Pushing Through

My bones are creaking this morning, from too many days in a row of getting up and down ladders and hefting books and heavy boxes and crawling around on my hands and knees picking up random detritus, all in an effort to get the school library ready for academic prime time.  It was a mess, and now it is much better, but my body is much worse for the wear this year.

After the last year and a half of breast cancer treatment, my muscle tone is shot and my body has, unfortunately, gotten used to a much lower level of activity.  My usual ability to push through is still there intellectually:  the spirit is definitely willing, but the body is way, way too weak for what my mind thinks that I can do.

Irritating.

The good news is that I could still get things done, and my room looks wonderful and is almost ready for students.  I still have some shelves to clean and books to reorganize, but overall it is looking really good at the moment.

Today will be a partial rest day.  There is laundry to do and kitchen cleaning to catch up on, although Mr. ReddHedd helped tremendously yesterday by doing dishes and a lot of laundry while The Peanut and I were at school working on my room.  The day to day doesn't stop while extra stuff gets piled on, but this year we have managed to muddle through it without too much impact at home.

We've begun making more healthy food choices in earnest, and I can feel it making a difference in me, even with the achy knees this morning.  So that's a good thing.  I have eaten more veggies this week than I have in a long while, and it has made a difference in mental sharpness, even though it hasn't shown up on the scales just yet.  Can't expect an overnight miracle, but I am happy with the direction we're going at the moment.

As in most things in life, the key appears to be pushing through whatever barrier decides to throw itself into your path on any given day. 

Adventures With Our Vitamix

In our continued effort to add in more fruits and veggies to the daily eating plan, I have enlisted an ally in our kitchen:  our Vitamix.

It chops up veggies to a very fine consistency, so that they can be added to sauces or soups without noticeable chunkiness that might get detected more easily by picky eaters.  Stealth veg is my secret weapon at the moment. While we continue to work on just eating the veggies outright, I am not content to wait and try to sneak extra veggies into just about everything where I can.

When I have time, anyway -- this week has been so insanely busy that I have been grateful to just get any home-cooked food into all of us at the end of the day.  I hate it when we have that week, and am looking forward to the slow-down that the end of school brings to our house.

But my favorite use for our Vitamix is for smoothies: I just toss some juice or water, assorted frozen fruits, spinach or kale, and some protein powder into the Vitamix and whir it around to make a delicious smoothie that is bursting with antioxidant goodness.  I have found that if you use enough frozen blueberries or cherries in your fruit mix that no one will ever know the spinach or kale is in there once things are well blended.

I swear that you cannot taste the spinach or kale at all, but the healthy goodness is in there for an extra vitamin kick. 

I love that we can get 3 or 4 servings of fruits and veggies in a big glass of milkshake-tasting yumminess.  If I toss in a variety of fruits, which I normally do, we get a whole spectrum of antioxident goodness in a glass.

Vegging Out

Eat yer veggies.  How many times has that refrain come out of someone's mouth in your general vicinity over a lifetime?   Especially when you were younger, and veggies seemed like an enormous hardship at every meal (unless you were me, who loved veggies so much growing up that I would have second and third helpings of broccoli...I know!). 

For some reason, as life has gotten busier and busier for me, I have found it tougher to work a variety of veggies into our day to day diet. 

I do try, truly I do.  I buy a lovely rainbow variety of tasty veggies at the store, but then they languish in the fridge because I can't get time or energy to do prep after a long day at school, and then I end up wasting way too much veg that gets thrown out of the produce bins, looking soggy and sad at being forgotten.

So, I'm trying an experiment this week to see if I can't do a bit better.

Today, my plan is to clean out the fridge and to cut up a number of veggies that I can toss into my lunch or into dinner menu possibilities the front part of the week.  Not so much that they will go bad before they get eaten, but enough that it will be easier for my lunch-packing rush in the mornings.

Two weeks to go in school, and I still feel like I am running out the door every day.  It is wearing me out, and I need summer to recharge.  But in the meantime, I'd like to plug more veggies into the daily mix so the antioxidants and vitamins can help me gut my way through the end of the year with a little more pep.

