150 calorie meal that is amazing, also frustration.

150 calorie meal that is amazing, also frustration.

150 calorie meal calorie counting recipe egg white and spinach lose 200 pounds More garlic recipe Weight Loss zeusmeatball

So, I have been doing just awesome for a few weeks now, I track my food, I am walking more again and I finally got to weigh myself but alas! that last part is oh so important for moral and focus for me and the scale is refusing to play nice. I am not saying that its not playing nice because I am not losing, no no, I am indeed losing but its not playing nice in the way that I got on it 5 times this morning and I got a different weight every time! This has been happening more and more and I have a feeling that the scale may be defective or it might just be telling me to get the hell off that it cannot breathe when I am on there. The fact that I cannot get a solid accurate number each AM is messing with me in ways that I don't need to be messed with right now and I believe a new scale is in order because to get frustrated 5 minutes after I wake up because of something that is suppose to help me is not a good start to any day. 

The last couple days I have been struggling with feeling hungry and I can;t decide if its just my body trying one last time to convince me that I need to eat the junk not unlike a five year old would do for fifteen more minutes before bed? or if my frustrations are projecting into hunger. I am not diggin' on this hunger any more that I would enjoy listening to a Justin Bieber CD from start to finish so we gotsta figure this one out. Wify said this morning "Go get a new scale" so I believe its what I will do as this needs not be more frustrating than it has to be and speaking of Wify, she came to the rescue last night with the dinner that you see above. 

My calories were approaching a number that was starting to mean no dinner for the big fella or at least a very small unsatisfying dinner so I started going through options and mentioned that egg whites might not be a bad idea. Wify said something to the effect how would egg whites with spinach on whole wheat wraps sound? since we had some baby spinach left in the fridge and a short conversation later I said "Make me your vision then and I appreciate it" so it was made so. As it turns out we had no wraps left so I decided that having it on light whole wheat toast open faced would be good so as Wify was cooking the spinach with some garlic I made the toast. She was going to dice the tomato up and put it on top cold but I decided that popping it into the pan with a bit more garlic ~I mean who doesn't like MORE garlic?~ would be better than cold and the result was amazingly simple to make and tasted awesome for a tiny amount of calories.

We made enough for three open faced sandwiches but I decided that I would have two and let her try one so for three open faced sandwiches the calories would have only been 225 calories which is insane because it was quite filling. Over all I am doing fine with my restart but the last two days have been a little less than peachy because of the hunger and my obviously  mismanaging of my AM calorie intake meaning eating more heavily early on. We will make adjustments as necessary and as long as Wify kicks in her creativity every now and again maybe we will get back down to a fighting weight by the summer. 

That's all I got for today, the support is greatly appreciated so please feel free to comment or email me and for Gods sake keep on reading along! 

As Ever
Me

Soup is good for the soul, not bad for my ass either.

Soup is good for the soul, not bad for my ass either.

Ham and white bean soup Ham bone soup lost 200 pounds recipe Weight Loss zeusmeatball

Halfway through the week and feeling great, I am officially off of my AM cup of Joe and feeling better early in the days, it really is amazing how eating better foods will do that. Eating better was priority and as I get a handle on that its time to start thinking about some "real" exercise as I have been doing very short rides on the trainer and my Baby Calisthenics. With the more real exercise in mind I have to remember that I have a problem with my shoulder that I need to keep an eye on, I am not sure why but my shoulder hurts and its been that way for a while but getting better so just something to keep an eye on. 

Incorporating daily walks back into my routine is a must, when I dropped most of my weight the first time  around I was walking daily, no excuses, no cold or rain stopped me it was as important as breathing to me and I need to get there again. The problem that I am having is that I either take the toddler out in the cold for a brisk walk in January, wait until the evening and walk the narrow DARK country road and hope that I don't get hit by a car or walk in a mall during the day. I am not driving to a mall that's 20 minutes from my house so its going to have to be one of the other options, and the first time around my other daughter wasn't much older than this one and she walked with me so perhaps we will try that.

