Lunchtime Surprises

The point of my first goal wasn’t to count calories. However, as I was eating some of my more unhealthy meal choices, I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly I was putting into my body.

One such occasion was Monday’s lunch – 2 slices from a small pepperoni/pineapple pizza and ⅔ of a tossed salad with esperanza dressing from Mellow Mushroom. It’s one of those meals that I know isn’t great for me, but in my head isn’t as bad as some of my regular lunches. However, after discovering this meal was a whopping 990 calories provided me with an opportunity to test my knowledge of my own food intake. Here is the breakdown for my “usual” orders at places I frequent for lunch:

Panera:

Plus 180 calories for the french baguette, makes the whole meal 910 calories!

Moe’s (customized Joey Junior and chips & salsa):

A total of 775 calories!

Smashburger (Spinach Cucumber & Goat Cheese- Grilled chicken sandwich and smashfries):

Calories in my fries

Calories in my sandwich

A total of 933 calories.

The fact that Smashburger was the highest in both calories and fat floored me, especially considering more than half of those totals were from the fries alone. Another thing that surprised me was that Moe’s was technically the healthiest, being the lowest in both calories and fat.

All of these numbers in mind, I set out to find something I would enjoy at each place for under 450 calories:

Without chips & salsa a trip to Moe’s will never be complete. Taking into considering the chips and salsa are 380 calories alone, I’m out of luck there.

At Smashburger, I assumed getting my favorite sandwich in salad form would save me from the calories, but that salad actually has more calories than the sandwich. I could order the sandwich/salad made without seasoning or butter, but at that point I could make it at home. Looks like I’ll be creating my own to bring it in under 450.

Panera fared the best with some soup/salad combinations I enjoy coming in under 450, but a sandwich (half or whole) is completely off the table.

The shock of these numbers reminded me a of a few things:

1. Just because it sounds like a healthy option (ie. has the words spinach, cucumber, goat cheese and grilled in the title), doesn’t mean it is.
2. It’s okay to splurge on things like fries sometimes, but calling it a “usual” is just plain unhealthy.

It also opened my eyes to how wrong I’ve been about what I’ve been eating. With all this in mind, can I really be surprised by the weight gain?

Weekly Goals #3

My goal last week was to continue to write down everything that I ate but include calories, protein, fat, etc, which i both succeed and failed at. I got the calories for the week but not the rest of it. I was having trouble getting it down for everything I was eating, especially when it was my own recipes. Rather than constantly stressing about it, I recorded only the calories.

I averaged about 1,655 calories a day throughout the week. Thinking back to what I was eating daily throughout the last couple months, I’m confident this is 500 calories or more than my previous daily average. I think I’ll eventually need to keep it closer to 1,500, but for now I’m happy with the changes I’m making.

Now, for this week’s goal: 7 days of healthy.

For the past two weeks, my eating and exercise as been spot on Monday-Thursday but as soon as the weekend hits, all bets are off. My goal is to incorporate exercise and healthy eating into all seven days of the week.

Keep your fingers crossed for a sunny Saturday next week so I can ride my bike!

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Worth the Splurge: The King’s Kitchen

Rating: 5 / 5 stars

My boyfriend and I have a monthly bet to see who can get in the most miles of cardio. The reward for the winner is a meal at a restaurant we pick at the start of the new month. I love this bet because it keeps us both moving, feeds my competitive nature, and ends in a delicious meal.

In August, we picked The King’s Kitchen and, on Tuesday, the loser (him) finally treated the winner (me, obviously*) to her southern fare.

I initially choose The King’s Kitchen after finding it on Instagram and drooling over the upscale versions of my favorite southern classics. What I didn’t know at the time is that The King’s Kitchen is much more than just a restaurant. According to their website,

Far too many of our fellow Charlotte residents suffer from extreme life-challenges such as poverty, homelessness and the slow, uphill battle of recovering from substance abuse or incarceration. Our vision and goal each day at The King’s Kitchen is to raise funds to feed the spiritual and physical needs of those who have the least in our community and to train and equip those previously unemployable in the restaurant trade.

This means that 100% of the profit from our dinner went to feeding the hungry, and the people behind the scenes making it all possible are getting a second chance. As someone who likes to think of herself as a fairly active, loving member of the Charlotte community, I’d happily come back and pay for a meal to support this initiative again and again.

