Are You Kidding Me???

Today is my wife's birthday, and to celebrate we went to the Cheesecake Factory.  Trying to somewhat stick to my eating regimen, I ordered what I thought would be a relatively healthy meal, the miso salmon platter.  Salmon, white rice, snow peas, and some sort of white sauce.  Doesn't sound too bad, right?  It was, in fact, delicious, one of the best salmon dishes I've ever had.  I limited myself to three bites of cheesecake that we were all sharing.

Imagine my surprise when I plugged that salmon meal into MyFitnessPal and saw that my dinner contained over 1600 calories.  That's one thousand, six hundred and seventy three calories.  More than my total daily allowance.  I was stunned.

Oh well, what's done is done.

The Downward Trend Continues

Down another 1.1 pounds at weigh-in this morning.  That's over 4 pounds total in 3 weeks, 10% of my goal!  I was dreading the weigh-in this morning, because I didn't do much walking this week, I wasn't expecting good results.  Apparently just the eating changes that I've made were enough.

Sorry, You've Been Replaced

Sorry Cookie, Puddin', Sweetie, you've been replaced...

The Get Hawt topic for this week is Substitutions, the assignment is to write about ways that we've found to substitute healthy foods in place of unhealthy ones.  This is something I've been actively trying to do for the past three weeks, and it's not as hard as you might think.

Consider lunch for example.  Mine used to consist of a "main" item, a frozen pot pie or a sandwich, some chips, and a can of Pepsi.  Every day, no matter what the food items were, there was a can of Pepsi in there somewhere.  No more.  I've replaced that can of pop with a bottle of water.  I think I've had four pops in the past three weeks.

Another substitution that was easy to make - yogurt in place of pudding.  I love those little Jello pudding cups - tapioca is my favorite.  I would almost always have one with lunch, or something equally sweet.  You're supposed to have dessert with every meal, right?  I've eliminated the pudding in favor of Yoplait yogurts.  Calorie-wise, I'm not sure there's much difference, but it seems like a good change to make.

The main course for lunch has become, at least for now, a large serving of fresh fruit.  I've found a 2-cup serving of grapes, watermelon, and chopped apples to be quite satisfying, and infinitely better than those pot pies.

There have been substitutions as home too.  The biggest has been in the area of side dishes.  As I've said before, my wife and I were raised on meat and potatoes.  Every meal had to have some kind of meat, and a side of potatoes, usually mashed.  Bake a chicken, serve with mashed potatoes.  Pork roast, goes with mashed potatoes.  Salmon, that calls for red potatoes.  See where I'm going with this?

We've swapped out the potatoes for a vegetable or rice side dish.  I've become a big fan of those frozen steamer bags that you pop in the microwave for 5 minutes.  They come in a variety of choices, they're easy to make, quite tasty, and as far as I can tell, they're not loaded up with fake ingredients.

The hardest substitution to make at home has been the meat.  We're trying to do at least two meals a week free of meat (not counting fish).  I've liked every alternative that I've tried so far, but not so with Missy.  It hasn't been easy finding recipes that we both like.  Most meat-free recipes use beans in place of meat, and she's not a huge bean fan.  One recipe that we did agree on was a Chipotle bean burrito (recipe forthcoming), very, very tasty, and completely meat free.  It will be on the menu again this week for sure.

Another pitfall at home is after-dinner snacking.  I can sit down with a package of those sugar wafer cookies and annihilate the entire package, no sweat.  Yeah, I know.  That has ended.  If there is any snacking after dinner now, it's popcorn.  Not that nasty microwave stuff either.  I'm talking real home-made popcorn, popped on the stove, with just a little butter and salt added.  Delicious, and not terribly unhealthy.

Giving up the goodies isn't easy, but it's worth it it.

How To Get Fruity At Work

Have I mentioned yet how hard it is to eat the right foods and ignore the wrong ones?  The past couple of weeks have been eye-opening for me in terms of some of the foods I've eaten over the years.  I'm focusing on cutting out fatty foods, heavily processed foods, cutting out junk foods (like POP, as a proper Minnesotan would say).  I'm also looking for easy ways to increase fruit and vegetable intake.

We've always tried to keep some sort of fresh fruit in the house, but honestly we were just going through the motions.  Grapes, apples, oranges, typically those get thrown into the bottom drawer of the refrigerator, forgotten until we rediscover then six weeks later.  Bananas sit on the counter until they resemble some sort of pudding, or possibly the leavings of a large animal.  We've eaten a lot of banana bread over the years.