On the food side of things, We had a ham bone from Christmas that I stuck in the freezer to make something with and yesterday I decided that I would try a ham bone and white bean soup. I have never in my life made a soup out of a ham bone and beans so this was an experiment as much as a meal and I gotta say I think it turned out awesome! I made stock with the bone, removed all of the remaining ham from said bones added a bag of white beans, a finely diced onion, one medium potato and finished it off with spinach, this was seasoned with black pepper, rosemary, thyme and 2 cloves of crushed and minced garlic. Wify picked up a loaf of french bread to have with it that I stuck in the broiler for a few minutes and man this was some good soup if I do say so myself and very simple as far as ingredients and prep goes. 

We wanted to figure the calories out per cup so we added all of the ingredients together, divided by how many cups were there and I was extremely surprised at the number we came up with, this very hearty soup comes in at about 120 calories per cup. After we all had dinner and sent some to my mother in laws there are about 12 cups left so plenty for me for the rest of the week as lunches etc and I will likely freeze a small container to have next week.

This next statement may be a bit premature but I have to say I feel like I am in a good place and feeling very motivated to keep this going in a good direction. Next on the agenda is to get the walking into my days and come slightly warmer weather climb my ass back onto my bike and hit the trails on a regular basis again, good plan eh? 

With some discipline, dedication, exercise and maybe some luck I am hoping to get back down to a weight where I feel healthy and am able to do everything in my days agenda without issue once again. 

That's all I got for today, make sure to pop back in tomorrow to see where the next installment of as the fat guy turns takes you!

As Ever
Me

Tortilla pizza recipe inside.

Tortilla pizza recipe inside.

flat bread pizza recipe low calorie pizza low calorie pizza recipe pizza recipe recipe tortilla pizza recipe Weight Loss

So I haven't posted a recipe in forever and since I'm always looking for low calorie alternatives to my favorite foods I thought that I would share how I get through a pizza craving with my tortilla pizza recipe. I call it tortilla because I use a tortilla wrap as the crust but I think that it falls into the flat bread pizza category ultimately and who wouldn't want a piled with veggies flat bread pizza for a mere 270 calories? When we are on a limited calorie budget getting creative with meals is a must and I think that this one fills a void that so many people have with pizza where the normal would be to go without, I say why go without? just adjust it around what we can have! so let me get right to it with the ingredients.

The ingredients are as follows

2 Tortillas/wraps I use Smart Delicious because they are only 100 calories each.
1/4 cup Spaghetti sauce
3 T Parmesan cheese
Garlic powder
2oz Mozzarella cheese
1oz Green bell pepper
1oz Red onion
1oz Black olives
1oz Baby Bella mushrooms
Jalapeno
Black pepper
Pinch of Splenda (optional)

Let me start by explaining some of my choices because most if not all of these ingredients can be customized to what you like, my choices are based on caloric value and price. The tortillas that I use are only 100 calories and there eight huge tortillas in the package so its a good bang for the buck in calories as well as price, besides that they taste really good and I use them for lots of other recipes too. I use Spaghetti sauce in place of pizza sauce mostly because its cheaper to buy a big jar of sauce rather than the smaller pizza sauce jars and again I use it for other things and with a tiny pinch of Splenda it tastes like pizza sauce which is something that I have been doing forever and that explains where the Splenda comes into play as well and also why its optional. All of my veggie choices are because they all lend huge flavor benefits while having a very low calorie value per ounce besides the olives so I can use them pretty much at will, the pepper came out of my garden so it was free of charge and that's always a plus for me too. The Mozzarella cheese is your run of the mill part skim milk Mozz and was chosen on price and calorie value, it happens to be stop and shop brand and has a very average 80 calories per ounce and I prefer it to the fat free or full skim milk variety because of flavor and the rest of the ingredients is just what I happened to have on hand.