How do you incorporate more healthy produce into your day to day?  Do tell.  I'd love some new hints and tips on making this work a little better at our house.

Cutting The Crapola

The last couple of days, I have been re-reading a lot of my healthier cookbooks, trying to revamp our eating habits to clear out the unhealthy bits and add in more healthy ones.  For the most part, we eat far more healthfully than we did for years, but my recent bout with breast cancer has made eating even more fruits and veggies a priority.

Not just for me, but for The Peanut as well, for obvious reasons.

As I'm trying to plan a menu for all of us for the week, I find myself making excuses and trying to come up with ways to continue serving the same old easy stuff, because we can all agree on it and I know it will be mostly eaten, even by the pickiest among us.  But that is ridiculous, because if the same old, same old was acceptable, I wouldn't be trying to revamp things, now would I?

It's time to cut the crapola when it comes to diet and exercise and be honest with myself:  we can, and must, do better.

Some of the cookbooks I've been perusing are:

-- The Eat-Clean Diet Recharged: Lasting Fat Loss That's Better than Ever!

-- The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook: Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean

-- Eating for Life: Your Guide to Great Health, Fat Loss and Increased Energy

-- The New Sonoma Cookbook: Simple Recipes for a Healthy, More Delicious Way to Live

-- The South Beach Diet Quick and Easy Cookbook: 200 Delicious Recipes Ready in 30 Minutes or Less

-- The South Beach Diet Super Quick Cookbook: 200 Easy Solutions for Everyday Meals

For me, though, it really isn't about knowledge.  I know what I ought to be eating and doing.  What I lack is actually DOING things properly, instead of just halfway and hoping it is enough.  It isn't.  And I know it.  Which means it is time to get off my rear end and do something about it.

So, henceforth, the following will apply:

That Pesky Question Of Fitness

Fitness is a painful subject for me just now.

At this stage in all the morass that is cancer treatment, I am not even certain what muscle tone is any longer.  That is how bad things are for me at the moment.

And it plagues me.  A lot.

But with five more radiation treatments to go (woo hoo! only 5 more!), the skin in and around the treatment area is angry, raw and beyond painful, which doesn't exactly lend itself to a fitness frenzy.  Moreover, I have no idea how long it is going to take all of this to heal, because none of the creams or usual skin treatments have done any good the last few weeks.  Because I keep getting irradiated, over and over again, while treatment is ongoing, my skin never really has a chance to heal, and thus stays incredibly angry.

All this to say, being completely unfit is driving me crazy.  But being able to do anything concrete about it is a far off prospect at the moment.

So, what's a girl to do?

The front end planning.  It's the only thing I can do.  Starting with menus for a few weeks of good, clean eating, and shopping lists for each of those weeks.  At least my body will be well fueled as it begins to heal, and I can work on portion sizes as well, right?

It's a start, anyway.

What I'm more uncertain about is how to work fitness back into the mix in a more regular way.  At a point when I can barely stand to wear clothes over my sore spots, the thought of straining with weights or pushing myself to do intervals with my cardio is unbearable right now.

So I'm trying to figure out a more gentle way to begin to tone up again, in a way that allows me to continue to heal but still moves me forward instead of continuing my spiral toward flabby and blah. 

We got an UP Band for me recently, so that I could at least see that I am getting some steps every day.  It turns out that I'm getting a lot more steps than I realized, and that I regularly get close to if not more than 10,000 steps in a busy day. 

That gives me a lot of comfort, even when the scale is telling me I'm not even close to rebounding.  But my still feeling blah and flabby says that I should at least start by working on portion sizes a bit more and cleaning up what I'm eating.  However, that doesn't help with muscle tone, which is desperately in need of help after so many weeks of sleeping and sitting through chemo (and, yes, I'm aware that chemo is really rough and whatever I did was all I could at the time, but that still doesn't fix the fitness conundrum as things stand now). 

Walking is great, but it can't fix everything -- and heaven knows I have a lot that needs fixing right now.

I could use some advice from folks who have been through this.  How did your skin rebound (or did it?) from radiation burning and blistering?  What helped most with this for you?  Were you able to work fitness back into your life without making things worse?  If so, how?

