Juicing Day 5

I survived my first juice fast! I have to be honest though… I ate on my last day. I was running late between work and a networking event so I didn’t have time to juice.  At the event they had appetizers so I helped myself to a plate of fruit… and cheese and crackers! Oh the shame! It felt so good to eat again though. Since I had ended my fast, I felt more inclined to eat for dinner, so I went out with friends for some Mongolian BBQ.  I feel pretty satisfied with myself for lasting most of the fast. And I’ve still been having one juice per day!

Results:

I was feeling pretty good on it once I got my schedule down and wasn’t allowing myself to get hungry. My lowest weight was 124 lbs. That was awesome to lose 4.5 pounds in 5 days! However, now that I’m back to eating solids again, my weight is back up to 126.5 lbs. I haven’t been eating that great since getting off of the fast. I’ve had some salads and stir fry, but Daniel and I made that pizza I spoke of the other night for our Friday night feast!

We each made our own personal pizza. We bought the crust to save on time and added our favorite toppings.

Mine has pineapple, orange bell pepper, black olives, and spinach on it.

I put my toppings on the sauce first and then clumps of cheese so that I ended up putting less cheese on.

Daniel on the other hand, cover his pizza in cheese and then put pepperoni, spinach, orange bell pepper, and black olives on his.

Excuse the minced olives. We bought chopped olives thinking they’d be chunks but they look more like caviar. Still tasty though! We each ate half our pizzas and then had the rest for saturday’s lunch.

For dessert, we made that revered Chipotle Raspberry Black Bean Dip… but with a twist! We bought thin pizza crust, baked it in the oven for some crispiness, then topped it with the bean dip!

It was good but I actually think it would have been better if we had baked the bean dip on top of the crust. Either way, I still prefer salty tortilla chips with it. Nothing beats the combination of salty and sweet!

Ok, back to the topic of juice.

Advice for juicing:

Juice doesn’t last long after you make it because the nutrients start to oxidize immediately.  It’s better to drink it fresh, but that’s not always possible to make every two-ish hours. I started making my breakfast juice at night and putting it in an airtight container filled to the brim with little room for air to be in there and placing it in the fridge over night. That saved a lot of time.  My dad has recently started juicing and he makes most of his juice for the day the night before.  For those limited on time throughout the day, I would recommend that. Nothing is worse than being hungry and not having time to juice. You’re more likely to break your fast if you get too hungry.

I think juicing would also be a lot easier if you prepared for it. They recommend starting to introduce juice into your diet and start eating more fruits and veggies a few days before the fast. Getting your body acclimated with less processed foods in your diet will make the switch to juicing easier. I went in without any preparation except a couple juices the day before. It was definitely a hard transition.

Here’s a video of Joe talking about starting a reboot and what steps to take to prepare for it.

On a side note, Daniel and I never got around to carving our pumpkins. After making our pizzas we settled down for a night of movies: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Cloud Atlas. Daniel hasn’t seen many HP movies, or even read the books! So I’m educating him. Cloud Atlas was really good but really confusing! I need to read the book! I love movies like that where actors play several characters. Austin Powers anyone? haha.

We plan to carve our pumpkins today and we’re going with a Disney theme! The masterpieces will be revealed tomorrow!

Questions:

Do you like pineapple on your pizza? Some people hate it but I love the sweetness of it with cheese and sauce.

Are you carving pumpkins or dressing up for Halloween this year?

Juicing Day 3 & 4

I’m finally getting the hang of this juicing thing. The hardest part was incorporating enough time into my schedule. I’ve found it easiest to make my breakfast juice the night before, place it in an airtight container up to the brim to reduce exposure to oxygen and put it in the fridge. My favorite are my breakfast juices because I always make them extra sweet with lots of fruit. You shouldn’t have too many fruits later in the day because the sugar in them will make you crash later.

My typical morning smoothie has consisted of peaches, apples, pears, oranges, strawberries, one carrot, and spinach. I try to get a little veg in by adding the carrot and spinach, but I don’t want to taste them! Adding one carrot and a few handfuls of spinach creates a perfect balance with the other fruit flavors shining through.

