Refreshing and Oh So Good

Berry Smoothie

Super easy to make. 

1  cup frozen mixed berries

1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach 

1 banana peeled

1/2 cup nonfat Greek yogurt

1 cup nonfat milk

1 tablespoon of honey

Toss everything into the blender container and blend until smooth.

This is basic smoothie. You can add more berries, less spinach, or you can use vanilla yogurt. This is pretty sweet IMHO, so I don’t always add the honey. If you want it thicker you can use a frozen peeled banana.  I rarely measure, I just add what looks good.

** Note**  Safeway sells a nice big bag of frozen mixed berries and the bag sells for under $3.00 a pound in my local market. 

Stair Climbing Goal Is In View

Remember my goal to climb a huge long set of stairs? I’m not quite there yet. But I have no doubt I will be ready by Sept 22. Here are the stairs I walked down and then back up yesterday… 

These stairs go on and on.I didn’t go down and back up immediately.
I stopped for a few to enjoy the view.

It was a beautiful day to be out and about exploring Washington State.

Vine Ripe and Oh So Juicy

I love summer! But I really love late summer when harvest time rolls around. One of my aunts has a  farm and orchard in Eastern Washington. She came to visit this past week, and she brought us a bounty of fruits and vegetables picked early in the morning, ripe from the vine.

She brought these to us a few days ago. We’ve been eating pears, sweet corn, cucumbers, grapes, yellow plums, red beefy tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, and yellow tomatoes,  I didn’t take photos of all of it, but she brought us fresh from the tree peaches, and let me tell you what, they are so good and juicy!

Oh my goodness… can you imagine such goodness, all fresh from the farm!  I love weight watchers at this moment! Why you may ask? Because most of these fruits and vegetables are zero points per serving.

Oh yes! 

WW Points Plus

I have been doing the weight watchers points plus program using info I found online. Well,  after a couple of months on the program I figured out it works for me. I know. This all sounds kind of backwards doesn’t it? But I didn’t want to put out money for something I may not be willing to follow through on.

I have all the info or the old weight watchers program. I know it worked for me too. I was thinking I could always go back to that if the new points plus program didn’t work out. Well, now I have tried it. I love it. Maybe if I wasn’t a big fan of fresh fruits and vegetables I wouldn’t be as excited as I have been about the PP program.

Today I made the time to go to the city and stop into the Weight Watchers’ office. It has been a long time since I was in their building. Simply walking in the door was so motivating! I am thankful for the leader who spent so much time with me today. After gathering a ton of information, I purchased this…

I know because of my circumstances at this stage of my life, I won’t have the time to make it out to the meetings, so I am doing Weight Watchers online. 

I’m excited! This is like a fresh start all over again!

Goals and Motivation

Seattle has some pretty steep hills and a lot of stairs…. Mr♥C and I use to run together, and stairs were not an issue… we weren’t completely out of breath at the top of the stairs. I don’t know if I will ever be a runner again, but I will be healthy and fit.

See those stairs? They seem to end in the middle of the photo? Well. No… look closer and you’ll see there is another set of stairs leading to the street above. Yep. My goal is to make it up all those stairs, and  right back down all of those stairs….  without being out of breath.  Goal date: Sept 22, 2012.

GO ME! 

Celebration Food

I was having a difficult time figuring out what to do for our 4th of July celebration menu. I kept it super simple this year. I think super simple was super weight watchers friendly, and that makes me happy!

We grilled lean pork. It was awesome! I did a super simple seasoning of soy sauce, the they went on the grill. Our sides were so easy.  We had fresh corn on the cob, watermelon, cantaloupe, cherries, and a lot of fresh veggies, and a bean salad.

I usually serve up an antipasto salad, with olives, artichokes, pepperoni slices, chunks of cheese, and top it off with wishbone Italian salad dressing. For our 4th of July dinner this year, I made a simple vegetable salad and let everyone chose their dressing. It always tastes so fresh and cool. I love all the red from the tomatoes and the red bell peppers.  My dressing of choice is nonfat Greek yogurt with some dry ranch mix stirred in. It is really thick and creamy. YUMMY.  

Patriotic funfetti cupcakes with the patriotic funfetti frosting. I mixed the frosting with fat free cool whip and spread it on very thin. Again…. yummy.  I have made these fat free cupcakes twice now, and they received good reviews by everyone.

