Salad #2: Hodge Podge d'Jen

Oh. Ma. Gawd. I just discovered two things that will forever help me with salads:

1) Cut everything up really small
2) Use only a small amount of greens

And of course, the ingredients are a very big deal, and I seem to have found a pretty good combination. I really didn't know what proportions to use when I started so I made a general rule of 2/3 cup of each item. Some items I added a little more, some I used a little less. Here's the rundown:

Baby arugula (1 cup)
Cherry tomatoes, halved (2/3 cup)
Red seedless grapes, halved (2/3 cup)
Hard boiled egg, chopped (1)
Avocado, chopped (1)
Cucumber, chopped (2/3 cup)
Carrot, shredded (2/3 cup)
Red onion, diced (1/3 cup)
Red bell pepper, diced (1/3 cup)
Maple Grove Farms All Natural Strawberry Balsamic dressing (4 tbsp)

This dressing is amazing: it's 25 calories per 2 tablespoons. I had planned to make my own, but since I have this entire bottle (purchased for a New Year's Eve event and never opened) I think it'll be my dressing darling for a while.

This whole mixture comes in at about 625 calories. More than half of that is from the avocado, and of course, the egg is a big part as well. So if I go back for the rest of it right now (which is a certainty), that'll be a 625 calorie lunch for me, which is more calories than I'm used to. Next time I'll use less avocado (I almost used only half an avocado, but the other half looked soooo good) and get all these good veggies without loading up on the calories.

So, next time: less avocado, more grapes, possibly more red bell pepper. (I can't taste it at all, but I used only 1/3 cup because I'm not its biggest fan. I love roasted red peppers on a sandwich, but raw peppers aren't usually for me.)

YUM! This one is a winner. Salad #1, the Russian Beet Salad was OK too, but this one easily took the lead for me.

Salad idea...

I know, I know, I've only been doing this daily-salad thing for one day. (And that was yesterday; today I exempted myself because Friday is free pizza day at work, so that's basically all I eat.) But I know the salads are going to be a problem for me. Eating a pile of plants just isn't satisfying to me. As I blogged yesterday, it can be filling, but still plain unsatisfying.

At the beginning of this I thought I'd stick to veggies only in my salads, since that's the ingredient missing from my diet. But now I'm thinking that I can add a little bit of something else. The salads should still be mostly-veggie, but I can use accent ingredients, such as a little pasta. I love pasta salad, so I'm thinking that I could have a pasta salad that's super-heavy on the vegetables.

And this morning an e-mail landed in my inbox with a link to this recipe for a Crab, Corn, and Tomato Salad. Now that sounds super-yummy. Once I get through the produce currently in my kitchen (which, I again bemoan, cost thirty-four dollars and eighty-two cents) I think I'll get some crab and corn salad fixins.

Dissection of my grocery bill

Now, hold on a second. This only looks like it's going to be straight out of the "of interest only to Jen S." files. But I promise, I have a point.

I just spent nearly $100 at the grocery store for what was supposed to be a quick trip for salad ingredients. Of course, I needed a few other items, since my kitchen is nearly empty. Some yogurt for the dogs (they get a dollop at meal time), food for the reptiles (iguanas and leopard tortoises are vegetarian), and some miscellany like milk, nutrition bars, tissue and fruit.

So here's where all that money went:

Miscellaneous grocery: $36.10
Dog food: $5.98
Reptile food: $18.58
Salad ingredients: $34.82

That last item there? Did you see it -- the thirty-four dollars and eighty-two cents I spent on salad fixins? That is another reason why I shy away from making foods involving a lot of fresh produce. Gah. I just don't know what else to say.

I look forward to learning just how many days of salads that $34.82 bought me. Salad days indeed.

I was even charitable, and kept the minced garlic on the "miscellaneous" tab because even though I bought it for salad (in particular, the dressing I'll make), I will be able to use it for some time. The other stuff, not so much.

I should add that $5.05 of that miscellany was for a plate of sushi that I decided to reward myself with for taking this step into salad-land. So, today I haven't yet had any salad, but I sure did have some yummy salmon rolls for dinner.

