Souper low fat mushroom soup

Get it?? Souper...super...

....well, I giggled!

Here's a recipe I made last night from Skinnytaste - creamy mushroom soup! This soup is so so so delicious, I'm still in disbelief that it's only ONE POINT for a 1 1/4 cups of soup!! And it's super easy to make! This soup has become a staple in my house.

Low Fat Creamy Mushroom Soup
Gina's Weight Watcher Recipes 
Servings: 5 • Serving Size: 1 1/4 cup • Old Points: 1 pts • Points+: 1 pts
Calories: 49 • Fat: 1.8 g • Carb: 6.6 g • Fiber: 1.1 g • Protein: 3.2 g

• 3 tbsp flour
• 4 cups water
• 2 chicken bullion cubes
• 5 oz shitake mushrooms, sliced
• 8 oz baby bella, sliced
• 1 celery stalk, whole with leaves removed
• 1 tbsp light butter

Place cold water and flour in a blender and blend until smooth, pour into a medium pot and set heat to medium. Add celery, mushrooms, chicken bullion and butter and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until vegetables are soft, about 20 minutes. Remove celery and a cup of soup, blend, then return back to the pot.

 Ta da!! Quick and easy and so tasty!! I didn't bother to blend the celery, my soup was creamy enough so I simply discarded the stalk and served. I had 2 cups for dinner, and plan on a cup for lunch to go with my salad :)

Here's whats up with me

Hello there everyone.

So I'm a little behind the times here. To summarize the last few days quickly: I weighed in a day late last week, and ended up gaining .8lbs. I wasn't too surprised as I found myself snacking a lot that week.

This week is looking to go the same way - I'm finding it difficult to get motivated to get to the gym and have been tracking only half heartedly, not as precisely as I was before vacation. I'm in a rut! The rainy weather we've been having all week has done nothing to help either - All I want to do is get under the covers and sleep when it's dreary like this out!

Hopefully it clears up soon because I started taking long walks down a local bike path near my house before the weather turned, and I was really enjoying it! It's about a four mile path down a river and through a pretty wooded area, and though I'm not running it (SO not there yet), walking it is way better than sitting on my ass!

I'm going to continue trying to eat as well as I can this week but I don't expect to drop any lbs by Friday. I went to a wedding on Sunday and ate and drank tons. But, there was a LOT of Greek dancing going on, and if you've ever Greek danced before you know it's a real workout! So hopefully I'll only do a tiny bit damage.

Paycheck comes tomorrow and I'm going to hit Trader Joe's and stock up on food so I can make myself healthy lunches and dinners for whole week to come.

See ya on Friday!

Last night's dinner: Sesame Encrusted Baked Chicken

Browsing Skinnytaste at work always puts me in the mood to cook, so here's what I whipped up last night for dinner. Gina's recipe called for chicken tenderloins, but I used chicken thighs and adjusted my points accordingly. I also made it 4 even servings instead of 4.5, so my points were a little higher per serving.

Sesame Encrusted Baked Chicken Tenders
Gina's Weight Watcher Recipes
Servings: 4 1/2 • Serving Size: 2 chicken tenders • Old Points: 4 pts • Points+: 5 pts
Calories: 196.9 • Fat: 9.1 g • Protein: 22.9 g • Carb: 5.7 g • Fiber: 1.5 g • Sugar: 0.3 g  Sodium: 400 mg

Ingredients:

• 18 oz chicken tenderloins
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp low sodium soy sauce
• 6 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
• 4 tbsp panko
• olive oil spray (I used Pam)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425°. Spray a baking sheet with non-stick oil spray.

Combine the sesame oil and soy sauce in a bowl, and the sesame seeds, salt, pepper and panko in another.

Place chicken in the bowl with the oil and soy sauce, then into the sesame seed mixture to coat well. Place on the baking sheet; lightly spray the top of the chicken with oil spray and bake 8 - 10 minutes. Turn over and cook another 4 - 5 minutes longer or until cooked through. 

I served mine with a side of fried rice, which I adapted from Gina's Spicy Shrimp Fried Rice recipe. My version is as follows:

Fried Rice
Servings: 4 • Size: 1/4 of recipe • Points+: 5 pts

• 3 cups brown rice cooked (I use Trader Joe's frozen rice pouches)
• 2 egg whites, scrambled
• 1 whole egg, scrambled
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, diced
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
• 5 scallions, chopped, whites and greens separated
• oil spray
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 4 tsp soy sauce (or more to taste)
• 1 tsp Asian fish sauce
• salt and fresh pepper

Scramble eggs with a drop of water and season with salt and pepper. In a hot wok, spray a little oil and cook the eggs. When cooked, remove from pan and set aside.

