Beer and Brownies: A Tailgating Survival Guide

Football may not be your thing. You may not like it, you may not understand it, or you just plain may not care about it. However, even though it's not your thing, you probably have some kind of "thing" that seems to revolve around friends, food, drinks, and fun. For me, football is that thing. And although this is my survival guide to tailgating, I'm sure parts of it can also be applied to whatever your "thing" is that happens to involve eating and drinking.

(Disclaimer: I'm not claiming that everything in this guide is "healthy", most of the tips are just my "healthier" options to enjoying the day. The beauty of WW is that you don't have to give up eating and drinking with friends in order to live a healthy lifestyle. It wouldn't be healthy to live this way every day, but on occasion it is necessary to fit a day like this into your life, if only to preserve your sanity!)


Tomorrow I will be attending the home opener of my favorite professional football team. My friends and I are pretty serious about football. Eleven of us own a bus, painted in our team colors, which we will be driving to the stadium tomorrow morning. We will arrive in time for the parking lot to open at 8:00am. Here are some suggestions for getting through a day like that without completely sacrificing your hard work toward living a healthy lifestyle:

Tip #1 - Bring breakfast
Breakfast is for wusses! Beer is all the breakfast we need! Well, not this week. I will be eating fruit before I leave home, but I am making low fat blueberry muffins for everyone else (and I will have one too). I'm hoping this will allow me to eat lunch at a more normal time instead of having hot dogs at 9:00am because I am starving!

Tip #2 - Bring your own snacks
I bought fat free pretzels because I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone else will be bringing snacks like potato chips and Doritos. Snyder's is my go-to brand for pretzels, yum!

I also made a dip, because for some reason people really like to dip their snacks in something (myself included). I'm not sure why, pretzels are great on their own, but when tailgating, I always feel the need for dip. This dip is super low fat! I have a dip mix that calls for mixing the spices with mayo and sour cream. I substituted nonfat Greek yogurt for the sour cream and used low fat mayo. 2 T of dip are now only 1 point!! It's called Fiesta Dip and has a lot of spicy, Mexican flavors. Doesn't it look yummy?

Tip #3 - Keep track of your beer!

For me, this one is especially important. I am very serious about tracking my WW points. After a few beers, it gets really hard to remember how many I have had, and almost impossible to track them later! Some people say to limit your alcohol intake by drinking water in between beers, and that may work for some, but not for me! I'm not interested in filling up on water when I planned to drink beer all day!

My number one rule: no beer in the stadium. It's too expensive and too difficult to keep track of. Instead, any beer I am going to drink will be while tailgating in the parking lot. Every time I finish a beer, the tab (in this case, since I bought cans, but you can do this with bottle caps too) goes directly into my pocket. Later, when I get home and need to track my points for the day, I can pull out the tabs and know exactly how many beers I had. No guesswork!

Tip #4 - Substitute
I am from Buffalo. We are a town that appreciates our sausage. I am from a very Polish family. My innards are practically made of processed meats. I would love to say I am vegetarian and have the easiest excuse for avoiding these meats while tailgating, but my friends know me way better than that! Even more, I know I will WANT those processed meat products, and I am not about to give up all the great things in life if I don't have to. Everyone is going to be eating hot dogs, sausage, and hamburgers. However, I will enjoy eating these goodies more if I know they aren't a heart attack on a plate... So I substitute. First, I bought reduced fat hot dogs. Second, I am bringing some homemade venison sausage (venison is a very lean meat). And third, I am eating these products on wheat rolls with more fiber than your typical hot dog bun:

Tip #5 - Play games!
So, I have already saved all my weekly points for tomorrow. And I have already earned as many APs as possible. But instead of just sitting around bs-ing and drinking beer, I will have tailgating games handy to try and sneak in some activity. For those outside the greater Buffalo area, I present to you the best party game ever: KANJAM!!

Seriously people, this is a fabulously fun game to play with friends! It involves throwing a frisbee into a small plastic container (like a small garbage can with a slot cut in the front). If you don't have access to KanJam, there are lots of other great group games you could bring... Rings, ladder golf, beanbags (we used to have a great team logo beanbag toss, but it got warped in the rain one day). None of these things are hardcore exercise, but they certainly help prevent everyone from sitting around and eating nonstop!