Now that I’m not allowing myself to go hungry anymore, this diet could actually be fairly sustainable. Not sure how easy it’d be to keep up with travels but otherwise, it’s perfectly feasible to do! I admit though, I am very excited to be on my last day! I can’t wait for those delicious dinner plans Daniel and I have that I mentioned last time.

Here’s one of the green smoothies I’ve made off the rebootwithjoe.com suggestions. It’s called the Green Lemonade:

• 6-8 kale leaves
• 3 handfuls of spinach
• 1 green apple
• 1 cucumber
• 2 celery stalks
• 1 lemon

It’s actually pretty tasty!

This one was also really good made with 4 carrots, 2 apples, and  1 lemon — also from rebootwithjoe.

I should have stuck with the recipes more because adding too much variety to each juice starts making all the juices taste the same — and that gets old fast. Don’t worry about fitting all of your veggies into your juice every time. Mix it up and have some in one juice and some in another.  A suicide of all the flavors is no bueno.

Ashley Update

She is down to 210 lbs! That’s about 10 lbs lost since she started her new weight loss regime almost 3 weeks ago. I’m so proud of her! She was busier this last week and only worked out once a day instead of her previous twice a day routine, but it seems to be working for her.  She’s also been keeping up with her healthy eating. Way to go, Ashley!

Have a lovely Thursday night!

Juicing Day 1 & 2

I owe all of you an update on my juicing experiences. I’ve decided to shorten it to just a 5 day juice fast, which means I’m almost halfway done (I ended up starting on Sunday instead of Saturday). It is much hard than I expected. I feel tempted all the time to just go eat something, but it is getting easier. Daniel was doing the juice fast with me but I allowed him to eat since he needs significantly more calories than I do, and he wasn’t getting enough from the juice. However, he is keeping me motivated! Definitely have a juice buddy to help you stay on track!

Here’s a little Q & A of how it is going so far:

What kind of juicer do you use?
I use the Breville Juice Fountain Plus. I bought it off Amazon.  It’s really easy to use! And the clean up isn’t so bad. A plastic bag to catch the pulp makes it faster. And the brush provided does a great job of getting things clean.

How hard is it?
Juicing simplifies things in a sense because you don’t have to worry about making a meal, you know exactly what you’re going to have.  And once you get the hang of it, it doesn’t take that long to make. Just prep everything and send it through the juicer. It’s actually kind of fun to make different concoctions. My favorite are the sweeter ones, obviously =)

What recipes do you use?
I first followed Joe’s reboot recipes at rebootwithjoe.com but now I mix it up. Daniel and I even made pumpkin juice! Warning: nothing like pumpkin pie. I was a little disappointed. We added an orange and apple and I believe some ginger to it. I can’t really remember. But man that pumpkin flavor is strong!

My favorite recipe was with an orange, pear, peach, strawberries, carrot, and a handful or two of spinach. Reminded me of a smoothie!

Here’s what our cart looked like when we first bought groceries for it. It is the most produce I’ve ever bought at once.

What’s in the cart:

Liquid Gold

I did something I’m not proud of yesterday. I ate a Snickers candy bar.  In the midst of learning about the ideal diet of 80% vegetables and 20% fruits in the reboot system from the Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead saga of Joe Cross losing weight and regaining health through juicing, I decided I needed this artificial, poor excuse for snack. It was only satisfying for the first few bites and then it almost became too much sweetness overload. And that is crazy for me. Snickers have always been my favorite candy bar.

Other than Fiber One bars, I really don’t feel like I have sweets that often anymore. I don’t crave them as much either, I’ve notice.  But don’t get me wrong, I still have a ginormous sweet tooth. Hopefully it doesn’t lead me down a road of failure because….

