Campbell's Chunky Healthy Request Sirloin Burger soup

It's cold out here, so that means soup time to me. I've got a ton of cans that I'll be trying and I'll post reviews (always helps me remember which varieties to not buy again in the future!) :)

First up, Campbell's Chunky Healthy Request Sirloin Burger soup. The nutrition facts on it aren't too bad - especially the sodium, considering it's a canned soup. All these "Healthy Request" soups are 98% fat free and 40% less sodium than their regular product. However, this one just plain did not taste good. The little sirloin patties were kinda nasty - tasted burnt to me. The texture to them was not right as well. I wouldn't buy this soup again.

Nutrition Facts (per cup, about two cups per can)
Calories 130
Fat 2g
Saturated Fat 1g
Cholesterol 20mg
Sodium 480mg
Potassium 990mg
Carbohydrate 18g
Fiber 3g
Sugars 3g
Protein 10g

The latest news

Got laid off, and my weight is within three pounds of where it was a year ago. If now ain't the time to get the weight off, I don't know when is. (Oooh, love that grammar!) :)

On the good side, I am less than 200,000 steps until I hit my goal for the year. Woo!

NaBloPoMo fail

Eh, so I've failed on the posting-every-day thing. Ah well. Frankly, I love the motivation of posting daily, but without any replies or comments, it just ain't all that motivating. But never fail, I'll still post when something interesting comes to mind. ;)

Not the best cardio workout ;)

Shockingly, Electronic Interactive Whac-A-Mole is not a very good cardio workout. ;) But satisfying to hit the little guys on the head with a plastic mallet! :D

Ow.

I walk a lot - but with the silly weather and of course the joy of daylight savings ending, I haven't walked a lot since returning from vacation a few weeks ago. Saturday I did about five miles, so yesterday I upped that and walked about nine miles. All fun and good, until I got home and took off my shoes. I had blisters on the inside part of my feet that were so big you could see them through the socks! Looked like nasty bunions or something. Ow.

I need to get some new shoes, clearly! Ow.

Fiber One Toaster Pastries

I admit it, I like Pop-Tarts. They're tasty, but oh-so-not-healthy for you, so I rarely eat them. Pop-Tart has a new line of "whole grain", but they're still pretty high in calories and fat, so I skip 'em. But when I saw the new Fiber One Toaster Pastries, I thought I'd give 'em a try. I went with the brown sugar cinnamon flavor - with frosting! Woo!

Well, maybe woo. Though the pastry is tasty, it's still un-fulfilling to eat just one (and of course they're wrapped in twos). It's not as tasty as a Pop-Tart, but it's not a bad replacement. Nutritionally speaking though, it's not a miracle food - only 5 grams of fiber doesn't seem like the typical Fiber One way there. One of these did not fill me up at all. Two filled me up a bit, but I thought about how much I could've eaten for 380 calories and 10 grams of fiber, and was really disappointed.

Fiber One Toaster Pastry 190 calories 4 g fat 1 g saturated fat 140 mg sodium 36 g carbs 5 g fiber 16 g sugar 4 g protein

Whole Grain Pop-Tart 200 calories 7 g fat 2 g saturated fat 170 mg sodium 34 g carbs 3 g fiber 14 g sugar 3 g protein

Another note: the Fiber One Toaster Pastries are six to a box, and Pop-Tarts are eight to a box.

Alternative Bagels - Cinnamon Spice

I love Western Bagel's "Alternative Bagels" - seriously fabulous and healthy treat. I've tried all of them, but today I'm focusing on the flavor I just ate. ;) Cinnamon Spice is tasty, and as with all their bagels, it tasted great once toasted. They're ok if you don't toast 'em, but much better when toasty. I hit this with a few sprays of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and I'm good to go. Tasty breakfast with some scrambled eggs (two egg whites and a regular egg). :)

These bagels are available online and in select west coast grocery stores. Super Wal-Mart locations sometimes carry them too (sadly my closest one is about an hour away).

Nutrition Facts
Calories 110
Total Fat 0g
Saturated Fat 0g
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 220mg
Total Carbohydrates 26g
Dietary Fiber 7g
Sugars 1g
Protein 7g

Movie theatre eeeevil

So sad that movie theatres frown upon you bringing in your own food. We went to the movies tonight and there are just no good options at the concession stand! Ugh. If only you could get some air-popped popcorn instead of the oily action. Doh.

On the good side, I got a nice walk in today and that made me happy. ;)

Tasty snack

• one medium pear (preferably ripe, not as crunchy as an apple like mine way)
• 1/2 cup fat free cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup fiber one cereal

nutrition info:

• 204 calories
• 2 grams fat
• 47 grams carb
• 15 grams protein
• 17 grams fiber
• 5 grams cholesterol

tasty and hopefully filling! :)

Well then!

Diet-related: shockingly, not walking and eating crap causes weight gain. Stop the presses!

Raisinets snack packs for Halloween are cute - only 200 calories for 3 packets. However, resisting eating more than a couple of those packs is really tough... glargh.

Aie!

No weight loss news today - the election is everyone's focus right now! Wonder if the new president will do anything to help raise the health level of the country...

Bacon jelly beans

Bacon jelly beans, courtesy of our friends over at Archie McPhee.

These are truly nasty. ;) They taste just like liquid smoke - joy. Think you can save some calories by enjoying bacon jelly beans instead of real bacon? Think again. ;)

But they are a cute gift! ;)

Soup!

