A Day of Feasts

Sunday was a day of delicious food. We got up for breakfast with my parents, Sarah, and Joosung at Simply Breakfast. It was delicious! I couldn’t resist and ordered the French Toast Platter.

So tasty!

After breakfast, everyone departed. However, instead of going home first, Daniel wanted to catch the Chiefs game on tv so we stopped in a bar and watched it. Well, he watched it, I studied. But they won! That was exciting! Everyone was cheering and I’m the loser with a laptop and textbook like “did I miss something?” haha! Grad school probs.

Anyway we made it back to the Hat (Manhattan for all you non-Manhattanites) for dinner with our friend Garret. We had invited him over a couple weeks ago for fish tacos so he returned the favor by making some for us. He got fancy with some taco seasoning on some Swai, a black bean/corn mix, and some fresh avocado! Oh, and he bought the mango salsa I’m obsessed with.  He’s a good man.

I think they were better than the ones we made him. This might have to be a tradition.

Here’s the rest of Sunday’s meals:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	2 strips of bacon	90
	Whole wheat french toast with syrup (2 slices)	350
	hash browns	70
	1/2 english muffin	50
Drink	Mango Smoothie	300
Lunch	Subway Melt 6in on 9grain Honey Wheat	370
Dinner	Fish Tacos (2)	380
Total		1610

And since I fail at posting Weekly Wrap-Ups on Sundays…

Looks like I lacked in the workout department this week.  My average calories are down by 100 from last week but I still wasn’t successful in avoiding pizza.  But this week it’s all about avoiding those sweets! Hopefully I can resist!

Time to go running! Have a great rest of your Monday!

First Day

Yesterday was my first day of work as you know. It went well! I did a lot of reading to get acquainted with the projects I’ll be working on. To keep my body and brain fueled during work, I made a fruit smoothie to take with. It was not very pretty and I was a little embarrassed to have people see inside my cup.

This is obviously an old photo (blond wood table) but it gives you an idea. It was maybe not even that pink since I didn’t have any fresh strawberries so it was almost kind of pale. Anyway, not the prettiest but oh so good!

So what I ate Tuesday:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Corn Flakes	100
	Almond Milk	40
Snack	Fruit Smoothie	220
Lunch	Almond Butter & Strawberry Preserves sandwich	230
Snack	Chips and Peach & Mango Jalapeno Jam	120
Dinner	Crusted Salmon and Rice	340
	Fruit and Spinach Salad	150
Dessert	Toblerone (2 pieces)	80
Total		1280

I had my favorite salad of course! A bed of spinach with some fruit (this time blueberries), feta, sliced almonds, and raspberry vinaigrette. Never disappoints!

To accompany it for dinner, Daniel made a crusted Salmon, but with a twist! Instead of using eggs to hold the toppings to the fish, he used mustard!

It wasn’t even that strong of a mustard flavor. He just brushed it on the fillets, then pressed them into the bread crumb mixture. The mixture consisted of Panko bread crumbs, Corn Flake crumbs, one slice of bread crumbled in a food processor first, lemon zest, Creole seasoning, and Italian seasoning (basil, parsley, and oregano).

It was really good! Daniel had added some soy sauce to his rice and I was going to but once I started eating the fish with the rice I completely forgot! It was so good, it didn’t need more flavor. Seriously people, mustard is the way to go.

Workout recap time!

I did not workout.

Moving on!

I did something crazy tonight.  I jumped on the bandwagon. The kale chip bandwagon, that is. Verdict: Not bad! Definitely not as good as real chips, but I can dig it. I’ll share my version of it tomorrow!

Enjoy your Wednesday evening!

Labor Day Lazy

Yesterday I was suuuuuuuper lazy. Daniel and I didn’t do much all day. We started off by making these tasty breakfast tacos with eggs, green pepper, cucumber, cheese, and mango salsa.

I was starving so I ate three and a half.

Needless to say, I did not work out yesterday.  But we did have a delicious dinner!

We stopped by Wal-Mart and picked up some spinach tortellini. We added some chopped up chicken, vodka sauce, and some veggies. Delicious!

