Category Archives: 1500 calories

1500 calorie day

Back to basics. I need to start doing more food logs on the blog again. They do give me that extra boost to be disciplined.

I have to cut back some to take off those couple of stress pounds before they turn into a couple dozen! That means 1500 calories of food.

Breakfast was Kodiak cakes with protein. I cooked my apple topping in a pan, poured the pancake batter over it and stuck it under the broiler for a couple minutes. Then flipped over onto my plate:

Topped with some maple syrup and butter. I have my morning coffee with cashew milk. I switched from almond to cashew so that I can be more eco friendly. Calories: 435

Most days I have a morning snack, but I didn’t need one today for some reason. Probably because I didn’t exercise in the morning. It was really cold today and I wanted something hot for lunch. We had a banana that really needed to be used up, so I mashed it, cooked it with some oat bran, whisked in egg whites and topped with almond butter:

It’s topped with this:

Have you tried it? It’s pretty tasty. Normally we don’t buy sweetened nut butter, but I wanted to try it. It’s very good, although it’s not really no-stir. It doesn’t separate as much as natural nut butter, but it still needed stirring. Lunch calories: 355

Afternoon snack:

Of course it’s a latte! Drizzled on top with some honey. Calories: 150

I had a solo dinner tonight, so it wasn’t vegetarian. I keep some of these in the freezer:

Super easy. Just toss in the toaster oven for 30 minutes and it’s done.

Steamed veggies with a bit of butter on top. Calories: 400

I have my evening snack planned out for later. Cafe au lait and Yorks:

I usually have my snack around 8 or 8:30. Calories: 150

That brings the total to 1490. Give or take rounding. Close enough. This was a good mix of food, although the breakfast for lunch was unusual. I did about 40 minutes of walking today.

It always feels good to get back to basics. I wasn’t going totally overboard or anything, but it could head that way pretty easily.

Have a great weekend!

A day’s eats

I thought I would get back to being more accountable on the blog with food and exercise, not every day, but more than I have been. So here is today. My general goal is around 1500 calories per day give or take.

Breakfast was oatbran cooked with a mashed banana, egg whites and topped with 1 tbsp of Nutella.

With my coffee, 480 calories. A lot of times, I have almond milk in my coffee, but decided to go back to milk instead. This meant having less of the topping on the oatbran to keep the calories the same. I usually have about a cup of milk divided between my 3 cups of coffee.

Interestingly enough, this breakfast lasted me until lunch. Was it the milk?? Curious.

Speaking of lunch, that was 2% Fage with apple/cranbery topping:

310 calories

I am really busy at work now. This new account I am on is busy. We have to work on the payment for it so I get compensated enough. They sort of threw a number in the air to the client with room to wiggle, and we’re going to have to wiggle 😀 The days go by really fast, now.

Afternoon snack – latte with a little honey drizzle and some dried pineapple (measured half serving)

180 calories.

Dinner was pretty standard. 5 oz potato with a wedge of laughing cow cheese and topped with BBQ chicken. Plus broccoli for a change 😉

About 415 calories.

I took all the pictures on my phone. I really notice a different between the phone and my Rebel. I used to think my phone took great pictures, which it does, but the camera is such a step up. Lori, remember to use your camera for these pictures…

Exercise for today was a 25 minute walk and some strength training:

Squats – 3 sets of 10
Dumbbell rows – 3 sets of 10
Stiff-legged deadlift – 3 sets of 10
Dumbbell shoulder press – 3 sets of 10
Reverse fly – 3 sets of 10
Dumbbell chest press – 3 sets of 10
Crunches – 3 sets of 15

That leaves me about 100 calories to have a snack with tonight at the coffee shop. Likely a decaf drink and a few bites of something John gets. We have a library/coffee date tonight. 😀

Holiday week plan

Holiday week is here! My goal is to eat lower carb and/or calorie controlled Mon through Wed. Sometimes I get that ‘holiday mentality’ and start eating all kinds of stuff the days leading up to a holiday. Do any of you do that? I don’t want to do that this week.

