High Fructose Corn Syrup

High Fructose Corn Syrup is in a lot of foods on the shelves. It is even in things you don't think of as being sweet to the taste. Start reading the ingredients listed on food labels and you will be surprised. A lot of breads have it.

You On a Diet recommends staying away from foods with high fructose corn syrup. The theory is that consuming high fructose corn syrup shuts off the hormones produced by your body to tell itself when it is full. You end up eating more and I think it is also highly addictive.

A lot of companies in the food industry are taking notice. In fact, many have switched back to regular sugar. You can find packaging on some foods that advertise, "No High Fructose Corn Syrup." Many soda companies are making their soda out of cane sugar again. I have heard of new diet trends that are taking notice as well.

Of course there is some controversy. There always is, isn't there? You can understand that corn refiners are not happy about the new trend and bad wrap. In fact there is a movement to change the name from High Fructose Corn Syrup to Corn Sugar. Check out this article that was published in September. Who knew there was a Corn Refiners Association???

The truth is, replacing corn syrup with regular sugar is still SUGAR. We all know that people who have diets high in sugar are at a higher risk for developing diabetes. I choose to stay away from products with high fructose corn syrup because for me it is addictive. In general, R and I have reduced the amount of any type of sugar we consume.

I recommend reading this article by the authors of You On a Diet. It gives a good scientific explanation for how high fructose corn syrup interferes with your body and its processes. I also encourage you to read ingredients on food labels. Let me know what foods you come across that you're surprised to find out have high fructose corn syrup. In fact, go read your ketchup label.

I Have a New Addiction

October 4th is the anniversary of R and I deciding to change our eating habits. The first week was not so bad. R and I were very determined and driven to make a change. The second week found us wanting all the wrong foods we were used to eating, but we persevered and met our weight loss goals.

Throughout the last year I have eaten things like popcorn, veggie chips, granola bars, and trail mix to curb my desire for crunchy snacks. When I did eat chips, it was always the baked kind. Frankly, I think baked chips are boring and have no taste.

Many times I have passed by HEB's Multigrain Baked Pita Chips and thought, "I wonder if I could eat those?" The answer is, "YES!" R and I bought them for the first time a couple of weekends ago to take to a football viewing party. They were a huge hit! They taste wonderful and they are pretty healthy too.

The key to eating these chips is portion control, because you will want to eat the whole bag. I try to put a serving size in a ziploc bag and take only that amount to work for lunch or snacks. They are pretty filling and they have less sodium than most pita chips you find at the store. They're also cholesterol free and have zero grams of saturated fat.

Goodbye baked chips! I have found HEB's Multigrain Baked Pita Chips!!!

Shrimp = Low Fat + High Protein

Since changing our diets in October 2009, R and I have learned that foods low in fat, but high in protein keep you full longer. It takes your body longer to breakdown proteins than carbs. Seafood is generally high in protein and low in fat. I used to think of beef when it came to protein, but now I think of seafood.

We recently purchased frozen cooked shrimp from HEB. The fact that the shrimp is already cleaned and cooked makes it easy to use. All you really have to do is heat it up and add it to any dish. The taste is excellent as well.

The other night R made soup with brown rice, black beans, low sodium chicken stock, onions, bell peppers, garlic and SHRIMP. It was wonderful and I can't wait to eat the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

While he was out of town last week, I came up with my own little shrimp dish. In a skillet with a little olive oil, I cooked some onions, garlic, red bell pepper, capers, lemon juice, and SHRIMP. Once ready, I added my skillet creation to some whole wheat pasta. It was wonderful and I had the leftovers from it for lunch as well.

You've probably heard that shrimp in high in cholesterol, which is true, but read this article from livestrong.com. It seems that the benefits of shrimp outweigh its cholesterol levels.

Do you have any good shrimp recipes? If so, please share them on this post. Thanks!

A Great Snack

Our favorite snack right now is Kashi's Heart To Heart CerealOat Flakes & Wild Blueberry Clusters. I usually take about 1 cup to work and eat it around 10:00 am. It tastes great dry and it is one of the cheaper cereals that Kashi makes.

I typically eat the same breakfast every morning: whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter and honey and a glass of fortified OJ. However on Saturday mornings, I like to eat Heart To Heart CerealOat Flakes & Wild Blueberry Clusters with almond milk and banana slices. This makes a great breakfast before our Saturday morning jog.

We're on a blueberry kick at our house right now. HEB has some great fresh blueberries from Canada. They are also good on any bowl of cereal and there packed with vitamins and antioxidants. YUM!

