This summer has been a success for me in the foods category. I ripped off my hesitation cloak and embraced finding new foods that were both filling and nutritious! I can say that with the help of the grill I had quite a few tasty treats this summer!

My 10 fantastic food finds for the summer:

1. Sweet potatoes

I was never much of a lasting fan of sweet potatoes. I would eat them at Thanksgiving in an obligatory way and then not touch them again until Thanksgiving the following year. However, after this summer… I have a whole new perspective on sweet potatoes! Best way to make them? Par boil them and cut them into fat fries. Sprinkle lightly with olive oil and sea salt and then grill them! They are fantabulous for sure!

2. Spinach

The only way my dad could get me to eat spinach back in the day was to tell me that it was Popeye’s favorite treat. It was only then that I would grudgingly eat spinach. HOWEVER, this summer– I started buying freshly washed, already cut baby spinach. I would add it to salads, sandwiches and eat it just because! Now, I cannot imagine my fridge without it!

3. Jalapenos

I used to like jalapenos and then I didn’t for the longest time. And now? I grew jalapenos in my garden this summer and found mad love for them all over again! Garden grown jalapenos pack heat and bring delicious flavor! It’s a great added veggie to any dish that requires a little kick! Last seen: In my husband’s chili, which we ate on Saturday night!

4. Red Onions

I have always considered myself a sweet vidalia girl. Sweet vidalias are sweet and oniony and well… just plain good. However, after this summer — they have stiff competition! Meet red onion. Red onion is sweet and mild in flavor. It has considerably less carbs than its yellow counterpart. It adds color and flavor to any dish

5. Carrots

Like Kelloggs Cornflakes I had to taste them again for the first time. Dip them in hummus or eat them plain — carrots are simply delish!

6. Albacore Tuna Fish

At one point, I loved tuna fish and then I didn’t. I craved it all throughout my second pregnancy (maybe because I couldn’t have it?) and then after I gave birth… the craving died down. I gave it a second whirl and found that it went very well in a spinach salad or on whole wheat bread! Now… I am a fan again!

7. Blueberries

Put these little blue balls of heaven into a bowl with skim milk and light sugar on top and you have a breakfast for champions!

8. Tomatoes

Until my garden, I had been avoiding tomatoes like the plague. But… garden grown tomatoes have been proven to be a big hit at dinner time! Everyone loves them including me!

9. Avocado

I have always loved avocado and would eat it if someone prepared it for me, but really didn’t develop a taste for them until this summer. Now, grocery shopping isn’t complete without adding a bag of avocados in the cart! Eat them in homemade guacamole or slice them up and put them on a sandwich. They are fantabulous either way!

10. Miniature Red Potatoes

Sprinkle them with a little olive oil, seasoning and then wrap them in tinfoil and throw them on the grill. The potatoes might be small — but the flavor is big enough to leave you feeling satisfied.

In addition to the wonderful food finds… I also found a wonderful fashion/workout find in the name of mbt shoes!! have you seen them? They help tone your leg muscles and give you better posture! I feel straighter after I walk in them!

Those are my fantastic summer food finds. What were yours?

So, about a month ago I decided to undertake growing a garden.  I found my plot, moved rocks and already established plants and tilled everything under.  I bought seeds and plants that are harder to grow from seed (or take longer for that matter).  I am currently loving and caring for my garden.  I am currently doing it as organic as possible.

And I must say…

I can’t wait to eat the fresh veggies!  I have been growing tired of the bland store-veggies.

As much hard work as I am putting into my yard, I am also excited to do it.  It is gratifying to see my work at the end of the day.  I never knew I had such a green thumb or that gardening would be natural to me!  Believe me.. .if you met me… you wouldn’t think that I was the “gardening type”.

In a couple of weeks, I am going to help my parents put in some pond filters. They have a decorative pond in their yard and they need my help with it.

My parents are also into gardening. My dad actually has a garden that is about 3 times the size of mine. Last year we benefited greatly from some of the veggies my dad sent our way!

So… do you have a garden?

I have been organizing, cleaning and packing. We have accumulated so much stuff since we moved in to this place over two years ago! No really. It’s amazing how much you can accumulate in 2 years! Needless to say, Goodwill has been getting much of the stuff that we no longer need. I would rather give it to charity than hang on to it and have a garage sale in the spring. Too much work. And I have never been one to feel that my things have a price tag on them. We have been blessed with so much. I want to pay it forward any way I can.

So, if you haven’t seen me around much, it’s because I am packing. And organizing. And cleaning. In a couple of weeks things will get back to a better-than-normal state, and I can’t wait!

