Four-Month Update

For those of you who didn't read the 3-month update, those numbers across the bottom are not weights, they are the total of the inches measured above them. Because I'm adding muscle, my weight did not just plummet steadily down, but my inches did, so it is way more motivating to track that number instead.

I have lost 45 inches at 5 points. Which means, that if I had laid in the street four months ago and you had drawn a chalk outline around me, and then we came back to the same place today and you drew another chalk outline around me, today's outline would be nine inches inside the four-months-ago outline!

No, wait...

I don't think it does mean that. I forgot, I'm three-dimensional.

OK, if you had dipped me into a tub of plaster four months ago... whatever, you get the point.

I'm just doing BodyPump three times a week now. It is offered four times a week, but I get one floating skip day each week. I have tricked myself into seeing this as decadent.

I watched Food Inc. and became a pescaterian. Didn't mean to, but the idea of beef or pork or chicken kind of makes me sick now. There are completely healthy ways to eat meat; I've just gotten to a point where it's not worth the effort for me personally.

I don't count calories at all anymore. I know what's smart to eat and what isn't. I eat fish and shrimp and fruits and veggies with reckless abandon. I find that I cannot eat large portions anymore, or again, I get sick.

Basically, I made all new habits. I re-trained my body to expect me to make smart choices. I actually crave poached fish. I snack on tomatoes. It's nuts. I also snack on nuts.

Four months into this, I am SO glad I did it. This is the easy part, the pay-off. But if you're just starting, don't think about four months or even one month from now. Go out this weekend and buy healthy groceries. Cook at home this week. Take a walk after dinner. Make food you like in a healthier way. Take advantage of the fall weather and do an outdoor activity you enjoy. Then, one week from today, brag on facebook about how you completed a week. Then two. Then a month. Eventually you will get over the hard part, the confusing part, the feels-like-forever part and you can coast. Maintain. Do what now comes naturally. It's cake. Hell, it's BETTER than cake!

Same jeans from month 3 to month 4 -- they fit very differently today. :)

Stop Having a Boring Tuna

It's hard to get jazzed about tuna. I suspect this is because, for most of us, our associations are mostly of our mothers cranking open a can of Star-Kist, plopping it into a bowl, adding mayonnaise and calling it lunch. Or maybe that’s just me. Post-Tuna Stress Disorder.

Anyway, here’s a better thing to do with your tuna. Don’t be gross.

Tuna Steak salad

You will need:
Tuna steaks – I got a bag of frozen steaks at Sam’s for like $10
Mixed Salad Greens
A fresh avocado

Slivered almonds

Dressing:

Jar of Papaya-Poppy seed dressing

Two kiwis

A fresh mango

Thaw the tuna steaks in a bowl of water in the refrigerator until all ice is gone, then refresh the water and add 2/3 of the jar of salad dressing and thaw overnight.

Heat up the grill (outdoor or Forman or whatever ya got) as high as it will go. When the grill surface is at like 673 degrees, throw your tuna on there for about 30 seconds on each side. For reals. That’s it. The inside will still be raw – that’s what you want. Put the tuna on a plate in the fridge to cool.

Meanwhile, peel and dice a large mango and two kiwis. Run them in the food processor to liquefy. Then add the last 1/3 of the jar of dressing and whip them together.

Put mixed greens on a plate, slice the tuna and the avocado and add them. Drizzle with dressing and a sprinkling of almonds. If you do not both drizzle AND sprinkle, it won’t taste right.

Throw Another Shrimp on the Barbie

Even though Labor Day traditionally marks the end of outdoor grilling, unless you enjoy meat seasoned with the sweat of the cook, you almost have to wait till after summer to start outdoor cooking season in Texas. You can cook almost anything on an open flame if you have enough time to invest. And it usually turns out healthier because the fat drips off instead of the food cooking in it. Also, most of your favorite healthy foods – veggies, chicken, fish, even tofu- taste best when grilled outside.

All day Sunday I was craving shrimp and chimichurri sauce. Not sure why, except they’re both awesome.  Then when it looked like it was going to rain, I just HAD to go outside and grill. For most people, rain is a deterrent to outdoor grilling. Not me. Anything that’s awesome is at least twice as awesome in the rain. FACT.

For all my bitching about recipes, I did have to look up chimichurri sauce to make sure I didn’t miss an ingredient. And it’s a good thing, too, because I would have forgotten the cumin if I were just winging it and cumin is key. Anyway, the recipe is below, with the instructions for the rest of this meal:

Grilled shrimp and chimichurri sauce on white rice with fire-roasted vegetables and watercress salad.

