Sunday, December 16, 2007

Day 2 (Sunday 12/16/07)

After a successful day 1, let's see if I can build some momentum. So far, this is fun.

Breakfast: Ahh, the joy of weekends. I took a whopping twenty minutes or so to make breakfast. Even though I can certainly spare the time during the week, I always feel too pressed for time to do anything like this.

Anyway, what you have here is 2 eggs scrambled with another 3 oz or so of Spam and some diced green peppers and onions. A small pat of butter in the pan before the onions went in and a little pepper on the finished product. On the side is a little grapefruit and a mug of black coffee. Absolutely delicious.

I should mention that I'm not enough of a glutton for punishment to actually dice up a green pepper and an onion for this. Instead, I used pre-diced frozen versions. Our local supermarket sells them this way - if you watch for a sale you can get them for a buck or less each. In hot dishes, they work out beautifully. Less effort, less waste.



Lunch: The hazards of not eating at home. Went to a birthday party. For a main course, a small bowl of "chili" and two open face turkey sandwiches. Just turkey and a slice of cheese.





And you can't have a party without cake. No, I did NOT eat the whole thing. That would be rude. I did have a piece with a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream.

It was pretty good cake, although it really set off the hunger pangs a little while later. Sugar is not my friend.





And somewhere in there, I had several (at least six) handfuls of homemade Chex mix. Chex mix is like kryptonite to me. Love the stuff, even though I know it's no good. Aargh.










Dinner: Back to normalcy. They had a great deal on ham at the store this week, so I bought one. Biggest ham I've ever purchased - about 6 pounds. The whole hams were less than the half hams, about the same as the quarters. Guess I'm going to be eating a ton of ham this week!

Oh, yeah, I couldn't eat all that. I ate the full slice but couldn't touch the half. On the side was just some green beans out of a can. Pretty tasty. Water to drink.

Day 2 is in the books!

Saturday, December 15, 2007

A New Beginning, Day 1 (12/15/07)

Let's try this again. I kind of misplaced my password to this thing and life also got in the way of posting. Anyway, the basic premise is that I take pictures of what I eat and post them. It's a way of keeping myself accountable.

Anyway, here are today's eats:

Breakfast: No picture. I was reorganizing my computer stuff, so I didn't get one. Anyway, it wasn't anything exciting. I was going to have a plate of scrambled eggs and Spam, but my eggs were older than I'd like so I just had about 3 oz. of Spam. And a small bowl of grapefruit.

Um, no, I'm not going to win any awards for dietary excellence. I went to the store later.


Lunch: Just a couple of simple oven roasted chicken drumsticks. I did sprinkle a little garlic power and Italian seasoning on them before baking, but since I ate almost none of the skin it really didn't matter. They were OK, nothing more. Next time I try and jazz it up a bit.

I've got a couple left over - cold chicken is usually pretty good. Here's hoping anyway.







Dinner: This was both easy and very good. I got a small piece of chuck steak (roast, whatever, it was labeled as steak), sliced it up and threw it in the slow cooker with a small can of Ro-Tel (diced tomatoes with green chiles). It just cooked away all afternoon and came out delicious with the addition of a little salt.

Not a very exciting day, was it? A little short on veggies. As always, I'll try to do better tomorrow.

I only had water to drink today. Tomorrow I might break out the coffeemaker - I don't usually drink coffee, but since I'm trying to not drink soda it might be necessary. I didn't miss the caffeine today but tomorrow might be another story.

While I'm typing away, one more thing. Although I could stand to lose quite a bit of weight, I am not on a diet. Not a particular one, anyway. I'm hoping to cut out a lot of the sugars and starches and processed crap and actually cook more. It may not happen - cooking for one is a pain especially with a high-stress, time consuming job.

Until next time.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Day 3 (Wednesday, 1/24/07)

Breakfast

Same 'ol thing. I have one more decent sized bowl left. Granola with milk.

I'm kind of looking forward to a change.








Lunch

Turkey, American cheese and brown mustard on whole wheat, 2 pickles and some kettle chips. Lime sparkling water to drink.

I was hungry. Felt better after eating this, though. I think I've got to do something different at breakfast, especially on days when I'm in the office before 8:00.




Dinner

Holy cow was I hungry. I was on my way back to the office and had another hour to go before heading home. I cracked.

$4.68 wasted, one camera phone photo taken. Big Mac, fries, Coke. Your standard #1 value meal, not super or large sized. First caffeine in two days and yes it tasted fantastic. Stupid tasty corn syrup water.



