I did it and I'm not ashamed to admit it

          My parents left this morning.  I always hate when they leave.  Hopefully I'll be able to convince them to move down here in August when their lease is up.  
          In order to ease my pain I sat down with a fork and a few desserts that they had left here.  Do I feel bad for it? OF COURSE!  But, I also realize that I'm human and humans mess up.  I knew that I was seriously doing something bad when Mr. Amazing looked at me and said "how are you supposed to blog about living healthy when you're doing this to  yourself??!!??"
          Because of my pig out session I'm going to do my weekly weigh in on Tuesdays during the month of May to see how I'm doing.  It will be my diet upkeep check-in.  
          Here's a reminder of what restrictions I'm placing on the family in May:

• No Sugar
• No unnecessary boxed/packaged/premade foods
• 45 minutes of exercise every day
• No eating out
• No beef, chicken, or pork
• Seafood only, with a maximum of 2x a week
• Fruit at every meal
• Whole wheat products only

And tomorrow I'm going to the communit college to try and start my nutrition degree this summer.  I'm super excited!!

K is for Kayaking

          We had an awesome day today!  As you know from yesterday Dad and I were planning on taking Kay and Mo kayaking.  It was great!!  We rented kayaks from Tropical Kayaks in Palm Coast.  They launch the kayaks from there too.  It's $20 for 2 hours for a single kayak, $40 for 2 hours for a double kayak.  The owner is really relaxed and nice.  I definitely plan on taking the girls there again.

          I've outlined our route in pink.  We decided to do a really simple trip.  The only person with us that had been in a boat that you paddle before is Dad.  He was in one kayak with Kay and I was in the other with Mo.  I was so proud of Mo.  She's small and she paddled so hard.  She even did all the work a few times while I sat back and took some pictures.  We decided to stay away from the area with a lot of boat traffic.  We were told that we could see dolphin and manatee, or even a monkey that lives in the area but all we saw were 6 jumping fish in the 90 minutes we were out.
          The owner told me that at the end of my kayak rental I could test out a stand up paddleboard.  Unfortunately I completely forgot about it until I was already changed.  She told me I could come in early on a Sunday and test it out.  I'm going back next Sunday to test one out.  I'm SUPER excited!

And now I leave you with a few pictures from our adventure

Kay paddling down the canal

Mo paddling.  

Me and my paddle

The canal

Kay and Sirr

Kay and Sirr

This tree was interesting

Have you ever taken your kids kayaking?


Links
Tropical Kayaks

Farmers Market with the Parents

Total Price: Approximately $60
Price I paid: $20

          My parents paid for most of it.  I had a larger than normal trip because of the fact that we're starting all the eating restrictions on Tuesday.  I found out today that Hugo's Muffins is no longer going to be at the farmers market.  I was crushed.  But, it's probably a good thing until the end of May.  
          We had a great day today.  We wandered around the farmers market for a few hours looking at the different vendors and different produce and stuff that they were selling.  My dad and Baye shared a popcorn.  Mom got a few watermelons and a few cantaloupes for us.  




Has the farmers market opened in your area yet?


Tomorrow Dad and I are taking the Kay and Mo kayaking.  It's going to be a great time...I hope.

I Did Something Right!

Weigh In:  116.2
Difference from last week: -1.2 lbs


         I've been trying to take my measurements (since that's what I care about more) but, both of my tape measures have ran away.  Hopefully I'll be able to update my measurements next week.
         For the past week I've switched from my normal fat-free yogurt and a banana to a slice of reduced calorie bread with peanut butter and jam on it.  Since I switched I've noticed that I've been full until about noon and I haven't munched in between meals.  I think it's due to the fact that it has fat in it and fat keeps you full longer.  
          I ran out of PB2 and haven't had a chance to drive to Ormond and pick up some more.  I wanted to try Better N' Peanut Butter but, Target was all out.  I've heard good things about it.  

As you can see it only has 100 calories and 2 grams of fat.  The PB2 has less calories and only a little less fat.  But, this was OF COURSE the one time that Target was all out of it.  

