WIAW – Page 2

Getting Back on Track: WIAW #21

May 18, 2016 by Alicia Leave a Comment

After spending a couple days just going with the flow and eating things because I craved them, I am getting back on track this week. Here is what I ate on Monday. I even managed to avoid the donuts someone brought in from Carlos’ bakery (good thing I am more of a cookie and cupcake person).

Since I went to the gym Monday morning, I was up at 4:45am, I drank about a full water bottle and ate a banana before heading out the door. After my workout, I heated up a piece of a protein oatmeal bake (I stored the pieces in the freezer and taking them out one at a time the night before) I made over the weekend and some sausage (I precooked the sausage on the weekend).

I was getting a little tired of the breakfast burritos and missing my oats and this was a great way to get some oats and lots of protein in first thing.

After 10am, I had my snack of carrots and hummus. I made a new hummus recipe with avocado in it, very delicious and will post on here once I make it again.

I also enjoyed half a Quest bar.

At 1pm I had lunch and I was so hungry!! I had my usual shredded chicken salad, but the store didn’t have spinach so I had mixed greens instead, still was tasty.

A sweet snack after lunch was a mango chia bar. I kept forgetting I had a box in my pantry.

I got home at 5:30 and immediately had dinner. I had Wegmans Italian marinated chicken that I baked over the weekend so I quickly heated that up and had a broccoli slaw salad with it that I made.

For a little dessert, I had a spoonful of cinnamon raisin peanut butter by Wild Friends with some chia seeds and a few Lily’s dark chocolate chips. This was my first Lily’s chocolate purchase and I have to say I am officially in love!!

Throughout the day I had a ton of water. It has been chilly here and I find that drinking enough water gets harder when it is colder. I think I drank about 8 water bottles full of water throughout the day. I was definitely thirsty and this helps to curve my appetite as well.

Since doing 3-4 weeks low carb, my stomach feels more full after I eat. I feel satisfied and not bloated. It’s a great feeling and I think I will be sticking with fewer carbs for now, but when I have cravings or want a weekend off, I will take that. I am not being super strict about it. It’s definitely a lifestyle to adapt to. Knowing that eating this way makes me feel good motivates me to stick to it. I have also been exploring more new recipes for breakfast and dinner, which I am loving. It is great to change up what you eat. I love my salads daily for lunch still but now that cucumbers and berries are coming back in season, I may change up some of the ingredients in my salads from time to time.

Low Carb High Fat Week 4: WIAW#20

May 4, 2016 by Alicia 1 Comment

I’m in week 4 of doing my low carb, high fat lifestyle. I thought I would give you a peak into what my weekday eats have looked like over the course of the past 4 weeks. The only meal that changes a lot is dinner. Breakfast and lunch are pretty similar on the weekdays from week to week.

Yesterday morning, I started with a burrito I made and a cup of hot lemon water. I usually cook bell peppers and sausage for the burrito but this week I didn’t feel like that. I used chicken sausage and roasted brussel sprouts and sweet potato. It was definitely an interesting combo for a breakfast burrito, but I knew I liked all those ingredients together so it was easy to portion it into 5 servings in a wrap. They were out of the original wraps I like, so I had to get spinach, but they honestly don’t taste that bad. I might even like the spinach ones better.

I also cook up a slice of bacon, sometimes 2 if I go to the gym in the morning. I just like having something crispy on the side of my burrito.

I get to work at 8 and usually between 10 and 11 I eat a snack. Since I eat at 6am, that’s a good 4-5 hours without food. I’ll eat some carrots with hummus. I was buying some different flavors of hummus but this week I decided to make my own and I forgot just how much I like my own. I think I will be making more at home, also at like 1/3rd the price.

I will then eat my half of a Quest bar as well. That keeps me full until I eat at 1pm. If the weather is nice, I will go for a walk around 12:30 and then eat at my desk at 1. Otherwise I eat at 1 in the kitchen while watching The Chew (except that apparently we didn’t pay our cable bill so I couldn’t watch it on Monday, luckily it was back yesterday). Lunch is always a salad, shredded chicken, spinach, orange bell pepper and tomato. I don’t even add dressing.

Yesterday during lunch, they had leftover cookies from a meeting so I also had one of those, just couldn’t resist. Also a piece of a brownie and a bit of fruit.

An hour or so after lunch, I usually dig into my last snack, some almonds. I just started adding a dash of cinnamon to them and they taste great. Cinnamon almonds without the sugar.