Will a salad a day melt my spare pounds away?

If you've been paying attention, you know that as part of my effort to be fit and healthy I've been trying to lose weight. Those of you who know me know I'm not overweight; in fact, I'm nearly smack dab in the middle of the "healthy weight" range for my height on all the charts. But I'm much more physically comfortable when I'm at the lower end of that category, and my clothes fit better. In fact, I'm down to two pairs of pants that fit me. (I just had a denim casualty: a pair of jeans ripped in the butt. RIP, favorite jeans.) So my goal is to lose a pants size, as I have stacks of pants in my closet that I will then be able to wear. All I should need to lose are about 10 pounds to achieve this (though I'd like to lose 15, giving me a little room in the butt so they don't rip).



So I track my daily food intake at FitDay.com, and my daily calorie goal had been 1200-1500 for some time. That amount of food worked for weight loss. I wasn't losing quickly but I was losing consistently, and if I had a "bad" day when I splurged, it didn't even really register. (Thus avoiding the mental setback involved when one "gains" a few pounds overnight.)

But I was always hungry. Not quite as hungry as I was when I tried NutriSystem for several months last year, but hungry enough to notice. It was sometimes hard to concentrate, hard to sleep. And I tended to have more than my fair share of "bad" days.

So a few weeks ago I adjusted my calorie goal. Instead of 1200-1500 calories a day, I started aiming for 1400-1600 calories.

It fixed my hunger problem. As soon as I hit 1500 calories, as long as I spread my food intake out over the entire day, I was in a safe place where I knew I'd make it to bedtime without hunger pangs. It felt good.

But for my first two weeks at that level, I gained weight. This was right before my trip to Hawaii, so you can imagine how put out I was. I had stuck to my diet guidelines (minus one splurge day, which wasn't particularly bad) and exercised 5 days/week, so I really can't figure out what the problem can be other than to say: my metabolism sucks. If I had any disposable income, I'd hire a nutritionist right about now to help me out of this rut. But I don't, so I need to figure something out on my own.

But I'm not going to lower my calorie goal again. Well, I think I'm going to tighten up the range to 1400-1500 calories/day, just to try to get my ass a little more disciplined. But going back to starvation is just not a part of my plan. Instead, I've decided to try replacing some of the calories I've been consuming with different calories.

I eat pretty decently, at least for an American. Cookies, chips, candy, donuts, and even crackers make up a miniscule portion of my diet. I don't ever buy those items when I go grocery shopping, so the only times I have them these days are on a purely opportunistic basis. Such as when I'm at a party, or at a friend's house, or when I'm stuck at work late and the only food available lives in the vending machine. A routine day's diet for me goes something like this:

Breakfast: 2 hard boiled eggs
Morning snacks: 1 banana, 1 nutrition bar (Balance, Zone, etc.)
Lunch: Frozen meal (I know, this isn't high cuisine)
Afternoon snacks: 1 pear, 1 apple
Dinner: This varies drastically from day to day. My only real guidelines are that I won't repeat a frozen meal if I've already had one, and I only have around 400 calories left to play with. Because I'm not cooking for anyone besides myself I don't cook as often as I'd like, so sometimes dinner will be a hodgepodge of things like some yogurt, another nutrition bar, more fruit. Sometimes I'll have a big bowl of oatmeal or Cream of Wheat. Sometimes I'll have some fish. It's a daily puzzle: "What does Jen have in her kitchen that she can put together for 400 calories?"

So I'm thinking: I can't cut calories, and I can't cut junk food. But I can cut processed food and add more natural foods. Namely: vegetables.

If you've been paying attention you also already know that I've been trying to add veggies in to my diet. Looking at my sample day's diet above, you can see that I haven't done a good job. But sometimes I do. It's a matter of good planning. The last time I bought vegetables for myself at the grocery store I wound up spending ungodly amounts of money on several pounds of organic spinach, much of which didn't get eaten, so I went a bit gun-shy after that.