Tip #6 - Conquer the post game munchies
After the game we head back out to the bus. Being Bills fans, we typically have just suffered a devastating loss, we have lost our buzz, and we are facing hours of traffic to get out of the parking lot. We don't want to fire up the grill again, so we snack on whatever is handy. There are always leftover chips (luckily I will have my pretzels) and someone brings cookies or brownies.

This time, I refuse to get caught up in that post-game lull of mindless snacking on unhealthy foods. To satisfy the sweet tooth, I made No Pudge brownies to share with everyone:

I added some chocolate chips on top, which did increase the points value a little (this is a batch of 24 brownies, at 3 points each). I wonder if anyone will be able to tell they are low fat!!

I hope this survival guide helps some of you through the football season (or with whatever your "thing" is). Go Bills!!

Week In Review

I gained a little this week. I totally expected to have a small loss, since as I mentioned early in the week, I did not exercise AT ALL. However, I wasn't really expecting a gain. I ate well, used most (but not all) of my weekly points, and made sure to drink lots of water. It's a bit frustrating to gain, especially since my past shows me that my body loves to hover around that 170 mark for long periods of time. I definitely don't want to think that I'm going to be bouncing in and out of the 170's for months, so I hope this was the kick in the pants I needed to MAKE time for exercise. Since this weigh in on Tuesday, I have been out running my power line intervals with the pup on days when I get home before dark. I have been trying not to obsess about getting APs, but focus more on the enjoyment of what I'm doing for exercise. I am also trying not to beat myself up on days when I just don't fit in any exercise. It happens. Like my mom likes to say "Bridge it and get over it."

Accomplishments of the Week:

This week I kicked ass because:
1) I tried one new recipe - This was not as many as I had planned, but again I was struggling with finding that balance between going back to work and cooking, exercising, and making time for me! So I was happy to have made something new at all!

Lately I have been really loving the recipes featured on the WW website. I never used to be a huge fan of most WW recipes, because they always seemed to be lacking something but they have really stepped it up over there! This week my new recipe was "Tomato, Basil, and Mozzarella Pasta Salad" which was a refreshing summer treat.

In our house, we LOVE pasta salad and it's really hard to find a satisfying healthier replacement to the traditional version we crave. I really enjoyed this salad! It was whole wheat pasta, fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes (from the garden), fresh basil (from my herb garden), oregano, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Super healthy and super delicious. The hub said it was a little dry for him, he wanted more oil. I told him to suck it up, it was healthy! But I liked it a lot and took the leftovers for lunch the next day!

2) I planned ahead and packed awesome lunches - One thing I have relied on in the past and am trying to get away from is eating frozen meals for lunches at work. It's so convenient, but I know I can make much healthier lunches by just preparing ahead of time. Every day of work so far I have packed my lunch the night before (even using leftovers, which I usually forget to do!) and I'm really hoping to keep that up. Obviously there is nothing wrong with frozen meals occasionally, but I find myself jumping on the whole foods bandwagon more and more all the time, so packing something I made is just a better option for me.

Goals for Next Week

Next week I will kick ass because I plan to:
1) Report to this blog on time - I'm really trying to use this as a tool to keep myself weighing in, attending meetings, and being overall accountable. I feel like I really stink at it when I weighed in on Tuesday, attended my meeting on Wednesday, and am finally getting around to reporting on things on Saturday! I am about to start a second job, too (more on that another time) so my schedule will be even crazier. BUT, I really am going to work on writing posts on time.

2) Work in some exercise - As mentioned above, I have already been working on this. I am not going to get caught up in obsessing about how much I exercise or get upset on days when I don't work it into my schedule. I'm going to be more laid back about it, do it when I have time, enjoy it, and reap the benefits that I know will come. I can feel my heart getting healthier all the time!

3) Be the healthy tailgating buzz kill - I love fall because I love going to football games. My team is playing its home opener tomorrow and I will be going to the game with a large groups of friends. We are arriving when the parking lots open, at 8:00am and will be eating, drinking, and having a generally great time all day. I have a master plan to keep tailgating from ruining my healthy lifestyle... I will be posting later with my healthy tailgating tips so stay tuned!

Week in Review

Wow, I was NOT expecting another large loss this week! Down 3.2! I am getting so close to my all-time adult low and I cannot wait to see that number looking up at me. Hopefully next week.

