Recipe: Curry Popcorn

Here is a slight adaptation on an Aarti Sequeira recipe from her Youtube "Aarti Paarti" days, before she went to Food Network, and they renamed her show "Aarti Party". :)

Curry Popcorn

~serves two peepses

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp vegetable oil (I usually sub canola oil)

1/3 cup popcorn kernels

1 tsp salt, finely ground

1 tsp curry powder

1/4 tsp ginger powder

1/4 tsp garam masala (or you can sub cinnamon)

1) Put oil, along with 3 or 4 popcorn kernels, in a 3 quart pot on high heat, with lid on. Wait until all your tester kernels have popped.

2) Take the pot off the heat, then add the popcorn & all spices. Put the lid back on, shake to coat popcorn with oil and disperse spices. Wait 30 seconds.

3) Put the pot back on high heat, shaking periodically to prevent burning, until there are several seconds between popping sounds.

You're done! Remove from heat, toss in a bowl, and enjoy!

--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 7 & 8

Been a busy couple of weeks... We've been occupied with the impending opening of our current community theatre production, as well as auditions for the following show! :)

Anyway, we've still been plugging along on the reduced-carb & sugar front, but still haven't jumped back on the exercise bandwagon just yet. Here's how we rolled...

Weigh In Week Seven [2/14/2011-2/20-2011]
Jay: 334.5 (+0.5 pounds for the week; -27.5 for 2011)
Dee: 213.0 (-1.0 pounds for the week; -15.0 for 2011)

Weigh In Week Eight [2/21/2011-2/27-2011]
Jay: 329.5 (-5.0 pounds for the week; -32.5 for 2011)
Dee: 211.0 (-2.0 pounds for the week; -17.0 for 2011)

We've been playing around with all sorts of new snacking ideas too, just to keep things interesting. I've tried to add one piece of fruit back into my daily eating plan, but we've also stayed on some of the lower carb ideas, such as little pizzas made with the melba toast we got at Trader Joe's... nachos using our flaxseed chips from Trader Joe's... yay for Trader Joe's. :)

We plan to stay good for the next few weeks through the run of our current show, then relax a little on the caloric front on a brief family trip, and come back and kick back into gear.

--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 6

Eh, a bit of a stall on the blogging front, as well as the weight loss front this week. We've been plugging along, watching calories, carbs & sugar. One downside of the lower carb & sugar shift is that we seem to be bringing a little more fat back in, and we've eliminated fruit completely. We're still not going over the recommended 65g of fat per day by any means though. I'm thinking to adjust a little more over the next few weeks so that ALL my numbers are in a good balance. :)

Weigh In Week Six [2/7/2011-2/13/2011]
Jay: 334.0 (-2.0 pounds for the week; -28.0 for 2011)
Dee: 214.0 (+0.5 pounds for the week; -14.0 for 2011)

Not counting Friday the 11th when we had a decent, semi-health-conscious meal out at TGI Friday's, Dee's carbs ranged from 100.8-133.0 and sugars from 17.52-27.42 for the week. My carbs were 110.2-161.8 and sugars were 15.85-36.25, mostly because I'm trying to finish off some artificially sweetened nonfat yogurt that we still having hanging around the house.

Rock it!
--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 5

All we can say this week is, "Thank you, Jorge Cruise!" We're not following the Belly Fat Cure to the letter, but we've re-evaluated our sugar intake, making sure what we do take in is mostly of the natural variety. Dee had a remarkable showing this week, and I did better than I have the last couple of weeks. Let's peek at it...

Weigh In Week Five [1/31/2011-2/6/2011]
Jay: 336.0 (-3.5 pounds for the week; -26.0 for 2011)
Dee: 213.5 (-6.0 pounds for the week; -14.5 for 2011)

The funny thing is, we both weighed in Tuesday morning, and hadn't lost a thing for the week. Dee started reducing her sugar intake drastically on Wednesday, and I joined her on Thursday. So these results seem to come from only 3 or 4 days of this new eating plan!

