Friday, August 27, 2010

Diet Food vs REAL Food

If given a choice would you rather eat "diet" food or "real" food? I'm asked this questions a lot and it seems like the follow up comment is always, "I could never eat powdered food the rest of my life! I want to eat "REAL" food!". To which I just chuckle to myself and say to them - I understand.

What people don't realize is that majority of the "real" food they are consuming comes to the retailer in the form of powdered food. To give you an example - I was at Fudruckers for dinner (great place to get a good bison burger and salad btw) and noticed that you could buy their rolls pre-made or you could take home a bag of roll "mix" (aka powdered rolls). My son worked in the bakery of a large retail chain and all their "fresh" bread and rolls, cookies, brownies, croissants, etc. were made out of mixes (aka powder) re-hydrated, baked and sold as "fresh baked" to the end consumer. (Silly me - I had visions of those little baking elves carefully measuring out ingredients like I did at home!)

Magically it had become "real" food to the end consumer!
Our little foil packets come to us as "diet" food and magically we can produce "real" food!
It's amazing!!
What's really amazing is that these little foil packets can change your life!

So I thought we'd take a look at a day of "diet" vs "real" food at my house.

Today's Diet Food Menu

5- Foiled packets of Pancakes, Chocolate Pudding, Banana Pudding, Chocolate Shake, Brownie







Today's REAL Foo
d Menu

Breakfast

Chocolate Chip Crepe with warm Syrup





Second Breakfast


Chocolate Frosty





Lunch

Tropical Punch Slurpee







Second Lunch


Chocolate Cookie "Ice Cream" Sandwich






Ap`eritif


Raspberry Limeade







Dinner


Beef Shish Kabab's with Grilled Romain and Green Beans





Snack


Banana Pudding with Chocolate Cookie




Gastronomic boredom leads to lots of unhealthy eating.
If you don't make improvisation and experimentation part of your eating life,
you are sure to find yourself in an eating rut.
It's as bad as a romantic rut - losing that spark - and just as likely to get you in trouble!
Mireille Guiliano
French Women Don't Get Fat

So, if you're still licking that shaker cup clean and feeling a little deprived, just scoop the pudding into a fancy glass bowl, get out the silver spoon, sit down at the table and enjoy REAL food!

BTW - I won't tell if you just mix up the brownies and eat the batter (:

Monday, August 23, 2010

The Incredible Shrinking Couple


The Incredible Shrinking Couple!
150 pounds lost!

Priceless

With fire alarms blaring at my mom's apartment complex, she
grabbed her favorite bathing suit and ran out.

"A bathing suit?" I said later. "Of all the priceless things
in that apartment, that's what you chose to save?"

"Material things come and go," she said with a shrug. But a
one-piece suit that doesn't make you look fat is impossible
to replace."
(Good Clean Fun)

Isn't that the truth! I know you guys out there are shaking your head but just think of it this way - it's like trying to find a really comfortable easy chair. One's too small, one doesn't have a "lounge" feature, one's too flowery and it's not leather or it's "pleahter".....you get the picture.

Finding a weight loss program that works and is easy to do is like finding that perfect swimsuit or lounge chair - truly priceless! Once you find it DON'T LET IT GO!! Hang on to it with all your might!

Monday, August 16, 2010

Life of Gaga

My gym uses some really upbeat and fun music in their workout areas and classes. We sweat away to pop divas like Beyonce with her "Single Ladies" and Lady Gaga's "Poker Face".

Ah, Lady Gaga what can you say about her.................
Words like creative, weird, original, outrageous and kooky come to mind.

But I think she's brilliant!


This is me on a normal day. I wake up in the morning and make my hair bow,
and I put my catsuit on,

and I call up everybody in the Haus of Gaga, and I say,
"How are we going to be brilliant today?"
Lady Gaga


So Wake UP!
Get your cat suit on,
make that hair bow (tutorial)

And be BRILLIANT today!!

Friday, August 13, 2010

Fillet of Elephant

The best way to eat the elephant standing in your path is to cut it up into little pieces
African Proverb

How do you drink like an Elephant? An African elephants drink as much as 50 gallons in a single day. They drink at least once a day and in the wild, though they live in a variety of habitats, from thick jungle to open savannas, they are never far from water.

If an Elephant can drink up to 50 gallons a day, how hard is it to drink our measly 64 oz. (1/2 gallon) of water each day? To me it's like trying to eat an Elephant! It's HUGE and I get very overwhelmed by the thought!

This is our Elephant - the 2 liter or 67 oz bottle - on the right
1 of these a day in addition to our shakes, soups and other meals with water

It's the big Elephant in the room and no one wants to talk about it!


To conquer my Elephant I've discovered my
"Fillet of Elephant"
That small, tender and juicy morsel -
the 8 oz water bottle - on the left

12 swallows and I'm done! 8 of those a day - easy peasy! I can enjoy fillet 8 times a day! And to make it even easier I freeze just a little water in them to make them cool and crisp each time I reach for one. To do that I lay them on their side in the freezer. The ice melts quickly and keep it "just right" as Goldilocks would say - oh, sorry for mixing my proverbs and my fairy tales.

Yes, that's a chocolate shake getting ready to be a "frosty" in a few hours

To spice up your fillet of Elephant, try sparkling water with a twist of lemon or lime. Perrier or my favorite San Pellegrin
o are wonderful served with dinner - it turns a Tuesday ho-hum into to a Tuesday hummy (humming+yummy)! Buy low or zero sodium seltzer or soda water and sugar free syrups like Torani or DiVinci brands. I fill a large glass half full with crushed ice, add a splash of sugar free raspberry syrup and fill with seltzer water and I think I'm in heaven!
No matter how you serve it
you really can

Eat [or in our case] Drink an Elephant!