Accomplishments of the Week

This week I kicked ass because:
1) I made exercise my priority - I incorporated a ton more cardio into my usual lackluster fitness routine. I started doing intervals of running and walking on the power line trail near my house. It is literally a trail cut through the woods so a power line can run across the hill so I walked from my road to the first electric pole, jogged from the first to the second, walked from the second to the third, and so on. I am by no means athletic, and certainly am not a runner, but this was a great start! Guess who also really enjoyed it?

I also had some really great bike rides this week. I went a different way on my usual trail and look who I saw:

There was this entire swamp that was so beautiful and there were about five beavers playing around in there. They didn't seem to be too concerned that I was there, so I stopped and watched for awhile. The one in the picture seemed curious and swam right up to me!

2) I tried some new recipes - I have been trying to beat food boredom, so I plan to try a couple new recipes every week. This week, I tried three.

The first was a "Buffalo Chicken Pasta" recipe I found on the WW message boards. It consisted of chicken breast and whole wheat pasta, in a sauce made of vinegar, light whipped butter, celery seed, Franks Hot Sauce, and Laughing Cow Cheese (it called for Herb and Garlic, but I only had the Sun dried Tomato so I used that... I threw in some garlic powder for a little garlic flavor).  Being a Buffalo girl, I enjoyed the flavor of the Frank's Hot Sauce a LOT! It had that chicken wing-ish flavor without all the deep frying and butter. Not entirely the same, of course, but enjoyable nonetheless. It was a bit too spicy for the hub though.  I forgot to take a picture before we ate it all up, so it will have to suffice that I say "yum!".

The next recipe I tried was one of the recipes of the day last week on the WW website. It was "Grilled Margherita Portobello Mushrooms":

Looks like a burger, right?! It was pretty good, but I'm a fan of portobellos in general. This was a grilled portobello topped with a mixture of fat free mozzarella, garlic powder, and oregano. I put it on an Arnold's Sandwich Thin and topped with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, some fresh basil from my garden, and tomatoes. This was crazy low in points and so satisfying! I would suggest NOT eating it on a bun though, unless you're into the whole wet bread thing. I am not a fan of any kind of soggy bread and between the mushroom juices, the balsamic, and the tomatoes this meal was just too wet to come anywhere near a slice of bread!

The last new recipe I tried this week was "Grilled Corn and Avocado Salsa", again a recipe of the day last week on the WW site:

Every recipe I tried this week was good, but this one was my favorite! It is made of grilled corn (cut off the cob), scallions, a jalapeno pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic, cumin seeds, salt, pepper, avocado, lime juice, and cilantro (my favorite herb, by the way!). I loved this recipe because it was super versatile. I used it the following ways:
- To eat with tortilla chips, like you would a tomato salsa
- As a condiment in a burrito-like wrap
- Mixed in with a Mexican-style chicken bowl (with black beans, chicken, a little cheese, and some sour cream)

I'm sure there are more possibilities, but I ran out of salsa! I will definitely be making this again. It was super delicious, a little spicy, and a great new flavor to add to a lot of dishes. Plus, it kept for days, looking as fresh as the day I made it.

Goals for Next Week

Next week I will kick ass because I plan to:
1) Mix up the exercise - I know it is inevitable to lose some muscle along with fat every week, especially with these large losses I have been having, but I am not a fan of that "Body Fat %" number going up on my scale. I know I need to continue the great cardio I have been doing, as well as get back to strength training. I hope to work that in this week.

2) Get back on a schedule - School starts again this week so that means I am back to work for the school year. Summer is great for a lot of reasons (warm weather activities, fresh produce, a carefree attitude) but being on a schedule is not one of them. I'm a bit of a control freak, so the school year is good for me because I can plan more regular meals and exercise since I am on a set schedule. Sometimes, this throws me off right at the beginning of the school year since it's hard to figure out how I ever had time to work, exercise, cook, clean, etc (I've often fallen victim to ordering a lot of pizza during the first couple weeks of school). I'm spoiled in the summer and can use all my time to care for myself and my home! It's a lot harder when I suddenly have to convert back to the working woman! My goal this year is to not let the transition phase me and to keep up my recent success!

Weekly Meeting with Caroline

So I told you the other day I was going back to WW meetings, and I meant it, damn it! I went to my regular Wednesday evening meeting with Caroline, the sweetest lady ever. Caroline has been my leader for a couple years and she is hilarious. She is about 70 years old and has been on WW for 30 years!! Seriously, I want to be her in 40 years or so! She is such a firecracker!

