Average Gluten Free Day

People always tell me how they feel so sorry for me because I can't eat gluten and I'm always explaining how it really isn't that huge of a deal.  There are tons of great things I can eat and I rarely feel deprived.  (Don't ask me on Thanksgiving though!  lol) So here is a rundown of what I eat in a day.

Here is a typical breakfast.  Fage 2% mixed with Trader Joe's Pumpkin Butter and a sliced banana.  High protein and delicious.  This keeps me full til lunch!

Lunch was leftovers of maple roasted chicken and veggies.  This is a recycled photo...I didn't eat rice today actually.  Just chicken and veggies.

 Snack was a honey crisp apple and some delicious blackberry mojito green tea.  Amazing stuff.

Dinner was a comfort food classic.  Meatloaf with mashed potatoes.  Please disregard the mustard greens in the picture.  Those landed in the trash.  I love turnip greens and collard greens so I thought I'd enjoy these.  Ummm not so much.  Literally it took a sheer force of will not to spit them back onto the plate like a bratty 4 year old.

No day is complete without dessert.  Tonight I made chai spice cookies.  Sadly I got creative and made these with coconut flour.  I would definitely recommend using a GF all purpose flour blend.  These were edible but not anything to brag about.  Too coconutty and the texture was almost powdery.

If all else fails you can't go wrong with an eggnog latte! :)

Taco Thursday!

I started the day out with another pumpkin concoction.  This one is no-cook oats featuring non-fat plain yogurt, pumpkin, oats, cinammon, pumpkin pie spice, and truvia.  Quite tasty!  It looks a bit gross though.  I've gone almost the whole week without my Sweet n' Low!  I'm getting used to the Sun Crystals.  One thing that has helped is using just half of the packet per cup of tea.  They are very small but wow are they sweet! 

Lunch was of course leftovers from last night. Also some carrot sticks and grapes.  Very tasty and filling.  I didn't even get hungry for my 4 o'clock snack!  One of the ladies at work insists that I must order lunch with her tomorrow because I've done good all week and "I deserve it".  No one seems to understand that I like packing my lunch!  I really do enjoy what I bring and look forward to it!  Plus if I don't eat the leftovers for lunch then they go to waste and I don't like to waste if I can help it!

Tonight was kickboxing night.  I was not feeling it as my back/hip is still hurting but I drug my behind in there anyhow!  Glad I did, I burned 520 calories!  For my before gym snack I had my favorite Larabar, Key Lime...after class I had to go to the pharmacy so naturally I had to get a tall soy latte from Starbucks!  My dad likes to tell me that just because the sign says drive thru it doesn't mean I have to drive thru! lol!  For dinner I tried something new!  My husband loves tacos but the regular kinds are so bad with tons of sodium and strange chemicals...so I got this Garden of Eatin' from the healthy section of Krogers.

  These were so good!  The shells were delicious.  My husband ate 6 shells...3 without fillings he liked them so well!  The seasoning was a lot lower in sodium plus I only used half the pack and that was plenty!  I made these with ground chicken and topped them with 2% cheddar cheese and reduced fat sour cream.  Corn as our side.  A little carb heavy but I love white corn!  I will definately buy this again!  After dinner I watched The Office, it's one of my favorite shows and then did my relaxation yoga.  Now I'm ready to seriously relax until morning! :)

Not Cabbage Rolls

Today was a pretty good food day.  I enjoyed each and every meal!  I started out with a weird breakfast concoction.  I got the idea from April.  I mixed cottage cheese, pumpkin, truvia, and spices together.  Then I topped it with Ezekiel Cinammon raisin cereal.  It looked crazy but tasted really good.  I'm glad none of my coworkers came in while I was eating though.  For some reason they think everything I eat is weird so orange cottage cheese would've really frightened them! lol!

Since we went out to dinner last night I didn't have any leftovers to bring to lunch.  So I made a sandwich.  Whole wheat pita bread with Sabra hummus, a slice of mozzarella, and as much spinach as I could stuff in there.  I really love Sabra hummus.  It's the only brand of store bought hummus I like.  It tastes much better than when I make it at home.  For my side dishes I had carrot sticks and grapes.  This lunch was very tasty but I have to say not so filling.  I was starving by the time I got home! 

