Veggie scrambled eggs with cheddar, hot sauce and ketchup, and a delicious juicy pear

I’ve also been eating lots of yummy whole grain pancakes.

Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes

I can post the recipe if anyone is interested…just leave me a comment!

Eating hasn’t been great, most of the time I eat healthy, balanced meals, but then on the weekend we’ll go out for dinner or lunch a couple times, which I feel throws the whole thing off. I think 1 cheat meal/week is acceptable, but we often go over that. And the worst part is that I KNOW it’s not good, but I feel like I can’t help myself. This is probably why I haven’t been losing as much weight as I’d like, I just need to get back into the swing of things.I need to start being more strict with myself.

Enough talking, on to some pictures. These were taken with my new camera I got for christmas. A nikon D3000! I love it, but still need to figure out how to use all the settings etc.

Apple-Banana Bread

Banana oats with granola and natural peanut butter

Open-faced veggie burger with sweet potato fries

New catten, Pixie!

I have more pictures to upload but that will have to wait until later tonight or tomorrow. I promise I’ll try to post more often though!

Every time I hear that song it makes me think about what I’ve done this year. I was thinking about it in the car today, and I decided it would make a good blog post.

What I’ve Done this Year

• Finished university
• Got my Bachelors of Science in Nursing
• Started nursing at the hospital
• Moved into my own apartment
• Bought RRSPs
• Started paying into my pension plan
• Went to New York City
• Met some absolutely wonderful people
• Adopted Nori and Soba, the chinchillas
• Won a Youthline Award for Outstanding Contribution to Social and Health Services
• Began to love working on the floor I work on
• Started working out with a personal trainer
• Started this blog!
• Lost close to 30lbs in 3 months
• Bought our first Christmas tree

What I’m Going to do Next Year

• Lost 60+ more lbs
• Travel! Hopefully at least 1 big trip (San Francisco!)
• Stretch after every workout
• Consider getting a second job
• Learn how to use my new camera
• Keep the apartment neater
• Blog more often

Pictures I Took this Year

Times Square

Central Park

What have YOU done this year, and what do you hope to accomplish in the coming year?

I had a really good lunch today, it was really simple, but delicious and satisfying. I made a sandwich with Vermont maple ham, cheddar cheese, honey mustard and spinach, on a thin bun, and had a lunch dessert. I love lunch dessert!

A yogurt parfait! Fat free strawberry yogurt, raspberries, blackberries, all layered with a bit of Kashi Go Lean cereal, for crunch. So light and delicious! I forgot to take a picture of my sandwich, but it was fairly straight forward.

Who wants to see the most exciting part of my day?? You? ok fine, you convinced me.

Can you see it? It’s a tiny little green banana, lost in the middle of the big yellow bananas. It caught my eye from across the room this morning, and make me sooo excited. Look how cute it is!!

I also made delicious cookies today. They’re very rich and sweet, but they taste like the chewy edges on brownies (which is the best part, in my opinion!).

Chocolate Featherweight Cookies

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 ½ cups powdered sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1  tbsp pure vanilla extract
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup cocoa nibs
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, or a silicone baking mat (what I used).

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the cocoa powder, sugar, and salt. Make sure there are no lumps.

Combine the vanilla and egg whites in a measuring cup, and slowly add them to the cocoa mixture, whisking as you go. After adding all the wet ingredients, keep mixing until your batter is smooth and glossy. Add extra ingredients, such as chocolate chips, cocoa nibs and pecans (or use whatever other nuts you’d like).

Using an ice cream scoop or measuring spoon, place 5 mounds of batter (about 2tbsp each) about 3 inches apart on the baking sheet. The batter will spread. Bake the cookies until thin cracks appear on the surface, about 14-17 minutes. Remove them from the oven, and cool them completely on a rack. When they are cool, peel them gently from the parchment paper or baking mat. Repeat the process with the remaining batter. Enjoy!

Makes 12-13 cookies

Sorry the picture is kind of dark, the sun had already set by the time I took the pictures. They’re seriously gorgeous cookies though, so shiny! Definitely not part of the diet plan, but I only had 2!

Tomorrow I’m going to hit the gym in the morning (hopefully I can drag my butt out of bed at a reasonable time), come home and get changed/make my hair presentable, go pick up Kail, run some errands, make some foods for our snacky time,  pick Lyndsey up from work, and then we’re having a girls night of drinking and going out. I haven’t actually decided if I’m going to drink or not, all those extra calories…plus I’m not a big drinker to start with. I like to be in control too much I think. I guess we’ll wait and see tomorrow!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!!

Today I woke up nice and early! I really love waking up early, I’m not sure why but I seem to be more productive and the day seems so much longer when I wake up earlier, even if it’s just an hour earlier. I don’t feel rushed, I can check my email/read all the blogs I follow before even getting out of bed. So after I got showered and dressed, I decided I need a nice warm bowl of oatmeal.

I melted half a banana in a bowl in the microwave, added oats and skim milk, microwaved again until done, then topped it with the other half of the banana, sliced, a tbsp of natural peanut butter, and a tbsp mini dark chocolate chips. Mmmm it was really good!