Breakfast this morning was the banana bread pudding, but I didn’t want to wait 20 minutes for breakfast. Yeah, that sounds lame writing that I can’t wait 20 minutes. Anyway, I don’t care as much for this pudding in the microwave, so, I put the batter in the waffle iron instead of baking it.

Gluten-free and grain-free waffle!

Topped with almond butter. It’s actually pretty good this way. Not crispy, but still soft like it is when baked.

Mondays are always a weird day at work. I can either be overwhelmed with work because facilities didn’t upload stuff from last week or it can be cricket chirping because we are all caught up. Today was cricket chirping, so I did what work there was and then helped John out with his business. That gave me a chance to visit with Bill the Cat. He’s quite the talker all the time. Here he is with his mouth open talking to me while taking his picture.

It’s like “Hi, I like you” “Do you like me?” “What are you doing?” “What’s this?” “Do you like me?” “Look what I am doing”. My goodness it is endless. 😯

He is really happy here. His face is still a bit messed up (as John put it), but he is looking better. Getting cleaner now as he stays inside and he has gotten flea meds. He is so, so friendly. He will be put up for adoption once I find out his FeLV status. The adoption center won’t list him without that test and I just need to find time to get him over to do that. He will be getting neutered a week from Friday.

I snagged a quick lunch of the corn and crab chowder (with a handful of Almond Thins) before heading out to tutoring.

I have to say, tutoring is really exhausting. For both me and my learner! It can be hard to find that balance between pushing for progress and not overwhelming him.

I got a latte to go when we finished, since we had met at the coffee shop for our lesson.

My brain food. Ahhhh….. I bet the Zombie apocalypse can be avoided by making sure there is enough caffeine for everyone every day.

Dinner break time was a quick one. My go-to quick dinner of a broccoli and cheese omelet.

Yay! These strawberries looked good, but a little watery tasting. Oh well.

I will be working tonight to catch up from the time spent at tutoring, but then I will get some football! Too bad I lost the picks already this week. My evening snack is dried pineapple with some almond milk. Keeping calories at 1500 today.

Dang, but Mondays are busy around here.

What my 1500 calories looks like today

Thanks for the comments on the porch! I love home improvement. Helen commented that I should flip houses. I actually did that and still would be if the market was really viable. I did 2 houses. The first one was really a restoration. I bought bank owned properties and fixed them up. Lots of work and I really enjoyed it, but then the banking and housing marked crashed. I held the second property as a rental (not planned) and finally sold it 2 years ago. I would love to be able to flip again, but it’s too hard to get financing right now. I could post a few pictures some time of the before and afters – especially the first house.

Anyhoo, I thought I might give a 1500 calorie day example today, since that is my plan for the month. I seem to get a lot of emails asking me about calories and exactly how many I eat. This is just what works for me in weight loss mode without being too hungry. Keep in mind I am 44 and only 5’2″, so what works for me might not work for you (be it more or less).

Breakfast was my protein waffles with blueberries.

With my coffee and almond milk on the side, this breakfast comes to 350 calories. Normally I eat a bigger breakfast, but I did not work out this morning.

Lunch – Baked potato (5.6 oz) topped with laughing cow and ground turkey (3 oz) with BBQ sauce.

Lunch comes in at 390 calories.

Afternoon snack – you know I love it! Plus a pluot.

165 calories. Note to self – buy more pluots.

Dinner – Egg/eggwhite omelet with cheese, broccoli sauteed in coconut oil, pear.

Hot sauce optional, but recommended Calories for dinner – 365

Evening snack – This is being taken with me to tutoring tonight.

Calories – 240

Total for the day = 1510

Of course, this is an estimate because I don’t weigh my produce. Other stuff yes, but not fruits and veggies. I do round the numbers as well. Good enough for government work, though.

Exercise today was walking. And now, I am off for tutoring tonight (with snack!).

1500 calorie week done!