You will need:

Fresh watercress

Rice (I use boil-in-bag whenever possible)

Raw medium-jumbo shrimp

Red onions

Tomatoes

Other veggies as you like

Margarine

Brown sugar

White Vinegar

Lemon juice

Dry seasoning to taste

Chimichurri Sauce:

Fresh Italian Parsley - 1cup

Fresh Cilantro - 1/4 cup

Garlic - 2 cloves minced

Cumin - 1/2 teaspoon

Olive Oil - 1/2-3/4 cup as needed (depends on how dry the herbs are)

Red Wine Vinegar - 1/3 cup (or more to taste)

Put white vinegar and olive oil in a baking dish and add the raw, peeled, de-veined shrimp. Cover with Dry seasoning and refrigerate. Put all the ingredients of the chimichurri sauce into a food processor and blend until smooth. Halve red onions and cut a small slice off of the rounded side of each half so they will sit flat on a plate. Add margarine and a bit of brown sugar to the flat tops of each half and refrigerate. In a bowl, soak whole tomatoes and any other veggies you want in vinegar and oil and dry seasoning. Fire up the grill. Put everything directly on the grill (as shown.) If your shrimp are small enough to fall through, put them on a higher rack and lay tin foil underneath to catch the ones who try to escape.

Boil rice inside on the stove. After about 20 minutes, it’s ready to eat. I literally did nothing to the watercress other than put it on the plate. It just adds a delicious, fresh flavor to the background of the rest of this vinegar-heavy meal. Leftovers are even better the next day after the flavors marry and are absorbed into every grain of rice and morsel of shrimp…. OMGYUM!

There you are. Virtually no effort and once it’s cooked, this meal boasts near-zero fat and very low calorie. Sodium levels will depend on the dry seasoning you use and cholesterol will be determined by your choice of meat. Shrimp and other seafood are freebies in the cholesterol department, as we have discussed before, so eat up.

You're welcome.

Change Up

Hey, y'all. I'm very sorry for the complete lack of blogging last week. It was my busiest work week of the entire year and I had no time to cook, let alone write about cooking. Anyway, I'm back to normal this week. Headed to the gym this afternoon. Grilled a whole situation last night - which will be discussed in tomorrow's post. Here's a pic to whet your appetite though.

Riiiiiiight?!?

Remember to tell your friends about the awesome new food blog you've been reading. Also, the content here is going to expand beyond just food. Gonna incorporate travel and lifestyle stuff; maybe some home-keeping tips if you're lucky. Kids love home-keeping tips.

Thanks for reading and sticking with me. More to come very soon.

All Told: 3-Month Check-In

  Starting Point                 1 month               2 months                    Today

Ladies and gentlemen, here you have it. My weight-loss journal, exposed for the world (or at least, the 40 of you Blogger tells me read this thing.) I really have to advocate for this facebook diet thing. If you have tried everything and nothing works, you should totally give this a try. Tell everyone what you’re doing and keep us updated on your progress. I bet it’s something you haven’t tried and what could it hurt?

OK, quick and dirty stats:

As of today, I am down ten inches in my chest. This seems like a terrible thing at first glance, but it’s not. At the risk of divulging too much information here, it’s only the band size that has gotten smaller, not the cup size. Also, bench presses are more effective than surgery for lifting the girls so they stand up and say howdy all by themselves.

A lot of people measure waist and low waist, because a lot of people, especially women are larger around the area below their belly button than above it. I am not built that way. I have always had this area above the navel that I call my “Homer Lip” so I measure there. Anyway, not only am I down 11 inches at my high waist, I have gotten the high waist and standard waist numbers a lot closer together, so I look less like a fat cartoon man’s profile.

I have lost 6 inches at my waist – measuring right across the navel. Not as much as I’d like, but still good. If you look at the chart below, you will notice my waist has always been my smallest measurement and my waist to hip ratio has always been about 3:4. All that’s still true. You can’t really change the genetics of how your body looks, you can just do what I like to call “The Tighten Up” overall.

Hips and butt are down 7 and 8 inches respectively. I’ve always gotten compliments for that wagon I’m draggin’ (I’ll wait while you Google that) and I went into this not wanting to lose any of it. Again, weight lifting saves the day. Sure, you’ve got to have cardio to burn the fat, but weight lifting makes your body look SO much better under the fat that once you burn down to it, you’re all like “Daaaaaaym! Where’d these muscles come from?” Now, I don’t care what size anything is, as long as it’s hard as a rock!

I have 2 weeks left to get to my goal numbers and I’m about 2 inches off on everything. That will be tight. I’ll probably have to cut out sodium to hit it, but I should be doing that anyway. Of course, I’ll keep you posted here.

I should mention that the totals across the bottom are not pounds; they’re total inches at all 5 measuring points. As of today, I have lost 42 inches!

And I’m not giving you pounds except to say I have lost 20. Stop caring what I weigh or what you weigh or what that celebrity weighs. It is a worthless number that does not take really important things like muscle mass into account. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna bust my ass lifting weights for three months and then get on a scale and feel like a failure because the number didn’t budge. Muscle weighs more than fat. Everybody knows this but we still get psyched out by it.

I am stronger. I can run farther. I sleep better. My joints don’t hurt anymore. I can finish a Body Pump class easily now with the same weight on my bar as the instructor. I look better in my clothes. I look better out of my clothes. I don’t cringe at pictures of me. Shopping is fun again. I feel healthy and clean. I’m not dehydrated. My skin looks better. I have been inspired to quit smoking. I don’t crave junk. Whole foods taste good to me. I am proud of me. I get compliments almost daily. I might even wear a bathing suit this Labor Day – in front of people and everything! Who gives a tiny rat’s ass what the scale says?