Snack

Let's add insult to injury - a bunch of Jays chips and another can of sparkling water. It took quite a while to eat these. I probably could have quit halfway through, but I didn't.

Stupid junk food, it's not filling. Still hungry, but going to bed.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Day 2 (Tuesday 1/23/07)

Breakfast: Once again, I went with a good sized bowl of granola and milk. Once again good.

What else can you say about breakfast? Um, it was fast and easy.

And yes, I was hungry at lunch.

Incidentally, I'm going to use the "small" size for pics ... if for some unknown reason you want a bigger version, just click the pic.

While I'm at it ... why not shake up the picture alignment ...
here's lunch:

Healthy Choice turkey, American cheese and brown mustard
on 100% whole wheat, a couple pickles, a few olives
and some kettle-cooked potato chips. Lemonade to drink.

One thing I can say about this meal is that it contained
no corn syrup. Do you know how hard it is to find BREAD
with no corn syrup?!

Dinner: Leftovers. This is the remainder of the chicken recipe I made yesterday, over the balance of the biscuits. It's at least two servings and it was, frankly, too much. Cooking for one is a pain.

Accompanying are a bunch of red seedless grapes and the remainder of the lemonade. The rest of the week will have
different beverage choices.

Overall, this meal was OK.

Unnecessary snack:

More pretzel rods. This is the last of them and I
won't be in any big hurry to buy more. I'm not
wild about pretzels.

And that's a wrap for Day 2, a day which featured
exactly NO fast food! Yay!

Monday, January 22, 2007

Day 1 (Monday, 1/22/2007)

Okay, here goes nothing.

Breakfast, Day 1: A good sized bowl of lowfat granola with milk. Good stuff.

I spent about $35 on groceries for the week and I'm hoping to keep the total tab to fifty bucks.

I'm not a big cereal fan. I've gone years between bowls. I bought some granola a few weeks ago and found it to be reasonably satisfying. Same for Raisin Bran. I'd rather have bacon and eggs, but since I'm not a morning person, that doesn't happen too often during the week.

Some other breakfast foods I like: Omlettes, biscuits and gravy, grapefruit, breakfast sandwiches...



Lunch: Ooh, not so good. Thought about a turkey sandwich at home, but I was decidedly hungry.

Burger King Texas Double Whopper, fries, Coke.

About a zillion calories. The Texas Whopper is a very, very tasty sandwich, although this wasn't the finest one I've ever had. Overall, very satisfactory if not dietetic.

Amount wasted on fast food: $6.14.

I really want to cut way back on the fast food. If you count pizza, I've been running in double digits for fast food meals per week. It's just wrong.

So consider this a big black mark.


Dinner:

What I really wanted for dinner was biscuits and gravy. No idea why. I didn't really feel like making sausage gravy, though, and I had some chicken that I cooked up yesterday, so I decided to make chicken and biscuits.

I basically used this recipe with a couple minor tweaks. I made the biscuits separately using 'Heart Healthy' Bisquick and substituted canned peas and fresh diced baby carrots. I was less than diligent at measuring things, but it worked out. The only defect was that the carrots weren't done enough - I should have precooked them in the microwave - a lesson for next time. I have 3 biscuits left for tomorrow, along with at least half of the chicken stuff. If I'm really hungry, 1 meal, if not then maybe 2.

The blob behind the bowl is a small leftover brownie. The beverage is Meijer Organic Lemonade - my grocery store splurge of the week. I had 2 1/2 glasses. Bad me. At least once it's gone, it's gone. I hate grocery shopping.

Snack:

Six Snyder's pretzel rods.

Probably not necessary.

Day in Review:

Heavy on protein and starch. Light on vegetables (toppings at lunch, some carrots and peas at dinner). No fruit. I did buy some grapes, so there's hope for the rest of the week.

This was fun, so I think there will at least be a Day 2.

The Mission

It's simple.

Goal: Take and post pictures of everything I eat.

Why?

Well, I have this crazy theory that this will make me more accountable for what I consume.

In case you haven't guessed already, I could stand to lose a few pounds. But that's more of a side issue: I want to eat better. Less fast food. Less highly processed crap. More healthy stuff. More vegetables. More home cookin'.

Some of the stuff I eat will make you cringe. It's going to be an adjustment. Before you get too uptight when you see bacon, red meat and other bad stuff, know this: It's still an improvement over what I have been eating. I'll also frequently eat too much, but hope to fix that.

Also, for what it's worth, I'm an otherwise healthy 30something male who lives alone. All my numbers (except weight) are grossly normal. I'm an adequate cook, but have been in a rut.

Here goes nothing.