Here's a recipe from the cookbook that is proving to be this family's healthy-eating lifesaver: Cooking Light's "Slow Cooker" cookbook. The book advertises itself as "57 essential recipes to eat smart, be fit, live well" -- and all of the recipes I've tried so far (about half of them) have been fantastic.
My daily routine allows me to go to the gym after the kids are off for the day, and then come home and make dinner before lunch time. Having dinner made long before what my mother-in-law calls the "arsenic hour" (when my kids are home and freaking out, but my husband is not yet home for dinner) ensures that I have something ready to go that is consistent with my eating plan.
And so this cookbook has become my absolute favorite.
Now on to the recipe:
1 lb top round steak (1 inch thick), trimmed
1 cup chopped onion
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried dill
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 (8 oz) pkg presliced mushrooms
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 c less-sodium beef broth
1 (8 oz) container reduced-fat sour cream
2 cups hot cooked medium egg noodles (about 1.5 cups uncooked pasta)
Chopped fresh dill (optional)
1. Cut steak diagonally across grain into 3/4-inch-thick slices. Place steak and next 8 ingredients in a 3-qt electric slow cooker; stir well.
2. Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup, and level with a knife. Place flour in a small bowl, and gradually add broth, stirring with a whisk until blended. Add broth mixture to cooker, and stir well. Reduce heat to LOW, and cook 7 to 8 hours or until steak is tender. Turn cooker off, remove lid. Let stroganoff stand 10 minutes. Stir in sour cream (make sure it's cold and you've let the stroganoff cool, or the sour cream will curdle). Serve over noodles and sprinkle with chopped dill, if desired.
Yield: 4 servings (1 cup stroganoff and 1/2 cup noodles)
Calories 444 (32% from fat); Fat 15.9g (sat 7.4g, mono 3.4g, poly 0.9g); Protein 35.7g; Carb 38.8g; Fiber 2.6g; Chol 123mg; Iron 4.7mg; Sodium 737mg; Calc 123mg
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
And the current day
So now that we've roughly established my long and not-so-loving relationship with fatness, let's a little more precisely discuss what things look like these days.
As of this morning, I'm about a month into my recommitted approach, and I weighed 167.2 lbs (down from 173 at Christmas).
I'm tracking all of my food and exercise at FitDay.com, and I'm using their numbers to estimate my metabolic rate and exercise burn (but sanity checking them with my numbers from my watch and the RMR test I had done at the gym). I'm using their numbers instead of my more personalized ones because they are more conservative -- we'll see how that goes.
I'm shooting for an 860-ish calorie restriction per day to achieve a 1.5 lb - 2 lb weight loss goal per week. What this typically looks like is eating 1600-1700 calories per day, and exercising about 2 hours a day.
My exercise schedule currently looks like this:
Monday: 60 min zone 1-2* cardio, 60 min pilates class
Tuesday: 60 min athletic yoga, 60 min zone 1-2 cardio
Wednesday: 60 min zone 1-2 cardio, 60 min pilates class
Thursday: 60 min zone 1-2 cardio, 30 min strength training, 60 min Fluid Strength class
Friday: 60 min Fluid Strength class, 30 min zone 1-2 cardio, 60 min private pilates instruction
Saturday: 60 min power vinyasa yoga (or off)
Sunday: 60 min zone 1-2 cardio, 30 min strength training (or off)
*I'll discuss the zone business in a later post.
This schedule looks a lot different than the last year, where most of my cardio came in the form of zones 3-4-5 running -- I ran 5 half-marathons in 2009, the first of which in January, and the last in December. But because running was apparently not effective for me for weight control, I'm revising the approach.
It seems like a lot of exercise -- and it is -- but given that I've worked up to it over the course of the past 18 months or so, it's really quite enjoyable.
As of this morning, I'm about a month into my recommitted approach, and I weighed 167.2 lbs (down from 173 at Christmas).
I'm tracking all of my food and exercise at FitDay.com, and I'm using their numbers to estimate my metabolic rate and exercise burn (but sanity checking them with my numbers from my watch and the RMR test I had done at the gym). I'm using their numbers instead of my more personalized ones because they are more conservative -- we'll see how that goes.
I'm shooting for an 860-ish calorie restriction per day to achieve a 1.5 lb - 2 lb weight loss goal per week. What this typically looks like is eating 1600-1700 calories per day, and exercising about 2 hours a day.
