Mariano’s Salad Bar

I brought another parfait for breakfast yesterday.  I still need to make some homemade granola (made some last night!) but decided to veer into CVS from the train station to see if I could pick up a bag of granola to keep in my work desk.  I was on the Weight Watchers app and really had my heart set on picking up Honeycomb cereal – a whole cup is only 3 smart points!  But CVS didn’t have it.  So I pulled out my trusty scanner, and most of the granolas were so point heavy for such a small amount, because of the high sugar content.  So after a couple minutes, I settled on Kashi:

A cup is 6 smart points, so I had about 1/4 cup on top of my parfait – just enough to give it a bit of crunch.  My fruit sauce yesterday was half blueberry/half cranberry.  Love the sweet tart combo, and breakfast came in at 5.5 points.

My boss was leaving early so I took a late lunch.  I had a couple things to pick up at the store, and decided to get my steps in at the same time and walked the 7 block from my office to get there.  Within a 5 minute walk I have both a Whole Foods and Mariano’s!  But I actually prefer Mariano’s.

My wallet thanks me too!  I had apples, celery and salad bar for lunch on my list.  Although I did spend about 15 minutes walking through the store, you know, just to get extra steps.  Also thrown in my cart during that walk was a whole cored pineapple ($2.95) and salad dressing.  I’ll talk about that in a minute though.  I was hoping they would have my new favorite apple – cameo, but they had just about every other apple, but that.  These are the apple varieties that I have never heard of:  Kiku, Lady Alice, Pinata, Envy and Opal!

I bought the Pinata apple, simply because it was on sale and it seemed firm.  Although Red Delicious apples feel firm to me, but I absolutely hate the pithy insides.  Do you even remember other apples growing up besides Granny Smith and Red Delicious?!

I was happy that it was no longer windy in Chicago, just foggy.  That direction is walking east, towards Lake Michigan, and the closer you got to the lake the foggier it got.  It was about 45 degrees though – I’ll take that!

I did my usual chicken tender off the hot bar and chopped it up into my salad.  The chicken finger was 4 points, I had a point of chick peas, and the rest were veggies.  I wanted to pick up a salad dressing to keep in the fridge at work, and decided on this one:

I am not sure if “Simple Truth Organic” is a Mariano’s brand, or just a brand on its own?  Either way, it was delicious! Reminded me of Annie’s Goddess dressing, but this one comes in at only 2 points per 2 tablespoons and it has a nice lemony kick to it.  My salad was 7 points.

I’ve realized that if I eat a piece of fruit around 4:30 I am not tempted to buy Garrett’s popcorn or Annie’s pretzels in the train station.  Who am I kidding, I am always tempted, but having something in my stomach before the hour and ten minute train ride home makes all the difference.  The verdict of the piñata apple?  Loved it.  Slightly more tart than the cameo apple, but delicious non the less.

It’s amazing when you actually count all the points that you put in your mouth, that your mind set starts to turn around.  You’d think I would know this after the many weeks, months, years I’ve “been” on Weight Watchers, but you all know how I never counted the wine.  And I never really cared how many points my party pizza Friday was, because I knew I was going to eat it anyway.   I dove in the freezer before work to thaw chicken wings for dinner.  I had my whole day planned well enough that I could have the chicken wings and still be within my point range for the day.  What a different feeling that was!  Before it would feel like “cheating” and you know where your mind goes when you think you’ve cheated on a diet, or at least this is what usually happens to me:

• eat something high in points
• consider that food “bad”
• tell myself that I can’t control myself
• continue to tell myself “just f_ck it” and eat like crap for a day, week, a month, etc.
• finally pick said self up after that day, week, month and declare myself “back on.”

But I planned for it.  While the point ranges differed on the website, I did not batter my wings, used zero point wing sauce, and since I had 16 points going into dinner, just counted dinner as 16 points and I am moving on.  No guilt.   No reason to “get back on” because I never fell off.  I planned it, tracked it, and today is another day!  And again, this is a salad plate, so it makes it look like so much more food!

Today marks my 3rd weigh in at Weight Watchers after fully committing to the program on December 26.  I’ve lost 5.2 in the last two weeks, so I know my weigh-ins will level off, but I don’t really care what the scale says today.  I know I am being accountable.  I know I am in control of what I put in my mouth.  And I know if I keep it up, the weight will come off eventually. 

So my question to you?  What is your favorite apple – have you heard of any of those before?

Also, I think you can search for my playlist I mentioned yesterday – my name on Spotify is biz319 (before I knew a name mattered and you can’t change it) and the playlist is called #livefully and I think you can just use the search button on the bottom of your screen and search for it and then follow if you like.  I plan on continuing to add to it too – any favorite songs you think I should add, I am all ears.

Thursday Thought . . .

Make it a great day!