Okay, at some point we will want to chop up the veggies and weigh the cheese out so that making the pizzas goes smoothly and the above photos show what I ended up with after that step. My daughter was my assistant and insisted on using her little cereal bowls when she saw me snapping pictures and in that second photo you can see the amount of Jalapeno that I used as well as what 2oz of Mozz cheese looks like on a saucer. This is how I assemble the pizzas and in what order the items go on.

1.) I start by preheating the oven to 425 degrees and spray a very light film of low calorie cooking spray onto the baking sheet while I create the pizzas.

2.) Lay the tortillas onto the sprayed cooking sheet and measure out 1/4 cup of the spaghetti sauce and split it equally onto the two tortillas spreading it around evenly followed by a couple pinches of Splenda on each one to give it that pizza sauce taste that I like.

3.) Shake 1/2 T Parmesan cheese over each sauce covered tortilla and add a shake of garlic powder and the Jalapeno at this point, I like the jalapeno under the Mozz but on top of the sauce because it seems to put the flavor into the sauce a bit more that way.

4.) Put 1oz of Mozzarella onto each of the pizzas and shake some black pepper on top of the cheese once its spread evenly over the sauce and jalapeno.

5.) Now add 1/2 oz each of the Bell pepper, Red onion, Black olives and Baby bella mushrooms to each of the pizzas and then shake 1oz of the Parm cheese onto each pizza and you should end up with something pretty close to the image below.

6.) Place the pan into the oven for 10-12 minutes, depending on your oven cooking time may vary a bit but I just keep an eye on them since the tortilla is pretty thin and can burn easy if not watched. I prefer mine slightly more crisp than my daughter does so hers was done in 10 minutes while mine took 12 minutes and you can see from the picture below the edges were beginning to darken up on mine and that's how they came out of the oven, perfect.

7.) The final step is to cut it up and enjoy! below is the finished product just seconds before it found its way onto my plate and into my gut, it was a mighty tasty little alternative to its high calorie cousin if I do say so myself.

My entire dinner which consisted of both of the pizzas that you see in the second to last image was only 542 total calories which is as I stated earlier only 270 calories per pizza. I was full when dinner was all said and done while my mouth was left with the flavor of some pretty good pizza in it all for a measly 542 calories, in my book that's one for the W column and us calorie counters. The next time that you crave some pizza give this recipe a try and I think you might just find that it hits the spot! The next time someone asks you how you lost all of your weight you can then reply with "by eating pizza of course!", but seriously don't think that you can't have your favorite meals just because you are "dieting" its all about how we make our food choices work for us because this is a lifestyle and eating well can and should be a part of it.

I hope that you enjoy it if you try it and please let me know if you do in the comments, if I get a good response I may just start posting my recipes regular like because I hardly say it but I love getting feedback from you who choose to read my chicken scratch each day.

That's all I got.

As Ever
Me

Cajun Salmon and some random thoughts for day 802.

Cajun Salmon and some random thoughts for day 802.

recipe salmon recipe Weight Loss

This weekend is not exactly turning out how I wanted it to, I was suppose to go out on a date with Wify Friday night and because of a situation outside of my control it didn't happen, not that it would have been too much fun because I have a new cold yay! My daughter came home from school with a head cold and I got it! I couldn't taste anything at all almost all day yesterday so a dinner date for Sushi probably wouldn't have been all that satisfying anyhow. I am feeling better than yesterday right now so hopefully this doesn't hang around too long but I am staying well within my calorie range I am not getting much cardio in because of the stuffy head. on the other hand. I came in way low on calories for yesterday because I had saved up for the date but I wasn't very hungry anyways so no big loss really.

