Thanksgiving weekend diet aftermath

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Rory

So I didn’t quite stick to my plan of indulging on Thanksgiving and then getting back on my diet the following day. On Friday, Saturday AND Sunday I ate things that I wasn’t supposed to.

  • Friday (I met my cousin and her kids at the bowling alley): chicken wings, fries, and a few cookies.
  • Saturday (Stayed in all day except for when I ran next door to my mom’s house to raid her fridge): Nuts, turkey, chicken salad, and a piece of cake.
  • Sunday (Left the house to go to salsa class, then went to my mom’s afterwards to get some food): mashed potatoes, nuts, fruit juice and milk. Oh, and the spaghetti I decided to make at 9:30 last night.

The result of all my “indulging”? I’m up three pounds since Thursday morning. Sigh…whatever, it’s not a big deal really. It’s Monday; I’m back at work and back on the low calorie HCG diet. I should be back to my pre-Thanksgiving weight by the end of the week. It’s just annoying that I let myself get so out of control sometimes.

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Turkey stock – making the most out of Thanksgiving leftovers

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Rory

After reading all of those recipes the other day on how to make chicken broth, I couldn’t wait to ask my aunt if I could have the turkey carcass left from our Thanksgiving dinner. She said yes, so between the carcass and some raw veggies that were left over from the veggie platter I’d made I had all the ingredients I needed to make a turkey broth!

Except I didn’t end up making turkey broth, I made turkey stock. The difference? Broth is made from the meat of the animal, while stock is made from the bones. I just learned that two minutes ago while writing this post. Thanks google!

Homemade Turkey Broth Stock

1. Fill the pot with enough water so the carcass is covered. I had to use my hands to break the carcass into four smaller pieces in order for it to fit in my pot. I felt kind of savage when I did this, but in a good, “I could have survived as an American pioneer” type of way.

2. Add carrots, celery, spices, etc. In this case I did NOT add any spices, because as you can see in the photo above there were all these spices that were already in the carcass from when my aunt cooked it. I figured I’d make the broth and then see what needed to be added.

3. Bring to a boil, then let it simmer for a few hours.

When it’s done you can run it through a strainer to remove the bones and fat. According to everything I’ve read on the internet, it’ll last about a week in the fridge or 4-6 months in the freezer. (I have a tendency to use things wayyy past their so-called “expiration date,” which I view as more of a guideline than an absolute. :-))

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Starting a diet around the holidays

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Rory

When I got my HCG drops in the mail at the beginning of the month, I debated over WHEN I should start the diet. Like nearly every other family in the United States of America, my family’s Thanksgiving day revolves around the meal. How could I keep to a diet when if I’m surrounded by all that amazing food? Maybe it would be better to wait until the holiday was over.

But playing the waiting game can be a slippery slope. After all, three weeks after Thanksgiving is my company’s holiday party, two weeks after that is Christmas, and a week after that is New Year’s Eve. If I were to delay my diet by two weeks because of Thanksgiving, what would prevent me from delaying until after the holiday season was over? I could easily see that happening.

I quickly decided that waiting was not an option. I simply couldn’t afford any delay. Here’s why:

1 – My main New Year’s resolution for 2013 is to learn how to maintain my weight loss so that I can stop this yo-yo diet that I’ve been on for the past, um, I don’t know, 23 years. But in order for me to maintain my weight in 2013, I need to reach my target weight while it’s still 2012.

2 – Last New Year’s Eve I went out with two of my best friends. I love my girls dearly, but they are both a size 0. Like I said in THIS POST (you can also see my New Year’s Eve picture there), when I saw pictures from that night of the three of us I wanted to throw up. I do NOT want to feel that way again on January 1, 2013!

3 – At my company’s holiday party, which is on December 13, I will be seeing this guy that I used to date (free advice: don’t date your coworkers!). The last time I saw him, in May, I was about 10 pounds lighter. When I see him at that party in a few weeks I want to look at least as good as I did the last time I saw him, if not better.

In order to accomplish all of these goals I had to start the diet right away. So I did.

So how am I going to get by on Thanksgiving? What am I going to do when I’m surrounded by the turkey, the stuffing, the biscuits and gravy, the candied yams, and the 4 or 5 different pies? Duh, I’m going to eat, naturally! Even though I’m not supposed to, and even though nearly all of the food on that table won’t be allowed because of my diet, I am going to enjoy that Thanksgiving dinner. Because the holidays are meant to be enjoyed, and I will not enjoy myself If I’m worrying about food and dieting.