Our Grocery List for One Week

• fruit
• salad
• garlic
• onion
• tomatoes
• cucumbers
• bell peppers
• squash
• zucchini
• shrimp
• bread
• natural peanut butter
• dried cranberries
• Italian seasoning
• Kashi cereal
• Kashi granola bars
• canned black beans - no salt added
• chicken stock - no salt added
• tomato sauce - no salt added
• whole wheat pasta
• stewed tomatoes - no salt added
• Yo-Plus Yogurt
• salsa
• veggie chips
• walnuts
• almond milk
• multi - vitamins

Veggie Wraps

Last night for dinner R and I made Veggie Wraps. Check the calorie count on a just the wrap itself with no filler next time. Even spinach ones can have a pretty high calorie count for a bread product. The other thing to look for is the amount of sodium. You'd be surprised how many milligrams of sodium some bread products have.

We could not find a whole wheat wraps at the store, and settled for the HEB brand 100% Whole Wheat Tortillas instead. The night before, R had made a yummy soup (recipe forthcoming). We split a tortilla to soak up the rest of the soup at the bottom of the bowl so we knew they were pretty good.

Here's what I put in my wrap:

• Mustard
• Mixed Lettuce
• Red Bell Pepper (they were cheaper than green ones this week at the store) :)
• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Red Onion
• Feta

YUM! I love feta! The whole wheat tortilla can be very filling due to the high fiber content and it does have some protein. For a side, we had raspberries, blueberries, and grapes. It was a great summer meal.

10 Tips

1. Plan out your meals and snacks for the week and stick to the plan.


2. If you order an entree from a restaurant that is typically cooked in a sauce, ask for it on the side instead and don't use all of it.


3. Use honey instead of sugar.


4. Use shallots to add flavor.


5. If you use salt, use sea salt sparingly.


6. Use olive oil instead of butter.


7. Lemon adds great flavor instead of salt.


8. Ask for your dressing on the side at restaurants and don't use it all.


9. Go easy on the free bread or chips. Limit yourself and don't just eat them mindlessly.


10. If you must have cheese, use mozzarella made with part skim milk.

Yogurt

Sometimes I don't have time to chop up an apple or peel an orange at work and I need a quick, sweet snack. Sometimes I finish dinner at home and I want a cold, sweet snack and I don't want to leave my house to get it. In both cases I turn to yogurt, both the creamy, fruity kind and the frozen kind.

I like to pack Yoplait's Yo-Plus yogurt in my lunchbox for a quick snack at work. I usually eat a small handful of almonds along with it. The Yo-Plus variety has some added vitamins and minerals that you don't find in regular yogurt varieties. When we first started following You On A Diet, we thought it told us to eat the light variety. Turns out, we were wrong, and the non-light variety tastes much better and has more flavors available.

Look for fat-free frozen yogurt the next time you go grocery shopping. You will not be disappointed. We like to buy Creamy Creations Fat-Free Frozen Chocolate Yogurt to be specific and only eat a half cup at a time. It is great if you sprinkle some walnuts or chopped strawberries on top. Who knew something that was fat free could taste so sweet?!

Popcorn Recipe

Google "calories in movie theater popcorn" and you will not believe what comes up. Look up how much sodium and saturated fat is in one of those tubs. USA Today has a great article entitled, "Movie theater popcorn: You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll get fat!" that compares movie theater popcorn at three of the large movie chains. Below is a simple recipe for making your own popcorn that we have adapted from You on a Diet. It tastes great and it super cheap!

You will need:

1/2 cup of white popcorn kernels (this is enough to split between two people)
Hill Country Fare butter flavored cooking spray
Sea Salt

Pop the white popcorn kernels according to the directions on the packaging. You may need to take some of the popped kernels out and microwave the kernels that have not popped until they do without burning them. You won't be able to get all of them popped (this always annoys me). Spread the popped popcorn out on a cookie sheet and lightly spray it with the cooking spray. Sprinkle the sea salt on top. You can experiment with sprinkling cinnamon or maybe cayenne pepper on it if you wish. Eat and enjoy your movie!

Turkey Burgers & Black Bean Burgers, Deee-lish!

A number seven with cheese, no pickles, no onions, and whatasize the fries to a medium with a Dr. Pepper was just how I liked my Whataburger. I can smell the grease right now! Alas, my Whataburger days are over. I've traded in beef burgers for vegetarian burgers and life is great!



Never in a million years did I ever dream that I would crave a vegetarian burger. Don't let the word "vegetarian" scare you. These burgers have great flavor and are very filling. R and I have had some excellent turkey burgers and black bean burgers.