I bought a juicer! And I’m soooo excited to start juicing.  It supposed to be delivered today! Now, I don’t plan to do any extreme juicing fast. My goal is for 10 days to drink nothing but juice starting this Saturday as my Day 1. I hope I can make it! I’ve heard a lot about juicing from various bloggers but it didn’t seem realistic for me because not only did I not have a juicer, but I felt like it would hinder my working out. I thought there wouldn’t be enough protein in the diet to sustain a workout plan as well. But after watching the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, I was inspired to finally take the leap and purchase a juicer. I visited their site, rebootingwithjoe.com which provides all the information and starter guides to get you on the path to juicing. That’s where I found out my assumptions about protein were severely wrong. Yes, you’re getting a juice packed with micro nutrients, but there’s plenty of protein in there to cover your daily intake and then some. A few veggies won’t provide much protein, but a diverse assortment with increased quantity intake is plenty! Afterall, you’ll be having juice 6 times a day.

My goal for this juicing fast is not necessarily to lose weight, although a few pounds off would be nice, but more to jump start healthier eating habits. I’ve been eating wayyyyyy too many processed foods. My meals lately (mainly out of laziness) have been pasta with store bought sauce. And you know, detoxing my body might be a plus. There’s so many added benefits of juicing: faster absorption of micro nutrients, stronger immune system, weight loss, and higher energy levels. It’s liquid gold, as Joe would say it!

After I complete my juicing fast, I plan to incorporate juice into my daily routine as breakfast or snack.

Workout Recap

P90x is going well. I’m definitely sore everyday! Unfortunately Daniel and I seem to always put off working out until 10pm which makes things tricky being on the third floor of our building. We don’t want to disturb our neighbors, so some of the movements like jumping exercises have to be modified.  Wednesday night, we ended up just doing the stretching video and it felt amazing! I haven’t stretched that good in a long time. If I had the time, I’d do that video every morning and night. It incorporated a little bit of yoga which I always enjoy. Last night we didn’t get around to working out because I was studying hardcore for my stats midterm today. I felt fairly good afterwards, not too many questions I couldn’t answer so I’m hoping for a good grade!

Ashley Update

She is officially 214.9 lbs! That week of eating healthy and working out really showed! She said her daily routine is walking for an hour in the morning and then using various elliptical machines for 45 minutes to an hour at night. She’s continuing that same routine this week and will hopefully get some more good results!

Here’s an idea of what she’s been eating from the groceries she got last week: Turkey pitas, veggies burgers with hummus, bananas for snacks, yogurt with fruit, spinach salads with fruit feta and raspberry vinaigrette.

Lots of tasty things to eat! Better than what I’ve been eating. I plan to go to the grocery today to stock up on fresh produce for my juicing adventures. I’ll show you my loot later.

Speaking of what I’ve been eating. Daniel and I went to a Mongolian BBQ restaurant the other night. I had three plates. This was the least unhealthy of them all:

My other plates consisted of wontons, crab rangoons, this cheesy pastry thing, a spring roll, and lots of Tso’s chicken with rice. And can’t forget that sweet and sour sauce!

I always had my last girlfriend discount from Daniel at Einstein’s so I went all out with a turkey sandwich topped with cucumber, tomato, avocado, cream cheese, bacon, and bbq sauce. So good!

On my juicing fast I probably won’t keep track of calories just because I’ll be consuming nothing but fruits and vegetables but I hope to reclaim that habit afterwards.

Have a fabulous Friday!

Question:
Have you ever juiced before?

Hello, I’ve Missed You Quite Terribly

Hi all! Would you believe me if I said I’ve missed you? Because I have! I seriously wish I had more time for blogging. This whole grad school thing is seriously putting a damper on my personal life and goals. Both blogging and working out have been on the back burner! Unacceptable! I’m vowing to try harder this week!