Hope you all had a great weekend! Mine was fairly uneventful, which actually was kind of nice. Plus, I made it through my 7-day 1500 calorie challenge to myself! (more on that below) Now I can get back to regularly scheduled eating on Monday. Even with lowered calories, I was still able to eat my bagels. Like breakfast this morning:

Gingerbread bagel at Panera!

Yummers. I was really hungry for this as I woke up early and got on the bike trainer for a while instead of waking John up to go to breakfast. I am such a good wife.

John made eggnog this morning, but decided to leave out the egg whites. So, I figured I would use them up at lunch time today! I tried something way different for me.

I put 4 egg whites into the magic bullet with 1/4 cup of FF ricotta cheese and blended. Then I made an omelet with them and tucked in some sauteed broccoli. Or sorta made an omelet. I kind of fell apart on me. Topped with a chile con queso laughing cow and salsa:

Interesting, no? With an apple and cinnamon. This was good, but I honestly have to say that I do miss the yolk.

This week was really good for me in a lot of ways with my calorie experiment. I learned that my meals are actually just fine portion wise. Where I get in trouble are with unplanned snacks. My normal snacks will have higher calories, and that is where I trimmed my calories from the last week – and maybe a little off of a meal or two here and there. Where I was having trouble was the extra snacks.

I have decided that chocolate chips really are not something I can snack on. 1 tablespoon of chocolate chips has 70 calories. That is all fine for topping oatmeal, but I usually want more than 1 tablespoon as a snack, and often paired with nuts. That kind of snack can easily end up being 300 calories. Not that there is anything wrong with a 300 calorie snack, but not if I have already had 2 snacks during the day already. It is most annoying at how easily that stuff adds up…

I do much better with an Attune bar or a couple of dark chocolate mint cups. I am not sure what the difference is between the chocolate chips and those other things. Maybe it is the quality of the chocolate? Or maybe it is just my brain 😳

Speaking of snacks, John made eggnog lattes for the afternoon snack with the nog he made earlier:

Another thing I did last week was to decrease my exercise. As I had mentioned to Shelley in the comments the other day when she asked me if I felt deprived – the answer to that was no. Part of that was because I lightened the exercise up. I didn’t want to shoot myself in the foot with lowering calories and keeping up a high level of exercise. That combination would really have made me unhappy. Ironically, I actually felt exercise deprived! I love working out (who is this person??) and will be glad to have more calories again so I can do longer workouts. I don’t exercise to eat more – I eat more because I exercise!

Since it is Sunday, I cooked up a bunch of chicken for the week. Included in dinner with some roasted brussels:

Tonight’s snack? I made some cinnamon raisin bread yesterday (recipe coming Tuesday):

Knowing I had a specific calorie budget really helped keep me from scarfing half the loaf yesterday. Because I wanted to, and I was home alone LOL! I did have some extra calories on Saturday because of the bread, but I was totally fine with that. That was another thing I noticed this week is how much I had been letting rarely eaten foods in more often. Stuff just has a way of sneaking in.

So, I really do call the calories experiment week a success!

Calorie tally:

Saturday calories: 1650 – little higher, but I am okay with that for a Saturday with fresh baked bread in the house.

Sunday: Preworkout: 110, Breakfast: 590, Lunch: 276, Afternoon snack: 186, Dinner: 286, Evening snack: 144. Total: 1593

New gloves and Hot 100 update

We enjoyed the concerts last night. Here is a pic of the drums they played:

Last lifting day of the week. Wahhh…. Maybe I will think about doing a split body routine next year for some variety. I had half a S’mores Balance bar before heading out. I started with a 1/2 mile jog on the treadmill, then set to work.