I'm going to ask at my doctor's office today, too, when I go for my next round of radiation.  But I thought throwing this question out into the void might be useful, too.  If you have thoughts or advice, I'd love to hear it.

The Search For Spring

The lingering cold is messing with my internal compass this year.  And with my perennials.

Usually, my daffodils are out in full bloom by this point in the year, but they are holding back:  a few are looming, but not all at once, as if they are still fearful of showing off their Spring bonnets because of the cold and frost.  The same is true for my tulips.

It's even true for the johnny jump-ups that The Peanut talked me into planting ages ago, and which have seeded themselves so prolifically around our yard ever since.  I didn't think anything could slow those little, aggressive bloomers down, but I was wrong.

Ended up not planting anything yesterday, as much due to being too tired to deal with lugging compost around to enrich the raised bed soil as anything. 

Today, though?  Cold be damned, I'm finding a way to at least get the planting bed ready and popping some onion sets into the earth if nothing else.

I am in desperate need of some springtime. 

Quick, Cool Breakfast

It is hot here lately.  Scorching hot.

The kind of hot that makes you want to crawl in the freezer for a coupla hours after the humidity sets in about 7:30 in the morning hawwwwwwwt.

So what's a girl to do for breakfast?

Something cool, that's what.

Lately, I've been having some yogurt (vanilla, key lime, whatever is handy in the fridge) mixed with some cottage cheese and sprinkled with cut up, assorted berries.  I top with a few chopped walnuts or pecans and...voila!  Instant refreshing breakfast!

It's a decent mix of protein and healthy carbs, antioxidants from the berries and some omega-3s when I use walnuts.  All in all, a fairly healthy way to start my day.

If I'm feeling adventurous, I sprinkle in a little ground flaxseed for extra fiber and things seem to move right along for the day, if you know what I mean.

Ideas For Dressing Your Shape And (Changing?) Size

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We have been eating much more healthfully at our house for about a month now. We were eating pretty well before that, but we've consciously eaten only lean proteins and veggies and only whole grains and absolutely no processed crapola (with the exception of a single cupcake each for our nephews birthday).  Thank you cleaner eating!

You can tell it makes a difference by the looseness of the waistband on my jeans.

The great thing about dropping a size is that you feel better -- physically and emotionally in my case, because I was beginning to really loathe how much weight I had gained and was beating myself up for it a little too often.  I'm not after some number on the scale at the moment, but I'm definitely working on getting back to a healthy, happy point wherever that happens to be at my age.

That said, now I'm dealing with a problem I hadn't ever thought would be a problem:  half my clothes are too big and now hang weirdly, especially pants and skirts.  But I'm not remotely close to where I hope I will be in the next few months, either, which makes me question whether it is worth it to get a lot of my clothes tailored now. 

Maegan Tintari has some great tips on how to deal with this sort of thing.  While I'm not ready to go out and pick up a caftan, I really love the boyfriend jeans pictured in her post and am going to have to give those a try, I think.  I could make that work on a short and curvy frame, right?

Because I've lost a little weight -- actually I'm down a size, woo hoo! -- I've been thinking about how to manage the clothing transition a lot, and here are a few ideas that have been working for me of late:

Yummy Breakfast: Baked Greek Frittata

In our efforts to eat more healthfully this week, I've been trying to start the day off with a good mix of lean, healthy proteins and healthy, mostly non-starchy-veggie-related carbs.  This way the meal lasts a little longer in terms of digestion and fullness, we get better antioxidants and fiber and a more stable blood sugar to start the day.

But you can only eat so many omelettes before you begin to hate eggs, right?

So I've turned to an old recipe that I did ages ago for this blog in its earliest incarnation:  the crustless egg bake.

It's a sort of casserole, with some eggs, veggies, meat, and cheese all layered in together and cooked into a sort of egg-y souffle/frittata as it bakes in the oven.  The best thing about a dish like this is that you can use up whatever happens to be hanging around the fridge or your pantry, and once everything is mixed together and poured into the baking dish, your work is done until you take it out of the oven.  Have to love something that easy, don't you?