As for the food, it was amazing from appetizer to dessert.

I may have cheated on my October goal a little with some cider. Worth it? Absolutely.

We started with the crab cakes, which our server recommended based on the fact that their seafood is sourced every 48 hours from the coast. The crab cake itself had a ratio of approximately 80% crab to 20% filling, which is ideal, and served on a tartar sauce that is perfectly flavored. I’m recommending it to anyone based on the fact that my New England-raised boyfriend gave it his stamp of approval, which is not easy to get when it comes to crab.

Then it was onto the plate that I spent the entire day dreaming about – fried chicken, mac & cheese, green beans and mashed potatoes. Let’s be honest, the only healthy thing about this meal was what it did for my mental health, which was make me instantly happy and nostalgic. This exact meal takes me back to my childhood like no other can.

The chicken itself was crispy, juicy, flavorful and not bogged down by a thick batter. It was everything fried chicken should be, but the sides stole the show.

The mac and cheese was creamy, the mashed potatoes were covered in white gravy, and the green beans were cooked with bacon. It was everything a true southern meal should have been – flavorful, well-cooked and very cravable.

His burger was equally as delicious as were the fries, which were crispy and not at all greasy. The only change I’ll make next time is my decision to order the cornbread instead of the biscuit as it was a little dry. The cornbread didn’t matter though because after clearing my plate, I was too full to think about it. We took the chocolate moose to go and, despite it’s small size, enjoyed it’s rich decadence for the next two nights.

If you’re in Charlotte looking for some southern comfort and a way to give back, I would recommend The King’s Kitchen every time.

*I actually lost our September bet and now owe him Cowfish. More on that when we finally make it to Cowfish.

MMM: All Purpose Chicken

Meal planning and preparation seems to be a common theme among healthy lifestyles. The basic idea is that you set yourself up to eat well by surrounding yourself with the best foods. With that in mind, I spent some time last Sunday meal prepping.

I made a batch of low calorie salad dressing, cut up veggies, put together lunches for the week, and tested out the Convenient Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken from the Skinnytaste Cookbook. If you have the cookbook and haven’t made this yet, drop what you’re doing and plan your next week of meals around it. If you don’t have the cookbook, I’d argue this one recipe, and the other’s in the book that utilize it, make it worth buying.

With a few staple pantry ingredients, minimal hands on time, and four hours of slow cooking, I ended up with enough chicken for lunches and dinners throughout the week. Cooking up about 2 pounds of chicken got me:

• Chicken enchiladas
• Three chicken caesar wraps
• Chicken to add some protein to a salad
• Buffalo Chicken Toast from Skinnytaste Cookbook 

This is a recipe that I’ll begin to incorporate into my weekly routine. It’s easy to adjust for more or less (I added about a half a pound), and allows for a lot of variety in your menu with less prep time. Off the top of my head, I could make chicken tacos, chicken salad,or any of the recipes in the Skinnytaste cookbook that call for it with just one batch.

For someone who needs variety in her meals, this is the perfect recipe.

An eyeopening experience and this week’s goals

My goal last week was to write down everything that I ate. This included everything from my late afternoon diet soda to the random breathe mints throughout the day. The inspiration for this goal came from this month’s book, The EveryGirl’s Guide to Diet and Fitness. In the book, Maria Menounos said she was surprised by her first food log, and I had a similar experience.

Here is my log from Monday:

• 8:15 am – Coffee with unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 9:10 am – Coffee with unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 10:00 am – Instant maple & brown sugar oatmeal (low sugar, made with water)
• 12:00 pm – Half of a small pepperoni & pineapple pizza; regular tossed salad with Esperanza dressing
• 3:30 pm – Diet Pepsi
• 5:40 pm – Picked at chicken; slice of monterey jack cheese while cooking; small glass sprite
• 5:55 pm – Skinnytaste buffalo chicken toast; Skinnytaste house salad; glass of sprite
• 8:00 pm – Two slices multigrain bread dipped in balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese 
• 8:45 pm – A few sips of Sprite

This is a very representative day because everyday this week had some healthy moments and some not so healthy ones. For instance, this was a pretty good day except for my lunch, which added up to a shocking 780 calories! What’s most sad about that is I enjoyed my dinner more than my lunch and it was almost 300 less calories. This was a theme throughout the week that really showed me that just because it’s healthy option doesn’t mean it’s the less delicious one.