I did play with dinner tonight and yes I know that I am not suppose to play with my food but I wanted to change my sides up a bit so I made a seasoned rice and topped it with some sauteed zucchini and yellow onion to have with the Salmon fillets that I made. I seasoned the Salmon with a very light shake of a Cajun spice that I picked up a while back and let me tell you I will be making this whole dish just as is again because it was very good. Making meals that taste as good as stuff that I would get in a restaurant really makes me feel like I am cheating at this whole weight loss thang, seriously. I eat better now than I ever have and the food taste so much better than the over seasoned crap that I use to eat when I was 500 plus pounds its unbelievable that I ever liked that other processed stuff. I snapped a picture of my plate before digging in and of course got the standard "Dada how come you like to take pictures of your food?" from my daughter she will some day read my blog and see why I took all of those photos and will be able to read all about how her Pops took his life back. This entire plate which consisted of 3/4 cup of the rice, 3/4 cup of the zucchini and onions and 7oz of the Salmon only cost me 480 calories and of course I had a nice big glass of green tea with it.

Cajun Salmon and sauteed zucchini with rice, 480 calories for the entire plate.

Rollin with this in lieu of being sick all week because I have to, This year will be the year that I hit my fitness goals and get down to that once seemingly unattainable 275 pounds and below I will go. I use to wonder if I was going to be able to get where I wanted to with my weight loss, I use to look at that goal number and think "Man that's a shit ton of weight to drop, is it even possible?" and these days I have completely changed the way that I see that goal, I am going to make that goal and even surpass it. Throughout my life I tried to lose weight and did lose some here and there but in all honesty looking back at it I was half ass-ing 90% of those attempts and all I needed to do was put 100% into it and look at what can happen. I am that pain in the ass who carries his scale around, I am that guy that when I head over you say "I am making chicken and corn on the cob does that work for you? should I make yours a different way?" and I don't care that I am that fellow, its what I need to get where I am going.

Saying that I am that pain in the ass with the scale is not always the case though either, I do have a beer with the neighbor from time to time, I do eat pizza and I do go out to eat at restaurants because that's just life and its going to happen. I literally just watch portion control and make sure that what I am eating is cooked the way I need it to be in order to make my calorie balance and that's it for the food. I have said this before and I am going to say it again, I am not special and contrary to popular belief I do not have any super powers when it comes to eating or exercising. I am just a fat guy that had enough of watching life happen around him while his waistline grew uncontrollably, perhaps one day I will not see myself as a fat guy but I am not there just yet folks I suppose that chapter is waiting to be written.

You can do this just like I am and many others out there that took their life by the horns and decided to live. Thanks for following along while I literally change my life and know that all of the support is more than appreciated.

That's all I got for tonight.

As Ever
Me

Salsa Tilapia recipe and pre weigh in thoughts.

Salsa Tilapia recipe and pre weigh in thoughts.

recipe Salsa tilapia Tilapia recipe Weight Loss

Making my way through my week and here it is Thursday already, that of course means that tomorrow is a weigh in day and I am really hoping for a new low weight this time around. I had been to the gym 9 days in a row on my quest for the three teens and then on Monday night it happened, my daughter who has a bad cold couldn't hold back any more and gave Dada a nose kiss and bamn! Tuesday morning sick. I went to the gym Tuesday anyways as it was just the beginning but yesterday there was no way I was making it out to the gym, instead a trip to the doc for my daughter and by last night I was achy and went to bed way early and was unable to complete the yoga routine that I have been doing with Wify in the evenings. This morning I feel terrible and don't see a trip to the gym in my near future for today as my daughter will not be going to school again anyways so my workouts in the early part of the week will have to carry me through until tomorrow mornings date with the scale.

I know that I am lower than last Fridays weight but I am unsure if I will hit those teens this time around but I figure if I eat perfectly clean today and try that yoga routine again tonight that maybe just maybe I can hit 319 tomorrow. I am not looking at this as even a bump in the road, people get sick and there is always next week if I don't get there this week but man I was seriously looking for high mid teens this week. Something happened to me and I have become motivated beyond where I have been the last couple months and I want that sub 300 pounds really bad, the way I see it is that if I am sub 300 pounds I am only 25 pounds from my goal and there is something about being so close that gets me in a mood to just get er done already.