And my vegetable garden is ... not doing well. (That's another post for another day.)

But I figure, I'll cut down on my nutrition bar spending, and use that money toward veggies instead. Then I need to find some good veggie dishes. To start, I'm going to concentrate mainly on salads. The thing is, I don't like salad. Because to most people, "salad" is a tiny plate with a few lettuce leaves, onion slices, tomato wedges, radish bits, and if you're lucky, carrot shavings, and the only good thing about it is that it acts as a dressing delivery vehicle. Yuck. My salad needs are much more sophisticated than that, and much larger. I'll eat my salads out of mixing bowls. On the ingredients front I know where to start, and that's with more interesting greens (spinach, arugula, or at least, for the love of god, baby field greens, NOT just lettuce leaves), avocado, onions, but maybe cooked a little, tomatoes, but sliced thinly so their juices can marinade their neighbors, and ... after that I'm at a loss. At the start, I'm keeping it to veggies-only, so no eggs, meat, nuts, raisins, etc. I'll use tiny amounts of dressing, I'm thinking a little virgin olive oil and extra vinegar. And pepper. Amazingly, this is sounding good right now.

But before I do any shopping I need to scour my cookbooks for some firm ideas. I don't want to waste any more vegetables. If you have a recipe for a good salad, please share it here!

To sum: I hope to replace one meal a day with a big, honkin' salad of comparable calories. Because I can't cut my calories any further, and I already exercise about 5 days/week, so I don't know what else to do.

Strawberries vs. chicken fingers: the cost of calories

The cost of healthy food is a pretty hot topic lately. Even ignoring current economic issues (which is hard to do: it's tough to pick up a newspaper without reading about how the cost of ingredients and gas are making food prices skyrocket), fresh foods are simply more expensive than processed foods. If you stick to buying the healthiest stuff at your supermarket: fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, eggs, cheese, meats, that is, the stuff that the store displays on its outside walls, your grocery bill will be higher than if you select your items from within the aisles.

This is a much more involved issue than most people realize. Much of it goes back to the farm bill and subsidization to corn farmers. If you google for a moment you'll find articles in sources ranging from random bloggers like myself to the New York Times that focus on how Americans are so obese because a bag of chips (whose ingredients are heavy on corn) is so much less expensive, dollar-per-calorie, than healthier foods like fresh produce.

On a shallow level, I absolutely agree with that argument. People like my dad will say that chips are expensive. "$4 for a bag of snack food! How is that cheap?" But compare the number of calories in that $4 bag of chips (often over 1000) to the number of calories you'll get if you spend $4 on pears (200-400, depending on the season) and it's really obvious that the argument is valid.

But on a deeper level we should see that the argument, presented as I did above, isn't comparing apples to apples. The choice that lower-income families face isn't (or shouldn't be) pears vs. chips. There are numerous other aisles in the supermarket containing cheap pastas, beans, and other more convenient foods. People trying to save their earnings while staying healthy sure aren't taking a bunch of asparagus in one hand and a box of Oreos in the other hand and thinking, "Well, asparagus is far more nutritious, but dollar-per-calorie, I'm gonna have to go with the Oreos...." The contents of prepared pastas and boxed rice dishes aren't as pure as those in fresh produce, but there really is enough good stuff available to raise any growing boy without making him one of America's obese children.

And with that in mind, I am going to begin a series of articles comparing the cost of calories in different foods. My recent healthy eating kick has really opened my eyes to how expensive it is to live on foods like spinach, and I find myself looking back fondly at the days when I came closer to living on Banquet frozen foods, perpetually available at Jewel for $1 each. (Recently the discount went even deeper, to $0.88 each. Convenience food nirvana, let me tell you.)

This idea recently hit me hard when I was surprised by the nutritional information I entered for a couple of my meals (on fitday.com). Those two meals were: One pound of fresh strawberries (more like a big snack than a meal) and Banquet Chicken Fingers.