So I had a ZBar.  The Spooky Smores is the only flavor I've tried of these and I really like it.  I like that it only has 130 calories.  I love a regular Cliff Bar but they are all around 250 calories which is a bit much for a snack!  I do think it's funny that the back of this bar suggests giving them out to trick or treaters....um yeah, when I win the lottery! lol!

I really wasn't in the mood to go to the gym tonight.  I had to work a bit late so I would have had to rush to get to spinning and the thought of the cardio equipment just bored me this evening.  So since we now have a DVD/VHS recorder I decided to drag out another old school exercise video, Crunch Time.  This video was made by the original founders of the Firm.  In fact the instructor, Susan Harris, was in the very first Firm video, which I love by the way! I like this video because it's a combo of cardio and strength, she doesn't use Barbie weights, and the warm-up and cool down were yoga so I get my 10 min. of yoga in for the day!  Multi-tasking! :)

After I exercised I took a shower and ran out to Starbucks.  My daughter has an ear infection and strep throat and was begging for a latte!  I got a tall soy latte.  Then I came home and made dinner.  I like to call this Not Cabbage Rolls.  It's for when I'm in too big of a hurry/too lazy to make real cabbage rolls.  I brown my ground sirloin, saute in some pre-shredded cabbage, a can of tomatoes, brown and wild rice, and tons of cinammon. Quick, easy, healthy, and delicious!

 Now I'm exhausted!  It's my bedtime! :P  For a bedtime snack I'm having cottage cheese and an apple sprinkled with cinammon.  I'm on a huge cinammon kick here lately.  I'm actually eager to get to bed.  My back has been hurting really bad today and my leg a bit too.  It will be nice to lay down!

Dancing outside of my comfort zone!

I finally went to Latin Moves tonight.  More on that later...I'll start at the very beginning.  Breakfast! Last night I mixed 1/2 cup Oikos plain greek yogurt, 1/2 cup Trader Joe's blueberry museli, and 1 spoonful of pumpkin butter in a bowl and put in the fridge overnight.  I ate it this morning with a small banana.  So good.  This is one of the best breakfasts I've had in awhile.  I'd love more tomorrow but I'm out of greek yogurt! :(

Lunch was leftover soup with homemade bread and dab of peanut butter.  I like Krema Natural peanut butter because it has exactly one ingredient.  Peanuts!  It's very creamy, spreads well, isn't too oily, and it doesn't need refridgerated or so it says on the jar.  Anyhow I keep it on the counter and it's not made me sick yet. 

For dinner I was really craving a fried egg sandwich but my family wasn't.  So we decided to use a Quiznos coupon I got via email.  I choose a small black angus steak (aka roast beef) sub with cheese and mushrooms.  I skipped the bourbon sauce and grill stuff and added pickles.  If I have pickles I don't need mayo or other sauces.  One thing I will not give up to save calories is cheese. You pretty much will never see me having a cheese-less sandwich.  I love cheese! Anyhow this sub was good.  Suprisingly I was full enough without eating chips or anything on the side.  Just the sandwich.

Now for Latin Moves.  I think this is supposed to be a Zumba class because at first that's what they called it but now it's called Latin Moves. I don't like dancing or choreography of any sort but seeing as I'm aiming to improve myself I felt I should give it a try.  To start we did some stretching.  That was okay.  I could keep up.  Then we started the dancing.  Ummm...not so good here.  I felt like a chubby, no rhythm having dumbass.  I really wanted to leave but I stayed.  Then we moved on to the "weight" segment.  I got quite excited for this part.  Well I shouldn't have.  She suggest 2 lb. weights.  You read that right.  2.  So what we were going to be doing exactly?...the answer: dancing while swinging the weights around.  Sounds safe and effective.  Ummm. Yeah.  I could tell I got on my friend's nerves by being all "know it all" but seriously why waste your time doing 400 reps with Barbie weights?  I was a good sport and got big scary 5lb. weights and partcipated.  At least it burned calories since we were jumping around like crazy.  It just seemed like you were increasing injury risk without any benefit to your body at all.  I'm 100% in favor of the New Rules of Lifting for Women philosphy.  Heavy weights, low reps.  The class was an hour and 15 minutes and my heart rate monitor said I burned 600 calories.  Honestly this seems high since my heart rate was much lower than in kickboxing but whatever. When  I got home I made an interesting shake.  We were almost out of milk and I didn't want to use the last of it so I mixed ice, cranberry juice, and chocolate whey powder in the blender.  Surprisingly delicious!