Ok so keeping track of calories last week was an obvious fail. No Weekly Wrap-Up this week. But how about another montage of what I’ve been eating? Here goes:

I left off Thursday where Daniel and I went out with his friend Garret for dinner and a few shots… after that stressful week, I need a little somethin’! Originally, we were going to get our favorite 50 cent tacos from Porter’s, a local bar in Manhattan, however, it was crowded and we were hungry! We decided to check out the newest bar, Wabash, for some eats. They were advertising 75 cent JUMBO wings. I don’t know if I ‘d agree they were jumbo, but they were tasty! I had mine with honey mustard of course! (It’s the best, in case you were unaware)(Also, excuse the blurry photos, we ate outside on their deck and it was dark)

I also thought their fried shrimp appetizer sounded really appealing. It came with an asian sauce that was flavorful. I’d order this again!

Friday, Daniel and I went to see GRAVITY!!! It is sooo good! And no, it’s not just Sandra Bullock floating around in space. But it is a suspenseful movie! I keep saying that I’m surprised I still have hair after watching it–the anticipation was aging killing me! But I digress, go see it! Totally worth it in 3D too. Even with the headache, it’s exciting to have things come at you from out of the screen (and yes I totally tried to dodge things).

After the movie we were starving and Panera is nearby the theater which made for an easy meal.  Did you know they have an autumn squash soup now?!? Have you tried it? It’s AMAZING! I was left wanting more. Not a fan of the seeds they put on top, but the soup is so good! I had my usual Napa Almond Chicken Salad Sandwich with it for the Pick Two.

Saturday, we failed to make it to the CrossFit intro class. AGAIN. But that’s because we went out with friends for drinks the night before and 10am always seems to be too early on a Saturday. BUT, we started P90X! More on that in a minute.

So for dinner we made more pasta with the last of our vodka sauce.  Daniel made some tilapia to go with it. I made the bread crumb mixture! I’m so helpful like that. I pulsed a slice of bread in the food processor with some lemon pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. Then I added Panko bread crumbs to beef it up a bit with more crunch. Daniel cooked in on the stove for 8-ish minutes per side. I think that’s a little longer than usual but the pan wasn’t heated all the way when he put them on.  It came out pretty good! Breaded fish is the best.

Sunday, we had some people over to watch the Chiefs’ game. Unfortunately, I was attempting to multitask and do homework at the same time so I really didn’t get a chance to watch much of the game. But I did get to eat this:

I’m sure you were expecting something more exciting than a bowl of cereal. Technically, this is Daniel’s cereal but I’ve been helping myself to it as well. With some vanilla flavored coconut milk, it is soo good! It’s so sweet, like dessert. And only 100 calories per cup! I’m sure all the sugar in it isn’t good though. I had at least 5 bowls of it this past weekend. And to be honest, I just paused my typing to make another bowl. Mmmmm….

I’ve also been snacking on a lot of these:

It’s a plain ol’ rice cake topped with Laughing Cow Cinnamon Cream Cheese.  The cream cheese makes it amazing. Also, it’s only 35 cal for the rice cake and 45 for the cream, which makes for a nice small snack when you just need a little something.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I made brussel sprouts for the first time in my life this past weekend! I HATED them growing up. I’m not sure how exactly my mom prepared them, but they were always a mushy green vegetable with bad texture and taste. However, after stumbling upon Julie’s blog, Peanut Butter Fingers, last winter, she made me believe there was hope for this little green vegetable after all. She has a recipe for roasting them in the oven. I finally got around to making them, but I didn’t follow her recipe exactly. First of all, I didn’t have minced garlic. So I tossed them in the olive oil and then dashed some garlic powder on them with the black pepper. I skipped the salt, and didn’t have balsamic vinegar either, but I like how they turned out! The smaller crunchy pieces were my favorite. And the flavor reminded me of kale. The little roasted leaves that fell off could definitely have been mistaken for kale chips. Yummy! Daniel was a fan of them too. In fact, I think he ate more of them than me! Definitely going to be making more soon!

Last but not least, Sunday dinner. Lemon pepper and cajun spice tilapia with some stir fry! I added red and green pepper, zucchini, and celery to the stir fry with honey, soy and teriyaki sauce.

