Days 4 & 5

     Day 4 was great again. Breakfast was a chocolate waffle with strawberries. The recipe made more than I could eat, so I gave some to my daughter. She said, "well, it does taste healthy, but it's still good." She's super picky these days (as an adult) so coming from her, that's pretty good. Breakfast was late so I had no morning snack. Lunch was some rotisserie chicken left over from the night before, with lettuce, mayo (which I spiced up with horseradish and spices) in a low carb tortilla. I liked that it was quick and easy. I've got the time to make the recipes in the cookbook, most take only 5 minutes to put together, but sometimes I just don't feel like it. Anyway, my afternoon snack was a frosted cinnamon muffin - tasty, and done in under 5 minutes. I substituted vanilla extract for the lemon juice in the frosting and now it was smooth instead of clumpy and looking all separated. Supper was a quick White Chili.  It was just stuff I keep on hand anyway - 2 cans of white beans, a can of rotel (tomatoes with chilis), a can of diced tomatoes, I chose to add 2 jalapenos w/o the seeds, and the last of the rotisserie chicken. That's it. Once it was heated through, it was done, quick, easy, and tasty. 

     I notice that this is the first time I've been on an eating plan that I'm not hungry. I mean not even a little bit. Sometimes I spend a good 10 minutes deciding on a snack because I'm not really hungry, but know not to let my blood sugar drop, then spike later. In fact, I've felt so satisfied that I started to wonder about portion sizes. There's no rules, and most of the recipes say "single serve", but still...

     Day 5 was another easy day. I started with a microwaved blueberry muffin that's done start to finish in 5 minutes. Lunch was roast beef, turkey bacon, lettuce, mayo (a very thin layer, literally only about 1/2 Tbs., a drop of horseradish, on 2 slices of Ezekiel naturally sprouted bread. It was just a sandwich, no cheese though since this was an E meal (energizing/carbs but low fat), but I stayed full all afternoon.

     It's time for my afternoon snack and I'm truly not hungry, so I reached for a small Fuel Pull (FP) recipe - one with so little carbs and fats centered on a protein that it doesn't affect your body like an E or S meal would. I found a quick chocolate shake in the cookbook. I'm not a fan of chocolate - I don't like chocolate cake, most candy bars, chocolate ice cream, I barely like Boston Cream donuts, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies - but I gave it a try. Let me start by saying, this is HEALTHY - It has in it frozen okra! and protein whey powder, and plain gelatin, and date palm oil, but it also has vanilla, unsweetened cocoa powder, and Stevia. Expecting to have an awfully healthy taste, I was shocked it was so good! I'm not an okra fan to start with - but this is thick, creamy, tastes like chocolate ice cream with maybe a scoop of malt in it, or mixed with a little chocolate frozen yogurt. But it doesn't taste thin and artificial - it tastes really rich and good. You have to try it if you decide on the THM plan!

     Supper tonight will be an E meal. I have some turkey cutlets to use up and 3 or 4 mouths to feed, so I'm making a (turkey) chicken alfredo over noodles. The only difference is when everyone else has regular pasta, which around here are usually quinoa noodles anyway, I'll have noodles made from the konjac root. They have no calories, no carbs, no fats, but lots of fiber. They're Japanese noodles that have been around for years in Asia, but not here. Usually they're packaged in briny fish-smelling liquid, like we package hot dogs, but THM sells them packaged in a much cleaner, non-fishy smelling water. I tried them in a homemade Ramen type of dish before starting the plan and I loved them. They're chewy like al dente pasta should be, not gummy like American pasta. 

     I can't imagine NOT eating on a plan like this long term. It's healthy, tastes good, easy, quick, makes sense, heals things along the way, and I'll also drop either weight, inches, or both?!  I would recommend it to everyone!

Day 3

     I think after the first week, I'll probably only post when something new comes up, or once a week, whichever comes first.

