Sunday, March 21, 2010

Easy vs. Hard

I had my weigh-in yesterday morning.

Drumroll, please.......

Down 1.4! *sigh of relief*

I am SO GLAD that I went hardcore for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week (rather than give up because I'd already "ruined" it) because I couldn't have handled seeing another gain. I could focus on the fact that I haven't lost the 4.2 pounds I gained last week, or that I'm only down 1.8 pounds overall since late December, but I won't! I will focus on the fact that I am back on track and feeling really good. :)

Yesterday, I had my parents over for dinner and decided to try the chicken parmesan recipe from last month's Clean Eating magazine (my first--but not my last--time buying it!). I decided to recreate one of my favourite restaurant meals (from the grad pub at my university): a chicken parm wrap!

But, alas, my grocery store did not carry panko bread crumbs. So I grabbed some Fibre 1 cereal instead, remembering that Hungry Girl uses it to coat things all the time. I kind of combined her recipe with the Clean Eating one (but it was mostly hers), and ended up with this:


And then I grilled the wraps on my George Foreman (which I've never done before, but clearly will be doing ALL THE TIME now):


The verdict? They were... fine. I don't know if I love the Fibre 1 as a coating (it sure kept the Points low, though! I calculated half a wrap to be 4 points). The other problem was the tomato sauce (which was mainly from the Clean Eating recipe). It just wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.

Today though, I made a wrap from leftovers, and added in some sliced tomato, and it was pretty great.

To go with the wraps, I made some potato wedge fries (the wedge recipe is after the sushi recipe in the link) from Rose Reisman's The Complete Light Kitchen.


They turned out really well. The last time I made them (just for myself), I had planned on having leftovers... I ended up eating them ALL. So I am very pleased to say that last night's leftovers are still in a container in my fridge! I managed to keep myself from eating EVERY LAST WEDGE like I usually do!

The past few days have been "easy" days for me. I haven't had many food cravings, my willpower has been strong (although I haven't been faced with eating out), and I've been paying attention to my hunger signals.

For example: last night, I made these chocolate ricotta rolls for dessert.

I didn't love them (because of the ricotta... I'm not a huge fan of the texture), so even though I had planned for them, I didn't finish them. I still have a couple in my fridge. I decided it wasn't worth it to eat them. I wasn't hungry, and they didn't taste that good. Usually, I would eat them anyway (hey, I'd already made the decision to eat them, right?), but I re-evaluated while eating, and didn't want them anymore.

(I plan on using won ton wrappers a lot in my future though...)

Have you noticed that sometimes (er... often) eating well and exercising is the HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD and sometimes it's like "Um, why do I ever have a problem with this? Why did I get overweight? Eating healthy feels good and it's easy and I don't even NEED all of my points to get through the day!"

Luckily, today is an easy day... but the past little while, I've had a lot of hard days (and I know I will again). Such is life, I suppose. For now, I'll enjoy the easy days while they last. :)

6 comments:

Ellen said...

The chicken looked good and the chocolate ricotta rolls sound yummy - kind of like cannolis.

Congratulations on your weight loss, Katie. 1.4 is a good loss. I'd be happy with the same at my Tuesday weigh-in.

Enz said...

The chocolate ricotta rolls DO sound delicious, would you share the recipe?

I use Fibre 1 as well but do 1/2 whole wheat breadcrumbs (or sometimes oatmeal) and 1/2 the Fibre 1, the taste and texture are so much better.

Katie said...

Thanks for the tip, Enz! I'll definitely try that next time.

I got the chocolate ricotta roll recipe from Green Lite Bites:

http://greenlitebites.com/2009/01/08/chocolate-ricotta-rolls/

There are all kinds of yummy won ton wrapper desserts on there I will be trying... I like the idea that I can just make a few, so I won't go overboard.

Diana said...

I sgree with you about the Fibre One for a coating on chicken. I tried it once too. Maybe it was the sweetness or something, but I didn't like it very much.

Hard days, easy days. Gosh, me too. Some days it's just like this is the easiest thing in the world, and food isn't that important. Other days I think I'm going to die if I don't get more to eat.

I hear it does get easier, I'm just not there yet! Although I suspect there'll still be the hard days too, we'll just be stronger by then (lots of practice on how to deal with them).

Great job on the loss. You're doing great!

Katie said...

Thanks, Diana!

I think it WAS the sweetness that I didn't like about the Fibre 1!

Anonymous said...

Absolutely on the hard days & easy days thing! Some days it all clicks and I wonder why it so hard the other days!