Oh my goodness… these roasted chickpeas (garbanzo beans) are so good! These are my new go-to snack when the family is sitting around eating chips, peanuts, or  M&Ms. This batch is slightly sweet with cinnamon. YUM! To roast the chickpeas, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Then simply open a can of chickpeas, drain, and rinse, then pat dry. Spread them out on a foil lined pan. Put them into the hot oven for 15 minutes. Shake the pan after 15 minutes, then put them back into the oven for about 15 more minutes. (30 – 40 minutes total baking time). Shake the pan every few minutes. Watch carefully as they may start to burn.  You do not want them to burn. When they are dry roasted like this, they tend to pop, so be careful you do not get burned by a popping chickpea!

To make the sweet cinnamon chickpeas shown here, simply put the hot roasted chickpeas into a bowl and mix in 2 teaspoons of oil, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a light sprinkle of brown sugar. You can use any seasoning you like. I like garlic and a sprinkle of season salt.  They are best eaten fresh. However, once cooled, you can store them in an airtight container for a couple of days.

My 4th of July celebration wasn’t as hard on my diet plan as I thought it would be. My daughter in law made her baked potato salad, but I didn’t go near it. I had so many fresh food choices on the table and in the fridge, I didn’t feel the need to eat the high calorie foods I use to go for.

This  is one of the reasons why I like the weight watchers plan so much… I have great options to chose from, and I did not feel deprived of anything.

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July celebration!

My Adventures With Funfetti Cake Mix

I started with this…

When I opened the box I divided the mix… half went into the mixing bowl. The other half I put into a ziplock bag for storage. Next time I will probably store it in a mason jar.

I made these… To make 1.5 point plus cupcakes – preheat the oven to 350. Line your cupcake pan with paper liners. Mix half a box of  cake mix with 6 oz (3/4 cup) of diet sprite and 1 egg white.  Whisk it all together, making sure there are no lumps and the batter looks like cake batter.  Divide the batter equally among the 12 cupcake liners. Bake 18 minutes – 20 minutes – test with a toothpick. When they are done the toothpick will come out clean.  When they are cool, I will frost them with fat free cool whip. They will be a nice low fat dessert later tonight.

After I made the cupcakes I made a cake batter dip. Sounds strange doesn’t it? But it tastes so good! This has been all over the pinterest boards, but I made it my way, using less cake batter and more yogurt.  I liked it a lot!!!  My family liked it a lot! So yummy good!

  cake batter dip recipe – my version

• 1/4 cup fat free Greek yogurt
• 2 TBS cake batter mix (dry – right out of the box)
• 2 TBS fat free cool whip

Mix well, and serve with sliced apples or other fruit

A serving is 2 tablespoons – it was plenty of dip for my sliced apples. YUMMY!

I didn’t come up with these yummy recipes on my own. I found the recipe for the cupcakes here: Skinny Funfetti Cupcakes

The dip recipe I found here via pinterest: Funfetti Cake Dip I love browsing her website, Eat Yourself Skinny, as I am looking for new recipes with weight watchers points plus listed.  I can browse her recipes by points per serving, or by course. I like that!

Fat Free Greek Yogurt Salad Dressing

I'm loving my salads this week! My lunch consists of a big beautiful bowl of freshly chopped vegetables.

This  was my lunch bowl. Broccoli and cauliflower in small florets. Aren't they beautiful! Next I added chopped carrots, walla walla sweet onion,  and celery. I added a serving of garbanzo beans, a sprinkle of low fat mozzarella cheese.  This salad looked nearly perfect.

Normally I would have added ranch dressing.... the regular full fat stuff.  My normal is changing. This is my new normal.... and I love it! Fat free Greek yogurt, with freshly crushed garlic cloves, a sprinkle of season salt, and black pepper.

YUMMY!

How many weight watcher points plus in this salad?
1/4 cup garbanzo beans = 1 point +
1/4 cup low fat mozzarella cheese = 2 points+
1/4 cup fat free Greek yogurt = 1 points+

When I need to save points (for example when we had family pizza night) I can skip the cheese and garbanzo beans making this a super low point side salad. This bowl of chopped vegetables is my new favorite.... my new normal!

Menu Planning For 4th of July

Considering I've been on a diet before, you would think I would have a preplanned menu for holiday weekends. But I don't have a plan. 

So far all I know about the week ahead of me... there is a BBQ tonight and a Potluck on Sunday. I'm not sure about any of the other days. I know there will be more BBQs and a lot of big family gatherings.

I have no ideas for the potluck. I think I can manage the BBQs and not have a problem with my weight watchers points. Grilled chicken, corn on the cob, fresh veggies and fruit for dessert. Someone is planning on BBQ ribs. My favorite. Ohmy.

I don't want to be obsessed thinking about food from now through the 4th of July.  I think I'm making this whole menu plan more difficult than it needs to be.

I Wish I Was That Fat

Earlier I was browsing through some old photo albums when I came across some old pictures of me... I wish I was as fat as I was back then. Seriously. I thought I was a fat slob some years ago. Yeah, no self-love in that statement is there?

