Something New

As of today, I have been married to the love of my life, my soulmate, and my best friend for a month and four days! It has been the best time of my life, and each day gets better.

Something new I have recently started is eating healthy. Now that I am out of my parents' house, I am thinking it will be a good bit easier... Hopefully. About a week ago my sister showed me an app called MyFitnessPal, which is fortunately for me available on both Android and iPhones. All you have to do is put in a goal weight, your height and weight, and how quickly you would like to lose the weight, and it gives you a set amount of calories for the day. Think of it like weight watchers, except with calories instead of numbers and FREE.

Now when people find out I am doing this, for instance, when I turned down some pizza at work the other day, (which smelled AMAZING), they think I am crazy. No, I do not think I am fat. I KNOW I am not overweight. I don't want to get there though. Honestly, I just want everything in my closet to comfortable fit me and I don't want to go buy more pants. Most importantly, I don't want to buy a bigger size of pants, (unless they're maternity pants), but that's another story for sooner or later. And when I say that I mean later. Yes, I know that I am not overweight YET, but anyone who knows me can see that I have obviously put on a lot of weight since I have gotten out of high school. And I have a huge problem with that trend continuing. I am opposed to a lot of health food fads due to different reasons as to why they are actually bad for your body in the long run, (reasons too lengthy to go into discussion about now), such as artificial sweeteners or any of those diets where you eat as much protein and fat as you want but limit your carbs. So, my options are few.

Anyways, when you are actually keeping track of the amount of calories you are consuming, it really makes one realize exactly how all that weight was gained to begin with. EXCESS! For one thing, my portion sizes were out of control. For another thing, I drank a Dr. Pepper every day, or sometimes more. Everything I ate or drank was full of junk.

The best thing this app has done for me so far has made me stop putting everything I see into my mouth and stop to peruse over the ingredients first. By doing this, my mindset is more geared towards eating things that are 'more bang for the bucks'. The bang being the nutritional value and how filling it is and the bucks being calories. In other words I am loading up with premium now. Okay all that was a joke, considering I absolutely hate metaphors and stuff. Unless Jesus is using them.

Short story is, I have been doing this thing almost a week, and I already feel healthier. You know how people say they just FEEL better? It may be a placebo effect, but it is cool. And now that I have learned how to control my portions and pace myself throughout the day, I don't have that gnawing hunger as much.

All in all, I feel like this is something I CAN do. Usually I hear diet/exercise routines, and I know in my head that my job/lifestyle/self will/money will simply not allow me to do that. So although I am not saying this is for everyone, it is something for me. So I am pretty excited about it. Can't wait to be able to use my wardrobe to its full extent now.

Now with that opening, I will also say that I have been trying to find healthy recipes in order to keep my poor belly from constantly feeling like I am starving. I'm talking lots of bang for the calories type of stuff. Well tonight we made salad, shrimp, and "something else I am not sure what it is called but Kyle made it, it's a substitute for rice and pasta, I didn't like it, it tasted like grits except I like grits and I didn't like this stuff." Considering I didn't like most of that stuff, I made a dessert that wasn't too bad.

I blended 1 pound of strawberries, a pinch of salt, and 1/2 cup of honey until smooth.
Added 2 cups of Greek yogurt, then blended until smooth.
Added 1 cup of Ice, then blended until smooth.

I did the math myself, and that makes 213 calories per cup. Matthew and I both thought it was awesome. A cup was a perfect portion for me, and I think I may start making this and eating it instead of yogurt for breakfast. That recipe yielded about 4.25 cups. The strawberries were 150 calories, the yogurt (which was low fat) was 240, and the honey was 515 calories. The whole recipe was 905 calories, which is how I got 213 per cup.

Note: I blended this with a blender, and it is easy to drink even without a straw. The only reason a spoon is pictured is because I used it to scoop the yogurt into the measuring cup. :-) Also, I used low fat yogurt. It is more calories if you use regular yogurt. And it doesn't matter if you use fresh or frozen strawberries. I prefer frozen everything, because I don't have to worry about leftover strawberries rotting!

It was a delicious and healthy alternative to a strawberry milkshake, which would be about 570 empty calories! Empty meaning lots of artery clogging sat fats and not so much of vitamins and minerals.

I can't wait until the heat of summer to whip up batches of this stuff!
Much LOVE!
Katelyn Cowart Pardue, RN
;-)