The problem with fruit is that it takes effort.  If you're looking for a snack, and you have the choice between a bag of chips that are ready to eat, or grapes that you have to wash first, typically you're going to grab the chips.  Taking an apple or an orange to work may seem easy, but sitting at your desk with sticky fingers, dripping apple juice all over the place, you quickly decide it's not worth the effort.  That's been my experience anyway.

I read somewhere recently that a way to solve this dilemma is to prepare the fruits ahead of time.  Wash the grapes all at once and divide them into containers.  Make a fruit salad, again dividing into containers.  I've been doing that for the past two weeks with grapes, and it's worked perfectly.  I've had a cup of grapes with almost every lunch, with no extra effort on my part.  This week, I'm expanding that to include apples and watermelon.

Each of these containers contains 1 cup of grapes, 1/2 cup of apple chunks, and 1/2 cup of watermelon chunks.  That's 2 cups of fresh fruit in a grab-and-go ready-to-eat container.  This, a yogurt, and a handful of cashews will be lunch this week.  All it took was 10 minutes of prep work.

Now, back to my bottle of POP, the first one I've had since mid-week.

I'm A Bigger Loser Than I Was Last Week

In spite of being assaulted last weekend by Five Guys armed with fries, I managed to pull off a win this week by losing.  I'm two pounds lighter than I was a week ago.  That's three pounds total in two weeks, 7% of my goal!  Something I'm doing is working!

Works For Me

It's week 5 of the Get Hawt challenge, and the blog topic for this week is "what works for you" with regards to fitness and well-being.  I'm wrapping up my second full week of changes to diet and exercise; tomorrow morning will be my second weigh-in.  When I saw the topic for this week, my initial reaction was "aww, too bad, I won't know until Saturday if anything is working for me".

I've come to realize that's not necessarily true. There has been a noticeable change in my energy level this week.  I've been sleeping great, waking up before the alarm every day except this morning, something I haven't done in a long time.  I've been following the Two Hundred Situps program religiously, and today I did 107 situps.  ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN SITUPS!  Are you kidding me?  Should I mention the 71 pushups that I did after that?  This is phenomenal stuff for me.  Even better - it's getting easier to do them!

The hardest thing is the food.  I am trying very hard to stick to good foods, fruits, vegetables, fish.  I'm trying not to be a calorie-counter, but I am using calories as a guide to what's really bad.  Some things have surprised me at their calorie count, both good and bad.  Some things that I thought were acceptable are surprisingly heavy in calories.  Some things that I knew were bad are INCREDIBLY bad.  1400 calories from a cheeseburger and fries???  I had no idea.  To make it worse, there are temptations everywhere.  Brownies at work.  Free-flowing soda in every restaurant.  Cookies on the kitchen counter.  Co-workers wanting you to go to a burger joint for lunch.  You don't want to be rude. but you know that if you go you're going to eat something you shouldn't have.

It's obvious to me that what I'm doing is working.  I'm learning how to eat, I'm learning WHAT to eat, I'm learning easy ways to get some exercise, and I'm starting to feel the rewards.  I haven't had soda in three days, and I resisted the siren call of the cheeseburger today.  I wouldn't have cared three weeks ago.  I call that progress.

Cheesy Potato Soup w/Ham Sandwiches

I love potato soup, especially in the winter.  Actually, I'm a fan of most any thick, cream-based soup, but potato soup is definitely a favorite.  My standard recipe involves milk, heavy cream, lots of butter, and BACON!  Tastes great, but plays hell on the waistline.

Missy found a recipe in Cooking Light magazine for a cheesy potato soup.  Sounded good, and it's in Cooking Light, so it must be less unhealthy than the other stuff, right?  Turns out, it's pretty darned tasty too.

You can get the original recipe here, but I made a few small changes.  My version is below.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 3 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 6 cups chopped red potato (about 2 pounds)
• 2 1/4 cups 2% low-fat milk
• 2 cups fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese
• 1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 
  

• Preparation

1. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Add onion to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until onion is tender. Sprinkle with flour; cook 1 minute, stirring onion mixture constantly.
3. Add potato, milk, and broth to pan; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes.
4. Add 1/2 cup reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese and ground red pepper; cook 2 minutes or until cheese melts, stirring frequently.

For the ham sandwiches, I used four sweet Hawaiian rolls, split them and baked at 400F for about 4 minutes.  A swipe of mayo and a swipe of mustard, a slice of ham on each (folded into fourths), and you have a perfect little ham sandwich to go with the soup.

There was enough for the two of us to eat for dinner two nights in a row, and it was delicious.  Sure to become a favorite in this house.

