Flog it good!

I got on the scale this morning. It was disappointed in me again. 4 pounds up since Thanksgiving.

It’s possible to gain weight as a vegan or vegetarian. I’ve proven to my mother that just cause something’s vegan doesn’t mean it’s automatically healthier.

I can pile on Earth Balance — which is amazingly butter-like — on my vegetables and be 100% vegan. I can eat a triple cheese pizza and be lacto-ovo vegetarian. With all the recipe testing and “Oh this looks good” type of cooking, maybe it’s time to step back — counts as exercise, right? — and start food blogging again. I love reading others’ “what I ate today” posts cause I can get some ideas — or feel better about that huge bowl of vegan bread pudding. I am interested in the new program at Weight Watchers but have no time in a few weeks since school starts back up.

There are lots of words of wisdom out there in the interwebs:

• Weight Loss Tips for Vegetarians
• Vegan Weight Loss which talks about Weight Watchers, McDougall, and Low-Carb
• High-Carb, Vegan Diet Causes Weight Loss
• GoVeg.com’s Success Stories makes it look so easy

We’ll see. I don’t like those 4 pounds. I have more to lose but was taking a break by maintaining for a bit. Meh.

Breakfast: Sin Sin Sin Sin Sin

“What’s wrong wit this picture?” is a game we all probably played as children. Let’s play it now, shall we?

• Sausage. That’s an easy one. It’s spicy and nummy but bad for the tummy!
• Biscuit. They were out of potatoes so I got a freshly made biscuit. Tasted fantastic but still not the healthiest choice in the cafeteria.
• Plastic utensils. Right to the trash.
• Paper napkin. Right to the trash.
• Styrofoam take-away container. Right to the trash.
• Diet Mountain Dew. At least, I will refill it with water from the fountain to drink today and recycle the bottle afterward. But, have you looked at what’s in Dew? Yeah. Scares me too. I am down to one diet soft drink a day on weekdays. Weekends are much easier because I can nap instead of reach for the caffeine. I vow to continue to lessen my dependence on this evil monster. The headache is less but I had a headache for a few weeks from something else, so it just may be that now there’s just a headache from caffeine withdrawal. I am weening so it could be worse!

Cost: $3ish, I think. I don’t get a receipt.

So. That is the breakfast of shame. Could be worse. Could be better. I brought my oatmeal from home before. I can do it again. That cuts back on fat, calories, cost, and waste. Must. Do. It.

Laptop Lunch #6

Wow. Number 6 already? I found a tin of miniature letter cutters and got a little silly with my Laughing Cow babybel.

Clockwise, starting at the top left: Fat-free cottage cheese with bits of oranges and cantaloupe in it. A pile of plum and orange slices. Next is a Laughing Cow Light Babybel on top of spinach on top of orange slices. Last, but not least, is a bunch of cantaloupe balls with plum slices.The theme of this is cozy neighbors. A little of one container is in another container. Did I mention I was in a silly mood?

I started to get the hang of making balls out of my cantaloupe near the end. A few have rind on them. Oops!

WW Core except for the Laughing Cow (1 point). I just had to try these little letter cutters that I found in a drawer. I wanted to do “C” for cheese but it didn’t have “C”! No idea why. So, this is “N” for “NUM!” Also, a little gotcha… I forgot that there is a paper(?) string thing and the cut-out didn’t pop out as easily as I thought it would so had to cut along the edges of the “N.” When I got to work, I peeled off the strips and it put a slash through it making it look like “No N.” Or maybe it’s a “Z”!

Yes. I’m easily amused.

I also discovered that I don’t like orange plus cottage cheese. And the plum was very tangy but was told they’re supposed to be sweet so I’ll try that again. I still really like the combination of spinach and orange.

Flatout amazing! My first time making a flatout wrap

Two thumbs up!

I wanted to buy a low-cal, low-fat wrap for sandwiches (yes, thinking about my laptop lunch makings) and found among the wraps a weird looking oblong wrap. Brand name is Flatout and after looking at the nutritional values of those available, I got the Honey Whole Wheat one. It’s a lot of good bread for just 1 point. Odd though, I can’t find it on the Flatout website. This is the closest to the nutritional value that I found: Multi-grain Flatout.

The texture is great. It’s not scratchy or heavy wheat. It didn’t fall apart like the one tortilla ‘sandwich’ that I made did.

I looked on the website to try and figure out how I was supposed to use it. I found a few recipes but no play-by-play. So, I went with the generic “put the stuff on round end of the bread and then roll tightly.” I smooshed the cheese on the bottom using a wet tablespoon. It made the spreading of the cheese much easier. I then put on spinach, some thinly sliced turkey breast, and some slices of tomatoes. I rolled up from the filled end as tightly as I could but couldn’t do too tightly because of the tomatoes.

