Traditional Thanksgiving

Are you dieting while trying to make it through the holidays? It just seems wrong doesn’t it? Makes me think God has a sense of humor. He gives us all this bounty and if we partake in it we will be “waddling” until next year when we do it all again.

I’m not going to bore you with all the statistics like so many people will gain at least 10 pounds between now and after the New Year, or how many people end up in the hospital every year because they don’t clean all the stuffing out of the turkey before they put it away in the refrigerator. I’m not going to put up a bunch of recipes of food that no one wants to eat because they are so strange, even if they do cut 300 calories off of a traditional side dish.

I’m just going to share with what I do to shave the calories and the fat, but still be able to enjoy all the usual Thanksgiving dinner dishes.

I substitute eggbeaters for everything that calls for eggs. About a 1/4 cup is equal to 1 egg, although some say on the side of the carton to use 1/3 cup for baking. I use Land o’ Lakes fat-free half and half, or Carnation canned skim milk for anything that requires milk. Last but not least I use Country Crock Shedd Spread, or something similar for anything that requires oil or butter.

It is totally amazing how much fat and how many calories you can cut just making these small changes. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of substituting Splenda for sugar, but I’m working on it. I just prefer to experiment sometime other than the holidays with my pies. LOL. Using the items listed above instead of the whole fat stuff works well and no one seems to know the difference if you don’t make the mistake of bragging about it.  The minute you tell someone it’s all “low fat” of course there will be someone who complains or says it doesn’t taste “quite right”. This is one secret you want to keep to yourself.

Another Halloween has come and gone, and unlike the Christmas retailers who are buying scaled down stock because of the economy, there was leftover chocolate Halloween candy everywhere!

I’m usually pretty good at passing up the candy when it’s for sale prior to Halloween because I think most of the time the prices are ridiculous. After Halloween though is a weak point. When the same big back of bite size candy bars is finally marked down to what is reasonable, I usually have to partake. you know, now that I think about it, I have the same problem at Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Christmas. Man there are a lot of “candy” holidays!

I also pride myself on the fact that I only have to have 1 piece to be satisfied, and even that isn’t a daily thing, so a big bag will last quite awhile. Not the case with my mother. She has 2 sitting in the freezer at the ready at all times, and the bag is disappearing quickly. Now I remember why I used to hide it in our room or in the bottom of the freezer behind a bunch of stuff.

There’s no reason why we can’t partake in the finer foods of life (chocolate, cheesecake, etc) but like everything we do, we need to be able to stay in control. Planning is a great way to do that, if you know you’re going to be having something you shouldn’t. You can move calories around so that you’re not destroying all your hard work by having something you normally wouldn’t. Another great deterrent and tool is journaling. If you’re totally and brutally honest about writing down everything you stick in your mouth, trust me, you begin to have second thoughts before you have that second piece.

It’s getting into Thanksgiving now and we all need to do some planning in advance. How do you handle the holidays?

This was the mother of all weigh-ins today. LOL. I haven’t had a scale for almost 6 months, but now we moved into a place that had one in the garage, and it seems to work just fine. Especially since I weighed less with all my clothes on than I did the last time I weighed myself necked.  It must be accurate.

Actually now that we’re doing our own cooking and I’m back on fat-free cream cheese, when I use it, and the same for skim milk vs. whole, that alone can make a heck of a difference. We use Shedd Spread instead of butter and the fast food is almost non-existant. Except for pizza, I probably had enough burgers etc. to last me almost a lifetime. It is so nice to have a home cooked meal, knowing that the ingredients are healthy or at least healthier.

Now I need to pick up on a few of the good habits I left behind, like adding flax oil to yogurt for breakfast every day, things like that. It will come. With just moving the budget’s a little tight right now, but it will get better.

If any one else reading this is revisiting the scale for the first time in along time, welcome! We can watch it go DOWN together. LOL

I was all prepared to come on here tonite and tell you all how well I’ve been doing and how much healthier I’m eating now that we’re cooking for ourselves in our new home. I went out to the kitchen to get something to drink before I started on this, and the significant other has made “Cheeseburger Macaroni” Hamburger Helper for dinner! LOL. God Bless him that he cooked while I’m trying to get “caught up” but good grief…

So, at least it’s 1) homemade so it’s not as bad as the 400 calorie cheeseburgers we’ve been eating since we didn’t have a kitchen 2) I’ve taught him we only by skim milk and country crock margarine so at least whatever he cooks is lower in fat. I usually put dried chili peppers on mine to boost my metabolism, but the downside is I like a piece of bread with peanut butter with it.

I’ll figure out the points and calories tomorrow. Luckily I’m not still eating a bagel with whole fat cream cheese and I’m moving around a lot more so maybe I have a little room to spare.

Sometimes I wish I’d been born beautiful and skinny vs. intelligent and oh yeah, beautiful. lol.