Baby Steps

Cue the dramatic music.  Fat guy approaches the scale <dum-dum, dum>, camera flashes to the guy, then the scale, then the guy, then the scale <dum-dum, dum>, narrator says in a dramatic voice "Your total weight loss for the week is" <dum-dum, dum>, fat guy steps on the scale <add dramatic beeping sound>, camera pans to show the results:

If you're a fan of The Biggest Loser, you'll recognize this as a jab at the show.  It cracks me up how they can, with a little bit of music, turn stepping onto a scale into a dramatic event.  Really?  What's the big deal, step on the scale, get your number, done.

So why is it that when I weighed myself this morning, I was mentally playing that music?  And why was I simultaneous disappointed and pleased with the results?  At first, I was disappointed that after all of the temptations that I avoided this week, and the miles walked, I only lost 1 pound.  Son-of-a...

Then I did some reading.  A safe rate of weight loss is considered to be around 1% per week.  That means I should be working towards a loss of 1.8 pounds per week.  My weigh-in this morning shows a loss of 1.1 pounds, close enough for me.

Baby steps!

Disaster Averted

Could you resist the temptation if this were placed in front of you?  It's not easy.

This has been a tough week to be on a health kick.  We've been conducting our annual DR (disaster recovery) test at work this week, where we test our systems and processes for keeping the business running in case of a disaster.  Traditionally during this week, the boss provides lunch for everybody involved in the work.  The same was true this year - I've been challenged with Jimmy John's, pizza, Famous Dave's, Chipotle, and this delicious-looking cake above.  It's a nice perk to have this kind of stuff offered, but disastrous for somebody who's trying to change his eating habits.  It's not easy to sit there munching on grapes when the tempting aroma of Chipotle hangs in the air.

Hopefully tomorrow morning will justify the effort.  I've decided that Saturday mornings, before breakfast, will be my official weigh-in days.  Tomorrow will be the first weigh-in since I started this.  I'm hoping to see some sort of result.  Pulling the belt in an extra notch yesterday was a good sign!

Walk A Mile With My Camera

Boredom is a big problem for me when it comes to exercising.  I hate walking on a treadmill, staring at the same spot on the wall.  Same goes for any machine in a gym; I just can't stay interested.  Even walking outside, repeating the same route over and over again can get old.  I need something to keep the routine from becoming routine.

I've always been a big of a photographer wannabe, but never really made a serious effort to learn the craft.  Over the past year or so, a combination of forces, primarily the need for a good camera to take photos for magazine articles, pushed me to buy my first "real" camera.  By "real", I mean something more than your typical point-and-shoot that you take on vacation.  As a precursor to a DSLR, I purchased a Samsung HZ50W, one of the new classification of "super-zoom" cameras.

As I said, the main reason for buying this was for magazine photos, but I quickly began exploring other uses.  I became hooked on the camera, taking it with me everywhere; everything I saw looked like a photo opportunity.  I became "that guy with the camera", ask my wife.

What's this have to do with health or this blog?  How many times have you been somewhere outside, on a walk or a hike, and saw something photo-worthy but didn't have a camera?  What if the purpose for being on the walk in the first place was to look for photo-worthy sights?  That's how I've started to view my walks.  Each walk is a photo walk, an expedition to look for new things to take pictures of.  An interesting shadow, a ray of sunlight calling attention to a leaf on the ground, a bird sitting on a tree branch.  I get so wrapped up in the hunt for a photo that I completely forget that I'm exercising.  It's amazing how quickly 3 or 4 miles go by.

I thought I'd share some of my favorite "walk" photos below.  If you want to see more, feel free to browse through my albums on Google+; I won't promise all of the pictures there are good, but some of them are great.  I think you'll agree, I have plenty to do when I'm out for a walk!

  

  

No Excuses!

It's 10 degrees outside with a stiff breeze that makes it feel like 5 degrees.  There's over an inch of fresh snow on the ground from last night.  The sun is shining, the driveway has been cleared, and the coffee is still hot.  I have a decision to make; go back inside and watch Star Trek, or take a walk.

No excuses!
http://runkeeper.com/user/tracymckibben/activity/68548937

Granted, it wasn't a long one, and it wasn't one of my fastest, but it was a walk.  I feel good that I made the effort.

New Gadgets

Through the blog of another "Get Hawt" participant, I discovered two new gadgets that I'm going to try out in my quest to shed some pounds.  Remember, I'm a gadget guy.  Gadgets help me to see this venture as a sort of game, and games are fun, and anything that makes this effort more fun is definitely welcome.  Both of these gadgets are apps for my phone.

