Turrón!!!!

Ok, so, before I start food journaling, I just have to say that I am extremely ashamed and angry to admit that I have eaten 4 pieces of turrón between yesterday and today. The pieces are about the size of two KitKat bars, and I have been eating really well except for the turrón... so tomorrow, no turrón. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

In other news, yesterday I finished up my day with a "chilli salad" (homemade chili on a salad with cheese and sour cream) and half of a baked potato with some yogurt dressing. For a snack, I had some cut up turkey, a few cubes of cheese and some.. turrón... For dinner, I had a chicken breast, a banana and the other half of the baked potato... and some turrón. Grrr


Today, I woke up late and didn't feel like breakfast. So I had some tea. The rest of my day went like this:

• Lunch: Chicken breast and roasted veggies (green beans, potato, turnip, carrot, zucchini and tomato! delicious!)... and half a piece of turrón...
  
• Dinner: Salad with lettuce, pulled chicken breast, tomatoes and feta cheese with yogurt dressing.... and some turrón.
  

Do you see a developing theme? Yes, that's why tomorrow is NO MORE TURRÓN day! I hope that I have more self discipline than I have over the past two days.

And I've reached the end of a meal plan, so it's time to make another one. I will work on that tonight!

How did your first few days of 2012 go??

Happy New Year!

Happy 2012 to all!!! :)

The new year always seems to be a time of new beginnings, and this was the first year in a while where I was sad to say goodbye and welcome in a new one. I had so much to be thankful for in 2011 - passing my PhD exams, starting my dissertation, getting an awesome fellowship and moving to Spain, losing 29 pounds and keeping them off, being able to spend time with my family before hopping over the ocean, visiting Africa... the list goes on and on. It is hard to believe that 2012 will be just as amazing, although I am determined to make it so.

Some of the things that I am looking forward to in 2012 include:

• finishing a draft of my dissertation for editing in the early part of 2013
• going back to the US in June to be able to spend time with friends and loved ones
• getting to meet my friend Jenny's baby!!, who will be joining us on January 5 (good luck, Jenny!)
• continuing to eat right - and incorporating more exercise - so that I can see more weight loss... I am hoping for 20 pounds, but I'm not comfortable committing to a number quite yet
• visiting Italy for the first time in May!!! :) :) (and hopefully Istanbul in April, if my friends and I can work it out!)
• showing my parents around during their first trip to Spain in February!!! (This will also include me seeing Seville and Córdoba for the first time, which I have always dreamed of!)
• being reunited with my Cori cat, who is temporarily living with - and terrorizing! - my parents while I am away
• applying for academic jobs for 2013
• beginning my own portrait photography business

So, I have a lot to look forward to in 2012 as well! What are you most excited about? Least excited about?

Ok, now back to the boring food journal stuff. I took yesterday "off", although my eating habits were still pretty good.

Saturday:

• breakfast - eggs
• lunch - half of a store-bought pizza (they usually have thin crust and pretty healthy toppings here; I'd say that size-wise, it equated to about a slice and a half of your average American take out pizza); I also had about 10 gummy candies
  
• dinner - while celebrating the New Year with my friends, I had: some corn nuts, a chicken breast, FOUR grilled veggie skewers, a few chips, a glass of wine and the traditional champagne and twelve grapes.. not too bad for New Years

Sunday:

• breakfast - a piece of bread with jam and butter and a cereal bar
  
• lunch - yogurt and pineapple and a cereal bar
• dinner - baked potato topped with my own "quick-chili" (ground beef and pork, canned tomatoes, hot pepper and a small can of sliced green olives) and cheese and sour cream... and a cereal bar later that night

So, my eating efforts weren't exactly great this weekend, but considering it was "cheating", it was still not too shabby!

Today, I am back to the grind. Here is what my meal plan looks like:

• breakfast - yogurt with fruit and one Wheetabix; tea
• AM snack - olives
• lunch - salad
• PM snack - yogurt
• dinner - chicken breast with rice and fruit

I just had breakfast while typing this entry. While infinite varieties of yogurt are available (everything from kefir to Greek to yogurt drinks to straciatella yogurt), I am kind of picky about the yogurt here. Some of it has a funny texture, and not all of it is delicious (particularly the Raisin-flavored yogurt with added fiber... blech!). I either get natural Greek yogurt or the 0% fat berry-flavored yogurt available from one of the supermarkets.