Salsa Tilapia with seasoned rice and corn, 490 calories.

Enough about the weigh in, I made a new Tilapia recipe last night and everyone seemed to like it a lot and I think that I will add it to my bag of tricks because frankly I am starting to lose my love for Tilapia but this spiced it up a little different. I haven't done a recipe in a while so I thought this one would be a good one to post up, I found it by searching around on the net but I did make a few changes to it to lighten it up so that each 3oz fillet cost roughly 105 calories each salsa topping included.

What you will need.

1 to 1.5 pounds of Tilapia fillets
1/4 cup Parmesean cheese
1/3 cup Salsa
1 T light mayonaise
Black pepper
Adobo spices
Non stick cooking spray

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees and put the salsa, Parm cheese and mayo into a bowl and mix it up, shake some black pepper into the mixture and set it aside.

Rinse off your tilapia fillets and place them into a baking dish that has a bit of non stick cooking spray in it and shake some adobo and black pepper to taste onto the fillets. Once that is done spoon equal amounts of the salsa mixture onto each fillet to coat them evenly and into the oven for about 20 minutes and thats it!

We had 8 fillets all about equal size and the bag was a 1.5 pound bag of fish so I figured each fillet was roughly 3oz or 75 calories and after adding all of the ingredients in the salsa topping and dividing by 8 we came up with 30 calories per serving of the topping for 105 calories per cooked fillet. I made seasoned white rice and corn with this meal and the plate in the image is 490 calories total and it was more than enough for me to feel full. The changes that I made to the recipe I found online is I used half of the mayo that it called for as well as I used light mayo and the recipe called for 1/4 cup of salsa, I used 1/3 cup so that the volume would be the same because of the lack of mayo in mine. I also seasoned the fish with black pepper and adobo spices because it didn't make sense to me to not season the raw fish, there's nothing like under seasoned fish to ruin a good plate of food for me. The only thing that I would change about the recipe is the next time I make it I will stick it under the broiler for a quick minute to brown the top a bit more, otherwise it was pretty good.

All around this week has been good in lieu of me getting this wonderful cold from my beautiful daughter and I have a good feeling that I will have a new low weight come the morning. I am not happy about having missed the gym yesterday and the fact that I will very likely miss it today but hey! what can I do. I hope that if you try this Tilapia recipe that you enjoy it as much as my wife did and make sure that you check in tomorrow to see what I have lost this week, hopefully there will be some pictures posted of items weighing the same as me and what I have lost and if not? then there is always next week. I have a cup of hot tea with honey calling to me from the kitchen so that's all I got for today, as always thanks for following along and thanks for all of the support it is always appreciated.

As Ever
Me

A recipe and I am still under the weather.

A recipe and I am still under the weather.

chicken wrap recipe recipe Weight Loss

Today's report said a sore throat and congested chest and head 100% possibility and it came through, I still feel like I swallowed broken glass and have a bath towel stuck in my chest and nose, but I wanted to get a post up anyways. I stayed within my calories on Monday besides the tea in the morning with the honey and Brandy, i did not count that towards my calories but had about 100 extra at the end of the day so I am pretty close, I only drank 1 gallon of green tea plus maybe a 30oz cup of hot tea in the morning so this is effecting my keeping hydrated, but since I am pretty much just relaxing I am probably ok and I did not do anything for exercise yesterday besides walk around my yard with my daughter talking about the flowers and I ran out in the afternoon to restock my veggies supply in the house.

Chicken and veggies cooking up in the pan.

Since I am under the weather and am holding off on running until this whatever it is clears up I thought I would post a recipe, in fact I just made this about an hour ago for lunch. I started with 4oz chicken breast that I had grilled for dinner last night, I chopped it and set it aside, then into a frying pan I put some chopped up yellow onion, green bell pepper and shot of low cal cooking spray. When the onion and peppers were soft I dropped in some sweet red roasted peppers and the chopped up chicken, cooked it until the chicken was hot all the way through and then added a tiny squirt of pueblo pepper sauce that I had laying around.

