Sunday, April 3, 2011

Feeling Full after a 560-Calorie Supper

Yesterday was day 55 of my diet. Although I never went in much for pre-processed foods, now I am even more determined to cut down on salts, fats, sugars, and unpronounceable chemical additives in foods I consume. Therefore, nearly all my food is prepared by me. While shopping at Woodman's, my favorite grocery store (employee-owned), I searched the section that had the foods "on the cusp", as it were, or shortly about to expire. Most of it is still quite good. I bought a pound of mustard greens and 4 chicken sausages with cranberries and cognac. They had only 100 calories each and were exceptionally low in salt and fat, but high in protein. I put them together with other foods and created a new, nameless recipe. Maybe some day I'll make a recipe book of all these low-calorie meals I'm creating. Here's the calorie count I did on the recipe. You are welcome to try it.
                                                                                          calories
mustard greens, 1#                                                                  100
chopped tomatoes in their own juice                                       145
potatoes, 5 fairly small                                                             400
carrots, 4 small, peeled and left whole                                     45
chicken sausages, 4 left whole                                                  400
Italian seasonings 2 T                                                             miniscule
chopped onion                                                                        30
hot sauce I made  2 T                                                            miniscule
garlic, chopped  2 T                                                              miniscule

                                                                          Total calories             1120 / 2 servings=
                                                                                      560 calories per serving

I shared this meal with my adult son. It was not only extremely tasty with all those good things in it, but it needed NO SALT because of the seasonings, and I added no form of fat whatsoever. That hot sauce turned out really hot; I made it from water and hot peppers blended together. I used enough water in the pot to cover the food while it was cooking. I did not serve bread with the meal because I felt there was enough starch in the potatoes. We were completely satisfied after eating that great amount of food out of two large serving bowls. Later I ate a small scone to satisfy my sugar craving. I must admit that after having only 1316 calories yesterday, I awoke at about 4 AM terribly hungry and unable to sleep, so I ate three crackers mindfully and finally got back to sleep. Betsey got only a few pieces from me.

This is my calendar entry for the day:

Saturday, April 2, 2011
+ 1316 = 
85,379 / 55 =
1552 
(106,865) [total calories I would have consumed over 55 days if I had been eating only to maintain a healthy weight] 

On April 18 I'll be seeing my cancer doctor and I will have a weigh-in at a good scale. I'll let you know how many pounds I lost. I know it's going well because my clothes are getting loose. Now I guess I'm sorry that I donated 20 boxes of my old size 10 clothes. Many of them were brand new. Just think, I could have been WAY out of style if I wore those 20-year-old clothes again. I think I'd have some fun with that.

At last I finished the painting I was working on. It's not my usual subject. I do people portraits and landscapes, and I like for them to be quite dramatic. In this case, I painted flowers, but they are not done in a "feminine" style. (I've frequently been told that NONE of my paintings  look like a woman painted them. I guess I just have to figure out exactly what that implies.) I made a portrait of dramatic peonies in my garden. I photographed them in June, and the time of day was sunset, with the sun very low on the horizon.

1 comment:

  1. You are doing so good and are such an inspiration! I'm excited (and nervous) about my weigh in on Thursdays at Weight Watchers. I think I've been doing well, but my home scale isn't showing any loss at all, which is disheartening. I picked up a cool book called "Eat This Not That" which I found interesting and I understand he has a new one called "Now Eat This" that I'm looking for. Also found a website for straw bale gardening that looked interesting and the guy lives in the twin cities. Thinking of going up for his workshop or at least getting the book.

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