck so far) so maybe this is my chance.  On that note, you know what, don’t click on that link.  This will increase my chances of winning… j/k

Before we got our Christmas tree, I stopped by an art gallery store to check out their ornament selection.  There were so many unique and absolutely gorgeous ornaments that I just had to take pictures of them.  Unfortunately they were outrageously expensive so I didn’t get any.  Maybe if I win the lottery one day

Aren’t these amazing?!

And these are some giant ornaments in my office lobby.  There a bunch of them all over the Prudential Mall in Boston.  So cool!

And here is my husband cutting the protective plastic around our first Christmas tree ever  

And our tree all lit up.  It looks really pathetic in this picture, but actually it’s really cute and made the last few weeks very festive

Ok, onto food and fitness…

I woke up this morning ready to be super healthy.  I was so excited about it!  So today I’m happy to report was so so good.  I just love being healthy!  It makes me feel a billion times better than stuffing my face!!!

BREAKFAST

After opening some gifts from my husband (I got a brand new camera and an HRM – yay!!!!!!) while drinking coffee, I made one my lovely yogurt parfaits.  It’s been what seems like ages since I’ve had one.

In this beautiful bowl (picture still taken with the old camera – not bad) was about 3/4 cup of yogurt, 1/2 banana, some strawberries and blueberries and a serving of Bear Naked Continental Divide Blend trail mix (banana chips, chocolate chips, walnuts, almonds and chocolate granola).  Yum yum yum.

Here is the package of the trail mix.  I liked it a lot!

WORKOUT

After digesting my breakfast for a few hours, I head to the gym in our building.  It is so convenient having it right there… I really have no excuse of ever skipping workouts!  I used my new HRM, so I have some workout stats… I love knowing exactly how many calories I burn!  The HRM was about 25% below what the treadmill and elliptical showed!

I like having a plan before I go to the gym, so today I came with a printout of this 3s and 5s treadmill challenge.  I looked at Melissa’s speeds and thought they were at about my fitness level so I started following her numbers exactly but after the first set, realized I could kick it up a notch without jeopardizing my ability to finish the run so I increased everything by 0.3 mph, oh and I also ran all the recovery intervals at 6.3 mph.  This was so much fun… I’ll definitely do this again.  Hopefully I can increase my speed and add some inclines over time!

After 45 minutes on the treadmill (or exactly 5 miles), I jumped on the elliptical and did another 30 minutes there.  I think the elliptical is just so boring… it took a lot of convincing to stay on for the full 30, but I did it!  Here are my stats:

Duration: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Calories burnt: 701

Ave heart rate: 151 (I think that’s a bit low but this thing is new so I’m still figuring it out)

Max heart rate: 198 (whoa)

HBBC points today: 7

Total HBBC points: 46.8 

SNACKS

I wasn’t too hungry after my workout so I just had a snack before making lunch.  I’ve decided to give Meghann’s orange + pb combo a try. I gave it a little twist by using Peanut Butter and Co.’s Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter.  This is about 1/2 orange with 1/2T of pb:

It’s official, peanut butter goes with everything… including orange!!  The juicy orange was actually a nice contrast to the creaminess and heaviness of the peanut butter.  De.licious!

Another snack later in the afternoon… a Harry & David pear.  I grabbed one from a goodie basket at work yesterday, so it got a little bruised on its commute home.  It was still juicy and delicious.  Harry & David pears are definitely the best (honestly I wouldn’t be able to justify the price though)!

LUNCH

For lunch I planned on making a salad since my husband was eating the leftover calzone (I usually try to eat salads or other “funky” foods he wouldn’t be interested in when he’s on his own with food).  We had a pretty pathetic amount of mixed greens, though, so I brainstormed and came up with this “salad.”

This looks just like a pile of food, but here is what you really see:

• mixed greens dressed in 1 teaspoon of Annie’s organic goddess dressing
• 1/4 avocado
• grape tomatoes
• small handful of macadamia nuts
• 1/2 block of baked tofu (sprinkled in chili powder and salt, baked at 375* for 35 minutes)

This made me so full!  I think it was the fat from the avocado and the nuts.  This was about 300 calories but I was seriously stuffed for hours (almost in an uncomfortable kind of stuffed).