The first app is called Two Hundred Sit-Ups, and appears to be nothing more than a convenient way to follow the Two Hundred Sit-Ups program.  In a nutshell, you start with an honest assessment of how many sit-ups you can do, and from there the program guides you through an increasingly difficult regimen, with the goal being the ability to eventually do 200 sit-ups.  Judging from the grunts and groans that come from just tying my shoes, this should be interesting!

From the same group of people, the second app is called Hundred Pushups, and I'm not talking about those frozen orange ice cream treats.  This is essentially the Two Hundred Sit-Ups system designed for pushups.  The last time I did a pushup was about two years ago, when we first got Wii Fit.  I think I did 10 of them, and haven't done one since.  If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

Best... Popcorn... Ever...

I've never made popcorn the old-fashioned way.  Ever.  Throw the bag in the microwave, push the "Popcorn" button, then dig in; that's been my strategy for, well, ever.  Knowing that the microwave stuff is terribly unhealthy, and since I'm on this health kick right now, I decided to try making a healthy popcorn.  I can confidently say that I'll never ever open a bag of irradiated popcorn again.

First of all, it was ridiculously easy to make.  Pour just enough oil (I used canola) to cover the bottom of a large saucepan.  Toss in 4 or 5 single kernels of corn, turn on the heat, then wait for those kernels to pop.

Once that has happened, throw in 1/2 tablespoon of butter and some salt, then 1/4 cup of popcorn.  Cover loosely (I used a skillet, turned upside down).  As the popcorn begins to pop, shake the pan back and forth over the hot burner.  Continue until the popping has stopped, then immediately dump the popcorn into a bowl and start eating!

Seriously, this was the best popcorn I think I've ever had.  Certainly better than the microwave stuff, without the extra crap that comes with it.

Also, consider this; Act II Butter Lover's Microwave Popcorn weighs in at 170 calories per serving.  How big is a serving?  Two tablespoons of unpopped popcorn, or 1/2 of the 1/4 cup that I popped (which was split between two people).  According to MyFitnessPal, the popcorn that I made amounted to 40 calories, for the same sized serving.  I've had the Butter Lover's popcorn, there's a partial box in the pantry right now.  The homemade stuff was better, by a long shot.

Here's the recipe that I started with, but I cut the butter way down, and I used slightly less popcorn:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_popcorn/

Farfalle with Tomatoes, Onions, and Spinach

Tonight was our second meatless dinner this week, another recipes from Cooking Light.  Very quick, very simple, it took me about 15 minutes to prepare.  Basically it's a garlic pasta dish with tomatoes and spinach, very, very tasty and filling.  I also made an olive bread to go with it, also from Cooking Light.  I'm not sure which I liked better, the pasta or the bread, but I was quite pleased.  Wife, not so much.

Pasta:

• 1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon salt 
• 8 ounces uncooked farfalle pasta 
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided 
• 1 cup vertically sliced yellow onion 
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 5 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 cups grape tomatoes, halved 
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 3 cups baby spinach 
• 3 tablespoons shaved fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3/4 cup (3 ounces) crumbled feta cheese 
• 
  
• 1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil with 1 tablespoon salt. Add pasta, and cook according to package directions; drain.
• 2. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and oregano; sauté 12 minutes or until lightly browned. 
• 3. Add garlic; sauté 2 minutes. 
• 4. Add tomatoes and vinegar; sauté 3 minutes or until tomatoes begin to soften. 
• 5. Add pasta and spinach; cook 1 minute. 
• 6. Remove from heat, and stir in Parmigiano-Reggiano, remaining 1 tablespoon oil, remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper. Sprinkle with feta.

Bread:

• 1. Preheat oven to 450°
• 2. Unroll 1 (11-ounce) can refrigerated thin-crust pizza dough onto a baking sheet
• 3. Combine 1½ tablespoons olive oil, ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper, and 1 minced garlic clove; brush over dough 
• 4. Sprinkle dough with ⅓ cup chopped kala-mata olives 
• 5. Bake at 450° for 11 minutes or until browned and done 
• 6. Top with 2 tablespoons thinly sliced basil
• 
  

My Love/Hate Relationship With Pepsi

I thought I was eating a decent lunch today.  Not exactly health food, and yeah, I know the pop needs to be out of the picture.

After plugging all of this into MyFitnessPal, I was shocked to see that this is more than 30% of what I'm allowed to eat today!  That can of Pepsi alone accounts for 10% of my total allowed caloric intake.  Time to try giving it up - again.

I've been through this before, stopping for a few weeks, maybe having a soda if we go out to eat somewhere.  Then I'll fall off the wagon and start drinking a can or two every day.  I love the stuff, but then I see something like this, knowing that it's not good for me, and then I start to hate it.