I like to add fruit to my yogurt, and usually cereal or granola. Since it's winter, and any fruit other than mandarins costs an arm and a leg, I tried to go with canned fruit... what a mistake!! Three cans of pineapple (each has 4 rings) cost 3€ (about $4.15!). I also bought one can of mixed fruit for 1.99€. It seems expensive, but I figured I would spoil myself this week! I'm going to see if any other stores sell it cheaper.

There's also no such thing as Kashi here... there's Special K, but it usually has chocolate in it. :) So I tried Wheetabix. Although my roommate warned me, "To most, it takes like cardboard", I find the taste pretty similar to Kashi. It doesn't mix well with liquids, and even yogurt can turn it into a sloppy mess (think Shredded Wheat left to sit for about 15 minutes), so I usually eat it alongside my yogurt. It's pretty good, and each biscuit has about 65 calories.

Here's a picture of my breakfast:

For many, today will be the first day of a new meal plan or a life change, so I want to wish you the best of luck! Be sure to document it, celebrate your achievements, and correct your moments of weakness! If you would like someone to read along and encourage your efforts, please leave a comment with your blog address below. Happy New Year!!

Oops...

So, I forgot to write yesterday. Oops.

Yesterday, I got up early (well, for Spain) and headed to the grocery store. Since I stuck with my meal plan all week, I shopped at the precocious "Corte Inglés" - yay!

I did a lot of writing, working on my dissertation! The first chapter (which I'm currently working on) just keeps growing and growing...

Then, I took Watson to the park with my friend Lula and her dog Metraya ... metraya means "shrapnel"; an interesting name for a pooch ... and then I went downtown to meet some friends.

Puerta del Sol, the Madrid equivalent to Times Square, is THE place to be on New Years Eve, where they ring the bells at midnight - 1 for each month of the year - and you eat one grape every time the bell rings. Well, it turns out that they have a "practice run" the night before NYE, so my friends and I went and had a few glasses of wine and then pushed like linebackers until we were in the plaza and watched it all go down. There were SO MANY people pushing to get in - in fact, at one point I realized that if someone fell down, they might very well get trampled and die just trying to get to Puerta del Sol!! - but once you got into the plaza, it was much more comfortable.

Here are a few photos of the evening!

Maria enjoying and contemplating a glass of white wine.

Max and Zonia looking happy!

The very large metal and light Christmas tree in Puerta del Sol taken about 2 hours before the festivities began!

A shot of the craziness!!

Ok, so here is my food journal for yesterday:

• Breakfast - 1 egg, 2 sausages, banana, tea
• Snack - yogurt and olives, tea
• Lunch - salad with ham, cheese, lots of tomatoes, caesar dressing; and Fanta Zero (like Coke zero, only Fanta flavored - yum!) ... oh, and I had a piece of bread while coming back from the supermarket
• Snack / Dinner / ?? - olives, some ham bits, some cheese bits, a small piece of bread, 3 pineapple rings and some Greek yogurt... it started out as the yogurt, pineapple and bread, but I was still starving, so I made an impromptu meat and cheese tray.
• With friends - 3 glasses of red wine, a few bites of: patatas bravas (potatoes with spicy sauce), ham, tortilla española, croqueta, bread. We ordered a tapas sampler, and since I literally had 1-2 bites of everything, I didn't feel so bad. And it was almost delicious; well, as delicious as an appetizer sampler of everything "Spanish" can be when you're so close to the tourist traps.

Today (Saturday), is the last day of the year. That's kind of awesome for two reasons: 1) it's less than 2 weeks until I get to go back to the States for a visit, and 2) I feel like I'm already sticking with a New Years Resolution, and it isn't even time! Yay!

Tonight, we're having a barbecue the terrace of a friend of mine (so Spanish!), so I can't really meal plan for that. But, my meal plan looks something like:

• Breakfast: eggs and yogurt
• Snack: fruit
• Lunch: salad
• Snack: yogurt and fruit
• Dinner: ???

I hope that everyone has a very happy and safe New Years Eve and a prosperous 2012!!

The day is almost over...

Hello! In an effort to stop the Christmas Cookie Catastrophe(s), I decided that I am not eating anything sweet today. At all.