It held together very well considering I take my sandwiches so dry — no mayo, etc. I sliced it in half and it still held up well.

Fantastic product! I can’t wait to try some other ideas with it. Interestingly enough, after I bought it, I saw a fellow blogger post her fajita photo made with Flatout bread. So weird to go from never knowing about a product to buying it and seeing it in use shortly after!

Laptop Lunch #5

I was really looking forward to this one! The shrimp were thawed the night before and nestled in there. I didn’t add anything and ate them cold. I don’t like cocktail sauce. The grapes and cherries were singing their swan songs. Spinach, carrots and light Greek dressing are the bomb diggity.

And I got a new placemat! My precious.

I like this laptop lunch thing. Putting together lunches is so easy! I don’t have to make a lot of one thing, just fill up some little containers.

I’m extremely tempted to buy another one. It’s kind of a pain to wash it and then fill it the same night.

Laptop Lunch #4

Clockwise, starting top-left: Fat-free yogurt with cherries and grapes. I cut the fresh cherries in half to get the pit out. Then though that that looked keen so added some halved grapes. Pretty tasty. The cherries fresh are a little tart, so is the yogurt, but the grapes helped calm everyone down. We then have more grapes– can you tell I love grapes? And under those grapes are some leftover apple bits. And the next container has — surprise — more grapes and some apple slices. I put the skin side up and didn’t add anything to it to see how badly it’d turn brown. Didn’t do badly at all! That’s an organic Fuji apple. Num! Last, but not least, we have left-over brown fried rice with a sprinkle of parsley on top cause I was feeling cheeky. I did microwave the rice for about one minute but it was fine cold. Tasted better at least at room temperature, though.

This is a WW Core meal.

For the plate: Red

How can I plan a meal for presentation? I don’t see me making little radish roses but I could see nestling in a grape tomato for a splash of red. I’ll list what I’ve found even if I don’t eat it. Tastes change, etc.

Red

Beet Can be eaten raw, but are more typically cooked or pickled. [more…]	Blood orange Raw. Less acidic in flavor than regular oranges. [more…]	Cherry Raw or cooked. [more…]	Cranberry Cook or it’s too tart. [more…]	Guava Raw or cooked. [more…]
Papaya Raw. [more…]	Pomegranate Raw. [more…]	Pink grapefruit Raw. [more…]	Radish Raw or cooked. Hot peppery flavor. [more…]	Raspberry Raw or cooked. Sweet, slightly tart.[more…]
Red apple Raw or cooked. [more…]	Red bell pepper Raw or cooked. [more…]	Red chili pepper Mild to hot. [more…]	Red currant Cook or it’s too tart. [more…]	Red grape Raw or cooked. [more…]
Red onion Raw or cooked. [more…]	Red potato Cooked. [more…]	Rhubarb Cooked. [more…]	Strawberry Raw or cooked. [more…]	Tomato Raw or cooked. [more…]
Watermelon Raw. [more…]

Images are from Flickr Creative Commons-licensed content. Clicking on each image will take you to the photographer’s album.

Two days of eats

Oatmeal:
How I love thee but won’t it get old quickly? I still have about 2 or 3 cups left in the fridge for nuking. So far my favorite way to make it (other than oodles of brown sugar and milk and butter) is banana. Gotta find some other ways!

PB&J roll-up disaster
I tried to make a PB&J roll-up so that I can cut it up for my Laptop Lunch. It was a disaster! My little cutting board looked like I just butchered something. The spewed guts (aka: jam) went on top of some yogurt so that was good. But the roll-up…. I don’t know what I did wrong! I put peanut nut butter on the tortilla first so it wouldn’t get soggy and then put on the jam. I put too much jam (2 tablespoons) definitely but the cutting was horrible.

Breakfast

• Oatmeal, steel-cut, leftover, 1 cup: 2
• Apple, organic, Fuji, cut-up: 1
• Cinnamon:0
• Da Dew! 0
• Was going to put slices on top of the oatmeal but that’s hard to eat so I chopped some up and mixed apple in after the oatmeal was nuked. Sprinkled cinnamon on top. Not a huge fan. Maybe it’d be better with the apple nuked or some sweetener added like honey or such. I’ve seen people add applesauce to oatmeal so thought this would work.

Lunch

• Chicken fried rice
  Based loosely on OAMC Chicken Fried Rice. I used some of the cooked brown rice, rest of the chicken, onion, frozen vegetables, 2 eggs, and soy sauce/pepper.