          I have also recently found out about Peter Pan Whipped Peanut Butter.  

          It's delicious.  It's not as sweet as normal peanut butter.  But it's really good.  It has 12 grams of fat in 2 tablespoons and 150 calories.  Reduced fat peanut butter by Peter Pan has 13 grams.  So, it's actually better than the reduced fat one.  My body still hates me for eating that much fat but, I'm a peanut butter addict so, I get the one with the least amount of fat.  

          

How's your week going?

Links:

Better N' Peanut Butter

Peter Pan Whipped Peanut Butter

Week in Review (i.e. I didn't have time to blog so I'm doing it now)

Monday & Tuesday

I didn’t get out much these days.  The temperatures didn’t get above about 75 degrees either day.  I took a walk with my mom on Tuesday to get out of the house and to get some fresh air. 

Wacky Workout Wednesday

I took a walk with my mom  and found a cinder block in the water so I carried it a mile back down the beach.  I made Mr. Amazing go pick it up from the beach.  

My cinder block

For dinner I made a supersized jalepeno popper using a large spicy pepper.  They turned out well.  My only complaint was that the pepper wasn’t spicy enough.  I am now on a mission to find the perfect pepper for a large spicy pepper popper.  I adapted the recipe from Cook This NotThat.  

Pepper Poppers

1 cup cremini or button mushrooms, diced
1/2 onion, minced
1/2 cup shredded fat free cheddar cheese
8 oz fat free cream cheese

Salt and black pepper to taste
2 green chile peppers (the larger ones)

How to Make It:
*Preheat the oven to 400F.

*Heat skillet over medium-high heat.  Put the mushrooms and onions in and cook about 5 minutes until the mushrooms are brown and the onions are clear.

 *Combine the cream cheese, cheese onion, mushrooms, salt and pepper in a medium bowl

*Cut the peppers in half

*Stuff each pepper with a quarter of the mixture.  Place the peppers on a baking pan.  Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes.

Tomorrow's weigh in day!  Let's keep our fingers crossed!!!

It's Baye's Birthday!!

Her barnyard cake.  I'm kinda proud of it so I had to show it.

I can't believe my baby girl turns 3 today!  Time flies so fast.  It seems like just yesterday that she was born.  Next time I turn around she'll be in Kindergarten. 


Take a look at what it's SUPPOSED to look like.

I'm not an awesome decorator obviously.... if you click the picture it'll take you to the instructions.  




If you make the cake show me how well you did.

Restaurant Rant

          We took Baye to Chuck E. Cheese today for her birthday celebration.  She turns 3 tomorrow.  We went today so my dad could enjoy the festivities before he left for Orlando for a business trip.  The poor child was miserable.  We have learned that you should never take a kid that is scared of costumed characters to Chuck E. Cheese!  She clung to Mr. Amazing, my sister and me the whole time.  

Pizza for everybody!

Baye clinging to Mr. Amazing

Doesn't Baye look like she's having a great party?

Kay and Mo had fun though.  We ordered a few pizzas for the kids, Mr. Amazing and my parents (Gramma and Sirr).  I got the salad bar.  I ended up not being able to eat the salad bar so I gave it to my sister.


**Begin Rant**
          I have been to 2 different restaurants that have salad bars and have had the same problem with both of them.  They have no fat free normal salad dressings.  Chuck E. Cheese only has fat free Catalina.  How many people actually use/like fat free Catalina???  Not this girl!!  How hard is it to order fat free ranch?  I'm not going to lie, if you're on a low-fat diet, you're okay.  Lite ranch is a lower fat content then regular.
          When I was planning a trip to Ruby Tuesday I noticed on the website they said they have no fat free dressing at all.  None, Nada, Zip, ZERO!  The only thing closest to fat free dressing that they have is balsamic vinegar.  How hard is it to get rid of the lite ranch and replace it with fat free?  Stupid restaurants!
**End Rant**




