Thing's I've Been Eating: Travel Edition

So I wanted to post a little bit about the things I ate while I was traveling. The first part of the trip was easiest - when I was in Ohio, my friend and I spent all day the first two days at her tanning salon while we were scrapbooking. She bought a few groceries for me and we had a small fridge so it was easy to eat and drink all day long like I was supposed to. The basics were...



Apple slices with peanut butter. I had actually never had this before and didn't plan it or ask for her to buy it... it just sort of happened when we were trying to figure out breakfast. It ended up being DELICIOUS. Yum. It takes me 2-3 sittings to finish a gala apple (which are pretty small), so I use lemon juice to keep the slices from browning too much so I can eat them over a couple of days.



Light string cheese and turkey breast slices. Nothing fancy... but a good meal.



Cream cheese cracker... a flatbread cracker with cream cheese and deli meat and cheese on it. Had a couple apple slices with it also.

This was the kind of stuff I ate at the tanning salon the first day. That night we went to this fun restaurant and I ordered this tasty burger:



I didn't even bother getting it with a bun. I cut off 1/4 of the burger which I ate with a few fries. This was what was left over:



I did take the leftovers "home" but didn't end up having much of it. What I DON'T seem to have a picture of - and can't believe it - is the tuna salad! I ordered tuna salad to go from this restaurant too and it turned out to be DELICIOUS. Chrissy and I ate it several times the next day until it was all gone. She had hers as a sandwich, I had mine on my flatbread crackers. It was just so good.

Now on to CHICAGO eats!

First stop was - as usual - Portillo's Hot Dogs.



Just looking at this makes me drool. I absolutely love these hot dogs. Mmmm. I used to eat either 1 or 2 of them, along with a large cheese fry and a large root beer. This time was very different.



I portioned off 1/2 a chili dog and 4 fries for myself. I wasn't able to finish all of the bun but I did finish all of the hot dog and chili :) Yum. I also had ONE sip of Sarah's root beer when I was all done. That was awesome. :) Here's my leftovers:



The next morning we went to my favorite breakfast place, Walker Bros. I got a Denver Omelette. It was HUGE!!! Check it out compared to my hand:



Here was my portion, about 1/6 of the whole thing, plus a piece of bacon.



I ate pieces of this for breakfast most of the time I was in Chicago! It reheated well and was super tasty.

Now for the WEDDING! I was very curious how that was going to go. Luckily, there was a LOT of time between each course. I just ate the things I really wanted.

First they sent around appetizers and I had ONE meatball. Pretty small but good protein, and it was a good 30 mins before the dinner began.



First course was cream of chicken and wild rice soup. It was a nice small portion and didn't have too much rice in it. It was FANTASTIC so I ended up eating all of it along with a very small piece of roll with some butter.



It looks big in the picture but it's a VERY small plate and a very small bowl.

The next course was a salad. I took a picture, but I didn't touch this. I don't really do salad now, and even if I did, this one had mushrooms and a mushroom dressing.. pass!



The main course was a chicken marsala dish. I pushed all the mushrooms off and just ate 1/2 of the chicken... ignored everything else.



Here's what was left:



At this point I was full but luckily it was a little while before we had cake. The pieces of cake were also VERY thin which was perfect... it was light and delicate, vanilla cake with a not-too-sweet frosting and a lemon filling. Yum.



No leftovers... I finished that :) All in all this was a success! At other weddings I have stuffed my face and if I didn't like everything in the meal I'd be cranky because I wasn't full. This was so much more enjoyable!!!

One of the other meals I had while I was out there was pizza at Tore & Luke's. Just one slice, and it wasn't thin crust.. .I cut it in half and was still only able to eat mostly the toppings, left 3/4 of the crust behind. I ate one half at lunch and another half 3 hours later.



Another night we went to Red Robin. I love this club sandwich...



I ate the fillings of 1/2 the sandwich, one piece of cantaloupe, and I'm not sure how many fries but it was too many. I ended up WAY too full. This was a case of having accidentally gone 7 hours without eating... we were out, we were busy, and I just wasn't able to eat. I was so hungry and ate too fast and before I knew it I was totally stuffed and uncomfortable. I had pain in my chest for like four hours, so that was NOT fun. I have since had this sandwich again here at home, and ate the appropriate amount and it was all okay. Whew.

