Lazy Night

Good discovery last night! I've found my official lazy night dinner for those evenings when I just don't want to cook. Ham steak and vegetables are perfect. Yesterday was an interesting day. I had good conversations with a couple of you about my diet, which was great. I like getting that kind of feedback, it helps to know that people are paying attention! The biggest question that's come up so far is regarding my fruit and vegetable intake, or lack thereof.

I am planning to increase the amount of these items that I'm eating, as I get more accustomed to being on the low-carb program and more comfortable with the relative numbers of carbs in different items. As far as fruits, there are very few that I'm going to be able to work into my diet. Most fruits are high in carb content, although the carbs that they contain are the complex type and certainly more nutritious than simple carbs like flour and sugar. It looks like certain types of berries might be my best bet, particularly raspberries, blackberries, and cranberries.

For vegetables, the options are a little more widespread. I've been including a vegetable in my dinner each day, although canned green beans are certainly not my ideal in terms of either taste or nutrition. They do, however, have the advantage of being cheap, easy, and always in the pantry. Fresh steamed or sauteed veggies like zucchini, green beans, peas, carrots, mushrooms, and broccoli to go along with dinner would be best, I think. I'm also planning to look into salads and tomatoes at lunchtime. I've got to be careful with salads, since salad dressings are fairly high in carbs and I tend to drown my salads in dressing. I need to look into which of the types of dressings I like are lowest in carbs, since I'm really not a particular fan of vinaigrettes. More on the fruits and veggies issue in posts to come as I learn more! And now on to yesterday's meals...

Breakfast: 2 eggs, scrambled, 1/2 lb bacon - 3.4g
Lunch: 1/4 lb deli ham w/mustard to dip, cheese stick - 1.3g
Snack: Cheese stick - .8g
Dinner: Ham steak, peas - 13.2g
Dessert: None
Total: 18.7g

If you've noticed that I ate the same lunch yesterday as I did the day before and came up with a completely different carb number, you're right. The food database in the carb counter app I'm using is very confusing and I think I managed to enter about four times as much ham as I actually ate on the previous day.

I want to tell you all about something I'm pretty proud of. I said at the beginning of the post that yesterday was interesting. Part of that interesting wasn't so good. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday evening after dinner that upset me rather a lot. Turns out this morning that most of it was misunderstanding and miscommunication, but I didn't know that at the time and I was unhappy. And I DIDN'T EAT ANYTHING! *pause for applause* Normally my immediate reaction to being upset and hurt would be to head for the cupboard or the fridge, and I sure had the urge last night, but I didn't give in to it. This was the first real test other than just general hunger and my normal chronic depression, and I passed. It probably doesn't sound like a big deal to most of you, but the emotional eaters out there know exactly what I'm talking about. Go me!