Saturday, May 14, 2011

Fish tacos!


A ridiculously yummy and simple weeknight dinner, or easy to make at home and take to work for lunch. Serves two.

1 previously frozen mahi mahi fillet (thawed)
1-2 tsp "tequila lime" spice blend from Whole Foods, or other spice mix of your choice
1 tsp fat of choice (melted coconut oil is ideal)
3-4 small radishes
Handfull cilantro leaves
Half a tiny red onion
Mango salsa (homemade or purchased)
Limes
3 lettuce leaves per person (okay, okay, Better Half ate corn tortillas; she thinks this paleo business is crazy)
Optional: sour cream for serving

Note: this would have been even better with some avocado, but we didn't have any.

Coat fish with spice mix and fat and grill (we use one of those countertop panini-press type grills) for about 4 minutes per side, or until it flakes easily. Wash and chop radishes, cilantro, and onions. Wash and dry lettuce leaves and arrange on plate. Put fish, salsa, and chopped veggies, avocado, and optional sour cream onto each leaf and serve with lime wedges. If you like salt, add a little salt to each taco before serving.

Nutritional breakdown for half of a recipe: 248 calories, 9 grams of fat (includes 1 tbsp sour cream but not avocado), 15 grams carbohydrate, and 20 grams of protein. Easily doubled.

Observations on Dutifully Tracking

Tracking with Daily Plate has been revelatory, in a good way. In switching over to Weight Watchers (it's free through my work, I thought I'd give it a try last fall, I've lost over 20 pounds since joining, but it's never really felt right for me), I lost the ability to see how my macronutrients were breaking down every day. I was still choosing mostly paleo foods (with the addition of some dairy fat), but I wasn't able to see how things were stacking up.

Well, now I can, and two things stood out right away: carbs and protein. I'm actually doing fine on the carbs, which is really heartening. I'm even able to stay on target (under 80g per day) and still have moderate amounts of fruit, and occasional drizzles of honey. This is a good thing. The protein story is not as good. I was really feeling hungry when I was strictly tracking with WW and keeping within my daily points, so I knew something had to be amiss; sure enough, I have not been getting enough protein. Now it's really nice for me to be able to log on and track and see, yeah, I'm still hungry because I'm 10-20 grams short on protein. Let's go have a Tanka bar (by the way, why, why, WHY do these have sugar in the cranberries??? I love these stupid things and I don't have time to go back to making my own pemmican, but it annoys me that they have added sugar; I digress) or some steak or something.

One issue I'm having with all of this is it's been a looonnnng time (and almost 60 pounds :D) since having my body fat tested, so I'm winging it a little on the LBM calculation. Better Half and I have actually been talking about buying a better scale anyway, so I may do some research and see if any of the ones that measure %fat are remotely accurate.

Things are looking up. The scale has already budged down a bit this week, which is awesome, and I'm not seeing as much day-to-day fluctuation as I had been. My calorie percentage breakdown seems to be around 55-60% fat, 15-20% carbs, and 20-25% protein. I did go ahead and have a "cheat" meal last night, enjoyed the hell out of it without going overboard, and am back on track this morning.

Monday, May 09, 2011

I'm settling into a routine

I haven't blogged in a while!

I'm still struggling with sticking with it. I'll go for a week and do just fine, then have some big stupid carbfest meal. Change is hard.

On the other hand, I am really falling into a routine, which is good. Breakfast is boiled eggs (I sprang for one of those countertop egg cooker dealies, and it is AWESOME) with pasture butter, lunch is protein + vegetables (I've been taking the lazy way and eating additive-free rotisserie chicken plus frozen organic vegetables fairly often), I sometimes have a fatty snack in the afternoon (I often just "freebase" the pasture butter), and then dinner is a fancier variant of protein + vegetables. Better Half is liking the dinners, at least, even if I haven't persuaded her to come over to the fat side at lunch or breakfast.

In the past month, I have lost zero pounds, and I know why: I haven't been very serious about it. I haven't been tracking, I've had quite a few "effit" days ("I could make good choices... or... ahh, eff it"). I think the lack of tracking is really killing me. I'm so fed up with the WW tracking system, as they don't show you the macronutrient breakdown. I think I need to go back to using Daily Plate, or maybe switch over to fit tracker. Also, I have not upped my activity level. I'm still doing low intensity daily (walking DogMonster); I really need to add more high intensity workouts. I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that, though, as, through no fault of my own, I pretty seriously bruised my tailbone last week and I'm still in beaucoups pain.

Actually, to be fair, I gained 5 pounds in the week after getting my wisdom teeth out, and I have lost that and a little more; but all that means is I still weigh what I did before the tooth surgery.

I have, however, noticed that my clothes fit differently. My pants are getting looser. So it's possible that I am losing fat / putting on some muscle. This would be a really good thing, I've been really worried that following CW means I'm ditching both fat and muscle, which I'd rather not do. I really need to get my body fat % tested, speaking of.

I still want to do a 30 day challenge, but I'm afraid I have to wait until the school year ends before I start one.

In the next 7 days, I challenge myself to:
-Try tracking on Daily Plate and see how it goes
-See what kind of activity I can handle with the injured butt bone
-Find ways to feel like I'm "splurging" without going off-plan