Exercise	Set/rep/weight	Muscle worked
Stiff-legged Deadlifts	3 set of 10 at 75#	Lower body
Underhand grip lat pull down	1 sets of 10 at 50# 2 sets of 10 at 60#	Back
Pliet Squat	3 sets of 10 with 40# DB	Lower Body
Reverse Crunch	3 sets of 15	Core
Barbell Bench Press	3 sets of 10 at 60#	Chest
Calf Raise	3 sets of 10 at 140#	Calves
Face Pull	3 sets of 15 at 30#	Shoulders
Kickbacks	3 sets of 15 with 15# DBs (30# total)	Triceps
Lower Back Extension	3 sets of 10 at 100#	Low Back

By the way, here are my new gloves I got in a giveaway on Jody’s site.

I needed them, too, as my others ones were ripped (and not in a good way). They are Harbinger gloves. They have a nice stretchy mesh, and at first I thought they felt tight (size M), but the leather loosened up after a couple wearings, and they are quite comfortable.

Here is the palm side.

I like that these are washable leather – yay! The only thing I wish the gloves had is an absorbent pad over the top of the thumb/first finger area. My old gloves had that and I would wipe sweat with it. That doesn’t work so well with these gloves. I have had a couple comments on my new gloves, too. The black looks pretty badass at the gym.

Still having some shoulder issues. I can do pushups and bench presses now, but still no fly or incline presses yet. Ah well. That’s what happens in your 40s, I guess.

I then popped on the treadmill to jog another mile and then I was so ready for breakfast! I made waffles with the apple cranberry topping, but using fresh cranberries instead of dried.

A little fluff sneaked on there after I took the picture. Love!!

Now it is Friday and Hot 100 Update time!

Maintain my weight. Scale starting to drop Tday weight. Funny how watching portions will do that…
No eggnog lattes until Thanksgiving day! This goal is done, so I will remove it now.
Do the duathlon and at least 1 more 5K race before the end of the year. This goal is also done for the year.
Do stretching exercises 4 days a week at least. Did 5 days. I really think this makes a difference for me.
Visit one new blog each week that is participating in the Hot 100 Challenge and cheer them on. Doing.
Do one no-added sugar day each week. Completed

Doing pretty good now. Just need to ride it out for the next few weeks.

Lunch time! This was so good yesterday that I had it again today. 1/2 cup of cooked quinoa mixed with sauteed broccoli and a wedge of chile con queso Laughing Cow.

Easy and delicious! That’s my kind of cooking 😀

I was supposed to meet a friend for coffee today, but that got canceled, so I went with John instead. I had a skim latte and about 1/3 of this piece of coffee cake.

Tasty. The cafe is all festive right now. It’s feeling mighty Christmasy around here.

Aren’t these chairs fun?

I was spacing my work all day today, which is not a bad way to work! Soon enough it was dinner time and I had popcorn shrimp.

With hot sauce! I opened this bottle of sauce on 11/29. I marked the bottle because I want to see how long it takes me to go through it.

There will be dates for a snack later.

All in all a very good food day for me. Fridays have been tough for me lately, so it was good to continue the good eating. We shall see what the weekend has in store…

Calorie Tally: Preworkout: 105, Breakfast: 520, Lunch: 337, Afternoon snack: 226, Dinner: 328, Evening Snack: 60 Total: 1575

Running breakthrough and monthly wrap up.

I made it through yesterday! I had one more date last night because I was hungry, but fine otherwise. I don’t know how people who weigh more than I do eat less food than 1500 calories. Maybe I will just need to get used to it again. It’s been so long in maintenance where I do just the balancing. I have really forgotten what it is like to be in true losing mode and not just dinking around mode. Know what I mean? But I can do anything for a week.

I got more good sleep last night to the tune of 7.5 hours. Yay! I had breakfast first because I wanted to run a bit later outside. I made up some pumpkin custard oats topped with pecans, honey fluff, and crystallized ginger.

That’s what I’m talking about! Yum! I love how the fluff gets all melty.

I worked and let brekkie settle, then set out for an outdoor run. It was 39 degrees and not windy, so all in all a good run scenario. I did 3 miles at a nice steady pace. It was feeling good and easy. The last 2 or 3 runs I have had have felt very different from all of the ones since I herniated my disk, which has been about 8 months now. I feel like I have turned a corner and am getting my running mojo back. I have accepted the fact that I likely have permanent numbness in my knee and that my thigh may feel tight forever, but I am getting pretty used to that. It was the running ease – relatively speaking- that was missing, and I have felt that the last couple of runs.

