The home is where the heart is...but the heart of the home is in the kitchen!

How many of you grew up hearing the saying: Home is where the heart is. While I agree with that saying, as I’ve gotten older and especially now as I have a home of my own and the constant need to play the role of hostess to go right along with it, I’ve come to understand that saying all the more but believe that to take it a step further: the kitchen is the heart of the home. Any time there is a social gathering, regardless of the kitchen space available, everyone seems to find themselves huddled in the kitchen hanging out and socializing. Have any of you noticed the same thing?

This past weekend I was in North Carolina with my momma to not only mourn the death of Aunt Catherine (her aunt, my great aunt) but to celebrate her life. We spent the majority of our time in Mount Olive at her daughter’s home (a home where I’ve spent many a holidays and family gatherings) and for the most part, right in line with my kitchen is the heart of the home statement, we found ourselves camped out in the kitchen around the bar-recalling old memories, looking through old photographs, and just enjoying our time together. But we all know what happens in the kitchen of a home when one has just passed away, right? There was food EVERYWHERE. From side dishes to meat dishes, pies to cakes, it just kept arriving. Have you ever noticed that people express their “help” through the delivery of food? When someone passes away, you prepare a meal. When someone has a new baby, you deliver a meal. When someone is sick, you take them food. Am I the only one that’s noticed this pattern? Needless to say, I used a few extra points during the two days that we were at Beth’s. I do have to say however that I remained in control, made decent choices, and didn’t feel guilty about any of them. For me that’s a huge WIN!

As I mentioned in my last posting, being on the road and not being able to have total control over when you will eat and what you will eat is hard for me. However, I think I, along with my mom whom I’m very proud of, did a bang up job of staying in control, tracking every bite, and making good choices. On Sunday as we were heading to Beth’s for the first time my mom, my aunt, and I decided we should stop and have lunch (we had the salad bar at Ruby Tuesdays) prior to our arrival for the exact reason mentioned above-we knew there would be LOADS of food but not necessarily foods that would help us stay focused. On Monday following a family luncheon (oh-so-delicious and oh-so-Southern, if you know what I mean) provided by Aunt Catherine’s church family and then her funeral services later that evening we again decided to stop for dinner (again, salad bar at Ruby Tuesdays). Overall, my trip was a food success. As I was telling my mom yesterday on the way home, I didn’t one time have a fried food, a french fry or a coke. In my book that was a huge success. When you go on a road trip, are there any foods you often find yourself falling victim to that you wouldn’t normally eat at home? What have been your food successes in the last week since I started this blog? In the last month?

Again, I have to thank all of you for your continued following and your uplifting remarks. While I was gone I heard from 2 of you and it was so good for my soul! Thanks for checking in. Sorry for the delay in posts but things were a little busy. I’m home now and getting settled back into the routine! Also, thanks for sharing your food yesterday, Hoover! Hopefully your “comment” will be helpful to others out there reading this, as it is always helpful to me! If any of the rest of you feels comfortable sharing your “journal” please feel free. This is a safe, loving environment! I would love to hear about your victories, and even your struggles. That’s exactly what this blog is about. Celebrating and overcoming! Until tomorrow, wishing you all good eats!

Breakdown of Sunday and Monday:

Sunday:

Breakfast included a bowl of mixed berries and Greek yogurt ( 1 point and 125.5 calories) and a bowl of oatmeal (1 c=4 points and 307 calories) with ½ a banana (0 points and 53 calories), blueberries, cinnamon, sugar(1 t for 0 points) and walnuts(2 T=2 points and 82 calories) for a total of 6 points and 490 calories. This brought the breakfast total to 7 points and 615.5 calories.

Lunch included salad from the salad bar at Ruby Tuesdays and was topped with egg (2 points and 78 calories), croutons (5 points), ranch dressing (4 T=8 points and 296 calories), craisins (1/8 c=1 point and 49 calories), cheese (1 point and 22 calories). This brought lunches total to 17 points and 538 calories. Don’t ask how that math works out. Breakfast at 615 and half the points? I’m really getting a bit frustrated with both calculations.