It’s true. The poorer you are the less you can afford to eat healthy and take care of yourself. Here in Silicon Valley for the last week channel 5 here has been doing a special about living on $4.00 a day for food. The consumer advocate put herself on a budget of $4.00 a day because our unemployment is up over 12% and many, many people are on food stamps. That is their allotment.

One of the first things she noticed was she had to switch from fresh fruit to frozen. The other thing she did was fill up on more starchy food for fullness versus healthier food. I’m not sure I would have agreed with how she shopped. I think I would lay out a menu and buy more bulk foods cheaper when I first got my money than shop day by day as she did. She had a bulk pak of chicken breasts that were a great buy, but because of the way she was shopping she had to put a large portion of it back. She also went to bed hungry one nite because she spent $1.59 one day on a coffee. I guess between shopping in bulk, buying pretty much only the stuff on sale, and clipping a few coupons feeding a family of 5 on $6.00 a day wasn’t too bad. LOL.

Since we’ve been living in a hotel I have been eating full-fat cream cheese on my bagel and whole milk on my cereal because that’s what they serve for breakfast. The other choices are sweet rolls, muffins, crescents, toast, and that sweet, instant oatmeal. I could not eat the bagel but then I’m hungry mid-morning and start looking around for something else to eat. For dinner we either do fast food or something microwavable because there is no stove. TV dinners are neither cheap or non-fat no matter what anyone says, although at least there is Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice and Smart Ones to choose from. I will be so happy to be back in a full-fledged kitchen where I can buy things on sale and store them, buy fresh fruit and vegetables and have a way to cook them. And oh yeah, I’ll have my scale back. That will really tell the tale. LOL.

I’m starting to wonder if the obesity problem in this country is really poor eating habits etc., as much as it is that more than half of American families live below the poverty level and eat what they can afford.

Bacon on the hoof

Obviously, those of us who have had to restrict what we eat (diet), understand that bacon is not diet-friendly unless you’re only counting carbs. It is however one of America’s best loved foods, and evidently so much so someone has decided it to be worthy of it’s own holiday. Sept. 5th was International Bacon Day! It seems appropriate for kicking off a 3-day holiday weekend. For many of us, the regular weekend is all we need to forget the healthy food we ate for breakfast all week long and chow down on bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, toast, maybe pancakes, etc. There goes a week’s worth of pain for a couple pounds of gain. LOL.

When I was researching bacon for this blog post (I rarely eat it tho I love it) I was actually surprised to see it wasn’t worse than it was calorie-wise. I would like to thank the good people at FatSecret.com for all the great information below. Look below the nutritional info for another “fun” site concerning America’s obsession with bacon.

Popular Serving Sizes of Bacon	Fat(g)	Carbs(g)	Prot(g)	Calories
1 thin slice	2.09	0.07	1.85	27
1 medium slice	3.34	0.11	2.96	43
1 thick slice	5.01	0.17	4.44	65
1 oz	11.70	0.40	10.37	151
1 cup pieces	33.42	1.14	29.63	433

Other Popular Types of Bacon	Fat(g)	Carbs(g)	Prot(g)	Calories
Canadian Bacon
1 slice	1.94	0.31	5.58	43
1 slice grilled	1.98	0.32	5.70	43
1 oz	2.36	0.38	6.79	52
Cured Bacon
1 medium slice	10.21	0.15	2.63	104
1 thick slice	17.12	0.25	4.41	174
1 oz	12.77	0.19	3.29	130
Cooking Variations (1 slice serving)
Baked Bacon	3.50	0.11	2.89	44
Broiled or Roasted Bacon	3.34	0.11	2.96	43
Microwaved Bacon	2.80	0.08	2.90	38
Pan-Fried Bacon	3.18	0.12	3.03	42

Other Common Suggestions	Fat(g)	Carbs(g)	Prot(g)	Calories
1 slice Lower Sodium Smoked or Cured Bacon	3.34	0.11	2.96	43
1 tbsp Real Bacon Bits	1.50	-	3.00	25
1 tsp Bacon Grease	4.28	-	-	39
1 oz Bacon Fat	28.21	-	0.02	255

And now for the fun stuff I was telling you about. To celebrate International Bacon Day, BaltimorMetroMix.com did a photo essay on the “Sixteen Degrees of Craving Bacon”. This is very interesting. Enjoy =)

Well, that’s not completely honest. I just knew I wasn’t going to try it because the warning about “anal leakage” scares the hell out of me. LOL.

I’m sure anyone in the diet world has heard the news that broke yesterday (I think). They’re saying Alli may cause liver damage. According to the newswires, regulators are assessing at least 32 reports of liver problems between 1999 and 2008 in patients taking the weight-loss drug orlistat (I wonder if that’s the same fake fat they use to make a lot of foods fat-free? No, that’s orlean. Is it the same? I’ll have to look that up).  It is sold as a prescription drug Xenical, and more recently, as an over-the-counter medication called Alli. The prescription is twice as strong as the over-the-counter drug.

