Monthly Archives: October 2012

Day 288: Oops, cheat lunch at Chinese restaurant / excellent keto-friendly lasagna

Total weight loss: 41 pounds

We finally decided not to go out to breakfast. Just too costly. Rick made my “breakfast bowl”: 2 eggs, 2 sausage patties, cheese, and Taco Bell hot sauce. He puts it in a bowl, and I reheat, chop up, and eat at my desk. MMMMMMMM. Thanks, honey.

I was going to eat 2 Beddar Cheddars for lunch, but I got a surprise lunch invite from my niece, Marsha. The AUCE Chinese restaurant that we both love is very near my workplace, so I agreed to lunch with her.

I debated if I could do a low carb lunch, or if it was too difficult with the few options that I should just do a cheat meal. I sort of did a blend of both options.

I went to the Mongolian section and made a bowl with chicken, onion, garlic, and a little crab. I asked the cook to use garlic oil – he offered spicy; I said sure. It turned out to be delicious. Unfortunately, the Mongolian counter was at the back of the store, past the crab rangoons and the tempura sushi. Sigh.

So, I sort of did a half and half cheat meal. I had a main course that was low carb, and side dishes that were coated with breading. I do think I’ll get some garlic oil and try to make my own “Mongolian” stir fry at home. It’d be pretty easy, and keto-friendly. Always looking for some fresh ideas for keto recipes.

While I was off galavanting with my niece, Rick was home slaving away over the stove – for me! He made marinara sauce with the low carb tomato sauce and diced tomatoes he found yesterday at Kroger. He also cooked a pound of ground up Italian sausage. He was preparing the ingredients for a new keto-friendly, low-carb lasagna recipe I wanted to try. I thought I’d make it pretty close to my Dad’s traditional recipe, only using spaghetti squash as the lasagna “noodles.”

I saw this idea on several low carb sites, but most of the recipes, although low carb, were too high in carbs for keto. Rick did some investigating while shopping and found that a 14 oz can of Del Monte diced tomatoes with zesty mild green chilis was 7g per can, and Kroger tomato sauce was ZERO net carbs per can. He used 2 cans of each in his recipe, with 2 tbsp of olive oil (og), and various ingredients like garlic, 1/2 cup onion (10g), and 1/2 cup of red wine (4g). The whole recipe is posted here.

After work, I cook a whole large spaghetti squash, gathered the rest of the cheeses and ingredients and assembled a lasagna. Approximately one hour later, we sat down to a delicious bubbly authentic-tasting lasagna meal. At approximately 7.4 grams of carbs per serving, it surpassed my wildest dreams. I am no cook, but Rick’s marinara sauce is really flavorful and added to cheese and pepperoni, this tasted almost like my dad’s traditional recipe!

Here’s a picture of the whole pan…

So, dinner was a hit, and I have lots of servings to warm up during the week. This will definitely be a staple of my keto diet, and I’ll be making it a couple of times a month. I have to recalculate and be sure I didn’t mistake any of the carb counts. For instance, the mozzarella cheese said less than one gram of carbs per serving. Well, if you have many servings, when does that become 1 or even 2?

We each had an Adkins coconut bar for dessert. It was kind of an up and down day in terms of the keto plan, but creating such a keto-friendly pan of lasagna was a real high point of the day.

Day 287: Monday – back to the old grind and trivia night

Total weight loss: 41 pounds

Well, we did it again. We went to the diner for breakfast. It was another nice relaxing outing before starting the workweek, but we do have to stop. It’s a bit extravagant on our budget.

Breakfast – cheese/onion omelet and 4 pieces of bacon

Lunch – once again, breakfast kept me full well into the afternoon. I was sure to drink lots of water, and I had an almond snack around 2.

I left work by 3:30 in order to get more done on the move before trivia started at 6. We unloaded some of Brandon’s things from the truck, but after that, neither of us felt like going over to the house. Instead, I made a list of grocery items for Rick to pick up and I worked on my computer backups and server issues while he grocery shopped.

