Thou Shall Eat No Eviiiiil!

WOW, I was so tempted to eat Halloween candy tonight!  I really, really wanted to!  I'm somewhat at my goal weight, so I use just about every holiday or special occasion to CHEAT!  But, I was really bad during my anniversary and husband's birthday (like shall we say a 5 day binge?)  So, I really wanted to try and be good tonight and not cheat for a very long time.

I texted my sister Beth to help keep me strong!  Its always good to have a friend to help you through the temptation times!  Eventually the temptation will pass, so just stay strong. 

One other thing that helps motivate (or sometimes discourage...) me is to check my ketone levels.  TMI alert, this is my ketoStix... Sorry if that grosses you out.  But this little piece of plastic here is the reason I did not stray tonight!  After I saw that I was burning a strongly moderate amount of fat, I definitely wanted to keep being good!

I ended up eating 2 Atkins bars instead of chocolate candy!  And seriously, I think that they actually tasted better than the candy would have (nothing's worse when you cheat and then it wasn't even very satisfying, ya know?) I had a Caramel Double Chocolate Crunch and a Nutty Fudge Brownie.  YUM!

How was your Halloween?  Did you stay on the straight and narrow, or did you give yourself some leeway? Tell me how it went!

No More Boring Chicken!!

Ok, so sometimes don't you feel when you're eating low carb that you get sick of the taste of chicken?  I do!  When I snack, I usually eat flavored almonds.  They are sooo yummy, low carb and they help make you not feel hungry!  What could be better?!

Every time that I would snack on flavored almonds (which, by the way, Habenero BBQ is my favorite flavor right now...)  I kept thinking to myself, these would taste really good with chicken!  But I'm not really one to venture out and try my own recipes, so I got intimidated and never tried it out.

I just kept thinking about trying the almonds with the chicken and finally I got the guts to just go for it and see how it would taste.  OMG, it was sooo good!  Here's a picture of how my Almond Chicken turned out!

Here's a quick version of what I did (for the complete recipe, please visit my Recipe page):

 First I smashed up the flavored almonds. 

 Then I mixed the flavored almonds with grated Parmesan and carbquik.

I coated defrosted chicken with egg and then dipped it into the almond mixture, placed it on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and baked it in the oven!  It was so delicious!!  The chicken had a wonderful nutty flavor with a taste of habenero BBQ. Mmmmm....

Saturday Treats!

I have finally found a delicious chocolate chip cookie recipe!!  A low carb one of course!!  No sugar, no flour!

So, I was big time craving some chocolate chip cookies!  I have had a hard time finding a good low carb/ Carbquik recipe for them.  Every time I make them they taste waaaay to much like I'm eating a butter cookie.  Sick.  Seriously, I might have well as eaten a stick of butter with some sugar free chocolate chips sprinkled on top.  Even though the cookies looked good, they tasted nasty.

Other times, its hard to find a recipe that has the cookies ending up looking like cookies.  Sometimes the cookies come out as little floppy puddles that you have to scoop into your mouth.  I just wanted a COOKIE!

So, I texted my low carb guru AKA my sister Beth and asked, WWBD? (What Would Beth Do?)  She suggested finding my normal favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and just substituting carbquik for flour, Splenda for sugar, sugar free maple syrup for brown sugar and sugar free chocolate chips instead of normal chocolate chips.  It worked!  It was soooo good!  Even my husband Luke said they were good!!  Now, that is saying something!

You can find my altered Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe here.  Enjoy!

The Camera Adds 40 Pounds Right?

After EXTREME debate, I am including a picture of me at my fattest.  You can find it here on the "My Story" page.  It is not only depressing to look at, but also motivating to me at the same time.  It helps me to keep dieting so I don't end up here again.  Some might say that I wasn't really that fat, or that size 14 is average.  Let me tell you, I'm 5'3", size 14 did not look good on me.  And, it doesn't really matter how fat you get, or how skinny you get.  It matters how you feel about yourself.  I felt FAT and I felt depressed.  I was constantly thinking about my weight.  It was literally on my mind all day long.  I would look at other women as I walked to class (in college) and think, "do I look like her?", "I wish that I looked like her", "Maybe I have the same body type as her, maybe that's what I look like from behind?".  It makes me want to cry just thinking about where I was with my self-esteem.  But, I'm happy to say that those days are behind me and that if you put your mind to it, and if the Atkins diet is right for you, you can do it too!

Tuna Pattie Delight

 Um, this is delicious.  The other night I was looking for something to eat and it was one of those nights where you look in the refrigerator, then you close the door. Then you look in the cupboard, then you close the door.  Then you look in the refrigerator again...maybe check the freezer... Nothin'!  Then you think, danggit!  I have nothing that I can just eat real quick!  This seems to happen to me a lot lately.  It might be because I have to cook two different meals a night.  One for the family, and one for me!  Sometimes I get lucky and we can eat the same meal-- for the most part. But, usually I make them a meal and then realize that I have to eat too.

But during my unfruitful food search I found a can of tuna.  I know some people aren't big fans of tuna, but I find it delightfully delicious! I went online to carbalose.com and found their Tuna Pattie recipe (which is now posted on my recipe page) and I decided to give it a try.

It turned out great!  Although I felt like I needed something more than just a pattie of tuna.  So I had the idea to make some 'buns' for it.  These buns are made out of the cheddar cheese biscuit recipe (also from a carbquik recipe).  The reason I only used one bun was because, I feel, when you use carbquick to make buns, to have two buns is too heavy.  Too much (non fluffy) bread.

The next time I make these buns, I'm going to use a large round cookie cutter so that they will look a little nicer :)  But all-in-all, this was a very tasty meal, and one I will repeatedly make since it was so easy too! I hope you enjoy it!

Has anyone made anything else with tuna?  Or have any suggestions to make this EVEN better?! Let me know, I love me some tuna!

Oh Happy Day!

Recently I've not been the poster child for the Atkins diet...  About 2 1/2 months ago my sister Beth and I got way pumped to loose some weight.  We planned to go full force for 2 weeks of hard core low carb eating and hard core exercising (I know what you're thinking... Me?  Exercising?!)  SOO, I ate 15 carbs a day and exercised TWO TIMES a day. For real, you can run an tell dat. I did 40 minutes of cardio in the morning and 25-30 minutes of weights in the evening.  Talk about tiring!  But I had super purple ketostix, which meant I was burning A LOT of fat!!

My body looked waaay better and toned, but I really didn't loose any weight.  Can you say frustration?!  I got a little burned out.  Now, I didn't fall off the band wagon, I still have been eating low carb... just not, consistently... I stopped checking my ketone levels because I knew that I couldn't be in ketosis because of all of my cheating escapades!  Thankfully thought, I've been maintaining my weight.

But this morning I got the guts to go ahead and check my ketone levels since I've been really good for a while now.  I had light pink ketones!  I know that light pink only means that I was burning a small amount of fat...but it is still progress!!

Checking my ketone levels is definitely motivating for me. It helps me stay on track with my diet.  What are some things that help you stay motivated to diet?  What are things that you see affecting your ketone levels or wieght loss?  Do you have any special things that help boost your ketons?  I wanna know!!!  Please feel free to share you thoughts and ideas with me!!