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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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.