Labor Day Meals:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Breakfast tacos (3.5)	550
Snack	Chips with Peach & Mango Jalapeno Jam	120
Drink	Green Tea Blender	350
Dinner	Tortellini with Chicken and vodka sauce	325
Dessert	Fiber One Lemon Bar	90
Total		1435

Shouldn’t have had the Green Tea Blender but it woke me up!  It was from the Hardback Cafe (connected to Hastings). Basically a frappucino. Only better.  Ok, they’re both pretty good. I’m just on a green tea kick!

Well after my first day of work, I’m ready to relax! I mean, do homework…. Have a great Tuesday night!

Back On Track

After a food-filled weekend, it was time to get my habits in order. I think because I had not had decadent sweets like that in a while, my taste buds went into over drive and I devoured everything in sight! Ok, not everything. But my cravings were not under control. My will-power was nowhere in sight. I think I had it under control by sunday though.

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Left over Jimmy John’s sandwich	132
	Rice and eggs	100
Snack	Fiber One Chocolate chewy bar	90
Lunch	4 Pieces of shrimp sushi	200
Dinner	Almond crusted salmon	322
	Rice & corn	180
Dessert	1.5 No-bake coconut cookies	264
Total		1288

Two of those no-bake cookies were left and I couldn’t let them go to waste. I tried to sneak them without Daniel noticing but he caught me eating the second one so I gave him half of it. I’m greedy when it comes to sweets! Otherwise, it was a better day for sure.

For dinner, we bought some salmon and Daniel cooked it up using a mixture of recipes. He combined the Almond Crusted Swai with the Tilapia Milanese.

For the crumb mixture, he pulsed almonds in the food processor with a little parmesan, parsley, and lemon zest. Then, he added Panko breadcrumbs to the mix. He coated the salmon in egg, then dipped them in the almond mixture. We thought we could skip the flour step but found that it actually helps the coating stay on better. It worked out in the end though. Then he cooked them on each side for 5 minutes over medium heat.

We are big fish eaters nowadays. There are so many easy recipes out there that are so flavorful and give the fish a little crunch. I love crunch in my meals whether it be crispy coating on fish, almonds in my salads, or crunchy vegetables in my stir fry.

Alright, it’s time for my Weekly Wrap-Up since I forgot to do that yesterday. My bad!

Obviously Saturday’s calories are just a guess. I knew it was going to be a lot from all of those sweets so I just picked a high calorie amount. Other than those two bad days, I did pretty good! I just need to not go to the grocery store hungry and learn to resist having seconds (and thirds) when it comes to desserts. I did do a lot better incorporating more workouts so I hope to keep up with that this week. Oh, and I got down to 129.6 this past week! Finally under 130 again. But I may have gained a pound or two after saturday’s binge…. time to burn off those extra calories!

Binge Eater

The lake was so much fun yesterday! As you know, we were at Daniel’s uncle’s lake house. His aunt and uncle weren’t there but two of his sisters and several of his cousins made it. It was fun to meet more of his family. The house is on a private lake with plenty of room for fun activities like tubing! Sadly, on the second run the tube broke (I guess it was pretty old), but we still swam a bit and enjoyed the boat.

I’d love to tell you about all the things I ate but I figured I should just show you. Let’s just say I went over my calories A LOT. I didn’t even bother to keep track. You’ll see why.

So first off, those No-Bake Almond Joy Cookies. They were a hit at the lake house! I felt like I kept getting compliments on them through out the day. I pretty much followed the directions except for the salt (I hate adding a lot of salt so I only added a pinch) and I didn’t have wax paper but foil worked just fine –no sticking cookies!

I will definitely be making these more often. In fact, I might make them sooner than later — they’re sooo good!

For dinner, Daniel’s cousin, Luke, grilled us some hot dogs and hamburgers. I opted for the hot dog and loaded up on all the sides.

Now here is where things got bad — but OH SO GOOD!

This, my friends, is lasagna ice cream. It’s layered with ice cream sandwiches, chocolate, caramel, and crumbled snickers on top. Luke’s wife, Mindy, made it. She found the recipe on Pinterest. It was AMAZING!

