Lurrrv alfredo! I had a recipe—it’s basically chicken broth or stock with salt and pepper to taste, then cream and parmesan or romano. I found some “fat free” half and half and of course, you can get reduced fat cheese. After cooking it down a bit, I added some corn starch/water to thicken. It wasn’t bad!
I used to make tortilla wraps a lot. Get the smaller low carb tortillas, smear a wedge of reduced fat laughing cow or some reduced fat Philly with chives on it. Then, depending on what you want:
shrimp sauce, lemon pepper, canadian bacon or shrimp + greens
brown mustard, kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, onion + garlic powder + roast beef or pastrami, + greens
drained salsa (i.e. the solids) + kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, onion + garlic powder + any of the lunch meats you like + greens
Get some nice butter lettuce or some of the fancy stuff with raddichio etc.
Roll them up (toothpick through them if you’re making a bunch and are saving them or a party etc., cello and refrigerate). These weigh in at only about 2 points.
Folks in this thread will find this site very useful. It has the nutritional information on everything from Subway sandwiches to sexual activity: http://www.calorie-count.com/
If you’re a choco hound, here’s something to note: I have some Nestle cocoa (for baking, not sweetened or anything) and the nutritional info, per Tb: 15 calories, 1 g fat, 2 g fiber.
If you apply the WW formula: (15/50) + (1/12) -(2/5), = .3 +.08-.4 = -.92
That’s right: this cocoa counts NEGATIVE points! The problem is that it’s unsweetened, so most people are going to add sugar, the calories are going to go way up, yadda. However, now that we have zero cal sweeteners like Splenda, maybe it doesn’t have to be that way.
One really simple, practical application is to experiment, add a smidge to something you’re already making, like your pudding. The sweet is already in there, and you may not even have to add Splenda. Turbo chocolate!
At the market around the corner, they have chocolate angel food cake. I wonder if it’s fewer points than the “regular.” And btw, traditional angel food cake in general is good for low points; it doesn’t thrill me but with cool whip free and some fresh fruit (maybe a few drops of almond extract on the fruit), it’s good.
BUT, if you can find it, sour cream angel food cake is the bomb.
Yea, one reason I pay a bit of attention to sodium is family history of hypertension. Plus I just find it weird (just like 1000 calories meal or 40% fat) to get so much of extra of what I need out of a meal that I know is not proportional to what I’m eating (and I know I’ll get plenty of it with the other meals).
I use this site everyday. To lose weight is calories out more that calories in with a balanced diet. The website helps with your percentages of fat/soduim/carbs etc.
I have no comment on the OP’s actual complaint, but I do want to add my little calorie-cutting trick: LaCroix flavored sparkling waters in cans. Just carbonated water and fruit flavoring, no sweeteners of any kind, no sodium, no calories. There’s a bunch of flavors: lime, lemon, pamplemousse (grapefruit), berry, orange, and cran-raspberry.
The best part is, you feel like you’re having a can of soda. I cut down from a 4-5 cans of Coke a day habit to roughly the same amount in sparkling water, and with no other dietary changes, lost 11 pounds in four months.
I’ve also taken the WW chocolate smoothie mix and added a couple of spoonfuls to a bowl of puffed corn with non-fat milk. Tastes vaguely like cocoa puffs.
I’ve been using Sparkpeople for four months now to track my eating and it is working really, really well. I’ve gone from being completely ignorant about nutrition to having a wonderful in control of my life feeling. I eat an average of 1500 calories a day- some days more, some days less- and I never, ever feel deprived. And I still eat tons of pizza, just carefully made, with a low calorie tortilla and lots of veggies and little to no meat, and even a decent amount of cheese. I couldn’t do this if I couldn’t eat pizza, or, for that matter if I couldn’t eat any particular “bad” thing.
I walk for an hour 3-4 times a week, and I’m enjoying eating more than I ever have in my life because I never feel bad about anything I eat. It all fits into my daily plan, be it chicken and veggies, a big old salad, pizza- or even the 2 Taco Bell Fresco chicken soft tacos I had after work today. Yeah, even with a Fourth Meal I still currently have 200 calories allotted to me for the rest of the day. I shall celebrate with 8 ounces of white wine.
Since the beginning of April I’ve lost 33 pounds. I never thought I could be anything but fat.
I recommend a daily calorie tracker for everyone trying to lose weight. However, I know it’s not really possible or workable for everyone, so as much as I would like to yell at all people trying to lose weight to do it I can only share my experience that it works for me.
