Happy Hump Day! I hope everyone had a great day today. My day was super busy – I had a few challenges food wise I knew I was going to face at work – so I planned ahead.
I’ve mentioned before that my office has catered breakfasts on Wednesdays – the menu changes weekly so I can almost guarantee that whatever is going to be served is NOT Weight Watchers friendly. And I was right! Today was egg, cheese and chorizo breakfast burritos! BUT – I had frozen waffles in the freezer at work – it’s the Target brand whole grain waffle, you get 2 waffles for 5 Smart Points. And I also had frozen turkey breakfast links – each one is 1 Smart Point each. They did offer fresh fruit, so I grabbed some of that and I also had a hard boiled egg. AND – my favorite is roasted potatoes – I could eat a whole tray of those, but I only picked up 4 pieces to round out my breakfast.
By the time I finished my breakfast it was 9:30 – and this kept me full for hours. The next food challenge I needed to attend to – is our office had an all staff meeting and Lou Malnati’s pizza was served – I think there was 40 pizzas served (my office has 250+ people). Since it was lunchtime and I wasn’t hungry – I didn’t eat then. But after the meeting I was helping clean up and they did have salad, so I made a pizza salad. I took 1 square of pizza, cut it up, put it on top of my salad and served it with strawberries I brought from home. The old me would have had a TON of pizza
That wasn’t a lot of food so by 4:00 I was really hungry – so I thought I would have oatmeal with my banana as a filling snack. When I went back to the kitchen to grab my oats – I opened the cabinet.
This container of sea salted caramels was staring me in the face. I actually took it down and was about to scan the label in my Weight Watchers app and decided it wasn’t worth it and grabbed my oatmeal and banana. I mixed 1/2 cup oats with 1 cup hot water and let that steep on my desk for about 5 minutes. The water gets absorbed by the oats and it’s super creamy.
For those of you who don’t know I LOVE PASTA – like I could have it every single day for every meal and probably never get tired of it. But now I measure the pasta – it’s 5 Smart Points for a cup of cooked pasta and tonight I made my own meat sauce.
In a large pot – bring water to a boil and cook pasta according to directions and drain.
In a medium sized pot, I added 8 oz. of 85% lean ground beef and started browning that on low heat, breaking up the meat. Discard any fat before adding any more ingredients. I then added 2 cloves chopped garlic, 1/4 cup diced white onion, 1/2 cup diced green pepper, 1/4 cup diced baby bell peppers. Stir and cook for about 5 minutes until the veggies are tender. Next I added one 28 oz. can of crushed red peppers and one 8 oz. can of tomato sauce. Stir to combine. Add 2 generous teaspoons of dried oregano, a few pinches of crushed red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Simmer while the pasta is cooking. For a generous cup of this meat sauce is 2 Smart Points! (Makes 6-7 servings).
I think another reason I was able to stay on track today is tomorrow morning is my WEEK 9 weigh in. The meeting I go to is an “at-work” meeting in my building. I wasn’t able to get enough people to join in my office, so a few of my co-workers were able to join a long standing meeting a few floors up. It’s a great group of people and they welcomed us with open arms and the leader is great too!
So come back tomorrow to see if I did ok – it was my son’s birthday – my birthday – but I think I did enough to see the scale go down.