Another theme, which I knew was coming, was that caffeine addiction is very real. Every morning included two cups of coffee and every afternoon, around the same time, it was time for my second dose. i was proud of myself for choosing diet soda rather than my favorite, Coca-Cola Classic, but that’s not very good for me either. I’m going to try to slowing start weening my body off of this addiction.

I need to also start weening myself off of my mindless snacking habit. For the first time in a long time, I was thinking about everything that I put into my mouth and I never realized how much of that was in between meals. Whether it was free samples at the grocery store or a snacks here and there while cooking – snacking, even when I wasn’t hungry or about to eat a meal, was something I did every day.

With all of that in mind, I’ve decided that I’m going to build on my previous goal rather than define an entirely new one. This week, my goal is to continue to log my food intake but begin to include calorie, fat, protein and sugar counts. This will allow me to see what all of this is adding up to, and prepare me for what it’s going to take to cut the calories and lose some weight. I’m also going to focus on my snacking and try to keep it to a mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and after dinner snack. No more eating while shopping or cooking for this girl!

#WorkWeekWins

Making a big change in your life is as much about the small victories as the big ones.

If my weekly goal is to write down everything I eat for a week, but I slip up for a day I’m likely to feel a little down about it. That’s when it’s time to celebrate the small victories. The more I can stay in a positive mood about all of this the more likely I am to keep going.

I know this because it’s my frame of mind that’s gotten me off the healthy track before:

About two years ago, I decided it was time to make a change and I went after it 100 percent. I was counting every calorie and I was in the gym everyday. I became obsessive about it, particularly the calorie counting. If the restaurant didn’t have the calorie count posted online, I was unlikely to visit. If I went over by a little, I made sure to work them off at the gym. If I went over by a lot, I dwelled on it.

Rather than enjoying the success I was having, I was constantly worried about maintaining it. The problem is that I don’t want to be obsessing about health and fitness at all. I don’t want to be obsessing about being overweight, like I am now, and I don’t want to be doing it over maintaining a certain weight, like I was back then.

My goal is to incorporate health and fitness in a way where it becomes second nature to order a side salad with my one slice of pizza, or to head to the gym after work. I’ll feel like I’ve reached my goals when I’m not actively thinking about it, I’m just doing it.

I realize that getting to that point is going to take a while, and in order to keep myself on track I’m going to be sure to celebrate my small victories. I’m going to do so every week with five “Work Week Wins” on Twitter.

A “Work Week Win” or #WorkWeekWin is something small that makes me feel good about choices I made on my busiest days – Monday through Friday. This could be anything from ordering a side salad and a slice of pizza, instead of multiple slices of pizza, or skipping the donuts in the break room.

The point is to remember to celebrate the small victories just in case I have a setback. On weeks I don’t have a setback, I’ll have twice as much to celebrate.

Monthly Goals: October

In addition to my weekly goals, I’m going to set monthly goals that will help shape my posts throughout each month. This will include one all-encompassing goal, a cookbook/food blog to cook from, and a book to review. I’m hoping about 50% of what you’ll read here comes from these goals and the other 50% from other sources.

For October:

• Overarching goal: No alcohol*
• Cookbook: The Skinnytaste Cookbook
• Book: The EveryGirl’s Guide to Diet and Fitness by Maria Menounos

*This month’s goal is technically going from Sept. 29 until Oct. 22 as that is four weeks, and I’ve had a long-standing trip to my college town planned for that weekend. This is one of those instances where balance is the key!

What do your goals for October look like?

MMM: Chicken Enchilada Soup from Skinnytaste

Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I picked this recipe for two reasons: I needed to make dinner in my crockpot because I knew my schedule was crazy, and I had 93% of the ingredients on hand.

Typically, a big hesitation for me when cooking healthy food is that a lot of it isn’t food I would regularly have on hand, but Gina Homolka of Skinnytaste is great about creating recipes with pantry staples.