This was all well and good until I went to the park with my dog and Lula, a really nice girl whom I've befriended (and is really super amazing!), brought me a chocolate turrón. Yes, I said it. Chocolate. Turrón. Behold:


This was such a generous gift - and gave me the perfect excuse to take a mulligan on my "no sweet promise" - but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to save this for another day... it might be tomorrow, it might be the next time a bout of homesickness leaves me weak, or it might be back in the States (where I am headed on January 13 for a visit). Either way, it's getting packed away tonight.

Aren't you proud?? I am!

So, on to food journaling:

• Breakfast: 1 egg, 2 pieces of sausage, and 2 small bits of bread with butter; tea to drink
  
• Lunch: ham, egg and cheese omelette on a whole grain baguette and a mini can of stuffed olives; tea to drink
• Dinner: I'm going to go downstairs to the café and buy a salad with chicken, feta, and olives. I might add some tomatoes here at home. Nom nom nom!

So that's that ... I am really happy that I (almost!) made it through my no-sweets day. What helped? Sleeping in late, having a relaxing day with very little work, and talking to lots of friends. Also, going to teach class was fun and distracted me!

Yay for me! (And if I break down over the next 3 hours, please punish me!)

Update: Ok, so I had a salad with lettuce, pulled chicken breast, feta cheese and sliced olives. It was SO delicious. And as soon as I had the last bite, my brain said "Ok, what's for dessert?" I panicked! Instead of tearing into the turrón, I made a glass of tea with milk and ate a banana. Sure, it's not "sweet", but it was sweet to me. I think I may have made it... 12:00am can't come quick enough!

Christmas Cookies are the Devil's Food of Choice

Good morning!! (Or good afternoon to all my Spain-side friends!)

So, it happened again. I was just finished with dinner (a yummy and healthy salad) when my friends canceled on the Scrabble night we had planned... and I realized I either had to crumple into a pile of goo or eat a few Christmas cookies. A few turned into 4, but the good news is that I am out of Christmas cookies... so that won't be happening again. Boo for me.

Day 3 of "crash course healthy eating habits" is going better than yesterday or Monday. I'm not dying of hunger like before, but I am craving carbs. Not even the super sugary deliciousness of Christmas cookies, but rather a piece of bread or a cracker or some pasta. Since I haven't eaten anything like that since Monday night, when I had some pasta with dinner, my body is probably saying "Feed me some carbs, woman! Can't you tell I need zem for ze brain powerz?!" Since I don't have any bread.. or crackers.. and pasta takes so long to cook, I had a cereal bar with breakfast. So here's the plan for today:

• breakfast - eggs and meat
• AM snack - yogurt and tea
• lunch - salad
• PM snack - olives and fruit
• dinner - meat and tomato salad

So far I have been right on track. I made some sausages for the meat (longaniza ibérica, which is a pork sausage that is super delicious) and had some eggs and tea for breakfast. Oh, and a cereal bar. I didn't have a snack, but for lunch I had a big salad and a yogurt. See below:

My salad had: iceberg lettuce, chopped ham bits, half of a mini can of sliced olives, one tomato, and about 10 cubes of "Mediterranean cheese". I used the caesar dressing. Delicious!!

Then, I had two pieces of turrón (you can read about that here). Turrón is kind of on the list of foods that profess: "You'd do better to glue a stick of butter to your thighs than to eat me", but I figured that it had LOTS of almonds - 60% is almonds, to be exact - and helped me reign in my sweet tooth. Plus, it's hard (like peanut brittle) so it's hard to over indulge!

Besides writing my dissertation, I also teach English classes to four children (two different families). I am "on vacation" until January 9 with the first family, but I will see the second family this afternoon. I love playing games with the 2 and 5 year old children, and I am hoping that we will get to play with some Christmas presents today!! However, that means that my afternoon snack probably won't happen. So maybe I'll have an extra big dinner.

... And an extra big dinner I had! I was starving by the time I got home from walking my dog, so I had: a salad with three types of tomatoes (cherry, roma, and some green type of tomato that's red on the inside that they sell here in Spain) and some sliced olives; and an omelette with some leftover sausage, eggs, cheese and cayenne pepper. I put the omelette on some whole grain bread that I picked up from the store today. It was so delicious!!! Check it out:

Of course, I had some more turrón after dinner. My goal for tomorrow is not to have any sweets after or between meals. I have definitely cut down from what I will now refer to as the Christmas Cookie Catastrophe, but I'm still craving sweets. Let's see if I can kick the habit tomorrow! What bad habit are you trying to kick?