Feeling pretty good - got up at my first alarm instead of waiting for the second one. I have a headache setting in this morning. There's a storm of hunger coming on! I can feel it! Started the morning with the orange blend and it wasn't so terrible - quite refreshing actually. I had small powder pockets - I think I'll start following the advice I'm seeing on the tips and tricks websites and dissolve the powder entirely in a small amount of water before adding the rest.
I'll be in learning mode for a while for sure! I think the lean and green so far was the meal I had to reference my book the most for - understandably. I was afraid of doing too much of everything. Cooking comes so natural to me now - it's hard to think about measuring every little thing. I guess that's how I got into this mess to begin with. Here's to a good day, a successful beginning, and better health! (Don't be mad because I'm so positive! I'm trying to keep my own positivity in line! GET ON MY LEVEL!)
7:50 AM: Medifast Strawberry Crunch Bar
I got busy at work and got my snack a little late this morning. This bar isn't terrible, but I like the mint chocolate better! My headache finally set in; I'm trying to ignore it. I was really hungry. I'm glad I sat down to have my bar! It'll be better in a few days. Keep on truckin'!
11:00 AM: Medifast Maryland Style Crab Soup
I waited too long. I got to working on too many projects and had to finish them before I could step out for lunch. This soup isn't awful. Crab soup isn't normally my thing, but it was free with the Be Slim Club order! :) (I apologize in advance - every time I type "crab" it comes out initially as "crap" - I really did not eat crap for lunch, and I will try to watch for it, but I may miss one or two. Hahaha.). I let it soak all day in my thermos, but since I ate so late it was a little cold. I nuked it. I'm glad it's not the best-tasting soup ever. It will help me eat it more slowly. :)
1:45 PM: Medifast Honey Mustard Pretzel Sticks
Headache is finally subsiding after some excedrin. I'm still hungry, but surviving. It will get better. I have no energy at this point. May just have to take a nap when I get home. Hope these pretzels help...
...OMG. They're delicious! Like Gardetto's! Yum!!
4:50 PM: Medifast Vanilla Shake
Welcome to real-time, folks! I'm drinking this shake as I blog (see photo). While the fancy welcome kit comes with a blender cup, I personally prefer to use my Ninja! I threw some ice in there, some water, and the packet of goodness. It tastes like ice cream. :) When it's gone, I get sad. That's saying something about the food, don't you think?
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Since I haven't made my lean and green yet for the day, let's have some real talk while we wait for my manfriend to get home. Today has been hard so far. My schedule at work is really inconsistent. Some days I start at 5, some days I start at 7, some days I start at 9... It's the life of a food service worker. So it's hard to stay on a plan where I have to eat every few hours. I don't have set breaks; sometimes my break clumps together with my lunch, and it's taken anywhere from two hours after I begin to EIGHT hours after I begin - it all depends on how the day is running. Some days I work 5 hours, some days I work 15. I never get as much sleep as I'm supposed to. (I've always been someone who needs very little sleep to operate - and I've still always been pleasant! ^.^) That all being said, today my meals were spread very far apart. I start projects at work and sometimes they take more than 2-3 hours to complete before I can take a break. I'm hoping that this won't hinder me from being successful on the plan.
Yesterday, I was doing some perusing. I was only on day one of the plan and I was already nervous about having a limited amount of options. I was looking up recipes that people are making with two or three food packets - combine the packets to make something delicious, then divide the product into two or three packets to make separate meals. Some of the stuff people come up with is pretty interesting. I came across this youtuber named Kristina. She's a Take Shape For Life coach who has gone through the program and transformation herself (as with most coaches). I watched a few of her videos, and found her to be kind of... well.. bitchy-sounding. One of her videos entitled Medifast Recipes really kind of rubbed me the wrong way until I really thought about it. She said essentially that people who combine their packets to make different foods are stupid because they're defeating the purpose entirely of being on the diet. They're trying to make foods that resemble other foods and kicking the cravings back into gear for those real foods. I was thinking she was really snooty for saying that in the first place, but then I realized.. she's right. Yes, I can see making a few changes to things, or trying a few recipes to get rid of a box of something (Please, someone have a recipe to make the crab soup better... PLEASE!), but I can see where someone could get off track by repeatedly altering the packets to make them into something different.
That being said, for now, I think I will stick with the packets instead of seeking some sort of variety. I was getting ahead of myself looking in the first place. (I haven't even tried everything I have yet! It's only day 2!) I was just so frightened before I even got into the nitty gritty of it that I was going to get bored with the food. I think that's an obstacle that I need to overcome in order to be successful. Kristina also made another point: She used to be severely overweight as well, and she made a confession that she was in love with food and had to basically go through the program to change the way she felt about food. I'm the same way.
