What is on your Tuesday Menu RNYers?

I have had moon cheese once before, but just ordered Mr. Cheese Os this weekend, so they should be arriving soon. I'm hoping it will seem like a treat (at least for a little while).

Good Morning Everyone!

QOTD:  I've really been into salads lately and I LOVE Moon cheese!

My menu for today:

Breakfast:  2 eggs, sunny side up, 3 slices bacon

Lunch:  1/2 Wendy's apple pecan chicken salad

Dinner:  Homemade taco salad

Snack:  Oiko's Triple Zero greek yogurt

Snack:  2 string cheese sticks

Snack:  Moon cheese

Snack:  Sugar-free pudding w/ cool whip

Exercise:  Walking the dogs

Have a fantastic day everyone!

~ Karen  

I had an epiphany this weekend. I confess, I used to believe that people became morbidly obese because they eat A LOT. In my mind "a lot" amounted to, bags of food at McDonalds, a whole pizza in one seating, the entire box of one dozen donuts at Dunkin Donuts, etc....in other words, thousands of excess calories. This, of course, did not apply to me! I didn't eat "that much". I may eat more than some, but not like THAT. Then I read another thread posted on these boards and there was a link, I believe Grimm provided it, to an article about not losing weight and unknowingly over eating. Basically the article was saying that it is an easy calculation, if you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight...and even if you THINK you aren't eating more calories than you burn, you are wrong. Either you aren't measuring right, aren't counting everything you eat, etc. I processed this and put it in the back of my mind.

Yesterday morning, after 3+ weeks of eating many of my trigger foods (per doctor's orders *wink), I woke up 5 pounds heavier. Five pounds in three weeks. Maybe it isn't all fat, maybe two pounds is water retention. Lets say I gained 3 pounds in 3 weeks. 3500 calories per pound, times 3 pounds, equals 10,500 calories....divided by 21 days is 500 extra calories that I ate per day in excess of what my body burned. Then I went back and looked at my food log since June. When I lost weight, I was consistently eating around 800 calories a day. So lets pretend my body uses 1000 calories a day to keep itself running. If I eat less than 1000, I will lose weight. If I eat more, I gain weight...if I eat 500 calories more every day for 3 weeks, I gain 3 pounds. Epiphany! A 1500 calorie diet is no daily binge at McDonalds. For me it is a bowl of cereal and milk, plus a serving of crackers with a wedge of laughing cow cheese in addition to my planned meals. Eye opening!

So, I pick myself up and dust off, back to the drawing board. I am now armed with the knowledge that 1000 calories is the dividing line. Eat more and I gain, eat less and I lose. Do I wish that line were higher...heck yes! But it is not.

QOTD: Favorite food...can I change that to "favorite method of cooking my go-to food?" My go to food needs to be chicken breast for the sheer fact that it is low in fat and high in protein...but I am abysmal at cooking a juicy chicken breast, so I tend not to eat it. Well I found a new way to cook chicken breast and it has worked three times in a row now...and it doesn't matter how thick the chicken is!:

Brown chicken breast on med/high heat for 1 min.

Flip and brown for 1 min. on opposite side.

Turn burner to low and cover for 10 minutes (do not peak!)

After 10 min. turn burner off (still no peaking) and set time for additional 10 min.

That is it! It comes out perfect all the time and you can add any seasonings you want before adding the chicken to the pan. I've done lemon pepper and last night I tried a dry bbq rub. Yum!

B: bacon, egg, and wheat toast
S: 3 oz. lemon pepper chicken
L: 3 oz. roasted turkey breast
S: 2 oz. bbq chicken breast
D: 3 oz. Korean beef lettuce wraps

Calories: 825

Protein: 89

Carbs: 39

Great epiphany, and great fool proof way to cook chicken. Moist is where it's at...My favorite is sprinkled with cajun spice.

I use Tony Chachere's Cajun spice on EVERYTHING!! Although we picked up this seven pepper spice from SAMS on Saturday (They had samples of it on lamb chops and it was divine!), and I will probably start using that in conjunction with my Tony's! Love my cajun spices!

Yes! I say all the time--weight loss isn't magic, it's math! It's still not easy, but it's not a mystery...

Great insight.

Put another way, 500 calories is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And not a very large one at that. It doesn't SEEM like a lot of food. It's what a toddler has for a meal. But boy, it adds up fast.

I think there were two articles posted that day and I loved them!!!  Hit the nail right on the head.  My husband used to always be surprised that I gained weight with what I ate (and I wasn't eating in secret), but it is just simple math.  I was eating too many calories.  Plain and simple.  Like now, although I am at my original goal and could be satisfied here, I would like to lose more; however, I am basically maintaining, which means I am eating too many calories to lose weight right now.  If I want to lose more, I will have to make a few more changes.

true.  I used to average around 3000 kcal a day.  We have men in our office who probably eat that much, so it wasn't like I was sucking down a large pizza every day.  In fact, it would have probably been a "normal" amount for some people, like very active, younger males.  But it was way too much for *me*.  My older, shorter, female, not-so-active body just didn't need nearly that many calories.  So I do get annoyed when people assume morbidly obese people eat a dozen donuts for breakfast, 3 or 4 Big Macs & a large fries & a shake for lunch, and an entire large pizza for dinner.  I'm sure there are some out there, but I think a lot of us just ate too much *for us*.

Yeah. Some of us gain a bunch, quickly, when some major life crisis smacks us upside the head. But we also gain by increments. One pound a month, every month, for twenty years is 240 pounds overweight. And one pound a month is a nothing amount of food.