Cafe Express makes a great turkey burger. We like to order the California Burger, no cheese and substitute a turkey patty. The roasted artichoke hearts and tomatoes add an excellent flavor to the burger. For the side we choose their fresh fruit cup. Cafe Express is probably R's favorite place to get a turkey burger.



The best turkey burgers I've had so far have been at Red Robin, yummm! You can order their Natural Burger which comes with only vegetables and substitute a turkey burger. We add mustard, but no mayonnaise. Instead of the bottomless fries, we order the melon which is always crisp and cold.





At home we like to make black bean burgers. We've never actually made our own patties; we buy Morningstar Farms Spicy Black Bean Veggie Burgers in the frozen section at the grocery store. We use the skillet method printed on the box to cook them, and they are better if you toast your bread. We use Oroweat 100% Whole Wheat. You can put a little mustard on the bread, add spinach, tomatoes, and cucumbers and you will have a burger that will make you want to slap yo mama. (Please excuse the strange colloquialisms. I blame my father!) You can serve them with veggie chips and a Diet A&W Root Beer in a frosted glass. Deee-lish!



Morningstar Farms Spicy Black Bean Veggie Burgers are easy and fast to make. I'm not quite sure why they are called "spicy," because we don't find them to be that way. I have not tried any of the other Morningstar products, but my uncle tells me that everything he has ever eaten made by them has tasted great. Have you tried any Morningstar products that you would recommend?

Veggie Pizza Recipe

Please forgive the quality of the photo of our Veggie Pizza below. We were very hungry and the lighting was not good.

Veggie Pizza adapted from You on a Diet

1 Flat of Tandoori Naan, Whole Grain (they come two to a pack and you can freeze the other one)

1/2 cup part skim milk mozzarella

6 tablespoons of tomato sauce (we use the no salt added)

1 tablespoon of Italian Seasoning

1 Zucchini Squash chopped

1 Yellow Squash chopped

1 Onion chopped

1 Green Bell Pepper chopped

Hill Country Fare Cooking Spray for fat free cooking, olive oil flavor

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Heat a skillet on medium heat. Coat the skillet with the cooking spray. Add the chopped veggies and cook until tender.

Place the Naan on a pizza pan and spread the tomato sauce on the Naan. Sprinkle the Italian seasoning on top of the sauce, add the cheese. Carefully add the veggies. You will probably have more veggies than will fit, but they make a great snack while you're waiting for the pizza to bake. Bake the whole thing for 12 minutes.

You can use whatever veggies you prefer. This makes enough for R and I to each have half. Enjoy!

Pizza!

I have an obsession with pizza. Honestly, I could eat it everyday. Before we changed our diet, I used to eat pepperoni pizza A LOT. When I was in elementary school, we always had pizza on Friday nights. That is still ingrained in me and Fridays make me think of pizza, hence today's blog topic.

I knew there was no way I could stick to our new way of eating without fitting pizza into it some way. Fortunately, there is a pizza recipe in You on a Diet that uses a thin whole wheat crust. We've tried many different products for our whole wheat crust. Whole wheat pita bread doesn't get crispy enough for me before it burns. Whole wheat tortillas are too thin, but whole wheat Naan makes a great pizza crust! It has a wonderful flavor and gets crispy before burning.

The recipe in the book says to use mozzarella cheese made with skim milk. R measures the cheese to exactly the amount the recipe calls for. I love cheese so I just eyeball it. I make sure there is enough to cover my pizza.

Veggie pizzas are great! It is fun to go to the store and pick out the different veggies to put on your pizza. Right now our favorite are Texas sweet onions, yellow squash, zucchini, garlic, and tomatoes.

Long gone are the days of pepperoni on my pizza. I don't even miss that greasy stuff! I ordered a whole wheat crust pizza from a restaurant by my office recently. The pizza on the menu had all veggies on it plus pepperoni. I forgot to tell them to hold the pepperoni so I spent some time picking off the ones I could see. I didn't get all those boogers, though. After a few bites, I got a pepperoni and it was the most salty thing I'd tasted in a long time. I seriously could not swallow it.

There is a great restaurant at Market Street in the Woodlands called Pizza By Marco. They have a yummy veggie pizza that they will make on a whole wheat crust for just a dollar more. R and I love to go there, split a pizza, and head next door to Red Mango to split a parfait.

One of the great things about changing our eating habits is getting to see foods we have always eaten in a new light. It is great to find that some of our old favorites can still be our favorites if we just modify them to be healthier. What kind of veggies do you like on your pizza?

Smoothies!

Smoothies make an excellent snack and are a great way to satisfy the sweet tooth. We have experimented with making some at home and buying them from smoothie places. It is important to review the nutrition facts at places like Smoothie King and Jamba Juice before you decide on your smoothie.