Dinner included 3 cups of clam chowder (12 points and 543 calories), a piece of pork tenderloin for 3 points, slice of pecan pie (9 points and 339 calories) and a smidge of banana pudding (4 points and 143 calories). Dinner put be over my points and into my weekly extra points by 18 and well over my calories. Thank goodness for those extra points each week-they really are what keeps my sanity! Dinner is where I feel victim to the “kitchen is the heart of the home” saying. Because we were spending our time in the kitchen and because the kitchen was where all the food was (not only was it there but it was all laid out and its aromas were super enticing) my “nibbling” got the best of me.

Monday:

Breakfast included 1 cup of oatmeal with 1 T raw sliced almonds (1 point and 45 calories), 1 t agave sweetener (1 point and 20 calories), and cinnamon along with a bowl of mixed berries, 1 T sliced almonds and Greek yogurt. Breakfast equaled 8 points and 542.5 calories

Lunch was a little tricky. We had lunch at the church as a family and I wasn’t exactly able to calculate everything but I am being 100% accountable for every bite: baked ham, 1 T creamed corn, 2 T potato salad, 1 roll, 1/4 baked sweet potato, green beans, 1 T mac & cheese, 1 small slice pound cake, 1 small slice of some sort of yellow cake with a chocolate whipped frosting, and one bite of brownie. I opted not to have fried chicken and not to have heaping spoonfuls of the other options. Everything was extremely delicious but being Southern myself was enough for me to understand that everything was most likely prepared with butter-and lots of it. Not to mention the other ingredients that makes Southern food so delicious but artery clogging!

Dinner was salad from Ruby Tuesdays again. It was a refreshing way to end the evening. My mom used to tell me, “Candace, you are going to turn into a rabbit with all the salad you eat” but what can I say-nothing beats a good salad!

In my next post you won’t see calorie calculations. I’ve decided (through much conversation and through several days of observation) to reduce my daily points from 34 to 29 and that should be right in line with the number of calories I should be consuming each day. If you see a food and just want to know the information about it and I haven’t provided it, please feel free to ask!

To track points or calories....that is the question!

In the last several days as I’ve been trekking down the path of tracking points and calories I’ve been pondering the idea of how the two become one. I’m at a loss. As I posted a few days ago, when I’m tracking points I always end up having more points to use up at the end of the night than I have calories left to consume. I know it’s because of fruits and vegetables. I also know none of us got to where we are today by overeating said fruits and vegetables. However, the more I think about it and the fact that my points seem to be an additional 300+ calories a day more than the 1448 my “Lose It!” app suggests not to mention those 49 extra points I get a week with WW, I don’t see how that science works out. I’m still adjusting to the new plan. In fact, I’ve found that I really enjoy it quite a bit more than the old plan because it promotes better eating overall for me. On the old plan there was no way I was “wasting” points on fruit when I had so few points to consume anyway. I also felt sometimes like while my points were restricted I didn’t make the healthiest choices when I was selecting how to distribute my points. Frozen “smart ones” and 100 calorie snacks filled my journal each day. My scale saw big results, my clothes saw even bigger results, but overall my body wasn’t feeling a lot better. This time around, I think I’ve found within myself the ability to make better choices. I mean our body is a temple right? We are supposed to treat it as such, right? Well I can promise you, I wasn’t. Not even close. But this go round I’m going to fall back to my mantra: We are beautiful and our body deserves it! What exactly does this mean? It means that I’m making better choices. I’m being more conscious of what I put in my body. I’m reading more food labels. I’m buying more “whole” foods and way fewer processed goods. I have to do it for myself; no one is going to do it for me. All this to say that from here on out throughout the rest of this journey I’m going to be focused more on the calories more so than the points. I’m going to continue tracking both and the foods I eat and post will contain both counts so that my WW girls can still see those, but I’m going to be adhering to the phone app more so than the target PointsPlus values.

