Category Archives: keto lasagna

Day 294: Perfect keto day

Total weight loss: 41 1/2 pounds

Monday morning and I started out with an egg/sausage/cheese breakfast bowl lovingly made by my hubby.

Lunch was leftover keto-friendly lasagna.

After work, we went over to the sold house – again – to do ONE MORE load of last minute “junk” from the garage. Rick swept the garage floor, and he just needs to go back tomorrow morning to get about 4 boxes and some leaf bags (filled with leaves). I’ll be soooo sooo glad when we finally close on this house.

 

Dinner was at Albert’s on the Alley, since it’s trivia night. I didn’t get the delicious french fries. sigh. I didn’t eat any of Jo’s pizza. I did get the healthy keto-friendly grilled chicken salad with blue cheese dressing. The salad was just packed with yummy layers of ingredients. It took me more than 1/2 hour to eat it and it hit the spot. I ate one steak fry, courtesy of my trivia pal and coworker, Jim.

Before bed, I read a little and had two 72% chocolate pieces. Daylight saving time plus lots of activity has made us both pretty tired. I’m usually up until 1 am, but last night, we both hit the hay at 9! I was starting to get hungry again, so I think I dodged a bullet by just going to bed.

Day 292: Busy Saturday – stayed on track

Today’s weight loss: 1 pound

Total weight loss: 41 1/2 pounds

Today, I did something a little different. I reweighed myself. I gained a 1/2 a pound at yesterday’s weigh in, and I wasn’t terribly upset about it. However, last night I was reading a motivational article for business owners that says one should chart small victories and I decided to reweigh this morning to see if yesterday’s gain was an anomaly. This morning I weighed one pound less than yesterday, for a net loss of 1/2 a pound since last week.

That’s more like it! Only 8.5 pounds to reach the 50 pound goal!

Saturday breakfast at the diner – cheese and onion omelet with 4 pieces of crispy bacon

We stayed inside and worked on websites all day. We have 3 currently in the works. I updated the product information for the ecart client, while Rick worked on the layout for a church and a hair salon. It was a relaxed day and we both really enjoy working on our business.

I paused for lunch around 3pm – leftover keto lasagna (yes, there is still some left! and it’s as good as ever)

Dinner – I wasn’t very hungry after my late afternoon lunch, so I just had a handful of chili lime almonds and 2 squares of 70% chocolate while watching a movie.

Day 290: Successes and failures…and lessons learned

Total weight loss: 41 pounds

Breakfast – skipped

I took my breakfast bowl to work, but our morning meeting went so long that I wasn’t hungry for breakfast by the time we got out. My friend Wally called unexpectedly and invited me to lunch. I decided to wait to eat until then.

Lunch – Big Boy buffalo grilled chicken salad with bleu cheese dressing. It was delicious, as usual – and Wally treated. Thanks, friend. Good food, good conversation.

Snack – Rick and I decided to go to a 5:00 movie: Cloud Atlas. I knew I wouldn’t make it until after it was over to eat dinner, and I didn’t want to show up at the theater hungry and get tempted to buy something bad at the snack bar. (I am learning to plan ahead.) I was already getting hungry, since the salad for lunch was all I had eaten for the day. Around 4, I heated a leftover portion of lasagna and ate that as a preventative measure. It was really tasty. Most “pasta” dishes seem to taste better when reheated since all the flavors have time to blend.

Movie – 2 sips of Rick’s diet Coke. Very determined NOT to buy concession food

After movie dinner – We didn’t eat out. When I got home, I heated another portion of lasagna. I have no problem repeating meals when I like them.

I congratulated myself on my restraint. I had a perfect keto day.

Then, an hour before bed, I decided to read and have a choco/peanut butter low carb snack.

I went in to the kitchen to get some 70% chocolate and noticed that Rick had eaten one package of the Hostess cupcakes we had purchased for the grandkids. How are we supposed to give only ONE grandchild a pack of cupcakes? Boy, they sure looked good. They were orange frosted. I could just taste the tangy citrus flavor of the frosting and the creamy center. So I did. I ate two Hostess cupcakes.

BLECK. I was SOOOO close to going to bed. Why didn’t I just close my eyes and ignore them? They were a total of 60 grams of carbs. I know I was well under 80 carbs for the day, which is probably fine on a low-carb diet, but for keto, I’m sure I knocked myself out of ketogenesis, and for no good reason. They were just okay tasting, nothing to get excited about.

Lessons learned:

  1. I am not perfect.
  2. I should probably fill up more on water.
  3. Don’t skip breakfast.
  4. I probably did not eat enough during the day, and allowed myself to be too tempted.
  5. NEVER have junk food in the house.

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.