Other than my Thursday night splurge for fried food and a lot of sugary cereal, I don’t think I’ve been eating too bad.

Work Recap

We bought this Door Gym from Wal-Mart to do the pull-ups. It is suppose to hang over the door frame and press against the sides so no holes in the wall are necessary! Unfortunately, the doors in our apartment are extra wide so it doesn’t fit! Boo.

But I do like it for the push up aspect of it. My wrists always seem to hurt afterwards so it’s nice to have something to hold on to instead of just having your hands on the floor.

So for P90X, we’re not going in any particular order for the videos. We decided Sunday will be our rest day but I was craving a workout since it had been so long so we did the Ab Ripper X video. It’s only about 16 minutes long but you definitely feel the burn! It’s suppose to be used in conjunction with some of the other videos but we might just do it every Sunday. So far so good!

Ashley Update

Ashely has been eating healthy and working out! She said at the gym yesterday that her weight was 214! That’s 5 pounds down in a week! However, since we originally weighed her on my scale we’re going to have her come over to see if that matches up. We both won’t have time until Wednesday, so maybe she’ll be down even more than that by then! I’ll also give you a more thorough update on what she’s been eating and doing for exercising.

Alright, this grad student needs to go study for a mid-term this Friday! (It’s statistics and I need all the help I can get)

Goodnight!

Ashley’s Before Photos and My Eats

I know, it’s been a while. Yet another busy week for me!  I had a big take home test to complete, a big test today, and an interview today for a summer internship! Needless to say, I had a few shots tonight when it was all over… that’s acceptable right? It’s Thirsty Thursday!

Ok, here’s Ashley’s before photos. Now remember, she has already lost over 100 pounds! Doesn’t she look good?! 60 more to go and she’s already been keeping up with her healthy eating and exercising!  She’s going to update me this weekend some more about how she’s been handling it so far but her occasional updates sound like it’s been a good week!

She said she’s been working out twice a day! I haven’t even worked out once this week! I plan to go running tomorrow and hopefully figure out how we can start P90x now that I can have a little bit of a life again.

Alright so my eats? Well, I lost track of calories again so I’ll just update you on my meals. I don’t think I’ve gone over 1200 calories that much per day this week.

Sunday I was lazy and we had zucchini so I made zucchini pizza for dinner. It’s one of my faves! So easy, and so tasty! (Don’t worry, I ate more than just two slices. These were just the least ugly of the bunch.)

Monday, I took advantage of the girlfriend discount for lunch and had Daniel make me a bagel thin sandwich from Einstein’s. Turkey, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocado, and this awesome pesto/red pepper sauce. Yum!

For dinner, I decided we needed to finally eat up the Curry Pumpkin Soup my dad had made back in August.  We’ve had it in our freezer and last week I decided it was the season for us to finally eat it up. The problem was it was still a little too spicy, which overpowered the pumpkin flavor. After trying to add more pumpkin and half&half to the concoction last week, I decided to try coconut milk.  Third time’s a charm–it was finally a consistency close to what my dad’s friend Monica had made us in Germany. A little bit of that spice goes a LONG way!

Tuesday was salad bar and stir fry for dinner. The salad bar was to tide us over while we shopped. Grocery shopping on an empty stomach is a no-no! But to be honest, even when I’m not hungry I want to buy everything in the bakery.

Wednesday I capitalized on that girlfriend discount again and had another bagel thin sandwich.  They’re so good! And nothing tastes better than free. Sadly, he’s quitting soon due to school/work conflicts and stress so I need to take advantage of my discounts while I can! This one had turkey, spinach, cucumber, avocado, tomato, onion, bacon, light cream cheese, and bbq sauce.  I think it’s my new favorite combo. Obviously the best part is the bacon, cream cheese, and bbq sauce. Mmmm!

For dinner we didn’t even try and just had macaroni noodles with vodka sauce. I was too busy studying to care. No veggies. Nothing. Just sauce and pasta. But man, that vodka sauce makes everything taste good!