Made soup last night from Cook's Illustrated's "Best Light Recipe" cookbook - cream of mushroom soup. Took a long time, but was potentially tasty until the husband poured in waaaay too much sherry at the end. Doh. Now I need to find a way to use up the rest of my half-and-half. ;)

NaBloPoMo!

I'm not creative enough to attempt NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, but I can try for NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month! ;)

So what's new with me? Well, this week marked the 100th week since I started dieting. I weighed in at 85.8 pounds gone, so that average kinda blows. This year has been a massive diet struggle, and I'm glad to be "maintaining" so to speak, but I've walked well over 3 million steps for the year, and I'm so very frustrated that it hasn't moved the scale. With daylight savings ending tomorrow, it'll be even harder to get in the exercise. Hopefully watching what I eat more closely will help.

More on the Jillian game

So I played it again, this time not using the Balance Board. It sucked less this time - I wasn't thrown off as much by the game not responding to my movements on the Balance Board. However, this really defeats the purpose of the game to me - I wanted another fitness-oriented game that uses the board. It's still not accurate in its responses all of the time - in the game where you have to kick, I had to do it several times when kicking on the left side. Grrr.

Happy to see the Amazon reviews get more balanced, but disappointed that they apparently rejected my review (despite not mentioning this blog at all) - lame!

Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009

Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009

I've been looking forward to this game for awhile - even though I enjoy the concept of the Wii Fit, it frustrates me that I don't get to link their mini-games together. After every one, you go back out to the menu and have to choose another one. Fooey.

So I went out and bought this game the day it came out. I've played it awhile tonight and I'm pretty darned disappointed.

First, you set up your character - choosing a male or female, and then you can choose between two items for your shirts, pants and shoes - ooh. A few different colors, too. Very, very minimal customization here.

If you've got the Wii Balance Board, you can use it to enter your weight, and then use it for all the games too. Onto the games...

There are 11 games total, and you can link them together to do one right after the other (two minutes minimum on each) and also choose light, medium or hard intensity. The games are:

• Paint Grenade Toss: pick up paint grenades and throw them - basically, squat and then throw. Easy and very repetitive and dull.
• Cannon Attack: load cannon balls and aim and shoot the cannon. More squats and then lean to aim. Boring.
• Handcar pump: squat repeatedly and pump your arms up and down to move the handcar down the track. Yet more squats and you need to flick your wrists sharply to get it to register.
• Tire trail: run through a set of tires. Lean on the balance board and then flick your wrists to one side or the other. Not much of a workout, just flicking.
• Rowing: row a kayak by sitting on your balance board and moving the controllers to each side. Again, flicking is the key here. Painful because you keep hitting yourself with the cord between the controllers...
  
• Monkey bars: climb the monkey bars by leaning to the sides and putting your arms above your head and move them back and forth. Not too hard, but CONSTANTLY hitting your head with the cord between the controllers. Glargh.
• Log jump: jump from log to log by doing yet more squats
• Log walk: hold your arms out to the side (as much as the controller cord lets you) and balance while walking on a log. Dull.
• Boxing: need to jog essentially to "work up" to throwing a punch or kick as instructed. Really annoying because it did not register many of my kicks. Grrr.
• Punching bag dodge: run and then dodge as instructed. Again, didn't register most of my jogging or dodges, so this was a pain.
• Running: run, duh. But the character doesn't respond to the pace I was keeping, and sometimes it just plain didn't register.
  

Overall, I'm really disappointed - this had potential but the game just plain doesn't register everything you do and that's deeply annoying. I don't see myself playing this a lot, and that's extra disappointing because it was $40!

Two months later...

Wow, time is really flying but my weight is staying the same and/or climbing. Doh. I've been continuing to walk a ton, but my weight is being stubborn. I'm hoping to really pour myself into this delightful weight loss battle again soon. For now, just keep taking it day by day and trying to not make foolish food choices too often. ;)

Getting back into things

So, 2008 hasn't been a particularly great year. February 3, I hit my lowest weight in a decade in the morning, and in the afternoon, my grandfather passed away after a long and slow decline. While I went out to be with my family, my husband's mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Right after I return home, we find out it's stage four. She fought hard, but less than four months later, cancer took her.

So you can understand why my blog was abandoned for awhile there. I got way behind in my walking obviously, but have busted my butt to catch up and get ahead (which came in handy when I had a stomach bug two weeks ago and spent a few days in bed). My weight loss has definitely stalled - I'm about 7 pounds down for the year, which also means I'm now at a less than a pound lost per week pace. Fooey. I've walked over a thousand miles this year, so this makes me even more frustrated that I just can't shed the pounds appropriately. Hopefully the rest of the year will be nice and quiet and calm and I'll start seeing the pounds disappear.

Wii fit fun

Bought the Wii Fit last week - today is day 8 with it. I love it! It's got four main components: aerobics, strength training, balance and yoga. The aerobics has things like step, hula hooping and boxing. Strength training includes push ups and other things. Balance has some wacky games where you tilt all over the place. Yoga is straight-forward and difficult.

It seems to be a bit off from my scale, but within a pound. I wish it didn't have such an emphasis on BMI & weight, but otherwise it's a blast. More to come...

stats update

Haven't posted in ages due to all kinds of familial crisis, but gotta get back into the swing of things.

As of this morning, I'm down 91 pounds total, and I've also caught up on my steps for the year! Might just be able to hit my goal weight by the end of the year.



Hopefully the good weather will continue and I can keep up with all the walking (and also the Wii'ing!)