(For more information about my dieting and weight loss, click here. For more information about the specific foods I eat, click here.)

Today you get the recipe that sits in my refrigerator. I’ll explain in a moment. But first, the recipe:

Parmesan Crisped Chicken

Ingredients:
1 egg
2 Tbs. milk
3 lbs. of chicken
3 Tbs. of margarine or butter

Ingredients for Crumb Mixture:
3 parts cornflake crumbs (mash up some of the generic stuff)
2 parts Parmesan cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 350 degrees.
2. Wash the chicken and pat dry.
3. Dip chicken in liquid made form egg and milk.
4. Coat Evenly with the crumb mixture.
5. Place in single layer, skin side up, on a wire rack in a sheet pan. (If you don’t have a wire rack, make sure the pan is well-greased or lined with foil)
6. Drizzle with the margarine.
7. Bake for an hour without covering the pan or turning the chicken.

So what did I mean about keeping it in the refrigerator? Well, when we first made this chicken, we liked it so much that we print out the recipe, attached it to an empty Parmesan cheese shaker, and filled the container with the crumb mixture to make it easy to do it in the future. Every once in a while, we refill the shaker with more mixture.

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DIET DIARY

Numbers from Today

Blood Sugar: 103
Weight: 279.8
Fat Percentage: 47.8
Water Percentage: 30.5
Muscle Percentage: 34.8

Food and Exercise from Yesterday

Fluids: Water (16 oz - 5 times a day)
Exercise:
None.
Meal 1:
Oatmeal
Multivitamin
B150 Vitamin Complex
Snack 1:
1 Slim Fast 220 Calorie Optima Bar
Meal 2:
Parmesan Crisped Chicken (as above)
Green Beans
Rice a Roni
Snack 2:
2 Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Cheese icing. (These were done from a box. They stayed within my carb limits. I used them as a dessert for the meal about an hour after dinner.)
Meal 3:
Oatmeal

Posted by Saphrym | 8 Comments »

(For more information about my dieting and weight loss, click here. For more information about the specific foods I eat, click here.)

I hate spicy foods. And when I say spicy, I mean hot spicy. Now, I know it’s good for burning fat so will have some pepper such as cayenne every once in a while. But normally spicy foods really hide the flavor of the foods they are in. My mother and father agreed with me. So when we moved to Louisiana back when I was 13, we tried some Jambalaya. The food itself was good, but too spicy. So my mother came up with a recipe that didn’t have the pepper in it. That recipe was then passed to my wife. Anyone who has tasted it has loved it. Last night, that is what I ate. So here is the recipe as told to me by my wife:

Ingredients
One package chicken breast
1 package smoked sausage
2 cans French onion soup
2 cans beef consume
2 1/2 cups uncooked rice
1 stick butter

Directions

1. Boil chicken (salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, poultry seasoning, chicken boulion cube)
2. When fully cooked shred chicken making sure to remove all fat.
3. Cut smoked sausage into rounds.
4. Add all ingredients into a baking pan
5. Bake at 450 until rice is fully cooked about 1 1/2 hours

Make sure to read the carbs on the rice you use. That determines the carbs of the dish. Take more sausage and chicken if possible and keep the carbs below 60. (So basically about 1 1/2 cups of jambalaya per 1 cup of rice you’re allowed.)

Enjoy! This is good stuff. And it’s easy to make. And the amount it makes can be used over and over again depending on the size of your household. We eat off of it twice and send the rest to a few friends who can’t get enough.

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DIET DIARY

Numbers from Today

Blood Sugar: 108
Weight: 282.0
Fat Percentage: 48.6
Water Percentage: 30.3
Muscle Percentage: 34.8

Food and Exercise from Yesterday

Fluids: Water (16 oz - 5 times a day)
Exercise:
None.
Meal 1:
Jambalaya (As per above)
Multivitamin
Snack 1:
Chocolate (I had a craving. I kept it in my carb limit.)
Meal 2:
2 Peanut Butter Sandwiches
Chips
Snack 2:
Chocolate (I still had a craving. I still kept it in my carb limit.)

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Posted by Saphrym | 11 Comments »

(For more information about my dieting and weight loss, click here. For more information about the specific foods I eat, click here.)

You can eat pizza and still lose weight. I should know. I eat pizza twice a week. See, we always have leftovers, so I eat the second part the next day. So how can you accomplish such things? With moderation.

