Cookin' (and Lookin') Good!

I am a proud Weight Watcher! I wore my name tag from Saturday's meeting all the way home (under my jacket...):

Do you ever forget that you live alone and buy enough groceries throughout the week to feed a small army? I do. Often. So I've been doing some cooking & baking (which means I pick recipes that necessitate me picking up a few MORE groceries, and the cycle continues...). Here are some of my eats from the past couple of days:

Loaf Potion # 9 from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry! It has cranberries, walnuts, carrots, and zucchini in it. SO DELICIOUS!

I made it a double-loaf day with some banana bread.

(I know, I know... it doesn't really look like banana bread. It's a weird recipe, I think). The recipe is from The Duke Diet. I think the best part is the brown sugar and walnuts on top.

I brought some of each loaf to my parents & my sister and froze some more. As I mentioned above, I live alone (and as much as I'd like to, I probably shouldn't eat vast quantities of baked goods in short periods of time).

One of my impulse grocery buys was some fat-free ham. I hemmed and hawed over the high sodium content, but decided to treat myself (in small portions). And so the past couple of mornings I've been enjoying a healthified egg mcmuffin for breakie (with egg whites, light cheddar cheese, and a whole wheat english muffin! And the ham, of course).

And today's lunch creation:

My first time making cream of broccoli soup! It was pretty good. I got to use my immersion blender, which is always a good time. :)

I had it with some black beans, corn, and cheese on a tortilla (with greek yogourt)!

Tonight: pad thai! Seriously! More cooking!

I've also already gotten TWO workouts out of the way this week! Yesterday I went for an awesome treadmill run. I reached NEW SPEEDS (I think). I definitely had some (short) intervals that were around level 6.5. I covered 2.75 miles in 30 minutes. I don't think I've ever run that much before in that time period! It felt great!

This morning I started my day with the Intermediate workout from my Booty Camp dvd. Does anyone else find it easier than the Beginner workout, or am I just getting stronger? ;)

In other news, apparently I look great:

• Last week, one of my students from last semester noticed I'd lost weight.
• Today, I went to a coffee shop where I like to work sometimes, and the girl working there said I look really good and I should keep doing whatever I'm doing! I didn't even know she knew who I was!

I'm used to people who haven't seen me in a couple of years telling me I look different, but I'm not used to people who only know the "new me" noticing new changes (does that sentence make sense?).

I haven't lost much weight in the past couple of months, but I think my body composition has changed (thanks to Booty Camp!) and that must be what they're noticing. Yay! My clothes are fitting pretty well.

I have a cockeyed idea that I'm going to get up at 5 am tomorrow to squeeze a workout in before work... yeah, wish me luck with that. (Don't worry, if I can't do it, I'll work out sometime in the afternoon instead).

Have a nice night, all!