Simple baked eggplant recipe

Recipe for baked eggplant:

1 eggplant
Salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups tomato (pasta) sauce
4 oz mozzarella or other cheese

Cut off the ends of the eggplant and discard. Cut the remainder into rounds about 1/2 inch thick - yield about 8 slices. Coat with salt and leave to sit about 20 minutes, until a brown liquid leaches from the eggplant (I hear this removes bitterness). Rinse the salt off of the eggplant. Coat eggplant with olive oil on both sides and bake on a cookie sheet at 350 F for about 15 minutes, until it displays a soft, spongy texture when poked with a fork. Remove eggplant from the oven and top each slice with 1/4 cup tomato sauce and 1/2 oz grated cheese. Return to oven until cheese is melted. Serve with bread or pasta.

Serving size 2 slices, servings 4, about 210 calories per serving.

Sugar binge

Monday 12/27

Toast, scrambled eggs with chard and swiss, and 1/2 grapefruit (90+140+30+100+100=460)
2 chocolate truffles (210)
2 caramel waffle cookies and coffee (250)
1/2 TLC sandwich and tangerine (90+110+100+30+40=370)
Mini cupcake, pistachios, and chocolate (100+160+150+220=630)
Skinny Cow ice cream, 2 bars and 1 cup (200+150)
Chicken vegetable soup and a stroopwafel (500+125=625)
2 mini cupcakes (200)

460+210+250+370+630+350+625+200=3095

This is the diet of someone who has had too much sugar sitting right in front of her face for too many days in a row. But I tried! I started off with a healthy breakfast, see...

Hoping for better luck tomorrow.

Merry Christmas

I'm not weighing in this week because the number is unreliable - I had a super low weight yesterday due to special circumstances on Thursday, and a fairly high number today due to special circumstances yesterday, also known as Christmas Eve dinner.

However, I will talk about today a little. I figured I'd go to my parents' house, eat lots of chocolate and some teff muffins and also a real breakfast, stop by home and eat salad if I was hungry, and then go the dinner and not eat a ton of appetizers because I would have either eaten salad or not been hungry in the first place.

Unfortunately, my parents' plans did not involve a real breakfast and so until one o'clock pretty much all I ate was sugar. I'm sure the fiber-y, protein-y teff muffins helped a bit, but they were still basically a sweet carb-based food. So I was really pretty strung out by the time I got home and I ate some leftovers with my salad for lunch. I got myself back on basically the level, but it wasn't a good foundation for the day and I also ate a little cupcake on my way out the door and I did not have particularly good calorie control at the dinner.

I ate enough today to gain half a pound. I don't feel bad about it, but I'm a little worried about tomorrow. We're out of eggs, as well as many other things, since we usually shop on Saturday, so there isn't an evident protein source to get back on track with a healthy wholesome breakfast. I don't want to end up eating the waffle-pressed caramel cookies with coffee for breakfast. Maybe I will have a rice cake with cheese?

Solstice dinner observations and low calorie muffins

Last night my parents hosted Solstice dinner. I had allotted 1500 calories for dinner and I'd planned out my meals in the day and gone to Bikram in the morning such that even with the big dinner I'd have a small deficit for the day.

Solstice dinner is always a root vegetable soup, lots of bread and fancy cheese, and often a dessert that varies. I also made an appetizer that was on sample at the grocery store with chocolate and sea salt melted over oiled baguette. So I had a couple pieces of chocolate bread, then sat down to dinner. Starting off with a bowl of soup, and the various cheeses made their way around the table. I took a few pieces of bread and took small samples of each cheese that was available. There was a lot of cheese, but I didn't think I'd have trouble putting it away. I certainly had less on my plate than I've eaten in previous years. But this year, I was barely halfway through my cheese when I started to get full! I slowed down, sipped some wine to cut through the fat, and had another bowl of soup for nutrients and fiber. I managed to sample each cheese without becoming uninterested in food, but I was totally stuffed (a phrase I never truly understood the meaning of before now) by the end and only had a few bites of the funny raw-food "cheesecake" that was for dessert.

So that's the downside of losing weight and the dietary changes that come with it. You get used to eating small portions, and then when you get to an event where there's lots of good food you want to eat, your body has forgotten how to take it in stride. I used to have a similar problem with Thanksgiving anyway - after having a little of everything, I was too full for seconds of the things I really loved. Anyway, it's interesting to see the internal changes as well as the external changes to my body. I'll have to come up with strategies for satisfying my mouth and my eyes without taxing my stomach too much at events like these. Fortunately (or not?) there will be plenty of practice this week.

