Round

December  26th

Exercise : 2 hrs walking around

Breakfast : breakfast burrito (left 1/4), latte

Snacks : apple,  several cookies, a few chips, another half apple, pho broth

Dinner : 4 very greasy latkes with sour cream, chicken in oily sauce, pine nut salad, 3 more cookies

fruit & veg count : not so hot, about 5

December 27th

Breakfast : fruit smoothie

Lunch : naked Qdoba steak burrito, left 1/3

Dinner : crudites, turkey, purple mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, salad, blueberry pie with ice cream

Leave something leftover : not so great at dinner, ok for smoothie and lunch

Fruit & veg count : over 10

December 28th (flying all day)

Breakfast : 2 pancakes w butter and syrup

Lunch : tomato soup, fruit salad, shrimp cesear salad

Snack : strawberry smoothie 16 oz not finished

Dinner : roll w butter, nuts, salad w blue cheese dressing, chicken w veggies and barley, fruit salad

Fruit & veg : about 9

December 29th :

Exercise : 1 hour elliptical

Snack : apple, 1 biscotti

Dinner (out to couscous) : pepper and tomato salad, whole wheat couscous, meatballs and 1/3 merguez sausage, lots of veggies, 1 peice baklava

Fruit & veg count : about 6

December 30th :

Exercise : 60 min elliptical

Breakfast : oatmeal w milk and agave

Lunch : pea soup, roll

Dinner : steak, aligot (mashed potatoes mixed with a ton of cheese), artichoke hearts

Fruit & veg count : 3

Gym : 60 min elliptical

Breakfast : 1/2 cinnamon bun, whole wheat, yogurt w jam, tea w milk, apple

Snack : 2 oatmeal choc chip cookies

Dinner : spaghetti & sausage, tomato sauce, salad w vinaigrette, garlic bread, apple, 1/2 cup ice cream

Leave something leftover : oops!

Fruit & veg : about 5

Yikes, I guess I need to do paper, since I didn’t write this down at the time my memory is fuzzy a few days back… Internet access has turned out to be a problem - my brother in law had installed wifi at my mom’ but guess what? She unhooked it, changed things, and we can’t figure out how to get it back. I will not stay here in the future without internet, I’d rather stay at a hotel.

I’ll give a brief synopsis :

THE GOOD : Exercise! Almost every day, only missed one day in the gym since I’ve been in Denver, not too bad.  I’ve also been good about leaving food leftover almost every meal.

THE BAD : Not paying close attention these past couple of days to the food journal (or the food choices)

THE UGLY : My mom’s scale reads about 5 pounds lighter than my scale in Paris (if I assume I didn’t magically drop 5 pounds by flying).  I’ll have a hard time adjusting back to the higher number

From most sure (most recent) to least :

Wednesday December 24th :

Gym : 55 min cardio

Breakfast : 6 oz yogurt, apple, 1/2 whole wheat cinnamon bun

Lunch : slice bread w olive oil, chopped salad w salami & cheese

Snack : popcorn at the movies… with butter (which I can now admit is pretty unnecessary…)

Dinner : at a party… kind of grazed, mainly eating the veggies and green salad, about 3 bites of pork roast (not a fan) and desserts - 3 pieces of rugelah, 1/3 cup chocolate mousse, 1/2 cup ice cream

Fruit & veggie count : about 9

Leave food leftover : okay w popcorn & dinner

Tuesday, December 23rd

Gym : 70 min cardio, yeah me!