I actually ate ALOT today. I did 45 mins of elliptical and some ab stuff at the gym, and it made me really hungry. After the gym I had some almonds and half of a protein bar, while I ran some errands. I needed new pants, apparently the ones I was wearing were 3 sizes too big. oops!

When I got home from shopping, I was starving! I knew I had an Amy’s Organic bean burrito in the freezer, calling my name. So that’s what I had, with salsa and a bit of cottage cheese on the side.

Yeah, it’s pretty ugly-looking, but it did the trick! Then later in the afternoon, I had a whole wheat english muffin with a couple slices of maple ham and spinach, because Lyndsey was working late, therefore dinner would be late. Well it turns out Lyndsey ended up picking up an extra 4 hours of work (overtime!!), so I had to pick something up for dinner to bring her, and ended up grabbing something for myself too. We had Arby’s and it totally wasn’t worth it, well, at least for me. I had an Jr Roast Beef sandwich, which was totally gross and made me feel ill, and 3 jalapeno poppers (my weakness, love them!). For the same amount of calories I could have had such a GOOD dinner at home. Oh well, could have been worse I guess, and I learnt my lesson.

Also, lately my “dessert” has been a single square of deliciously dark chocolate. I’m really loving this kind right now, it’s so delicious.

It has little grains of salt in embedded in it. So good, and fairly guilt free. I only even have 1 square, which is only 1/3 of a portion.

Oh, I guess I should write a little something about personal training/weight etc for this week. I thought training was so much better now that carbs are back in my life, so much more enjoyable (yes, really!). I ended up gaining 2 lbs this week, but it was all water weight. This also happened to be that “special” week, if you know what I mean, so I wasn’t too worried about it. I feel better about our diet now, so I’m not worried about gaining a couple extra lbs for one week.

P.s. Loving all the comments everyone! I <3 you all!!

I really believe that if your body is craving something, you should be able to eat it…within reason. If you want chocolate, have chocolate! But make it a couple squares of a really good, dark chocolate. A few squares of nice dark chocolate is so much more satisfying than a whole crappy chocolate bar! Depriving yourself is not the way to go, and neither is dieting. It’s really not sustainable in the long run (not that we were planning on doing this forever anyways), and to be honest, it’s too much work! Being healthy shouldn’t be about counting every single thing, it should be about eating healthy, wholesome foods, exercising and being active.

So back to healthy eating we go. We’re going to try and keep our carbs a bit lower though, and we’re only going to eat nice complex carbs. Hopefully we stop being so darn tired soon, and our strength comes back soon. I’m NOT looking forward to the weight gain that resuming carbs is sure to bring though.

So farewell diet, you provided some nice results, but all in all, weren’t worth it! I didn’t take any pictures today, and I’m working all weekend, so blogging will be back on schedule Monday. Have a great weekend everyone!

Personal training today was good, as usual . I felt kind of weak though, probably from losing a bit of muscle, and also my lack of glycogen stores in my body, from not eating any carbs. I managed to get through it alright though. I also realized that we did our three days of personal training at the beginning of last week (monday, tuesday, wednesday), and then this week, we’re doing wednesday, thursday, friday, so technically it’s been a whole week between training sessions!

Food was good today. For dinner we had salmon cakes, over salad. It was really good!

Salmon Cakes

How about a recipe?

Low Carb Salmon Cakes

makes 6 salmon cakes

• 2 cans of “tuna style” salmon, or regular canned salmon, deboned and drained
• 3tbsp ground flax
• 2 scallions, thinly chopped
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• 1/4 cup egg whites
• 1 tsp hot sauce of choice
• seasonings of choice (parlsey, dill, garlic, etc)
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Mix all ingredients in a medium sized bowl
2. Form into patties (about 2″aross), squeezing out excess moisture.
3. Fry in oil of choice (I used EVOO) over medium heat until browned on both sides
4. Enjoy!

After the gym today, we went out and bought stockings and a tree skirt. Pictures? ok!

Isn’t it cute? I love it! It’s purple, black and silver, in case you can’t tell. I love christmas! I’m off to make some more candy cane lane tea <3

Last week Lyndsey and I hit a bit of a “plateau” in our weight loss, so we decided to alter our eating habits. Hoping to jump out of the plateau and get our weightloss moving along again, we’re taking a couple weeks to try out a bit of a controversial diet. I’m not normally one for “dieting” and believe more in healthy eating and healthy living…but we decided to try it out. It’s a low carb, high protein, high (healthy) fat diet, similar to Atkins but better for people who lift weights etc (which we do). We’re not planning on doing this diet long-term whatsoever, dieting is NOT a way to live, and I wouldn’t be able to do it for the rest of my life. So we plan on sticking with this for a couple weeks, see if it gets us out of our plateau, and then continue on with our “regular” way of eating.

So basically I haven’t posted because what I’ve been eating has been very very boring. Mostly eggs and egg whites, chicken, tuna/salmon, a little bit of beef on occasion (not a fan), olive oil, cheese, nuts, and lots and lots of low carb veggies (broccoli, spinach, peppers, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, zucchini, etc). No grains whatsoever and no fruit. I kind of hate it, so hopefully it helps out in the long run. Here are a couple things I’ve eaten.