On a personal victory note (and please please please feel free to share your own victories-small or large-I want to celebrate with you) my mom and I left town yesterday to venture to NC for the funeral of my great aunt. Instantly my thoughts went to fast food restaurants, chain places, loss of control. Those were the old days. They are no more. Mom and I stopped in at her local Trader Joe’s before hitting the road and stocked up on fresh berries, Greek yogurt, carrots, and several other delectable goodies that we could take with us for the 7 hour journey that would allow us to make it to our destination without compromising our goals. That’s right we didn’t stop one time to fuel up on burgers, fries, chicken nuggets, or any other “road trip” foods. American Food Industry 0, Candace Fox 1! It’s the little things like that that are making the difference for me this go round!

And so as day three, and now four, has come and gone I am finding this blog more and more reassuring. Add to that quite the motivator. Prime example: Friday night was girl’s night (as I previously reported) and we did in fact bake red velvet cakes; however, my consumption of the cake was limited to the 3 tiniest bites of “sampling” we did and a finger full of the oh-so-delicious cream cheese frosting. I even frosted and took home 2 (we made mini versions) cakes. However, through what can only be described as an amazing display of willpower and through the encouraging and uplifting words I’ve received from all you guys in the last several days, as I left my house yesterday, I left both cakes comfortably nestled in their boxes in my fridge for my oh-so-sweet hubby to consume while I’m away. Now ladies, if you know me you KNOW that cake-most importantly the frosting-is one of my favorite foods on the whole planet. Where sugar meets more sugar there my heart lies. While it definitely wasn’t a “scale” victory it was definitely a VICTORY. For me to not only walk away from cake but to actually throw away cake and frosting because we had too much and were way to tempted took an outlandish amount of determination and to be quite frank, a miracle. But I did it. I walked away guilt free and overjoyed that I was able to “beat” the cake. It didn’t own me, my thoughts, my desires; I was in control. In fact, instead of indulging ourselves with the cakes my friend and I opted for a much healthier, delightfully yummy treat of blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and Greek yogurt. It was like discovering the 8^th wonder of the world. My heart leapt, my guilt was nowhere to be found, and I was 100% satisfied-both with the treat and myself. American Food Industry 0, Candace Fox 2!

Now I must take the time to thank all of you out there reading this, commenting on this, and for all of your words of encouragement! Every time I think about what to eat or when I put a bite of food in my mouth I think of this blog and the people reading it. You have helped me more than you can know in just this short period of time. Each choice I make for myself I feel like I’m also making for you. I can’t wait to see what the next few days, weeks, months, even the next year has to hold. Stay tuned as I continue to “win” over the American Food Industry and my guilt with my body and my food!

2 days worth of food break down (Friday & Saturday)

For breakfast I had a protein and fruit smoothie. Friday morning I stood the hallway staring into the abyss that is my pantry attempting to find something for breakfast and I started reading food labels. Artificial flavoring, dextrose, other ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce if I try, and high fructose corn syrup were staring back out at me. That’s when it hit me: when is the last time that I’ve consumed something out of a box/package and actually eaten the true flavor they tell me is in there? I can tell you it hasn’t been any time recently. With all the science and technology out there today, it’s a wonder we ever get anything “real.” This led to my breakfast choice. I didn’t want to put all that in my body. It’s a temple remember? My shake had a scoop of chocolate whey (3 points and 130 calories), 1 cup of 2% milk (3 points and 130 calories) and then I measured out 71 calories worth of a raspberry and strawberry mixture bringing the shake total to 6 points and 331 calories.

For lunch I relied on leftovers. I had 1 cup of rice (5 points and 242 calories), 2 cups of bean sprouts (0 points and 62 calories), and 1/3 cup of onion-chopped and sautéed with the bean sprouts (0 points and 21 calories). I mixed it all together and threw in some hot sauce to spice it up. Lunch equaled 5 points and 325 calories.