We try to make sure to order a smoothie that is lower in sugar than most of the smoothies available. We stay away from any smoothies that contain high fructose corn syrup or any variation of corn syrup. Natural sugars are the best! The more protein and fiber the smoothie has, the longer it will keep you full.

Generally we order the small size available if the smoothie is a snack. Anything larger than that has enough calories for an entire meal. The medium and large size smoothies are usually meant to be a meal substitute. Personally, a smoothie, no matter the size would not keep me full long enough to be a meal substitute. I prefer the small size for a snack.

Right now, I must say my favorite smoothie is the Heart Healthy Pomegranate at Jamba Juice. It is no longer on their menu, but you can still order it. Today Jamba Juice is offering $1 Superfruit Smoothies. What a deal! Check out their website periodically for specials.

There is a Robeks near my office. Sometimes I will go by in the morning or afternoon for a snack. Right now my favorite is the Pomegranate Passion. Are you noticing a trend? Anything orange flavored is always great too!

Recently, R and I picked fresh strawberries at a local strawberry patch. We froze the majority of them. They are great to take out from time to time to use in our own smoothies at home. We blend several with some almond milk and a little bit of honey. We plan to experiment more with making our own smoothies with frozen fruits and I will post any good recipes we come up with.

Do you have a favorite smoothie you like to make or purchase?

Soft Drinks

R drank A LOT of Dr. Pepper before we decided to change our diet. I drank one every now and then. My drink of choice is usually iced tea. However, sometimes you want to drink something sweet and carbonated. In the beginning we tried to cut out soft drinks completely, but there are a few great diet soft drinks that taste close to the real deal.

The taste of Diet Dr. Pepper is very close to the original Dr. Pepper. There is a slight aftertaste, but it satisfies my craving for a soft drink. I usually grab one a couple times a week in the afternoons at work for the caffeine boost.

Coke Zero is probably closer to the real deal than Diet Dr. Pepper. You don't know how much it hurts to say that...Being a native Texan, I'm a Dr. Pepper fan all the way, but Coke wins this battle. Surprisingly Coke Zero is available at a lot of restaurants. Next time you go out to eat, ask for it.

Even better than Coke Zero, is a Diet A&W Root Beer. There is not even the slightest hint that this is a diet soft drink, except for the labeling. R recently had one for the first time and has claimed it to be the winner amongst the diet soft drinks. I agree. If you're drinking a soft drink for the caffeine, though, you won't find it here. A&W Root Beer does not contain caffeine, which makes it okay for me to drink after dinner. It is also hard to find at most gas stations and even HEB was out of the cans last week. Someone else must know the secret...

What diet soft drinks do you like to drink? Are they close to the original?

Yesterday I Ate...

Breakfast:

• Oroweat Whole Grain 100% Whole Wheat Toast with Laura Scudder's Smooth All-Natural Peanut Butter


• 8 oz. Tropicana Pure Premium Lots of Pulp Calcium plus Vitamin D


• Mulit-Vitamin

Morning Snack:

• 1 oz. of Blue Diamond Oven Roasted Almonds, No salt


• I should have eaten some fruit with these, but it was a busy morning at the office

Lunch:

• Athenos Roasted Garlic Hummus sandwich with Oroweat 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Thins, spinach, tomatoes, and cucumber


• Small green salad with balsamic vinegar and oil dressing

Afternoon Snack:

• 1/2 cup Kashi Go Lean Crunch Cereal - Honey Almond Flax

Dinner:

• Lemon Caper Chicken - adapted from You on a Diet

Ingredients

2 thin cut chicken breasts - about 1/4 lb each

Juice from one lemon

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 shallot minced

1 tbsp. capers - drained

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

Preheat the broiler. Put the chicken in a baking dish. Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over the chicken. Broil for 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked.

• We served corn and peas (our own creation of mixed veggies) with the chicken

Tonight we're having Black Bean Burgers...one of my favorites!

When Carrots Just Won't Do...

You on a Diet provides a detailed two week meal plan to get you started. There are also great charts in the book to help you decide what you’ll eat for each meal and snack for the rest of your journey. My favorite section in the book tells you what things to eat at particular types of restaurants.

R and I were very motivated the first week we started following the two week plan. However, once the second week rolled around, we were kind of missing the old foods we used to eat. DON’T QUIT! Once we made it past the second week, we got into a groove. We even got to the point that we no longer craved a What-a-burger!?!

Don’t get me wrong, my enormous sweet tooth still knocks at my door from time to time. The book provides some dessert recipes too! R and I tried eating the super duper dark chocolate it says you can have. I just can’t handle the bitterness.