Cheesy scrambled eggs with veggies, spinach and hot sauce!

Roasted chicken with sauteed onions and peppers, arichoke asiago dip, on a lettuce “wrap”.

While Christmas shopping today (Yay Christmas!!), I bought myself some Candy Cane Lane green tea. Drinking it right now, it’s so good. Tastes exactly like Christmas. I’m drinking it in my mug, which looks like a sock. See:

I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things, taking pictures if I eat something remotely appetizing. Mostly it looks like a chicken breast, on a plate, with broccoli and brussel sprouts. I’m sure you guys can imagine what that looks like .

Personal training tomorrow, it will have been exactly one week since our last session and since beginning this “diet”, so we’ll see what happens!

Oh, ps, here’s picture of my cat, being cute (and bad) as usual (she’s in the sleeve of a coat!).

How long have you and lyndsey been doing this?

We bought a 6-pack of half hour personal training sessions when we joined the gym in late July, slacked off for a month, and did our 6 training sessions started at the end of august. They were only introductory sessions, and didn’t really focus on any one thing in particular, just general orientation type sessions. We really enjoyed personal training and LOVED our trainer, so we decided to buy ALOT more “real” personal training sessions. 3 per week for the next 11 months, or around 120 sessions. We officially started personal training and eating better September 24th, 2009. So it’s been around 7 weeks so far!

How do you guys measure whether or not you’re losing fat and gaining muscle ?

We get weighed weekly using a body composition scale. It measures weight, BMI, BMR, amount of body fat, muscle mass, bone mass, and hydration level. It’s pretty neat, and although I realize it’s not 100% accurate, it’s good for comparing on a weekly basis. It looks like this (not my picture, thanks google!):

How many lbs have you lost to date?

As of thursday, I’ve  lose a total of 15lbs so far. I’ve also increased my muscle mass by around 10lbs, so I guess I’ve lost around 25lbs of fat overall.

What inspired you guys to do this so thoroughly?

Well, I just got tired of being fat and unhealthy, sounds pretty brutal but it’s the truth!

Some people choose to tackle exercise first, getting that under control before changing their nutritional habits, or vice versa. But personally, I felt like I needed to give it my all, and just do everything cold turkey, or else it woudln’t work for me. I didn’t feel like exercising without eating properly made very much sense, especially for what we’re trying to accomplish.

We’re nowhere near 100% healthy, and I doubt we ever will be, we cheat sometimes, and sometimes we don’t feel like going to the gym, but I feel as if we’ve done a 100% turn around from where we were 2 months ago, and I’m happy with that!

Does anyone else have any questions? Don’t be shy!!

Favourite breakfast this week:

1 cup of Kashi Go Lean cereal, 1/4 cup cinnamon pecan granola, 1 tbsp ground flax, 2 tsp powdered peanut butter, 1% milk (cannot handle skim milk, and I’m all out of soy!). Delicious! I also take a bunch of vitamins and supplements with my meals, see:

I take fish oil (x3), CLA (x3), a multivitamin, and vitamin C everyday. They’re HUGE pills!

We did have a really good breakfast one day!

Scrambled eggs with green peppers, green onions, fat free cheese, and topped with salsa! Served with a piece of whole wheat bread with laughing cow cheese and grapes. The eggs were so good, creamy and flavorful.

Lyndsey and I had a bit of a bad weekend food-wise. Friday night we decided to go to the movies, and out for indian food first. Indian food is so so delicious, which causes me to overeat. At least I overate on good stuff, like chicken and chickpeas? Then saturday night, we went out for a fail dinner at Casey’s with my sister and friend. We started off by sharing a HUGE plate of delicious nachos (I looked at the calorie count after…not a good idea), and I had a steak and shrimp for dinner. I only ate about 1/4 of the steak, 2 grilled shrimp, some (cold) zucchini, and the entire baked potato (best part of the meal!). Lyndsey ordered some nasty ass Pad thai that tasted and smelled like fish and dirty gym socks. So she returned it for some mediocre pesto shrimp pasta. Overall, wasn’t worth the calories.

This week we’ve been mostly eating quick stuff. We had store-bought BBQ chicken one night, with baked sweet potatoes and broccoli, soup and fat-free hotdogs another night, and a really gross dinner tonight. We had “pasta” with low-fat meatballs and sauce. The “pasta” was tofu shiritaki  angel hair noodles. They’re noodles made from blending the root of a type of yam and tofu together.

They have a very strange texture, very chewy and a bit slimy, but they only have 40 calories and 2g of carbs, which is amazing!  We had them before and thought they were tolerable, but this time, not so much. I kept gagging when trying to eat them, so I just ate the meatballs. I also had a small chocolate milk while driving Lyndsey to work.

The weigh-in this week reflected our lousy weekend. I didn’t lose any weight. Well, I guess I did, I lost 1lb of fat, but also gained 1lb of muscle, so the number stayed the same on the scale. We also did measurements and I went down everywhere! Even my wrists, strange!