My mom got us a bunch of kitchen stuff for our Christmas present. I still haven't opened most of it. I need to clean out my cabinets first. We have only been back for a day and we didn't do much in the way of productivity yet. Tomorrow we are going to go look at houses and hopefully we will find one that we want to make an offer on. Also, I'm going to try to clean the house tomorrow.
Now, as for my diet and exercise plans... I haven't done anything in the way of exercise yet. I'm hoping that I can get started when my husband goes back to work. And after quite a bit of indecision, I have decided to try, once again, to succeed on the Mediterranean Diet. I had considered trying the 17 day diet or even something more restrictive like the HCG diet. I'm not completely discounting them, yet, but my husband doesn't want me to do anything that is likely to be unhealthy. And he doesn't think that counting calories is a long term solution. The Mediterranean Diet is simple because I'm not expected to count calories. There are a few things that I need to work on, and I hope that this diet will help me. The first problem I have is portion sizes. When I'm eating something delicious, I just keep eating until I am so full I cannot breath. At that point I usually wallow in heartburn hell for several hours. I don't want that. Another problem is that I don't eat enough fruits and vegetables and I rarely, if ever, eat legumes. This diet features plenty of beans and lentils along with 6-9 servings of fruits and veggies. If I start eating the correct amounts of these foods, I think it may make it easier for me to cut my portions of meats and cheeses. I am also addicted to cheese. I guesstimate that I probably eat 10 or more servings of cheese most days. This diet restricts me to 2-3 servings of dairy a day, which seems ridiculously low. The diet also has me eating seafood 2 times a week and chicken/poultry 1-2 times a week. But I have to restrict other meats to once a month. I might not be as stringent on this particular rule, but I will try to eat meats lower in fat, and try to work my way to the true Mediterranean style. So, I guess we will see how that goes.
We went grocery shopping today. I now have a fridge full of veggies. We made blackened Yellowfin Tuna steaks for dinner tonight. I had steamed asparagus (although my husband wouldn't eat any.) I also made rice pilaf and black beans as sides. I probably should have eaten more vegetables today, but it was a nice start. Tomorrow I'm going to make tacos out of the leftover tuna. I bought fruit for smoothies and ingredients to make my own bread (which could prove disastrous.) I also bought ingredients to make chicken fajitas and I think I'll throw the extra chicken in the crock pot with carrots, potatoes and celery and make it like a roast, just replacing the beef. I have a vegetarian cookbook and I am going to try to make one recipe out of it every time I go shopping. This time I chose Gypsy Soup. It has sweet potatoes, bell peppers and weird spices like turmeric and cinnamon in it. Oh, and it has chickpeas in it. I figured if I was going to start broadening my tastes, I might as well start with the most extreme thing I could find. All in all, I got out of the grocery store for less that $300, if I do manage to decrease my portions, I could probably get 2-3 weeks out of this one trip. I guess buying steak, bacon and pork chops is much more expensive that I thought it was.
Well, it's after midnight. So I guess I'll go join my snoring hubby in bed. Goodnight.
