Hits and misses

I enjoy trying new recipes. If I had my way, that's what I would do for a living. But since there's not a lot of positions available for a self-trained cook/recipe-tester, I guess I'll have to finish my ConLaw reading...

This weekend, I tried two different recipes: an Apple-Ginger Oat Bran muffin from an old issue of Fitness, and a black bean and couscous salad from CookingLight. The first recipe intrigued me: it called for nearly no fat. Fat binds baked goods together--and it does such a tasty job, particularly when you use butter. Mmm. This recipe called for 2% milk (which I didn't have) and extra light olive oil.

Frankly, even if I used 2% milk instead of nonfat, this muffin still would have tasted blah. It was soft, moist...but just lacked any sort of flavor. I've made other light muffins that end up with the same calorie count (around 150) that are much more flavorful. There's a Cran-apple muffin I'll post another time that is delicious. But these just didn't hit the spot.

The other recipe is good: perfect for packing in lunches, and it survived several ingredient swaps that happened because I just wasn't paying attention: "No rice vinegar? Uh...sure, I'll just use that white wine vinegar instead! Red bell peppers are $2 a piece!? Green will be just as tasty." I'm not going to run out and buy rice vinegar to make this again, though. It's good, but it's not one of those recipes that I can't wait to make again. Good things about this recipe: large serving size (2 cups), lots of fiber, easy and quick. Despite that, I'll be making my curry chicken pitas for the rest of the week--if I can just remember to cook the chicken tonight!

As part of spring cleaning, I have been going through my old issues of Self and Fitness, tearing out recipes. I have a gnocchi and shrimp dish I hope to make this weekend. Let's hope it turns out better than those muffins!

Finding healthy, easy-to-transport lunches

One of the keys to weight loss is avoiding unplanned meals, especially those in restaurants. Being a student living on loans, it's especially important to me to avoid spending money. I almost always bring my lunch to school.

My favorite lunch foods:

1. Any cold pasta or grain salad (i.e. Quinoa Caprese)
2. Sandwich fillings plus a pita half--I tried Curry Chicken Pitas recently and really liked them.
3. Apples, oranges, pears: I usually slice or peel these and put them in a plastic bag for easy snacking. You can avoid brown apples by putting some lemon juice on the apple slices.
4. Soup-at-hand: if they're on sale, they're only about a dollar--and very convenient. Just watch your sodium intake the rest of the day.
5. Leftovers from a healthy meal the night before.
6. Hummus and carrot sticks (or green pepper slices)

I'm always looking for new ideas. If you have any, be sure to comment!

Venti he go? Coffee secrets of a savvy Seattle girl

Someone told me that once you start living a healthier lifestyle, it's like noticing a new kind of car: suddenly, you see people doing unhealthy things (or that particular model of car) EVERYWHERE.

One of the first things I did back in the size 16 days was to switch to nonfat milk when ordering lattes and such. Not knowing much about calories, I took my best friend's word for it when she said that ordering a tall--not a grande--nonfat latte would save me some money and some pounds. She was right: Starbucks' nutrition site says that the difference between a tall whole and a tall nonfat latte is 80 calories.

And then, I looked at the whipped cream. I live in Seattle, and Starbucks is everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I love them. I love that you can go to a Starbucks in Kansas City (not the airport though, Starbucks doesn't run those) and get roughly the same quality of coffee as at the original store down by the market. I also like that they offer employees stock options and health care, but that's for a social responsibility sort of blog, not this one.

So, yes I love Starbucks. But sadly, you have to give up some things when you're trying to be healthy. I cut down to once a week: I went to Starbucks on Friday mornings to celebrate the weekend's arrival and had a tall vanilla nonfat latte. Mmm. And every single time, I would see the same people ordering venti Frappucinos WITH whipped cream. "Okay," I thought, "Maybe they are ALL on graveyard shift and this is dessert? Don't judge, don't judge...okay, I'm judgmental. I have to judge."

At Starbucks, adding whipped cream to ANY drink adds at least 100 calories. A venti caramel Frappucino is 530 calories with whipped cream. If those people would switch to even a tall caramel Frappucino with no whipped cream (assuming this is a weekly, not daily ritual), they would lose a pound in 11 weeks JUST by changing that behavior, assuming they held everything else constant.

I've been drinking more than one espresso drink lately. Law school encourages excessive coffee consumption. But I found out a very interesting secret: Starbucks has a SHORT coffee cup. They don't advertise it, but it is 8 ounces of deliciousness. That is 4 ounces less than the tall; granted, the calorie difference isn't a lot. But like the example above, it may be enough to add up to a loss. Also, I have learned that you can get an Americano with room, then add a bit of nonfat milk and cinnamon for a tasty, caffeinated treat (around 15-30 calories depending on the amount of milk you add).

The new goal for the rest of this month is to cut out coffee treats, for the sake of my wallet and my waistline. Since the ultimate goal is one latte a week, I think I can let it be a tall :)

Habit-breaking, habit-forming

One of my goals this year is to become a morning exerciser. This quarter, this has been made more challenging with 9am classes. If I want to work out, shower, eat breakfast, and catch the bus in time to make it to the law school with a bit of breathing room, I either have to do a short workout (i.e., 20-minute yoga DVD) or get up REALLY early. This is made more complicated when my roommate, who gets up after me, is already using the shower when I get back from my workout.