I’m trying to plan ahead and make some interesting keto recipes. I want to bring back the sense of excitement that I had when I first started the plan. I saw one idea for making a fake lasagna using spaghetti squash. The recipe called for marinara sauce and it was a little steep in the carb grams for keto. Rick checked out tomato sauces and diced tomatoes. He found diced that were net carb zero! and sauce that had 4g of net carbs (1/4 cup, I believe). The plan is for Rick to make a marinara sauce during the day, and I’ll make the squash and layer up some lasagna after work. Fingers crossed that this turns into something edible!

Back to the journal. For lunch, I brought leftover steak and cauliflower mashed. Ended up that I had about 4 bites of each left in the bowl, so I didn’t eat much. I drank another 2 glasses of water.

I didn’t eat again until trivia at Albert’s, where I ordered my traditional grilled chicken club salad with blue cheese. I haven’t been to trivia for a couple of weeks, and I sure missed this salad. My coworker and trivia team member, Jim, ordered a basket of steak fries. Sigh. I LOVE Albert’s steak fries. I decided to ignore the basket and eat my salad, then see if I was still tempted after eating. By the time I finished, his basket was empty. WHEW!

However, there was also a bucket of Halloween candy on the table. At the very end of the game, temptation overcame me and I ate 2 mini peanut butter cups. I’ll sadly check out the carb count now. . . . .

11 grams

Well, I may not have been knocked out of keto (if I’m even back in, after eating the churros on Sunday). I’ll have to use a keto strip later to find out where I stand.

That was it for the day. Oh wait. I lied. I ate an Adkins coconut bar while watching The Good Wife.

I do have to comment on something I’ve noticed this week: my pants are getting baggy! (and I only recently achieved going down to this size). And my rings are loose. How annoying, NOT!  KETO IS GREAT!

Day 286: Sunday at home – tacos

Total weight loss: 41 pounds

We stayed home today. There’s still a bit to do moving out of the sold rental house, but it was a chilly Sunday and we enjoyed taking care of business at home.

Rick and I made separate breakfasts, but ate them together. I grilled some diced onions, added 3 eggs and grated cheese. I microwaved 3 pieces of bacon to go with. The result actually tasted better than a diner breakfast and wasn’t very much trouble to make.

I wasn’t hungry for lunch, and I was busy on the phone chatting with a friend for awhile, then with my son and new daughter-in-law. By the time I was through, it was about 5 pm. I ate some almonds while I worked on some files.

For dinner, we decided to make do with what was left in the fridge. I had a pound of ground round and some low carb tortillas, so I cooked up some tacos, topped with cheese, lettuce and sour cream. They were pretty tasty. It was a big tortilla, so I only ate one.

I had an Adkins chocolate/coconut bar for dessert.

Good info – 6 snacks that are good for you – all keto friendly

I was cleaning out my google chrome bookmarks tonight and found a lot of interesting sites that I had forgotten about. One bookmark was a link to an article about healthy snacks. It explained away a lot of misconceptions about foods like full-fat sour cream (a staple of my diet!) and other snacks. The interesting thing is that ALL of these items are keto-friendly.

Genius Junk Food: 6 Snacks That Are Actually Good For You – lists the following snacks. Read the article from Men’s Health to read the facts about each:

  1. Pork rinds
  2. Alcohol
  3. Beef jerkey
  4. Sour cream
  5. Coconut
  6. Chocolate Bars

I don’t really like pork rinds, but I have eaten the barbecue flavored kind. I also found a comment in a discussion board where one guy said he ate pork rinds dipped in sour cream or guacamole. I may try that.

Day 285: Yummy steak with onion blue cheese sauce

Total weight loss: 41 pounds [I like typing that]

Saturday morning breakfast at the diner – cheese/onion omelet with a side of bacon

We worked on emptying and readying the house we  [finally] sold. We packed and cleaned for a few hours. This stuff seems to multiply. Afterwards, we went to Del Taco. I had the usual macho beef burrito and opened up and ditched the tortilla.