So that was my week so far. I had some good veggie moments. I’ve also made a few smoothies this week that I’ll have to update you all on. I have a new protein powder to add now!

What have you been eating this week?! Did you make something healthy? Or perhaps those Pumpkin Scones?! Still can’t get over how good those were. Someone invite me to a party so I can have an excuse to make them again!

Alright, time to get some shut eye. I can’t believe tomorrow is Friday already! Goodnight!

Reached A Goal!

Another week has flown by. Where is the time going? Well, another week and another weigh-in. Last week I was 129.0 and I said I wanted to finally reach 128 or 127.  Well, I did it! This morning I was 127.2 lb. Woohoo! I’m really not sure what I did different to finally get out of the 130 plateau I had been on for almost a month but I’m happy.  I didn’t really work out this week. Oops. However, my average calories per day have been the lowest ever, so that must have been the contributing factor.

First let’s take a look at Saturday’s calories:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Corn Flakes	100
	Almond milk	30
Lunch	Brown rice	100
	Fiber One bar	90
2nd Lunch	Spinach and fruit salad	125
Dinner	Veggie burger with guac	100
	Chips and guac	200
Drinks	Straw-ber-ritas and beer	400
Drunk Snack	THE SANDWICH	400
Total		1545

At the grocery store yesterday, I picked up some similar items that Ashley had gotten because they were sounding good. Like some veggie burgers and guac! I usually buy MorningStar but I compared it with Boca, and Boca was less calories, less sodium, and more protein! I decided to give them a try. I chose the original Vegan Veggie Burger. I put some fresh guac on it. Doesn’t look pretty?

Well, unfortunately it didn’t taste pretty. In fact, there wasn’t much flavor other than the guac. I think I like the flavor of MorningStar a lot more.  But the gauc was sooo good! I did some damage on that with tortilla chips. Yum!

It was a low calorie day until I started drinking. And of course with drinking comes the necessary SANDWICH at the end of the night. Mac n’ Cheese Grilled Cheese with Bacon. What’s not to love?

Workout Recap

Daniel wasn’t feeling well yesterday morning. He went out with his cousin Friday night. So no CrossFit saturday =( Hopefully we can try it next week!

Weekly Wrap-Up

My average is the closest to 1200 that it has ever been! I wish I had gotten more exercising in but I’m proud to have stayed closer to my calorie goals. I hope to keep it up this week as well but incorporate more workouts into my routine. I have a two tests and an interview, so we’ll see how well I can time manage.

I’ll be back later today with Ashley’s Before Photos!!

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It’s OCTOBER! The best month ever. Fall is my favorite time of year.  Leaves change hues, pumpkins are everywhere, and mild weather make for a beautiful month. I still need to buy a pumpkin. And make/buy fall decorations. It’s happening.

So I’m not sure where the time went yesterday but 11PM came all too soon and I didn’t get a chance to blog.  It may have been due to the 4 episodes of Breaking Bad that Daniel and I watched yesterday.  We’re trying to catch up to the series finale! Don’t spoil it! We have 3 episodes left and will more than likely watch them tonight.

Ok so Sunday’s meals:

Meal	Food	Calories
Lunch	Pulled pork sandwich with awesome sauce and coleslaw	350
Snack	Caramel kettle corn	100
	2 Pumpkin Scones	500
Dinner	Raspberry Chipotle Salmon and stir fry	270
Snack	veggies with ranch	50
Total		1270

Monday’s meals:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Corn flakes	90
	Almond Milk	20
Snack	Fiber One Bar	90
	Plum	25
Drink	Green tea with almond milk	10
Lunch	Pulled pork, sauce, bun, coleslaw	350
	Left over stir fry	40
Snack	Caramel corn	100
	Pumpkin scone	250
Dinner	Stir fry	250
Snack	Kudos bar	100
Total		1325

Not bad on calories considering I ate a few Pumpkin Scones…. that’s right, I made PUMPKIN SCONES! While watching the Chiefs game on Sunday I had a burning desire to bake something.  Maybe it was the sweet smell of my new butternut pumpkin candle (if it was edible, I would eat it). So I hopped on Pinterest to check out my options from sweets I had previously pinned.  I must say, it was a good choice, because they turned out amazing!