Let the wok get really hot. Add sesame oil and saute onions, scallion whites, garlic and ginger for about 1-2 minutes. Add rice and cooked egg along with soy sauce and fish sauce, mixing well for about 2 minutes. Add greens of the scallions and serve.

 With my edits to the chicken recipe plus the rice, my dinner came out to a delicious 12pts (if you follow Gina's recipe exactly and serve with my rice, it'll be a 10pt total). And there's plenty of leftovers for lunch!

A little late

A little behind, but let me tell you about my weigh in on Friday morning.

It was a little déjà vu of my "What the Weigh In?" experience before vacation. Aka...I LOST! Lost weight on vacation!! Is that the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard???

Starting weight: 226.4 lbs

Prevacation weight: 214.6 lbs

Friday's weight: 211.2 lbs

Total loss: 15.2 lbs

I can't tell you how ridiculous it is to me to have lost 3.2 lbs while eating carelessly on vacation. I did no tracking whatsoever, and definitely had days of feeling guilty after eating gyros, fries, sandwiches and ice cream. 

But no one can say we sat on our asses and did nothing. Everyday was an adventure. In Amsterdam, we were on our feet walking or biking for hours on end, and Greece was days of swimming, hiking to isolated beaches, and walking up and down the cobblestone roads of Skyros town. Imagine if I had be tracking??

Sigh. Losing weight on vacation - Just another reason I want to go back.

I'm back!

Hi all! Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you, or about my weightloss journey.

The last two weeks were spent gloriously on vacation in Amsterdam and Greece, where there was lots of naughty food, but also lots and lots of walking, swimming, hiking, and exploring to cancel it out.

I'm back on the plan and ready to lose any lb's I may have put on while abroad. I'll be weighing in on Friday as usual to see the final damage. Even if I did put on of a few pounds, can you tell I'm not that upset about it? Everyone deserves a vacation and a break from stress, and that includes diet induced stress as well as work and every other type of stress. I did not track in anyway during my two weeks away, but somehow found a balance between indulging and not overeating. According to the way my pants are fitting, I did pretty OK!

We'll see on Friday! See you then :)

What the weigh in?

Let's recap, shall we?

Starting weight:

226.4

Last week's weight:

216.8

So I really wasn't expecting the scale to move much this week, if anything, it'd be going up. It wasn't anywhere near my best week food wise: I drank a ton on Saturday, had chinese twice (though I will give myself credit that my order both times was steamed shrimp and steamed veggies with brown rice and diet brown sauce on the side, and both times I saved half for the next day's lunch), plus I know that I've been snacking without tracking, which has the potential to be disastrous.

That's why when I stepped on the scale this morning, it went something like this:

"What the what??"

After hopping on and off again about three times to make sure, it changed to this:

"Yaaaay!"

This week's weight:

214.6

This week's loss:

-2.2

Total loss:

-11.8

I can't tell you how happy I am to not only have finally hit the -10lb mark, but to have surpassed it by almost 2lbs! I was dancing around it for probably three weeks, gaining and losing the same pesky 1.5lbs. It feels so good to be under the 215lb mark for the first time in probably 2 years!

Now I just need to keep the momentum up. I'm leaving for a two week vacation tomorrow and I am sort of nervous about it. I do feel that I've become more willing and able to make healthy decisions even when I'm out of my element, so I'm hoping eating responsibly paired with all the swimming, walking, and hiking I'll be doing will at the very least keep me at the same weight. Wish me luck! 

Checking in

It's been a few days, and a crazy few days at that! I'm heading off to Greece on Saturday so I've been running around doing lots of last minute things. I've still made time to go to the gym three times since Friday - and I definitely need to get one more work out in before this Friday considering the amounts of sangria I drank at the banger of a barbecue I threw on Saturday. In all honestly, it was such a great time and I got to see so many faces I haven't seen in ages that I wouldn't take it back even for the price of a small gain!

That being said, I've been really good with food and exercise this week, so maybe I'll get lucky and I'll at least stay the same weight wise.

I'll be back with results on Friday!