          I miss eating out.  I really do.  I loved the fact that I didn't have to cook every once and a while and I could have someone else do the dishes.  If I'm really careful I can goto American Buffets like Golden Corral.  But, there is one type of restaurant that I can goto with no problem.  That one place is a mongolian barbeque.  They always have fat free food.  A lot of chinese restaurants have Mongolian barbeques in them.     They are great.  If you've never heard of a Mongolian barbecue it is "meat and vegetables {that} are cooked in large, round, solid iron griddles at temperatures of up to 300°C (572°F)"  

http://resti-review.blogspot.com/2010/05/mongolian-barbeque-kzoo.html

You choose which vegetables, meats and sauces you want and they grill it in front of you.  I love it.  I ask for no oil on the grill and they pour just water/broth on the grill to keep the vegetables from sticking.  I adore it.  There are some chain Mongolian grills that are really good.    I've included links at the bottom of the page.  

Have you ever been to a Mongolian Barbecue?  What do you think about it?

Links:

Bd's Mongolian Grill

Wok N' South

Genghis Grill

Stay away from cake

Farmers Market Shopping List

Total Spent:  $41

This is what I got:

I was super excited about the jam.  I bought red raspberry jam and traffic jam (I partially bought it because of the name.  It's delicious though.  It's a mixed fruit jam with strawberries,peaches,raspberries, cranberries, and cherries.  Kay loves the honey sticks.  She’s super excited because honey is allowed on our Sugar free May (I really need a good name for it.  Any ideas?) 

We’re celebrating Baye’s birthday tomorrow so I started working on her cake tonite.  I made chocolate zucchini muffins and banana carrot muffins.  I make myself something that is okay for me to eat so that I don't dip into the fat and calorie laden birthday cakes.  I altered the recipe from the Happy Herbivore.   If you click the link it'll take you to the original recipe.

Ingredients:

·         1¼ cups whole wheat pastry flour

·         ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa

·         1¼ tsp baking powder

·         ¾ tsp baking soda

·         ½ tsp salt

·         1 tsp cinnamon

·         1 whole banana, mashed

·         ½ cup stevia

·         ½ cup unsweetened applesauce

·         ¼ cup skim milk

·         1 tsp vanilla extract

·         1 cup shredded zucchini

·         2 Tbsp sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Grease muffin pan 
3. Whisk dry ingredients together in a bowl.
4. Cream mashed banana, and applesauce
5. Add in milk, vanilla, zucchini
6. Add flour mix to wet mix in batches and stir until just combined.
7.  Put batter into muffin pan and bake 18-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  (Mine took 25)

(I seriously threw everything into a bowl and used my electric mixer to blend it all)

Then I did one with just bananas.  I substituted the zucchini for carrots (I only bought enough zucchini to make 1 batch of muffins.)

·         1 ½ cups whole wheat pastry flour

·         1¼ tsp baking powder

·         ¾ tsp baking soda

·         ½ tsp salt

·         1 tsp cinnamon

·         2 whole banana, mashed

·         ½ cup stevia

·         ½ cup unsweetened applesauce

·         ¼ cup skim milk

·         1 tsp vanilla extract

·         1 cup shredded carrots

I loved them.  They were very moist.  But, I like my banana muffins kind of on the brink of “gummy”.  If you prefer your banana muffins to have more of a muffin consistency then I would suggest only using 1 banana.  You can also lower the fat by using white flour instead of whole wheat.  

Have the farmers markets by you opened yet?

Back in the Swim of Things

Today’s weight: 117.4 lbs

Difference:  0 lbs

I’m okay with that.  It’s better than gaining right?  Baye has been helping me get exercise.  Every day we goto the pool after we drop Kay and Mo off at their bus stops.

Underwater view of Baye

While she splashes around I walk in the pool and do mini laps in front of the stairs.  I figured I burn a couple hundred calories.  Then while she’s taking a nap I go back and do some laps.  My goal is to swim a mile.  I managed to do .75 miles today.  I’m a math nerd so I measured the pool.  I used the “foot” method where you put one foot infront of the other.  But then I came home and measured my foot and did the math to figure out how long the pool was.  Then I divided the pool length by the number of feet in mile and got all of my numbers. 