     Day 2's supper, Egg Roll in a Bowl, was GREAT! I wanted to share with Jordan (and Logan, as it turned out), so instead of ground beef, chicken or turkey, I used MorningStar Farms (soy) meatless Crumbles. I know, there's a lot of talk about soy and GMOs these days, but Jordan is allergic to ALL meats, broths, fish, seafood, and she has to eat something besides a ton of dairy and beans for her protein. Anyway, I used crumbles. Instead of shredding cabbage, the cookbook recommended having a bag of cole slaw mix instead, which would include some shredded carrot too. It was so easy! What I made fed 3 of us easily, and could've stretched for 4 over rice or stir fried vegetables. Everyone thought it was great. I'll definitely be making that again.

     The evening snack was a white cake with vanilla frosting, but my frosting is clumpy, almost like it's separated. I have to figure out if it's just that I don't whip it enough, or something else. It's basically lowfat cream cheese, butter, sweetener, and vanilla - it tastes great but looks "wrong". I'll have to figure that out - I bet I can find a video on THM's website that shows how so I can see what I'm missing, but again, it still tastes good.

     Day 3, today, I had eggs with cheese and turkey bacon. I made another Trimmer (all day sipper drink), but left out the cayenne, since it's on my list of foods I have sensitivities to. I wanted to use chili powder but I'm all out until this weekend, so I just left it out. Understanding the plan, I can make a similar drink with coffee, sweetener, almond milk, and vanilla - or use herbal tea instead of black tea (on my Alcat once or twice a week list). The cookbook has other recipes too, and the video on THM's site says to experiment with different teas, extracts, add cocoa powder for a chocolate flavor, etc. There are no rules, just avoid combining high carbs with high fats. That's it.

     Lunch could be as simple as a can of Progresso Light soup, but instead, I cooked a small, thin, leftover turkey cutlet (maybe 3 oz), then put it over a salad with lettuce, tomato, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and heaping tablespoon of lowfat cottage cheese - no dressing needed with the moisture from the other ingredients. It was so tasty, really easy, and even very inexpensive since berries are in season here.

     Supper will be a bit early and then I'll probably make an evening snack, rather than an afternoon snack and a late, heavier supper. I plan on having rotisserie chicken, with broccoli and maybe a salad if I feel like it. If I want it to be an E meal (carbs but low in fats), I can keep it just like it is. If I want to turn it into an S meal (fats but low carbs), I can eat the same thing, but add butter or cheese sauce to the broccoli, or have peas in a parmesan sauce, and have creamy dressing on my salad. I'll decide at mealtime. That's the beauty of this - at any meal or snack, I get to choose which way to go. There's no set order to have them, just make them one way or the other. Occasionally they have what they call a Fuel Pull, which seems to incluce both fats and carbs, just low amounts of each around a good protein. I plan on reading more into those.

     I'm looking forward to dessert. I'm planning on a single serve sized Pineapple Upside Down cake. I can't wait. This is really a much more enjoyable way to eat than any other program I've tried - no drinking shakes twice a day, no expensive prepackaged box meals on auto-ship, no totally gluten-free rules, no Atkins style carb restrictions (I love my fruit!).  If you're considering it, just do it. You'll enjoy the food freedom it brings.

