5K Saturday and Pizza Revenge

Hope everyone is having a good Saturday! I woke up a little slow; my cold seems to have surfaced. It's mild, but I was still slow going. My first thought was no way am I exercising today, but as I got up and moving around, I realized that I didn't feel as badly as I thought. I donned the sneakers and headed to the treadmill for another 5k Saturday! This was my second time and I was able to run without stopping again! I even beat my time from last week by 3 min.; I went from 61 min. to 58 min! I felt really good afterward. Depending on what I have going on, I may try it again tomorrow morning!



After my run, I had some breakfast of 3/4 c. Puffins, 1/2 c. high fiber cereal, 4 sliced strawberries and 1 c. Soy Slender...









I was craving lots of fruit today and I actually decided on what fruit I wanted before what I would have for the main part of my lunch! I went with a ham wrap with lettuce and tomato, orange slices, grapes and 1/2 oz. Kettle Baked Potato Chips. An altogether yummy 5 POINT lunch...


My peanut butter cravings surfaced again and I also wanted some yogurt for a snack, so I put them together. This was an interesting combo! I used 1/2 c. plain yogurt and mixed it with my BFF - PB2 to make peanut butter yogurt! Sounds weird, right? It was good, though. To make it even better, I crumbled a Weight Watchers Peanut Butter Cookie over the top...

Wow, 3 POINTS of PB heaven!

The husband and daughters devised an evil plot to get their pizza that I deprived them of last night! It was decided that we should go out for dinner and of course, they chose Bertucci's, which is an incredible brick oven pizzeria and Italian restaurant! This place is hard to be in; even though it is a chain -type restaurant, everything is so delicious. But, the item that is the toughest for me is this...

These dough ball rolls are right up there with brownies in the temptation department! They are served with a dish of flavored olive oil for dipping! Evil, evil, evil!!!!! So, I tried to be a good Weight Watcher and moved the rolls and the dipping oil to the other end of the table. I allowed myself one of these rolls, but I waited until the server brought my salad with fat free Chianti dressing until I dug into this doughy goodness...

Along with my salad, I ordered a cup of the Tuscan Minestrone Soup which was delicious and warmed my stomach on this cold, cold night...

I did break off another bite of roll, but didn't eat any of the pizza that was swirling around me! Whew, glad that we got out of there before any damage was done! It's a little rough going out to eat, especially when I knew that I used most of my Weekly Allowance POINTS yesterday on that mindless after lunch snacking. Overall, I was happy with my choices tonight. I have to understand that everything I ate was delicious AND good for me, even if it wasn't what I would have eaten "in the old days" (i.e. giant calzones, heavy pasta dishes, way more than one roll!). As a matter of fact, I commented to the husband on the ride home, that I couldn't imagine eating or ordering the menu items that I used to when we went there. I could almost remember the "after feeling". You know, like that stuffed and lethargic just want to lie down feeling. Again, I acknowledged my progress in this journey of trying to eat healthy! Cool!

When we got home, we played a little Wii bowling and tennis, then I had some dessert. It got away from me last night, but no way can I go 2 nights without some!!! I continued on with my peanut butter craving and had my usual dessert, Deep Chocolate Vitatop with PB2/Fluff icing. This was the last of my PB2 (sniff, sniff), but I have some on order. Can't live without the stuff, now...

The husband brought the remainder of the daughters' pizza home and one of those doughy devils home. I am using Angie's trick right now of imagining that it fell in the toilet!!! LOL! Hey, we gotta do what we gotta do to stay outta trouble!

Hope you're all staying out of trouble, too! I know, I'm NO FUN...

A Sweet Experiment

Rain, rain, go away.... But, it didn't. It was a downpour all day ! I did not want to go anywhere this morning. I'm not usually put off by some rain (although some may say I would melt- he he), but I wasn't in the mood to battle it. So I stayed in and played around in the kitchen! It started with breakfast. I wanted an omelette, but was running low in the veggie department. I scrounged around the fridge and found this in the waaaaaay back...



I forgot about this Red Pepper Spread with Eggplant and Garlic from Trader Joes's. I decided to put this in my omelette with 1/2 of a Laughing Cow Light Cheese Wedge. Wow, what a great combo! The spread is 15 cal. for 1 tbsp. and it is really tasty paired with the cheese. I had an Arnold Sandwich Thin spread with the other 1/2 of Laughing Cow on the side. Delicious and filling; all for 3 Points...

