The 400 Calorie Meal Diet Plan Thingy

For the next few weeks, I’m going to show you what’s in my lunchbox, and sometimes my breakfast. Approximately 400 calories a meal. What I bring to work tends to be high in veggies, fruits, and protein by necessity. They also tend to be generally low in fat, carbs, and refined sugar (donuts are an exception and a treat). But everything’s high in taste. No sense in eating cardboard.

400 calories is not a whole lot. Take that donut pictured above. That’s 220 calories! I apologize for the bite; I got a little excited. So I only ate one donut knowing that I’ve got to fill up my gut with more than just two tiny pieces of fried and glazed, gluten-free dough otherwise I’ll be hungry long before noon. I added the grapes and raisins on the side. Not pictured are a handful of plain almonds. Again, I was a little short on the patience.

So here’s my lunch:

• 3/4 cup boiled chicken (de-boned) – 204 cal.
• 1 cup frozen, boiled broccoli marinated over night in 1 tb. of La Choy Orange Ginger Sauce-110 cal.
• 1 roma tomato, sliced-20 cal.
• 1 small orange, sliced-60 cal.

Calories: 394 (according to http://caloriecount.about.com/)

One of the best parts of the meal above is that it’s made up of 50% leftovers from the night before. No extra planning. I just sliced up a tomato and orange and added the sauce. This meal took me about 10 minutes to prepare after Kevin and I finished eating dinner. 10 minutes!

Water is Life, And Maybe Death

So I've been drinking a lot of water lately, more than usual because of the new diet. Ahh, gasp! Not possible you say? Very possible. But I've been a lot more conscious of the water I've been drinking for two main reasons: (1) Kevin and I got a Reverse Osmosis system (thanks Mom and Dad) because our water tastes pretty bad and (2) because of the following.

That ain't what you think it is.

This is what water looks like where I work. This is the reason why our drinking water filter (at work) has been changed out twice in the past 2 months. I've been told this lovely rust color in the water is due to construction in the area. But can this be healthy? If not, where are the alerts to say it's not?

Water is the numero uno important substance that our bodies need. But we channel it, we pipe it to our homes, we bottle it in factories, we add fluoride and chlorine to treat our waste that gets pumped back into the system, we filter it, we boil it. But when we diet or try to get fit for our health or to train for a race, how often do we ask ourselves, "Did I drink healthy water today?" I know I don't. I'm usually focused more on taste, color, and convenience. Bottled water is easy to grab on the way out of the house. Our city water tastes bad, so in order to enjoy water we have to filter it. And then there's the rust colored water. Yuck. But these are all surface level issues.

Most articles that try to identify healthy water aren't unanimous. Take this one for example. Bottled water is handled by man-made equipment just like tap. And anything that's "handled" could be contaminated with all sorts of chemicals, fungi, bacteria, and on and on. So, unless we live near glacial waters, I wonder, could water effect or possibly encourage allergies? In addition, think about all of those calorie free or reduced calorie powders that we stick in our water. Think about my RO system. Are we just covering up the problem. And maybe even adding more chemicals and new problems?

Can we even stop?

Note: This has been a philosophical rant to some degree. Our regularly scheduled recipes will come back shortly.

The Weight Challenge



Yummy Breakfast for Work

So, I've been keeping track of the calories for the past two weeks. And I've settled on about 1200 a day. It's not bad. I'm hungry just a little bit before lunch and dinner then I'm a little hungry before bed, but I'm not constantly thinking about food or uncomfortable. I think I've hit on some good food choices. I'm no longer eating breakfast items for breakfast unless I want to. For example, I had a gluten free cinnamon roll and almonds for breakfast one day, then a ham salad the next. Here's my current weight log. I'm pretty excited. We'll see what happens.

135.6 1/6/2011
136.8 1/7/2011
135.4 1/9/2011
133.8 1/13/2011

The cool thing is that Kevin and I have stumbled on this really cool new show, on MTV of all places, called I Used to Be Fat. It's a really cool improvement over the Biggest Loser, in our humble opinions. It's about teenagers who want to lose a large amount of weight (we're talking like 60 pounds) after high school and before they start their lives away from home. Within an hour show you get to see the whole journey of weight loss (no cheesy drum roll or competition). It's all about the kid and their trainer and their daily food and exercise choices. We never thought would have though we'd watch something on MTV, but it's really inspirational. And it's not just about the losing weight part. We love how the trainers really try to teach the kids to push themselves and make healthy decisions everyday. Love it! Love it!

New Year, New Goals

After our long stent in marathon training, Kevin and I are both want to spring into something new and fun! So here are some of my goals for 2011 (not necessarily associated with a New Years Resolution, just a coincidental time):

• Cross Train/Fun Train-Short fun runs, swims, more aerobics of all kinds, biking, hiking, etc. Not just running please!
• Find a Church-Connect! We need connection with some fellow believers. Preferable within our age group and with similar intersts. Would be fun to joing a choir and get back to my roots.
• Weigh What I Want-Looking to see if I can weigh 128 comfortably and I've never counted calories before. We spent all of last year turning our bodies into running machines, not I want to see how efficent my bodies is. Never tried it before, so why not now.
• Travel-More time off this year means more fun with family and relaxation in fun places.
• Surprise Adventures-A plan for spontaniousness with with hubby! A contradiction of terms, I know! I'm goofy!