THM - Day 2

     Yesterday I posted how I started a new way of eating called Trim Healthy Mama. I thought I'd check in to let you know how my first day went. Normally on the first day of any program, I do okay, eat something I forgot I wasn't supposed to, or else I've figured out everything I won't get to have for a while. Can you relate? The thought of never having an entire food group forever would make me start second guessing my decision to start something new - but this time, this really does seem like something I can live with.
     Breakfast was a quick frosted cinnamon muffin that had the consistency of a cake. It was great. It kept me full until lunch time, too.
     Lunch was a salad topped with a tiny NY Strip steak I found at the store on sale. I of course used creamy bleu cheese dressing over my lettuce & tomatoes. I added just a few berries for sweetness, and I was really full. The actual portion size was only about 4 oz of meat and barely 3 romaine leaves with only 1/2 a tomato. Such a filling meal. That must be why they call it an "S" meal, which stands for satisfying.
     The plan strongly recommends that you try to eat about every 3 hours, give or take, to keep your blood sugar levels steady. When they drop and spike all day from not eating, then overeating, that's when we start to mess up our bodies efficiency. For my afternoon snack, I felt like I was craving sugary carbs, so I found an easy recipe for a microwavable lemon cake with frosting. It took just a few minutes to mix, under 2 minutes to cook, and in 5 minutes I had a great snack to fix those cravings. I will say it's easy to tweak these recipes if you need to. In an earlier post I discussed my food sensitivity test and list. I can't have coconut oil so I had a choice to use either red palm oil or just butter. I chose the oil just to see how it would taste baked out. It was a very tangy lemon cake (I put the maximum lemon, not the minimum) and I think part of it was the red palm flavor too. I loved it, I'll definitely be making it again, and next time I'll try the butter version.
     For supper, I was still "satisfied", not hungry, not stuffed, just satisfied. I postponed supper until the very last part of that 3 hour window. I decided to have the beef roast I made in the crock pot. I needed to cook it and the guys needed to eat too. I put it in a bowl, melted some cheese over it, then added some brown gravy over it. It was a little bowl of yumminess! I needed some non-starchy vegetables with it but was simply too full for anything but that small bowl - so I used Romaine lettuce leaves as a sort of taco and ate it that way.
     The cookbook has recipes for small desserts that you can follow supper with, like mini frappes, but I was done for the day. I also had an "all day sipper", like a homemade chai, to sip on all day too.
     Day 1 - delicious, easy, healthy, satisfying, filling, so happy with this new plan.

     Day 2 started with an "E" meal, for "energyzing" - here's the healthy carbs.  I had old-fashioned oatmeal, not the quick or instant oats, because the older type is healthier and mine is gluten-free. I had just half a cup with a few pieces of fruit cut up in it, a little almond milk, no sweetener. I also had an Oikos Triple Zero Greek yogurt cup - no calories, no fat, made with Stevia instead of sugar or fake substitutes.
     Because my day started at early, breakfast was around 6. By 9 AM I wasn't overly hungry, but I knew I needed a snack. I pulled out the cookbook for ideas, but decided a couple of eggs with cheese and about one ounce of leftover roast would be more than enough.
     Lunchtime I was actually hungry, but not ravenous. It was strange. It was very different from when I normally feel hungry. This was more of a hollow, non-bloated, not tired kind of run down feeling (like a carb crash from the previous meal). I felt healthy, but like my body had efficiently used up what I'd previously eaten. I ended up getting home later than planned so it was almost 4 hours before eating. Not too bad. What I made was another recipe from the cookbook. I had homemade tomato soup that took me one minute to make, and just a few more to heat on the stove (I could've microwaved it, I guess). The book recommended half a low carb pita, opened and split, and used for a half sized grilled cheese. I've been to 3 stores so far and no one has low carb PITAs, just wraps/tortillas & breads. I improvised easily by using half of a low carb (small size) tortilla, and with the cheese in the middle, it was like having 1/4 of a cheese quesadilla. Pretty satisfying so I don't miss out on the usual number of carbs.
     Tonight I'll make a recipe called Egg Roll in a Bowl - sounds like fun. I need to be in bed before 6 PM to take my daughter to work at 2 AM, so I probably won't be having my snack. I'll just plan to make it some other day this week. It's a single serve sized white cake with frosting. Now THAT'S an eating plan I can live with!

     One last note, my all day sipper called The Shrinker has cayenne pepper in it. I love the taste but I could tell something I'd eaten must've been on my Alcat sensitivity foods list. Sure enough, cayenne should be removed from my diet. So how hard is it to alter the recipe and continue enjoying it? I just switch to chili pepper and I'm good to go - I have no sensitivities to chilis. So even if you have allergies or situations where you can't have gluten, or meat, or seafood, or dairy - you can still easily alter this and do it.