I am feeling good enough about it that I am seriously thinking about a half marathon next year. Maybe. 😯

Lunch time! I just flopped an egg scramble on a pita with laughing cow and hot sauce.

There was no room for the pear on my plate, so it was on the side.

This was a dry pear… booooo….

Goal check! These were the goals set out for November:

Lose weight this month. I am not putting a number on how much to lose, just some. I lost 1 pound this month, too bad I gained 4 in October LOL! I actually had lost more, but this was the post Tday weigh in.
Do a turkey trot on Thanksgiving. I took part in a virtual turkey trot hosted by Alissa and did 5 miles!
Organize my bedroom closet (scary!). I have pictures of this. I did pretty well on neatening it up, but need to purge more and keep it that way (the hard part).
No eggnog until Thanksgiving (latte or otherwise). I made it to Tday without the nog!

Looking at that, I feel pretty good overall. I will post some December goals tomorrow.

Afternoon snack time! Homemade eggnog latte. If you missed the earlier post, here is John’s lightened up eggnog recipe!

The banana is pictured here for blog space sake, but I didn’t eat it until about an hour after the latte.

John won football picks *again*. 😡 I am going to have to get a 3rd job to pay for all these dinners unless I start winning some weeks around here! Stupid Colts. For those that wonder, John and I do have our own separate checking accounts, although the business account pays for most of our living expenses. It just makes life easier that way. Maybe that is why we are still married after 14 years?

So his choice was Pizzeria Uno. I perused the nutritional info and noticed a most annoying thing. They gave the calories for a serving size, and then noted that 2 servings came with each meal. WTF? Serve me one portion or give me the tally for the whole plate thankyouverymuch.

Anyhoo, I just went for a basic tonight. House salad with grilled chicken and blueberry pomegranate dressing- which was 2 servings. Shall I count lettuce leaves to get my single serving? Actually, I ate both portions since it was about 400 calories with the dressing, of which I used one.

Rainy evening in tonight. Here we thought the tree was safe from Pixie. Doesn’t she look all “who me?” in this photo:

Now she says, “How did that ornament get on the floor?”

She likes shiny sparkly things like her owner does…

Tonight’s evening snack/dessert. Attunes! I haven’t gotten these in a while.

Have a great night!

Calorie Breakdown: Breakfast: 489, Lunch: 330, Snack (latte and nana): 221, dinner: 410, evening snack: 90. Total: 1540

Focus challenge to myself.

It’s a newly minted, fresh and shiny week! I got some good sleep last night, which was nice. I had a quick protein drink and headed out to workout.

Exercise	Set/rep/weight	Muscle worked
Barbell Squat	1 set of 10 at 45# (warmup) 1 set of 10 at 55# 1 set of 10 at 65# 1 set of 8 at 75# 1 set of 8 at 85# 1 set of 7 at 95#	Lower body
Seated Lat Row	3 sets of 10 at 55#	Back
Captain’s Chair	3 sets of 10	Core
Calf Raise	3 sets of 10 at 140#	Calves
Push Ups	3 sets of 10	Chest
YTWL	3 sets of 4 each letter with 8# DBs (16# total)	Shoulders
Lower Back Extension	3 sets of 10 at 100#	Low Back
Bench Dips	3 sets of 10	Triceps

No cardio in the morning as I had to get home, shower, and walk to see the dentist for a checkup. I was their first appointment of the day. I didn’t even get breakfast except a cup of coffee. $150 dollars later, no cavities, and they gave me gifts!

So what do I do after getting teeth cleaned and polished?? Eat blueberries and drink cafe au lait, of course!

I was pretty hungry. The dentist is only a 5 minute walk from home, so pretty convenient. I do like this dentist even though he is a little expensive (I think).