They’re not super big so I didn’t feel as guilty about eating them.  Here’ s the original recipe from Sweet Pea’s Kitchen.

Yeah, I took a lot of photos. They’re just so photogenic! I love scones.  After eating several the past couple days, I’ve noticed that they fill me up more than other sweets.  Yes, I was craving them.  But they did also offset my hunger compared to empty calories like chips or a cookie.

This batch made 12 and there’s one left!!!  They were popular on Sunday with our guests and of course Daniel and I have been snacking on them since.  I wish there was more…

Workout Recap

Sunday was my rest day. Ha. Aren’t most? But I did run yesterday! It was getting late so Daniel and I made a quick 3 mile trip around the park. Nothing too exciting though we did do a little speed work.  For some reason it was a lot harder last night for me to sprint than before. Maybe it was all of those scones weighing me down.

I really want to try CrossFit but it’s expensive so I think we’re going to possibly do P90x if we can find a way to get the DVDs.  However, K-State has a free CrossFit intro class that we plan to try out Saturday.  I at least want to see what it’s like but I’m pretty much ready for anything that builds strength.  I need something to hold me accountable like a class or schedule of some sort.  Trying to get motivated at home is hard.  If we do P90x we plan to set aside a certain time every day for it.

What do you do for strength training?

Now, go make pumpkin scones!

I’m going to attempt to motivate myself to do pushups.

Wait… It’s not Spaghetti?

That’s right… and it’s not worms (which can sometimes be confused for spaghetti…).  It’s squash! Spaghetti squash. Have you tried it before? I was my first time last night (that’s what she said).

Last week I saw Spaghetti Squash for the first time at my local grocery store. Is it a seasonal thing? Because I had checked over the summer and they didn’t have it. Anyways, you get all the great flavor of spaghetti without the calories!

Check out my beautiful squash:

There are a lot of ways to cook it but I decided to follow the instructions that came with him.

So I cut him in half and gutted the seeds, then baked him for 45 min at 350 F.  Here’s him out of the oven.

Then I took a fork and scraped out his stringy pulp. There’s obviously a lot more than what’s in my bowl, this is just my serving.

I heated up some veggies: more squash, green pepper, kale, and cucumber. Then added in some sauce, got it all nice and warm and then poured it over my spaghetti squash. Yummy!

It was full over flavor and very filling!  And it was all veggies!

Daniel approved of the dish so I think this is a keeper, as long as those grocery stores keep it in stock!

Here’s the rest of Wednesday’s Meals:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Corn Flakes	100
	Almond milk	30
	Fiber One Bar	90
Snack	Almonds	180
	Potato chips	200
Drink	Dirty chai latte	150
Lunch	Left over chipotle	230
Dinner	Spaghetti squash and sauce	200
Snack	Hummus chips	200
Total		1380

I went a little over calories again, and I didn’t work out.  I was so focused on studying! However, I think my test went well!

Now I can enjoy my weekend.  I plan to catch up on a lot like: finally finishing the staining of the 4th chair from our dining set, washing my car, looking up companies for internships, catching up on other homework, reading my bloglovin (I have almost 200 blog posts I need to catch up on! I think I follow too many blogs haha), and getting more sleep!

What are your weekend plans?!

My Dog Ate My Posts

Do you believe me? Ahhh I’m getting so behind! I can’t believe it’s been TWO DAYS since I’ve posted.  Life is getting busy! I don’t like it.  Summer is officially over. =(

I’ll go by day, giving you the play-by-play as usual.

