Biggest salad ever!

I'm still here! I haven't quit yet. I've been tracking (albeit slightly creatively on occasion) and exercising consistently.

Today I'm feeling very motivated. The past two days, I went a bit overboard with my eating. I kept thinking that little things here and there wouldn't make a difference (like a muffin with my coffee, some wine with dinner, an impromptu bagel as a morning snack...), but when I sat down and tracked everything, I discovered I had used up ALL of my weekly Weight Watchers points (which don't reset until next Monday). Instead of giving up for the week (or longer), I planned out my meals for today and made a huge salad to bring for lunch. I also brought my french press to work to brew my own coffee instead of buying it. I tend to buy treats whenever I'm at a coffee shop, so I think this will be a big help (and more economical!).

This morning, I talked to my trainer about my nutrition and it made me think more about exactly which foods I'm choosing to eat. On Weight Watchers, you can pretty much eat whatever you want as long as it fits your points. That's what makes the program easy to follow - but it's also one of the potential problems with the program (depending on how you look at it). I'm very proud of the changes I've made to my eating habits over the past few weeks (just the fact that I have been preparing most of my meals, rather than eating out constantly, is huge), but I still have lots of room for improvement. If choosing healthy, filling, whole foods becomes automatic for me, then this lifestyle will truly become sustainable... I hope. :)

Anyway! I have a couple of snazzy lunches to share with you.

From last week:

Red peppers and a wrap! There's hummus in the tiny container.

Today I brought a HUGE lunch to work in my Aladdin collapsible salad set (I know I've mentioned my addiction to fun lunch containers before). I bought it months ago, but didn't use it until today for some strange reason. Here it is all closed up:

And here's what's inside:

I had lots of greens and some broccoli coleslaw with chicken, cheddar cheese, corn chips, salsa, and some guacamole. This salad was SUPER filling. The container was a bit cumbersome to carry TO work, but after lunch all the containers collapsed to a very manageable size.

I am exhausted so I think I will head to bed. I have plans for an early-morning workout! Ta!

My First Week

Hello! This post is arriving much later than I'd hoped. My apologies!

I finished my first week of classes on Friday. It was a total success! I liked my profs, and my classmates were all very friendly, too. I do think this year will be a lot of work though (which I was expecting!).

I've taken a few photos around my picturesque campus:

We have a lake on our campus!


And a community garden:


I've seen deer 3 times on my way to school. Finally, yesterday, I had my camera with me! The building in the background is the one that I have all of my classes in.



In between schoolwork , I managed to track 6/7 days last week and I fulfilled my goal of exercising once.

Unfortunately, the school gym leaves a lot to be desired. It's a small room of cardio machines in a basement. The machines have a 20-minute limit (which will only be an issue if the gym gets crowded, which I imagine it will, as it's not very big). I went with a new friend from school, and we decided to forgo the weights (which were in a separate room occupied by intimidating male jock types).

I've also been spending time with my blogging & weight-watching friend Tiffany! On Saturday, we went out to dinner and a movie. It was so great chatting with her about motivation and strategy, and she's inspired me to really get on track while I'm here in Thunder Bay. It was great that I tracked 6/7 days last week, but when I found out how amazing she's been doing (5 weeks straight and counting!), I decided I really want to commit to tracking everything. If I can track every day from now until my practicum begins, that would be 8 whole weeks!

Tiffany also lent me the use of a scale while I'm here. I had originally decided to not weigh myself until I'm back home, but I think I will go back to weekly weigh-ins to measure my progress. I weighed in yesterday morning, and the number was lower than I anticipated! I'm eager to see where I'll be next week if I keep up the tracking and exercising.

Having Tiffany around is also great because I have a workout buddy! I got a free one week trial membership at her gym. We went yesterday and today (I'm super sore, by the way), and have plans to go at least once or twice more this week (including a possible 6 am class!).

Here I am, sweaty and sore after this morning's 20/20/20 class (which included step, strength, and abs).


All in all, I'm feeling super motivated and really excited at the progress I can make while I'm here. Hopefully the busy-ness of school doesn't get in the way too much!

I will leave you with an unattractive food photo. I had a delicious salad for lunch.


It consisted of greens, perfectly hardboiled eggs (if I do say so myself), sunflower seeds, cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices, and honey dijon dressing. Yum!

Have a great week all!

Adventures in the Kitchen

On Tuesday, I made not one, but two brand new recipes (simultaneously, no less)!

Firstly, I made the No Weigh, Jose! Mexican Lasagna from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry. It was AMAZING! It consists of layers of ground chicken and black beans, tomato-ey goodness, cheese, and tortillas. Here it is about to go into the oven:

While it was baking, I started mixing together the ingredients for Mini Shrimp Rolls from Green Lite Bites. In the bowl are shrimp, spinach, green onions, ginger, garlic, and shredded carrots.

Then, I attempted wrapping the won ton wrappers:

As you can see, they did not want to stay shut.

The recipe calls for 16 wrappers, but I used 18 and still had some filling leftover. I restuffed some of my early attempts, and this motley crew is what I ended up with:

Meanwhile, my lasagna was baking away (remember??)! Here it is, fresh out of the oven (note the won ton stuffing going on in the background):

The lasagna was TO DIE FOR!

The shrimp rolls turned out okay, too:

I discovered I liked them better cold... but the best part about them... I crunched the numbers... and one roll is ZERO points. 3 rolls = 1 point, 6 rolls = 3 points, and 9 (half the recipe the way I made it) = 4 points.

I've been a happy Katie with some yummy leftovers (the shrimp rolls did not last too long, though)!

The cooking extravaganza did claim some casualties, however:

The band-aids are because I "grated" two of my fingers while grating cheese (for the lasagna) and carrots (for the shrimp rolls)... and that poor plastic lid was sitting on the stove whilst it preheated to 375 degrees. (Actually, if you look at all the pictures of the lasagna from this post - you can see the lid sitting on the stove before the lasagna goes in the oven... then when the lasagna is out of the oven, you can see the remains on the burner. The poor lid never saw it coming!)

The things we go through for our health!

And this is what I just ate for dinner, along with some lentil curry:

That is a HUGE bowl, people. I'm not always a salad person, but I wanna be, I swear. I'm usually okay as long as I pile on enough avocado. Today, I had a stroke of genius and threw in some corn! It was amazing! I ate the whooooooole thing (yay for volume food)! Also, it took me like 30 minutes to conquer... good way to preoccupy myself from grabbing other, unhealthy treats!

What do you like in your salads? Have you ever gotten a bit overzealous with the cheese grater, like I did?