<p>Okay so i just made two blueberry quick breads. I reduced the sugar amount and substituted half of it with stevia. I also substituted whole wheat flour for the unbleached flour. I reduced the butter amount too and substituted some of it with coconut oil. They are in the oven now. I will keep you posted on the result. This is rather momentous because I Do. Not. Bake. Ever.</p>
<p>I always weigh more on Monday morning - as far as I’m concerned it’s part of my life style. It’s generally gone by Thursday at the latest. This weekend I had a party Saturday night and ate a lot of sushi and samosas (and tried to do a lot of dancing, but probably didn’t do quite enough!). Sunday we had BBQ for lunch. And let’s not even talk about my brother’s waffles with whip cream, maple syrup and fresh strawberries! </p>
<p>Just back from a long walk. I discovered an area that I had never been to before and I have lived here 28 years.
I don’t belong to a gym so all my exercise takes place in or near my home. I am blessed to have a beautiful area to walk or run just outside my gate. In aiming for lifestyle changes I am adding exercise each week that will provide me strength to hopefully remain mobile as I age. This week I came to see that I have a great outdoor staircase from my upper yard to my lower. My own built in stadium steps. Starting out this week with four ups and downs and hope to increase it weekly.
I would love to lose more weight but if I can just maintain I would like to firm up and have less belly. I don’t really have a muffin but more of a front bloated belly.
Has anyone else noticed that the fitbit one seems to record differently if clipped to shorts versus to your bra? Or am I imagining things?</p>
<p>Mom60, in answer to your fitBit, yes, it behaves differently. I think when clipped to the middle of your bra it doesn’t get as much movement, but when clipped to the side of your shorts it gets a definite start and stop on eat gait switch.</p>
<p>If your increased movement doesn’t change your belly fat, try one of these 1) add a sprint in you stair climb to really accelerate you heart; this changes your hormone balance to help burn fat over time, and/or 2) take a close look at your sugars and carbs and restrict them by 50% for at least two weeks.</p>
<p>Snowflake- glad I wasn’t imagining things. I usually wear it clipped at the center of my bra.
I am sprinting up the stairs. I also have on some of my walks added some sprints up my final hill. My carbs and sugars are fairly low already but I’ll take a closer look for hidden carbs. I have reduced belly fat just not as much as I would like. I definitely notice a carb bloat when I indulge in bread products.</p>
<p>The healthy version blueberry quick bread was pretty good! I ate one small slice and put it away. Next time i think I will put some banana in it.
Feeling more optimistic today and have decided to workout 6 days a week. I like abasket’s suggestion to alternate hard with less strenuous workouts.</p>
<p>The reality is, for me, that I am not going to stop eating out. Not going to stop meeting a friend for a drink now and then and not going to stop partaking, occasionally, in the homemade ice cream that is sold a half mile from my house. I need to find a way to compensate for those things in a way that I don’t feel deprived. Otherwise, my weight is just going to keep yo-yoing. Sooo, mindful eating 90 percent of the time and the rest, well, life is short!
We met with a financial advisor last night and it was interesting to see that his approach to financing retirement is similar to a food lifestyle. We had to figure out a budget based on how we spend money. Well, we spend a lot in restaurants. He told us to plan to do at least as much of that in retirement because we are not going to change our habits now. The thing to do is to make compensatory allowances in other areas of our budget to allow for what we love. Not so different than planning a menu for the week.</p>
<p>EPTR, I like how you roll. </p>
<p>Double post deleted. :)</p>
<p>Eptr- I think you are of the right mindset. If you say your going to eliminate something that you know your not going to be able to realistically do you set yourself up to fail. I also like the comparison to retirement finances.
I read something today about eliminating caffeine. I know that would in no way work for me.
