Snack Attack ... Arrggh!

Happy Wednesday, folks. I have to say today I was sort of in a snacky mood although the morning and early afternoon didn't start that way.

Breakfast featured one of my regular favorites, a one-egg sandwich served on a Arnold multi-grain sandwich thin and ghee with strawberries. My friend Katie recently commented about my use of ghee, asking if it's the Indian kind. Well, I think so? When I was home over the summer my Mom was all about what she called "ghee". She informed me that it's just (boiled) unsalted butter, but with the fat scooped off the top. So essentially it's clarified butter, right? Once scooping the fat off the top, I pour the melted butter in a small jar and refrigerate. It lasts me about three weeks. And a small portion goes along way. That's my ghee.

Ryan and I realized that we kind of blew it this week with our meal preparations, in that we failed in making enough food for the entire week. So for lunch today, we resorted to having organic Mediterranean garlic and herb ravioli from Rising Moon. We serve ours with chunky vegetable pasta sauce from Rinaldi. Reallllllly good stuff! I also had a mixed greens salad with baby beets, cucumbers, walnuts, and BelGioso parmesan cheese.

After lunch, I grabbed one of my trusty dark chocolate calcium disks from Adora. I LOVE THESE!!

Again, getting back to our lack of planning in the meal department, we ended up at Whole Foods for dinner. This worked out nicely since we had to pick up a few odds and ends. I grabbed for as many greens and colors at the salad bar and ended up with some kale with cranberries, cucumber salad, curry cauliflower and some pasta with sun-dried tomatoes. I can never pass up Whole Foods' soup, and tonight I had their chunky vegetable with orzo. To drink, I tried Zevia's orange flavor. My Mom talks a lot about stevia and Zevia's caffeinated beverage uses stevia. Good good good!

When we got home is when things started to go the snack route. I should have reached for a water instead, but I wanted to chomp on as many Potato and Cheddar PopChips as I wanted to. I couldn't stop. They're too good.

Bad news is that my exercise is falling to the wayside because of all of my work time spent on the computer. I need a vacation from my desktop, STAT! I pray I see my elliptical on Thursday.

Thanks for reading! Hope your Wednesday was fab fab fab!


How do you handle it when your snack cravings kick in?

Foggy Monday

Question for those who are reading this blog: Do you ever find yourself totally out of it on a Monday morning? Like no matter what you do to get your booty back in gear after the weekend, you still feel like a space cadet? Do you ever skip your workout? This pretty much sums up my Monday.

I haven't worked out in DAYS! Five ... er six to be exact. I didn't do it today, either. I haven't missed exercising like this since before I started this blog in mid-June. Talk about a slip up. This time, though, I'm ready to get back on the horse, whereas as in the past I most likely stopped working out altogether ... or at least until my next half-committed effort. Girl Scout's Honor, Tuesday is my day!

For breakfast, I had some sliced bananas on a multi-grain sandwich thin from Arnold. I'm liking these a lot and have enjoyed my switch from Cybros. But I also love the Cybros brand. But's nice to change things up once in a while, right?

I also has some plain Siggi's yogurt with fresh raspberries. I did add a teaspoon of honey to the mix, too, as I needed some extra flavor. And you'd think with my morning iced latte, that'd do the trick in getting me out of a Monday fog.

Lunch saw the last of Chef Meg's Tomato Soup (via SparkPeople). I'm telling you, if you're looking for a change in your regular tomato soup, this version is absolutely fabulous. I know it's summer and with the weather being so darn humid lately, you might ask yourself, "Do I really want hot soup right now?" This recipe fits, trust me. It's not like having chili in July, haha.

I also paired up my soup with some raw veggies and a tablespoon of Roasted Red Pepper Hummus from Athenos. Later on, I also had some of Lucerne's part-skim mozzarella string cheese.

I spent much of the afternoon getting through laundry and other Internet duties. Come dinnertime, I had my head down in preparing our grocery list and meals for the week. We didn't do our regular Sunday grocery shop since we were tired from the weekend, thus we resorted to one of our regular Plan B ideas with Rising Moon Ravioli. But before enjoying our Garlic & Roasted Veggies selection, I snacked on a homemade blueberry muffin that I made last week. I couldn't resist.

Anyhow, we added a herb salad with cucumber and carrots, plus some BelGioioso Parmesan Cheese, to our ravioli menu. Yum!

Tell me, how do you beat those foggy days? Thanks a mil for reading Fighting the Pudge.

Fighting Fat

I really hate going over in my fat calories. It truly bugs me, like it did on Monday. I had to do some reorganizing with today's menus in order to avoid any repeat of that. Having a cup of Cranberry and Almond Granola for breakfast at 524 calories ... I don't know. Across the blogosphere, granola seems to be celebrated and championed as a something healthy for breakfast. Is it really? Today, I'm totally to blame since I had a full cup instead of a half cup serving. I ended up skipping the banana.

I split up my late morning workout with a 45-minute power walk outside and 30 minutes on the elliptical. I spend A LOT of time inside, with various freelance projects, blogging, and job hunting. I just had the urge to take a break and get outside yesterday. Plus I was able to complete an errand, too.