Of the 32 reports of liver problems the FDA has in hand, 27 patients were hospitalized and six suffed liver failure. In an “early communication” of a drug safety review, the FDA said it will also review additional data on “suspected cases of liver injury” submitted by drug firms that make and market orlistat in its branded and generic forms. Now to me, this is kind of like putting the fox in the hen house. Do they really think the firms that make this stuff are going to be honest about reporting the negatives? You’ve got to be kidding me! Glaxo reported $123 million in sales for alli last year, while Roche posted $472 million in revenue for Xenical.

Dr. Steven Osborne, executive director of the FDA’s drug safety oversight board, called the issues surrounding orlistat’s safety “complex” and stressed that “no definite association between liver injury and orlistat has been established at this time.” He noted that 30 of the 32 reports of liver damage already received by the FDA come from outside the United States. Personally I don’t know why that would make a difference. Are they using a different formula outside of the U.S? or are they getting more honest reports from outside the U.S.? He also says people taking this drug should keep taking it. That’s our FDA watching out for us alright.

The symptoms that could point to liver injury, include jaundice, fatigue, or brown urine, should consult a healthcare professional. Abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, light-colored stools, itching, or loss of appetite (I thought loss of apetite was what it was supposed to do) also may be symptoms of liver damage. Physicians, as well as
consumers taking orlistat and experiencing such symptoms, can make an online report to the FDA’s Medwatch Adverse Events Reporting system, or call (800) FDA-1088.

A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline said there is no evidence the company’s drug causes liver injury, noting that it primarily acts on the intestinal tract. She said alli’s safety has been studied in more 30,000 patients enrolled in 100 clinical studies. Of course didn’t the makers of Redux and Phen-Phen said until the evidence was so insurmountable they couldn’t ignore it any more?

These are the things I’ve been learning while tracking my nutrition of the last couple of weeks.

1. Things aren’t quite so fattening if you only eat half.
2. Even Chinese fast-food isn’t my friend.
3. The place I’m staying uses whole milk and full fat cream cheese.
4. I can save over 300 calories by cutting the bagel and cream cheese from breakfast.
5. I may need to cut down from 1500 to 1200 calories a day.

I came across a great website this morning if you happen to be on the WeightWatchers journey. For me, I think it’s probably one of the easiest weight loss programs around as it is pliable to any situation you happen to find yourself in. The name of the site is “Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone“. She has lost, regained some and lost again, but what is really super about her site is she has umpteen restaurants where she has broken all the food into point values. I was able to find nutritional info on her site that I couldn’t even find on the company site itself. While she is an obvious WeightWatcher, she has everything broken down whether you’re watching points, calories, carbs or fat grams. Her story and photos are very inspirational, and she’s also got a couple of recipe books in pdf format you can download. I think it’s a terrific resource.

I guess for a lot of celebrities lately, the answer to weight loss comes in a little can of liquid. I had heard they were coming out with this, but didn’t know it was available now. The drink is called “Celcius” and has been shown to burn up to 100 calories per can.

Janice Haley, Founder of Celsius, says that the product works “by raising metabolism and providing sustained energy. Celsius drinks sustain energy and calorie burning with EGCG from green tea, ginger, B vitamins, and chromium, and caffeine and contain no sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or artificial colors.” It comes in assortment of flavors. I’m all for anything that burns calories from my eating or drinking it! It appears to be available either by ordering, or supposedly you can pick it up at your nearest Walgreens or GNC. I’ll have to look the next time I’m there. One review says that while the ingredients appear to help sustain energy and rev metabolism, it says the individual ingredients would be more effective taken naturally on their own, vs. extracts, etc. Of course they have their own weight loss supplement they’re pushing.

And now, TA-DA! Whether you’re constantly dieting or just watching what you eat for health reasons, we all at some point need a little “inspiration” and “motivation“. One of the ways to keep motivated is by watching the scale go down. Sometimes, even when we’ve been good and done all the right things, it needs a little help. This is my solution: 5 ways to cheat the weight loss scale for motivation and inspiration.

1. Weigh yourself first thing in the morning. You almost always weigh less in the morning than later through out the day no matter how good you are.
2. Make sure you go to the bathroom first, no matter what time of day you weigh yourself. A gallon of water (urine) weighs 8 lbs. You do the math. If you’ve ever heard the comedian Ron White, then you’ve probably heard his joke about being one good “poop” away from a new size. Think about it.
3. If you must weigh yourself with clothes on (like in a weight watchers meeting) when you get home take your clothes off and weigh them. Deduct.
4. If at all avoidable, never weigh with shoes on. If you must, follow instructions for 3 above.
5. Never weigh yourself with wet hair, unless you’re already skinny enough for people to say “she can’t weigh ____lbs. soaking wet” or your hair is so short you’ve been mistaken for a guy.

That’s all I’ve got for today. If you know more ways to “weigh” for motivation and inspiration, I’d love to hear them. Be sure and leave your secrets below. LOL

This is one excuse I hadn’t used yet!

Excuses For No Weight Loss