So…I’ve put myself on a diet. Not a Nicole Ritchie starvation diet or anything, just a normal watch what you eat, and exercise more often diet. I’ve been feeling awful lately so it needed to be done. I hope to accomplish simple things like stop making Chocolate Chip Cookie dough just to eat Chocolate Chip Cookie dough, and lay off the second helpings of pasta.
That means there will probably be a few more recipes like these:
Fried Rice with Scallions, Edamame, and Tofu
Sage Rubbed Pork Chops with Warm Apple Slaw
Fettuccini with Creamy Red Pepper-Feta Sauce
And a few less recipes like these:
Peanut Butter Fudge
Double Shot Chocolate Cake
Aunt Joyce’s Brownies
To assist me in this endeavor I’ve enlisted a fabulous little online tool called “My Food Diary.” My Food Diary is absolutely brilliant! For the bargain price of $9 a month (less than two Grande Non-Fat White Chocolate Mochas) you can track your food consumption online — my favorite place in the world.
After entering your height and scary weight info it tells you how many calories you can eat in a day while still losing a pound per week. The most conveniant part is that they have a huge searchable database of food items (everything from Quaker to P.F. Changs) that you can manually add to your day’s tally. You can also enter nutritional information for products that are missing from the site and save them for future use in your “fridge.” In addition, MFD allows you to add recipes ingredient by ingredient. Then you enter how many servings the recipe is and voila — those cookies are 175 calories a piece. Oh My God! Ahhh! I just had 5…
Anyway, it really takes so much of the guess work out of counting calories and fat. It definitely makes me think twice about what I eat and don’t eat. For instance a conversation in my head might go something like this:
Do I really need to eat those Thin Mints? Ugh…Yes! But then I have to log them on My Food Diary and I wont make my goal, and they’ll give me frowns at the end of the day instead of smiley faces. *sigh* I guess I don’t need the cookies…
You’d be surprised how powerful the little “smiley and frown” breakdowns are. If you exercise, you not only get to eat more food, but you also get a big green smiley! If you consume too much sodium MFD frowns at you. There are other “bells and whistles” too like forums, and inspirational quotes…if you’re into that sort of thing. Anyway, that’s the last time you’ll probably hear about this whole diet thing, because this is a food blog and I like to cook and eat, but I do think that moderation is my biggest obstacle to overcome and MFD definitely helps give me some excellent perspective on hunger and portion control.
If social media isn’t your thing than maybe you’ll get excited about the fact that The Cheesecake Factory is going to be selling their amazing slices of Cheesecake for only $1.50 to celebrate their 30th anniversary. So stop by on Wednesday, July 30th when they turn back the clocks to 1978, and stuff you face like a pro for a fraction of the price. Personally I’m partial to the Banana Cream Cheesecake and whatever one comes smothered in peanut butter cups. The naughty cheesecake makers will also be offering a special edition Chocolate Cake Cheesecake throughout the year. If you select that scrumptious sounding choice 25 cents from each sale will be donated to America’s Second Harvest. Calories for charity: it sounds like a great idea to me! [Thanks to Shannon from Zeer for the link].
