Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Chili - WW style

So here I am on the last day of my vacation (boohoo!) and I thought I would share one of my sister's recipes that was so tasty plus filling and low in points (4pts per cup).  A great dish to take to a pot-luck.

Start off with a protein - boca crumbles or chicken tenders - and throw it into the crock pot (don't have one, get one!)
Step 2: one package of dried ranch dressing mix and one package of dried chili mix
Next: drain a can of black beans, white beans, chili beans, and hominy (rinse these if you want to decrease the salt content of your chili)
Next: add a can of ranch beans or another can of chili beans, undrained
Now add a couple cans of diced tomatoes and/or Mexican spiced canned tomatoes
Water, if needed

Plug it in, go have a great day....come home to a wonderful meal.  You will even have plenty for a couple of lunches.  Makes a great taco salad.

If you can have some extra points that day, add some sour cream or cheese. Or, as you can see from the photo, my sister added fresh green beans and a wedge of laughing cow light Swiss cheese.

PS: remember to rinse out and recycle all those cans!!

Sunday, June 06, 2010

A puzzling formula

As some of you know, I struggle with late night eating.  I'll find myself exhausted from work but unable to go to bed, instead I'll sit watching hours of hulu.com or netflix.com.  Periodically I'll get up to wander around the house while thinking about eating something, finally making my way into the kitchen.  There I'll stand with the refrigerator door wide open, letting the light shine on me (isn't there a song about this? something about this little light?) Mostly I'm looking for anything sweet and chocolate so I can raise the blood sugar and get a shot of caffeine and stay up even longer.

Part of this is not wanting to go to bed so the next day doesn't come so quickly....well, actually ALL of this is about not wanting the next day to come.  Sleep, commute, work, commute, hang out at home in an exhausted stupper, and then start all over again. Kind of sounds like boredom but before I go down that rabbit hole I need to make sure it's not all about some other thought or emotion.  So much can contributed to this resulting formula: staying up too late + overeating  = exhaustion and weight gain.

Since I've lost weight before and gained back half of what I lost, I want to be much more aware of how my emotions contribute to my eating habits this time around. Many of the new food journals neglect to encourage documenting our emotions along with what we eat and our activity.  Here's one I found that looks helpful: One Day at a Time and Linda Spangle's book "Life is Hard, Food is Easy" has an entire chapter about "Head-Hunger and Heart-Hunger".  So I'm on to journally...food, activities AND emotions!  Wish me luck.