Getting close, here it is before I wrapped it all up.

While that was finishing up I chopped up some tomato and lettuce and put it aside, I layed out my Lavash bread and dumped the chicken and veggies into it and added the lettuce and tomato. Then I rolled it up cut it in half and plated it with a garlic pickle wedge and the rest of the tomato chopped up as a side, of course I had green tea with it and it was pretty good if I do say so myself. Very filling and tasty and for a total of 365 calories I will make this concoction again, in fact I think this is something that Wify and my son would enjoy so I may try it out for dinner one night and se how they like it.

The finished product and a great way to spend 365 calories if ya ask me.

Just a quick post with a recipe for today, I am hoping that I will feel good enough by tomorrow to start week 3 and get this C25K thing rolling again but I am not going to push it because wify had this same thing the week before last and continued to run through some of it and did not have good results, in fact she stayed sick for more than a week and I don't plan on following in her foot steps on that one so easy does it is how it's going down. If you try the above recipe I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and remember that H2O, hydration is key to dropping the pounds in my humble opinion, Thanks for reading along.

As Ever
Me

Grilled Trout and an Eagle oh my!

Grilled Trout and an Eagle oh my!

recipe trout recipe Weight Loss

My intake for Monday was spot on again coming in at 1665 and was pretty well rounded, I got in 1 gallon of green tea and 1/2 gallon of water as far as hydration goes that was on point as well. Earlier in the day the weather broke long enough for me to take the little one out on a walk around the lake and I went 1.7 miles @ a little faster than 3mph and that's just what I was going for so I am happy all the way around with how the day went.

During my walks I always bring my camera to cut down on those "man I wish I had my camera" moments and yesterday I was glad that I did. The lake I live on has an interesting animal that lives in the area and we sometimes have the pleasure of seeing it cruise around in the sky looking for fish in the lake and that animal is an American bald eagle. Yesterday while I was walking he flew over head and was pretty low so I pulled out my camera and zoomed in out and clicked off a couple of photos hoping to get lucky enough for a decent picture and I managed to get a picture so I thought I would share it, I zoomed in on the Eagle so that you could see it better and the photo is clickable to get a look at the larger photo.

Click the image for a full sized image.

For dinner I threw some trout that I caught on the grill and I have to say that everyone loved it! including wifys step dad that I invited over for dinner, it came out very good and 6oz worth only has 250 calories so its low calorie to boot. I prepared the fish with some black pepper, rosemary and some Grillmates Salmon seasoning, coated it in a very light coat of olive oil and straight onto the grill they went. For sides to this dish I made red potatoes seasoned with olive oil, rosemary, thyme and black pepper then placed into a 400 degree oven until they were brown and green beans with black pepper and Smart balance, simple right? I find that the simple ones are usually the best tasting ones and this will be my go to prep for trout from here on out. I snapped a picture of my plate before digging in so that I cold share here on the blog, have a look.

The blue plate does nothing to make this look better but here it is.

Everything that is happening this week is how it should be where losing weight is concerned so I am looking forward to Fridays weigh in number, I have walked almost every day, I am eating right and I am staying hydrated and that is the recipe for fat to burn. I feel good and am down in weight since Friday so off to a good start for my goal to hit 344 pounds this week, will it happen? it is a possibility but if it doesn't happen this week it will happen the next so no worries. I have decided that I am going to focus on strength training more than I have been and want to start doing my daily push ups again if my shoulder holds up, it has felt good for about 3 weeks now and I am getting itchy so today I will test it out with a few short sets just to test the waters.

The end has come to another post in a long line of posts and I am going to keep on ding what I am doing because it has worked to this point. Thanks for following along and don't forget that H2O!

As Ever
Me