The Foods I Eat

A friend of mine has recently joined Weight Watchers and she has asked me to help her by giving her some food suggestions. I've done this before and I also want a list for myself (sometimes I forget what I eat) so I decided to post it here so I will have it forever and now it will benefit others too. Feel free to comment on the foods you eat that are healthy also. Of course fruits and vegetables are an obvious great choice for foods but I may not be listing those since they are indeed obvious. I will list foods that I pretty much always have in my house since I've been on WW and that I occassionally purchase too.

Dairy
Skim Milk
Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze
2% Cheese
Fat Free Cheese
Low fat Sour Cream
FF or LF Cottage Cheese
Country Crock w/ calcium
Egg Beaters - original and southwestern
Yogurt (I try to stick with the natural stuff here)
Laughing Cow Cheese (light original)

Meat
Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
Pork Loin
Lean Ground Beef
Tuna
Canadian Bacon

Snacks
Lowfat Chips (I like some of the natural kinds in the health food section)
TLC Crackers
FF Pringles
100 Calorie mini popcorn bags
WW cookies or bars
Hershey sticks
Cut up veggies

Canned
Soup (I like Italian Style Wedding)
Beans (kidney, pinto and black)
Fruit (pineapple, pears and peaches)
New Potatoes
Tomato Sauce/Diced Tomatoes
Corn

Frozen
WW desserts/bars
Frozen Vegetables
Frozen Fruit
FF Cool Whip
Edy's Slow Churned Ice Cream

Bread/Grains
Whole Wheat bread
WW english muffins
Wheat Pita Bread
Brown Rice (instant)
WW pasta
Bulgar
Barley
Polenta
Cereal
Oatmeal

Other
PB2
RF Peanut Butter
SF Jelly/Jam
Mini Choc Chips
Ranch dressing packets
Pickles
Hot Tea
SF/FF Pudding
Fruit Leather
Vita-muffins

Alot of times for dinner I'll make a pita pizza or english muffin pizza with just tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. It's pretty low in points.

I think that's it, I'll continue adding to this if I think of more. Here's a recipe for Taco Soup that I've made several times and love:

Taco Soup

1 lb lean ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
1 can pinto beans
1 can black beans
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, no salt added
1 can Rotel
1 can diced tomatoes, no salt added
1 packet taco seasoning
1 packet ranch seasoning

Brown beef with onion. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker, cook at least until heated through. 1 cup = 3 pts. Top with LF sour cream and/or cheese.

Book Review: In Defense of Food

I actually read and finished this book a month or two ago but it was so fast I didn't even get a chance to put it in my "Currently Reading" section of my blog. I really liked this book and reviewed it on Amazon so figured I'd just copy and paste it onto my blog.

Is what you're eating actually food? Think about the long list of ingredients you now see in some of your favorite snack foods. We are getting further and further away from eating healthy even though most companies are stamping their products with health claims. Getting Vitamin E that has been infused into Whole Grain White Bread is not the same as getting Vitamin E from its natural source (almonds, olive oil and avocado for example). This book teaches you how to shop and avoid "food" items that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize. This book also encourages you to find a way to start eating locally and introduced the term CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to me. You can go to http://www.localharvest.com/ to find CSA's near you.

There's a documentary I really liked that explains more about CSA's too called The Real Dirt on Farmer John. Click here for my review.

Makes you start to wonder if the reason people get life-threatening illnesses and are overweight are not only because of the bad foods they eat but the good foods they're not eating. I'm of course not saying this is the cause of all diseases, not even close. But I do think that we don't take advantage of what was naturally given to us to help fight off diseases.
As many of you know, I'm a Weight Watchers leader and although Weight Watchers definitely promotes these healthy guidelines I'm starting to see many people eating "substitution foods" instead of real food to lose weight (they'll eat fiber-enhanced bread or Splenda-sweetened anything before choosing fruits or vegetables). I'm guilty of this too but now am intrigued by this new (yet old-fashioned) idea of eating and purchasing real food God gave us. It may cost more but I'm thinking it's worth it in the long run.