DINNER

My husband was craving buffalo chicken, so I suggested making little pita pizzas with buffalo chicken.  They came out super delicious!  Un-pocketing the ww pita makes for a great base for TWO individual pizzas… so efficient

Here is my plate with 2 large carrots on the side for some veg:

Close-up of the pizza:

Oh, I used Trader Joe’s pizza sauce (it’s really great!) and 2% Italian shredded cheese (1 oz worth).  I burnt it a little but it was still super yummy!  I will definitely remember this idea when I’m craving a greasy slice – this one was enjoyed 100% guilt free!

And after blogging, I’m going to make some tea and have this baby:

This guy was in my stocking this morning.  The snowman is so cute

All in all, I am so happy about getting back on track.  I just feel so happy!  I’m restarting my No Mindless Snacking Challenge (NMSC).  Today was Day 1 (of a second streak attempt).  I home to make to the end of December (and then I’ll start the January NMSC).

Merry Christmas to everyone again!  I hope you are having a wonderful day, whether you celebrate it or not (you probably still got the day off )

BREAKFAST

More of those juicy strawberries made an appearance in my breakfast yogurt parfait.  Since I overdid it with the chocolate yesterday I decided to make my own trail mix since I have all sorts of nuts and dried fruit in the house (my pre-mixed trailmix has chocolate chunks in it).  So today’s beautiful and super delicious bowl had a little over 1 cup of yogurt (last of the container), 5 large strawberries, some raisins, hazelnuts, almonds, pecans, dried apricots and Erin Baker’s double chocolate granola.  Ok, I guess I did have some chocolate with breakfast after all but this granola isn’t too chocolatey or too sweet.  This was excellent!

SNACK

I was hoping to squeeze in a workout during lunch so I had one of Ellie Krieger’s energy bars with some tea as a snack around 11 am.  Those bars are so good!  There seems to be no picture online with the recipe, but I actually own her cookbook and there is a picture there.  The one in the book is a lot chunkier than mine, which I think would be quite nice… I got a little carried away with my food processor  But, the taste is still absolutely amazing and I will definitely be making these bars again after I finish them up.  I think I have 3 or 4 left in my freezer…

Anyways, around noon (when it was time to hit the gym) I was really on a roll with work, so I decided to keep going and postpone my workout to after work.  This was a risky move for sure, but sometimes when you’re on a roll, you just gotta keep rolling

LUNCH

My breakfast and lunch (and maybe the fact that I was really into my work and thus not really thinking about food) kept me full for a long time.  I finally stopped for lunch maybe around 2:30?

Lunch was a whole lot of random goodies: leftover lentil soup (3 ladles worth), Arnold’s sandwich thin with 1 thin slice of American cheese and a juicy plum.  It was very satisfying despite being pretty low in calories!

PRE-WORKOUT SNACK

This time it was a real pre-workout snack.  I brought some grape tomatoes, but as usual got a chocolate craving.  So I chose to listen to my craving and grabbed a chocolate chip zbar out of my office drawer (there is always an endless supply of healthy snacks in there )  With some more tea…

WORKOUT

After canceling my reservation for the lunch time spinning class, I immediately tried to sign up for the 5:45 spot.  Well, that class was well booked!  This guy is awesome (and super tough) and recently with the holiday season upon us, his classes get totally booked up!!!  I watched the reservation line all day, and finally was able to get a spot when someone cancelled.  Phew!  I got the last spot because there were definitely people that were denied access.  The class seriously killed me today.  I felt so out of shape and seriously thought I was going to throw up at some point, but a shower and some beautifying (hair straightening and make-up) made me feel all new and shiny

DINNER

Dinner was just a bunch of stuff we had in the house.  I used a package of shelf-stabilized firm tofu and used this recipe from Joanna of A Cup of Jo for the sauce.  Since it was Asian and we had some leftover brown rice in the fridge, I thought of making a stir-fry with veggies we had in the freezer.  So I defrosted some frozen broccoli, water chestnuts and mixed peppers in the wok sprayed with EVOO Pam, then added the tofu with the sauce and a few minutes later the cooked brown rice.  All of this was stir-fried together, and then I added an egg that I tossed with the rest of it.  The tofu got broken up but it was super delicious!  Sorry the picture isn’t very appetizing but trust me, it was awesome!

And now I’m stuffed.  Honestly I shouldn’t have eaten the whole bowl, but I was already kind of low on calories for the day.  I didn’t want to wake up famished tomorrow…

Total caloric intake: 1413

Oh, I almost forgot, go to HangryPants’ blog and leave a comment.  Every comment will add 5 cents towards food for the Rhode Island Food Donation Bank.  Very cool!