The key is to keep the ratio of add-ins to eggs at about the following:  for every 4 to 6 large-ish eggs (or 1 cup or so of egg whites or egg substitute), make a custard with about 1 to 1 1/2 cups milk.  Your filling should be about 1 to 2 cups of a combination of whatever meats, veggies, etc. you want as your base flavors, and about 1/2 cup to 1 cup of cheese.  If you stick to this basic primer, you'll generally come out fine, although it is pretty flexible so you don't have to rigidly adhere.

This morning, I've thrown together one from some things we had at our house and it smells wonderful.  Here's what I did:

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

There is a part of my brain which is begging me to call first thing in the morning to my surgeon's office and make them read the pathology report out loud to me if it is available.  That's a big "if" given that the intervening Thanksgiving holiday has slowed down everyone including the lab, I'm sure.  And that the folks at the office have better things to do than assuage a stressed out patient over the phone.

Especially when she has her appointment with the doctor to go over said lab report and surgery notes on Tuesday anyway.

Color me impatient for all the answers.

You know what, though?  It's a sort of lesson in zen.  You cannot make the world move to your timetable every single time you wish that it were so.  You can choose to chafe at that, or instead use it as an opportunity to learn patience and find some better thing to do with your time than fretting.

I'm choosing the latter.

Some things I'll be doing this week instead of sitting around and stewing over the three short days left to get my news, in no particular order:

-- Being grateful for my loving family who have taken such good care of me the last few days.  My life is really, really wonderful, and stopping to soak that in fully gives me enormous comfort and joy.

-- Planting an indoor herb garden to get me through the winter months with fresh, antioxidant-rich herbs in the house.  I already have a thriving rosemary plant that will be coming indoors shortly before the frost claims it.  I have another pot that will get filled and planted this week with thyme, oregano, and a few other choice herbs -- not too many because I don't want to overcrowd, but at least some that we'll be able to pick from fresh through the snowy, winter months outside.  Won't that be lovely?

CH-CH-CH-CH-Changes

Right after a cancer diagnosis, everything gets a little garbled in your brain because sentences and thoughts -- even random, wholly unconnected to this in any way thoughts -- often seem to end with "Uh.  Mah.  Gawd.  I.  Have.  Cancer." for at least a few days if not weeks.  At least, that's how it has worked for me thus far, and I'm told by friends who have gone through similar battles that was true for them as well.

For me, though?  When I'm facing any daunting challenge, the thing I crave most is to know every possible thing about the oncoming hurdle so that when I have to face it, I have pinpointed several avenues of weakness and am more prepared than anyone else in the room to discuss my options and possibilities.  This is, not coincidentally, how I approached my legal practice when I had a hearing -- I knew every possible nuance and all the case law, every argument for or against every issue that I could identify as having any possibility of being raised before I ever entered a courtroom for a hearing...and I had figured out a way to crush each and every one of them before I ever stepped forward for an argument.  Exhaustive but highly effective.

All this to say, I have now entered the research phase of my diagnosis with a vengeance.

Some books and websites I've been reading include:

-- The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), which has a fantastic database of recipes available for the searching online.

-- The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen: Nourishing, Big-Flavor Recipes for Cancer Treatment and Recovery by Rebecca Katz

-- One Bite at a Time, Revised: Nourishing Recipes for Cancer Survivors and Their Friends by Rebecca Katz

-- The Anti-Cancer Cookbook by Julia Greer

-- Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips by Kris Carr

Of all of these, the Rebecca Katz books have been a revelation in terms of healthy eating combined with a gourmet sense of taste and flavor -- maximizing both healthy ingredients along with nurturing the pleasure of eating really good food.  And I've also realized this:  all the healthy eating we'd been trying to incorporate from Clean Eating and Eating For Life and South Beach and Sonoma and all the other diet plans that focus on whole foods and lots of fruits and veggies and a reduction of processed crap?

It's all really good and what we ought to be doing, every single meal, every single day.

So it's well past time to pull myself out of my stress eating crapola stupor and to move forward even faster with my "eat better, live better, feel better" plan for the rest of my life.  I'm going to start sharing healthy recipes here more often as I tweak them for my family and find that they work well -- if my veggie-tolerating-but-just-barely-sometimes hubby and my picky eater child can be coaxed into being healthier along with me, then you know yours can be, too.

