A little down

Not to much to write about but I am happy to report that I am down 2 pounds from last week...right on target.  I was a little concerned as I downed a half a loaf of zucchini bread and several beers, but seriously that couldn't have out done what I had accomplished the rest of the week and besides I was PMSing and needed the beer.

My Avocado Egg Salad

I've been roaming pinterest the last few days looking for good solid low-calorie lunch ideas.  I stumbled across one that was located at Skinnytaste.com.  I'm book marking her site for future reference.  The recipe in question is Avocado Egg Salad.  I loved the idea and decided that was what I was going to make for lunch today.  I love egg salad, I have a particular way I make it.  Eggs, mayo, pickle relish and yellow mustard.  Simple and easy but I wanted to tone it down for this recipe.  Skinnytaste's recipe while good called for things I just did not have in the fridge like plain yogurt and red wine vinegar.  I don't like the taste of vinegar in my egg salad so that was an easy one to omit.  I also prefer Miracle Whip for myself and it has less calories than most light mayo's.  I also halved the recipe.

Here is my Avocado Egg Salad Recipe (Servings: 3, 1/2 cup each)

1/2 avocado - cubed
2 small boiled eggs - cut up
2 tsp of Miracle Whip
2 tsp of yellow mustard
A couple dashes of cinnamon
A dash of paprika
Salt and pepper
3 decent sized romaine leaves

In a bowl add the cut up avocado and eggs. Add to this the miracle whip, mustard, cinnamon, and paprika.  Stir together.  Salt and pepper to taste. Spoon evenly into lettuce leaves.

Seriously this was yum-o.  Wish I would have taken pictures. I ate all three servings but hold on...ALL three servings?!  The original recipe said one 1/2 cup serving was 155 calories, so eating three would be like 465 calories.  I try for under 300 per meal depending on how often I eat, so I thought was was me over doing it again until I sat down and calculated my recipe.  By switching out or omitting some ingredients; I was able to make 3 servings equal to only 279 calories!

Note: This difference may however have more to do with the scale I used to figure calories.  Avocados for instance have two difference calorie amounts at myfitnesspal.com and I used the one noted as "corrected from website" which was 278 calories for a medium hass avocado, while the other one listed was for 240g hass avocado at 332 calories.  If I break the original recipe down using my figures the calories per serving would be approx. 122 instead of 155.

Continuing the countdown

Calorie counting.  Oh joy.  Actually it has been quite a joy and yes I am still eating what I love, just in smaller, more reasonable portions.  I've been counting calories for a week now.  The first few days were very hard.  I made it easier by utilizing technology.  On the 16th I upgraded cell phones and picked up the new Samsung Galaxy S3. 
Now I am not here to tout phone brands.  Any good smartphone capable to downloading seamlessly would be better than the piece of $&^! I had before...and it was suppose to be a smartphone too. 
Rumaging through the apps and thinking of what would be useful for me and free, I came across one called My Fitness Pal.  It has been a great tool for jump starting my diet...again.  I just enter the foods I eat by either typing in a short description or what I love to do it scan the bar code.  With this feature 9 out of 10 times it has found everything I scan, even the off and store brands.  I can adjust the number of servings I consumed of each food or if I eat something homemade and I have a rough idea of the calories, I can just manually add them.  I can also add all my exercise for the day and keep track of my water consumption.
Here is how my week has gone since day one (surprisingly I haven't missed a day).  My target calories are 1200 per day for weight loss.

1. July 19th - 810 calories (39% carbs, 44% fats, 17% protein) and exercised for a total of 30 minutes
2. July 20th - 2672 calories (I overdid it on the pizza) (58% carbs, 28% fats, 14% protein) and exercised for 20 minutes
3. July 21st - 1559 calories (snacked to much) (49 carbs, 34% fats, 17% protein) and zero exercise
4. July 22nd - 1497 calories (still snacking away) (59% carbs, 28% fats, 13% protein) and zero exercise
5. July 23rd - 1591 calories (snack, snack snack) 72% carbs, 13% fats, 15% protein) and zero exercise

On the evening of the 23rd I decided to weigh myself.  I started out at 168 on the 19th and was appalled but not surprise to see 170 on the scale after the week I had.  I decided then I needed to figure out how to spread the calories out so that one I didn't each so much and two didn't feel hungry and be tempted to snack.  I also wanted to make sure to incorporate more fruits and veggies.

My new plan:
Eat six 200 calorie meals (1 meal every 2 hours) or eat four 300 calorie meals (1 meal every 3 hours)
This is how my 6th day went

1. July 24th - 860 calories (52% carbs, 28% fats, 20% protein) and exercised my little contented heart out. 

Yep spreading out the calories made me feel so good!  I was energized and wanted to get out and do something.  I dragged pallets out, shoveled dirt and finally made my compost bin.  I got my husband motivated and we worked a great deal on the dog kennel we are building and I went walking with my son, who is always begging to go, but I am always to tired.  I also got on pinterest and found some great, short exercises that claimed to burn a lot of calories.  The one I chose to do last night says it burns as many calories as a 40-60 minute run in just 4 minutes.  Since I do a mile in 10 minutes I used the fitness calculator to estimate that in 4 minutes I would burn 772 calories!  Wow.  I tried it and yes I was tired afterwards.  Here is what you do.

4 minute workout

1. 20 secs squat thrusts (as fast as you can, as many as you can)
2. 10 secs rest
3. 20 secs mountain climbers (again as fast as you can)
4. 10 secs rest
5. 20 secs high knees (as fast and as many as you can)
6. 10 secs rest
7. 20 secs jumping jacks (as many as you can)
8. 10 secs rest
9. Repeat 1-8

I just broke out the stopwatch app on my phone and got started.  Good idea may be to stretch before this exercise and make sure you wear shoes (yeah I didn't do either of those).  It is also a great idea to do this just before your shower as you can wash the sweat off and it can help burn off the last of your energy before you settle down for the night.  Now if I could just get to bed at a decent hour.