The important part is your crust. That’s where the carbs come in. I use one of 3 different crusts right now, and no, I don’t feel like doing the carb math for homemade pizza crust. I like using the prepackaged stuff so I can see carb numbers immediately. The 3 different crust I use are:

1. A can of crescents. Yep, those cans f the moon shaped biscuits are awesome. You take the dough out and flatten it on a pizza pan. This takes some effort as the dough is not meant to be done like this, but the effort is worth it. The dough comes out nice and flaky and crisp. Good for a thin crust pizza.

2. Pie dough. You know those sheets of pie dough that come prepackaged where you just roll them out on a pie dish, fill, and bake? Yeah. Those. Put them on the pizza pan just like they are. What’s great about these is much less work goes into making the pizza. The problem is they are the kind of flaky you find in things like apple pie. So they fall apart easily. These pizzas you have to eat with a fork.

3. My favorite is the premade pizza crusts. These are already done for you. Just put on your toppings and place in the oven for 10 minutes and you’re done. The problem is not all grocery stores carry them. Out here I sometimes have a hard time finding them. But they can normally be found in the deli/bakery part of the grocery store.

Now, here’s the secret: Check the carbs. Don’t go over 60 carbs for one sitting with pizza. Since toppings don’t really cost much carbs, you only have to worry about the carbs of the crust. For the first two crusts, I basically get half of the pizza for one meal. For the premade ones, I buy the small ones and eat only one pizza per meal. They’re basically about the size of a personal pan pizza. All of these are 60 or less carbs as long as you check the packages and make sure. Now, why don’t I use the cans of premade pizza dough? Instead of something like the crescents? Simple. They cost almost 100 carbs for a decent amount of food. They are thick and dense and filled with carbs when cooked.

So what about the toppings? That’s another secret. Stay away from fatty toppings. I use hamburger meat, but I use the extra lean stuff and even rinse it off under water after browning it to make sure no fat remains. It removes a little of the seasonings I add (such as onion powder, Italian seasonings, salt, and pepper), but enough of the flavor remains that when I put the pizza sauce (store bought jars because I like easy, but you can make your own) on them, there’s still plenty of flavor. I’m not a fan of veggies on my pizza, but sometimes I’ll put a few tomatoes or green peppers. And of course, cheese is a necessity. For me anyway. I use pre-grated cheese in the packages. I normally pick the pizza blend or some Italian blend. I could grate my own, but again, I go for quick and easy most of the time.

So if you keep the toppings nice and light and keep the carbs you’re eating under 60 grams, you’ll be just fine. The crust is the most important. Find one you like and have at it. For more info, check out the video for today.

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DIET DIARY

Numbers from Today

Blood Sugar: 125
Weight: 283.6

Food and Exercise from Yesterday

Fluids: Water (16 oz - 5 times a day)
Exercise:
The “Pre-Brush Routine” by Dennis Rosato on Israel’s Fat Man Unleashed.
Meal 1:
Oatmeal
Multivitamin
Snack 1:
1 Slim Fast 220 Calorie Optima Bar
Meal 2:
Pizza (as described above and in the video)
Snack 2:
1 Slim Fast 220 Calorie Optima Bar
Meal 3:
We had one extra pizza this time, so I ate it for meal 3.

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Now for the video portion of the diary:

Posted by Saphrym | 8 Comments »

Basically, anytime I eat cereal and milk it’s kind of a treat to myself. So I go with any cereal I want. Whether it’s Cap’n Crunch or Banana Nut Crunch. What I do is I make sure that between the milk and the cereal I get no more than 60 grams of carbs. I weigh the cereal and I measure the milk until it’s perfect.

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There’s only one potato chip I normally eat. That’s Pringles. No, I’m not trying to sell them or anything. But the reason I eat them is because they are easy to measure for purposes of counting carbs. When I have chips I have just enough to flesh out my carb limit for that meal. For instance, if I have a turkey sandwich, the only carbs I’m really getting is from the bread. The bread costs me about 20g of carbs per sandwich. So I might have 1 or 2 sandwiches and then flesh out the leftover carbs with 20 or 40 grams of carbs worth of Pringles. If it’s a peanut butter sandwich, the peanut butter costs me 7g per tablespoon which is enough for one sandwich. So in that case, if I want chips, I normally only have one sandwich because it’s hard to eat only (60-27×2=6g) 6g of carbs worth of Pringles.

I also like them because they last longer than most chips and remain in good condition so I can buy them in large quantities on sale and expect the whole chips to still be whole when I eat them. They also have a variety of flavors (one of my favorites is pizza).

Just watch out for low fat Pringles. They actually have less fat but more carbs. So they can be counterproductive especially for someone who is diabetic.