I’ll do my best to avoid stuffing my face like I usually do. But even if I eat too much, so what? It’s just one day. I’ve accepted the fact that I will gain back two or three pounds because of it. But if I hit the gym every day over the weekend, by Monday or Tuesday I should be back on track. So that’s my plan.

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Diet-friendly sugar-free meringue cookies (HCG, South Beach Diet)

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Rory

Sugar-free meringue cookies – the best “I just finished lunch and now I want something to munch on” snack you could ever ask for.

I have written about these sugar-free meringue cookies so many times that it’s amazing that I still have anything to say about them. These cookies have proved to be a lifesaver for me when I’m dieting. An entire batch of cookies is only 72 calories, so if you’re in one of those moods where you just feel like stuffing your face Cookie Monster-style (a mood I am often in), you can do it with these cookies and feel absolutely NO guilt.

I started making sugar-free meringue cookies because I was looking for something to snack on the first time I did HCG diet. My first few attempts were complete failures. I could never get the texture right. Sometimes they were undercooked and too gooey, but usually they were too dry and it was like eating cardboard. So one day I decided that I was going to make a batch of cookies every night, with slight variations, until I came up with the perfect recipe.

A picture of the first batch of meringue cookies that I ever made (#Fail!):

It took a LOT of trial and error (over 20 batches of cookies) before I was able to figure out the precise recipe for how I like them.  This is the basic recipe; there are many different things you can add for flavor/variety. I’ll be adding those recipes very soon.

Sugar-free Meringue Cookies

…………………………………………………………………………..

Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 47 min
Ready in: 59 min
Yields: 36 bite-sized cookies

Ingredients:

½ cup liquid egg whites AT ROOM TEMPERATURE (this is equivalent to 3 egg whites)
¼ teaspoon Cream of Tartar
2 Tbs. Truvia

Instructions:

1. Place the liquid egg whites into a metal bowl and let them warm up to at least room temperature. (I place the bowl on the oven while the oven is pre-heating so the egg whites get even warmer.)

2. Preheat the oven to 215 degrees Fahrenheit.

3. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

4. Beat the eggwhites for about 5 minutes, until they start to stiffen.

5. Slowly add in the Cream of Tartar while continuing to beat the egg whites.

6. Slowly add in the Truvia while continuing to beat the egg whites. (The total beat time is about 10 minutes. You’ll know you’re done when you’re able to turn the bowl upside down and nothing falls out.)

7. Use a spoon to dollop the egg whites on to the parchment paper (I like to make 36 bite-sized cookies).

8. Put the tray in the oven for 25 minutes.

9. Rotate the tray and leave it in for another 22 minutes. (Every minute makes a difference. I like the texture the best at 22 minutes, but you might like them crunchier at 23 or 24 minutes. Feel free to experiment!)

10. When the time is up, turn the oven off but leave the cookies in there for a while, then transfer them to an airtight container. (This is especially important during the summer months when it’s humid. When it’s warm outside I’ll leave them in the oven for like an hour. But in the winter I usually take the tray out after only 20 minutes and just let them sit on top of the stove.)

All finished:

…………………………………………………………………………..

NOTES

On the ingredients:

The recipe comes out perfectly fine when you use liquid egg whites, but on the few occasions when I’ve been able to use real egg whites, well, it has definitely been a treat! The texture is a bit different.

As far as the sweetener is concerned:  So far I’ve tried Sweet Leaf, Truvia, Stevia in the Raw, and various brands of liquid Stevia. I find that Truvia is the best, especially for baking, because there is less of a nasty, bitter aftertaste. I’ve read that there is debate over whether Truvia is truly “natural,” because of some of its ingredients. Honestly, I don’t care. It tastes the best, so that is what I use.

On the preparation:

You’ll know that the egg whites have been perfectly beaten when you’re able to turn the bowl upside down without the meringue falling out. I swear, every time I turn the bowl upside down and it doesn’t move I feel a huge sense of accomplishment.

On cooking:

I rotate the tray halfway through because in my oven they don’t cook evenly if I don’t do that. But I’ve read some recipes that say you shouldn’t open the oven when you’re cooking them. So…yeah, I don’t know.

…………………………………………………………………………..

So that’s my recipe. I hope you enjoy it, and that it brings you as much diet-relief as it has brought me! xoxo

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HCG Days 6 and 7 – It IS possible to have a social life while dieting.

