(the) Jebbica

Breakfast is generally the hardest meal of the day for me to stay on task.  Half of the time, I skip it altogether, and the other half, I’m tempted to just swing by McDonald’s on my way to work and grab a $1 Sausage Biscuit (Lately, I’ve switched to the $1 Sausage Burrito, since it only has 300 calories or the $1 Fruit-n-Yogurt Parfait, but making it at home is always a better option!).  I used to read in diet books that the Egg McMuffin was the best thing to get at McDonald’s for breakfast, which has 12 grams of fat.  So then I found some Egg Muffin frozen knockoffs at ALDI that had half the calories and half the fat.  They were better looking and tasted better.  The problem for me was, though, I don’t really like Egg McMuffins.  I think English muffins are kind of strange with their powdery texture, and I just cannot eat an egg if I can see that the yellow is separated from the white.  I’m a weirdo, I know.

So, in trying to alter my eating lifestyle, I have tried to make breakfast the “most important meal of the day”.  Here are some healthy options I have been eating lately:

Peanut Butter Banana Whole Wheat Pita

How I make it:  Cut one whole wheat pita in half.  Spread insides with Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter.  Slice banana in half, then in half longways.  Place two quarters into pita.  Toast in toaster oven on “light” setting.  I squeeze a little natural local honey onto it when it’s done.  This has become my new favorite breakfast because it really stays with you until lunch! (more…)

Flowers.  I’ve never really seen the point of getting them.  They seem like an extreme waste of money for something that are just gonna die soon.  I mean, you can buy a goldfish for a quarter, and even it will probably stick around longer.


This was my theory, anyway, until I got some.

 

There’s just something about the way they spruce up my cubicle, the gleam of envy in my coworkers’ eyes.  They’re already jealous enough that I have someone who does the cooking and laundry, who takes out the trash, pumps the gas, and will fix a broken headlight.  Of course, he’s also impossible to buy for, a pain to deal with at parties, and super-cranky in the mornings.


But who is to say I am without flaw?


So, even though I was a bit jaded towards Valentine’s Day, it is still nice to have a special romantic day with your sweetie.  Of course, my romantic day was on the 15^th, since my sister’s birthday was the 14^th (and besides: everything is half-off by then, anyway, which I’m totally cool with.  My theory is, don’t be a sucker. If you can get twice as much for half the price, why wouldn’t you? The candy still tastes just as nice.)  In addition to the beautiful pink rose and alstroemeria bouquet, my Someone Special got me some new bras (fyi: he was totally unabashed in regards to searching through the lingerie section alone), and my favorite, Milka bars.  Now, of course I’m on a diet, and now we have two bags full of candy (and $15 worth of doughnuts, which is what he wanted for V-Day!).


Most of the candy should keep awhile, so I’m trying to think of ways I can still enjoy a little now and then while still maintaining my healthy eating regime.  Today, for instance, for my 10:00 a.m. snack, I mixed a few dark chocolate M&Ms with a few cocoa-dusted almonds.  Just enough to feel like I was eating something sweet while still getting in that delicious protein.  As much as I love carbs and sweets, I am also adoring the high protein-high fiber-low carb eating.  I already cannot wait for lunch, which is black bean salsa (recipe coming), turkey, provolone, and spinach on a whole wheat pita with a side of celery and hummus (everyone I know seems to think hummus is gross, but I think it’s good if you get the right kind! (Here’s a photo) The Sabra Roasted Red Pepper is delicious and tastes a lot like pimento cheese, a celery staple). 


I am even starting to exercise a bit.  I’m not athletic, and I’m certainly not graceful.  I can barely walk without falling over.  So last night, my sister Maegan (my Valentine’s Day-born sis) came over to play some Wii Fit.  I suggested that we try Just Dance, the game that I was kind of awful at.  She, The Boyfriend, and I took turns playing a two-player game, the odd one out squaring off against the winner.  It was so much more fun that way!  Maegan won a lot, and The Boyfriend sat a lot of them out, so it was mostly just the two Wallin girls in competition (me, getting my fat ass handed to me time and again).  Before we knew it, an hour and a half had gone by, and we had shed several layers of our clothing and were panting into the snow-filled air outside thinking, wow, it’s not so cold out here!  She definitely kicked my butt at most of the songs, but I didn’t care.  The point of it is it’s a great aerobic workout, and I am starting to understand the rhythm of dancing a little more.  There’s no fluidity to my moves whatsoever, but at least I didn’t fall down this time.