As for the bread I eat, I use Nature’s Own 100% Whole Wheat. The brand is not as important as the 100% Whole Wheat. This one costs me 10g of carbs per slice.

Posted by Saphrym | 17 Comments »

Ingredients:

• 3 ounces lemon jello
• 1 cup boiling water
• 12 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

Directions:

1. Dissolve jello in boiling water and set aside.
2. Cream the cream cheese with sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, and lemon zest.
3. Add jello mix.
4. Fold in 2 cups of freshly whipped heavy cream
5. Pour into 2 pre-baked graham cracker crusts
6. Chill at least 3 hours or until firm and set

Reasons:
We had to decide on a dessert that would be ok for me to eat during the holidays. I used to make red velvet cake to die for. My wife made pecan pie. Both of those would be way too much sugar no matter how thinly sliced. So we went with a cream cheese based dessert because of the lower carbs from the cream cheese. And considering it makes 2 pies, 1 cup of sugar spread out through 2 pies is not not bad at all per slice.

Notes:
I eat 5 times a day: 3 meals and 2 snacks. So instead of this being part of my meal and making it too many carbs, I had a slice (with the pie divided into 6 slices evenly) for a snack, which would be just under 45 grams of carbs, which is just right. I then had another slice for my second snack. Remember, it’s always a good thing to change up a routine in your diet every once in a while so the body doesn’t get used to things. Heck, I even lost 2 pounds over Christmas and the next day even though I had 3 slices of this pie total.

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Ingredients:

• 3 cups mashed sweet potatoes
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup melted butter

Topping:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Combine first 6 ingredients.
2. Pour into a buttered casserole dish.
3. Mix remaining ingredients together.
4. Sprinkle on top of casserole.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Reasons:

I love the taste and this is close to being a dessert for me.

Notes:
I normally eat about a 1/2 cup of the finished product. That keeps it below my carbs. This is something we only have on Thanksgiving and Christmas. So I normally have it with turkey (no carbs) and green beans (miniscule carbs). Therefore, it’s my carb for the meals. And usually I have it twice in a row because we eat leftovers of the previous day’s meal. This is one of those dishes that proves that you can have great flavor without going nuts about it.

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So, when I say I’m having a Slim-Fast bar, this is what I mean:
http://www.enutritionshop.com/product_list.asp?SKW=OPTMEALBARS

My 3 favorite flavors are:

• Caramel Crispy Peanut
• Oatmeal Raisin
• Rich Chocolate Brownie

Why Slim-Fast?

Well, I asked my diabetes nurse if they were safe for me to use and she said yes. That was a plus to it. Next, they have about 8g of protein in each one, almost 30% of daily vitamin needs across the board, and other healthy stuff. They run about 35g of carbs each, which since I’m allowed 30-45 grams of carbs per snack, fits perfectly with a glass of water or a diet drink. They do have sodium, so you have to make sure you stick to water or a zero sodium diet drink or else you’ll be retaining a lot of water which will mess with your weight.

Posted by Saphrym | 41 Comments »

For those of you interested in how I make my oatmeal, here’s my recipe:

Ingredients:

• heaping 1/2 cup Quick Oats (Like Quaker or generic will do fine)
• 1 scoop Vanilla Protein Powder (I use Body Fortress 100% Whey Protein. Can be found in Wal-Mart in the vitamin/nutrition area)
• 1 heaping tablespoon Brown Sugar
• 1 cup Water
• Cinnamon
• Salt

Directions:

1. Put oatmeal, water, brown sugar, and a dash of salt in a microwave safe bowl.
2. Sprinkle cinnamon on top to coat.
3. Put in microwave on high for 2 1/2 minutes.
4. Stir briskly.
5. Add ice or cold water to desired consistency and continue stirring. (I use ice to cool it off. I don’t like it too hot. Cold water will cool it off less. Also, the water makes it seem like more food if you’re felling especially hungry.)
6. Add protein powder and continue stirring.
7. Eat and enjoy.

Reasons:

This creates a dish that is good for your cholesterol levels. It also has plenty of cinnamon which is good for blood sugar levels. Brown sugar is better for you than white sugar as it contains more natural ingredients instead of completely refined. The protein is great for muscle building which of course increases your metabolism. The more muscle you have, the more weight you lose. The vanilla flavor of the protein also gives the oatmeal that final piece of flavor that makes it creamy and good even without the milk or butter that some people use.

Notes:
As always, remember, I am a big guy so even to lose weight I require a certain amount of calories. So if you’re much smaller than I am, you may need to half this recipe although I’d still recommend the full amount of protein powder.

Posted by Saphrym | 21 Comments »