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Rory

On Friday afternoon I decided I would go see the new Twilight movie after work before meeting up with a friend for a drink. There are two reasons why this decision might have led to a cheating episode:

1 – I was going to a MOVIE THEATER. I mean, I don’t know about you, but when I go to the movies I like to eat. Buttered popcorn, candy, nachos = yummmm.

2 – I had originally planned to go home after work, so I didn’t have anything with me that I could eat for dinner.

Fortunately I was able to find solutions to both problems. I had brought apple chips and meringue cookies with me to snack on after lunch, so once I made the decision to go to the movies I quickly put them away for later. Boom, now I had snacks for the theater. Problem #1 solved. Problem #2 had a quick fix as well: right before the movie I stopped at Duane Reade to get a pop-top can of tuna fish so that if I found myself really hungry at any point in the night I would have food readily available.

The moral of this story? Always be prepared!

On Saturday night I went to a going away party for a friend who is moving back to Germany. Since I was home all day I was able to stick to the diet, but I knew that I would run into a problem later that night when I came home. The thing is, after a night of drinking I have to eat something or I will probably throw up the next day. So I knew that if I didn’t have something ready for me to eat when I came home at 4 in the morning, then I would end up eating something that I shouldn’t, like the potato chips or can of nuts that are leftover in my cupboard.

So what did I do? Simple enough, really. When I was making my soup for dinner that night, I just made a little extra. I left it out on the stove so that when I got home all I would have to do is heat it up for a few minutes. And sure enough, that’s exactly what I did.

While I know that eating at 4 in the morning and then going to sleep right after is not necessarily a good thing, I still consider this a diet victory: I knew what my weakness was and took the necessary steps to avoid it. #Winning!

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Easy and Healthy Chicken Broth (HCG, South Beach Diet)

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Rory

I don’t know if chicken broth really needs its own recipe, but since I have a bunch of soup recipes that I plan to post I figured it would make sense to post the recipe I use, which I got from the pdf that came when I ordered my HCG. When I’m not on a diet I will usually make my broth with carrots, onions and celery in addition to all the spices, but when I’m on the diet I like to follow it to the letter, if I can. (One exception? Liquor. But more about that in a future post.)

Chicken Broth

Ingredients:

  • 1 whole chicken
  • parsley
  • onion powder
  • garlic
  • thyme
  • rosemary
  • oregano
  • basil
  • bay leaf
  • salt
  • pepper

I don’t like to add a lot of salt to my chicken broth, because in some of the soup recipes that I use it in, such as Egg Drop soup, I add this soy sauce alternative that is pretty salty. So I wait until I’m making a soup to salt it to taste.

1 – Fill up a pot with water and add the chicken and any amount of the spices that you want. I usually do like a teaspoon of each, and 2 or 3 bay leaves).

2 – Boil for about a half hour.

That’s it. Once it’s done and the chicken has cooled, take it out of the pot and start cutting off the meat. I put the dark meat straight into the freezer for use when I get off the diet, and I portioned the white meat into 5 or 6 oz portions that I can eat within the next few days.

As I was writing this post I started wondering about different ways to make chicken broth. I found THIS to be pretty interesting. It also has some useful tips on how to make your broth last longer.

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HCG Day 3 – A mild cheating episode

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Rory

On Day 3, which was Wednesday, I was doing very well on my diet. I felt a little bit of hunger after lunch, but I just nibbled on my apple chips and meringues cookies to keep the hunger at bay.

But then around 4 pm I went upstairs to the kitchen in my office to meet a coworker for a quick chat (we call it “Tea Time”). When I got to the kitchen I saw there was food on the table — the leftovers from some meeting or seminar.

Along with some sandwiches and pizza there was a large bowl of salad, spinach salad by the look of it. Well that’s not that bad, I thought, I’m allowed to have spinach on this diet. I peered in the bowl to see what else was in it. All I could see was dried cranberries and nuts. That’s not too bad either.

I ended up having a bowl. It was so good!

So yes, technically I cheated, because even though the spinach was allowed, the other things were not. I didn’t feel bad about it though. I had a two-hour salsa class to go to that night, so I didn’t think that a few nuts and cranberries would have a huge effect in the long run. In fact, eating that spinach salad just might very well have kept me from passing out from hunger in salsa! (Or some other excuse to help me rationalize what I did, which I know was wrong. Not because of the calories, but because I’m trying to stay focused and not cheat.)

