I don’t normally log everything I eat. I just try to be conscious of it, and eat healthy. But right now I mostly trying to sustain my weight while lowering my body fat. Back when I was actually trying to lose weight, I logged everything.
But a friend of mine is trying to lose weight. So asked her to log the stuff she eats for a couple days. I told her I would keep a diary of my eating as well. Here it is for yesterday:
6:00am: banana & a diet pepsi (12 oz)
7:30am: diet pepsi
8:15am: Lean Cuisine meal (150 cal) & diet pepsi
9:30am: diet pepsi
10:00am: one chocolate chip cookie & mini-cinnamon roll (from a birthday)
10:40am: banana
10:25am: Healthy Choice meal (220 cal) & diet pepsi
11:45am: banana & diet pepsi
1:15pm: Healthy Choice (210 cal) & diet pepsi
1:30pm: two small squares of pizza left over from a meeting
2:00pm: diet pepsi
2:30pm: banana
3:00pm: handfull of m&ms
3:45pm: banana
7:00pm: banana & diet pepsi
9:00pm: banana
9:30pm: low fat oven baked seasoned french fries
9:45pm: 95% lean ground beef hamburger (grilled) with fat free cheese (with ketchup,relish,tomato, lettuce) & diet pepsi
Yeah I drink a lot of diet pepsi! And I have been eating the bananas because they are cheap, I like them, and they count as a cup of fruit each in the Eat Well Live Well Challenge that I am doing at work.
And lest you think I ate all this, and then sat on my butt all day, I also ran 6 miles in the evening.
My wife worked last night, and didn’t get home until about 10pm. I thought omelettes would be good. She agreed. I had used all of the Egg Busters egg substitute this last weekend also making omelettes. So yesterday while I was shopping, I went to pick up some more Egg Busters (Egg Busters is the store brand version of Egg Beaters). But they were out of the larger size carton of Egg Busters that I have been buying. I haven’t tried actual Egg Beaters before. Egg Beaters is more expensive than the Egg Busters. I could have bought a smaller carton of the Egg Busters (store brand), but I decided to try a small carton of actual Egg Beaters to see if there was a taste difference.
What is egg substitute? It is made of 99% real eggs (probably mostly egg whites), but it fat free. It comes as a liquid in a carton. It looks like what real eggs look like is you scrambled them in a blender.
So I sauteed the ham, mushrooms, and green pepper as always, then poured in the Egg Beaters. It pour in the same. I put the lid on the skillet and left it to cook over medium low heat. The Egg Beaters seemed to cook a litte faster than the store brand version. I placed the fat-free cheddar on top the melt, and placed the omelettes on the plates to serve. My wife and I ate our omelettes. There is definately a taste difference. The actual Egg Beaters tasted better than the store brand. So in the future, I will may buy and use both Egg Beaters and the store brand version. I will use the Egg Beaters for things like omelettes, and maybe use Egg Busters for stuff where it is only minor ingredient. Or maybe I will just buy the Egg Beaters. I don’t know.
My wife and I have been making the low fat french fries often. But it is a bit of a pain to cut up the potatoes. I have been looking at buying some sort of a cutter. My wife point out that she saw one at a Harbor Freight. HF is a tool store!?!?! I did some research on the french fry cutter they were selling, and it looked pretty cheap. It was under $10. But the reviews were poor. I continued looking, and found another beefier looking slicer. It sold between $30-$50. But still got poor reviews. I remembered seeing something about a french fry attachment for my KitchenAid food processor. I did a search. One of the complaints about it was that all your fries would be short stubby things due to the limits of the food tube on the top of the food processor.
I kind of a gave up, and continued cutting with my chef’s knife. But the other day I decided to look again. I looked on Amazon, and read more reviews. I found a french fry cutter for under $10, that actually have good reviews. The main compliant was that you couldn’t fit a whole potato through it at once. It’s called the Progressive International Vegetable/French Fry Cutter. Apparently you need to cut the potato down a little to fit into the cutter. I am okay with that. If it works well, we may be eating french fries more often! I’ll be sure to post how well this thing works.
I have several good quality regular surface skillets. A 8 inch, a 10 inch, and a 12 inch. They are made by Wear Ever, and are restaurant quality. I also have a couple nonstick skillets as well, I have a Wear Ever 8 inch skillet that I bought 4 or 5 years ago. Maybe longer. I think the surface is Silverstone. I recently bought a 12 inch Wear Ever skillet. It has the newer Ceramiguard II nonstick surface. And today I bought a 10 inch Wear Ever skillet also with the Ceramiguard II nonstick surface.
Nonstick skillets are almost a must for low fat cooking. With regular surface skillets, you have to use oils to keep the food from sticking. But with the nonstick surfaces, you can use little of no oil for cooking. Often with the nonstick skillets, I can get away with a short spraying cooking spray.
The 10 inch skillet with come in had for various things. For example I made omelletes this morning. I made two, one after the other in the 8 inch non-stick skillet. If I had the 10 inch skillet that I just ordered, I could have made one larger omelette, and then cut it into two parts. I get lots of use from my skillets! And the new non-stick surfaces are tough. They recommend hand washing, but I have been washing them for years in the dishwasher with no problems!
I was just reading a post on a message board I am active on. A friend of a friend was talking about how she is losing weight. And from everything I have read, she is doing an excellent job. One of her comments sticks in my head she was talking about the costs of eating healthy, as well as the preperation time of eating healthy. She feeds a family of 4, while I only have my wife and I. While don’t usually eat extravagently, we generally don’t worry too much about food costs. We buy boneless skinless chicken breasts, and Lean Cuisine meals, but we buy them on sale, and store them in our freezer. Generally preperation time is more of a concern to me. I hate being in the kitchen for hours, at least all the time. Once in a while I don’t mind.
I will have to look at gathering a collection of low fat recipes that are both fast, easy to prepare, and relatively cheap. Who knows, maybe I will publish a cookbook of recipes like that. I am sure there would be a market for something like that. There are already cookbooks for fast low-fat recipes. But I don’t think I have seem one for fast, cheap low fat recipes.