Breakfast : tea with milk, slice of wheat bread w butter, orange

Lunch : salad w balsamic vinaigrette, 1/2 pizza with italian sausage (same pizza place as Saturday)

Snack : starbucks gingerbread latte, grande size. I don’t even want to know the calorie count. A lot, it was really sweet and rich. And it will be years before I am tempted to repeat the sweet starbucks drinks again - I relearn this lesson every 18 months or so…

Dinner : PF Chang’s chicken lettuce wraps - yum yum. I overate. Had kung pao chicken, spicy green beans & garlic snap peas too.  Overate for sure

Fruit & veg count : about 9

Leave something leftover : not my best day…

Monday, December 22nd :

Gym : 60 minutes cardio

Breakfast : apple, Kashi heart to heart with milk, tea w milk

Lunch :  Blue cheese, dried cranberries & nuts salad w dressing.   2 bites chocolate chip cookie

Dinner : Chile relleno and chicken enchilada, left a lot uneaten (I had lunch really late)

Fruit & Veg count / leftover : memory is a bit fuzzy, but leftover was good (I got a free cookie with my salad that I didn’t touch - threw it away easily - what I did eat were nibbles at the counter waiting for my salad).  Fruit & veg were low.

Breakfast - family brunch :

• apple
• Tea with milk
• 1 Bagel with cream cheese and pastrami
• 1 slice of kosher salami (yuck)
• 1 entire grapefruit

Nibbles all afternoon:

• Too many “Grandma’s Cookies” that we baked all day as a big family project
• 1/2 apple

Dinner (out with a friend to Mexican!) :

• will be cheesy, spicy, delicious
• update : was Mexican, cheese enchilada, chicken burrito & beef taco.  Didn’t finish any of them!

Fruit & veg count : 3.5 before dinner so about 5 total

Leave something leftover each meal : not so good at brunch, and the cookies… shameful.

Breakfast :

• Tea with milk
• Kashi heart to heart cereal w milk
• 1 apple
• Plain yogurt w berries

Lunch :

• baked ratatouille by my Mom - this was really good, I’m going to get the recipe (with a little parmesean)
• 2 carrots

Dinner :

• Pizza, 1/2 of a thin-crust small size (so less pizza than I typically eat in Paris)
• apple
• 1/2 hamentashen pastry, which I didn’t even particularly like

Fruit & veg count : 7 - this is way off my normal eating, I think it’s all the eating out

Leave something leftover each meal : pretty good, I didn’t eat a last piece of pizza (which my friend eventually ate) and I stopped at half the pastry

Okay, I am having a hard time with internet access here in Denver but I’m doing a good job with my eating & food journal, and today I even went to the gym and did 50 minutes on the elliptical.

I’m also doing great with leaving something left over at each meal! So glad I started this before coming, because US portions are HUGE.

Wednesday, December 17th (long long long flights)

Breakfast (airport lounge) :

• Tea
• Hot chocolate
• 1 roll

Lunch (on plane) :

• Cashews
• Salad
• Pasta w cheese eggplant
• Fruit
• 1 chocolate
• 2 tangerines

Dinner (at airport) :

• Japanese stir fry veg w chicken
• 16 no sugar pomegranate Jamba juice

Dinner part 2 (on second plane)

• 1/2 cup tomato cream soup
• 3 oz lasagna

Fruit & veg count : 10

Thursday, December 18th

Breakfast :

• Apple (fuji, locally grown and organic - fabulous)

Lunch : (Vietnamese restaurant)

• 3 halves of fried spring rolls wrapped in lettuce etc (delicous beyond belief)
• Pho soup (all the broth, all the fixings but only a small amount of the noodles)

Dinner : (Restaurant)

• Fajitas (only one tortilla, no beans, 1 tsp of guac & of sour cream, 1 tablespoon shredded cheese
• 1/2 strawberry-rhubarb cobbler, which I totally didn’t need but my mom insisted on ordering it. I didn’t eat the crust and only took 2 bites of the ice cream)

Fruit & veg count : 6

Friday, December 19th

Exercise : gym, 50 minutes elliptical

Breakfast :

• Tea w milk
• Plain yogurt (less good than we have in France)
• 1 apple, 1/2 clementine
• very small bowl of Kashi Heart to Heart w milk, just because I miss it, not because I was still hungry

Lunch (restaurant) :

• Chicken, artichoke & goat cheese salad

Snack (at Dad’s) :

• Brazil nuts (about 8 )

Dinner (Mexican restaurant - DANGER!) :

• Good control w chips and salsa, ate about 6 chips
• 1 cheese enchilada - left 2 bites
• 1 small chicken burrito - left several bites
• did not eat the beans & rice
• Enjoyed it all, but stayed in control, yeah me!
• Snowcaps at movies, very unnecessary, and not very good chocolate. Ate about 1/3 box, should have had gum and water…

Fruit & veg count : 6 if I’m generous

I used to have tons of bookmarks.