The topic of the meeting was "Say no to saying no" and was all about how on WW we don't NEED to say no to any foods. We may CHOOSE to say no, because it is not worth the points to us, but there is nothing that is completely restricted. (One reason I love WW, by the way!). I felt like this was a timely topic, considering my Pizza Hut debacle last week.

One thing Caroline said that really hit home to me was this: "Don't feel guilty about eating something. But make sure you ate it because you really wanted it. Don't eat it just because it's there, or because you smelled it, or because someone else is eating it. If you really, really want it, eat it. Count the points and move on. Guilt will get you nowhere."

Okay then. Last week I really, really wanted that pizza. I ate it, I counted it, I moved on, I still lost weight. I felt somewhat guilty for eating WPs when it wasn't really necessary, but I DID have the points, I DID want the pizza, and I DID track what I ate. So, no guilt.

The bottom line is, I think we are programmed to feel guilty when it comes to eating "bad" foods. No matter how healthy a lifestyle someone may live, no one is perfect and I'm sure every one of us craves some kind of not-so-healthy food at some point or another. Realistically, it's totally okay to splurge on something  every so often if we are maintaining a healthy lifestyle most of the time! And why should we feel guilty about that?

I think people often follow this philosophy in other areas of life and don't feel guilty about it. For instance:
I know people who cut back on spending in everyday life to save money for a nice vacation. I bet they don't feel very guilty while they are sitting on a beach somewhere sipping margaritas! Isn't what we do on the WW program a similar philosophy? If you want the pizza, cut back in other areas or exercise to offset the points, and enjoy! Wash your hands of the guilt!

I am just as "guilty" of this behavior as others, as you saw in my post about the pizza last week. However, Caroline's comment about how guilt gets you nowhere has really been stuck in my head. She's totally right and I'm going to try to stop the "bad" talking and feelings of guilt. I challenge everyone else to do the same!

Good luck and stay healthy!

Eat 'em if you've got 'em!

Clearly I'm a fan of Weight Watchers. I know it's not for everyone, and there are other healthy lifestyle plans that work for others, but WW has worked for me, so I'm an advocate of the program. However, there is one aspect of the program that I sometimes wonder if it's working AGAINST me!

Confession of the day: I have a love/hate relationship with weekly points.

See, I really appreciate the concept of the weekly points. Obviously they are WWs way of helping us through situations like:
- I chose the chicken entree (thinking I was making a healthy choice) from a wedding menu and the plate appeared in front of me with fried chicken smothered in cheese... Good thing I have weeklies left!
OR
- I had a healthy dinner planned but my best friend had a crisis so I ended up meeting her for drinks, which turned into dinner, which turned into more drinks... Good thing I can use my weeklies!
OR
- It was the end of the school year and one of my students brought me a donut as a thank you for being his teacher. I didn't REALLY want it, but it was a sweet gesture and I didn't want to seem ungrateful so I ate half... Oh well, I'll just use my weeklies.

All of these are situations in which I really feel okay about using my weekly points allowance. That's what they are there for, right? I try to use them for things like ordering mishaps, evenings out with friends (even then I still try to make the healthiest choices) or food surprises that I don't have the willpower (or heart, sometimes) to completely refuse.

However...

It seems like there are so many instances in which using my weeklies is completely unnecessary, but I decide to do it anyway. I feel like all I am doing by using weeklies this way is cultivating my ongoing unhealthy relationship with food! Argh!!

Case in point: Yesterday. Yesterday I made a day trip with my fabulous family (my hub, mom, dad, aunt, cousin, other cousin and her hub, other cousin and her boyfriend) to a glassblowing museum. Very cool, I even got to learn how to make a Christmas ornament by blowing glass!! (That's me, below, in my awesome safety glasses, getting ready to use my new skills).

Not knowing the food situation for the day, I ate a substantial breakfast of oatmeal with berries, a peach, and coffee. We didn't end up leaving the museum and getting to eat lunch until 3:00 and by then I was absolutely ravenous! My dad chose Bob Evans for lunch. I had never eaten there before so on the drive from the museum to Bob Evans I did a quick search using my "Eat This, Not That" app on my iPhone to see what kind of healthy options there might be. Even though I was super hungry and others were ordering tempting items like fried appetizers and cheesy omelets with biscuits, I managed to order reasonably healthy. I ordered from their "Fit from the Farm" menu, the only place where they showed nutritional info, so I felt pretty good about that choice!