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Diet-friendly Apple Chips (HCG, South Beach Diet, etc.)

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Rory

There is no better way for me to describe how good these apple chips came out then by relaying the conversation that took place between me and a coworker who knows that I am back on the HCG diet.

Me: Want to try a chip?

Him: Okay.

(Takes a chip from my ziploc baggie. Face lights up.)

Him: Wow these are really good!!

Me: I know, right?

Him: But they must be really bad for your diet.

Me: Huh?

Him: You know, all the sugar.

Me: Huh???

Him: Wait, you didn’t make these, did you???

Me: Yeah I made them last night!

Him: What?? I thought they were store-bought! They’re so good!!!

Sigh…best cooking complement yet!

Last time I was on the drops I made these fairly frequently, but they never came out as good as they did the other day. It’s either because I used a Macintosh apple this time, or because I lined the cookie sheet with parchment paper, which I don’t think I did before (it’s been so long that I can’t actually remember!). Since I was making them so often back then I invested in two fairly inexpensive items that make the process go a lot easier: a mandolin slicer and an apple corer.

(P.S. I bought the cheapest mandolin slicer they had at Bed Bath and Beyond, which was only like $10, and I regret it. It doesn’t slice as smoothly as I’m sure a more expensive one would. So if you’re considering buying one, I recommend investing a little more than the bare minimum. :-))

Diet-friendly Apple Chips

Ingredients:

  • An apple (you can sprinkle cinnamon if you want to, but frankly I don’t think it needs it)

1.Line a tray with parchment paper, and preheat the over to 215.

2. Core the apple. (Below, witness my apple coring FAIL, which led to a hole that was twice as big as it should have been!)

3. Slice the apple.

4. Line the tray with the sliced apples.

5. Bake for about an hour and 10 or 20 minutes, rotating the tray and flipping the slices maybe 4 times. What I do is this: at the 20-minute point I flip the slices. At the 40-minute point I flip the slices again AND I rotate the tray. Then at the 60-minute point I just flip the slices once more.

The timing isn’t an exact science. The slices are all different sizes, so they’re not going to be done at the same time. At the one-hour point I start checking to see if any are done. I’ll press down on the apple, and if it feels springy then I know it needs more time. It might take you a few tries to figure out how to get it to a crispy potato-chip texture in your oven, but there really isn’t any way to mess these up, unless you take them out too soon (in which case you could always pop them back in) or you forget about them and they burn.

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HCG Day 2 – Hunger pangs and a headache

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Rory

My second day on the HCG diet was not quite as easy as my first. I came back from lunch and realized I was still hungry. Luckily I had some leftover sugar-free meringue cookies at my desk, so I was able to munch on those without a problem.

I also had the worst headache ever, probably because I haven’t had any coffee this week. I like my coffee really light, with half and half, but on this diet you’re only allowed a tablespoon of milk each day. Useless for me, so I might as well skip it altogether.

As I was sitting there at my desk nibbling on meringue cookies I realized that I am going to need to snacks on a daily basis to get me through the rest of my diet. So that night I made another batch of sugar-free meringue cookies. I also made some apple chips – holy crap they came out so good!

I also decided to make some chicken broth so that I could make some soup. I like making soup when I’m on a diet because the broth fills you up. I’ll be posting the recipes for all of these things with the next day or two.

🙂

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Diet-friendly curry chicken (HCG, South Beach Diet, etc.)

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Rory

This recipe is so simple that it barely warrants its own post. But it is one of my favorite ways to make chicken. When I’m not dieting I make it the same way and just add some low-fat sour cream – ohmygodittastessooogood!

Diet-friendly Curry Chicken

Ingredients

  • Chicken breast (my typical portion is 4 or 5 oz)
  • 1/2 tsp Curry powder
  • 1/4 tsp Cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp Pumpkin pie spice
  • Salt and pepper to taste (I actually don’t even use pepper, but feel free to add it if you like)

1. Add a little bit of water to the pan (as opposed to oil) and heat over a low flame.

2. Season both sides of the chicken. I don’t even measure out the spices anymore, I just give each one a few shakes and I’m done.

3. Add the chicken to the pan. (I cook the chicken over a really low flame for like 20-30 minutes to keep it as moist as possible.) 4. While the chicken is cooking, prepare your side dish. For this meal I chose to steam some spinach.

That’s all there is to it!

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