Post Vacay Weigh-In Day…

Not as horrible as I expected, but not great….when I left I was 293, this morning I was 296. I am assuming the vacation bloat is gone by now since we’ve been home for a few days, so I’ve got a bit of work to do to get back to where I was. However, I’m ecstatic that it was only 3 pounds—the old me would have gained 10 pounds, easily.  So, small victories? Lol.

I’m doing great on my carbs today–I’m at 20, with a few grams of fiber so my net is even less. Water is….a work in progress. I almost made it to a half gallon. Not great, but more than I’ve been averaging. The weather has taken a turn for the cold and rainy for the next couple days, so the munchkin and I will be staying in and staying warm, much to her dismay. She stayed with hubby’s parents on the farm while we were gone, and she got used to being outside every day playing with the animals, watering plants, etc. so every other word she says is “shoes” or “go”, with a “bye” thrown in for good measure. And she’s gotten great at fetching shoes; she knows who every pair belongs to haha. It’s adorable.

I need to find some new low carb recipes; I don’t want to get bored with what I have in my arsenal, but it seems to me that we repeat the same handful of meals, or variations thereof, fairly frequently. Before we started eating low carb, I would never repeat a recipe more than once every couple of months, unless it was a special request for a birthday or something. I need and crave mealtime variety. I think mostly because I love to cook and be challenged in the kitchen. So if anyone has suggestions, lay them on me! Especially baked goods! I have been experimenting with flour alternatives. So far I like almond, and loathe soy. Bleh, it has such an odd taste, I just can’t bring myself to like it! I have some pecan meal that I’m eager to bake something with–other than just using it as a crust. I’m curious if I could make some sort of pecan cookie or shortbread.

Also, I feel like everybody and their grandma announced they were pregnant today…happy for them, sad for us. Seriously though, there was nearly a double digit number of announcements. Blergh. We’ve been trying for #2 for nearly a year…I’m beginning to think it’ll never happen. I’d like to lose more weight first anyway, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t sting a little that my body is incapable of doing what it should!!

Anywho, enough of my rambling for today! Happy hump day!

Yet another quickie

Just a note to say that I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth lol. I’ve been staring at a computer for most of the weekend, and  frankly, I just want to enjoy the few remaining hours before yet another chaotic week begins.

I’ve been behaving (mostly) diet wise, but my water intake has been in the pooper so I def will be stepping that up tomorrow. I wonder if infusing water with fruit adds carbs? I want to start doing that again. Got in some exercise with a walk yesterday but it was short because I was working so…not that great.

Anyway, hope you all had a wonderful weekend…looking forward to the warmer, drier weather that is headed in our direction. Means I’ll get more quality time outside with the munchkin!

PS- I made tiramisu. Holy crap, it blew my mind! So I’ll have to be sure to post that recipe as well!

Life is chaos! But there’s always time for a danish!

Holy moly, spring is in full swing! It seems like everyone wants us to be here or there. Sheesh! I want a weekend at home to re-cooperate!

So weigh in day went ok…294.6! Can’t complain about that after such a big drop last week, and the fun weekend we had!

The last couple of days I’ve been well behaved; drinking all my water, eating clean and hovering around 1200 calories/25 grams of carbs or less, getting a walk in or moderate physical activity in. I feel like I should up my activity, maybe add some high intensity interval training to really maximize my workout time.

As I promised, here is the Cheese Danish recipe…trust me, and make this. It doesn’t taste like diet food at all. Creamy, cheesy, decadent breakfast pastry goodness that totally feels like a cheat and isn’t!

adapted from uplateanyway.com….such a great blog! This is a three step process that *looks* like hard work  but really, isn’t too bad and comes together super quickly.

Ingredients:

Dough

——-

1. 1 1/4 cup 2% mozzarella shredded cheese (140 grams) (this type of cheese is important; using other types of mozzarells alters the texture and adds starch, etc.)
2. 6 tbsp Almond Flour (42 grams) (I didn’t have almond flour, so I used soy flour instead…turned out just fine, but did alter the carb count from the original recipe)
3. 3 tbsp Coconut Flour (21 grams)
4. 4 tbsp sugar equivalent
5. 1/2 tsp baking powder
6. 1/2 tsp vanilla
7. 1 egg (large)

Filling

——

1. 6 oz cream cheese
2. 1 tsp lemon juice (I omitted this and it turned out fine)
3. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4. 1/4 cup sugar equivalent
5. 1 egg yolk

Glaze

——-

1. 3 tbsp powdered sweetener (she ground hers up in a coffee grinder, I just used regular Splenda in the giant bag; it was very thick though)
2. 2 tbsp heavy cream
3. 2 oz cream cheese
4. 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Filling

1. Soften cream cheese and combine with lemon juice, vanilla, and sweetener and egg yolk using a whisk or electric mixer. Set aside in the fridge until you are ready with the dough.