As a snack a few hours later I had 2 of the WW strawberry smoothie ice cream bars for 3 points and 120 calories.

Later that evening my friend took me to a Mexican grocery store and meat market that has a little restaurant in the back. It was like sitting in someone’s kitchen in the back of that grocery store. The store was very quaint, way off the beaten path, but so incredibly delicious. The menu was in Spanish, the waitress spoke little English, but thanks to the help of my friend I was able to order a Barbacoa Torta. Now I’ll be the first to admit I had reservations about this place and this sandwich but when I bit into that sandwich it was like all that doubt and reservation just melted away. Aren’t those hole-in-the-wall places the best? The sandwich was layered as such: a small layer of refried beans topped with barbacoa (a Spanish BBQ pork type dish) which was then topped with lettuce, jalapenos, avocado, mayo, and tomato if you so desire, and all in cased in this warm, freshly baked bread that was much like French bread but way better. Generally I would have “guessed” at how many points something like that was, but with my new found inspiration through this blog I just couldn’t in good conscious do that. When we got home I googled to my heart’s content and found the following nutritional information: 16 points (I calculated each ingredient individually so if you want that break down, just ask) and 602.5 calories.

This is the point in the evening where the baking began and where those amazing feats of strength and willpower were showcased as we resisted the cake and went for berries and yogurt instead. That treat-and I’m telling you TRY IT-was a whopping 1 point and 80.5 calories.

My total for the day was 1426.5 calories and 31 points. I did my sculpt workout when I finally made it home but didn’t calculate the calories burned and didn’t add them to my daily intake.

Saturday’s breakdown:

For breakfast I returned to my yogurt and berries concoction and had 1/8 c of Trader Joe’s plain Greek yogurt for 1 point and 32.5 calories and 1.5 cups of berries for 93 calories.

For “lunch” I had Trader Joe’s bagel chips (2 servings) for 260 calories and 6 points along with their Spinach and Sour Cream dip (1/2 the container) for 250 calories and 7 points. I also paired it with a few baby carrots-delicious!

For snack I had another serving of the bagel chips for 3 points and 130 calories.

For dinner we went to a local Japanese Steak House and Hibachi grill where I opted for the vegetarian dish. I had stir-fried veggies, fried rice, and a sushi roll for 613 calories and 13 points. I also topped it with the traditional yum-yum sauce for another 318 calories and 5 points.

I had a total of 1696.5 calories and 34 points.

Post-dinner my mom, mom’s sister, and I sat around chatting (food, life, this blog, etc…) like we always do. It warms my heart! Following our all night gossip, I mean gab, session I did my Sweat workout. I definitely didn’t want to but I knew I’d only be cheating myself if I didn’t do it. So in the sunroom of my aunt’s home while everyone else was sleeping I knocked it out. The workout calories counter balance my caloric intake overage!

We are beautiful and our body deserves it...

I recently graduated with my BBA and I’m waiting to start a new job—that is, if the guy ever contacts me with a start date! So, in the last month I have found myself stuck in the house quite a bit. The first few days weren’t so bad, but those few days turned into Snowpocalypse 2011 and I was snowed into my house for an entire week. I couldn’t have gone out to run an errand or walk the dog if I wanted to. Snow week drifted into another week which brings us up to date and this week, once again, I’m in the house. It could have been a great opportunity to do laundry, clean the house, organize, etc…except we just moved into a new house and if any of you reading this know me at all, you know those things are already done. So, I’ve had a LOT of time to catch up on hulu, Netflix, and the books I’m reading. Suffice to say, I’ve also had plenty of time to think about food. My current guilty pleasure in the literary column is The End of Overeating, a book by David A. Kessler, MD. In the book he discusses how the food industry has taken it upon themselves to enhance our food experiences-through the use of added salt, fat, sugar, and now chemical flavorings. Is there no food that’s safe? Part of the book discusses different restaurants and how they prepare their meals. I’m sorry, how they thaw and then re-fry their meals. While I haven’t quite finished the book, it has definitely opened my eyes. I knew what was happening but I wanted to ignore it because let’s just be honest those hamburgers at Chili’s and the buffalo wings at Taco Mac are just far too yummy to say no to-until now! I’m taking a stand. I deserve better than that. My body deserves better than that. I can make burgers, chicken, salads, anything yummier and healthier than I can buy at any restaurant. Why should I sacrifice my health for convenience? Do any of you ever find yourself stopping at a restaurant to eat simply because it’s easier? Just think: no cooking, no cleaning, and delivered right to you. But if your dining out experience is anything like ours, it’s never that simple. Something always comes out wrong- the meats get over cooked, they put the dressing on the salad instead of on the side, the kid in the booth behind you won’t turn around and leave you alone and his little brother is crying. Ambiance and romance don’t stand a chance in that environment, not to mention my sanity! All this to say the Foxes will not be visiting any chain restaurants any time in the near future.