Another night we went to Friday's, which has my favorite mozzarella sticks in the world. I was with 2 friends and we got the appetizer:



I had two, with some ranch:



I had planned on splitting the chicken and shrimp dinner with Sarah. But after the two mozzarella sticks, I was FULL! Totally full. Fried stuff seems to fill me up super fast. I couldn't even touch my dinner. It was sweet they even split it onto two plates! Here is what would have been my half:



Sad I couldn't eat any of it... but I loooved my mozzarella sticks :) Sarah took the other half of the dinner home to eat later :)

That's all the pictures I have of food from my trip! I hope you enjoyed it.
I felt like such a NORMAL person on this trip!!!!!! I ENJOYED my food very much still, but I didn't obsess... I wasn't hungry ALL the time and constantly thinking about my next meal. Best of all I was able to be ACTIVE and not exhausted, and when I was exhausted it was because I was up til 3am, not because of being too fat to do anything. It was a great time.

Adventures in Eating Out

This is gonna be a long one! I haven't posted much food lately so I've built up a lot of photos from my adventures in eating out. From a family BBQ, to on-the-go, to restaurants... I've been doing it all. I don't usually CHOOSE to. When Ian and I have the choice we stay home! But I have always planned to live as normal of a life as possible post-op and saying no to social engagements is not really something I want to do... within reason of course!

So here I am going to share my recent adventures in eating out :)


FAMILY BBQ

We've had a lot of family BBQ's this summer but thankfully the last couple have had healthier fare (and not just bratwurst!) At the last one, my aunt and grandma prepared shrimp skewers with pineapple and veggies. VERY tasty.

Here is my plate:

I had not tried rice yet so I wanted to try it. After one bit I decided I didn't care... it tasted blah. It's not worth eating anything that doesn't taste GREAT, right? So I ignored that. The bread on the other hand was SO delicious, especially with REAL butter on it. I took a VERY small piece and enjoyed every bite. In the end I left some hard crust behind, and I left some veggies behind. Here was what I did not eat:

While I didn't eat any of this, I wanted to share it. It's called Caprese, and it's similar to bruschetta without the bread. Thick slices of mozzarella cheese topped with tomato and basil, drenched in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

It's not my thing, but Ian had one and loved it. It's a side dish involving protein, so definitely a score for a post-op.


Dessert I couldn't get a photo of because it was dark outside (and it didn't look pretty either lol)... but so delicious. She cut 3 huge peaches in half and put them on the grill. Once they were grilled for a few minutes, a scoop of vanilla ice cream went into the hole where the pit used to be. This was SO GOOD! I ate most of my ice cream and maybe 1/3 of the peach, I was too full to have any more. I did wait about 40 minutes in between dinner and dessert.


HOSPITAL CAFETERIA

A couple days after the BBQ, I spent half a day at the hospital with my mom while my dad was having a heart procedure done. (Don't worry, everything is great now!) I thought ahead and packed a lunch box full of stuff I could eat while I was there. My mom got hungry so we went to the cafeteria, and when I saw they actually had some good stuff, I decided to get a meal there too. For their salad bar you just take a plate and put anything you want from that whole area on the plate and they weigh it. I opted for some cold grilled chicken strips, carrots, and hummus.


Here's my plate, photo taken from afar so you can get an idea of the small plate size on the tray.

Here is what I was NOT able to eat:

I put the chicken and carrot in my lunch box containers and saved it for later :)



OLIVE GARDEN


My sister-in-law and I go to Olive Garden every single time we have lunch together. Because of surgery, it's been a while - we hadn't been since a week before my surgery!! Let's talk for a second about what I USED to consume when I would go to Olive Garden. 1-2 bowls of soup, 2 plates of salad, at least 3-4 breadsticks and 2 glasses of peach tea. Wow.


This time? 1/2 a bowl of soup (which is about 1/2 a cup) and 1/3 of a breadstick. Of course no drink.

It looks like a big bowl of soup, but it's shallow. I ate about half and brought the other half home, which I measured and it was 1/ 2 a cup so I assume the total amount was about 1 cup. That little piece of breadstick is all the bread I had. Big difference from having 4 full breadsticks! I did not eat any salad this time. I wanted to get the most protein from my meal, and also I haven't tried salad yet and I've heard it's hard to digest post op so I didn't want to try it for the first time in public ;)


Closeup of my favorite soup, yum!

And here is my adorable sister in law, Melissa, about to enjoy her lunch:

One last thing I should mention about Olive Garden - since I didn't plan on eating salad, and very little bread, I ordered JUST the bowl of soup instead of the soup, salad, breadsticks lunch and so I saved $2.



ANOTHER STARBUCKS STOP

So I had this one day where I UNEXPECTEDLY ended up being out for a really long time. I had this Best Buy reward coupon I had to spend that day. I went there first and didn't like anything all that much so I decided to check a couple other stores for similar items before deciding what to use the coupon for at Best Buy. I hit 2 stores before I had to make it to my 1-hour workout class. After that I was already hungry but I thought I could hit a couple more stores before going home. Then I kept finding myself near another store I could check. I knew I NEEDED to eat. I pulled through Starbucks and asked for a snack plate - but they were out! I knew a pastry was not in the cards so I decided to go with a breakfast sandwich. Ham, egg, and cheese.

