When Nutrition Labels Fail You.

Anyone see anything wrong with my Chobani Greek Yogurt nutrition information? Serving Size: 1 container. Servings per container: 2. Awesomeness!

Homemade Hummus

I hated hummus when I first tried it. I'm not exactly sure when or how it happened but now I adore it! Tim and I both eat alot of hummus. The problem is that hummus can be pretty expensive, especially when you eat it like we do. There are only a few ingredients necessary to make your own hummus and its really easy and inexpensive to make at home.

Last night before bed I made a big batch. Its a Weight Watchers recipe that I adapted for the ingredients I had on hand.

In a food processor combine:

• 2 cans of Garbanzo Beans
• 5 cloves of garlic (I like alot of garlic!)
• 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 3 Tbsp Tahini (I used peanut butter, couldn't find my Tahini)
• 6 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 cumin
• 1 1/4 tsp salt

Blend all ingredients for about 2 minutes or until really smooth. It makes 14 servings! (1/4 cup each). I wish I had some roasted red peppers to put in it, but I didn't. Next time I will try that for sure though!

In other news, I got my Amazing Grass in the mail today! Yay! I love getting treats in the mail. Its so exciting! I wasn't expecting it to come so quickly, but they shipped it Priority Mail at no extra cost. One thing I already like about Amazing Grass is that their shipping prices are included in the product price, so you don't pay anything extra for shipping when you order online.

We ordered 4 sample packs to try because we couldn't decide on which one to get.

I'll let you know my verdict after I try them. I did make Lincoln a smoothie with the Kidz SuperFood in it and he sucked it down!

Do you like hummus? What do you eat it on? What's your favorite flavor? Have you ever made it from scratch?

Goals for The Week

First of all, there is something that has been on my mind that I want to discuss. For all you Biggest Loser fans, last night on the episode when they had to order all of their food out, did you notice that they said to make sure their fruit didn't contain any: bananas, melons, or grapes? I keep thinking that maybe I misunderstood what they were saying. Surely they don't have them on such a strict diet that they can't eat certain fruits! Or do they?

My personal philosophy on fruits and vegetables is that, I didn't get fat eating them and they aren't going to make me fat now. Unless of course, you fry them or saute them in butter. I don't normally count points for fruits and vegetables that I eat raw or cooked without additives.

Every week I like to set a couple goals for myself. My weeks start on Monday (as far as weigh-in goes), so I'm a little late blogging these but thats ok. My goals for this week are:

• To only weigh on weigh-in day.
• To track everything I eat on Weight Watchers and Spark People.

I signed up for Spark People several months ago, but I stopped using it because I felt like it was too time consuming and redundant to track my food on both Weight Watchers and Spark People. One thing I did like about Spark People though that Weight Watchers doesn't have is that you can track all of your nutrients. You can actually see a breakdown of your calorie, carb, fat, and protein intake and measure it against the recommended daily amounts. You can track any other nutrients you are interested in as well.

Lately I've been really interested in not only losing weight, but also healthy living. By this I mean that I'm more interested in the nutritional value of what I'm eating than the Points value. So that is why I wanted to start using my Spark People account again. So far I'm doing really good at staying in the correct ranges for calories, carbs, fat and protein.

My other goal for this week is to only weigh on Monday. When I was younger I was completely scale obsessed; I would weigh when I first woke up, after I went to the bathroom, after I ate, after I exercised, anytime I went into the bathroom. You get the idea. I think this stems from growing up in a househould with someone that had eating disorders. My mother struggled with anorexia and bulemia when I was a child. For that reason its really important to me not to be scale obsessed anymore. I usually want to weigh myself every morning when I wake up, but I realize that there will be normal fluctuations from day to day and that weighing on a weekly basis is much more reliable.

My eats for today included:

Kashi GoLean Crunch with Vanilla Oikos Greek Yogurt


A Gala apple, my fave!


Leftover spaghetti squash with meat sauce, and a side salad.


1/2 of a Green Monster (Yep, thats yesterday's pic again)


Steak with mushrooms, green beans, roasted cauliflower, and
a twice baked potato.

I also had a handful of Quaker Quakes Mini Rice cakes, a Crab Delight snack, and a piece of garlic toast. It really seemed like I ate alot today, but I came in at 1450 calories.

I ran 6 miles this afternoon, and it was extremely hard for me today. I don't know if it was because I ran in the afternoon and I normally run in the morning, or if I was just having an off day. I literally felt like I couldn't have taken one more step though, and I felt all weird and dizzy afterwards. I think my body needed the extra calories tonight because I felt much better after dinner.

My First Green Monster

I made my first Green Monster this morning. Take a look at the website if you aren't familiar with Green Monsters. There are many different recipes to try. I made the Virgin Green Monster.