VS

Strawberries:
I buy strawberries when they are on sale. The sale is usually two pounds for the price of one (or, when the season is really high, four pounds for the price of two). Regardless, a half-price strawberry is a good find, if you can eat them fast enough. So one day I brought a pound-sized carton of strawberries with me to work. I ate the whole thing in one sitting. A pound of strawberries is more filling than I thought it would be. Fruits and vegetables are not very filling for me as a rule, which is one reason I've avoided them over the years. But strawberries did not disappoint. After being positive I screwed the pooch by eating the whole thing at once, I looked up the nutritional content of strawberries on nutritiondata.com and was surprised and somewhat alarmed to learn that one pound of strawberries contains only 144 calories. That pound of strawberries effectively cost me $2.50, so this large snack cost me $0.0174 per calorie. That's about one and three-fourths pennies.

Banquet Chicken Fingers:
Even during my current health food kick, I still consume a frozen meal about every other day. I prepare almost all of my food one way or another (as opposed to picking up food at a deli or McDonald's) so in order to eat all day long I have to resort to convenience foods at least once a day. For me, convenience foods mostly mean frozen meals, boxed pastas, and nutrition bars. Healthy Choice is my favorite frozen food brand but Banquet is the cheapest, so I stock both. (I should note that both brands are owned by ConAgra, so there is no violence in my freezer between the two related, not strictly competing, brands.) And when I grab a frozen meal out of the freezer, my mental calculator dishes up a caloric content between 300 and 400 calories, because that's what they tend to be. So you can imagine how shocked I was when I looked at the nutritional information on the package and learned that Banquet's Chicken Fingers boast a whopping 550 calories per serving. 550 calories! For $1! (I don't remember if I got this particular box for 88 cents, but that was a once-in-a-lifetime event so I'm going with the $1 figure.) The math tells me that this meal cost $0.002 per calorie. That's two-tenths of one cent. That is one cheap calorie.

The calorie deathmatch data:

Strawberries, one pound Calories: 144 Price: $2.50 Dollars-per-calorie: $0.0174 (1.74 cents)

Banquet Chicken Fingers meal Calories: 550 Price: $1 Dollars-per-calorie: $0.002 (1/5 of one cent)

To summarize: Banquet Chicken Fingers calories are so much cheaper than strawberry calories that you can buy 8.7 times the number of Chicken Finger calories as strawberry calories for the same amount of money.

Want it even more simply?

Spending the same amount of money*, you could live on strawberries for about one day, while you could live on Banquet Chicken Fingers for nearly nine days.
*In this case, that amount would be about $35, based on a 2,000-calorie diet.

Get it? Talking about fractions of pennies might not be as clear, but the above statement should hit you. The strawberry calorie, she is an expensive one.

This, my first article in the calorie deathmatch series, isn't necessarily comparing apples to apples either. But I think it's at least a little bit more relevant than comparing fresh produce to corn chips.

Adjusting my calorie goal

I am sometimes too impressionable. I read something or hear somebody say something and I label it "gospel" and file it in a place of importance and easy access in my mind's filing cabinet.

For instance:

Denise Austin said that I can safely reduce my daily caloric intake to 1200 calories and quickly lose weight without hurting my body. During the year I lived in Savannah, Georgia, I spent a lot of time in my living room with Denise Austin. For various reasons I had gained a ton of weight the year before (well, not quite a ton ... 1.5% of a ton, to be precise) so I spent this year in relative seclusion attempting to get healthy. Some days I jogged around Forsyth Park, but on the really stifling humid Savannah days I stayed in my living room and turned on the TV to do aerobics with Denise. It was a nice time. So I made many efforts to follow her advice.

Somewhere I read that while trying to get pregnant, Angelina Jolie's nutritionist advised her to up her daily caloric intake from 1200 to 1500 calories. Of course all beautiful celebrities diet their entire lives; their paychecks depend on it. (Often I wish mine did.) So I figured, if Angelina can maintain those breasts while consuming only 1200 calories a day, I can certainly do so and remain healthy.