Then I had a huge, long blogroll.

Every so often I’d have to go back and clean these things up, because well, diet bloggers stop blogging sometimes (we know what that means!) and other blogs and sites lose my interest.

My bookmarks become a mess, my blogroll is out of date.

I’d heard about blog readers a few times but never really understood what it was - and I’m not a super techie person so I thought it wasn’t for me.

I was wrong.

I started doing this in early this year and have not looked back.

Reading blogs in a RSS Feed Reader is really easy and it will simplify your life A LOT.

The basic idea is that in one service, one site, you see a list of all the blogs (or other sites) that you follow and you can see the new items and read them all in one place.

First you need to set up an account with a reader. If you already have a Google account (for GMail or YouTube or other Google services) you can use that.  Most other online services (Yahoo, etc) also have this capability, and there are many stand-alone services that do just the reader.  I have a lot of my life on Google so I use theirs, and haven’t bothered to try others because Google’s just works.

Then on all the sites you want to follow you look for text that says “RSS” or “syndicate” or “feed” or for the little orange icon which is sometimes present on the side, top or often bottom of the page :

For the 3FC blogs, look for text that says “Entries RSS”

You click on that and then tell it which of the services of the blog readers you are using, and you’re all set.

I have categories set up in mine - Paris, Denver, Wt Loss Blogs, Cooking, Friends, and a few other interests.  When I add a blog I assign it to the right category.

One drawback is the comments - on most sites (and the 3FC blogs) you can’t comment via the reader, you have to click through to the site to leave a comment.  On my browser the clicks open a new tab and it’s easy to do, but it does take a tiny bit of time.

If you’ve wondered what the RSS reader is, or if you’ve thought about it but not gotten started, I can tell you that I really enjoy it and find it a big boost in my internet productivity (both personally but also professionally).

To add my blog you can check out the sidebar - you want to click on “Entries RSS” or you might copy and paste this into your reader’s “Add new feed” section :

http://3fatchicks.com/diet-blogs/round/feed/

Want to learn more about blog readers? Try reading this

http://www.problogger.net/what-is-rss/

As a result of reading blogs in the reader, my blogroll has gotten even more out of date, and I have just eliminated the links. I’m still loving you, don’t worry, I just can’t keep up with 2 lists, and since the reader is where I actually READ them, it makes sense to take them off the blogroll, since it’s many more steps to put them in and keep them updated.  Hope nobody has their feeling hurt.

I’d love your comments on your experiences w RSS readers - I know there are a few technos in this crowd, and for all I know I’m the last person to get on this bus.

Here is a video that explains all this much better than I just did :

Common Craft RSS explained
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, maybe it’s not related, but yesterday I decided not to keep the food journal on the blog, and yesterday I grazed all day.  I didn’t really have a meal all day, just ate different things (mainly veggies & dip and fruit, but still…).  So I’m thinking I’m better off with sticking with this approach, as it worked last week, and I’ll adjust over the vacation as necessary.  Thanks for the comments saying the food journal wasn’t all that boring, it was the last little encouragement I need (and I too like reading others’ food journals, but they are boring to write & for me don’t really take the place of the other entries I like to make).

Goals for today :

• Leave something leftover at each meal
• Eat at least 7 servings fruit & veg
• Keep the food journal
• Eat very reasonably during the day, and make good choices at dinner

Breakfast:

• Tea w milk
• Banana oatmeal

Lunch :

• (PLANNED)
• Leftover braised cabbage
• pineapple
• veggies w dip

Afternoon snack :

• (Planned) fruit

Dinner :

• Going out to a fancy restaurant if I get most of what I need to do today done… not guaranteed

Cooking plans for the day :

• Not cooking, but cleaning out the fridge before vacation.  I have a bunch of stuff I need to toss or throw in the freezer

How did I do?

