I have eaten a lot of fruit today. Way more than I usually ever eat. I ate a couple bananas for breakfast, and some grapes. And throughout the day, I have 2-3 pounds of grapes, about 3-4 bananas, and 3-4 oranges. I hardly ate any “real” food. I had a little bit of leftover chili for lunch. And my wife made a low fat veggie lasagne for dinner. I had couple pieces of that. I am still hungry. Maybe I’ll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
I weighed 171.2 this morning, but I have no clue what I am going to weight tomorrow morning. Yeah I ate two plus pounds of grapes, but they are mostly water. The oranges have a lot of water in them too.
Then I ran 7 miles on the treadmill burning up over 800 calories. Then I did an aikido class this morning. So who knows.
Maybe I’ll make a tuna sandwich with reduced calorie mayonaise.
I love books! I own literally thousands of books. I also enjoy cooking. So my collection obviously includes cook books. My favorites are the ones from restaurants. I love making meals like you would get in a fancy restaurant. But I did own a few diet and low fat cooking books.
Among the handfull of diet cook books that I picked up somewhere were a few Weight Watchers cook books. Here are the ones I already had:
Weight Watchers Quick And Easy Cookbook
Weight Watchers Meals In Minutes Cookbook
Weight Watchers Healthy Life-Style Cookbook
Recently my wife started (or re-started) the Weight Watchers program. One little pamphlet she brought home had an ad for the cook book WeightWatchers My TurnAround Program Cookbook. It mentioned that it included “restaurant favorites made at home”. So I ordered it off of eBay. Interestingly, reading about this cookbook elsewhere didn’t seem to mention the restaurant aspect.
But in reading about that cookbook, I read about WeightWatchers Take-Out Tonight. Now this cook specifically say on the cover 150+ restaurant favorites to make at home.
These two cookbooks came in today’s mail. I was flipping through the Weight Watchers Take-Out Tonight cookbook, and found a Chimichanga recipe that sounds really good. We may have that for dinner tomorrow night.
My wife couldn’t decide what she wanted for dinner. So I suggested fish. She said we hadn’t had fish in a while and that could be good. Great! So I took dinner plans into my own hands.
First I stopped at the warehouse store, and bought a large chunk of farm raised salmon. Great price at $5.49/pound. I planned on cooking using half of the salmon for dinner, and vacuum seal the other half with the FoodSaver, and freeze. I also bought a 4 pound carton of grapes. The grapes aren’t for dinner, just for snacking.
My next stop was the grocery store. I bought some fresh Broccoli, and some sliced mushrooms. I also wanted to try some sprays for low fat cooking. I bought some extra virgin olive oil spray, and some Olivio Buttery Spray. I also bought a loaf of italian bread.
When I got home, I turned on the oven to preheat to 400 degrees. I pulled out a glass baking pan. I cut off half the salmon, and put it into the dish. I did a couple sprays of the Olivio Buttery Spray, and then drizzled some lemon juice over it. The Olivio Buttery Spray is going to be a lot lower fat than drizzling melted butter over the salmon. I put the salmon into the oven to bake for 30 minutes.
I cut off half of the loaf of italian bread. I sliced it in half. Again I used the Olivio Buttery Spray. I sprayed a little on the inside of each half, and sprinkled some Johnny’s Great Caesar Garlic Spread & Seasoning on to the bread. I wrapped the bread in foil, and set it aside.
I put a little water into a pan with a vegetable steamer.
When the salmon had about 10 minutes left to cook, I put the bread into the oven with the salmon. I cut some of the broccoli off the crowns into the steamer, and turned that burner onto high. I put a skillet on another burner, and sprayed a little bit of the extra virgin olive oil in the bottom. I filled the pan with the sliced mushrooms, and sauteed them.
When the timer went off for the salmon, dinner was done. It was delicious! The Olivio Buttery Spray worked great on both the salmon and the Garlic bread. The sprayed olive oil worked great for sauteeing the mushrooms. And using the sprayed versions allowed me to use much less. Low fat does not need to be low taste!! Dinner was great!
I had yet another Healthy Choice entree for breakfast today. I am out of the french bread pizzas, though I do have a raincheck for more. So this morning I debated which if the Healthy Choice entrees in the freezer to have. I had never had the Turkey before, so I decided to try it.
The Healthy Choice Slow Roasted Turkey Breast with gravy, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables has 200 calories, 4 grams of fat, and 570mg of sodium (blows my theory about them all have exactly 600 mg of sodium). It counts as 4 Weight Watchers points. 40 calories come from fat, or 20% of the 200 calories in the entree.
It took 4 minutes of microwave time, and I didn’t even need to stir it of anything. There were about 8 small chunks of roasted turkey lying on top of the mashed potatoes and covered in gravy. Not a whole lot. But then what do you expect for only 200 calories. They tasted okay. The mashed potatoes were also okay. The gravy could have been a little better, but then I am not a big gravy fan. I usually prefer butter on my mashed potatoes, but then maybe that is why I got up to 230 pounds? LOL! The mixed vegetables consisted of peas, corn and carrots. I sprinkled a little Molly McButter over these and they were okay. This entree was okay, but I think I would have liked a little more. I think it will hold me to lunch, but barely. I am actually starting to get hungry now.
I want six pack abs! And I am working on getting there! The muscles are under there from my various excercising: karate, aikido, and running. I can feel the six pack in there, under the layer of body fat. But that layer of fat is slowly getting thinner! I even took in my belt a notch today. I am contining to eat healthy, or mostly healthy. I am keep my fat intake down. And it is working. I actually have a four pack going. I will just keep running, staying in the aerobic zone, eating low fat, and I will get there. And with all the crunches and other ab exercies that I do at karate, the muscles will be there.
Here’s a picture that I took a couple weeks ago. I actually have more definition now, than I did when this picture was taken. Not bad for a 43 year old.