Wednesday’s meals:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Corn Flakes	100
	Almond Milk	30
Snack	Plum	32
	Almonds	150
Lunch	Einsteins Veggie Bagel Sandwich	270
Dinner	Spinach and Fruit Salad	150
Dinner	Coconut Salmon with stir fry	384
Dessert	Banana Nutella Ice  cream	140
Total		1256

So this is when we had Daniel’s cousin Sabra and her hubby, Ramon, over.  It was so much fun hosting them!  We made a delicious dinner consisting of coconut salmon and stir fry.  We used almonds, Panko, and shredded coconut for the crust and it was sooo good!  Then we did our typical stir fry with veggies, soy, teriyaki, ground red pepper, garlic powder, and honey.  We added less spices this time but it was still very flavorful. Oh and this is not pictured, but you know that Raspberry Chipotle Sauce we use for the Chipotle Raspberry Black Bean Dip? We decided that would compliment the salmon really well so we made that our dipping sauce.  It was amazing together!

Since Daniel and I were trying not to eat any sweets this week (huge fail, by the way), I decided to just make some of that Banana Nutella Ice Cream.  I received some good reviews!  I made a bunch of it and still have some left over so I’ll definitely be snacking on that sometime soon.

Thursday’s meals (Caution: A Bachelorette Party was involved):

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Corn Flakes	100
	Almond Milk	30
Lunch	Left over stir fry	130
	Half a mango	54
Snack	Half a Luna Bar	90
Dinner	Zucchini Pizza	150
Dessert	Chocolate Fondu (strawberries, marshmallows, pretzels, rice crispies)	450
Drinks	Beer, Bahama Mama, mixed drinks	400
Snack	Slice of pizza	210
Total		1614

So Thursday started off pretty healthy.  But you know how I am when there’s sweets around me. My friend, Jen, is getting married today! So Thursday was her Bachelorette party.  There was chocolate fondu and I could not resist.  I’m not sure whose idea it was to have rice crispies to dip in the chocolate, but they are a genius! It was probably my favorite.

Here’s the group:

Me, Jenna, Jen, Jenny

Yes, I was the only “R” name there, haha!  There was more girls but they came later.  We started out at a hotel for the fondu, drinks, games, and gifts.  Then we headed to the bars!  The party was in Lawrence, KS and I had never been to the bars there but they were pretty fun! We went to the Sandbar (90s music and surfboards, reminded of the Shark Bar in Power & Light in KC).  They had awesome drinks! I ordered the Bahama Mama.

It came with the beads and these stunna shades, haha! And yes, that is a penis straw.  Why leave them behind when you can bring them out to the bars?!

And here’s the Bride to Be with her drink! She got a rubber ducky with hers!

It was such a fun night! I can’t wait for later today to see her get married!

Friday’s meals:

Meal	Food	Calories
Breakfast	Cheerios	100
	Skim Milk	60
	Eggs	40
	Bacon strip	40
Lunch	Veggie sandwich (spinach, cucumber, green pepper, raspberry chipotle sauce)	150
Snack	Half a Luna Bar	90
Dinner	Delicious Chinese Food	400
Snack	Crackers, meat, cheese, fruit, veggies	150
Dessert	Banana Crème Pie Shake	465
Drinks	Beer, peach sangria	200
Total		1695

Yesterday, Daniel’s friend Bin invited us over for some home cooked Chinese food at his house.  His room mate cooked it and did an amazing job!  I can’t even tell you what it all was, but it was good!

Then I went to a friends’ house for a little get-together.  I had more snacks and some peach sangria.  Oh man, that sangria was so good! I plan to make some for myself sometime if I can remember the recipe!

Afterwards I met up with Daniel and Bin again and he bought us some Sonic Milkshakes before going to the bars to play pool.  I had the Banana Creme Pie milkshake. Heavenly.  And heavy in calories.  Good thing I didn’t drink all of it.  It was tempting though.

Ok, so I majorly failed in having no sweets this week. I should have tried harder. I gave in so easily!  How do I resist?  And the wedding is today so I obviously have to have wedding cake! I know, awful mindset.  We’ll see if can do better next week.

Alright, I gotta get ready for this wedding today. Have a great Saturday everyone!