• Renoncement (leaving something leftover) :
• Fruit & veggie count :
• Water : 1
• Herbal tea :

My daily weighing in has been helping to keep me on track, and I’m posting a 2 pound loss for this week, which brings me to a big whopping 6 pound loss over the past few weeks back - which on one side seems like nothing at all (don’t people drop like 15 pounds in one week on Atkins?) but on the other hand seems pretty good, considering how easy I’ve been taking it - still eating treats, chocolate and what I want, and not exercising.  I think in the grand scheme of things this is the right thing for me - slow steady loss with a great quality of life. (FYI, I weigh daily to keep me on track, but only consider the Monday weigh in as my “official” weigh in for progress purposes, since anyone who weighs daily knows there are many inexplicable variations in weight from day to day).

Last week I made a serious attempt at keeping a food journal.  I’m sure it’s boring for you to read, but it was helpful for me, and I’m going to keep it up.  I think I’m going to move it to paper for the next few weeks, as during travels it will be easier that way, and there are some aspects I’d like to add - including my assessment of my hunger level when I eat - something I could stand to get more in touch with (and adapt to).  I might do some mix of reporting here and paper, because I do like having it integrated into the blog, but if I skip a day it won’t mean I’ve given it up — I hope!

My goals for the week included eating a lot of fruits and vegetables - this has worked easily as I expected, and I significantly surpassed my goal of 7 per day - I was probably closer to a 9 average.

The goal of leaving something leftover was the hardest of the bunch.  That’s not really a surprise to me, but what is encouraging is that the more I did it the easier it got.  This remains a top goal for the coming weeks - an essential strategy around the holidays and in particular in the US, land of humongous portions.  I will continue to update on this here, because it’s really important for me to have accountability.

For the upcoming week, I have 2 days before I head for the US.  In those 2 days I have one cocktail party (tonight) but I’m making a huge veggie tray and I don’t like most of the French snacky things (like foie gras) so I’m not too worried.

My strategy while home for the holidays will consist primarily of :

• Daily food journal w hunger ratings & what was left over
• Daily weigh ins if I can find the scale in the bathroom cabinet at my mom’s house
• Start going to the gym at least once every 3 days (more if my family is driving me bananas!)
• Leave something left over routinely
• Don’t eat stuff just because it’s there, or just because we don’t have it in France.  If I want a taste of something pay close attention to the point where it is no longer wonderful (usually after 2-3 bites) and STOP EATING IT.
• Continue to concentrate on getting at least 7 servings of fruits & veggies per day. (healthy, plus less room for the other stuff!)

Goals for each day this week:

• Leave something leftover at each meal
• Eat at least 7 servings fruit & veg
• Consistently log my food (either online or on paper)
• Cook!

Breakfast:

• Tea w milk
• 1 clementine

Lunch :

• Buckwheat crepe “complete” (ham, egg & cheese)
• Hot chocolate
• 1 cookie that came w the chocolate
• pineapple

Afternoon snack :

• pineapple
• cauliflower w dips

Dinner :

• cauliflower w dip
• roasted parsnip
• roasted green beans
• roast beef
• a bit of chocolate (and I confess to having had some chocolate pretty much every day this week and forgetting to write it down)

Cooking plans for the day :

• Roasted root veggies - DONE sort of (just the parsnip, no new recipe)
• Roasted green beans - DONE and so good, so easy - GREAT way to cook green beans!

How did I do?

• Renoncement (leaving something leftover) : Left a bite of my crepe, and a sip of my chocolate!  Left a few bites of the beef at dinner.
• Fruit & veggie count : 9
• Water : 6
• Herbal tea : 1 1/2 pots