I get home around 5:30, assuming I leave work on time, and immediately heat up some food. Yesterday, I had some leftover pork tenderloin from Saturday night and some cauliflower fried rice with tofu. Cauliflower fried rice has quickly become one of my favorite low carb meals. I do need to work on a better sauce for more flavor on it though.

After dinner, I had my favorite peanut butter mixed with some chia seeds for some extra fiber. I then wound down with a cup of peppermint tea before heading out to teach yoga.

I went over a bit on my carbs with the fruit and cookie yesterday, but overall was pretty satisfied with how I did. I stayed within the ratios pretty well. I will also note that I don’t weigh my food so my estimates might be a bit off in my calculations.

Do you track your Macros?

Low Carb, High Fat WIAW#19

April 27, 2016 by Alicia Leave a Comment

Apparently it has been since January since I did a WIAW post. Since I basically eat the same things daily other than the weekend, I guess I haven’t found much reason to participate.

A couple weeks ago, I decided to commit to a low carb diet. Actually I will first admit, I didn’t look up what a low carb diet meant in terms of how many carbs, but rather I did lower my carbs and actually track them. Brian gave me to the goal of trying to stay under 100g a day. I didn’t 100% commit to this, but tried to not go over 100g too much. Most of my carbs also came from veggies and fruit and since I didn’t weight things after the first two days, it has been estimates since then. I did however pay attention to adding more fats in my diet and getting at least 100g of protein a day. I was surprised that I didn’t have to make too many changes other than my breakfast. I love my oatmeal for breakfast, but oatmeal has a good amount of carbs, so I decided to experiment with making some breakfast burritos, which didn’t include eggs. I try to not consume too many eggs due to knowing my mom developed an egg allergy and I have already become lactose intolerant (or I assume I have) and my mom is also sensitive to dairy products.

I plan to eventually post a breakfast burrito recipe, but on this particular day (Saturday), I made banana protein pancakes. Of course, whenever I have a banana, my carbs for the day easily goes over 100g, but I believe bananas are good for you and have helped me to lessen muscle cramps.

I slept until 7am and then made the pancakes: 1 small banana, 1 egg, 1 egg white, ½ tsp of baking powder, a scoop of protein powder and a tablespoon of dairy free chocolate chips. I got the baking powder idea from a recipe I found online and I have found it helps to fluff up the pancakes a bit more. I used to do just 1 banana, 1 egg and scoop of protein powder. I find this recipe easy to make and contains a good amount of protein to keep you full for a while. [Note: I realize it contains eggs, but I find eating eggs one to two times a week is fine. I just don’t want to eat them everyday.]

After going to the grocery store, I came back and had some Spark and half of a Quest bar before the gym.

I dropped off my car and headed to the gym next door (so convenient so I don’t have to wait around for my car). After my swim, I ate the other half of my Quest bar and drank tons of water and picked up my car.

I got home and had a nice workout carrying my snow tires into the apartment and was sooo hungry. I didn’t really have anything prepared so I decided to make a quick steak and salad.

I was still a bit hungry after that, so I had a rice cake and peanut butter (forgot to take a picture because I pretty much inhaled it).

I snacked on some honey roasted almonds then I made dinner early since I was a bit hungry. I decided to make Katie’s creamy tomato pasta minus the spinach, but to keep it low carb, I used pasta zero noodles. I find them next to the tofu section in my grocery store. The sauce was sooo good and completely dairy free and higher on fat due to the nuts, but delicious.

After dinner I snacked on a piece of chocolate and a bit later decided to eat some kettle chips I had from Panera leftover. My carbs went a bit over 100 but overall my percentages were pretty good for the day.

Thoughts:

As I am in week 3 of this lifestyle (I don’t like the word diet), my body is adapting. I have been more mindful about when I am actually hungry. The first week and a half I had slight headaches some days. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t eating enough, but I wasn’t really hungry either. I lost about 4 lbs in the first week and another pound and a half in the second. This is approximate though as I only weighted myself once a week at the gym. I am eating approximately 1600 calories a day. I do believe I am losing fat and since I am consistently working out, I see that I am also gaining muscle. I also feel much more energized, but I do believe the sunny days have helped my mood improve too.

I did this because I did feel like I was holding onto a few extra pounds, by no means do I think I am fat. I know I am in pretty good shape with how much I exercise, but I wanted to see more of a difference on a few areas of my body and I knew that that had to correlate with my diet more so than my workouts.

I don’t know if I will stick to this lifestyle or not but plan to go for at least another week. I miss my oatmeal in the mornings so I’m thinking of bringing that back after week 4 at least a few mornings a week (note: I ate a bowl of oatmeal sunday morning but stuck around 140g carbs).

