Food

All last year I worried about calories, and this year, as I've mentioned before, I've been shifting toward quality of food. It's tough to make that switch!

I've been eating a serving of almonds daily. They're supposed to reduce your LDL, plus they're a good protein and fat. I've been getting in more olive oil, Promise, etc. My fat percentage was really low, and I'm aiming to get 30% now. It's still tough, but I'm in the high 20s now.

The protein bit is more difficult. I like beef. There, I said it. Not supposed to eat a lot of beef because of saturated fat. So I eat 93% ground beef, and lower-fat beef. Chicken? Well, chicken is chicken. I could live the rest of my life, never eat another piece, and never miss it. So we've been eating a lot of chicken. Boring!!! lol

We went shopping tonight and bought salmon, fish, some pork cuts that are pretty lean. I've got tuna, cottage cheese, ground beef and loads of chicken. We also bought beans. We have egg night once or twice a week. That's actually cheap and easy. I have omelets or scrambled with one or two real eggs and some Egg Beaters. Everyone makes their eggs the way they like them.

Chicken is the best bang for the nutritional buck, though. I don't have many chicken recipes. Those I do have I enjoy, but DH--not so much. Anyone have any good chicken recipes they want to share? We both scoff at the idea of using chicken in Mexican food. That's beef territory!

So we're desperately trying to improve our protein. Any ideas?

Had I tried to do this last year, I would have failed. Small changes have worked for me (us) very well. When I started this blog, I used to have "I Can Do That's" that I'd post each week. I got away from posting those, but I still do them: Find something to improve, something little, and do it! It all adds up.

Not Enough Food?

I was trying to catch up on blogs this morning and didn't get very far. I stopped when I got to Downsizing Doc's blog.

I downloaded the CalorieKing software she mentioned for the free 7-day trial. I plugged yesterday's food in, which brought me to 29 WW points, equal to my journal. (I strive for 29-31.) I didn't exercise yesterday, so I came pretty close to CK's estimate for me.

However, I started playing around by adding exercise in. Whoa. CalorieKing has you eat back your earned exercise calories. I do not do that. Deficit=good, right? Maybe not.

I have noticed that when I do not exercise, my losses are--well, make me happy. When I do exercise, my losses are dismal. I have tried eating a couple activity points back, but that never worked. So this week, gulp, I'm going to try to eat them all back and see what happens.

This scares me. I don't want a gain. Yet, I'm in no rush, I need to experiment as I go and see what happens. If I'm not fueling my body enough, that's not good. And frankly, the workouts I'm doing are much more intense and difficult than Richard Simmons' aerobics tapes. I'm not saying those are easy--but The FIRM stuff is a whole other level. We're seeing physical changes in my body so fast--strength. My husband comments almost every day on my arms, and the fact that I now have a butt. My legs are hard, solid--well, under the fat, but there is definitely hard muscle in there, front and back, calves, shins are showing, etc.

So maybe, I'm just not giving myself enough fuel.

???

I have no idea. This is all so foreign to me. I don't understand it all. I've read and re-read Weight Watchers' information on activity points. Maybe there's too much gray area and I'm just not counting the workouts enough. I don't know.

I'm a little scared to try this. I don't want to jinx myself and have a huge gain or even a small gain. Yet, I think it's worth a try.

Truth be told, even though I'm losing (fairly consistently), I'm not happy with the rate I'm losing. I don't cheat. I weigh and measure everything. I double-check recipes I try. I am well aware my age may have something to do with it, but I think it's worth a try to change things up a bit and just see how it works.

Gulp, gulp, gulp.