Giving Up...Fried Foods

Fried food has always been our downfall.  I mean who can resist hot, crispy, salty French fries?  Well, not me.  Or Doyle, for that matter. And yes, McDonald's fries are our fries of choice.  The phrase, "Would like that super sized?" was coined just for Doyle.  Okay, maybe not just for him, but he was certainly thrilled by the addition of super sized fries.

 If given the choice, Doyle always choses fried...anything.  But last night, he told me that he thinks that he needs to give up fried foods.  Hallelujah!  I have been trying to get him to this point for years.  I don't expect miracles.  I know that he will still crave the salty goodness of fried potatoes, okra, chicken, shrimp, catfish, steak fingers, and don't even get me started on the sweet things like doughnuts, funnel cakes...do I really need to go on? 

 However, our journey is about taking things one step at a time.  At the risk of sounding like an AA wanna be, admitting you have a problem is the first step.  Maybe the most important step, or maybe just a necessary step that we have to repeat until we are able to move forward, like a waltz, one step forward, two steps back. Anyway,  hearing Doyle say,

"Karen, I think I need to stop eating fried food because it makes my heart beat me to death."

Just for grins.

was music to my ears (the Hallelujah chorus to be exact). Doyle may not listen to me, but he does listen to his heart. Since this is about Doyle's health not me, I can live with that. Even better, he can too.   Does this mean that we have to give up McDonalds?  Not at all.  McDonald's has made life much easier for us because they posted the calorie count of all their menu items. There are several things that we can choose from that allow us a treat without guilt.  One of our favs is the parfait. It's not quite the same as French fries, but it's a choice we can live with. 

As it turns out...red beans are still cheap.

March 17, 2014

And today, I am feeling every decade.
Hardly anyone ever says, "Give us a ding-a-ling on the old ring-a-ling later." anymore. 

I grew up eating red beans, fried potatoes (fried in bacon grease or lard)YIKES!!!!, and homemade biscuits. Store bought bread was a treat saved for Sundays, as it was too expensive to eat everyday. We didn't eat a lot of meat, but every meal, well, except breakfast which was oatmeal, included red beans.  There is a lot of press on how beans are healthy, full of fiber, low calorie, and low fat these days.  However as a child we ate them because they were cheap.  My parents had 7 children and a rather small grocery budget.  We didn't know what leftovers were because nothing was ever left over at our house.  We had never seen a McDonalds--all the Mickey Dee's were in large cities in those days.  My dad would rather go home and eat cold biscuits and sweet milk than go out to eat in any restaurant.  Since Dad wore the pants in the family, ruled the roost, laid down the law, oh you get what I am saying, we ate at home every meal.  Oddly enough, despite the bacon grease that was liberally used to season our food, no one in our family suffered from childhood obesity, we were skinny little kids.  I am sure that a methane gas cloud hung over our house, but we lived out in the country so neighbors didn't need to call in the hazmat team to neutralize the risk. 

Red beans are still cheap.  Even better, they are delicious and as it turns out, really, really good for you.  I still eat them on occasion, but rarely ever eat fried potatoes any more.  Now, as adults, my family has discovered not just McDonalds, but Burger King, Taco Bell, Jack-N-the-Box, What-A-Burger, and on and on--the list of fast food chain restaurants gets longer everyday.  Now, we are obese--morbidly so according to the doctor.  Maybe Dad knew what he was talking about when he said, "The food they serve in those restaurants will kill you." He wasn't speaking of any particular restaurant, just lumping them all together in one large out to kill group.  Unfortunately, he never bought the idea that cigarettes were harmful to your health. In 1998, he passed away due to complications brought on by years of cigarette smoking.




When I say red beans, I really am talking about pinto beans.
Yum!

Lesson learned. 

Just because I don't acknowledge that something is harmful to me, doesn't mean that it won't kill me.

  Donna makes really awesome red beans, maybe I'll suggest that she cook us some beans for dinner tomorrow.  Without the fried potatoes and biscuits, can't go down that road, but the beans and some zucchini cornbread muffins, I could dig it.


If you want to know more about the goodness of beans, check out Battle of the Beans. 'Today' Food Editor, Phil Lempert, weighs in on the different varieties of beans and their health benefits.

Is it a chip? Is it a cookie? No, it's V-8 to the rescue.

March 14, 2014




See why I need to lose weight?
  This boy is never still.

Pictures.   I really have a tough time posting any picture of me.  Notice that in one of these I am in a tunnel.  But these picture document a personal victory for me.  The jeans that I am wearing, I couldn't wear last May. They were too tight.  So while I not happy with my hubby for shooting the pics, it is great to know that 5 more pounds and I won't be able to wear this jeans without a belt to hold them up.