5280/40 = 132

So it’s 132 laps 1 way, 66 laps down and back.   

                It’s felt really good to get back in the water.  It’s the only exercise that I can really do for long periods of time and have it not hurt my knees and other joints that are screwed up.  There are a lot of benefits to swimming.  Here are some of them:

It can….

1.       help people with chronic diseases

2.       improve mental health

3.       benefit older adults by improving the quality of life and decreasing disability

source:  http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/swimming/health_benefits_water_exercise.html

This article talks about the other reasons why swimming is good for you http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/aging/retirement/10-health-benefits-of-swimming1.htm

In short they are,

1. There’s no “harsh” impact on your skeleton. 
2. It increases your muscle tone and strength.
3. Since water is 12x denser than air it’s a resistance workout.
4. It improves your flexibility.
5. It strengthens the heart.
6. It’s one of the biggest calorie burners.  Here’s the approximate calories per 10 minutes

Breaststroke	60
Backstroke	80
Freestyle/crawl	100
Butterfly	150

     7.  It helps improve asthma symptoms
     8.  It can balance your cholesterol
     9.  It Lowers your risk of diabetes
    10.  It relaxes you in the same way yoga does
    11.  It can keep you from dying.

Take a look at those articles and you’ll see some of the reasons why I love swimming.  What are your feelings about swimming?

Tomorrow:  Farmer’s Market Friday!!

I'm Back!

        I know I’ve been MIA for a few days.  I’ve been taking Baye to the pool every morning for about an hour.  One day she even demanded I take her for a bike ride around the community after our bike ride.  I love it that she forces me to exercise.  She loves the pool.  She’s a proverbial fish.  She could spend all day playing in the water.  

As you know I decided to cancel the 2 sugar free weeks.  I’ve decided to reschedule it for the  month of May.  The plan will be much more strict than the original.  Here it is:

• No sugar
• No unnecessary processed/boxed products
• 45 minutes of exercise every day
• No eating out
• No beef, chicken or pork.  
• Seafood only, and only 2x a week
• Fruit at every meal
• No white bread, only whole wheat bread

For more information about what I'm doing read this page by 100 Days of Real Food.  I'm doing it slightly different as you can see.

I’m not completely heartless so, I will make an exception for Kay’s birthday dinner and cake.    I’m only allowing sugar from the 18th - 23rd AND I’m only allowing sugar in the form of birthday cake.

When I told Mr. Amazing about my plan his response was “I guess I’ll be eating at work next month.”  Isn’t he loving and supportive??  He really is great though.  

Mr. Amazing and me on the camping trip

Us at the beach

Does your significant other support you when you have a crazy (or not so crazy) healthy idea?

Picture Post

These are some various photos that I've wanted to post but really didn't have any place to put them.  

Kimchi Stew!!

For those of you who haven't heard of kimchi " is a traditional fermented Korean dish made of vegetables with a variety of seasonings"  (Wikipedia)  The most common is made with cabbage but, I've also had it with diakon radish (my favorite), cucumber, green onions, and bean sprouts.  I love all of them.  Mr. Amazing is half Korean and his mom spoils me with all the yummy Korean food whenever we go visit them in Tacoma.  I miss Korean food.  We don't have a Korean grocery less than 45 minutes away
I adapted the recipe from Maangchi.  Click here for the original recipe.

Kimchi Stew
* 5 cups chopped kimchi
* 1 Tbsp sugar
* 1 tsp hot pepper flakes (I used red pepper flakes because we were all out of the Korean kind)
* 1 Tbsp hot pepper paste (I love this stuff)
* 1 onion, sliced
* 5 cups water 

1)  Put the chopped kimchi and juice in a pot
2)  Add the onions, sugar, hot pepper flakes, and hot pepper paste
3)  Add water
4)  Put lid on and boil for 15 minutes on high heat and then another 20 minutes on medium heat

Me and the girls at the beach

Building an "island"

 Did you know that building a sand castle burns about 100 calories an hour?

