{"id":52735,"date":"2017-03-11T12:55:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T12:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/?p=52735"},"modified":"2017-03-11T16:19:18","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T16:19:18","slug":"diet-diaries-chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/11\/diet-diaries-chapter-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Diet Diaries- Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good Saturday morning from very very cold arctic New York. How do we go from a balmy 60 degrees on Wednesday to 12 degrees today with snow yesterday and a significant snow storm headed this way on Tues? INSANE. I am not looking to give an extension for winter, I have my gardening gloves ready and just waiting to fling open my windows!<\/p>\n

Hope wherever you are…it’s a lot warmer. Moving along, today is the start of a new series. Much like the Buff Diaries, this is the Diet Diaries, and admittedly not nearly as much fun or pretty:) We have adopted a healthier way of eating, so I don’t even like to say we are on a “diet” as much as we are changing to way we look at food. There, sounds better already:)<\/p>\n

Its been about 3-4 weeks and I definitely feel much better. It was hard to say goodbye to certain foods that frankly I ate with abandon, but I am pretty good recreating the ordinary and have started to getting fairly creative with coming up with some pretty good meals, plus there are more choices than ever to be able to create a healthy lifestyle.<\/p>\n

So I am really hoping that we can do this maybe once a month or so , and get a dialog going. I hope to be able to share my ideas with you but really hope in return, you too will share yours. Diet and “watching it”; are three words most people know about, and with the warmer weather headed this way…….I think it’s on a lot of peoples minds now. So here are some of my own ideas, observations, successes-<\/p>\n

Today focusing on what we can grab and go the essentials to get me through a day, next time we will focus on things I am making at home, with a few recipes and the “E” word, exercise:)<\/p>\n

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DRINK WATER.\u00a0<\/strong> I have never drank as much waster as I have the last month. In general I drink a fair amount, but I have dramatically cut back on diet soda (now most days I have none and every few days will have one) so I replace all of that with water, water and water.\u00a0 Now soda seems so sweet, but every now and now it does hit the spot!<\/p>\n

I love Pellegrino and Poland Spring, that is really all I drink. Also love the sparkling Raspberry Lime flavor. I also love a big extra large cup filled with ice and lemon slices and fill it with water and drink it all day and refill as necessary.<\/p>\n

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BREAKFAST.<\/strong> I am not a big breakfast person, never have been. Most mornings I am rushing to get out the door, once or twice a week I will make myself an egg white omelette with baby spinach, tomatoes and one low fat string cheese cut up. I will add two pieces of the low cal 40 cal whole wheat bread and it is quite a satisfying meal. Most mornings however I have a yogurt and a piece of fruit or a low calorie cereal\/protein bar.<\/p>\n

The Think Thin bar is quite good and very satisfying, recommended often by various vigilant health nuts who have devoted their life to healthy eating.<\/p>\n

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Instead of a second or third cup of coffee, I have a few cups of lemon ginger tea throughout the day. Its quite tasty and has great benefits.<\/p>\n

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SNACKS.<\/strong> If I need a snack, a piece of fruit, a 90 cal string cheese, a small bag of unsalted almonds normally does the trick. I don’t do a lot of snacking while we are watching it as that is my pitfall, I could LIVE on snacks.\u00a0 But there are times you just need to eat to fill a craving for something to munch on, so choose wisely and make sure they are not empty calories that will make you feel even hungrier a few minutes later.<\/p>\n

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INDULGENCE<\/strong>. When I feel like I need to feel like I am being bad, I must say there are several indulgent treats on the market that are low calorie, low sugar, some high protein and really tasty. They will make you feel Ike you are having “the real thing” but at 90-120 calories, you walk away with zero guilt.<\/p>\n

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Spoke of these the other day, they are good!! Very high in protein, low sugar.<\/p>\n

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YOGURT.<\/strong> I love yogurt and did a sort of taste test the last two weeks, I experimented with about 5 different yogurts, peach is my favorite flavor and Greek yogurt in my eyes is the best. After trying about 5 yogurts, here are my top two faves so far, still experimenting and open to suggestions but must say these are darn good-<\/p>\n

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The Oikos is very high in protein, lowest in sugar and super tasty<\/p>\n

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This one is also very tasty not as rich feeling but yummy<\/p>\n

MY SECRET TO A LOW FAT PARFAIT.\u00a0<\/strong> I add some blueberries and then\u00a0 add a few tablespoons of Grapenuts, YES Grapenuts and it is soo good! A low fat yogurt parfait that is every bit as good as any other. Trust me:)<\/p>\n

Also have Grapenuts for breakfast, with no fat milk and berries or bananas, and it is actually quite good.<\/p>\n

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SALADS.<\/strong> OK this is the mainstay of what I eat. I have some variation of a salad almost without fail every day for lunch, and for dinner it’s often a piece of fish a big salad with protein and on occasion cereal with fruit.<\/p>\n

We have a lot of places around here with every kind of salad you can imagine so it’s easy to pickup when I am work. The market now carries so many prepackaged salads too, many that are quite good and it’s so easy.<\/p>\n

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I always use about half the dressing and sometimes add nuts or a avocado, you can in other words embellish these, I like crunch and texture in my salads<\/p>\n

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This is so convenient to make a really quick stir fry with small pieces of cut up chicken or shrimp-<\/p>\n

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I will share with you next time some salads I am\u00a0 making at home with low calorie dressings that you might like or want to try. We did not talk about exercise and obviously this is a key component here, one which I am not very good at but with spring around the corner I expect that to improve. We will talk about that next time, and I look forward to talking about that next time.<\/p>\n

Every time I do these posts I will pose a question, so this weeks question is-<\/p>\n

How do you handle watching your diet when out to eat in a restaurant?<\/h2>\n

For me, it’s of course skipping over the bared, I instantly think “shorts season” and it is a instant motivator to steer clear. I stick to salads, fish and chicken of some sort. A restaurant is a place to be able to enjoy something you might not take the time to make at home, and small things\u00a0 like saying light or no salt, dressing on the side, sauce on the side, etc…it all adds up. OK your turn to talk and I cannot wait to hear what you have to say on the matter.<\/p>\n

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A FAVOR-<\/strong>\u00a0 if you like me, really really like me, would you vote for me? I was nominated for best interior design blog by the JDR Industry Awards, SO exciting!!! Click here, only takes 2 seconds literally. Thank you in advance:)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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GIVEAWAY ALERT-<\/strong> Also don’t forget to throw your name in the hat for the tole planter! I will announce a winner tomorrow, click here to enter.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

CONTEST DEADLINE-<\/strong> I have a few more spots for the Enchanted Home Love contest. Tomorrow is the deadline. If you have a picture featuring an item purchased from The Enchanted Home, here is your chance to show it off! Plus you win THREE MONTHS OF ENCHANTED HOME GOODIES! Send 1-2 pictures to theenchantedhome@gmail.com. You can click here to get all details.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Thank you for stopping in, until tomorrow…..<\/p>\n

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Good Saturday morning from very very cold arctic New York. How do we go from a balmy 60 degrees on Wednesday to 12 degrees today with snow yesterday and a significant snow storm headed this way on Tues? INSANE. I am not looking to give an extension for winter, I have my gardening gloves ready […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52735"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52761,"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52735\/revisions\/52761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.enchantedhome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}