Thursday, April 29 -- Week 17, Day 5

We had a birthday yesterday, which explains the lack of a healthy-food post. Consequently, we bumped yesterday's menu to today, and will be skipping what was supposed to be today's menu. I can't bring myself to eat fish just yet. All in good time ...



BREAKFAST:

Original:

• peaches and cheese breakfast
• 1 slice raisin bread
• 1 tsp. margarine
• 1 cup skim milk
• coffee or tea

My adaptation:

• Whoops! Where DID the morning go???

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LUNCH:

Original:

• 3 oz sliced roast turkey
• 1/2 medium tomato, sliced
• lettuce leaves
• 1 slice whole wheat bread
• 1 tsp. mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup chocolate-flavored low-calorie milk pudding

My adaptation:

• 3 oz sliced deli turkey
• 3 slices tomato
• lettuce
• 1 small (6") tortilla
• 1 tsp. light mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup chocolate-flavored low-calorie milk pudding

I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of this meal - even the lettuce and tomato on my sandwich! Very refreshing. The only reason I substituted a tortilla for the bread is because I thought we had bread, but we don't. Very very good. And 3 ounces of turkey is a lot to cram into that small tortilla!

I'm also looking forward to dinner tonight! Beef! :-)

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DINNER:

Original:

• 1 cup tomato juice with lemon wedge
• 3 oz sliced broiled steak
• 3 oz. baked yam with 1 tsp. margarine
• 1/4 cup steamed onion slices
• 1/2 cup steamed spinach
• green salad with lemon juice and herbs
• sparkling mineral water with twist of lime

My adaptation:

• 3 oz steak
• 3 oz baked yam with spray butter
• 1/2 cup corn
• 1/2 cup green beans
• green salad with cream dressing
• water
• 1 cup Pepsi

First of all ... tomato juice is just gross. Not that I would actually know that, having never tasted it. Amendment: the idea of drinking tomato juice is just gross. I was seriously under on my calories today, so I just had a glass of Pepsi for a treat.

I also don't understand the point of just eating a pile of onions, steamed or otherwise prepared. And spinach .... raw, yes. Cooked, not yet. Also, I should mention that I saved my salad for last, because it's the only food I was eating that wouldn't get cold. We ran out of time and were running quite late for guitar lessons, so I threw my plate in the refrigerator, intending to eat the salad when I got home. But I completely forgot about it. So I didn't actually eat the salad in the photo.

At this point in the day, I had only consumed a little over 800 calories. I'm not sure what happened. I guess skipping breakfast probably had a lot to do with it. So, since I'd had a good bit of fruits and veggies today, I rewarded myself with a modest-sized piece of birthday cake. I'm easily still under the 1200 daily average.

It's really easy to have a good diet day when you like most of the food suggested for that day! Tomorrow's menu looks good too, but dinner includes steamed kale. We'll see how that goes. I do not intend to make a substitute. I will try the kale.

Tuesday, April 27 -- Week 17, Day 3

Welcome to the Toss-It-Out-The-Window version of the Weight Watchers 365-Day Menu Cookbook Diet!

Today got off to a bad start. I went to bed early last night with a sick stomach, presumably from all the foreign foods my stomach was bombarded with. I woke up this morning, still queasy, and in no mood for eggs.



BREAKFAST:


Original:

• 1/2 medium grapefruit
• 1 hard-cooked egg, sliced
• 1 slice toasted rye bread
• 1 tsp. margarine
• 1/4 cup skim milk
• coffee or tea

My adaptation:

• a bowl of Rice Chex
• 1/2 cup 2% milk
• 1 banana

I forgot to take a picture, but if you use your imagination, I'm sure you can picture it. My stomach still isn't completely settled, but an egg (hard-boiled or otherwise) would have sent me over the edge.

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LUNCH:

Original:

• lunch box fish and cheese (fish, cheese, and lettuce in a pita pocket)
• 1/2 cup cauliflower florets
• curried cole slaw
• 1 small orange

My adaptation:

• deli turkey, cheese, and lettuce in a pita pocket
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 small apple

We didn't have any leftover fish from our non-existant fish lunch on Sunday, so I used deli turkey. And I was NOT in the mood for another salad, so I doubled up on the cooked vegetables. I had originally planned to have an orange for breakfast instead of a grapefruit, so I then had planned to have an apple for lunch instead of an orange for both breakfast and lunch. The day has gotten pretty scrabbled so far.

