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