We have also been looking at truck accessories for my younger brother. He just got a new truck. I love helping him out when I can! So all of this running around has me a bit tired but also a lot pumped!

Here are my fabulous food finds:

1) Black beans — best. food. ever. I put black beans and salsa on anything that I can! It’s such an easy and tasty way to make a meal “southwest-ish”.

2) Chuck and Dave’s Salsa — they sell this stuff in bulk at Sam’s Club and Costco. I recommend it! It’s fresh tasting salsa with fresh ingredients. You can also get it at the local grocery store (it comes in smaller containers but might cost you more in the long run).

3) Sweet Potatoes — Buh bye starchy white potatoes… Hellloooo sweet potatoes! Last night I made oven baked sweet potato chips. I sliced them up to a medium thickness (circular shaped), sprayed Pam olive oil on them and smattered them with a bit of sea salt. Bake at 400 for 25 minutes and wahlah! Delicious and healthy potato chips!

4) Snickers Marathon Bars — I use these bars as meal replacement. They have 10g of fiber and 20g of protein. It’s guaranteed to make you feel full for at least 4 hours! 1 bar is 6 WW points. Oh and I eat one in the morning usually before I workout! The extra protein has seemed to help with muscle soreness.

Well, that’s about it for now! I’m off to go and read your blogs and comment on them! I’ve missed you guys!

On a good week, I would push for fast food dinners (and lunches) about 2-3 out of 7 days.  So that still means that almost half of those weeks were filled with weight climbing, heart-attack and stroke inducing foods.  I would see my kids eat it and my heart would break.  But I felt like I just couldn’t stop.

This next thing I mention… I would like to hammer home.  Because everytime I think of this… my determination for good health for not only myself but for my family as well, grows.

With all of the fast food that we were consuming…. there came a point where I felt like I was killing my kids.  I felt like I was handing them an invisible cloth with all of my failures and weight-humiliation on it and forced them to wear it.  They’re kids.  They eat what we eat.  They mirror the patterns that we set.  The risks for obesity for them is that much greater because I am obese and because my family has obesity issues.  If they see me eating crap food and couch-potato-ing it up… they are going to think that it is acceptable.

Of course, the reality is that they may not find it acceptable and may try desperately not to live that life.  But still.  Why put them through that if I don’t have to?  Why make them try to undo the mistakes that I handed to them on a platter?  Their psychs are so delicate right now.  And parents, we are the best teachers our children have.

On this whole journey, that is the one thing I keep reminding myself.  I’m not just doing it for me and for my future…. i’m doing it for them and for their futures too.

We are learning to eat differently as a family.  It hasn’t been easy.  My oldest is really kind of resisting the food changes.  I let him pick out a couple of meals a week.  I actually found a great book by Jessica Seinfeld called; Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.    So, instead of McDonalds Chicken Nuggets, I actually make the book’s recipe for chicken nuggets.  This involves chicken breast strips, pureed broccoli and a sesame seed/cornflake coating on the outside.   I dip the chicken breast in the broccoli puree and then roll it in the cornflake crumb mixture and bake them.  They love them!  Most importantly, my son feels empowered because he gets to pick a favorite meal and I don’t have to freak out about the meal being unhealthy.

When I cook at home, I feel empowered and in control of my own health and of my families health.

For me, staying the course with weight loss is much easier if I have some easy snacks or meals on-hand.  I have tried losing weight unscripted and on the fly before, but I found that having no strategy just doesn’t work for me.  As a mom who wears many hats and has many responsibilities, sometimes meal time can feel like a big overwhelming job.

And so enters fast food.  Because you see, for me, it’s easy to drive up and order and take home.  It doesn’t take much time and everyone is fed.  The problem with this, is that fast food, while quick, is majorly unhealthy.  It is loaded with salt, transfats and refined sugars.  You can however, find *some* low-calorie stuff on the menu, but for the most part, everything is ridiculously high in calories, fat and salt.

I love to eat.  I’m just going to throw that right out there.  I love food.  And so for me, getting healthy means that I have to change my course with food.  I have to put it in the proper place.  Because it’s okay to love food but you want to make sure that you fuel your body with the kind of food that loves you back.  So, I am trying to open up my relationship with food to include mainly healthy options.   I would like to share some of what I have discovered with you.

Meals:

• Veggie burgers (warm up your foreman and in 8 minutes or less you can have a healthy meal!  So far I have tried Morningstar Veggie patties)
• Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice freezer meals (choose your favorites and make sure you have them on hand!  Pop them in the microwave and have a meal on the fly!)
• Healthy Breakfast Sandwiches (Egg Beaters, low-cal cheese, turkey bacon or turkey sausage, and Thomas 100 Calorie english muffins — so yummy!  You can make them in advance and freeze them!)
• Cereal (keep a box of your favorite low-cal cereal on-hand)
• Brown rice (you can make so many things with brown rice!)