Although it's almost impossible to avoid everything that's not 100% natural, I've definitely been making several changes. I've switched from "light" breads and english muffins to 100% whole wheat (watch out for the 100% whole wheat breads out there...several aren't), I'm starting to eat more fruits and vegetables and have decided to have whole wheat pasta and brown rice almost all of the time now. Plus I'm starting to buy more bulk food from the local Good Food Store (like wheat flour and steel cut oats).

I know this may make me sound like a hippy but I don't care...change is good, this book gets an A!

PB2

It pays to be assertive!! That's a Weight Watchers "Tool for Living" (being assertive). PB2 is powdered peanut butter. It's made of peanuts, sugar and salt. You can mix it with water to get spreadable peanut butter but it's best to be used in recipes (smoothies, cookies etc). It's WAY lower in calories than regular PB and tastes pretty good too. I'm loving this stuff.

Here's the "being assertive" part. PB2 is NOT easy to find. In fact (as far as I know), they don't carry it in any stores in Rochester, you can only get it online and you have to buy a case!! So if you don't have someone to share this stuff with you'd better find a place to store your new powdery goodness. I contacted HyVee (our local grocery store chain) and within weeks the South HyVee ordered it and it's on the shelves!! They even said they'd probably sample it in the spring! When I went to get it there was a sign and everything displaying the new product (in the health food section).

I have to say there's a certain satisfaction to knowing I had a hand in this. It certainly makes me appreciate the store even more. So it pays to be assertive...definitely never hurts to ask :)

For more information and recipes using PB2, go to http://www.bellplantation.com/

New Food: Spaghetti Squash

Working for Weight Watchers I hear a lot about "good for you" foods but don't tend to stray from my regular staples that I eat almost every day (english muffins, cottage cheese, veggie burgers and lowfat chips/bars are among those that I eat very regularly). I've definitely heard of spaghetti squash before and have even seen several recipes that looked interesting. Tonight I finally tried it and I'm quite pleased with the taste and even more pleased about the calories saved. I followed a WW recipe I found on their website:

Spaghetti Squash Marinara

Ingredients
1 medium raw spaghetti squash, (about 2 1/2 lb)
1 tsp olive oil
1 small onion(s), chopped
1 tsp garlic clove(s), minced
14 1/2 oz canned stewed tomatoes, cut up
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Halve squash lengthwise and scoop out seeds. Place squash, cut sides down, in a large baking dish and prick skin all over with a fork. Bake until tender, 30 to 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, to make the sauce, heat oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and Italian seasoning; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring often, 5 minutes or until desired consistency.

To serve, carefully rake the stringy squash pulp from the skin with a fork, separating it into strands that look like spaghetti. Spoon sauce over squash and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Yields about 1 1/2 cups of squash, 1/4 cup of sauce and 1 tablespoon of cheese per serving.

When you first cut open the squash it looks and smells almost exactly like a pumpkin. I was a little worried because last week I just tried Acorn Squash for the first time and there's a reason you didn't see a post on that one...yuck. When you take the spag squash out of the oven you literally just rake it out and it looks almost identical to spaghetti, it's really weird. There's a lot in there too!! The texture is definitely not the same as regular pasta, it's a bit more chewy and raw. I was expecting a gross kind of squashish-pumpkin flavor but honestly it doesn't have much taste at all which I actually thought was a good thing. I could really enjoy the flavor of the sauce and parmesan I put on it. Would I rather have a bowl of regular spaghetti over the squash? Well of course but I would also rather have full fat creamy ice cream, real sugar in my coffee, chips that don't come in tiny prepackaged portions and gooey 4 cheese pizza every day. The point is; some things are worth sacrificing a little taste to save a lot of calories (in my opinion at least). And if I really want regular pasta I'll have it but in the mean time spag squash is a very nice replacement. Plus I just learned that you can cook a bunch and freeze the "spaghetti". One squash is about 3-5 servings and I've seen it anywhere from $0.10-$0.99/lb.