Creating this blog has forced me to go back and rethink exactly what we did when we started our journey.  Step by step we created a plan that worked for us.  There was a little trial and error, but once we finally made up our mind to change, we were able to stick with it.  It was the making up our collective mind that was difficult.  That took fifteen years to happen.

In our effort to keep it real for us, we have been reassessing the changes we have made in our eating patterns, and going back to the things we did at the very beginning that worked so well. 

The result...I think I need a drumroll here...we have all had a significant drop in weight.  We are talking pounds, not ounces, and it has been a few weeks, okay more like a month, since that has happened consistently for any of us.  So woo hoo! 

Also this "going back to the beginning" has reminded me of another hurdle we had to face.  Snacks.  One of the major problems with liquid diets, remembering that we begin with the idea that soup is part of that liquid diet, is that there is little that you can have for a snack. 

Okay, I hear you grumbling out there.  If I can have 3 shakes and 5-6 bowls of crackerless soup, why do  I need a snack?  I don't know, but there is a snack monster deep inside me that says, "I need snacks!" and says it quite ferociously at times.  I either head him off at the pass by having snacks on hand, or I fall in to the trap of going to the store to buy snacks and end up in trouble.  I do not make good choices when I am hungry.  Let me repeat that because I believe it bears repeating, I DO NOT MAKE GOOD CHOICES WHEN I AM HUNGRY.

Once again, my hubby and I headed back to our local Wal-Mart and searched the aisles.  On the juice aisle we found, well actually rediscovered, V-8.  Only V-8 isn't your grandma's cocktail anymore.  It has changed.  Actually it might be more correct to say it has reinvented itself.

My favorite is still the spicy V-8,but my daughter and husband like the fusion drinks.  A single serving can of the tomato, spicy, regular, or low salt, is 30 calories.  That's it.  30 calories.  The fusion drinks have 50 calories for a single serving. Can't beat that with a stick.  Late at night, when the munchies attacked, it was V-8 to the rescue.

It is kind of cool how things you have known about and enjoyed for ages, until you got out of the habit of buying them, help you get your life back on track.  Sort of feels like coming home.

Lessons Learned on a Tuesday Afternoon

March 12, 2014

Not all celery is created equal, and sometimes pizza is worth the celery you will have to eat if you cave.

Okay, so here is what I learned today.  If you buy one Little Caesars pepperoni pizza and one family size Italian cheesy bread, split three ways, it is your daily calorie allowance.  Does that mean I can't eat it?  No.  It means that I will be eating celery for the rest of the day so I had better enjoy every cheesy, greasy bite.  And I did, thank you very much.

The difference is that I am not feeling like I have cheated.  I don't feel like I have sabotaged my diet.  I am not worried about being able to get back on my diet tomorrow.  I am allowed 1200 calories a day, no matter what form they take. Do I make choices like this everyday?  No.  Pizza is not a healthy choice.  I am aware of this and am trying to make much healthier choices, but it nice to know that even when I don't, I have a built in safety switch.  1200 calories a day.  If I blow all my calories on one meal, then I find negative calorie foods to eat for the rest of the day, like celery.  Negative calorie foods take more energy to digest than they have in them.  While there are quite a few negative calorie foods, I find celery to be the easiest to keep cleaned and ready.  If I don't have to prep it when I am looking for a snack, I am more likely to reach for it when I go to the refrigerator.

For this very reason, I keep a lot of celery on hand.  Celery more than salad because salads can get pretty heavy on the calories if you aren't careful AND are not as handy to grab for a snack.


2 stalks of celery equals 15 calories.  Celery is fiber rich and a good source of water, so I also stock up on toilet paper.  Just saying.

When we first began this diet, back in July, I came across another diet-saving product--Biggest Loser Celery Sticks.  At about $2 a bag if was perfect.  Buying celery by the bunch is cheaper, and I buy bunches when I have time to prep them, but having a bag of precut celery in my refrigerator ready to grab and munch makes it easy for me to make better choices.  And hey, the celery is way cheaper than the chips that I used to snack on.


In case you are interested, here are the fruits, veggies, and spices that are considered negative calorie.











These pictures come from http://www.brainyweightloss.com/list-of-negative-calorie-food.html.

Again, I make no money off this product, but BL celery sticks is consistently a better product, fresher and better tasting, than other prepackaged celery products I have tried.

Our Journey

March 9, 2014

Leaving the Fat Lane

Every journey begins with a single step.  This journey is no different.  Our determination to turn our life around and to become something more than morbidly obese was inspired by Braden.   His birth has transformed our life, and we want to be around for a long time to share his journey with him.  For us the first step was understanding that we could no longer ignore that we were eating ourselves into an early grave.  This blog isn't to inspire others, although if it does, that is okay.  This site is to keep us on track and to force us to keep moving forward, even if it is only one tiny baby step at a time.

Life is more than a series of stops along the food highway.  It is the joy and light that we bring to each person we encounter on our journey.