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LivingAfterWLS Weekly Digest: Refresh You WLS Menu

One of my favorite things about spring is the variety of fresh berries and vegetables that come to the markets. After a long winter of cooking from the pantry I welcome the light freshness of asparagus and strawberries and baby lettuce and such. There is just something about this time of year that renews my interest in cooking. Today in the digest we spend a few moments refreshing our

Pretty funny & Climbing the Rock

A comment left on my last post titled "Fewer candy bars, more vegetables":

"On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 7:10 AM, hrgottlieb <Inoreply-comment@blogger.com> wrote:
hrgottlieb has left a new comment on your post "Fewer candy bars, more vegetables":

I wonder if your readers would benefit from a good resource for candy fundraising ideas? There are tons of different candy fundraisers to consider. But not all candy fundraising programs are the same."

Can you imagine me with a couple cases of candy in my house, for "fundraising" purposes? Pretty freaking hysterical.

Climbing the Rock
Remember my post from a couple years ago about my 25th anniversary with my company. Probably not. I can't even find the post, I think it was February 2009, so that's in my "old" blog (long story). I weighed 166. I always remember my weight. I chose rock climbing as my activity of choice for my team. So off we went to Vertical World in Seattle.

So, here I am, 20 pounds heavier and my coworker celebrating his 20 years with the company today has chosen rock climbing for the team. Everyone had so much fun at mine that he wanted to do it again. Today I will be pulling my 185 body up a wall. I hope my arms can sustain this extra weight. I have my doubts but I'm going to give it my best try.

Wish me luck!

Chicken Oregano with Sweet Peppers

(makes 4 servings)

Ingredients:

• 1.5 lbs.(about 0.68 kg.) chicken pieces, skin removed
  
  


• ¼ tsp salt
  
  


• ¼ tsp ground pepper
  
  


• ¼ cup onion, chopped
  
  


• ¼ cup dry white wine
  
  


• ¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped
  
  


• ¾ cup reduced sodium chicken broth
  
  


• 1 clove garlic, chopped
  
  


• 1 lemon, sliced
  
  


• 1 tomato, chopped
  
  


• 1 tbsp fresh oregano (or 1 tsp dried)
  
  


• 1 sweet green pepper, cut into strips
  
  


• 1 sweet red pepper, cut into strips
  
  


• Non-fat cooking spray
  
  


• Cooked white rice
  
  

Preparation:

• Sprinkle chicken with ground pepper and salt.
  
  


• Lightly coat non-fat cooking spray in a nonstick skillet.
  
  


• Cook chicken over medium heat for about 15 minutes or until light brown, turning once. Reduce heat.
  
  


• Sprinkle garlic, half of tomato, lemon, onion, oregano and parsley over chicken pieces in skillet.
  
  


• Add white wine and chicken broth.
  
  


• Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes.
  
  


• Add remaining tomato and sweet green peppers, cover and continue to simmer until chicken is tender (about 7 to 10 minutes) and cooked through.
  
  


• Serve with cooked rice.
  
  

Make 4 Servings:

Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving(¼ of recipe (346 g)): 236 Calories, 41 g Protein, 8 g carbohydrates, 2 g Dietary Fiber, 3 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 99 mg cholesterol, 275 mg sodium

Chicken Nicoise

(makes 4 servings)

Ingredients:

• 4 boneless and skinless chicken thighs or breasts
  
  


• 1¼ cups non-fat chicken broth
  
  


• 3 cloves garlic, finely
  
  


• ½ cup small white onions
  
  


• 1 tbsp Italian seasoning
  
  


• 2 green bell peppers, sliced
  
  


• 6 Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
  
  


• Cooked rice or noodles (Nutrition Facts calculated without rice or noodles)
  
  

Preparation:

• Remove fat from chicken.
  
  


• Heat ¼ cup of the broth in a large skillet to a boil then add chicken and cook until browned on each side. Remove chicken and set aside.
  
  


• Add onion, garlic, bell peppers, seasoning, olives and remaining broth to skillet, bring to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes.
  
  


• Add chicken then reduce heat to medium. Cook until chicken is no longer pink in the center of the thickest cut of the meat (about 15 minutes).
  
  


• Serve with rice or noodles
  
  

Make 4 Servings:

Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving(¼ of recipe (278 g)): 179 Calories, 30 g Protein, 7 g carbohydrates, 2 g Dietary Fiber, 3 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 68 mg cholesterol, 196 mg sodium

I'm a happy girl again!

My coworkers are hysterical. This was my cubicle today (and it's a mess). The red flag means stay out. No one has been allowed to talk to me for the last twelve days. Today someone put up the police tape. I didn't even notice it when they put it up, and I was in my cube. I had my headphones on and was totally focused. It's like I've been in solitary confinement.

After twelve days of feeling like I was in the depths of despair in my job, a miracle happened today. Seriously. I'm not a kidding. A real miracle.

First of all, I've never been this frustrated over a work project. I've had difficult tasks, but I've always had enough time to complete them. This time I was under the gun. After taking over something from a coworker, I had twelve days to complete something that after I got into it, I realized would take at the bare minimum a month, and to do a good job, probably a couple months or more. Of course, by the time I realized this I was knee deep with the a solid deadline in front of me.

Today my manager came back from vacation. She had left right before I started working on this project from hell. Have I mentioned I really like my manager? She's fair, understanding, and really wants the best for her employees. I'm very lucky.

We just happened to arrive at work this morning at the exact same time. Although I hadn't planned to catch her first thing, I asked if we could talk. After I explained the problem to her, she immediately came up with a much quicker and easier solution. Something that would take me about four hours to code instead of two months. She ran it by the director and it was quickly approved. Like I said, it was a true miracle.

I can breathe again.

INO
Yesterday Helen wrote a post about INO. It's a great post and really hit home with me. It's really simple, INO stand for "It's Not an Option".

I've been using INO for over three years when it comes to exercise. There are mornings when going to the gym is really not something I want to do. It would be much easier to sleep or find any excuse to not go. There are many mornings when I'm getting dressed in my workout clothes that I think about not going, but I always tell myself, "hey, not exercising is NOT an option. You have do this, regardless of how tired you feel or if you feel like crap from eating candy yesterday, you're going to the gym!". That was my Sunday conversation with myself after my big Saturday Milky Way bar binge.

I don't know why it's never occurred to me to use INO for eating. Helen talked about INO for her exercise and her food. Eat smaller portions of healthy food. It's worked these three plus years for exercise. I am trainable.

It's almost 2:30 a.m. (yes, I was testing the quick and easy fix before it goes to our QA group tomorrow morning). I ate healthy and smaller portions than normal all day yesterday and today. I thought about getting a snack tonight several times while I was working (I'm working from home). I used INO, and oddly, it worked.

At the moment I'm more tired than hungry so I made it through two whole days now without eating at night. Lately, that's some sort of record for me.

Here are a couple pictures I took after work tonight. I love these trees. I'm not sure, but maybe they're cherry trees? This is right outside my office. That's the moon in top picture, between the branches. It was about 7:30pm last night (I still haven't been to bed yet, but I'm going as soon as I hit publish). The other picture shows my lonely car in the parking lot. :)

 

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