Here's a thumbnail sketch of what I've found out thus far:

A Bit Of Inspiration

Yesterday, my copy of The Best of Clean Eating 2: Over 200 Recipes with Cleaned-Up Comfort Foods and Fast Family Dinners showed up.

The recipes in it are awesome -- full of healthy, vibrant, nutrient-dense yumminess.  I've already flagged half a dozen with post-it flags that we'll be trying over the next couple of weeks and I'm only on the third section. 

This one may be better than their first cookbook, The Best of Clean Eating: Over 200 Mouthwatering Recipes to Keep You Lean and Healthy, and I cook out of it all the time. 

But yesterday, as I sat in the alley behind my daughter's school waiting for pick-up time, I was struck by a moment of clarity: it isn't enough just to look at the pretty pictures or like the recipes or just want to be healthier in some vague, abstract, longing sort of way.  Even though that is completely and totally my M.O.

You have to live healthier, do things healthier, really buy in and dig deep and do what you need to do -- ALL of what you need to do -- to get yourself there.

It isn't enough just to know what you should be doing, you have to actually DO it.  Every day.  Which is a problem for me, based on my couch-potato-esque workout wanna be self at the moment.  I want the health and vitality that comes with living a healthier life, with doing the exercises, with eating healthy and clean every single mouthful. 

I just haven't been able to get there...one excuse at a time.

When I got back home, in a moment of serendipity, I ran across the above YouTube. Watch it.  It is brilliant. And spot on for me.

I'll admit to having used at least 20 of these excuses (at the very least) to not go for a walk or lift weights.  Or to eat that chip (and then several handfuls of its closest chip buddies).  Or that cookie.  Or...honestly, name yer poison, even if I know better, I'm still reaching for it out of habit, out of comfort, out of stress or boredom or whatever other excuse I can wrangle for the salty, fatty, goodie to make its way toward my gut.

And it shows.

No more. Do you hear me?  No more.

Lighten Up?

After 6+ weeks of the new Weight Watchers "points plus" plan, I'm down a whopping 3 pounds.

Whoooooooo, hold the phone!

In fairness, I had already begun eating more healthfully for 2 months prior to beginning Weight Watchers this time.  And, due to all the work getting the library ready to go, I'd been doing some pretty intense physical exercise as well (do you have any idea how heavy solid steel shelving gets after you've lugged it up two full flights of stairs?).

But three pounds??!!!???  Yikes!

Granted, during the last few weeks we flew out to AZ for a lengthy "vacation" visiting family, during which there was a wedding, a funeral and much babysitting...and not a lot of time for exercise and food planning at the level I usually do.  And because of the lengthy heat wave here, exercise for me has been spotty at best, since my joints tend to freeze up in hot, humid weather.

But, excuses aside, I'm going to sit down today and figure out how to tweak my eating.  I have stayed within my points totals every day, and I'm using fewer and fewer floating points, and yet the scale is still not budging as much as I would like.

Methinks, it is time to add in more activity, while tightening what I'm eating.  In other words, less of the stuff I love (fruit, whole grain carbs, etc.) and more of the stuff I really ought to be eating anyway (veggies, veggies, veggies).

So for at least part of today I'll be doing some menu planning with my Clean Eating, Eating For Life, and Weight Watchers cookbooks at the ready.  There has to be some way to make this work for me.

Tasty Turkey Burger

Since I'm back on the Weight Watchers eating plan, I've been avoiding burgers.  Most fast food ones are horrible and restaurant ones aren't much better.

But you know what happens when you try to avoid something?  You start craving it.

So I went in search of a healthier option so that I could have my burger and yet not have to break the bank of points for the week to do it.  And I found a really good one that we enjoyed a lot yesterday for our Fourth of July lunch.

So much so that I may make some extras to have on hand for the week for burgers and to crumble on salads, too, as an easy protein add-on.

Thought some of you might enjoy the recipe, too.  This was originally a Weight Watchers recipe from their Best of Weight Watchers Magazine cookbook.