I've heard that 1200 calorie rule bandied about in numerous places, from numerous sources. I have no doubt that it's a fine goal. I have little doubt that it's harmless and that you'll drop weight fast with that kind of calorie intake, and I can prove it. So striving for 1200 calories a day when dieting is what I've always done. I simply thought it must be the right thing to do. It was my gospel.

So when I signed up at FitDay to log my diet and exercise, I set up some daily goals for myself. The one I pay most attention to is daily caloric intake, and the goal I set for myself was 1200-1500 calories. I wanted to give myself a little buffer zone, as I knew it would be tough to get into the habit of consuming only 1200 calories. So 1200-1500 seemed reasonable, but I really wanted to keep it closer to 1200 when possible.

I tried, oh how I tried. I did very well for a while, too. I reached my first fitness goal of losing my first 4 pounds, and life was good. Until bedtime, that is. Any time after 6pm, actually, because by that time I had already consumed my 1200 calories, and the most I could do after that was have maybe a nutrition bar and a piece of fruit, that is, if I was satisfied with going all the way to 1500 calories for the day, and regardless, I went to bed hungry. Every night. And it's hard for me to sleep when I'm hungry.

What ended up happening was that I rebelled and ended up gaining the weight back. I was miserable. So about a week ago I decided to try making a change.

My new goal for daily caloric intake is 1400-1600 calories. Now, instead of 1500 calories being "OK, but at the high end of where I want to be," it's right in the middle of where I'm aiming. It's my bullseye. And if I want, I can even have 100 more calories after that!

It's still restrictive, as diets are by definition. But it's possible. Often lately I've been landing somewhere between 1400-1500 calories after dinner, and then if I'm hungry before bed my favorite snack is Orville Redenbacher's 94% fat free popcorn in a 100-calorie mini bag. I actually bought the box of mini bags by accident, but it turns out that the serving size is just right.

I'm learning that there is nothing wrong with adjusting my goals. More to the point, I'm learning that to adjust a goal is not to fail at the goal. There is a little trial and error involved in just about everything we do, and the important thing is that we improve along the way. So here I am, full of more calories than before, but at least now I can sleep.

My first fitness reward

This road to weight loss is going slowly, and I think that's the best way for me to do it. (Not surprisingly, others agree! The theory is particularly glorified in the blog Get Fit Slowly, which is a part of my daily reading list.) In the past, I typically got so charged up when starting a new fitness plan that for the first several days I'd eat very little and end up losing 5 or 6 lbs. almost instantly, only to be faced with a frustrating plateau and a grumbling belly. Now, I'm just exercising and eating sensibly. I don't have a calorie deficit every day, but as long as I hit a deficit more days than not, I'll eventually get to where I want to be. Wherever that is.

Back in February I began this journey to fitness, and you'll recall that I set up a rewards system for myself. The system was to be one of the more tangible motivators for my fitness regime. The system is: for every 4 lbs. I lose, I get to spend $50 on exercise apparel for myself. You see, most of my workout gear dates back to my college days (which were quite a while ago) and need to be updated for ... many reasons. I'm quite utilitarian and I run all my clothing into the ground before discarding it. (Unless it no longer fits or is 100% out of style, in which case I donate it. What lucky recipients.) But it's getting to the point where some items are going to need replacing soon. So! Out with the old, and in with the rewards system!

And now ... it's time for my first reward! I've officially lost my first 4 lbs., and I've visited Road Runner Sports and purchased a basic little outfit that I'm quite enjoying.

The Shirt:


The Shorts:


Both items are currently on sale for many, many dollars off.

So, here are my stats:
Beginning weight: 154 lbs.
Current weight: 150 lbs.
Goal weight: 138-142 lbs. (negotiable, depending on how I feel.)
Height: 5'9"
Gender: Female

I keep track of both what I eat and when I exercise using FitDay. It helps me keep my good days good. I can look at a day and say, "OK, I've eaten my goal number of calories and I feel pretty good, so I really don't need to eat this extra blankety-blank." I still have bad days when all bets are off (due to stress or social functions), but I figure if I can keep my good days good, and have fewer bad days, that will help my reach my goal.