My exercise schedule currently looks like this:
Monday: 60 min zone 1-2* cardio, 60 min pilates class
Tuesday: 60 min athletic yoga, 60 min zone 1-2 cardio
Wednesday: 60 min zone 1-2 cardio, 60 min pilates class
Thursday: 60 min zone 1-2 cardio, 30 min strength training, 60 min Fluid Strength class
Friday: 60 min Fluid Strength class, 30 min zone 1-2 cardio, 60 min private pilates instruction
Saturday: 60 min power vinyasa yoga (or off)
Sunday: 60 min zone 1-2 cardio, 30 min strength training (or off)
*I'll discuss the zone business in a later post.
This schedule looks a lot different than the last year, where most of my cardio came in the form of zones 3-4-5 running -- I ran 5 half-marathons in 2009, the first of which in January, and the last in December. But because running was apparently not effective for me for weight control, I'm revising the approach.
It seems like a lot of exercise -- and it is -- but given that I've worked up to it over the course of the past 18 months or so, it's really quite enjoyable.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
The Beginning-ish
My journey into fatdom has been a long one. I was intermittently chubby growing up, gained the freshman 40 in college, and have basically struggled with weight all of my life.
However, pregnancy catapulted me into a body that I'd never before known, and in which I felt imprisoned. After an 85 lb pregnancy -- I'm a stress eater, and it was unexpected -- I had accumulated fat in all sorts of places with which I wasn't accustomed, in addition to those with which I was. Twenty-six months post-partum found me at about 170 lbs, up from my pre-pregnancy weight of 145 lbs.
And 26 months post-partum also found me (expectedly) pregnant again, and the second pregnancy seemed to seal the deal that the weight was not going anywhere. In January 2008, when I was finally ready to face the scale, I weighed in at an unprecedented (non-pregnant) 190 lbs, which is a lot of weight for my 5'4" frame.
I had crossed over from overweight to obese. Not just the subjective kind, but the clinical diagnosis. The one that only truly fat people get.
From January through July of 2008, I managed to get myself back to that 180 lb mark with only moderate effort, where I then appeared to get stuck.
So in July 2008, I decided I was changing my life to live a healthy life style, once and for all. I joined a gym, hired a trainer, and got to it.
Since that time, I hit a post-pregnancy low of 156 lbs, but managed to mysteriously gain back 15 lbs of that through this past Christmas (Dec 2009), despite continued exercise and what I assumed to be healthy eating. (More on this particular yo-yo in a later post.)
And so last month, I had come to yet another decision. I've taken this all fairly seriously, and still seem to be struggling with my weight. How far am I willing to go to be at a healthy weight? It seems I can maintain 170 lbs fairly easily... far into the "overweight" category, but not clinically obese. Do I just accept life as a size 14 forever? Because anything other than that looks like it will require fitness to become my life.
The answer to that question is the reason of the genesis for this blog. Bring your A game, saddlebags. Because I'm coming after you for good.
However, pregnancy catapulted me into a body that I'd never before known, and in which I felt imprisoned. After an 85 lb pregnancy -- I'm a stress eater, and it was unexpected -- I had accumulated fat in all sorts of places with which I wasn't accustomed, in addition to those with which I was. Twenty-six months post-partum found me at about 170 lbs, up from my pre-pregnancy weight of 145 lbs.
And 26 months post-partum also found me (expectedly) pregnant again, and the second pregnancy seemed to seal the deal that the weight was not going anywhere. In January 2008, when I was finally ready to face the scale, I weighed in at an unprecedented (non-pregnant) 190 lbs, which is a lot of weight for my 5'4" frame.
I had crossed over from overweight to obese. Not just the subjective kind, but the clinical diagnosis. The one that only truly fat people get.
From January through July of 2008, I managed to get myself back to that 180 lb mark with only moderate effort, where I then appeared to get stuck.
So in July 2008, I decided I was changing my life to live a healthy life style, once and for all. I joined a gym, hired a trainer, and got to it.
Since that time, I hit a post-pregnancy low of 156 lbs, but managed to mysteriously gain back 15 lbs of that through this past Christmas (Dec 2009), despite continued exercise and what I assumed to be healthy eating. (More on this particular yo-yo in a later post.)
And so last month, I had come to yet another decision. I've taken this all fairly seriously, and still seem to be struggling with my weight. How far am I willing to go to be at a healthy weight? It seems I can maintain 170 lbs fairly easily... far into the "overweight" category, but not clinically obese. Do I just accept life as a size 14 forever? Because anything other than that looks like it will require fitness to become my life.
The answer to that question is the reason of the genesis for this blog. Bring your A game, saddlebags. Because I'm coming after you for good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)