My turkey/cheese/lettuce pita pocket was pretty good. There was no dressing of any kind, so it was pretty dry, but the flavor was good.

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DINNER:

Original:

• 3 oz broiled veal patty
• 1/4 cup steamed chinese pea pods
• 1/2 medium tomato, sliced
• tossed salad w/ 2 tsp. vegetable oil plus wine vinegar
• club soda with mint sprig

My adaptation:

• 3 oz broiled ground turkey burger on 1/3 pita pocket
• 1/3 cup peas
• 2 slices tomato
• 4 boiled red potato chunks

I forgot to take a picture again! Turns out the nausea isn't just me. We ate dinner half-heartedly tonight. I didn't find ground veal, so we had ground turkey, which seemed to be a suitable substitute to me. I also didn't find snow peas, so we had regular peas. And I'm so sick of salad, so I took the day off. I don't want to totally ruin salad for me, so when I feel I need a break from it, I'm going to take a break from it. My stomach is so messed up right now (presumably from all this extra fiber) that I didn't want to risk adding more to it.

I have no excuse for the potatoes. They were there, and I wasn't strong enough to resist them. I was strong enough to only have 4 chunks though!

Snack still coming up tonight: pear frozen yogurt. We'll see how that goes. It smells funny.

Monday, April 26 - Week 17, Day 2

BREAKFAST:

Original:

• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 serving hot cereal (3/4 oz dry)
• 1 tsp. reduced-calorie margarine
• 1 cup skim milk
• coffee or tea

My adaptation:

• 1/2 cup apple juice
• 1 serving cream of wheat
• splenda and cinnamon
• 1 cup skim milk

I forgot to buy orange juice, so apple juice is just fine. There is nothing new here. I like cream of wheat, but usually with pounds of brown sugar. I did oversalt it by accident, so it was quite a bit more savory than I was used to. I dribbled a bit of my apple juice into it as an experiment. I'd rather just drink the apple juice. It didn't add much to the cereal. Oh, and it feels every bit as pathetic in my stomach as it looks in this picture. 3/4 oz is exactly HALF of what the Cream of Wheat box calls a serving. 1 1/2 tablespoons dry. Who eats that much? That's pathetic. It could have fit in an applesauce bowl with plenty of room to spare. Good thing I put breakfast off until 10:30, so there's not much longer until lunch.

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LUNCH:

Original:

• 3 oz. broiled chicken
• 1/2 cup steamed green beans
• 1/2 cup steamed mushrooms
• green salad with sliced tomato, savory vinaigrette, and 1 tsp. imitation bacon bits
• 1 slice whole wheat bread
• 1 tsp. reduced-calorie margarine
• 1 small apple

My adaptation:

• 3 oz. baked chicken (meat from 2 drumsticks)
• 1/2 cup canned green beans
• 1/2 cup carrots
• green salad with sliced tomato, lite Italian dressing (I just realized I forgot the tomato.)
• 1 whole wheat breadstick
• 1 small apple

This was a LOT of food for a lunch. The chicken was just baked drumsticks that I had lightly rolled in bbq sauce before baking. The breadstick was wheat, leftover from yesterday's lunch. I've never been a big fan of chicken dark meat, but it was nice and moist, and the "dark meat" flavor was nicely disguised under the barbecue sauce. A good lunch! I'm full.

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DINNER:

Original:

• Ham Strips with Rice and Water Chestnuts
• 1/2 cup cooked yellow squash
• 1/2 cup cooked asparagus tips
• sliced cucumber and radishes on lettuce with tarragon vinegar
• 4 oz. red wine
• coffee or tea

My adaptation:

• Ham Strips with Rice and Water Chestnuts
• 1/2 cup zucchini
• 1/2 cup cooked asparagus tips
• sliced cucumber and radishes on lettuce with light dressing
• water

The store was out of yellow squash, so I got zucchini. I don't even know what tarragon vinegar is, so light dressing is fine with me. And again with the budget ... no wine.

This was a hard meal. I believe I overcooked the zucchini and asparagus. They were very mushy. Had a hard time with them. But I ate them anyway. Well, all but one bite of each, which I offered to one of the kids, who chewed it up and spit it back out. I wasn't about to eat it at that point.

About the water chestnuts ... I went into this meal with preconceived notions about water chestnuts. But everyone was right - they DO have a bizarre texture. I didn't care for it a lot, but the ham and rice were good enough that I was able to get through it. The ham and rice were quite good, actually!