Dough

1. Measure out almond flour, coconut flour, and baking powder. Combine well with a whisk.
2. Melt 4 tbsp butter and add vanilla and sweetener. Stir.
3. Melt 1 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese in the microwave, working in 1 minute increments.
4. Combine all the ingredients and add an egg.
5. Stir until batter is combined and the cheese and dough are completely mixed. Use your hands or a spatula to press and fold the cheese and the batter together. Reheat for 10 seconds in the microwave. Press and fold some more until 99% of the dough is all one color. (Tip-this gets sticky and if you wet your hands a little it helps tremendously. The water from your hands will stop the stickiness on the outside of the dough making it very easy to roll out.)
6. Reheat dough for 10 seconds and roll out into a square the approximate length of a rolling pin and slice into four quarters with a pizza slicer. You could also make 6 danishes to stretch the recipe a bit further and cut the carbs down even more! They won’t be huge, but they will still hit the spot.
7. Fold the corners into the center repeating with all four squares.
8. Spoon the filling into the center of each danish.
9. Bake for 10-12 minutes. (Check on this at 10 minutes and make sure to remove it from the oven as soon as it has a deep golden brown color!)

Frosting

1. Soften cream cheese in the microwave and add powdered sweetener, heavy cream and vanilla. Mix well with a whisk and pour into a ziploc bag. Cut a tiny hole in the corner and pipe onto each danish.

These are divine little bits of heaven!!!

Hope you enjoy the recipe!

KK

Busy, Busy.

Sorry for the radio silence yesterday; long story short, hubby and I booked a last minute vacay with some friends of ours so we were going back and forth deciding what to do and taking care of that last night. So yeah…in 19 days, we will be sailing off into the sunset! Can’t wait. We took a cruise together about a year after we started dating and it was heaven. I’m hoping we have the same experience! I’m pretty bummed that I’ll be spending all of Mother’s Day cooped up in the car for 20+ hours and away from my baby girl…still not sure how well I will handle being away from her for a week but I guess we will see!

So the past couple of days have been great. I’ve stayed on par with my carbs– 20 net yesterday, 30 net today. Calories yesterday were better than today. Yesterday was just barely 1200, today is nearly 1900….but that also includes a few beers lol. And I made a comfort food kind of dish for dinner that is heavier than we normally eat. I will def be posting the recipe for it because I am blown away by how awesome it turned out!! It was a shepherd’s pie, but instead of potatoes or cauliflower to make the mashed potatoes, I used a roasted butternut squash, seasoned up with some savory spices, butter, cream, etc. Then topped it all with a mozzarella/provolone blend and some bacon… and OH. MY. GOODNESS. lol! Yum! Plus I still owe you guys the recipe for the danishes, which are also fan-freaking-tastic!! So I’ll get that done this week.

Enough of that tangent lol. I’ve been drinking 3/4 gallon water the last couple days. Better than the weekend when I drank almost none! Workout….yeah, not so much. It’s turned cold again so I haven’t been getting out with the munchkin. Not a great excuse, I know. I need to make exercise a priority but it’s hard to get back into it after any amount of time off! I also know that drinking as much as we do is hampering our progress. We have a 4 beer max per day, but even drinking the low carb light beer, that ‘s 400 calories and 12.5 grams of carbs. Hello, empty calories AND carbs! 😦 but I just love beer so darn much haha!

Definitely worried about being on vacation for a week. Do i stick to as much low carb as I can? Do I just relax for a week and enjoy, but track religiously so I don’t go too crazy?? Have one splurge day and the rest strict low carb?? I’m at a loss. I don’t want to deprive myself; I’d rather enjoy our vacay and worry about it when I come back BUT…I don’t want to gain back everything I’ve lost, either. And our lives are going to be so chaotic the next few weeks. We will be away from home this weekend, celebrating our anniversary after that, and then vacay. When did my life get so busy?!

Worried about weigh in day tomorrow, too. I know I went a little crazy over the weekend on the caloric end. Ate a bunch of high fat no/low carb food to try to stay on track away from home. We will definitely have to plan that better in the future!

Enough whining I suppose. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!

KK