Sunday, June 3, 2018

Weekly Eats: Mon May 28 to Sun June 3

A weekly roundup: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Weight loss update and sick week edition.


I came down sick with a cold this week, so life as we know it was put on hold.  I went into zombie mode until my cold went away.  The cold knocked out my sense of smell for a few days and really put a damper on my sense of taste.  The funny thing (to me anyway) it that it amplified spiciness.  Usually nothing is too spicy for me, but I felt the burn on every Scoville unit I came across and loved it.

Weekday Breakfasts



Weekday Lunches

Surprisingly, I am all about salads right now.  I don't eat meal salads very often - my head doesn't register that I've eaten a meal and it's all too easy to pile on the calories, but right now I'm on a streak with them.  
M: Grilled chicken salad
T: Salad with BBQ tempeh (via work catered lunch)
W: Spinach Artichoke Pasta
H: Salad topped with fried eggplant (via work catered lunch)
F: Sweet Potato, Corn, and Black Bean Enchiladas


Weekend Breakfasts
S: cereal bar and string cheese
Su: leftover thai takeout (the previous night the boys had breakfast for dinner so I thought why not have dinner for breakfast to even the score)


Weekend Lunches
S: California Pizza Kitchen Margarita Flatbread
Su: BLAT!  Counting down the days until our tomato plants start producing, then I will be eating these everyday.



Weekday Dinners

Monday (family meal): neither one of us had a clue what to make.  Hubs whipped up mac n'cheese, hot dogs, and veg.
Tuesday (family meal): quesadillas for kids, freezer lasagna for hubs, freezer sweet potato, corn, and black bean enchiladas for me.
Wednesday (date night): the low point when I was both sick and had to work late.  Hubs fended for himself and I had snacks at work.  We met up afterwards and finished the smores bars that I made last weekend. And my sense of taste was back enough that I want to tell you again how fabulous these were.
Thursday (chill night): hubs picked up Panera.
Friday (family date night with my rents): they brought thai takeout

Weekend Dinners
Saturday (family date night 2): stepson #2 had an amazing achievement that we needed to celebrate.  He asked to go to a nearby family diner.  Both stepsons had breakfast for dinner, hubs and I had hamburgers.


Sunday (family meal): I'm back and in full cooking mode!  Chicken enchiladas via Gimme Some Oven with cilantro lime rice and guac.  I wasn't sure if the kids would balk at the black beans, but I decided to push the envelope and though they made jokes about them, they also cleaned their plates without any fuss.  Stepson #1 made the comment that enchiladas are "like tacos", which is his favorite meals, so this is going down as a win.
Two random thoughts I had while cooking:
  1. There's a big trend for one-pot meals.  I understand the theory, but man that's not how I do things.  One pan to bake chicken, one pan to make sauce, one pan to saute onions, two pans to bake them in.  My super power is cleaning as I go, so by the time dinner is ready, I had a clean kitchen and clean dishes.
  2. The internet raves about homemade enchilada sauce.  If I had a dime for every time I've read "and it's so good you'll never used canned again"...I'd have a few bucks in my pocket.  Look, I love to cook from scratch, but homemade enchilada sauce is overrated.  To me it's a solution in search of a problem.  I've just never had bad enchilada sauce.  Now let's be clear that the Gimme Some Oven sauce was on point but I wouldn't hesitate to use canned.
Meal Prep
We have another meal worth of enchiladas and I stocked up on salad fixings for lunches.  The freezer is very low and I need to replenish our meal supplies.
 
A lil' Diet Update
As you can see, it's lil' but it's still happening.  I wrote more about my weight loss goals here, but to catch you up, in five months I've lost 8 pounds with 7 pounds to go.  To be more specific, I lost 5 pounds in January, 2 pounds in February, and 1 pound in the 3 months since then.  This is real life folks.

Thoughts:
  • I can now wear most of my clothes, which I couldn't before.  Every pair of jeans that I own is fair game.
  • I only have one pair of shorts that fit...the others are just too big;-)
  • Wearing my swim suit last week for my beach trip was nothing but fun.
  • I struggle with food a lot.  Between wanting to lose weight and wanting to run all the miles, it's tough to strike a balance that meets both goals.  I've had a lot of high calorie days lately (on the one hand I don't think I need to worry about having a damaged metabolism but on the other hand if I don't get a handle on this the 136.8 won't be sticking around).
  • Afternoon snacking is my downfall.  By that point in the day, I'm a little stressed and/or bored (nothing against my job, that's just the reality of working life) and we always have food at work.  I need to come up with non-food ways to cope.
  • I've backed off of weighing in every day, and I'm going to be going off-scale for the month of June.  When I started it was really helpful to weigh in every day, but now it's starting to be counter-productive.  I feel like I'm reacting to the number instead of following my diet.
  • I tend to gain weight in the summer (all of my summer clothes are loose fitting and there's endless cookouts and fun stuff going on), so I don't think it's realistic to plan on loosing more than 1-2 pounds a month.  But between you and me...I really want to get to 135 by the end of June and it would sure be nice to get this all done by the end of the summer.  So that's my goal and I'll report back at the end of the month.
Workouts
M: Off due to illness, though I walked a million miles keeping up with the stepsons in the Memorial Day Parade.
T: Off due to illness
W: Off due to being a normal rest day and still not feeling well
H: Still not feeling great, but I couldn't stay inactive for a moment longer.  Two mile incline treadmill walk, one mile treadmill run.
F: Weights and one mile treadmill run.
S: I was ready to be active, but knew I couldn't handle a long outside run, so I headed down to the treadmill for a fantastic 5 miles.
Su: off
Something new: Popsugar's 100 pushup challenge.  I have zero interest in doing 100 pushups, but I have been working on pushups in general and upper body strength and this looks achievable.  I'm one week in, we'll see how it goes.  I really like that it gives you weekends off.

Watching
(From the treadmill): Fixer Upper, A Place to Call Home (just started season 5).

(From the couch):
Adults: Halt and Catch Fire, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Family: Cobra Kai!  We loved it. 

Reading
Finished Final Girls, standing by this as a good summer read.  Next up, an old favorite, Dover Goes to Pott.

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