It was a really thick bread so I barely touched that and focused on the insides. But the cheese stuck to the bread so I did have a LITTLE bit of it :) Here is my leftovers:

It tasted SO GOOD, I thought for sure I just ate 500 calories LOL but you gotta do what you gotta do when you are out and need to eat, right? I was pleasantly surprised though when I got home that it was not "that bad"... the stats are: 370 Calories, 16 grams Fat, 32 grams Carbs, 23 grams Protein. I have no idea how to calculate how much of this was in the bread, but I would assume at least 100 cals was the bread (probably more) and at least 15-20grams of the carbs were probably in the bread too. This is not a choice I'd go out of my way to make, but I think it was pretty decent for the situation. And definitely tasty. It also kept me full for about 4 hours!!!


RED LOBSTER

While Ian was on his business trip, I went out to dinner with my aunt and grandma. Their choice was Red Lobster. I figured this would be easy, shrimp and fish are great choices. My dilemma though was that I hate any of that stuff re-heated. I decided to go with grilled shrimp because I could eat it cold after the fact. I paid extra for asparagus as a side which was silly since I barely ate a couple of pieces and it was an extra $3. Ha. Anyway here is the GIGANTIC plate I got:

I decided to use my bread plate to make a smaller portion for myself:

And here is what I left behind:

I also ate 1/2 a biscuit... that was gone so fast it didn't make it into a picture :) Ha.

Overall this is ridiculously overpriced and of no value to me. I sent home ALL the veggies with my grandma. I saved the shrimp but still couldn't get into the idea of eating it the next day so my husband ate it when he got home. With tip I spent $20!! Sigh. So while it was healthy, it was definitely the most I have spent on any meal and it really felt like a waste.

Well that's it for my eating out adventures over the past few weeks. Since I am about to be going on a NINE DAY TRIP (yikes) I'm sure I will have lots to say when I get back about how I dealt with eating away from home for that long.

Life Cafe at Lifetime Fitness

Last week Ian joined up at Lifetime Fitness where I've been going for several months already. I am so happy he joined and we already got to work out together two evenings last week... which definitely contributed to me hitting me new all-time low, because on those days my workout with him was workout #2 for the day! Whew!

He is definitely impressed with the place (as am I). On Tuesday last week, after our workout, we decided to have dinner together in the cafe! There are a lot of choices that work for us as post ops. Even the not-healthy-seeming stuff like pizza is at least made with low fat cheeses and meats. Breakfast items are made with egg beaters. Salad dressings and mayos are low fat. This makes it really easy.

First here are some pics of the cafe:

We decided to try out a BBQ chicken pizza made on flatbread!

We split this in half but I was still only able to eat one slice. This is the size of the slice compared to my hand:

Normally when eating a thin crust pizza I can eat a bigger slice... but the chicken!! Chicken really gets me. So I was perfectly content with this little slice. They gave me a perfect container to take my other slice home:

I can't find the nutrition info online for the flatbread version, only for the regular pizza. In the cafe they listed both and I remember it being about 350 calories for the ENTIRE portion... so on average 87.5 cals per slice? That was a pretty small meal after a workout I guess, LOL! It was very tasty and satisfying though... good balance of protein and carb which is important after working out, too.

I really like the Life Cafe and can't wait to have more meals there with my hubby :)

Party Plate

Last night I went to my first party post-op. I've been to family BBQ's, but those were easy because everyone knew I had surgery. At this party, my friend who hosted it knows I had surgery, and she is about to have surgery herself... but none of her friends know, so we couldn't really say that was how we knew each other, and I didn't want to tell them I had surgery just because that might complicate things for my friend. So although I would typically be open and tell people I had it if they asked, last night was a little different.

Luckily my friend had a very nice spread and I was very happy with my plate. :)

Here's me and the lovely April, and her spread of yummy foods.

Here is what I ended up having:

I had a turkey & cheese pinwheel but I removed the lettuce and tomato, and after taking this pic I also removed about half the amount of tortilla. I also ate all the carrots but only a tiny bit of the ranch (it was spicy for me), and a little while later I was able to eat the little lemon treat. I would say this was about a 6" diameter plate so the portions were pretty small that I was eating.

I would have liked to have more turkey and cheese from that pinwheel but there were about enough for the people there so I didn't want to take a 2nd one, but I think I made it work. Luckily I had PLENTY of protein yesterday because I got a protein smoothie from my gym after my workout.

I felt comfortably full and happy at the party, and also like I really didn't draw any attention to myself. No one seemed to be pigging out since they had already eaten, or maybe they eat that little anyway, so for once I blended in! Normally in the past I would have wanted to eat 3 times that amount at least and I'd be paranoid that people would notice me pigging out. It was nice to not feel that way. :)

If you want to see more pics and hear more about the party, visit my personal blog here.