My 2 pounds weight loss yesterday morning buoyed my spirits. I’m sometimes tempted to “reward myself” with some kind of cheat meal, but realized it would be better to save that for when I’m not losing, to perhaps shock my body into responding to the diet. So, I didn’t have a cheat meal, but my compromise was eating 1 1/2 cinnamon churros. I have to admit they were good. Now I will look at the carb count…..egad – 21 carbs per churro. So much for being in ketosis. Sigh. So, I had approximately 32 extra grams of carbs yesterday. Not good.

Oh, another tip: carry a “real” fork with you. I carry one in my purse and it comes in handy when I order things like this burrito, or a burger with no bun. I HATE using a plastic fork, and some of those burgers actually break them.

Dinner was legal and delish. Rick grilled steaks. I made the accompanying blue cheese onion cream sauce and some cauliflower mashed potatoes. Before dinner, I cleaned the house, put the tv/pc back in order (the old hard drive had failed), and generally spruced up the place. While cleaning out the sold house earlier in the day, I had grabbed Brandon and Lindsey’s lamp set, which they aren’t currently using, and I put one on each side of our Ansel Adams print next to the table. It looked warm and elegant, so we ate our gourmet dinner using cloth napkins and each had a glass of cabernet. I had one more glass out on the deck [oh, what the heck? I already ate 30+ carbs of churro earlier – bad attitude, I know].

Dessert was the usual choco/peanut butter low carb treat.

Day 284: Two more pounds (yay!); working towards 50

This week’s weight loss: 2 pounds
Total weight loss: 41 pounds

Wow. I finally hit above the 40 pound mark. Nine more pounds to 50! Keto works.

Yesterday’s food journal:

I was happy it was Friday. We’ve been really busy this week, and I looked forward to the weekend. We went out to breakfast again. I know, it’s pretty extravagant to eat breakfast out each morning, but it’s also a nice, relaxing start to our day. I enjoy my NYT puzzle and Rick reads the paper. I get some “me time” before heading off to work. We also eat pretty cheaply.

Breakfast was the usual: cheese and grilled onion omelet with a side of bacon and topped with sour cream.

Lunch: I sort of skipped lunch. These breakfasts keep me full for a long time. I was working on a deadline project. It needed to be done by 2 pm, so the boss could take it with him on a trip. I had a snack around one o’clock – some chili lime almonds and some small pieces of cheese. By the time I left work at 6, I was famished.

That was something I forgot to blog about – I bought some individually wrapped cheddar cheese portions in a large bag at Costco. I put the whole bag in the fridge at work and always have a low carb snack on hand.

On the way home from work, I decided I’d like to have another of those buffalo grilled chicken salads like I had the day before. Here’s where I found out that I had eaten more carbs on Thursday than I originally thought. Rick wasn’t hungry, so I ordered the salad as a carryout from Big Boy. I ordered the “Buffalo grilled chicken salad” with blue cheese. The server asked, “do you want the grilled chicken or chicken tenders?” Hmm. I did say GRILLED, which is what I had ordered the day before for lunch. I did point out to Rick that the chicken looked like it had some kind of coating, but the menu said it was grilled, so oh well.

Turns out I must have been eating chicken with coating which would have had more carbs. Sigh. I think it would bother me more if I didn’t see the 2 pound weight loss.

Rick built a fire in the yard, and I joined him with a drink made of 3 shots of vodka and some raspberry Sparkling Ice. It was a nice end to a long work week. I also had 2 squares of 70% chocolate with peanut butter.

 

Day 283: A really good salad: Big Boy’s buffalo grilled chicken salad

Total weight loss: 39 pounds

Well, I really enjoyed that early morning breakfast Wednesday, so I made the effort to rise early and try it again. This time, we went to the Senate Coney Island, which is a bustling diner even at 7:30 am. I ordered a cheese omelet, asked them to add grilled onions, and skipped the toast. The side of bacon was enough for me to share with Rick. I topped the egg with sour cream (of course) and called it a meal. The service was fast, the omelet was delish, and the bacon was perfect. No extra hash browns to deal with and I just skipped the toast. We’ll be back.