This recipe calls for some leg work to be done before everything goes in the crockpot, which I took care of the night before. This made throwing everything into the pot before work a 5 minutes process. As much as I love cooking, I’m happy with any weeknight recipe that has only about 20 minutes of active prep time.

One of my favorite things about cooking in a Crockpot is that when you let it cook all day while you’re gone, you are guaranteed to be welcomed home by an amazing smell. This recipe more than delivered on that promise.

Overly excited about the smell, I dove in and burned my tongue. My first impression of the soup, other than the burning sensation,  was that it was full-flavored and delicious, but it was more like a vegetable soup with chicken than a chicken enchilada soup. That all changed when I added the sour cream, cheese, and scallions. It’s amazing was three simple ingredients can do to change the entire flavor profile. The mixed in sour cream also gave it a slightly creamy flavor, which was very comforting.

In addition to testing out a recipe I’m guaranteed to make again, I got the base for a delicious vegetable soup. I’ll play around with some idea and get back to you with a recipe.

Recipe modifications**:

• Left out the beans because I hate beans (it’s a texture thing)
• Left out the cilantro because I think it tastes like soap (it’s a genetic thing)
• Used canned corn because it’s all I had
• Added a bell pepper because it was going to go to waste if I hadn’t
• Cooked it in the crockpot on low or 10+ hours because I have a job and my boyfriend was late coming over for dinner

*MMM = Make More Monday – a weekly recipe or recipe review

**I realize that modifications can skew the results of a recipe, but the only modification I made that I think could have changed the flavor significantly was my omission of cilantro. If I had made this recipe and felt it was missing something, I would opt for parsley next time because it’s much less offensive to my taste buds. Also, I could be wrong about the beans not changing the flavor, but I have no real idea what beans taste like because I can’t get passed the texture. Bottom line on beans: I’m not going to cook them into any recipe, ever. If the extra cooking time did anything, it made it more flavorful.

How this is going to work & this week’s goals

In my opinion, this is going to be all about learning balance – being healthy without completely giving up things I love.

It’s about taking all of the resources available and figuring out which ones work best for me. Fortunately, I already have a few that I’ve paid for in Tone It Up, a local YMCA membership, and my copy of The EveryGirl’s Guide to Fitness and Health – you’ll hear me references these a lot. The rest, at least for now, will be ones I  find online that come in all shapes as sizes. These could be anything from a gym workout for beginners from Bodybuilding.com, or a daily health and fitness email from Popsugar.

Whether it’s testing out new recipes, taking up a week of “Bootycalls,” or just cutting out soda – I’m going to pick goals every week to try to stick to. The one’s that work for me (prediction: morning workouts will never work for me) I’ll keep and the one’s that don’t I’ll toss.

This will not the quickest route to the finish line, but after reading Maria Menounos’ story (and countless others) I truly believe that the best way to make a lasting lifestyle change is slowly. After all, it’s the tortoise that wins the race, not the hare.

Speaking of Maria Menounos, my first weekly goal is coming directly from her book:

Write down what you eat, down to every last breath mint.

No calorie counting, no obsessing over its health benefits – just a day by day log of what you eat. She said that when she was first starting out, her initial food journal served as an eye opening catalyst for change. I’ve already had my catalyst for change, but I expect that I’ll still be surprised by what I’m putting into my body.

Question of the day: Have you ever kept a food journal and, if so, what surprised you about it?

Catalyst

I recently stepped on a scale and learned that I am 23 pounds over what is considered healthy for my 5’7 height. 

Don’t get me wrong, I knew I had gained weight. I have a full length mirror and a closet full of clothes that are just a little too small to remind me everyday, but I never considered the number. I didn’t want to, and the only reason I found out was a required weight check at the doctor. However, now that I do know, I’m choosing to believe that it’s not the number that matters but instead it’s what I do with the knowledge.

I’m going to change that number and write about it, because at this point it’s not about getting a bikini body. It’s about being healthy and those 23 pounds are not simply healthy. 

I’m not looking for a quick change, as you’ll read over time I’ve tried a lot of options that promise results quickly. I’m looking to update my lifestyle to one where I can enjoy the things I love like pizza and beer (in moderation, of course), but maintain my health on a daily basis.

Those 30 seconds on the scale served as a catalyst for this journey, and this blog is my way of exploring the best way to reach that goal.