Lunchtime was the start of playtime. I really wanted sweet potatoes for some reason. Maybe I need some vitamin A or beta carotene! I have been toying with the idea of making sweet potato chips, but I haven't found a way to make my sweet potato fries crispy, so I wasn't holding out much hope for the chips version. I cut my potato as thin as possible with my really old plastic mandoline slicer and laid them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I cooked them in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes. They were extremely tasty, however, I had to discard quite a few of them because they were burned. The remaining "chips" were not chippy, more like - chewy. This has been the problem; to get them crisp, they have to be burned! Eeewww. There had to be a better way, I thought. While I pondered this very pressing question, I ate the rest of my lunch which was a ham wrap and a sliced apple...

I felt very healthy after eating this! Lots of color; veg and fruit on the plate. Weight Watchers would be so proud of me and this "filling foods" lunch for 5 Points!

After lunch, there was a ding dong at the door and to my surprise, it was a package for me from Kristi over at Healthy Living ! Look at this stash of awesome Ghiradelli Chocolates and the nice note she sent me...

Thanks, Kristi!

As much as I wanted to dive into that chocolate( there are so many cool flavors that I have never had!), I passed on it today and decided on some pretzel rods and string cheese...

The rain quieted down a bit, so I ventured out for a few errands. While I was out, I found this mandoline. I knew it would be the answer to my sweet potato prayers! I raced home, washed it and got to work slicing paper thin potatoes. This thing is a dream to work with, too. The blade is super sharp, so there was no fighting to slice these guys. I sprayed the slices with cooking spray and salted the heck out of them (I'll watch the salt next time), then laid them on the parchment -lined baking sheets. But, here was my trick. I decided to try and "dehydrate" them in the oven instead of cooking them. I put them in at 200 degrees and let them do their thing in there for about 1 hr. ...

It worked like a charm! They shriveled a little, but the "crispiness" was there! No more soggy, chewy sweet potatoes! Now, I must admit, I was getting a little impatient during this experiment, so when there was about 10 minutes left in the "cooking" process, I beefed up the temp to 350. Bad move; see how they started to burn a bit? They didn't look like that before I upped the temp...

Yeah, patience. It's not a virtue I possess, but I'm working on it :) So, maybe a bit more tweaking, but I'm calling this experiment a crunching success!

Of course, I had to eat them for with dinner ! In addition to the chips, I had a Cha Sui Bao (remember these? It's the last one in my freezer) and some grapes...

And believe it or not, no dessert tonight!! I'm not sick:) Just trying to lay low with the food because I planned on going to my WW meeting and get weighed-in tomorrow. Hopefully all the salted up sweet potatoes won't cause me to retain a small pond before I get on the scale :)

Sweet dreams=)

Day Two

I woke up feeling a lot better today, both mentally and physically. Although, my legs are sore as all get out from my run/walk yesterday! I guess that's a good thing. With one good Point tracking day under my belt, I am ready for day two...

For breakfast, I had a Thomas' Light English Muffin with PB2. In case you haven't noticed, a really am a fan of this PB2 stuff!

It was a good 2 Point breakfast, but I had this waiting in the wings...

I had an idea for Apple Cranberry Bread (I am banana and pumpkined out for now!) and I wanted to give it a whirl. It came out really good, so I had to have a piece which was an additional 2 Points...

For lunch, it was split pea soup again. I had a ham wrap and some apple and grapes along with it for a filling 6 Points...

I guess I was missing my chips because I snagged a small handfull of pretzel sticks ( 1 Point) after that. I wasn't really still hungry, but I needed more "crunch".

Posting this has made me hungry, so I just ran downstairs to grab another slice of apple cranberry bread for my snack...

It's pretty hearty since it's made with whole wheat pastry flour and just a little bit sweet from the apples and cranberries. A nice 2 Point snack.

Well, day two is almost through (hey, I'm a poet) and so far so good. I wanted to share something I read that I think is spot on with respect to what we have all been going through during this holiday eating season. Great, sound advice : check out MizFit's post on Damage Limitation.

Words to live by...