Do any of you have some days where your legs just feel like cement?</p>
<p>EPTR, that’s my feeling too. I remember at one point my SIL had gone on the food-Nazi diet and said she would never be able to eat birthday cake again. She’s very short and basically it’s very very hard for her to eat the 1300 calories a day that supposedly is all she needs. My thought was if there isn’t room for an occasional birthday cake life isn’t worth living. In any event, SIL did lose a lot of weight, but she couldn’t live like a monk for ever. She now has a pretty healthy diet, walks six miles most mornings and does weight work 2 or 3 times a week. She’s not thin by any means, but she’s probably pretty healthy.</p>
<p>EPTR, I am with you completely. I’m not willing to give up eating out and splurging. I’ve been trying to be pretty careful during the week and indulging a bit on the weekends. That seems to be working. </p>
<p>How about changing your mindset so that the eating out is more about the social time than the food itself? I know I tend to think of eating out as a time to “treat” - I don’t want a piece of baked fish and a veggie on my plate! However, this would be a problem if I was eating out frequently. Sometimes even the rule of only eating half of your serving and taking the rest home can be problematic - because that just means that half of the cheesy enchilada is being eaten at one meal and other half at another meal - so the endulging turns into TWO meals of endulging! </p>
<p>Well you could just eat half the enchilada and not take the other half home! Generally I don’t eat that differently at restaurants than I do at home. Except for the constant BBQ DH and S2 insist on, I generally order fish. Last nice meal I had started with ceviche style scallops, broiled fish with a vegetable, and a dessert with sorbet and other stuff from tropical fruit. I don’t think it was more than a few hundred calories more than what I would have had for a weekend meal at home (which always includes wine.) Sometimes I’ll order something with pasta, but usually as the appetizer so they don’t serve me too much. Often I’ll order two appetizers instead of a main course so that I get more reasonable portion sizes. My main aim in eating out is to eat things that are too complicated to want to cook at home.</p>
<p>" My main aim in eating out is to eat things that are too complicated to want to cook at home."</p>
<p>Yes, I follow that philosophy, too. That’s why we mostly eat out at sushi places and I usually go for some sort of sushi or sashimi combo - there is no way on Earth I could get the variety of fish needed to make that at home! </p>
<p>I have to say that I got addicted to having sparkling mineral water with my dinners! Saves me some $$ since I am not ordering wine and leaves me with a calorie reserve to be able to take a few bites of dessert without feeling too guilty. :p</p>
<p>abasket, YES. I have been taking that approach at restaurants and it helps me a lot to decide in advance that i am going to have fish or another low cal dinner when I get to the restaurant. I also have been ordering a double order of veggies instead of a starch and veggie. Tonight I am taking my mom into Boston for dinner and an outdoor concert. I will check the menu ahead of time so that I can plan. </p>
<p>As of today I am down about a pound and half from last week!</p>
<p>Another who usually orders something I wouldn’t make at home. I also order things that I am the only one in my house who eats something such as lamb.
I made a good salad dressing last night. I have never liked the taste of bottled dressings but never was good at making my own. Over the last several years I have experimented and I find I have improved.
Last night- taco style salad with sautéed red and yellow peppers, carmelized onions with seasoned ground beef and a Mexican cheese similar to Feta cotijla. I made a dressing inspired by chimichurri sauce. Cup of cilantro, cup of parsley, clove garlic, 4 tbsp of white wine vinegar, juice of a Mexican lime, about 6 tbsp of olive oil all in the food processor. It was really good and good for you. No sweeteners like you get in bottled dressing.H got a grilled jalapeño sliced on top of his salad.
Anyone else have some dinner suggestions?</p>
<p>I went to a cooking class at Sur la Table last night with H. He likes to cook and it was his Christmas present. It was fun and delicious but very eye opening in terms of how much butter and cream goes into those restaurant meals. We made a chick pea fritter (delicious and healthy) with a smoked salmon dressing, Chicken cutlet with lemon wine cream sauce (oh, boy) and grilled asparagus. Dessert was a crepe with orange grand marnier sauce and vanilla icecream. </p>
<p>Sooooo, I ate all of it but only took seconds of the chick pea fritters. We got a free pan to take home too!</p>
<p>I went to a cooking class at Sur la Table last night with H. He likes to cook and it was his Christmas present. It was fun and delicious but very eye opening in terms of how much butter and cream goes into those restaurant meals. We made a chick pea fritter (delicious and healthy) with a smoked salmon dressing, Chicken cutlet with lemon wine cream sauce (oh, boy) and grilled asparagus. Dessert was a crepe with orange grand marnier sauce and vanilla icecream. </p>
<p>Sooooo, I ate all of it but only took seconds of the chick pea fritters. We got a free pan to take home too!
Mom60! We also made a vinaigrette to go over the asparagus. I learned that, when you made a dressing, start with the oil in a small bowl and start whisking it quickly while you add the vinegar. Keep whisking until it emulsifies or thickens a bit and looks cloudy. We added chopped walnuts to it.</p>
<p>My apologies for the double post.</p>
<p>No apology needed, EPTR, but I want to take that cooking class!</p>