Since the museum was a few hours away from where we live, by the time my hub and I were getting close to home, I was actually a little hungry again. Could I have gone home and had a snack and been perfectly fine? Would I have stayed within my daily points, even after eating out at Bob Evans? Would I have been able to avoid using unnecessary weeklies? Yes, yes, and yes.

But... Knowing I had all my weeklies left, and feeling tired and lazy, and craving something unhealthy and cheesy after watching everyone else eat at Bob Evans, what do you think I did instead? This is what I did:

... And I used about 20 weeklies on it.

Disclaimer: The breadsticks were for the hub, not me! I didn't touch them! And it was a thin crust veggie lovers pizza.

So it could have been worse. Definitely worse. But still, I get so annoyed with myself after the fact that I made good choices all day long and then made a not-so-great choice just because I had all my weeklies left. And ONLY for that reason. I made it through a wedding on Saturday making really great choices and not using any weeklies. I made it through a day of travel on Sunday and eating out at an unfamiliar restaurant. Yet I knew my points reset on Tuesday, so I might as well use them up on garbage.

See? Love/hate... I need to figure out a way to focus on the health aspect of eating and ditch the "eat 'em if you've got 'em" mentality!

Dusting off the sugar and moving on

Yesterday - 12 hours in the presence of cake

Today I am coming out of my sugar coma... Not because I ate a ton of the sweet stuff but because yesterday I was so covered in it I could almost feel it seeping into my pores. Another Lisa fact: I am a cake decorator. In addition to my full-time teaching job, I make cakes. I love, love, love it BUT it definitely adds to my weight struggle. Yesterday's projects:

(Both of these will be decorated with some fresh flowers today to finish them off before I set them up at the wedding, but in these pics they are mostly complete)

The Sticky, Sweet Struggle

I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear that I became interested in cake decorating not only because I love the creative outlet it provides but also because I have an out-of-control sweet tooth. Back when I started decorating as a hobby it was not uncommon for me to make a cake just to eat at home (of course I told myself I needed to do it to practice my skills!). Now, however, I do my best to avoid a lot of processed sweets. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Do I usually indulge in something sweet every single day? You betcha! I just make sure I have the points for it! I also like to think I am past the point of allowing myself to down half of a gooey cake!

So, herein lies the problem. When I am baking and decorating I am tempted all day long to taste. "Oh, I better have a bite of this chocolate cake to make sure it's okay. Well, that was good. I wonder about the vanilla. I should probably taste that too. The frosting tastes okay, I tried it earlier. I wonder what the chocolate cake tastes like WITH the frosting. I should try it and make sure it's edible..." and on, and on, and on.

I will admit, some amount of tasting is necessary. Especially for fillings and icings that I need to make sure have enough of a certain flavor. That being said, typically one itty bitty, tiny little taste is plenty enough to determine if something tastes "right". Clearly, my struggle is stopping after that one itty bitty taste. I have, however, acknowledged that struggle and really been working hard at overcoming that temptation.

Anti-Sugar Strategies

Here are some things I did yesterday to avoid going overboard with the tasting:

1) Ate a filling breakfast - Fiber One cereal, fat free milk, banana, melon cubes, coffee (By the way, I was the incredible melon slayer this week... See below... I hacked up an entire watermelon and cantaloupe to have in the fridge so I could grab it quickly for a snack. Talk about sweet! These are so good they're like candy! But much better for you, of course).

2) Packed a lunch and plenty of snacks - Sometimes I get caught in the trap of not having any food with me when I'm decorating and I get hungry! All that does is lead to snacking on cake trimmings all day long! So I brought chicken and orzo for lunch, and my snacks were carrots and celery with a spicy mexican dip and more melon.

3) Water, water, water - I made sure all day long to have water at my side and even brought limes to put in it since I think the tap water in the bakery tastes funny.

Was I successful?

I guess we will see for sure on the scale this week! Overall, I felt that it was a pretty positive day. I tasted only a tiny bit (I estimate about 6 points worth) and also stayed within my daily points despite the tastes. Unfortunately, I didn't get all my GHGs in, but today I am focused on doing that to make up for yesterday. So, I give myself a B- for the day... not terrible, but room for improvement next time!!

Good luck and stay healthy!!