In other news, I tweaked the muffin recipe and achieved my goal of yummy, 150 calorie muffins! Now I have to do it all over again with teff flour so I can bring something gluten free to my mom, but here is the wheat recipe:

Low-calorie multigrain wholemeal muffins:

2 Tbsp white sugar
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp oil
2 eggs
1 cup applesauce

1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup oatmeal, crushed
1/4 cup cornmeal (polenta)
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

300 calories' worth of add-ins, for instance:
- 1/4 cup dried cranberries, 1/4 cup chopped walnuts, and zest of 1 orange
- 1 diced banana, 1/4 cup chocolate chips, and 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup cubed butternut squash, 1/4 cup sunflower seeds, and a few Tbsp grated ginger

Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then add dry to wet. Fold in the add-ins. Divide into 12 muffin cups and bake for 15-25 minutes.

Notes:

* Calorie content will vary slightly depending on the add-ins and also things like the brand of flour you use. However, as written, this recipe should give 12 muffins at about 150 calories each.
* A high volume of add-ins will result in slightly bigger muffins, and high moisture add-ins will increase the cooking time. So your cranberry-walnut muffins will be smaller and cook more quickly than banana or squash muffins.
* Some possible substitutions: use skim or 2% milk instead of applesauce (approximately calorie equivalent), use another kind of vegetable or fruit puree in place of applesauce, use all-purpose flour instead of whole-wheat, use more oatmeal or less cornmeal to lower calories further (I would keep 1 cup of wheat flour), use all white/all brown/raw sugar, use honey or agave syrup instead of crystalline sugar while cutting down the applesauce/milk a little, vary spices.

Day 99, round 2 - conclusion of phase 2 (posted late)

Yesterday was the last row of my second spreadsheet and my weight was 144.4 pounds. At 29.9% body fat, even! This means that in the past 99 days, I've lost:

18.4 pounds
6.3% body fat
2.5 inches off my waist
a little more than 1 pant size

as well as another 1.75 inches off my thigh. I switched my hip measurement to where it's supposed to be during this phase, so I don't have comparable measurements from beginning to end, and I haven't changed my bra size since the end of last phase.

I can't post a graph because the new Google graphs are funky and don't save properly, and my boyfriend's computer (my power cord broke) doesn't have the program I use to take screenshots. So, no eye candy - sorry.

I've refined my spreadsheet again for phase III. The biggest difference is that I split the exercise column into "calorie burn exercise" and "strength/toning exercise". I need to keep track of them separately, because I need to see clearly whether I'm doing my strength exercises or not. The sheet may look a little more confusing sometimes because certain things, primarily yoga, apply to both - but since it's my sheet, as long as I know what I'm talking about and put the right numbers in the right boxes, I think it's fine.

It's super awesome that I'm only 10 pounds away. I hope that I can meet the next microgoal - 139.6 - by the time school starts back up at the end of January. It will be a little slow-going during the holiday week, and my Europe trip will be a total wildcard, but the final week of winter break I have all the space I need to push for a couple more pounds.

How'd that happen?

Today I weighed in at... 148.8? How did I gain 4.2 pounds in 2 days? Certainly not from the extra calories I've eaten. If I was up to 145.0, I'd understand. I kind of binged over the weekend. But this is clearly a load of crap (well, that, and water).

I've been reluctant to use the word "binge" for my episodes of overeating. I know that true binging is a much uglier affair. When I "binge", I eat about 2500 calories in a day. Many bulimics and binge eaters can eat 2500 calories in a sitting. I also don't have the sense of uncontrol that characterizes problem bineing... I think. I don't feel like I can't stop myself, just like I don't care. I will think "damn it, this is going to put me over maintenance calories, but resisting what I want is just not worth it right now." So... that happens sometimes, and I am reluctant to use the word "binge" not only because it may trivialize a more serious issue, but because I don't want to start thinking of it in terms of that more serious issue, i.e., feeling like I start to lose control simply because I'm using a word that implies that. I brought it out though because I don't know a lighter word for it.

I look back at this weekend and think, what happened? On Friday we spontaneously stopped for a Peanut Buster Parfait after Bikram yoga. I actually thought that was great, because I'd been feeling an itch to have some ice cream, and also chocolate, for a while. I'd been trying to figure in a time when I could afford those calories, and as we were riding home from our 670-calorie workout my boyfriend commented that the 700-calorie dessert sounded real good. I figured - yes, great exchange, I'll still be in deficit for today and this'll satisfy my ice-cream craving so I don't have to think about it anymore. And that seemed to work out great. I don't think this was the trigger. I just bring it up because this was my idea of working to avoid a "binge."

