What worked: Different is good
Not a big loss this week but any loss in December, I’m going to count as a victory. This is a long-term goal after all.
This was a great week for holiday prep. Put up the tree, did some gift baking, holiday specials the works. All fun things, but all things that come with a cost in time and/or calories. For instance, every year when we put up the tree, we have hot chocolate, cookies and watch White Christmas. Hot chocolate and cookies are WAY out of my sugar zone right now, especially when I know there will be dinners and other events in the week that will be higher in everything than is strictly healthy. One of my friends suggested “light hot chocolate” or “hot carob beverage” as an alternative. Whatever your feelings on aspartame, (I’m not judging) I won’t touch it. I don’t like it and it makes me feel awful. I don’t have anything against carob, except that it’s just not the same. And who wants a treat that leaves you feeling “meh, not the same”? So rather than try for close-enough, I opted to go with completely new.
There are a few really excellent tea-houses I frequent. So I hit Teaopia in Erin Mills this week and got the low-down on all the benefits of all the different kinds of tea. (I’ll do a tea-post this week, it’s too much to put here.) I loaded up on a nice variety of loose-leaf tea and it’s not terribly expensive.
My top 5 tea benefits:
- No sugar (unless you put it in there)
- No fat (unless you add milk or cream)
- No carbs
- No salt
- No caffeine (unless you’re a black-tea drinker, but still less than coffee)
Instead of the usual cookies and hot chocolate, I had a wonderful spicy Chai and some seasonal fruit (pears, clementines, pomegranate) with my Christmas specials this week. Never once suffering through the feeling of “not the same”.
What needs work: Protein and greens
This is a busy time of year, and although it’s pretty easy to keep calories low, I haven’t been great about keeping my lean protein and greens up. Protein being especially important to keeping up my lean body mass for running and greens are so full of every kind of vitamin we need (especially during cold-season), not to mention it’s excellent filler and very important fiber.
I’m lucky, I’m a person who likes veggies, if they’re in the house I will go for them, so immediately after putting the groceries away this week I chopped up a celery, cucumber and a couple of peppers to keep in the fridge for sticks. I may not always have time to sit for a salad, but it’s easy to grab a fist full of sticks to have with soup of half a pita. I’m also going to hard-boil some eggs to have handy, they’re a good protein and easy to fix up in a hurry.
