Last Friday I went back to the grocery store, and loaded up on Lean Cuisine meals while they were still on sale. I skipped the ones that were regularly prices at $2.29, and went for the ones that were regularly $3.19. There weren’t too many of those left, but grabbed all of the ones I was interested in. Then I went after the ones that were regularly prices at $2.99. There was a great selection of these. I tried to grab at least one or two of each. Even then I didn’t manage to get all of them. I skipped some of the ones that had a higher amount of fat in them, and went for the ones with the lowest amount of fat. I need to take a calculator so I calculate out the percentage of fat calories.
Anyway, this morning for breakfast I ate the Lean Cuisine Chicken Cabonara (roasted chicken tenderloins with bacon & mushrooms over linguine). It was regularly priced ay $2.99. So a $1.66 was a great price. I hesitated on this one because of the 7 grams of fat. But I love spaghetti carbonara! The total calories were 270, with 7 grams of fat or 60 fat calories making up about 22% of the total calories. It took 5 minutes of microwave time. Just had to stir it when it was done cooking. It smelled great when cooking. Then it tasted great. It doesn’t have the texture of actual spaghetti carbonara, and the taste is a little different. But it is a very good. I will probably eat more of these every once in a while. But due to the higher fat calorie percentage, I will probably limit how often. But it was really good!
I was trying to decide what to make for dinner last night. I had gone through a couple cook books, Weight Watchers Take Out Tonight, and Low Fat In Nothing Flat. I couldn’t decide. I took the Low Fat In Nothing Flat cookbook with me when I went to karate class, with plans of stopping at the grocery store on my way home. And that’s what I did. I still hadn’t decided. So I sat in the store parking lot, thumbing through the cookbook and settled on Steamed Mussels With Bell Peppers. I went it, did my shopping, and bought all the stuff that I needed.
I am not sure I am going to mess with mussels again. They are a little work heavy. I had to scrub all of the mussels one by one. And it took a little while for 4 dozen mussels. And that was on top of dicing a red pepper, a green pepper, and onion, and mincing the garlic. I also had to chop the dried-tomato bits. Instead of melting a tablespoon of reduced calorie margarine in the skillet, I used butter flavored olive oil spreay. This work fine, and I had that much less fat in what was already a low fat meal.
The mussels were okay. It was a lot less messy than the mussels with marinara recipe that I tried a couple weeks ago. So we ate the clams, and ate all the veggies and broth stuff. It was okay. I don’t think I will make it again. I think I might look for more clam recipes that use canned clams. Those are much easier!
I haven’t had a lot of energy today. I did my aikido class in the morning. When I got home, I ate and took a long nap. I got up, and started running my 9 miles (which I still 3 miles to go). I didn’t know what to make for dinner. I went through a couple of my cook books, and had some ideas. But I really didn’t want to go to the store. I asked my wife what she wanted for dinner. She suggested that we pull some of the chili out of the freezer. (see my Low Fat Chili Recipe) I asked, how about having chili dogs? She said that sounded like a good idea. Great! I didn’t have to leave the house! I pulled some of the frozen chili out of the freezer, cut it out of the FoodSaver bag, and put it into a large pot over medium low heat. Then I went back to running on the treadmill. Every once in a while I would take a short break from running, and go and stir the chili. When the chili was completely thawed and heated through, I put a few Ball Park Fat Free Beef Franks into a water of water and set the burner to high. After a little while they were done cooking. We just set the hot dog buns on a plate, laid the dogs on the buns, and spooned some of the chili over the dogs. We ate them with forks as there was too much chili on the dogs to eat easily with our hands.
The ease of pulling stuff like chili out of the freezer is a great reason to have a big freezer! Also the FoodSaver sealer is a great plus. And my chili recipe (actually it was my mom’s) is so easy to make in big batches!
I got up this morning, played on the computer, then realized I hadn’t even grabbed a Diet Pepsi. So I grabbed one, played a bit more, took a shower, then headed off to aikido class. I was at aikido class and dragging. I realized that I forgot to eat breakfast. I managed to get through class, but I was tired feeling. When I got home I ate a couple of Fat Free Beef Franks from Ball Park. I played on the computer a bit more, then I took a long nap. After my nap I got up to start my 9 mile run. I ran a mile and I was slogging. So I ate a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich. I got on the treadmill, and ran another mile. I was still hungry, so I made another PB&J sandwich. Oh yeah, and a small orange. I feel better now. I need to buy some bananas so I can at least have something around quick to eat.
I went to compete in a stair climb challenge a couple days ago (I ran up 19 floors in a little over 2 minutes…read about my Stair Climb). A bunch of people from the company I work for competed in it. I Think there were about 30 of us. We raised a bunch of money for the cystis fibrosis foundation doing it. Anyway, at one time we all worked in the same building. But then as our company grew, they need room, so they moved us all to a new building. Then we kept growing, and they moved a lot of the people to different buildings. So a lot of the people at the stair climb were people I don’t get to see much anymore. So they haven’t seen me in a while either. It was nice having them tell me how I look so much thinner! Some of these people haven’t seen me since I weight mid 180’s. Other’s maybe 190’s. And few people may not have seen me since I weighed in at 210 pounds! This morning I weighed in at 169.2. I really don’t want to lose any more weight, but I would still like to burn off more fat. So I continue working out, and eating healthy low fat foods. I was actually surprised my weight was down this morning as I felt like I ate a lot yesterday.