Here’s an interesting item…one of the problems with WW is that some don’t want to have to write down everything they eat, and they may not have pen/paper with them.
*Question: How do I use the bracelet to keep track of my food intake? You simply move the charm according to the number of points (or whatever unit of measure you choose) you ate. For example, if you eat an apple, you move the charm to the right to indicate a point. *
What a great item, lobotomyboy. If I were doing WW I’d be all about that. I really like the idea of having a talisman of my success and hard work. For me when I lose 40 pounds I think I’m going to either go to the Coach outlet and get a purse or go to Target and get a Nintendo DS. My inner girly girl and my inner geek are currently locked in a death match.
My doctor said I was getting close to diabetic. She suggested we look at drugs. I said no way ,I will lose weight . In the last 6 weeks I have dumped about 25 pounds. At that rate, in 10 months I will be gone.
Well, we did measurements/weight at the gym yesterday. I have only lost 5 lbs in 10 weeks - I’m kinda bummed about that. However, I have lost 2 inches in my thighs, 2 inches in my hips, 4 inches in my waist and 2 inches around the chest. I have gained 1/2 inch in the upper arms - and mostly lost my underarm “wings”. I’ve lost 4% body fat.
I am still having trouble eating correctly - I just don’t eat often enough, according to my trainer. I’m just not hungry.
Even without weight loss I think my results are encouraging so I’ll keep up the workouts.
Um, that’s actually very, very good for 10 weeks. All of that weight that you haven’t “lost” is now skeletal muscle. Go calculate how much a 2" and 4" circumference loss actually works out in terms of volume (assume the human body is a cylinder to make the math easier and just use a conservative knockdown factor like 0.7), and multiply by 0.03 lbs/in[sup]3[/sup] (the approximate mass of adipose tissue). I think you’ll be surprised as to just how much fat you’ve actually lost, and how much muscle you’ve put on. This is why BMI measures can be misleading and weight is a nearly worthless estimate of fitness or effectiveness.
Since this seems to have turned into a general weight-loss discussion, I’m going to go ahead and pose a question: does anyone have any opinion on using SlimFast? I don’t have all that much control over my meals (I’m locked into a college meal plan, unfortunately, which means my choices are either “greasy as hell” or “salad with no dressing”), and my plan to lose ten pounds this summer has failed miserably (and by miserably I mean I’ve gained three pounds). In a last-ditch effort I picked up a six-pack of SlimFast shakes at CVS the other day. Anyone use it (and hopefully have encouraging success stories)?
The original Slim-Fast drink was little more than dehydrated or condensed low-fat milk and flavorants. I guess they have some more balanced stuff now, but I think it probably lacks bulk on its own, though if you also have some high bulk vegetables or fruits that may help. The big problem with stuff like Slim-Fast, though, is that it presents the notion that calorie control is something you do until you lose weight, and then you go back to eating like before, rather than being a permanent change in your diet. (Well, I guess you can eat Slim-Fast for the next sixty years, but ugh!)
I don’t know what to tell you about college meal plans; the school I went to had absolutely awful cafeteria food (the cafeteria was actually shut down one week for health code violations) and I did the college diet of popcorn, ramen noodles, and junk food–and ballooned from it–until I could live off-campus. I’m guessing you don’t have cooking areas and probably can’t prepare food in the rooms, so…
I think this may be one of your favorite lines about your mom, but you really need to drop this one from your collection…because I can’t think of a woman alive who willingly weighs herself in front of ANYONE! I weigh myself naked in the bathroom before my shower…this is not a time for my children to be in the room. And when I get weighed at the doctor, my kids aren’t with me.
Sorry to get picky about this one statement, but it kind of jumped out at me.
Yeah, I know it’s a short-term thing. I guess I’m hoping that if I can knock those pounds off, keeping them off won’t be as hard - I gained this weight due to a semester of intense stress and ankle injuries. I just checked and the list of various nutrients and stuff runs the entire height of the SlimFast can, so I guess it’s got some good stuff in it.
And yeah, there is a common kitchen across the courtyard I can use, and I have a minifridge and microwave in my room. The main issue is that after paying for the required meal plan, I can’t afford much more than ramen and rice. I did just realize that I can feasibly buy my own damn low-fat salad dressing at least (as we do have a decent salad bar in the cafeteria).
Blah. I’m off to wallow in self-loathing. It went away for a while in the gym, but now it’s back.