Lunch was on the run, again. More paperwork and banking to do. This house closing is dragging on, and there are still details to cover and items to move from the house.

chicken-saladWe went to Big Boy. Since this blog is all about honesty, I had a really difficult time deciding NOT to eat carbs. I love BB fish and chips, so that was hurdle one. I was tired, stressed and hungry (too hungry), so my decision making processes were hampered by the need for some comfort food. I had tried the buffalo chicken salad a while back and decided to try that. The spiciness might make me feel like I was having some tasty treat, and the blue cheese dressing that comes with would be creamy and fill that need for comfort.

It was a hit! I was a little worried that I made a wrong choice when I saw that the chicken had some kind of coating on it, but at that point, I was eating it no matter what. The tangy buffalo sauce was subtle on the small slices of chicken and blended well with the blue cheese. It was filling and delicious.

Again, I forgot to take a picture, so here’s one that looks similar. I will definitely be ordering this again soon, so I’ll get an authentic one on my next visit.

I looked up the nutrition information when I got home and it passed muster. Without croutons (which I removed), it’s 10.2 grams of carbs minus 2.3 grams of fiber, for a net of 7.9. That’s not counting the blue cheese dressing, but after a really low carb breakfast, I knew I’d be able to stay under 19 for the day. It also looks like they have similar salads at Chili’s and other restaurants.

Bad afternoon – I worked until 6:30. At 5:30, that damned Halloween candy bowl at work called my name. I ate a peanut butter cup and 9 whoppers (actual circles of candy, not packages).  I have no defense. I do think a salad doesn’t stick with me long enough to ward off the temptations. Whatever. I guess I’ll just have to plan ahead in case I’m tempted again tomorrow – drink a lot of water and eat almonds in the late afternoon?

Dinner – home late again. Rick didn’t feel like cooking, so we stopped to pick up a rotisserie chicken. Again, I was tempted. I had already eaten candy, so how about some macaroni salad on the side? NO NO NO. Rick didn’t buy it, and I made cauliflower mashed potatoes instead. Wonder why this is so difficult lately.

Oh, here’s a tip I figured out in the past few months. I really like the cauliflower mashed potatoes, and I really don’t like cooking very much (in case you didn’t figure that out). I now buy small frozen packages of cauliflower and have about 4 on hand. I use the same recipe as I have posted here, but here are the amounts of the ingredients I use with this size package….

Easy peasy cauliflower mashed potatoes – open one bag of cauliflower, pour in bowl, microwave 5 minutes. Put the cauliflower, 3-4 tbsp of cream cheese (definitely less than half a package), and one tbsp of butter into a food processor. The cauliflower should be steaming hot to melt the cheese easily. Process and eat. One package makes a little more than 2 servings. If Rick doesn’t eat his, it warms up well the next day.

Well, that quick recipe was a life savor, and I avoided the carby macaroni salad. I ate about 6 ounces of chicken with the “caulitatoes.” Dessert was 2 squares of chocolate with natural peanut butter.

Day 282: Back in the saddle again

Total weight loss: 39 pounds

Well, I’m getting back in the swing of things. Here’s yesterday’s recap:

Breakfast – Rick and I went out to a diner! Yes, mid-week, which is highly unusual. We’ve been under a lot of pressure selling our rental house, money leaving our pockets faster than we can make it, working on a few client sites all at once, and then both of us got the flu. usually, I go to bed late, wake up late and shower and fly out the door. On Wednesday morning, I just wanted to relax a bit before rushing off to work.

We went to a diner we hadn’t tried before. The only omelet choices had hash browns and toast with them. They also only had cheese, and I wanted to add grilled onions. I am NOT a morning person, and I had a difficult time conveying what I wanted. The cheese omelet special, add grilled onions. Hash browns also with onions, but to-go (for Rick’s next breakfast). No toast.  Side of crispy bacon. This really perplexed the waitress.