That is how I viewed myself. A big fat slob. I look at the photos and I realize I wasn't all that fat. I was not a slob. I was a normal healthy, young woman. I wasn't skinny. I was actually smaller than today's average size woman... today's average size woman is about 160 lbs and wears a size 14.

Society made me believe I was fat.

My motivational photo is of me... I keep it where I can view it often, because seriously... that is the size I wish to be when all is said and done. 

Here We Go Again

What happened to all that enthusiasm I had back in January... it done left the building. So here I am starting over... again.

I didn't go back to all my bad ways. I lost a little weight, continued eating nuts, and healthy fats like salmon. I have been drinking more water than other beverages. Sometimes it is the sassy water from the flat belly diet book. Sometimes I just add a slice or two of lemon to my water.

A couple weeks ago I started back on the weight watchers plan. This time I'm going with the points plus plan. When I first started out, I was left at the end of the day with points left over. I'm sure that won't be a problem as I continue to lose weight and the points allowed in a day go down.

So that is where I'm at... weight watchers is the plan for me.

Flat Belly Diet

At some point this past year I picked up the book The Flat Belly Diet. I didn’t really stick to it. But I did add nuts, olives, and more whole grains into my diet. I also started drinking the water.. Sassy Water. I love it! I grow mint in amongst my flower gardens, so I had it on hand. I never thought about adding mint to my cold water. So yummy!

The Water – add the following to a pitcher and store in the fridge overnight

• 2 quarts of water
• about an inch slice of ginger minced or grated
• a cucumber peeled and sliced thin
• a handful of spearmint leaves – I use peppermint sometime
• a small lemon thinly sliced

I lost a few pounds and was happy with the results. I didn’t even try sticking to the diet because we were eating away from home far too often. I have been reading more about the diet plan and I think this is the way I’m going to go… the basics are 4 small meals a day – 3 main meals and one snack, each 400 calories each. The key ingredient to the diet… MUFAs -  monounsaturated fatty acids because they help fight belly fat.

If you want to learn more about the Flat Belly Diet Plan, I found many great articles at the Prevention magazine website – all free. I like free.

• Flat Belly Diet Basics
• 7 Day meal plan with recipes
• MUFAs – the foods

Prevention mag also offers a free get started guide. It is an 8 page starter guide you can download. You need to sign up with your email address and they will no doubt send you a newsletter. But the guide is free. I signed up for it, and have already printed it out. The 8 Page Guide  is free. Did I mention I like free?

There are a couple of reasons I like this plan so much more than a few of the others I have read up on. The heart healthy benefits of the monounsaturated fatty acids and eating 4 small meals a day helps to regulate blood sugar levels.

I’m excited about my new start…

Do I Really Want To Share This

Okay… so I weighed in this morning. I’ve been debating if I should share my weight here or not. I had a diet blog before… where I blogged under an assumed name. Where my friends and family didn’t see me. This time around, I’ve shared my blog with friends and family. It seems more personal when shared with people I know in real life. Feels… a lot more uncomfortable posting here with people I know watching…

On the other side of the coin… I did post my weight on my other diet blog (years ago)… and I did lose weight. But not having people I know watching me online, I didn’t feel as much like I had to keep myself in check. Does that make sense at all? Well, it does to me.

Alrighty then… here goes.

I weighed in this morning…. Starting weight January 2, 2012 – 256 lbs.

My goal weight by the end of the year is realistic if I were to lose 2 pounds a week – give or take a pound here and there – 150 lbs.  

Celebrations Are Over

Oh thank goodness, the celebrations are over! Now if I felt like I could trash the cookies, fudge, and all the other goodies left on the table... I'd be happy, but I feel guilty simply trashing everything.

This holiday season has been amazing, but long. One of our boys has lived in the midwest for nearly 11 years. In all that time, he hasn't been home for Thankgiving. This past February, he moved his little family home to Washington state. My daughter and her little family live in the midwest too, but they came home to Washington a couple weeks before Thankgiving... soooooo... we have been celebrating the holidays pretty much non-stop for way too long!! Food... lots of food. I enjoyed the holiday baking with my daughter and the grandchildren. But now, I'm very thankful we are done with the holidays this year.

We wrapped up New Years day with more food... I am so done. Bloated and simply done in. I don't want to feel like this ever again.

I have a pitcher of water in the fridge. It is so refreshing... I added sliced cucumbers, minced ginger, and some peppermint to the pitcher. I love it!

First thing in the morning I'll be out walking... rain or shine. In the next couple of days I'll add my goals to the sidebar.

I'm looking forward to getting on with the new year... and a healthier life! Now for a good nights sleep...