I modified it a bit, but not in a way that upped the points at all.  The changed version is below for you:

Friday Link-Around

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-- Yesterday, there was a segment on the Today Show that resonated with my long-term interest and work on children's poverty and hunger issues. (See here, here, here, here, here and here just for starters.) Giada De Laurentiis from the Food Network was on discussing a program that has been started in the Rock Hill, SC area to combat childhood hunger issues called "Back the Pack."  It is similar to something that communities all over the country have been doing to help kids in need on the weekends --and over the summer as well -- when they can't get meals at school, and the segment is well worth a watch.  We need to be doing more all over this country -- because these kids did not ask to be born into poverty, and they should not be consigned to doing poorly in school because of it.  I was really surprised -- and very pleased -- to see the Today Show feature this issue so prominently.  I'd love to see them do a follow-up on summer hunger as well, and talk about threatened budget cuts on hunger programs for children and especially the $500 million cut for WIC -- that needs a much, much brighter spotlight.

-- Speaking of school food, Marion Nestle is helping to advocate for better foods being served to kids.  She has put together some interesting resources on the issue that are worth a peek.  Also worth a read?  Take a peek at Marion's spotlight on members of Congress lobbying the FDA to change the name of "high fructose corn syrup" to "corn sugar."  A bad food by any other name is still a bad food, though, right?

-- I don't know about all of you, but I could use some better food myself.  It's been so crazy busy here this week that I've been eating horribly.  Just got Tosca Reno's latest cookbook in the mail -- The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook 2: More Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean -- and I'm going to put some of those recipes to use next week when life slows down to a more manageable sprint.  The sauteed scallops with four-herb pesto and quinoa on page 148 sounds especially nummy to me at the moment.

Artist's Way Seminar: After The First Day

It's the morning after the first day of the Artist's Way seminar, and I'm exhausted, but having a lot of fun as well.

Yesterday, I started the day with a great breakfast of steel cut oats, fortified with a little yogurt, some walnuts and a little maple syrup and cinnamon.   Yum.  Let me say that again -- yummmmmmmm.  I also had a couple of boiled eggs and some stewed apple slices.

As I was enjoying the meal, I sat at the table thinking "Why don't I eat this way all the time at home?" 

There is no good answer for that, because I really could eat this way at home more often.

So I hereby vow to try and do so.  Because eating healthy food makes me feel so much better than eating crap.  ("Duh, Christy, how many times do you need to learn this lesson?" you ask me.  "As many times as it takes to learn it," I reply.)

Odds And Ends

Today is errand day for me -- lots to do, drop off, sort out and such that I put off over the weekend while we were doing family stuff together.  Funny how things pile up when you aren't actively tending them, isn't it?

In any case, here are a few odds and ends that have been occupying me of late:

-- New favorite breakfast:  a whole wheat bagel thin (Have you discovered these yet?  I love them!), toasted and topped with a 1 oz., single-serving container of Weight Watchers lowfat cream cheese and some smoked salmon.  Delicious, easy and not so calorie-filled and awful that I feel sluggish after eating it.  Yay!

--  Funds for school lunch programs for the poor are getting cut here, there and everywhere.  As I've said before many times, childhood nutrition is essential to developing brains and these kids did not ask to be born into poor and struggling families.  If they aren't being fed at school, most of them are going hungry, and where does that leave them in the long run?  Even further behind.  Desperation is not exactly an excellent start for a lifetime, now is it?

-- I do not understand these Real Housewives people.  Superficiality mystifies me, always has.  But what I really don't understand?  Is why anyone would watch them and want to be like them. Plasticity and shallowness?  Not something to aspire to in my book, but maybe that's just me. 

-- Oooh, Tosca Reno has a couple of new books coming out this year -- yay, more yummy, healthy recipes!

The Eat-Clean Diet Stripped: Peel Off Those Last 10 Pounds!, and

The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook 2: More Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean

Can't wait!

Monday Clear The Clutter Club Check-In

It's early Monday.  And it feels like it here.

Not enough coffee in the entire world to wake me up this morning, I'm afraid.  I blame it on too many episodes of Battlestar Galactica last night.  (No idea how we missed this show the first time around, but it's addictive.)