So, I have initiated a strong and specific challenge to myself this week. With the scale bumping up from Thanksgiving and with a trip coming up to my in-laws in a couple weeks (which is usually a bit of an eating nightmare), I am going to try to laser focus myself. I am going into a weight loss mode by trying to stick to 1500 calories per day. I will help myself out by eating more vegetables (particularly at lunch) and having fruit for snacks instead of chocolate. Not that I won’t have some dark chocolate, but less of it. 😀 I will also work on breaking the nibbling that has snuck back in while cooking dinner. Hello Altoids!

We will see how it goes. 😀 I will be putting up a calorie tally at the bottom of the posts, just so you can see a breakdown of my day as I normally don’t do that and I get a lot of questions about it.

Lunch time! I tried something a little different. I spread a tomato/basil laughing cow in the pita with tuna and spring mix. It was pretty good.

Filling up on cucumber and clementines. Funny how I don’t like my cucumbers sliced in sticks like this – so I really don’t know why I did it. It tastes better to me sliced in rounds. I am weird that way.

Surprisingly steady drone of work with job 1 from the get-go, which is really unusual for a Monday. I’ll take it though! After I finished up that work, I made lattes today:

While I was steaming the milk, I was thinking about how I wish I was one of those people that just loved veggies. It would make life so much easier that way and easier to fill myself up. I like more than I used to by training my taste buds, but it is really, really slow going. Hence the reason you mostly see broccoli and brussels on my blog. Like in dinner!

I made a pseudo hash with broccoli, turkey, and a chopped up Morningstar sausage patty – all sauteed in coconut oil.

It was tasty, but needed some kind of moisture. Not sure what, though.

I’ll be working tonight and watching football. This will be my snack later, which I have portioned out ahead of time:

Yum! Today was also my no-added sugar day. That always makes the dates taste extra sweet 😀

Calories: Preworkout: 110, Breakfast: 411, Lunch: 295, Afternoon latte: 110, Dinner: 317, Snack: 217. Total for the day: 1507.

On plan weekend

I really ate well this weekend! Well…. I still have to get through this evening, but I have a snack all planned out.
Weekends really are hard, which is funny since I work from home – you would think that weekends aren’t any different than the rest of the week!

I took today off from exercising as part of my plan. Although I did go and stroll for about 25 minutes to enjoy the nice weather today. No hardcore cardio. Rest days really are difficult! Not sure why, but I have that urge to exercise. I guess I could have worse problems than that LOL!

I was doing some reading, and did you know that by federal law, calorie counts are allowed to have a 20% window of variance on them and still be considered accurate? I got thinking about that with energy bars. How do they make all flavors of Larabars or Balance bars have the same amount of calories? Well, they probably aren’t quite.
And on top of that, there is a 10% margin of error allowed – so your item could potentially be 30% higher in calories than you think. Cause do you think the company is going to put the higher variance on the label or the lower? Hmmmmmm? Just some food for thought.

Great on plan day

Well, I am post happy today! Not terribly busy today, so I can play! Food totally on plan, and I got in all my exercise today.

I have found my calories creeping up to around 1500 per day, and I am still losing, so that makes me pretty happy, although I have to be careful not to creep up too high. I don’t care if the losses are slow, I would rather eat more. I don’t know if that is sad or not, but being hungry always leads to bingeing for me. That’s why it is important for me to eat every few hours. If I get really hungry – I call that ‘falling off the cliff’, and at the bottom of the cliff is usually a pile of donuts or some other mound of food.

So, I have been searching for a triathlon to do next year. And, I need to plan how to train for it. I will likely need a membership to the Y or a gym with a pool. So, I need to poke around for that as well. Still not sure about the gym membership. I hate spending the gas to go workout. I might be able to bike to the Y now, but certainly not in the winter. Although, I might wait on the membership until 4-5 months before the tri. I’ve got time.

Finding Radiance

Trying to live a fit life loving food, cycling, gardening and everything in between!