For lunch, Ryan prepared Ellie Krieger's Four-Cheese Macaroni the night before. This mixture makes enough to fill an entire casserole dish, so we always have more than enough to last us throughout the week. We like to add broccoli to the squash-cheese base, giving a little more umph to the veggie goodness. Ryan added some salami to his portion as well. While it sounds super good and tasty, I'll won't be indulging in that section of the dish. Haha.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon wrapping up loose ends and preparing for other deadlines happening later in the week. For dinner, I turned to Ellie Krieger again for her Salmon Cakes with Sesame-Ginger Sauce. This is another dish that yields several helpings, and we end up putting half of it in the freezer for a later date.

For the ingredients, we used six five-ounce cans of Chicken of the Sea's pink salmon, six pieces of Brownberry's Healthy Multi-Grain Bread, half a can of water chestnuts from Dynasty, one Egg Beater, five fresh scallions, ground black pepper, and a fourth-cup of fresh cilantro from my herb garden. Cilantro makes everything better! I love me some cilantro!

Really good and so easy to make! It has a nice Asian flair with the water chestnuts and the Ginger-Sesame Sauce. The Sesame-Ginger Sauce includes drained non-fat plain yogurt from Green Valley Organics (lactose-free for the hubs), some soy sauce and fresh ginger. I paired mine up with an herby green salad with some cherries tomatoes and a bit of BelGioioso Parmesan Cheese.

Since I kept my calories in check today, I also had some No Pudge brownie. YUM!

Back to the grind tomorrow. Interview transcriptions and then some. Cheers!

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,461
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 173
Fat goal 32-57: 53
Protein goal 60-128: 78

Manic Monday and 8-9-10

Well this week certainly kicked off with a bang, hence my title of today's post. Also kind of fitting with 2010's sequential date day. Anyhow, my morning started with a quick bowl of Post Shredded Wheat with some skim milk and fourth-cup of blueberries. Nothing special, but certainly enough to get me through the morning and my trip to the dentist.

Mine and Ryan's dental appointments lasted nearly two hours, which also means I lost time on prepping our lunches for the week. We were close to Whole Foods, so we picked up lunch instead. I had my regular spinach with veggies, balsamic vinegar, and BelGioiso Parmesan Cheese plus cucumber, tomato, and feta salad and tomato basil soup. A cool iced coffee rounded things out.

With phone calls, deadlines, and several in-house duties taking over my afternoon, my workout never happened. UGH!!!! I didn't have time to feel guilty because things were definitely busy. In between deadlines, I snacked on a nectarine.

For dinner, Ryan prepped his own version of chicken stir fry. We used brown rice from Minute Rice with red pepper, pineapple chunks (in water) from Dole, and Eating Right's Broccoli Stir Fry mix (broccoli, carrots and snow peas).

As my deadlines finally came to a close, I made some No Pudge brownies for Ryan as a thank you for dinner. Plus he prepared this week's lunches (more on Tuesday) and his Cranberry and Almond Granola for breakfast. Since I wasn't able to help, I thought he deserved a yummy dessert. I didn't partake in such chocolate-y goodness, however. Maybe tomorrow night.

Back in the exercise game tomorrow, man. I ended up snacking on some of the almonds in the Cranberry and Almond Granola that Ryan made earlier, which made me go over in my fat numbers. BOO! I did walk plenty around the city this weekend, which was nice. But I gotta sweat it out on my elliptical. I miss it and I know it misses me, haha.

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,353
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 165
Fat goal 32-57: 66
Protein goal 60-128: 98

See you Tuesday. Thanks for reading xx

** UPDATE (08.10.10): I double-checked the recipe calculations for Ryan's chicken stir fry and learned that it was definitely off. I still went over in my fat count just slightly. My carbohydrates count was off by one, but my calorie count was 19 less that I should have. Yikes! Monday's totals should be:

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,191
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 163
Fat goal 32-57: 62
Protein goal 60-128: 70

Back in Action

Like I mentioned in my camping recap, getting back into the swing of things definitely took some work come Monday morning. Plus, Ryan and I had zero food in the house, so we had to make due with what we had prior to me jetting to the grocery store later that afternoon.

Breakfast consisted of a cup of Cheerios with fat-free skim milk and an orange. I love my oranges and have been keeping away from them with all the summertime nectarines and peaches.

We typically keep a ravioli pack from Rising Moon on back up in case we run out of food. Lucky for us, we had a garden vegetable and herbs version in the freezer. We paired that up with two cups of herby lettuce and some BelGioioso Parmesan Cheese and some cherry tomatoes.

Come dinner time, I still needed to do my workout. BOO! I feel like I have this window during the day (when I am off) where I need to complete my workout. This is a rare thing, but if I don't complete it by early afternoon, I have to move on to other things, which I did with running errands and grabbing groceries.

Anyhow, dinner included a new dish for us, Eating Well's Chicken and White Bean Salad. This was fantastic! The all-purpose vinaigrette was a nice change with its citrus-y base. Really satisfying and filling!

So my workout finally came around 8:30 and I wimped out at 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer. There is a reason why most don't work out after dinner, right? I didn't feel so hot afterward and will call it a night soon after this and a Diet Vernors. Anyhow, I have to chalk it up, but 30 minutes is better than zero.

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,271
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 166
Fat goal 32-57: 41
Protein goal 60-128: 66