The ingredients are:

• 2 cups fresh spinach
• 1 Tbsp Flax Seed
• 1 banana
• 1 cup milk
• ice

This is what it looks like when its all blended together.

Pretty intimidating looking! I have to admit I was a little scared of what this was going to taste like. I smelled it first, but all I could smell was the banana. So here goes nothing!

And the verdict is:

Its really good! I couldn't taste the spinach at all, it just tastes like a banana smoothie. I'm glad to find another nutritious breakfast. I've really been wearing out the yogurt and granola lately. Now I can mix it up with a Green Monster sometimes.

I ordered some Amazing Grass last night, because I've been curious about it lately. Tim and I sat down together and looked at the website and decided to buy a few sampler packets to try and see what we like. I think these will be good to add into my Green Monsters.

Spaghetti Squash Recipe

I've been wanting to try Spaghetti Squash forever it seems. I've seen it on all kinds of cooking shows, but I've never been able to find it in any store here. Yesterday on our "Grocery Shopping Gone Wild" trip, we were buying some things in the produce section and I turned around and saw the Spaghetti Squash! And .. it was only $.89

I had to do some research to figure out exactly how to cook these crazy things, but it really wasn't hard at all.

First of all, this is what a spaghetti squash looks like:

The first step is to poke holes with a fork all over the squash so that it doesn't explode when you cook it. Then pre-heat oven to 375 degrees and bake the whole squash for 1 hour. I turned mine halfway through.

Meanwhile I made my spaghetti sauce, which is really pretty much just basic meat sauce, but I'll tell you what I did anyway. I used 1 1/4 pound very lean ground beef (93% lean), a tablespoon of minced garlic, 1/2 onion chopped, and 1 large zucchini chopped. I like to add in extra veggies wherever possible.

I sauteed this mixture until the beef was all browned and the zucchine started to get soft. Then I added in 1 jar of spaghetti sauce. I let the sauce simmer on low heat for the whole time the squash was baking.

After 1 hour I removed the squash from the oven, sliced vertically and spooned out all the seeds from the middle.

Once the seeds were removed, I used a fork to gently pull out the strands of the squash.

Top the "noodles" with the meat sauce like you normally would. The texture is a little bit different from real noodles, so you won't fool anyone into thinking they are noodles. But they have essentially no flavor, so it doesn't interfere with the flavor of the sauce at all.

Tim and I both really liked this recipe. I served the spaghetti with a small side salad and we were both pleasantly full.

I was really suprised at the amount of "noodles" you can get out of one squash. I had almost half a squash left after serving us both fairly big portions. I don't know how it will keep in the refrigerator for reheating, but I'm gonna give it a try.

$13 Running Socks

These babies are my $13 running socks:

Tim has been raving about these Wigwam socks for weeks now. We went to Kinnucan's a few days ago and I saw them for sale. Tim insisted that I should buy them.

So today I decided to try them out for my run. When I first put them on they felt like HEAVEN. They were squishy in all the right places, fit exactly like I like them, and weren't too thin or too bulky.

I ran 6.3 miles in them and honestly I have to say once I started running I couldn't tell a difference between these socks and my Champion socks that I normally wear which are $10 for 6 pairs.

I'm gonna have to say the verdict on these socks is a big thumbs down. There is nothing wrong with them really, but I don't think they were really worth the money.

Last Weigh-In Day Post

I have decided that after today I'm not going to post my weight every week. I feel like the scale doesn't always reflect the work that I've done and I don't want anyone (including myself) to get discouraged by that. I've been bouncing up and down alot lately, and rather than focus on the ups and downs of the scale I would rather focus on my nutrition and activity.

The bottom line is that I have lost 100 pounds! Whether I gain a pound this week, or lose 3 pounds next week really doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. The important thing is that I'm active and healthy and that the scale continues to ultimately go in a downward direction. I have about 15-20 more pounds to lose and that might take me 6 weeks or 6 months. Who knows? I'll definitely let you know when I hit my goal weight though. I will also continue to update my weight tracker at the top of the page.

So ... for my final weigh-in post, I gained 0.4 lbs this week. I'm not surprised at all by this, if anything I'm surprised it wasn't more than that. I did ok on my activity this week, but I had a couple of rough days with my eating.

I've been thinking about training for a half-marathon. A friend of mine gave me this article out of a magazine that she found. The only problem I have with this training program is that it seems pretty strict. Because of my odd work schedule I won't always be able to do everything as its posted here. I think I could probably use this as a basis for creating my own custom training program though that would fit my work schedule better.

What do you think of this plan? Do you know of any other training programs that might be better? Would it be reasonable for me to change this around to comply with my work schedule better?