Addictions are hard to break....  My one saving grace today is that I walked 3 miles before eating, burning off 2 cans of Pepsi.

Rotini with White Beans and Escarole

As part of this new "get healthy" effort, we're going to try to have at least two meat-free dinners each week.  Being a hardcore "meat and potatoes" eater, this is going to be easier said than done.

Last night, we tried the first meatless recipe, something I found on the Cooking Light web site.  It's called Rotini with White Beans and Escarole, and as the name implies, it consists mostly of beans, pasta, and something green.  Our first reaction was "what the hell is escarole?"  Turns out, it's just another leafy green vegetable, kind of a cross between celery and cabbage.

The full recipe is below, or you can click on the link above to go to the Cooking Light version.  Basically, you start by boiling the pasta.  Separately, put some olive oil in a pan, use it to heat up some garlic, red pepper flakes, and the escarole.  After a few minutes, dump the pasta and a can of white beans into the pan, mix it all up, sprinkle on some Parmesan cheese, and dig in.  It smells great while cooking, and much to our surprise, tastes pretty great too.  I really liked it.

Give it a try, let me know what you thought of it!


Ingredients

• 8 ounces uncooked rotini
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (I used minced garlic from a shaker)
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 (12-ounce) bag chopped escarole
• 3/4 cup organic vegetable broth
• 1 (15-ounce) can no-salt-added cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup (1 ounce) shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Preparation

1. Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat; drain.
2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan, and swirl to coat. Add garlic and red pepper; cook for 45 seconds or until garlic begins to brown, stirring constantly. Add escarole; cook 1 minute or until escarole begins to wilt. Add broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium; cook for 5 minutes or until escarole is tender and liquid nearly evaporates. Stir in pasta, beans, and salt. Top with cheese.

Is It Hawt In Here Or Is It Just Me?

I'm doing something I've never done before, never thought I would do, and still can't completely believe I'm doing.  No, I'm not moving back to Ohio, I'd move to Iowa before doing that.  The unthinkable deed that I'm referring to is joining a group fitness challenge, and I use the word "challenge" loosely.  More accurately, it's a group "motivation", drawing on the encouragement of others to keep working towards a goal, whatever that goal may be.

In this case, the goal is to generally become more healthy, in our eating habits and in our physical activity.  I already stated all of that in the opening blog post, so I won't repeat it here.  What I'm going to talk about in this post are the tools that we're (we being Missy and myself) are going to use to track our progress and stay on track.  Being a gadget geek, you can bet that I'll be using some sort of electronic doohickey to do this.

The first doohickey is my cell phone.  I've been a long-time user of an app called Runkeeper; I used it on my iPhone, and now I use it on android (don't get me started on which one is better).  The free version is a great app by itself, but I've paid for the premium version, which gets me all sorts of fancy reports, telling me how well I'm doing (or not).  If you look in the upper-right corner of this page, you'll see a "gadget" showing our latest Runkeeper activities.  Feel free to nag us if there's no recent activity there - get us off our butts and moving!

Up next on the gadget list is our Nintendo Wii.  Yes, we have the Wii Fit game, and yes, we've completely lost interest in it, like every other person who bought it.  Along with Wii Fit came the balance board, which doubles as an electronic scale.  We'll be using this to track our weight loss (or gain, if that's how it turns out).  I haven't figured out yet how, or if, I'll be posting that progress, but we will be tracking it.

Finally, this blog itself will be a valuable tool.  As I said in the opening post, if I publicly declare that I'm going to do something, I am much more driven to actually do it.  Face it, nobody wants to be known as "all talk, no walk" (pun intended).

There you have it.  This post is my first contribution to the group effort, a group consisting of some new friends who have been supportive of me in my writing efforts.  Now they're going to be supporting me/us in getting healthier.

Why This Blog?

I've found, through my other two blogs, that if I set a goal and declare it publicly, I'm more apt to pursue the goal.  The wife and I are setting out to cut back on the heavy, unhealthy comfort foods, the fast food, the junk food, and start getting more physically active.  Since I'm already a big walker, it seemed to make sense to start with a walking theme, and see where it goes.  I'm hoping that she'll participate in the blog as well as the diet/exercise effort, but that remains to be seen.  She's been reluctant to become "one of you Twitter people", but I'm working on that.

Anyway, starting today, I'm going to use this blog to publicly declare our/my goals, progress, significant events, etc.  You'll probably see recipes here, an occasional challenge, who knows.  I guess you'll have to follow along to see just what we do with this.  Nothing's off the table at this point.  Except this: