Category: General Weight Loss Tips

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General Weight Loss Tips

New vs. Old Habits

Old habits die hard. I’m hearing this a lot, as well as replacing old habits with new habits. And finding it difficult to identify these bad habits is a process in and of itself. Sometimes I don’t even know it’s a habit, or that it’s keeping me from my goals.

A couple of days ago I went through the house and threw out food that could cause me to binge. I went through this whole mental process of thinking this is wasteful, I can handle small amounts, and is this really bad to have around? It’s hard for throw away perfectly good “food”, but I did anyway and I have another round to go. I have boxes of graham cracks leftover from gingerbread house building, and right now they aren’t tempting- I could care less about graham crackers, but I worry about what they could turn into. So I will give them away.

And now I’m thinking of tackling my sugar/brown sugar and flour reserves. I cook occasionally with sugar, but I know I can use honey instead. Not much can be done (of the overeating variety, for me) without sugar, so I will keep the flour. I’m actually having these thoughts, what could I easily turn into a dessert? If this can be a dessert, it should go. This is the thing with being able to bake, you can do it quickly and easily without much on hand.

Old habits for me, are thinking “I can handle this”, and in the moment I can, but eventually something will pop up and I’ll find myself making brownies in the microwave and wondering how that even happened. Steps A to B to eating are a blur to me and I’m left with brownie residue in a mug trying very hard to wash away the evidence.

I’m asking myself, how can I  replace these habits and old ways of thinking? It’s a challenge, it’s hard to question a behavior you’ve worked hard at protecting.

What habits are you trying to throw away?

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31 Recipes

This month I’m participating in FloCoIMo which is Floyd’s (and beyond) alternative to NanoWrimo. My idea first was to create an art journal, but after the first day of the year that seemed like too much work for me right now. I imagine I’d sit around the last week of the year hurridly putting something together, just because. And so I went back to my original idea, which someone told me would be too much, but that’s me, I’m doing it any way. 31 recipes in January.

So far I’ve made five and I actually want to do it, I look forward to each recipe. It goes along nicely with my resolution to cook more and I’m trying out new recipes that I’ve been saving up for way too long.

Yesterday morning for brunch I had another tandoori chicken burger served on naan. Recipes one and two of the month. I just love this recipe.

For dinner I made Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchilada Casserole. I was scared that I wouldn’t like the mushy texture of the sweet potatoes in this, but I did. This recipe was a success, Josh said “I think this is even better than I think it is” as he is now battling the same sickness I had over the weekend. It was very good. Savory, spicy (but not too hot) and comforting.

I made a few minor changes to the recipe, which you can find here. I used kidney beans instead of black because my black beans were not done soaking. I used tomatoes with green chilis in the sweet potato mixture instead of just chilis. I added red onions to the layers. I didn’t use cream cheese. I used cheddar cheese instead and on top. I used beef broth instead of chili when making the green chili sauce, only because that’s what I had on hand. I served with avocados sprinkled with sea salt. I also made more sweet potatoes than that recipe suggests so I could put it in a bigger pan and make six servings. This will definitely be made again.

My fifth recipe is Five Ingredient Granola. I used pecans, oatmeal, chocolate chips, peanut butter, sea salt, honey+corn syrup.

These were good, but way too sweet, especially post Christmas. Next time I would use dried cranberries, more nuts and all honey.

 

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It Chooses You

Good morning! Did you guys get any snow yesterday? So far we just have a dusting, it’s mostly cold and windy. Is it bad that I’m hoping for at least one big snow this winter?

Yesterday’s breakfast was so good. I had one of Jeanne’s eggs fried in butter, a couple of slices of peach ham, a clementine and a small slice of banana bread. I ended up not eating more than a bite of the banana bread because I got overzealous with reheating it in the microwave. I think a loaf of banana bread is in my future.

Lunch was really late in the day so I kept it small. A shared chicken burrito, half of an avocado, and salsa.

Dinner took forever to cook, but it was so worth it. I made tandoori chicken burgers with yogurt cucumber sauce and naan. I topped the burgers with cucumber, red onion and cilantro. It was amazing. The chicken patties were tender and had a lot of Indian spice flavor to them. I also really liked the cumin in the cucumber sauce.

I didn’t get a good photo of the burgers because it was 9pm and I didn’t feel like pulling out the natural lights, but these were amazing. I’ll definitely be making them again. You can find the recipe for the tandoori chicken burgers here. The only difference for me was the chicken. I used whole chicken breasts and ground them up in the food processor with the spices. The naan recipe is here.

I did not exercise yesterday and can tell it’s going to be hard at first to get back into the swing of things. I woke up early to exercise and then waited for Josh and then just kept putting it off until we were both too tired. I think honestly we were both excited to get back to work and have a normal day that it took second seat to everything else. No excuses today though.

I’m almost done reading It Chooses You by Miranda July. Oh my. It’s so very interested and surprisingly sad and deep. Miranda’s comments about life, time and death feel so familiar to what goes on in my own head that it’s comforting to read the  words from someone else. While writing or trying to write a screen play she decides to seek out the people from the LA Penny Saver for interviews. What she finds is a whole lot of crazy in a world that exists without the internet.

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