My meal came: a huge plate of cheese and onion omelet, with a giant portion of hash browns and toast and a side of bacon (that was “middling” crispy). SIGH. I ignored the hash browns and toast, and enjoyed the omelet and bacon.

We probably won’t go back. There weren’t a lot of patrons, which is a sign that it isn’t a real popular breakfast spot. It seemed pricy and didn’t have a lot of options. However, my NYT crossword was completely finished in a half hour and I was relaxed and ready to greet the day.

We had some running around and paperwork to attend to on lunch, so I had lunch out, too. This time, we went to Bigg Burger. You know, I’m not a real meat eater, but when you order a burger and the bun is gone, there isn’t much left on the plate. I was really really hungry (breakfast was at 7:30, and by now it was 2:30!). I ordered a TRIPLE cheeseburger, no bun. They have lots of free toppings to choose from, so I chose mayo, grilled onions, and grilled mushrooms. They served up a great-looking presentation and I was really full when done. (where’s the picture? I AM out of the blogging habit – I forgot!). Here’s a simulated picture. LOL. Wait, you KNOW I didn’t eat that bun!

Since I took a long lunch, I didn’t get home from work until late. I was barely hungry after the “pounds” of meat I consumed at lunch, and also didn’t feel like cooking.  I grabbed 4 thin sliced pieces of ham, put about 1 tbsp of cream cheese in the center of each and rolled them up. I tossed some chili lime almonds on the plate and called it a meal.

For dessert, I had 2 squares of 70% chocolate with Smucker’s natural peanut butter on top.

Day 281: Update on progress, 39 pounds off

Total weight loss: 39 pounds

In case you think I have fallen off the keto wagon, I have not. I have simply been overwhelmed by life and far too busy to blog. There is no chance for me to catch up on my daily progress, but here’s a recap:

When last I blogged, it was on the cusp of my son’s wedding. I blogged just before the celebratory dinners began. For the week or so before/after the wedding, I had cheat meals galore. In fact, I was off the plan.

The next week (the end of August), I started afresh. Before going off the keto plan, I had lost 38 pounds. I weighed myself before starting back on the plan, and was sad to see I had gained 4 pounds during my cheat fest. Sigh, back into the routine I went.

I stayed on the plan through September and October. Each week, I saw slow progress: 1.5 pounds down, .5 pounds up, 1 pounds down, .5 pounds up, etc. etc. No consistent loss or huge drops in my weight, but I did have at least one-two cheat meals or days a week (planned, and unplanned, depending on the week).

At my weigh in last Saturday, all the weight I gained in August was gone, plus one pound – total 5 pounds lost in September and 3 weeks of October. WHEW!

As an added bonus, I am in one size smaller in my work slacks. For some reason (the cut of the pants or whatever), I have not been able to get in a smaller size all these months. In jeans, I dropped a size long ago. Well, whatever the reason, the pants fit, so I must not quit. [bad pun, sorry]

There isn’t much to report from the past week. I have no new recipes or food ideas, and my meals have been somewhat boring, so I will begin my daily meal journal with tomorrow’s blog.

Oh, one thing I do have to report: I’ve had a stupendous amount of energy! From dawn til dusk, I’m going going going, and feel great! I guess a nearly 40-pound weight loss can relieve the body of  a lot of stress. I know if I pick up something that weighs 40-50 pounds, I appreciate how heavy that is.  I think it’s time to work more exercise into my routine. I feel very healthy now, and that will speed up weight loss and make me feel more energetic as well.

Goals – I’d like to get back to more inspirational meals. I’m going to spend this weekend investigating new ideas. I’m also thinking about recording my meals in myfitnesspal.com again and getting more regimented in my intake. I have been estimating carbs based on the fact that I’ve been doing it so long. I’d like to see how much leeway I’ve been allowing myself by not recording every meal in a food calculator.