Tag Archives: healthy dinner

Weekly Wrap Up #3

Despite the fact that once again the scale did not move, I had a really great week.

I tried some fun new foods and meals, like these Baked Chickpeas, taco salads and even Caramelized Onion & Chicken Burgers. I was really happy to have my own homegrown tomatoes as a side dish.

I also tried and fell in love with my first KIND bar. So so good. Basically the best candy bar ever, but its made of nuts, tastes way better than a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. 190 calories and 7 grams of protein. Perfect for a snack or dessert.

I was under my calorie limit all week, I tired to stay around 1200 most days. Although I did go over a few times, I was always under 1610. Here’s the graph:

After some disappointing news tonight, Blake and I went out to dinner. I decided on the burger and fries. I said I was going to not eat carbs after breakfast in hopes of breaking this stalemate with the scale. But I broke that rule, oh well. I’m not worried about it. I know I did really well most of the week. I’m trying to really get myself in the mindset of living a health life, instead of trying to lose weight right now.

This was also the first week of my half marathon training. Definitely one of the best weeks of running I’ve ever had. I ran a total of 11 miles. I also walked Kia almost everyday, the loop we walk is 2.5 miles. I also spent a day at the aquatic center with my sister who was babysitting my (my brother’s kids) niece and nephew. So I spent a few hours chasing a 3 years old and lugging around a baby (I’m sure that burns a lot of calories!). It was a lot of fun, although I did manage to get my first sunburn of the summer.

Last Night’s Dinner

I’m getting really excited about cooking right now. I’m planning on doing a new recipe every day this week. I’m really excited to share tonight’s dinner with you tomorrow…..but first comes yesterday.
After my first try with Indian cuisine, I really wanted to try another dish, so I started searching one of my favorites sites for recipes, Eat Better America. If you haven’t checked out that site yet, you need to! They have tons and tons of recipes that have been “heathified”, I’ve tried a bunch of them and none have failed me yet.

eatbetteramerica®

So last night, I tried Vegetable Curry with Couscous but I had to make some changes. This recipe requires chutney and well I couldn’t find any. I didn’t even know what it was until I googled it! So I omitted it, along with the raisins, because I don’t like raisins. I’m sure that made my dish a little less Indian, but I’m not stressing about it. It was still delicious. It was easy and something I can see my self making when I’m in a hurry. And I had enough leftovers to have for lunch today.

Check back tomorrow for tonight’s new dinner recipe!

A Must Try Recipe

Although I’ve gotten a lot better, I’m not typically an adventurous eater. I’m the type of person who can eat the same thing every single day and be completely happy about it. Over the last few years I’ve definitely started to branch out more and more. Four years ago, I didn’t eat any seafood, drink coffee, I’d never tried tofu or soy-anything. But slowly I’ve tried new things, I love sushi and seafood, I’ve tried things like eel, octopus, and other chewy fishy things.

However, one area where I failed to branch out is ethnic food. I’ve never been to an Indian restaurant or Greek, probably the only place I have been would be Mexican places but around here there are more taco shops than…..Starbucks.

I don’t have the option of going to Indian place in my town so I did the next best thing, I followed a recipe.
Last week, I made Tandoori Chicken and it was delicious! And so easy. Like easier than easy.

I found this recipe using the Food Network’s iPhone app, under the Light Fare section. I paired it with white rice and oven roasted cauliflower(the only way to eat cauliflower in my opinion, just toss florets with olive oil, salt, pepper and a squeeze from a lemon or lime). And it was low in calories at only 240 a serving (chicken only)! Tonight I think I’m going to try Vegetable Curry and Couscous!

Tandoori Chicken (courtesy of Food Network Magazine)

An Amazing Night

Tonight I had the best run of my life (so far).

I took off this evening without Kia for the first time. I felt a little bit like I was betraying her, but Blake and I talked about it and we think its best for both me and our doggy, for her to stay home on my runs. We think maybe the reason why she stopped running the other day is because of her lungs. Kia coughs like a smoker, like a smoker that has a few packs a day. We took her to the vet, but they don’t know whats wrong…and we can’t really afford to keep running tests because we’ve already spent a pretty penny trying to figure it out.

Anyway. Off topic. So here I go out for a run, feeling pretty good. On the schedule was a 5-minute warm-up, 20 minutes run, and 5-minute cooled down. It was tough but it felt good, especially when I was done and saw that I had gone 2.78 miles.

But that’s not enough for Bloomsday.

So I started another training plan, one with a few running and walking intervals, rather than just running the whole time. Although I wasn’t running quite as fast for the second one, I added another 2.85 miles.

GRAND TOTAL: 5.63 miles! Holy Cow! Pretty sure that’s the farthest I’ve gone ever. I did it in 64 minutes. Overall, including the warm-up and cool downs, I walked 26 of those minutes and ran 38. I think thats pretty good for my first real long run. Then I entered it into myfitnesspal and it claims I burned something like 1300 calories! WOW! I really need to remember to wear my bodybugg to see how accurate myfitnesspal really is.

When dinner time rolled around I thought for a minute or two, “I just burned 1300 calories, I can eat what I want!” Which honestly I probably could have, but instead I choose to head to the grocery store and pick up the makings for some damn good beef stir fry.