Me the night we got to the campground.  I had been stuck in the car and in the house all day and felt I had to get some sort of burn.  I did step-ups using the bench and I did incline pushups.  I also ran sprints from the front and back of the spot.  

I hate the gym so I made this.  I also feel like unless you lift weights or need special accommodations then you don't need a gym.  A bike, some stairs and running shoes is all you need.  

Gotta Get My Veggies

Today I spent $53 at the market.  Here’s what I brought home.

It was a gorgeous day to goto the farmers market.  Bright blue sky, not to hot, just perfect!  I got a lot of great stuff.  I decidd to buy some Gouda from the new dairy farmer.  I love cheese and can’t pass up the chance to try something new.  I just wish cheese was cheaper.  The muffin man was back today.  I was so excited.  I bought one for Kay and Baye claimed one.  That leaves only 4 for me.  But I figure by them taking 2 they’ve saved me between 300 and 500 calories.  Mr. Amazing had me buy the bok choy so he can make us something special.  I love being married to a man that can cook.

My friend took my kids to a movie at Kay’s school so I had a night to myself.  The first night withpout any kids in over 3 years.  I had grand dreams of a long swim and maybe a walk.  My swim lasted 20 minutes (I was completely worn out after 20 minutes (I have a long way to go before I can consider the Olympoics don’t I?)  It was great to be back in the water though.

Breakfast
Chiobani Blueberry
Banana

Snack
Blueberries
Grapes

Dinner
Peanut butter and jelly french toast  (I'll post the recipe soon)
Liquid egg substitute (leftover french toast dip)


Speaking of dinners, here's my dinner from a few nights ago.  Fat free taco salad.  Lettuce, sauteed mushrooms and onions, salsa, beans, sour cream and refried beans.  

Workout
45 minute pool trip with Baye
1 mile bike ride (to and from pool)
10 minute freestyle
10 minute breast stroke

Goals check
1)      Get my waist measurement under 27
          Still working on this one
2)      Weight at or below 115
          Only a few pounds away
3)      Stop snacking
          I haven't stopped yet but, I only snack on fresh fruits 
4)      Exercise everyday
          Done!
5)      Cut out 99% of the fat from my diet
          Done!
6)      Cut out 95% of all sugar
          I've cut out about 75% I think
7)      Cut out 90% of all processed/packaged food
          Except for things I can't make myself like yogurt I've done really well
8)      Make it 12 days without sugar (April 9-19^th)   
          As you have read from my post a few days ago I've switched the dates up.  We're going to start in May
9)      Limit carbs to 2x per week
          I had bread yesterday and I think that was my only carb for the week

April 12th Check in

         It’s check-in day!  When I weighed myself this morning I was 117.4.  I lost .6 lbs in a week.  Not horrible but, not great.  I think that my daily intake is more than I actually think it is.  But whatever the reason, I’ve got to change it!  

On Tuesday my doctor cleared me to swim!  YIPPIE!  As you read about in my About Me section I  love to swim.  I am the most comfortable in the water.  I could spend 90% of my day in the water.  But most importantly that means that I can join the USMS swim team!  I’ve wanted to do this for a while and I finally can.  Maybe I’ll even be good enough for the 2016 Olympic swim team!!  I know those are big goals but, hey, something has to keep me going.  

        Then on Wensday when I went to the chiropractor he suggested I take yoga in order to loosen my muscles.  There’s a yoga class at the clubhouse every Friday morning.  Next week I’m going to go check it out.    Now Mr. Amazing has no reason to not let me take the yoga class now.  It’s doctor’s order LOL.  

http://www.fitsugar.com/Strike-Yoga-Pose-Forearm-Stand-500865

Here's my food log for the day:

Breakfast
Lemon Chiobani (I've become obsessed with Greek yogurt)
Banana
Grapes

Snack
Grapes
Blueberries
Popcorn

Dinner
Leftover taco salad veggies mixed with steamed cauliflower



Workout
30 minute swim
1 mile walk searching for my dog (turns out he was asleep with Baye)
1.21 mile (23 minute) walk
7:33 minute 520 stairs