I’m not sure I can see a difference on my body just yet, but I can definitely tell that I feel better with the things I eat, and I already lasted much longer on the dancing game this time than I did last time.  I’m getting full a lot sooner, too, which I’m taking as a good sign.  I wish results were immediate, but as long as I keep on this path, I think it will slowly but surely start to pay off.  Now if we could just keep those post-holiday candy sales at bay!!

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I have not been doing so well healthy-eating-wise since the flood.  I have really let it all go to hell.  It started as stress eating, then depression eating, then oh-God-I’m-fat-again eating, and now, look!  It’s the holidays again!  Hello, 89 different casseroles, all with the two-butter-stick minimum, of course!

So, yesterday was grocery day again.  With all of the holiday and furlough days, I am getting paid even less than normal, so money is especially tight this Christmas!  So I hunted for hours looking for enough coupons and ad matches to get us plenty of food for the month–and healthy food, at that.

We stopped into Wal-Mart, which I hate, to ad match some $1.50 Kashi cereal (and I had $1.50 coupons! FREE!) and $1.44 Eight O’Clock coffee, and I was going to ad match some Breyer’s yogurt that Bi-Lo had had on sale for $0.50 apiece.  I don’t know why, but we always buy yogurt, and I have every intention of taking it to work with me and eating it in place of more fattening snacks.  I might eat one or two, and then I forget about it.

Well, Wal-Mart had even less of a selection of Breyer’s than Bi-Lo did, but I spotted some nonfat Stonyfield Farms Oikos Greek yogurt.  All the health magazines of which I’m a subscriber swear by this stuff.  They say how it’s a great alternative to mayo, is great in cereal, etc.  I could never find any in the area, so a couple of months ago I did buy some Great Value brand nonfat plain yogurt and some powdered dip mixes and salad dressing packets and tried it.  It was a nice way for me to be able to eat “creamy” dressings and dips that I generally have to miss out on, since The Boyfriend is allergic to mayo (or, so he claims). 

So, this time I see that they are carrying the actual thing, and my heart almost stops at the price!  $4 for 4 4oz cups!  That is cuckoo-bananas to me. Nonetheless, I wanted to see what the big fuss was about it, so I got a pack of it.  I opened one of the 4oz cups tonight, determined to make tuna salad for tomorrow’s lunch.  Tuna salad!  I haven’t gotten to eat it (without sneaking, anyway) in almost five years!  It might not be a big deal to some of you, but try depriving yourself of something for a long period of time.  Even if you don’t really like it. If you know you can’t have it, you start to really want it.  As in, to the point of you will start acting like a crackhead on a street corner to get it.  So, the yogurt was a good bit thicker than the regular yogurt, and its smell and taste was a lot like sour cream.  It’s also much lower in carbs and much higher in protein.  I think if anything, it will be a really great healthy veggie and pita chip dip option.  I added apples and celery and all the good stuff you generally add to tuna salad, and I am actually excited about my whole wheat tuna sandwich lunch tomorrow.  Even if the girls at work DO end up getting Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches and 2 lb cheeseburgers.  Lunch at the office has been my downfall.  It’s better to bring your own lunch because it’s healthier and it’s cheaper, but then you don’t want to get left out.  And then you can’t fit in your chair anymore.

So, I guess my verdict will have to be delivered after lunch tomorrow.  But I am excited at the possibilities.  I can eat ranch dressing again?  I can mix it with all this Kashi cereal I bought?  And all the Indian and Mediterranean dishes–I’m getting hungry just talking about it.  See, this is where I have a hard time losing weight!  I just love food so much.  Healthy food, foreign food, Southern fried food, it’s all an adventure for my mouth in the same way that my varying taste in music is an adventure for my ears, and both are necessary since I rarely ever get to have any actual physical adventures.  But my fantasy world and poetic waxing are best left to another blog.  I think I’d better hit the Wii Biggest Loser for thinking about eating this late.

By the way: I did find coupons on Stonyfield’s website! It won’t be an impulse buy next time.

Something to leave you with as I have been contemplating this for awhile:  Splenda:  Friend or Foe?  It has no calories, so how bad can it be for you?  But then again, I don’t really eat anymore now than I did when I was ridiculously thin.  Splenda wasn’t even on the market then.  So, has introducing it into my diet messed up my metabolism?  Please, share your thoughts on this!