Here’s my first piece. Yeah, first. I had another piece for the ride home… but look at it! Can you blame me?

Once we made it back to Manhattan we quickly headed over to my friend Corey’s for her birthday celebration! I had a little piece of chocolate cake there too. I just went crazy on the sweets! But I warned you I eat dessert like it’s going out of style. It’s my downfall.

And of course, per birthday celebrations, some drinking was involved. Beer, O-Bombs, FIREBALL. I didn’t have much so I felt pretty good waking up today but those were definitely unnecessary calories. Oh yeah, and I had a Jimmy John’s Turkey Tom at the end of the night. So. Much. Food.

I binged hard on those sweets. I take advantage of them. I ate way more than I should have of the food too. But today is a new day and so far I’ve been doing pretty well calorie-wise.  Hopefully I can keep it that way!

Pass Your Plate

Yesterday started off pretty good with my usual cereal, almond milk, and smoothie. For lunch I had a MorningStar burger with 2 slices of whole wheat bread. I’m not vegetarian but I’m not much of a carnivore. These burgers taste better to me than hamburgers and they’re healthier! Winning.

I enjoyed it with a side of leftover rice and stir fry veggies.

Then dinner went down hill.  Daniel and I met up with our friends Robert and Amy. We went to this bar that has endless $5 pasta on wednesday nights. They only had two options: red or white pasta. I went with the red first because it’s typically healthier than cream sauces. Well, I don’t know how you can screw up red sauce, but they did. It was spicy (which I’m ok with usually) but it was more like spicy salsa than a red sauce. Not pleasing. I didn’t eat much of it.

Literally a few more bites after this photo and I was over it. I ordered the alfredo white sauce next. It was MUCH better. So much creamy buttery goodness. I knew it was bad, but it felt so good.

So here’s that calorie break down:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Cereal	140
	Almond milk	30
Snack	Fruit smoothie	180
	Veggie burger w/ bread ketchup + mustard	270
Lunch	Rice stir fry	90
Dinner	Alredo & red sauce pasta	660
	2 6oz glasses of sangria	195
	2 pieces of toast w/ apricot preserves	230
Total		1795

Shameful! Definitely should not have eaten that much pasta. I also could have done without the sangria for sure. It wasn’t even good sangria, but it was $1. I also have a problem when it comes to stopping when I’m full. I’m fine at home where I can easily put the food away so I don’t eat more, but in a restaurant I have to wait for the server to come take it or bring a t0-go box, so I’m just sitting there with food staring at me. So I ended up eating most of the alfredo, especially since I kept nibbling on it after I was full. I finally passed my plate over to Daniel to finish it for me when there was a few bites left.

But don’t Amy and I look cute? Our bellies are full of delicious pasta. Time for a food coma.

Sure, I over ate a lot yesterday. But you can’t let one bad day get in the way of progress. I’m slowly learning that. I used to think “crap I just ate pizza, might as well have dessert and go all out.” And then the continuous infamous phrase “my diet starts tomorrow.” I was in this cycle, telling myself that I can have this one unhealthy thing now because tomorrow I’ll eat better. But of course that never happened. I kept filling my body with lots of sugars and carbs and less actual nutrients. Yeah, I was craving a donut after my pasta (who doesn’t?) but I knew I was over my calories by then. Indulging is fine, over indulging is not so fine. So today is a new start and a new chance to make better decisions!

Alright now on to my strength workout yesterday. I chose to use my 5 lb weights instead of the medicine ball to make movements easier. This workout I did a lot last summer when I joined a gym during my internship. They helped me formulate a 5 day/week strengthening plan. I did the first day of exercises yesterday. Each day had various exercises so that through the course of a week you target all the main muscles on your body (arms, backs, abs, legs, etc).

My arms and legs are sore today! If you want more of a challenge I recommend upping the weights. 5lbs is just all I have on hand. If you’re a gym goer, try using the 20 lb bar for the squat & press, 30 lb bar for the deadlift row, and 10 lbs for the lunges. You will definitely feel a burn! Enjoy =)