This week?  The health eating has continued, and we are moving away from Phase One of the South Beach Diet to a quasi-Phase 2 eating style that I hope will become just the way we eat from now on:  healthy whole foods, whole grains, lots of veggies, some fruit, lean proteins, and even more veggies.

Spent part of the weekend going back through some of my healthier cookbook faves:

-- The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook: Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean

-- The Best of Clean Eating: Over 200 Mouthwatering Recipes to Keep You Lean and Healthy

-- Eating For Life

-- Mediterranean Light: Delicious Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine

-- Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast: Over 280 Incredibly Flavorful 5-Ingredient 15-Minute Recipes

I have several more that I like as well, but you get the idea:  healthy, whole foods in correct portion sizes that I cook from scratch.

Dinner Tonight? Easy Veggie Stir-Fry

I'm in the mood for some Chinese food this evening.  Which might be inconvenient, given that we are doing very well thus far on the The South Beach Diet Phase 1.

But I've come up with a plan that will satisfy my urge for a Chinese food fix, and still keep us within the parameters of Phase 1 requirements.

Woo hoo!

I've taken a recipe from Bill Phillips' Eating For Life cookbook, which I absolutely love, btw, because it's chock full of easy, healthy recipes that Mr. ReddHedd will happily eat, and tweaked it.

Originally this was the "Sesame Beef Stir-Fry recipe on page 125 -- but I've modified it a wee bit to make it South Beach Phase 1 friendly.  It took only a little bit of tweaking, and I've managed to add a bit more veggies to the mix for color, fiber and antioxidants while still maintaining a healthy profile.

So, here's what we are having for dinner here this evening:

It's Time To Start Clearing The Clutter!

The little hitch in my resolution giddy-up from my leg burn has finally healed enough that I can confidently say this:  it's time to start clearing the clutter at our house.

Today, we start on Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet.

For breakfast, we'll be having a veggie omelet, loaded with peppers, onions, and for Mr. ReddHedd some mushrooms (not for me, though), a little reduced-fat sharp cheddar, and a bit of salsa on top.  Plus a glass of V-8 juice and copious amounts of coffee, no doubt.  Lunch will be a chef's salad, with some cubed leftover chicken, diced ham, sliced boiled egg, chopped cucumber, tomato, celery, and lettuce topped with a homemade Dijon vinaigrette.  And dinner will be turkey burgers and oven-roasted green beans, cherry tomatoes, and onion. 

UPDATE:  Forgot to say that dessert tonight will be 1/2 cup each of part skim ricotta mixed with cocoa powder, a little vanilla, some natural peanut butter, and a couple of packets of Splenda, and topped with a Tbsp. sugar free whipped topping. 

Phase 1 is the most restrictive part of the diet -- it's designed to clear out the excess ick in your system so that your body can start with a clean slate to eat healthier foods.  It's a bit carbohydrate restricted, but unlike Atkins you have to watch saturated fats and only eat leaner meats and veggies -- it's not a bacon free-for-all, in other words.  We'll stick to this for a couple of weeks to clear out all the holiday sugar rush and then will broaden back out to include whole grains, fruits and other healthy carb choices.

And our hope is that this will not be a "diet" for us for a short period of time, but will instead become the way we eat as a lifestyle for the rest of our lives.

We need this.  The Peanut needs to see us do this and, more importantly, she needs to adopt healthier food choices and understand why it is important for her as well.

My plan?  We go from the first couple of weeks of Phase 1 on South Beach to a broader, liveable and far healthier lifestyle and diet.  I'll be pulling recipes and ideas from the following after this first couple of weeks:

-- The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook: Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean

-- Eating For Life

-- The New Sonoma Diet: Trimmer Waist, More Energy in Just 10 Days

-- Mediterranean Light: Delicious Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine

-- The Mediterranean Diabetes Cookbook (ADA)

-- The South Beach Diet Quick and Easy Cookbook: 200 Delicious Recipes Ready in 30 Minutes or Less

There are more, but you get the idea: healthy, whole foods, mostly veggies on the plate, leaner meats, and lots of fiber from beans and grains as well.  The way we ought to have been eating all along.