Dinner
2 Turkey cheddar dogs, 1 cup corn/lima beans.
I didn’t cook this but photographed anyway.
3 hot cocoas: 12
ice cream (1 cup + chocolate syrup): A kazillion points. Ok, not really.

Brunch
PB&J roll-ups: 2 Tbl peanut butter, 2 Tbl jam, 1 tortilla (3)
1 cup ff yogurt
Diet dew, 1 can

TOPS versus Weight Watchers

Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) is a non-profit weight loss group that’s been around since 1948. They have 200,000 members and 10,000 chapters in the world.¹ They don’t “sell” a particular way of eating as long as it’s healthful but they do have exchanges on their recipes and such. TOPS has a magazine. TOPS meets weekly. TOPS has weigh-ins. TOPS has success stories. TOPS is a lot cheaper than Weight Watchers. So why did I join Weight Watchers instead of TOPS?

Actually, I joined both. I signed up for TOPS, I think, in January or so. I picked a meeting night based on my school schedule and showed up. I paid $24 for the year which included a new members’ packet with weight-tracking booklet, magazine subscription and information about eating wisely. I went a few times but haven’t gone in a while.

The meetings are member-run which means no TOPS-paid leader or staff. The members come up with contests and games that are weekly or monthly, depending on what the member running the event wants. TOPS also has retreats that all can go to that are held all over the place.

I’ve belonged to TOPS once before and went fairly regularly. I was losing but was basically following the Core plan of Weight Watchers. I even ran a couple of the contests and made a huge contest compilation book for ideas.

So, why’d I join Weight Watchers that costs me $39.95 a month? That’s more a month than I pay all year for TOPS!

The top is a WW page layout ( July/August 2008 ) and the bottom is a TOPS magazine layout ( June 2008). WW magazine is slick, 2 months instead of just 1, a lot of ads, better photography, and better layout. TOPS has more reader-submitted content and is not as professionally designed. Which is better? Depends on what one wants.

Weight Watchers (WW) started in the 1963. I couldn’t find a membership number but it has over 50,000 meetings a week around the world. I have over 25 at my meeting. At TOPS, it usually averaged 5-10 a meeting. So, I can assume that there are more members in Weight Watchers than TOPS. Both programs have the support of a meeting (if you sign up for meetings), and both have a maintenance program (oh to get to that!). But, the cultures are different.

My local WW group is about 70% women in their 20s-lower 40s. Also, there is a program each week that is informative. I don’t like how WW pushes their products with little commercials — at least, I feel like they’re commercials — at the beginning of the meeting. “Blahblah is 50% off this week. It’s really good. Here are some recipes on how to use it.” I enjoy the programs of WW more than TOPS but WW has all those paid (underpaid, probably) staff members behind it. It also does the same program at different meetings whereas the TOPS chapter comes up with its own program. I also like that the leader of WW has been there, done that and was successful. Every meeting is different but the TOPS meetings I’ve been too are more openly accepting and friendly than the WW meetings.

Both, I think are great. But I prefer Weight Watchers because it’s more serious… more professional… more consistent. However, if you need a low-cost, fun way to get support, I suggest TOPS.

Footnotes:
¹ http://www.tops.org

Saturday foodstuffs

Yeah. Difficult day. Emotionally draining. I’m glad it’s over. I ate those little quarter sandwich things on a boat that I didn’t take pictures of but I did take pictures of the dinner I ate out. Yay? Oh and I am a huge fan of steel-cut oats! Cook up a bunch and store it for a quick nuke each day!

Breakfast [5]

• Oatmeal, steel-cut, leftover, 1 cup: 2
  I’ve been warming the oatmeal up in this bowl. I measured out how much each line is with water from a measuring cup, but also the oatmeal comes from a storage container that has lines for 1 cup, 2 cup on it. Very helpful.
• Banana, 1: 2
• Honey, 1 teaspoon: .5
• ICBINB, 1 teaspoon: .5
• Diet Dew, of course: 0
• I mixed up some cut-up, slightly smooshed banana in with the microwave oatmeal. Pretty lovely combination!

No picture of the food, but enjoy the water….
Lunch [4][9]

• Finger sandwich, 2 quarters, 1 turkey and 1 roast beef: 4?
• Water: 0

Dinner [9.5][18.5]

• Diet pepsi: 0
• 1 fried mozzarella stick: 2
• 1 broccoli nugget thing: 1
• Mahimahi: 5
• Broccoli: 1
• Hushpuppy, 1/2 of one: .5

After

• Diet dew, 1 can: 0

And then….

Ice cream with chocolate syrup. It seems the emotions of the day sent me back to my frozen lover. At least now that I’ve figured out how much my bowls hold, I can say how much I had. 13.5 points. How satisfying was it? Not very.