The Blonde Diaries

Happy Think Thin Thursday!  I am so excited about this week because it is the week after busy season ended and I’m eating healthily and exercising.  I finally feel like I’m back to my routine after an off and on February.  I didn’t participate last week because I just was too tired since Thursday was filing day and I barely made it to work in time and I left pretty late.  I did hop on Monday morning for one of my forum challenges and weighed in at 152.9 per the Wii Fit so I will use that as last Thursday’s weight.  This morning I weighed in at 151.8 so that is a 1.1 pound loss!  Counting points and exercising is working for me!

Not sure if you have been cruising down the snack aisle at the grocery store but Hostess and Weight Watchers seem to be duking it out to claim the title of best low-calorie twinkie. Yup! The folks at Weight Watchers have developed, produced, and are selling a Weight Watcher branded Twinkie that is just 1 point. The folks at Hostess have come out with 100-calorie packs for Twinkies (and a few other dessert items) which weigh in at about 2 weight watcher points.

So how do they taste? Well, I have tried them both and I will report that they are not quite like the original. It seems like they have more cake than filling so they are a tad drier than “real Twinkies”. The cake part is pretty soft and matches the taste of an actual twinkie which is nice. I will say the Hostess Twinkie tastes a little better than the Weight Watcher Twinkie and I think it is because the filling on the Weight Watcher version must have a different ingredient. Plus Hostess is the original creator of the Twinkie.

So that is my Twinkie roundup. I liked both products overall and depending on my points allowance I can go back and forth between the two when I need to handle a Twinkie craving.

One of the most famous recipes when you are on Weight Watchers is the diet coke cake. I have heard people talk about it at meetings and on online message boards for years now but have been too chicken to try it. I just couldn’t believe that you could make a cake with just a box of mix and diet soda. It just didn’t seem real or too tasty to me.

Well, my new coworker has tried it before and was talking about it a few weeks ago. It sounded so simple and easy to make and she swore that it tasted like real cake. I figure since she seems to be very similar to me that she was most likely telling the truth and I would give it a try. I hit up Kroger and found the new Reduced Sugar cake mix and brought home a diet coke plus from work to make my cake. And the ingredients sat for 2 weeks on the counter. Call me a chicken, call me skeptical, just know that I wasn’t sure even after buying the ingredients if the cake was worth the trouble.

But after more Googling (hello how do you ice this cake??), and mentioning it to my mother, I finally made the cake Monday night. Boy was the cake good, quick, and easy. It even looked like real cake when it was all said and done. I ended up using the entire 12 oz Diet Coke Plus and a box of the Reduced Sugar Devil’s Food Cake mix and followed the cooking directions. It came out really moist and without any real flavor differences. I also “iced” it with fat free cool whip. I would totally make this cake again but next time I want to try yellow cake mix, diet orange soda, and cool whip with fat free chocolate pudding mix for the icing. Yumm!

So there you have it. If you haven’t made the diet coke cake you should totally make it and give it a try. You can even make them into cupcakes if cake isn’t your thing. I think it comes out to 3 WW points per serving if you follow the serving size directions but I made smaller pieces to cut my points per day down.

A few weeks ago, upon my return from vacation, I shared that the impact of the hurricane and vacation on my health had been pretty minor. I only managed to gain 6 pounds but it was 6 pounds I didn’t need to gain. So I have taken to a number of methods to start shedding the pounds. The first was to obviously cut my calorie intake. The second was to start exercising again. The third method I am trying now is to vary the foods I eat and cut down on the number of carbs I take in each day. I have been using the tracker on fit day and man do I eat a lot of carbs! So this week I have been eating more “healthy” carbs like fruits, vegetables, and then lots of protein. I am down 3 pounds so I know I am making a difference. Slow and steady wins the race right?

So this is where I need your help. I need new healthy, low-carb recipes. I have the usual grilled chicken, baked fish, and grilled sausage down but I need help with varying them up. We like Italian but I do not have any good Italian recipes that do not include either a heavy sauce, pasta noodles, or something battered and fried. So any good recipes to share?

Can you tell I’ve been avoiding my diet lately?  You probably can by the lack of Weight Watchers related posts that I have posted lately.  It seems like I constantly have an excuse not to count my points but yesterday I learned that I need to say goodbye to my excuses and hello to counting my points.  I’ve always had an issue buying shorts so when I was bumping up a size or two I didn’t really think anything about it last month.  But when I tried on the exact same pair of jeans yesterday at Saks and they didn’t fit I realized how much I had stretched out my current pair and how I needed to quit relying on fast fat burner pills and go back to what works: diet and exercise. So I am hoping that in a month or two my brand new jeans no longer fit and I can get into some of my older pairs of jeans that I didn’t stretch out. I have a few pairs in a few different sizes so that should be a good measuring stick on how well I am doing with my plan. Another funny thing is that I can really start over because I can’t eat anything in my refrigerator or freezer due to the loss of electricity. I basically have to start over with grocery shopping when I get back from vacation. Kinda cool in a twisted way lol!

If you are on Weight Watchers or any diet that is working can you share some recipes with me? Either drop a comment or click on the gmail button on the left side bar. Thanks!!