Snacks:

• 60 calorie Jello pudding snacks
• Colbert 50-calorie cheese (individually wrapped.  You can find them at Sam’s Club)
• Skinny cow Truffle ice cream bars (only 100 calories a piece!  A delicious 2 pt. snack!)
• Jolly Time 97% Fat Free popcorn (1 serving is only 1 WW point.  A whole bag is only 3 WW points!)
• String cheese (low-fat mozarella cheesy goodness!  1 stick is 2 WW points or 80 calories)
• Hummus (you can make your own if you don’t want to buy it in the store:  chick peas, sesame seed oil (if you can’t find tahini), crushed garlic, lemon ~ This stuff is great for carrot sticks and other dippables!)

Another thing I found, is to keep low-cal shaved lunch meat on hand.  I like Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh Shaved Meats.  50 calories and 1 gram of fat, gets you a serving of six slices of meat.  You can nosh on roast beef, chicken, turkey, ham and beef salami!

Also, it’s always a good idea to keep some prepared vegetables and fruits around!  Carrot sticks, grapes, strawberries, celery, green pepper, etc.  If it is already washed, prepared and put into a Tupperware container or baggy, then it will be much easier to choose and transport!

And the last piece of advice:  Don’t buy what you hate.  If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.  I have done this before.  I will buy squash (not my fave) and think that maybe I should give it another chance.  But what ends up happening is that my good intentions of becoming a squash lover flies right out the window soon after buying it.  It sits in the vegetable bin (and at the very bottom of that bin I might add), and then everytime I think about using it, I choose another veggie instead.  I end up eating all of the veggies I like and intentionally skip over the squash.  So the day before grocery day, if all I have left is squash (or insert other disliked veggie here), I will opt out of eating veggies all together that day.  The squash goes bad and I am no closer to becoming a squash lover.

So what I found on my journey so far is that it is not hard to eat healthy if I arm myself with healthy meals and snacks that I can fix on the fly!

Side note:  For those wondering about the face behind the blog, I am going to get my husband to take some pictures of me with our new Canon camera and post at least one on the about me section!

People I knew would tell me all the time how “thin” I was becoming.  Yet, inside, it wasn’t the weight loss that mattered.  What mattered to me most is that I felt better about myself.  The food that I was putting into my body and the exercise that I would embark on daily made me… happy.

I just came across an article in the New York Times entitled “To Eat Well, Be Instinctive”.  The article basically hits home the fact that watching what we eat and being conscious about the choices we are making for our bodies is one of the most important factors in losing weight.

Intuitive eating involves returning to basic drives, dispensing with the notion of “good” or “bad” foods and rules about when to eat. Absent a fear of deprivation, the philosophy holds, one’s hunger and taste cues — rather than cognitive rules — provide the most trustworthy guide toward balanced, healthy eating.

In my world, I do a lot of eating just because it’s what I am feeling at the moment.  In fact, a lot of my eating is done in front of the computer or television.  When I do sit down and have a meal with my family, dinner time is usually so hectic that I shove the food in my mouth as fast as I can just to move on to the next thing (i.e. cleaning the kitchen, baths).  But later on, I feel as though I deprived myself of actually being able to enjoy the food, so i’ll sit down and eat again.

So I would say that a lot of times *I* personally feel that I do ninety percent of my eating in a subconscious manner.  Because at the end of the day (heck, sometimes even in the middle of the day) my body feels sluggish and ready for bed.

So I think that watching what you eat is just the tip of the iceberg.  It goes beyond the mechanics and right into putting food at a new place in your life.  Recognizing how to fuel your body and become conscious of every taste, smell and texture.

If we all did that, eating might be a more thrilling experience and therefore we wouldn’t feel as though we had to over-eat or stuff ourselves to compensate.

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To Eat Well, Be Intuitive – By:  Mandy Katz (New York Times)

So what’s the problem?  You see, there’s this little thing called the food pyramid.  And unfortunately whole grains (aka carbs) only take up a small portion of the pyramid.  Meaning, we’re supposed to eat other stuff too… like fruits & veggies.

Want to hear something weird?  I really like fruits and veggies.  But in my mind, they are yucky and I don’t crave them.  I would much rather have bread, or rice or a potatoe.

What to do?  How do you learn to crave fruits and veggies instead of the bad stuff (or in other words, the other stuff on the food pyramid)?