Posts by iechris

Chobani vanilla nonfat Greek yogurt and stores near me have just started carrying the nonfat Brown Cow Greek yogurt, get that in plain.  I eat the vanilla with breakfast and the plain at 80 calories makes a good snack. 

I set my activity level a light I think (have a job where I'm on my feet a lot) but then add in any exercise separately.  I think CC has trotting set at like 400+ calories an hour.  I just add in the time I ride.  Plus they also list tacking and untacking, I add that in too when I'm washing horses, turning them in/out etc.

I've found some of the vegan cookbooks to have more interesting and different recipes than the just vegetarian cookbooks.

Here are some cookbooks (both vegetarian and vegan) we can't live without:

Moosewood Simple Suppers

Vegan with a Vengeance

Complete Vegan Cookbook

Vegetarian Express

Vegetarian Express Lane Cookbook

Veganomicon

How it All Vegan

Garden of Vegan

For the cookbooks without nutrition info, I analyze the recipes here on CC and sometimes adjust them.  I almost always cut the amout of oil in 1/2 or even 1/3.    Vegetarian Times magazine also has a huge, free searchable database of recipes, all with nutrition info.

Spinach sauteed in a little bit of olive oil with some chopped garlic.  Yum! 

Green beans (I just nuke frozen green beans and eat them plain)

Eggplant marinated and grilled or cut it up in small pieces, sautee it and add it to your stirfry.

Mushrooms sauteed (you could even add them to a pasta sauce)

Great time of the year for fruit.  Peaches, melons, berries.  I buy frozen berries because fresh ones are pretty expensive.  Peaches and melons might be cheaper at roadside markets right now depending on where you live.

And yes... onions are awful.  Use dried minced onions (in the spice section) for a bit of onion flavor without the yuckiness of actual onion pieces (I always sub a few shakes of this for onions in any recipe).

Hope everyone had a good weekend!  I had an interesting weekend.  Was down at my friends' house working and riding on their horse farm.  Did tons of work every day, had a very small amount of calories actually on Sunday and stayed under on Saturday despite eating mostly dessert (pot luck- EVERYTHING had meat in it).   Yesterday I did a lot of work on the farm and riding, then drove home.  Had a pizza, which was fine but the bad choice was tiramisu for dessert- 870 calories.  OMG!!!!!  I ate 3000 calories yesterday.  Yikes!!  It does seem like I might have exercised off about 1300 calories with the farm work and I did make a conscious decision to eat the pizza and tiramisu and I have been good lately. 

Back on track, back to work and back to the gym today!

I have much the same experience, but I do think that is because I tend to love my large portions and sweets.  If I just exercise and eat like normal, I don't lose weight.  I can and have lost weight just through diet alone, but of course, it is best and I get the best results when I combine diet with exercise. 

But I'm example A of it is totally possible to work out (even fairly hard) and still eat way too many calories (ice cream- yum!) and not lose weight. 

Use the tools on this site to figure out how many calories you should eat (I set my activity level at sedentary) and then log in your exercise as well to see how many calories you burn through exercise.   Aim to keep your calories at 500-1000 fewer than you burn through living and exercise each day and you should be good. 

I *love* some of the exercise suggestions:

- Thin folks who say that when they start to gain weight, they just go for a 30 minute walk every day and lose it all off.   I have NEVER lost weight with walking as exercise, unless it is on a treadmill jacked up to 18% incline.

- An older friend who suggested I join Curves as a lady she knows said all the girls she works with joined and they are all so skinny now.  Um... thanks but I already lift weights 4x per week and work out with a personal trainer 1x per week. 

I hate having huge thighs and calves.

I'm so glad I live 3000 miles from my hometown so I don't have to worry about running into anyone I knew as a child.

I have given up on ever wearing a swimsuit in public again.  My thighs will never be fit to be seen in public.

I think shorts are evil.

Luna- I know what you mean about it being hard to keep up with the counting, etc.  And you amaze me with all that you do with your health issues. I have two friends with fibriomyalgia (and it seems to always come with a bunch of other nasty little issues) and both really struggle. 

Sometimes I try to think of keeping track of my calories as a little game.  Makes it a bit more interesting?   Have you tried doing something different for cardio, something new can add an excitement factor sometimes.

Annie- keep in the good work with the running, three miles is FANTASTIC!  Take care of your knees though!

I had quite a week!  Got back from VA on Monday PM and it would have been an outstanding eating day except on the drive home I found a chocolate chip muffin that had been left in my car by a passenger in my car.  I was really hungry so...  Tuesday I was completely exhausted but decided to push myself and go to the gym.  Not a good idea.  That took all the energy I had it seems and I barely made it through the rest of the work day and home.  Then of course it was TOTM.  Lovely... Did get in 3 days of strength training at the gym this week, but riding lesson was cancelled due to the rain. 

I also had a major meltdown in the dressing room this week.  My legs are big and my calves tend to swell toward the end of the day (lovely...).  I tried on this really cute sundress and I looked pretty good.  Until I looked at my legs sticking out of the bottom of the dress. I thought I looked pretty slim (for me- it was a size 10) then I saw my calves, they were HUGE.  I almost started to cry.  I didn't buy the dress (I have multiple sundresses already).   I rebounded by buying three hats.  I am now prepared for steeplechases next spring!  Ah... retail therapy...

Tomorrow I leave for a week in KY.  I probably won't have a chance for formal exercise, but walking 6 leash broken 45 lb dogs will give me some exercise (as opposed to the last two weeks helping walk 23 sort of leash broken 80 lb dogs!). 