My grocery bill did go up a bit which is due to the extra veggies and meat. I also started to order a monthly subscription of a box of Cookies and Crème Quest bars and a jar of my favorite cinnamon raisin peanut butter by Wild Friends (since Wegmans has been out) from Vitacost.com. Peanut butter is by far the best after dinner snack especially since it contains a good amount of fats. I sometimes add a sprinkle of chocolate chips or chia seeds with it as well.

It has been an interesting experiment and think about what food I am eating more. I find I do pretty well as long as I don’t go overboard on the carbs which is why I wanted to try this. It has also helped me to practice portion control and realize what a portion size looks like.

I forgot to take an actual before pic so we will use my picture from April 1st even though I didn’t start this until April 11. So this is my first week progress. I need to take some updated photos this week.

In summary, fat doesn’t make you fat. Also this article reading the section “What do you eat to stay in shape?” was an interesting read as well.

WIAW #18: Snowed in Edition

January 27, 2016 by Alicia Leave a Comment

Happy Wednesday everyone!!

This past weekend, we had winter storm Jonas come through Philadelphia. The weather people were actually fairly accurate this time (shocker!!) with when the storm started, around 7pm Friday night. Within that first hour, outside became increasingly more white.

By Saturday morning when I got up, the cars were all pretty well buried. I heard we had already gotten a foot of snow by 9am Saturday, expecting another 5-8 inches throughout the day.

I stayed warm inside most of the day. I started my morning with some lemon water while making some pancakes and cooking some sausage. I tried Nikole’s gluten free pancake recipe, though I only made a half batch since it was just me and I used butter instead of coconut oil and a gluten free flour I had on hand. I have to say I did enjoy how fluffy the pancakes came out.

I snacked on a cookie sometime between breakfast and lunch and then turned on the oven and made some fish sticks for lunch. I also prepared broccoli and roasted sweet potato Friday night just in case the power went out and I needed something quick from the fridge.

A sweet treat after lunch was the last of the batch of Amanda’s banana bread granola bars.

With a full and happy stomach, I ventured outside again and cleaned off my car. Unfortunately that didn’t help to get it out and I don’t have a shovel (probably should have bought one when I went out to get food…). Since I didn’t have to go anywhere until Sunday late morning, I didn’t worry about it for now.

winter storm Jonas plowed in — plowed in

I snacked on some Thin Mints and then a little later, had some Kale Pesto hummus with some chips and a side of Heather Waxman on Periscope! She made my Saturday afternoon so much better until my internet started to fizz in and out around 4pm and for the rest of the evening.

I then headed outside before it got dark and got a shovel to borrow and started to dig and talked to a neighbor. Then the snow started to get heavy again and it was approaching dinner time anyway, so back inside.

I quickly made some chicken stir fry for dinner. I got some frozen veggies from Trader Joes and so I put those in one pan, chicken in another and then once the chicken was cooked, I cut it up and added it to the veggies with some soy sauce and sesame oil for flavoring.

I left room for dessert and decided to whip up some banana ice cream. Last week my boss asked me what I bought to prepare for the storm. When I told him I bought veggies and meat and my usual things, he said I was supposed to buy cookies and ice cream. For any new readers, I actually can’t eat ice cream as I believe I am lactose intolerant (never tested but the pain in my stomach is too much). I told my boss I can’t eat ice cream and I have everything at home to make cookies. I love making single cookies so I don’t eat too many. I also love making banana ice cream. I experimented a bit and added a bit of powered peanut butter to the ice cream so it was a peanut butter flavor and sprinkled with chocolate chips. It was delicious, but before I share the recipe I want to try it a couple more times. I think I need to amp up the peanut butter a bit more.

It was so much fun cooking all my meals. After Saturday I had a fridge full of leftovers which was perfect for Sunday and the beginning of the week. Meal prepping and eating along the way. While I missed going to the gym for a swim this Saturday, I felt quite content at home and it wasn’t bitterly cold so it was good to get outside a couple times even if it was to work on shoveling. At least being in an apartment I don’t have to shovel a driveway.

In the end of the storm, I believe we got about 20 inches of snow, which is quite a lot. However, as long as you don’t have to drive anywhere, the more snow, the better right? I mean it gives you plenty for a snowman or snow angel and quite a workout just walking through it. Plus the sun after a snow storm, is just beautiful, lighting up the snow! Add a river to the background, even better!!

Thanks Jenn!

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