And I just wasn't in the mood for yet another salad, so I picked at it and ate about half of it, scraped the rest in the garbage.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Normal food that I'm sure I'll like! :-)

Sunday, April 25 -- Week 17, Day 1

This diet is based on an average of 1200 calories per day for women. There are add-ins for men and children, but the man and children in my house aren't following this book, so I'll not bother mentioning them. The intro says that they kept seasonal foods in mind when preparing the menus, so I opted to start at week 17, instead of starting at the beginning of the year, because this is the 17th week of the year. Already, I've made some adaptations. For amusing reference, I will include the original menu, then tell you what I actually ended up eating.

BREAKFAST:

Original:
• 1/3 cup prune juice
• 1 scrambled egg w/ chives + 1 tsp. imitation bacon bits
• 1/2 english muffin, toasted
• 1 tsp. margarine
• 1/4 cup skim milk
• coffee or tea

My adaptation:
• 1/3 cup apple juice
• 1 over easy egg
• 1/2 english muffin, toasted
• 1 tsp. butter
• 1/4 cup 2% milk

Prune juice? Blech. I am not an egg eater, but I love runny tepid egg yolks (no whites, please!) And I'm not going to bother buying skim milk. We're already buying 2 different kinds of milk, no need to add a third. I figure the extra 30 calories or so from 2% as opposed to skim isn't going to hurt anything. And I don't like coffee OR tea, and there's really no nutritional value in either (right?), so I don't see the point in forcing the issue.

At the same auction that I got this book from, I also got a lot of cute little juice glasses. They are so tiny that 1/3 cup juice doesn't look totally pathetic in them! Oh - back to the egg. I knew full well that if I only ate the yolk, I would be starving five minutes later, so I opted to choke down the white, like it or not. This way, I could put off my future starvation an extra three minutes. I didn't have to choke it down. It wasn't so horrible. Not my favorite, but I could certainly do it again.

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LUNCH (this is a good one...):

Original:
• 3/4 cup homemade vegetable broth
• Pineapple Flounder
• 1/2 cup steamed broccoli
• shredded red cabbage topped with alfalfa or bean sprouts and lemon juice
• mineral water with twist of lemon

My adaptation:
• 3/4 cup homemade vegetable broth
• salad with deli meat and cheese
• 1/2 cup carrots
• water

Here are the vegetables about to go into the oven. Pretty, aren't they? I had already exceeded my grocery budget for the week before I was able to find flounder, so there goes that for this week. We had ordered pizzas last night for dinner, so everyone else finished that off, along with breadsticks and carrots. I chose to skip the broccoli this time. Maybe later in this adventure I'll be more ready to try it, but for today it's just carrots. And regular salad with deli turkey, cheddar cheese, and chow mein noodles, as well as regular water both work just fine for me. I liked the broth! It was pretty spicy, I assume from the celery? It was odd drinking broth out of a cup, but after one spoonful, I realized eating it with a spoon was going to be very inefficient, not to mention annoying (slurping).

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DINNER:

Original:
• cheese pizza pocket
• carrot, celery, and green pepper sticks
• tossed salad with 1 tsp. vegetable oil plus wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup low-calorie jello
• 3/4 cup milk

Adaptation:
• Pretty close – I used a different dressing, and found that I just don’t like celery

A cheese pizza pocket is just ricotta, diced tomato, parsley, green pepper, parmesan, oregano, garlic powder, salt, and pepper in a pita pocket and baked until the cheese melts.

So I consider day one to be a success!

Introduction

Welcome! I am about to embark on a new diet journey. I was at an auction this past week. I was just about to bid $1 for a cookbook, when the auctioneer threw second cookbook into the same lot. I won, but wasn't sure what I wanted to do with a copy of Weight Watchers: 365-Day Menu Cookbook. I decided to just toss it into the yard sale pile, but my curiosity got the best of me. I flipped through it, and liked the idea of having my entire year's worth of menus already mapped out for me. Lazy, I know, but that's just me. I have committed to two weeks of as-close-as-possible out of this book. There are some things I just draw the line at, though, like calf livers, veal tongue, and calamari. But for the most part, I will attempt to stick to it as closely as possible.

This project will no doubt be amusing for you to follow, as I learn to eat many many things I've refused to eat in the past, and as I learn how to cook many things I've never eaten or cooked.

So again, welcome - and let's begin!