Taking My Own Advice

It’s rare that I get upset.  Most of the time I am a go with the flow kinda person – much more concerned if you are happy than myself – I’ve always been like that.

But yesterday when I stepped on the scale and saw .4 gain I lost it.  On average I had 1400 calories a day the past week – only had THREE glasses of wine all week (on Saturday night), worked my ass off at the gym by working out harder than I probably have in a year, and had nothing to show for it.

Or so I thought.  I think a lot of you have gotten comments from me over the last couple years telling you:

The scale doesn’t automatically show your efforts on the day of weigh in.

You have to look at the big picture . . . when I lost 70 pounds in 1999, there were weeks at a plateau, but I stuck with it.

I also want to thank Tony, Hannah, Helen, Robin Sue, Shelley, Rich, Tracy and Jenn for your email cheerleading yesterday and for all the wonderful comments.  And especially to Tony for being supportive and picking me up when I felt like just picking up a box of wine and a large pizza for one on my way home from work. 😀

So I am sticking with it.  Giving up is not an option.  I still have a goal of being 150 by January 1, and I am going to try my hardest to get there.  Thanks for sticking with me!

So the beginning of my day did not start out well – I started reading the emails from other Zero Scale challengers losing big numbers, and while I was jumping up and down for them, I found myself getting jealous and envious that it wasn’t happening to me.  Then I got to work and realized I left my camera at home.  Then I reached to get my lunch bag, only to find that half my soup now covered my food contents for the day and I spent my first 10 minutes at work washing everything off.

My blackberry also wasn’t charged, so I have no pics of my food yesterday.  Breakfast was an egg white scramble with roast beef and broccoli, a bacon and cranberry biscuit, and a cup of sliced apples.  440 calories, 26 fat, 13 carbs, 4 fiber and 34 protein, or 11 WW points.

Lunch was courtesy of this blog: Some Kitchen Stories.  I did adapt it, like I do, but this one is a real winner!  My changes are in blue below:  I stole her photo too – I just wanted you to see how gorgeous and delicious this soup was so you will make it! 

Butternut Squash Soup with Ginger Shrimp

Thank you, Bon Appetit

Makes: 5 cups or 8 first course servings (each cup: 174 calories, 7.3 fat, 22 carbs, 3.7 fiber and 6.9 protein, or 5 WW points)

Ingredients

For Shrimp

1 lb of large shrimp, deveined and peeled with tail remaining (I only cooked 5 shrimp since it was just for my lunch)
1 TBsp of fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated (reduced this to 1 tsp. for 5 shrimp)
1/4 tsp of salt (pinch of salt)
1 TBsp of vegetable oil (1 teaspoon)

For Soup

2/3 Cup of shallot, chopped (nope!)
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
3 whole star anise (didn’t have so I left out)
2 TBsp of unsalted butter
1 and 3/4 lb of butternut squash, peeled and seeded and cut into 1/2 inch pieces (5 cups)
4 Cups of chicken stock
2 Cups of water (reduced to 1 cup because I prefer a thicker soup)

• I also added 1 canned chipotle pepper to counteract the sweetness of the sweetness of the soup

Prepare

1. Toss shrimp with grated ginger and toss. Let marinate in fridge for 30 minutes but NO longer or shrimp will start to cook because they are weird like that.

While shrimp are marinating, we prepare the soup that will impress people. Yay.

2. In a 3-quart, heavy saucepan over moderate heat, cook shallot, garlic and anise.

3. Stir until shallot is softened. Cook about five minutes.

4. Add squash, stock and water and simmer, uncovered for 20 minutes or so (until squash is very tender).

5. Remove star anise. Coo to them, precious little babies. Thank them for their service. (I love this line from her blog post!)

6. Puree soup in 2 batches in a blender OR use one of those hand immersion blenders which are AWESOME and which I clearly just used for the first time.

7. Transfer to cleaned pan and keep warm, covered.

8. Sprinkle our shimp with the salt.

9. Heat vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking.

10. Saute shrimp in batches until just cooked through, about a 1.5 minutes on each side.

Bring soup to a simmer, season with salt and pepper. Mound shrimp in each bowl.

Note: On Weight Watchers? This insanely delicious soup is 5 points per 1 cup serving and 5 shrimp is 2 points.

I had to actually look up how to peel a butternut squash – I didn’t realize how easy the skin was to peel!

 

It’s velvety, and I like the extra kick of the chipotle pepper to balance the sweet and savory.  Lunch comes in at 7 Points.  Later in the afternoon I had an ounce of almonds for 4 points.

Tony and I love watching America’s Test Kitchens.  We have it saved on the DVR and pretty often we both look at each other and think “we have to make that!”

They had an episode where they made grilled tuna steaks with a red wine vinegar and mustard vinaigrette.  They key is the vinaigrette – brushed right before grilling (we grilled indoors on our cast iron grill pan) then I served my tuna steak on a bed of greens with a bit more vinagrette.

I have to tell you, when I first met Tony I was the pickiest eater.  Hannah and I lived on spaghetti, tacos and pizza most of the time.  When he first made me ahi tuna steaks and I saw the very very pink middle, I made him go back and cook it until it was grey all the way through.  The horrors!

Now I love it.  This was okay tuna, bought individually wrapped and frozen at Sam’s Club.  Each steak was about 4.5 ounces raw.  You’ll see that this makes a lot of vinaigrette, but between the two of us, only used about .5 ounce each.  So I am making this recipe 12, half ounce servings at 128 calories, 13 at, 1.8 carbs, .2 fiber and .1 protein, or 4 WW points.

Red Wine Vinegar and Mustard Vianaigrette (courtesy of America’s Test Kitchen)

• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 1 tablespoon chopped dried rosemary (or 2 tablespoons fresh)
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• pinch of salt
• cracked pepper

Mix the vinegar, mustard, honey, rosemary salt and pepper together.  Slowly add the olive oil and using a whisk, beat until emulsified.

I never got my workout in yesterday, so plan on moving my Monday and Wednesday around.  Today is row, leg curls, torso rotations and 20 minutes of hard cardio. 😀

Stats for Monday:

• 1159 calories, 63 fat, 54 carbs (I had three pieces of fruit, but since fruit is zero its not calculated in this total), 14 fiber and 95 protein
• 19% calories from carbs
• 49% calories from fat
• 32% calories from protein
• 30 WW points
• average blood sugar 108
• no exercise

I am dusting myself off – today is a new day!  Who’s with me?