Whew! That rant prolly just burned quite a few calories. Of course, it’s not enough. You’ve all heard me mention BodyPump. I’ve tried several classes and BP is by far my favorite. If you don’t like near a gym that offers it, here is what I do on weight machines on days I can’t get to a class:

Abs 50@50 split

Press 100@200 split

Outer Thigh 100@20 straight

Inner Thigh 100@20 straight

Hamstring Curl 50@40 straight

Biceps 50@30 straight

Triceps 50@30 straight

Rows 50@30 straight

Elliptical 30/200 straight

The first number is how many reps I do, the second number is the weight. Split means do half of them, then do at least one other machine and come back to do the second half later. Straight means do 10 reps, rest a minute, do another 10, till you hit the target.

So for example:

I start with the ab machine, do 25 crunches at fifty pounds, then go to the leg press machine and do 50 presses at 200 pounds, then go down the rest of the list straight through in reps of 10 and come back and do abs again and leg presses are the last thing I do for weights. Then I jump on the elliptical for a half hour for cardio.

On alternating days, I do yoga, ride my awesome new bike, walk/ run/ hike, swim, etc. Some days, I don’t do a blessed thing.

I don’t eat crap, as a rule, but stuff happens. NVR FRGT the mystery burrito. But I try not to let it beat me.

90 days in, I feel like I have certainly made a difference. It’s never boring since I’m always experimenting in the kitchen and I can always add more weight to my bar.  I do wonder if I will someday be an 80-year-old in the gym every day lifting 300 pounds over my head, but hey, that would actually be pretty kick-ass.

My nickname could be The Octogenarian Pescetarian! I’ll get T-shirts made up… It’ll be a whole thing!

Water, Water Everywhere (2 of 2)

The cure for anything is salt water;

sweat, tears, or the sea.
- Isak Dinesen

This is part 2 of a two-part, cliff-hanger of a post about cooking with water. We’ve got one more cooking method to discuss and then I’ll give you two recipes that can be made cooking only with water. 

Water: Earth Wind & Fire’s Shemp

Cooking Style: Steaming

Works best for: Veggies

Upgrade: Wilt herbs or greens quickly to keep them crisp

You don’t need any special equipment to steam.  I have done it with a bamboo rack, a double boiler, a single pot and a colander… basically anything porous or with holes or cut-outs that will let steam through on top of anything that can hold boiling water to create that steam. in the recipe below, I hung a large soup strainer across the top of the pot I boiled the potatoes in and let the zucchini slices hang out in there for a few minutes. Veggies don’t need much cooking – usually just a few minutes, tops.  Most people really, really over-cook them. This not only depletes the nutritional value, it also dampens the flavor and makes the whole situation a soggy mess. 99% of plants can be eaten raw, so you don’t have to get them hot enough to kill anything, just warm and soft enough to be palatable. This also works great for greens like spinach or kale and for fresh herbs. Steam them for about 90 seconds and they’re done.

Now, the recipes…

Mean Green 1^st Week of School Dinner

You will need:

Bag of frozen tilapia (or other white fish) fillets

Potatoes

Green Onions

Zucchini

Limes

Cilantro

Dry Greek Seasoning

Non-stick sauté pan – 2 inches of water. Pot – half-full (or half empty if you’re a pessimist or an Isaac Hoskins fan) of water. Put the frozen fish in the sauté pan and leave it alone for about 4 minutes. During those 4 minutes, dice the potatoes and slice the green onion and zucchini. Mince a bit of cilantro. Put the potatoes in the pot and boil them. Turn the fish over with your widest spatula. Squeeze the lime juice over the fish and top with dry seasoning to taste. Test a potato. They should need another few minutes. Add the green onion slices to the potatoes. Put a metal colander or steaming basket on top of the potato pot and add the zucchini to it. Chill for a minute. Take everything off the heat and drain. At the last moment before serving, coarsely mash the potato and onion mixture. Garnish the fish with cilantro and serve as shown:

Poached fish on top of Creamy Polenta and Stewed TomatoesPoach the fish – you should be an expert at this by now. Boil water in a small pot and then add a heavy pour of almond milk. Scoop spoonfuls of polenta into the water/ milk mixture and boil. After a few minutes, add whole cherry tomatoes and stir. Slice red onion and toss it in with the fish. Slice avocado and reserve. Finish the fish with Lime juice and dry Greek seasoning. Garnish with avocado slices and serve as shown.

You will need:

Bag of frozen tilapia (or other white fish) fillets

Tube of plain polenta

Red Onion

Cherry Tomatoes

Limes

Avocado

Almond Milk

Dry Greek Seasoning

There you have it. If you have 15 minutes and running water, you can make a delicious healthy meal. If you don’t, well, you’re screwed.

Remember to tune in tomorrow for the big three-month check-in! All will be revealed! Measurments! Pounds! Sizes! Pictures! Puppies!*

* no puppies