Trim Healthy Mama - Day 1

   

     Today is the first  official day of eating using the Trim Healthy Mama plan & cookbook. I heard about it through my cousin's wife who lives way up in Alaska, and she looks great every time I see photos of her. I bought the Plan book and the cookbook. When they came in I started reading immediately.
     The first thing that got my attention was that both authors had been through what I'd been through:  trying every plan out there - Atkins, Low Carb, Fat Free, Jenny Craig/Weight Watchers/NutriSystem programs, Vegetarianism, Vegan, Raw only, etc. and they didn't get results either. Come to think of it, almost all the women I know have tried so many of these with no luck, either! The gym thing? Yeah, I think being healthy and fit is important, but when you've spent 90min. to 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, up at 4:30 am, just to get to the gym and do both weights and cardio - and all you lose in 6 months is TWO POUNDS and never really dropped a size - why bother?! Something else had to be going on.
     These two ladies have figured out that a better way to help your body use what you eat the way it was meant to is to follow a sort of food pairing program. This was something that came and went in the late 90s, early 00s, but being Americans, we rejected it. We like our steak and potatoes, burgers and fries, hot dogs and potato chips, chili with all the toppings, etc. What THM's plan says, is to start with your protein - lean meat, red meat, fish, poultry, whey protein, etc. Then you either add fats to your fattier proteins, or else add carbs to your leaner protein. Just don't mix fats and carbs. That's basically it in a nutshell.  You can even pick which way you want to go with it at each meal or snack, no rules.
     The plan book and cookbook make it easy, it just takes a little bit of thought in the first week or so, then it gets easier and second nature. I didn't start until today because I knew I had a few things like a planned dinner out, snacks at a movie, a birthday party, and a tea with friends, that I had to get through first. I also ordered a few of the THM convenience products off their site, like the baking mix and sweetener. While waiting for today, I spent about a week eating the way I would if I'd already started - matching lean proteins with carbs and fattier proteins like red meat and ground beef with my fats. Know what happened? I dropped a size, lost a lot of the muffin-top bloating I'd struggled with for a year, and lost about 5 pounds - without really trying! I'm so excited to do this!
     The best part is that this plan really is something I can see myself doing forever, since it never has you count calories, or grams of anything (although they give slight guidelines for OCD people like me), you aren't told what your portion sizes are, just rough ideas. As they put it, "If we tell you that then it's OUR eating program. You decide what's right for you because it's YOUR eating plan."  No entire group of foods are off limits - like no carbs, or has to be gluten-free, or never eat fruits, in fact the only thing they really recommend is getting off the sugars and switch to either Stevia, or a blend with Stevia you can either purchase at a health food store or through them. They even created typical menus based on lifestyle, whether you're a busy, working Mom who usually hits the drive thru, or a purist who only eats organics, or a Mom who must budget for a large family. Total flexibility.
     As my first day, let me share with you my first meal. It took 5 min. to make, and just 15 min. in the oven (or I could've chosen to microwave it). It's a Frosted Cinnamon Muffin (cookbook recipe) and an "all day sipper" drink that helps you lose all day. It tastes like homemade chai, it's amazingly good. Here's my photo:

     It tasted so good! The muffin had the consistency of a cake, tasting sort of like a cross between maybe a sweet bran muffin and carrot cake? The cream cheese frosting was good too, but next time I'd take the time to blend or maybe even melt the cream cheese. The drink I made a few days ago for the first time. Everyone in the house tried it and loved it too. The strangest thing about the muffin was that I expected to use the THM baking mix for my flour, but it only used 3T of ground flaxseed meal, which I actually already had in the house. That's why of all the breakfast items I could've chosen, I thought I'd try this. Quick, easy, super-moist, healthy, and so filling that I skipped the 1/2 Triple Zero Greek yogurt that could've been paired with this. Can't wait to see how lunch goes.