I love food. I like to make it, have my hands in it, display it, and, most of all, eat it. I never really appreciated true food until I got my job at the hotel. I didn't appreciate medium rare steak or a sunny-side up egg. Now I have them at my disposal all the time, and I took advantage of it constantly. Making breakfast on my days off is my favorite thing to do. I love to make S breakfast. (S is manfriend!). One of my favorite things to make is just toasted bread with butter, with a sunny-side up or over-easy egg on top, then topped with whatever we have. Green onions and jalapeno ketchup? Sure. Salsa and leftover taco meat? Hell yeah. It can be done any way, honestly. But the way the bread soaks up the egg yolk is just so satisfying and delicious. I'm also a master of the "leftovers omelet". It could be the day after thanksgiving, and I'll figure out how to saute the leftovers and mix some eggs in there for a fluffy, delicious post-thanksgiving omelet. The best food on the planet is a pizza omelet (stop judging me! Don't knock it until you try it!). Take leftover pizza (stuffed crust, baby!) and cut it into pieces. Put a little bit of olive oil in your pan and throw the slice of cut up pizza in there. Heat it up until it's browning a little and the cheese is melted. Then pour some whisked eggs in there, and omelet it up, baby! Doesn't even need anything on top. Biting into that cheesy piece of pizza in your eggs is an incredible experience.
See? I get carried away. I work with food. I have this undeniable relationship with food where it understands me and I understand it. We just get along. I go on trips to eat food. I have social interactions where I eat food and use that as the reason for meeting. When I look back on it, there are several social interactions where I've almost regretted the meeting, but enjoyed the food! I associate it with holidays and family interactions. It's really everywhere. It's hard to get down to the DNA and reprogram my relationship with food when I literally am around it all the time. I'm willing to accept the challenge, but I think it will be difficult. It's hard to sit here and think about not ever having a pizza omelet again, but then I look at it from the other perspective (only for a moment.. god pizza omelets are delicious. seriously. try it.) and realize that those types of meals are what got me in this situation to begin with. I eat when I'm happy, I eat when I'm sad. I eat to celebrate, and I eat to hide the pain. I eat with people, I eat alone. I eat too much, and I eat enough so I don't have to put something in a dish that will get thrown away in a week. I eat enough gyoza to fill a skillet because why waste perfectly good skillet space and electricity only making one serving of gyoza? Oh, and gyoza isn't good the next day... gotta get that stuff eaten right away. (No, I've never made a leftover gyoza omelet. What exactly is "leftover" gyoza?)
I'm hoping this plan will help me reevaluate my relationship with food so I can begin to eat for sustenance rather than taste, and eat until I'm satisfied and not until I need to unbutton my pants and waddle to the car. It will take a while, and I'm hoping I stick to it.
Lean and Green is coming up in two hours! I'll update after it or tomorrow. Chicken breasts and asparagus for dinner! I kind of like this thinking-a-day-in-advance thing. It's kind of awesome. It won't always work out with my schedule, but when that happens, I have veggie patties for emergencies! Yum!
Time to get my stuff ready for tomorrow and get my dinner ready. Catch you on the flippity flop!
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I'm back to post about my dinner and I can tell you it was fabulous. Here's the breakdown:
- 6 oz. Chicken Breast (Lean!)
- 1 1/2 cups Asparagus (Green!)
- 1 tsp. Olive Oil (1 Healthy Fat)
- 1 tsp. Soy Sauce (1 condiment)
- 1/4 tsp. Onion Powder (1/2 condiment)
- 1/16 tsp. Garlic Powder (1/8 condiment)
- 1/8 tsp. Ginger (1/4 condiment)
- Dash of salt and black pepper (Lets count it as 1 condiment for giggles. Still under 3!)
I preset my oven to 350 degrees. I wrapped a potato in foil and threw it in for the manfriend and set the timer for 50 minutes. While it was going, I prepped the chicken. I was making enough for him too, so I had 4 thin chicken breast fillets. I thawed them in the refrigerator overnight. I lined a Le Creuset baking dish with foil, long enough to make a pouch. I put the chicken breasts in the foil, drizzled them with the olive oil, soy sauce, and spices (I used a little salt and pepper on both this and the asparagus.) I tossed the chicken about in the mixture and closed the pouch up tight. When the timer had 35 minutes left, I threw it in the oven and worked on the asparagus. I trimmed the ends and set it out on a foiled sheet pan. I drizzled it with the other 1/2 tsp. of my healthy fat for the night, and sprinkled it very lightly with salt and pepper. When the timer had 11 minutes left, I threw it in and did my dishes. Then... bingbingbing! They're all done at the same time. Genius.
This chicken was perfect. It was perfectly cooked.. my gosh. It was so moist and very delicious - perfect texture. I will DEFINITELY be using this method again. Shawn loved it too! Yay! It's amazing how making something so simple can yield so much flavor - we're so used to doctoring everything up all the time and adding more that we forget to stop and appreciate the natural and simple flavors. I think this will be a very fun and knowledgeable learning exercise. Maybe I only cook well becaujse I cover it up to manipulate people into BELIEVING I cook well. (Try it. Put barbecue sauce on anything. ANYTHING. See if anyone complains. I'll wait.)(Yeah, see? I didn't think so.) Only time will tell. Here's to better health tomorrow! Day 3 here I come!
PS: I'm feeling a lot better since I got home today. High hopes that tomorrow will be the same!
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