Misty- I'll be in Lexington KY for a whole week at the KY horse park, first week in June.  Plan on bringing lots of my own food as last year we cooked out all week and they just grilled meat every night.  So, load up on the Tofurkey...

Sugar addiction is the hardest to kick.  I just count it in my calories and have a Skinny  Cow almost every night. 

I had a terrible day yesterday even after my earlier post but stayed under my calorie goal and though I really wanted something bad, realized that it was emotional eating and said NO!

To those that have lost weight- keep up the good work! 

Annie- wow, you are doing great with the running!

I had a so-so weekend with being out of town.  I brought some of my own food, but also had some food that I could eat, but ended up eating two desserts on Saturday (though mainly had lettuce for lunch).  Sunday was mostly a travel day and I made some bad food choices on my way home.  Should have picked between the fries and iced mocha at McDonalds, not had both.  Ended up about 300 calories OVER my burn rate. 

Today I'm back on track and hit the gym at lunch, but I'm also struggling with the totally unrealistic frustration, the shouldn't I be there yet feeling of wishing my weight were in its goal range because I've been working hard at it.  Yet, I realize that I've really only been at it 2 months with being strict with the diet.  But still... man am I craving going calorie ladden, fruit topped pancakes! 

My dog did finish her championship a few weeks ago, so that is great and I probably won't be doing many dog shows this summer.  One more weekend to go on my 6 straight weekends out of town, then I'm home for about 6 days, then off to KY for a week, then NO out of town plans at all currently (though I'm sure I'll be headed to Aiken sometime in June). 

Yolie- about your co-worker, hate that you have to work with someone so toxic, but good for you for realizing it is her issues and nothing you can do about it. 

Hope everyone has a good week!

Keep up the good work to everyone who has stayed on track this week.  I had a great week until today.  This was originally supposed to be my stay at home and relax weekend after being on the road every weekend for the last month.  I do this totally by choice, I know, so I can't really complain.  

But... I was told I needed to enter my dog in shows this weekend, all well and good except I'm working on Saturday.  So, today was spent driving 2 hours down to take her to one of her co-owers, who will drive her 4 hours to NC and show her tomorrow.  Tomorrow night I work all day and then drive 4 hours to NC to show her Sunday.   This is totally not how I really want to spend my weekend, but that is the game I've chosen to play... So, this is my chance to vent to people who don't know me in that life or know my friends!

On the road so no lunch or gym today and Mexican for dinner.  Maybe 200-300 calories over my goal but hopefully still under the burn rate.  Did get a shortened riding lesson in this AM.  My trainer said that I'm really getting stronger and asked if I've lost more weight.  I'm really happy that she has is much more interested in me getting stronger than thinner, since she herself is quite thin. 

Goal for tomorrow:  hit the gym at lunch to finish up the strength program for the week!

Thanks for giving me a place to vent and ramble a bit!  It is so nice to see people with a healthy attitude toward weight loss and overall health.   Life is a wonderful and crazy journey, I think some people lose sight of that sometimes.  Here's to enjoying the ride!

I'm also vegetarian and my morning breakfast is 1 c Kashi Go Lean (not the Crunch, the original 140 cal/cup one), 1/2 c lite soy milk, 6 oz Chobani yogurt and 1 c coffee.  This has about 30 grams of protein and 300 calories.  I eat about 2x the protein a day as a non-vegetarian co-worker who is also dieting. 

Well... I went up to NJ, split the drive up into Thursday night and Friday day, then the whole 11+ hours back down on Sunday.  I did pretty well with the eating most days, as I had brought stuff to make sandwiches for lunch and yogurt for breakfast.  Yesterday had a bit of a bad due to to just flat out bad food choices.  Ended up 600 calories OVER my burn rate.   I knew I had eaten too much, but once I got home, I just had to eat a real dinner... so way over. 

Oh well... other than that I think I did pretty well and I hit the gym for cardio on my lunch hour.  The sandwiches are working well for meals on the road, so I'll do that for the next three weekends, as I'm on the road for the next three weekends. 

Goal is to hit the gym every day at lunch this week.  Aiming for cardio Mon, Wed and Fri and strength Tues, Thurs and Sat.

I'm back home after a weekend in GA.  I don't really stress over what I eat on the weekends when I'm out of town, but my goals for this weekend were to try not to go over my burn rate and to try to keep track of what I ate on my Blackberry.  We ate out a lot so I had to kind of estimate everything, but I don't think I'm too far off.  I was about 100 calories OVER my burn rate yesterday but today I seem to be 200 calories under (could be right at, as estimating one restaurants food based on others' data), but I'm happy with that.  Did well keeping track of my food until the batteries totally ran out on the Blackberry, but updated everything now that I'm home. 

Tomorrow it is back to the gym and back to 1500 cals!  I'm leaving for NJ on Thursday PM.  This next weekend is a BIG travel weekend for me.

I too love the hickory smoked slices, but I only have them in sandwichs (tomorrow's lunch- yum!).   I don't think I'd put any fake meat on my salad, I'd rather have some fruit and some nuts, though I seem to remember that Bac-os are vegetarian. 

Try some of the burgers, especially the cheeseburgers (if you aren't vegan) and the black bean burgers and also some of the breaded chicken products (nuggets, buffalo wings, chicken patties) and the ground crumbles in things like spaghetti sauce.