Friday, August 28, 2009

Prep Work

Contrary to my aversion to cooking, I actually enjoy baking. I still don’t do it very often, but when I do I really enjoy myself and I can whip together some pretty decent goodies too. Tonight, at the request of my husband, I made blueberry scones.

I found a really easy recipe with a Bisquick base online, and I purposefully searched for one that made a dozen so that there wouldn’t be a bunch in the house tempting me with their carby goodness. I even choose to cut the recipe down by another third so that I only made a total of eight.

The best part? I haven’t had one yet. My husband and a co-worker of his chowed down on a couple each, so there are four remaining. They smell and look so good and I am planning on having one tomorrow, but so far I have staved off the desire to try one tonight. I am really happy that I haven’t finished off the entire batch like I already would have in the past. Trust me, this is huge progress!

I also cut up a bunch more vegetables for the week to try and avoid the ‘wanting something simple’ pitfall that usually leads to cookies or a box of macaroni and cheese. Plus, I washed and tore up some romaine lettuce so that I can easily put together Caesar salads over the next few days.

Planning and preparation are key elements to this process that I just never got before – or at least that I never followed through on. I feel like if I keep this up I will be successful. I really hope I can continue drawing on this initial motivation long enough to form these positive steps into habits because, for me, long term success is the real goal.

FOOD & BEVERAGES:
- 11 glasses of water throughout the day
- 1 orange
- 6 large crackers
- 1 banana
- 3/4 cup fat free strawberry yogurt
- 1 1/2 cups of blueberries
- 2 wraps, each on a soft tortilla shell with Tuscan ham, grated cheese, mushroom, carrot, garden tomatoes, green onion, romaine lettuce, fat free Miracle Whip, mustard, and pepper
- 1 carrot

EXERCISE:
- 30 minutes on the recumbent bike completed in 2 sets (10 minutes and 20 minutes)
- 5 sets of 30 stomach crunches

5 comments:

  1. I, too, have found that cutting down a recipe so it doesn't make as much is REALLY effective in keeping me out of stuff I don't want anyway. Recently I made macaroni and cheese for my husband's dinner but only made three servings, and two of them he took as lunches.

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  2. Mmmm, I love baking. I don't do it so much these days because I have absolutely no control over myself when I'm around baked goods. I mourn the loss of fresh baked cookies every day. :-)

    I totally agree about preparation though. A big part of the reason that I used to eat so badly was that I was just too tired (or lazy) to put something healthy together. Making sure that I always have meals and healthy snacks available is totally key to my success.

    I should warn you though, that your "aversion to cooking" is totally killing me! :-) I keep thinking I should offer all kinds of "useful" advice to see if it might help but I hold myself back and remind myself that not everyone connects with cooking just because I do, and that's okay. But some advice might slip out sometimes anyway. :-) I'll keep trying to rein myself in.

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  3. Good job on all your prep and planning. I find that is the key for me. If I do that, everything else seems to fall into place.

    I do the same thing as you did when baking. I make only "just enough" portions so there will be few or no leftovers for me to eat my way through.

    I also love to bake (and cook) and its been fun finding easy and new recipes that are healthy versions of favourites, or brand new to me and my family.

    Your motivation will last as long as you want it to. It comes from you, right?

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  4. Awesome comments!!! S, feel free to throw some cooking tips my way so long as you know they may be politely ignored... lol! Seriously though, I wish I liked cooking, but it's the desire to have something easy that always overrides any interest in preparing a more complicated (albeit, delicious and hot) meal. I am planning on trying a green bean recipe that one of the bloggers I follow (hmmm... was it you?) recommended so I will let everyone know how that goes. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not hopeless, just very, very resistant! Ha!

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  5. Hi 266, I read about your blueberry scone dreams(!) and wondered if the recipe was 'diet friendly?' I have a really good recipe for whole wheat blueberry scones that are full of blueberries and about 120-150 calories each. I bake them and then put them immediately in the freezer so I won't be tempted to eat them all at once. The recipe is on my blog if you are interested (I see you don't like cooking.)

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