Fortunately, a recent trend in our area has given us a healthy alternative when carrots just won’t do. Several natural frozen yogurt places have opened up around our home and my by office. You can even get chocolate at some of them! Our favorite yogurt shop, by far is called Red Mango. They have a wonderful Mixed Berry Parfait that R and I like to split. The granola in it tastes great! In fact, I think I’m going to go and get one now. After all, I’m only a few points away from a $5 off coupon….

The Photos Say It All...

July 2009 - Three months before we decided to change our diet.

June 2010 - 8 months after changing our diet.

It's More About the Carrots than the Treadmill

In the past whenever I’ve felt I needed to lose weight, I would begin working out. In fact, I was running on the treadmill pretty regularly in 2008. I lost some weight; nothing near 45 lbs though.

R and I have learned that weight loss is more about what you eat. I’ve heard before that for every mile you run you burn about 100 calories. 100 calories??? A decent chocolate chip cookie is more than 100 calories. I’ve also heard that you have to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound.

Okay, so I lost 45 lbs:

45lbs X 3500 calories = 157,500 calories

157,500 calories / 100 calories = 1,575 miles

That is a lot of miles and it is assuming that I’m burning every calorie I’m consuming each day as well. It’s no wonder that people work out like crazy and hardly ever meet their weight loss goals. Truthfully, I did not work out regularly until after I lost the 45 lbs.

Weight loss is all about a calorie deficit. Your body must burn more calories than what you consume. You on a Diet guided us through eating lower calorie foods to create the deficit we needed to lose weight, but we did not feel like we were starving ourselves while we were doing it.

Snacking on foods high in fiber and protein helped to curb our hunger in between meals. Almonds with fruit are one of our favorite snacks. Kashi also makes some wonderful snack bars that are good to keep around. It’s all about making smarter choices about what you eat.

It Takes Discipline and a Partner

Changing your diet completely is tough. I’m not going to lie. The book we followed gave us the tools and information we needed, but without discipline and a partner we would not have been successful.

Self-discipline is not something we already had. We developed it along the way. I’d say R is more disciplined than I am. It is very difficult for me to pass up dessert when it is offered to me. R suggested that we approach the lifestyle change through prayer and that is exactly what we did.

I could not have been successful at losing 45 lbs without R. A partner is definitely the key to being successful. We plan our meals for the week together and grocery shop together. R actually keeps me in check without having to say anything. Since I know he is eating all the right foods, I'm motivated to do the same.

After praying for the discipline, the next step was to rid our house of all bad food. The book had a great section with information on this. We went through the pantry and gave away macaroni and cheese and pop tarts to my sister who was in college at the time, and our refrigerator was nearly bare once we were finished. If there is not any bad food in the house to eat when you get that craving, you won’t eat it.

We also found that it was important to be able to track your success. R had a Wii and Wii Fit to go along with it. In fact, we’d had it for about a year and had used it only a few times. R used it and still uses it just about everyday for his morning workout. I mainly used it to keep track of my weight and BMI. It allows you to set goals and charts your progress. Seeing your progress is very rewarding and gives you the motivation to keep on keeping on.

I'm eating carrots!

Well, you know what they say about eating carrots…

Or maybe, my dad has a saying that, “everyone who eats carrots is gonna die.” Sounds harsh, huh? My dad just doesn’t like carrots…

I’ve decided to start this blog because of all the questions my husband and I have received about our successful weight loss. People want to know what works so I’ve decided to share what worked for us.

My husband (R) purchased the book You: on a Diet: the Owner’s Manual for Waist Management, by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen a couple of years back. He read it shortly after buying it and then it collected dust in our home for the next year and a half.

Fast-forward to October 2009. We are sitting on the couch after a typical work day, exhausted and tired of deciding what to do for dinner. In the months previous to this day, I had tried jogging on the treadmill in an attempt to lose weight, but always fell off the wagon. I can’t remember how the conversation went exactly, but both of us decided we needed to make a change in our eating habits. Too often we went out to eat instead of cooking at home, because we were so tired. We were tired of being tired…

R brought up the book You: on a Diet: the Owner’s Manual for Waist Management and suggested that we follow the advice and information it provided. He had tried their smoothie recipes for breakfast before. We agreed that if we decided to follow the book, we would have to follow it completely. Just following bits and pieces in the past had not worked. And so began our journey…

As of today, R has lost 110 lbs and I have lost 45 lbs. I welcome your questions or suggestions on my blog. Afterall, everyone is different and what works for one may or may not work for someone else. I hope you find my blog helpful and encouraging.

-Megan