While we won’t be visiting any restaurants, we will be visiting with a lot of friends. With the holidays and the weather and the craziness that has been our lives since we bought our house and moved, I haven’t really had an opportunity to see a lot of our friends, much less have them over. Well, that all changes this weekend. No more just “stuck in the house”! I get to play hostess-one of my favorite things in the entire world! Tomorrow afternoon our old small group is finally coming over to see the new house and to warm it up by praying over it and some good old fashion fellowship. However, along with that of course comes: the snacks. I can’t help it-it’s just the hostess in me. So of course tonight during girls night there will be baking. I’m going to put my will power to the test tonight and tomorrow though and opt for only 1 slice of yummy delicious red velvet cake (unfortunately the recipe is a friend’s secret) and then only fruits and veggies for me! Luckily, I get to control the menu! Often, in groups, I find myself overwhelmed by the food and the choices and eat without giving it thought-it’s just a hand to mouth reaction. Do any of you find it harder to control what you eat in a “social gathering” type setting? Thankfully not only do I have myself, but I have you guys to keep me accountable! Bring on the social gatherings! Check in on Sunday to read my success (fingers crossed) story!

Now for the good stuff- the breakdown of yesterday’s foods:

For breakfast I had a plain bagel with 1 oz of regular cream cheese. That equated to 10 points (7 for the bagel and 3 for the CC) and 340 calories.

For lunch I rambled through the fridge and came up with cheesy pigs-in-a-blanket. I used Hebrew National 97% FF hotdogs (2), an off brand of crescent rolls (2), and 1 oz of a cheddar cheese block and paired with a cup and a half of fresh pineapple. All rolled together and baked put me at 11 points for the 2 PIAB at 390 calories and 0 points and 124 calories for the pineapple.

For snack I had one of my childhood favorites: an apple with 1 T of peanut butter and 1/3 of a cup of marshmallows. That made for one extremely delicious treat that equaled 4 points (3 for the PB and 1 for the marshmallows) and 240 calories.

For dinner we made a beef and rice bowl which equated to 10 points and 554 calories. The beef we got as a pre-marinated beef from an Asian grocery store near our house and the rice we used was a simple long grain white rice that we cooked in our rice cooker (our favorite kitchen gadget as of late)! I also added ½ c of canned corn for 90 calories.

For the day, that put me at 35 points and 1738 calories. The additional calories (since my daily intake is supposed to be 1448) came from the 35 minute high impact power 90 sweat workout calculated at 348 calories thanks to my handy iPhone app “Lose It!”. What I find interesting is that while I was only 1 point over my WW target and didn’t have to calculate for exercise, with my calorie counting I was 300+ calories over and had to add in my exercise. The difference? Fruit and veggies. WW doesn’t make me count for fruit and veggies, but what I ate yesterday accounted for 309 of my daily calories-21% of my daily total.

How are you guys doing with your tracking? With your goals? Are you sticking with it? Are you living in denial? Hopefully this blog is helping with motivation-I know it is for me!