But the real problem isn't the shower: I have the hardest time getting out of bed at 6am! I've been slowly trying to push back my wake-up time, but I have this unfortunate tendency of falling back asleep. Even putting my alarm across the room hasn't nipped this habit in the bud.

On the habit-forming side, I am having some success resurrecting an old, kind of weird habit: Pulling off pieces of food--like cheese from pizza or a quarter of a cookie--and throwing them in the trash before I can eat them. I know it's weird. But when I hit my first plateau two years ago, I started doing this at work and the scale started to budge again. It is best to do this only with snacks and treats.

At first, I was horrified at myself for "wasting" food by not finishing what I started to eat. We're all taught to clean our plates as children. (By the way, I think this is the worst thing that you can do as a parent. By all means, withhold dessert, but making your child eat past satiation sends the wrong signal. They learn not to listen to their bodies saying, "Hey, I'm full, you can stop eating now.) But then I realized that eating something I didn't need or want wasn't a waste--it was just another step towards a healthier, fitter body. So I'm going to continue to pick pieces of granola bar off of my snack and throw it away, pull cheese off of entrees at restaurants, and leave things on my dinner plate.

Muffin top at the bar

Nothing is worse than putting on one of your tighter, more revealing tops--the ones that are supposed to make you feel cute for a night out on the town--and noticing a wedge of fat hanging over your waistline where there wasn't one before. I'm heading back towards my healthier weight, but I am still lacking the muscle tone that I once had.

I think that my roommate is having similar issues because today our trip to the grocery store was extremely healthful in nature. We bought fish, lamb, tons of veggies, whole wheat pitas and nothing fattening or sugary in nature, except for some chocolate chips for a friend's birthday treat. Hopefully we can keep this up!

The pitas are for a curry chicken pita recipe I saw on CookingLight.com. I'm hoping that it will be as tasty as it looks!

Book review: 5-Factor Fitness by Harley Pasternak

Harley Pasternak has better credentials than most trainers out there. He has the celebrity clientele and a Master's in Exercise Physiology. He apparently has actually researched. But still, I don't know if I buy his philosophy. For one, he claims that you can be healthy only working out 25 minutes a day. Would that it were true!

I haven't entirely finished the book yet but I've scoffed repeatedly. I know that we're constantly learning more about the human body, but even the government has revised its recommendations for the amount physical exercise up, not down! Granted, it is the government but this is still contrary to everything I've ever heard outside of those ridiculous "tone your abs in five minutes a day!" commercials.

Mr. Pasternak holds up Halle Berry's transformation in Catwoman from hot to hotter as an example of what 25-minute workouts can do. Again, I'm skeptical: Halle Berry had to train in martial arts for her scenes, so I'm relatively sure that the shape of her body had something to do with the hours of capoeira she practiced as well as Mr. Pasternak's program.

Despite all this, perhaps I should suspend disbelief and try his program. I just can't believe that five minutes of cardio will keep my cardiovascular system in any kind of optimum health...

Yesterday's weigh-in

Starting weight, 06/2003: 175 lbs.
Last week's weigh-in, 03/15/2007: 149.6 lbs.
This week, 3/30/2007: 147.2 lbs.

I swear, being busy is the best way for me to lose weight. My kryptonite is snacking--no time to snack means losing weight!

Spring cleaning, with a side of Quinoa Caprese

I always get excited when spring starts popping up, and it's not just because we actually get more sunlight here in the Pacific NW. I get excited because I automatically eat better. I adore all the summer fruits; I love picking berries, and summer salads are the best! Olive oil and vinegar tastes good on everything, and everyone automatically feels skinnier anyway without all those bulky sweaters and coats, don't they?

In honor of the coming warm weather, I'm already breaking out my summer recipes. This one was originally in Shape magazine a while back. (In May 2006, I believe.) It's light and tasty. Quinoa is an amazing grain: it is chock-full of protein and pretty low on calories to boot. It works well as a substitute for couscous, bulgur, rice, etc, and it's pretty cheap to buy at Trader Joe's. (It can be incredibly expensive elsewhere, so be sure to comparison shop.) Equally important: WASH IT. You have to get the bitter coat off of it.

Quinoa Caprese
1 cup quinoa
14 oz. chicken or veggie broth
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
3 ounces fresh mozarella, diced (or the mozzarella balls, cut in half)
1 cup torn basil leaves2
1/2 tablespoons lemon juice1
1/4 tablespoon garlic oil (OR heat some olive oil with smashed garlic cloves in it for a few minutes)
salt and pepper

Rinse the quinoa thoroughly (IMPORTANT, especially if the quinoa isn't prewashed)
In a medium saucepan, bring the stock to a boil. Add the quinoa, reduce heat and simmer about 12-15 minutes until the liquid is absorbed. The quinoa should be tender. Transfer to a large bowl, let it cool down to room temperature.
Stir the cherry tomatoes, basil, and mozarella into the quinoa.
With a whisk or fork beat the lemon juice and oil together. Pour over the quinoa and toss well. Season to taste.