I still don't know exactly how far I will want to go with the weight loss. I think I won't be satisfied until I drop a pants size, and then that will be enough. Right now, I just have my eye focused on the next 4 lbs.

4 pounds at a time

Like many people, I gained some weight over the holidays. I doubt the reasons for my weight gain were the most popular reasons, which I assume to be holiday parties, holiday get togethers, and more holiday parties. The truth is, I had a lot of free time on my hands. December is almost always a slow month in my line of work, and that was compounded with the problem that my client list had been dwindling, slowly but consistently, over the course of 2007. (That is a topic for another day!)

And you know what they say about idle minds and the devil's playground: they are one and the same. With all this free time on my hands, did I take the opportunity to exercise? To cook healthy meals? To buck the norm? Why, no. I spent that time wallowing in my worries, rather than concentrating on any kind of personal development. I was insecure about my situation, I got myself caught in a rut, and it was a mistake. Once 2008 rolled around, I took the opportunity to try to kick myself in the pants and turn things around.

I have been doing many things on my personal development road (including concentrating on getting this blog up and running), not just dieting. This entry will focus on the way I'm going about taking off those devil pounds. Here is a list of the things I'm focusing on to achieve my goal:

1) I don't have a goal weight. I started this process at 154 lbs. I know how I looked and felt the last time I weighed 132 lbs, which is the least I've weighed during my adult life. It felt great. But I am far more athletic and have more muscle mass now than I did then, so I really don't have a solid idea of what weight will make me most comfortable. I think somewhere around 140 will feel about right (maybe ... 135?), but we'll see when we get there. So I'm playing it by ear.

2) I do have a goal pants size: 8. (According to Banana Republic it's 6, bless their heart, but every other brand I wear runs smaller.) It's only one size down from where I am now. But I *barely* fit into my current pants, so let's call my goal size one and a half sizes down from where I am currently. My height is 5'9" and I know enough about my body to know that I would need to starve myself to fit into a 6. (Size 4, according to BR ... 4?! I don't think I wore a 4 even when I was in fifth grade.) So, size 8 it is.

3) I have motivation. Several things to motivate me, in fact. One is that I'm participating in Hustle up the Hancock on February 24, and the better shape I'm in for that, the better off I'll be. Another motivating factor is the stack of size 8 jeans in my closet. I don't think I need to expound there. My health is my most important motivating factor. I like to feel good, and I want to live a long, healthy life. Exercising will help achieve that end, as will eating less. Eating *better* is also something I am trying to do, but simply decreasing my calorie intake (and cutting out much of the junk food) is an excellent step as well.

But I also have a motivating factor that is much more instantly gratifying, is tangible, and is material: I am using a rewards system. One sad truth in my life is that my drawer of workout gear is filled with spandex and nylon that I have accumulated over the past, oh, twenty years. I haven't bought anything new in literally years. Things are falling apart, things have built-in odors, things have deteriorating elastic. But exercise gear is so darn expensive that I've long considered it a luxury that I don't need to indulge in. I have become completely utilitarian in that area. Which I think is a good thing, but the fact is, I'm running out of comfortable and useful clothing to exercise in, and I think this is the perfect opportunity to buy some new togs.

So here's the system: for every 4 lbs. I lose, I get to spend $50 on exercise clothing. I chose 4 lbs. because, well, 5 is too many, and 3 is too few. I'm pretty darn sure I won't lose over 16 lbs, so that's a maximum $200 I'm spending on myself, and that seems like a good, heavy but not crippling, rewarding number of dollars. (And if it turns out to be only $150, all the better for my bank account.)

If you've ever shopped for exercise wear, you know that $50 won't buy you a hell of a lot. So for this type of attire, I shop sales. I am currently making my way through several dog-eared pages in a recent Athleta catalog, creating my wish list. I also have a Champion catalog whose line tends to be lower-priced to begin with. And after that, perhaps I'll actually (gasp) go out and hit some local stores to peruse their sales racks.

So here I go. When I reach my first goal of 150, you'll be hearing from me again, and getting a look at my first reward. I can't wait to post about it!