I would be in denial if I didn't acknowledge that pot has something to do with it. Pot causes munchies, and it always seems to cause more irresistible munchies when I go back to it after a break. I don't always go over calories when I smoke pot, but it makes it harder.

I usually "binge" on particular foods, but they aren't "trigger foods" because most of the time I eat those foods in normal amounts. Bread and cheese, particularly mozzarella cheese for some reason, ice cream or chocolate... and then peanut butter is in a special class. Peanut butter is my food that I eat when I'm craving something, but I know I will feel satisfied after just a tablespoon of it.

I might have been pushing it with the carbohydrates in the past week. We did have enriched-flour bagels during the week, and I had made those muffins which, while whole-wheat, obviously contained sugar. Boyfriend wanted to make pizza Saturday night, so that contributed some carbs. And I had eaten random food from the library and coffee on campus earlier in the week. Once I realized I was on the decline, I tried to at least eat protein-heavy foods rather than carbs in the hope of helping to terminate it.

What really I think screws me up though is going off my routine. I get routinized easily, and so I end up forgetting things when the schedule changes. Exercising is harder to make sure I do when it doesn't automatically fit into a slot in my day. I got that intro package at Bikram to go to over the break, but there are two things that aren't working great about my plans to go almost every day: one, I don't actually like Bikram enough to want to go often, and two, their schedule sucks for me. They have classes at 6/8, 9:30/10, 4/5, and 6/7 depending on the day. It's hard to go to class before eating in the day because it's such a hard workout, but it's also hard to get up early enough to eat breakfast, digest, and still go to 9:30 class on a relatively empty stomach - and then you've spent the whole morning. It feels terribly inefficient. By four o'clock, though, I'm not interested in exercise anymore. I would go all the time if they had, say, a 12 noon class. The other problem with falling out of routine is it's very hard, even just on weekends, for me to remember to drink water when I'm not at school. At school, I sit down with my backpack in front of me and my water bottle ready to jump into my left hand while I take notes with my right about four times a day. At home, I leave my water bottle or water glass in one room, wander into another, and forget about it. Finally, without a schedule of tasks, it's easy to think it's time to eat sooner, because there's nothing I have to accomplish first.

So here I am, four spurious pounds up, and tomorrow is the end of phase 2. I really want to shed most of this by tomorrow to get an accurate view of how much I've lost in these 99 days. I took a Cascara Sagrada this morning, which may sound a little bit bulimic, but it's really not, because the calories are long since absorbed - I just want to get the poop out. I'm also going to drink at least 4 bottles of water today (what I was drinking during the cleanse, 3 being typical for a schoolday) to flush out the bloating. I'll check my weight throughout the day and possibly take another Cascara in the afternoon, pay attention to fiber and salt content, etc. I admit it's rather shallow to be so concerned about my weight on a particular day, but okay, I care, and to be fair, it's as much about accuracy as anything else.

What's a little disturbing about these "binges" is that they tend to peter themselves out between 2000-2500 calories. Why should that be disturbing? Because the "that's enough" response is neither totally overridden nor occurs at an appropriate level. My body naturally stops me between 2000-2500 calories in a day. There's evidence of adaptation, because I usually feel rather stuffed and not entirely comfortable after that large amount of food, and also, if I am eating slowly and have been eating good food and gotten my exercise, I notice the cues coming in at the level I want them to - feeling satisfied at each meal at a point that lets it all add up to 1500-1800. But it appears that some aspects of my appetite are resistant to change. I just hope I am not fighting the urge to eat 2300 calories a day and weigh 165 pounds forever.

Cranberry-orange walnut muffins

So I made some delicious kinda-low-calorie muffins today, adapted from a few different recipes I found on the internet:

Dry:
1 1/4 c. whole-wheat flour
1/2 c. dry oatmeal
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp. cinnamon

Wet:
1 egg
1/3 c. sugar
3/4 c. unsweetened applesauce
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp water

Mix dry and wet, then fold in:
1/3 c. dried cranberries
1/4 c. chopped walnuts
Zest of 1 orange

Drop into muffin cups and bake 12-20 minutes at 375 F. I was expecting to get 12 muffins from the recipe, but it only made 8, and at that rate these are 205 calories apiece. They are really good, but I'd like to get a muffin of similar size down to 150 calories. If I could do that, I'd probably bake a batch of muffins each weekend and have them as an alternative to toast or bagels at breakfast, and take them to school for afternoon snacks.