You can serve this over some spinach leaves; arugula would work, too. I like it without, too!

New sites

I found some new sites today. I've been using Fitday.com to track calories for some time, but just found out about these:

Calorie King: another calorie counting site
Fitness Jumpsite: a way to tell exactly how many calories you burn!
Calorie Lab: another website that does calorie counts
iVillage health calculators: calculate your BMI, etc

Oh, Vegas.

Oh, indeed. Vegas is all hustle and bustle, bright lights and spectacle. And it is also about eye-popping amounts and quality of food. I couldn't resist...at least not all the time.

Despite that, I feel much more relaxed and able to take on things now. Like so many other women, I turn to food when life feels difficult (or boring). It's a shame that, unlike men, women get fat when they're not content. Of course, I find it difficult to believe that all the very overweight and obese men I saw in Vegas this weekend are living deliriously happy lives.

I did manage to walk a lot, avoided mindless snacking, and shared my dessert. Sadly, sharing a piece of the creamiest NY-style cheesecake I've EVER had is still pretty bad...My post-vacation weigh-in tomorrow morning is likely not going to inspire smiles.

But things are looking up: I have new workout DVDs to try, courtesy of the library; the weather is slowly improving, making outside workouts compelling again; and I am ready to spend the rest of my vacation scouring my CookingLight cookbooks for tasty new recipes to try!

Incentives are important

Muffin top: 1) the tasty part of a muffin or 2) the extra bit of fat that rolls over the top of your pants, resembling the top of the muffin.

In the interest of getting myself back on track, I'm setting up a incentive structure.

For every week that I work out 5 times, I can treat myself to a latte.
If I stay within my calorie goals for 25 days of the month, I can buy a new CD or DVD.
For every 5 pounds I lose, I can purchase a new piece of workout clothing or equipment.
If I reach my goal weight, I can purchase this dress or something similar at Banana.

And the true incentive: a new swimsuit if I complete the Self Challenge in better shape than I started it!

Starting over, yet again

Three and a half years ago, I graduated from college. Like so many other college graduates, I was bewildered, confused, and overweight. Having been chubby for several years, I finally packed on about fifteen or twenty pounds during my senior year bringing my weight to somewhere over 170 pounds (from my best estimates, around 175). But I didn't know that then; I was so focused on my lack of a post-grad job that I didn't notice my weight creeping up until I tried on a pair of size 14-16 pants...and they were tight.

Unlike so many others, my weight loss journey didn't actually start there. There was never one moment when I decided, "This is the time." It sprung from a series of unintentional decisions and lucky situations. My new roommate (now known as ex-roomie) after graduation joined my gym; I started going more. She drank nonfat milk; I switched from 2%. She subscribed to Glamour; I started a subscription to Self. My dad sent me a BBQ.

That first summer, I lost about 7 pounds. Suddenly, things clicked: I was not destined to be overweight. I could be healthy! Ex-roomie started running, and I started--slowly--to jog a few minutes at a time with her.

The good things only continued: I found a job with a bunch of health-conscious men who provided valuable information gleaned from losing weight and starting running programs. They were always supportive and never judgmental. I signed up to run a 5k, and then starting training for a 10k. When I got below 150 pounds for the first time since my senior year of high school, I started to cry. While on the scale. At the gym. Needless to say, people were cutting some startled glances my way!

Of course, disaster struck: my knees developed "patellofemoral pain syndrome" or some such nonsense. I kept working out but I wasn't able to do the activity I had become addicted to; yet, I managed to keep off the 30 pounds I had lost. I was

When I left my job to head to law school, my weight was steady around 142 pounds. I bid a fond adieu to Ex-Roomie, packed up my things and found myself without a gym buddy, without a truly regular schedule, and with a stressful seven months ahead of me. I did alright at first. The exercise was the first to go, but I was so busy the first few weeks that I actually lost weight because I simply didn't have time to snack. I didn't feel great, energy-wise, but I thought, "Hey, I'll work out, eat on a regular schedule, and I'll be happy and healthy."

And then, I adjusted. And all that lovely muscle shrunk, taken over by more and more padding. I sunk back into the habit of eating when I was bored, of not eating healthy portions, of relying on sweets when I was in a bad mood.

I have two finals left before this quarter ends, and I have gained back the weight I lost at the beginning of fall quarter, plus five pounds. It sounds so ridiculous: five pounds. But what matters is NOT the weight: it's how I feel. I am tired and stressed out, and I'm not making healthy choices. I have high cholesterol; even when I lost the 30 pounds, my levels were too high. My family has a history of diabetes and high blood pressure.

I am starting this blog because, yes, I don't want to regain those 30 pounds (for one thing, losing and regaining weight is as bad if not worse than not losing weight at all). But it's about more than that: it's about being stressed out and still making healthy decisions.

I'm making a (semi-)public declaration here: I'm getting back on track. Starting right now.