Things I've Been Eating at 2 1/2 Months

A commenter said she would like to see more of what I've been eating at 2 1/2 months out. The thing is, a lot of it is the same stuff I've already shown. But I really should be better about documenting my eating out experiences and anything new that I eat also. Here are a couple of things from this week and a rundown of my typical diet at this time.

Egg Bites

Finally got around to trying a couple of Shelly's Bites! We made the Breakfast Bites and the Denver Bites. They were pretty easy to make... somewhat time consuming (at least to me, who hates cooking) just because of chopping everything up. But Ian chopped up most of it the night before :) We made a whole tray of one kind for him and a tray of the other for me - this way we were able to use the whole carton of eggs we bought. They are delicious! We cooked them for the 30 mins stated, but they are a little overcooked so next time I'm thinking 25 mins. This is a great thing to make up on weekends so that Ian can grab-and-go for his weekday breakfasts. As for me well, I just like them cuz they're yummy.

The World According to Eggface is a great recipe blog and she shares nearly 50 varieties of her Bites recipes (many are not breakfasty, either!) and all other kinds of awesome recipes that I can't wait to try.



Grilled Chicken Fillet from KFC

I needed to grab something quick while out and I spotted KFC. I knew they had some grilled chicken options so I decided to investigate. I got this chicken fillet for $2.49 ... it was well seasoned and juicy. Not at all plain as I thought it would be. I also got a honey mustard sauce and used just a little of that to add extra flavor... it was delicious. A great drive thru option. I was able to eat the whole thing and I think it was about 3 oz.


Red Robin BLTA Croissant

Found this pic on the web because I didn't take one. Several notes - I do not get tomato - I do not get avacado - I add cheese. This was one of my faves before surgery so I ordered it again this past week when out to lunch with a friend. It came with watermelon (bummer, I prefer the cantaloupe) and fries. What I was able to eat at 2 1/2 months out - One HALF the sandwich but with the bottom part of the croissant and all the lettuce removed. Basically I ate the meat and cheese and some of the top part of the croissant... plus two large french fries. I brought all of the rest home (including just two more french fries), gave the watermelon to my husband and had another meal, just the same, later on.


Other Foods @ 2 1/2 Months

I am still eating a lot of the same things. Some meals I eat regularly are:

- Premier Protein Shake (usually 1 a day for breakfast)
- 1 Wheat Thins Flatbread Cracker with 2 oz of tuna or chicken salad on it
- 1 Wheat Thins Flatbread Cracker with cream cheese spread, 1 slice turkey, 1 slice american cheese on top
- Hormel White Chicken Chili (about 4 oz) with shredded cheese on top
- 2 Egg Bites (listed above)
- 1 scrambled egg (or egg beater equivalent amount) with 1 Morningstar Farms vegetarian sausage
- 1 light mozzarella string cheese with 1 slice turkey breast
- 1 light mozzarella string cheese with 1 oz peanuts
- 2-3oz chicken breast or turkey meatballs with campbell's cream soup of some kind, that has been cooked in crock pot
- 1 Asian-style beef skewer
- 6 grilled shrimp
- 6 cold shrimp with cocktail sauce
- Homemade flatbread pizza
- 1/2 a personal size frozen pizza
- 3 tyson chicken nuggets with a tablespoon of ranch
- sugar free pudding with protein powder added
- Snack Plates from Starbucks (I've posted about these) - 1 snack plate gives me 2-3 meals
- turkey pepperoni or turkey lil' smokies with a light string cheese
- fruits and veggies - very few and not with every meal. Still not enough room for too much of them.

In general I am eating 2.5-4 oz of food depending on density and consistency.

Starbucks Chicken & Hummus Snack Plate

I thought I already posted this but I guess I didn't! I tried a different snack plate at Starbucks - the Chicken on Flatbread with Hummus. This is a lower calorie, higher protein snack plate than the Protein Plate. I absolutely LOVE this snack plate. It's delicious.

The chicken strips in this snack plate are very flavorful and tender - absolutely delicious. The veggies included are cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, and cucumber sticks - that's right those are cucumber! The hummus is really good too.

I am able to eat all the chicken and a couple veggie sticks as one meal, then as another meal I finish the veggie sticks and hummus and have maybe 1-2 bites of the flatbread dipped in the hummus too. I ignore the tomatoes because I don't like them.

This is a great on-the go option.

I've actually had this one 3 times this month because it's just so darn tasty. The only one I haven't tried yet is the fruit & nut one - which I'm sure is tasty too but it has way higher calories and fat so not sure if I WANT to have it... since these other two snack plates are both good optons and tasty anyway.