Here's how our carb & sugar intake changed this week:

Mon. 1/31 - didn't count carbs & sugar

Tue. 2/1:
Jay - 247.2 g carbs; 104.6 g sugar
Dee - 236.7 g carbs; 96.5 g sugar

Wed. 2/2: (Dee went full-force onto the new plan)
Jay - 240.7 g carbs; 108.1 g sugar
Day - 132.1 g carbs; 33.2 g sugar

Thu. 2/3: (I made some small adjustments)
Jay - 176 g carbs; 62.1 g sugar
Dee - 106.3 g carbs; 21.8 g sugar

Fri. 2/4: (We went healthy shopping, so I joined full-on)
Jay - 145.5 g carbs; 33.3 g sugar
Dee - 108.3 g carbs; 21.1 g sugar

Sat. 2/5:
Jay - 135.2 g carbs; 27.0 g sugar
Dee - 112.9 g carbs; 22.8 g sugar

Dee had 4 strong days on this new way of thinking, and I had... call it 2 1/2 days. :)

Not bad... not bad a'tall...
--Jay :)

A Word With Two Zs

We decided to have a little fun with our mid-morning snack today, and tried out some Trader Joe's Tzatziki (a Greek yogurt, cucumber, garlic dip) with celery sticks. Dee said it was a little more watery than some she'd tried at a friend's house, but good nonetheless!

Why am I posting this at 6:30 pm, when we ate our snack around 11:00 am? I dunno. We've been running around like crazy today. :)

We also crafted a tuna melt wrap, similar to the one several months ago on this blog, using canned tuna, cheddar cheese, mustard, grated Parmesan, and lettuce on these mongo-wraps we found at Trader Joe's with 12 grams of fiber per wrap. Woo!

Weigh-in tomorrow morning!
--Jay :)

Exercise Recap: Week 5

Not much to report this week, as Dee injured her poor, poor shoulder/back muscles after last Sunday's attempt at being Super-Exercise-Girl!

Sunday 1/30/2011 [day off]
9:35 am - Dee - Gazelle Level 1 (20 min, 1.5 miles)

That be it! Other than some choreography rehearsals (which we have one to attend today as well), she's been resting and I've been lazy.

Awesomeness!
--Jay :)

It's The Great Pumpkin!

We're off and rolling with our watch-your-sugar-type plan this morning! We both had our normal 1/2 cup of oatmeal, now bolstered with 1/4 cup unsweetened canned pumpkin, cinnamon, and a dash of Stevia. Next be the new-found Trader Joe's fat-free Greek yogurt with a sprinkling of Uncle Sam cereal and a dusting of Stevia. Then, our old friend Egg Mates (our local, generic egg substitute) with a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese from the bright green can! Add some Folgers Chocolate Truffle coffee, and my morning is complete!

Dee accidentally over-Stevia-ed her yogurt to the point that she couldn't even palate it, so I adopted that as well, and still came out under my normal calories, and WAY under my typical carb & sugar level... wow... This might not hurt as badly as I'd thought...

--Jay :)

What A Haul!!!

We have officially hit up some healthy, organic-type food stores! We rolled to Virginia Beach today, stopping at Trader Joe's and The Fresh Market along the way, as well as our good ol' standard issue grocery store for the rest of our essentials. Check it out...



Look at this stuff! Isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the dude... the dude who has everything? (Okay, enough of that...)

I mean, we've got unsweetened canned pumpkin, almond milk, veggie & flaxseed chips, arugula, smoked salmon, fibrous Uncle Sam cereal, melba toast, Wasa crackers, turkey pepperoni, low fat cottage cheese, hummus, guacamole, wraps with 12 grams of fiber, low carb pita pockets & bread, fat-free Greek yogurt, tzatziki, sunflower seeds, 72% dark chocolate, and that little baby bottle to the left is our potential new friend, pure Stevia extract powder. Wow.

We've made some definite plans for some of this stuff, and a few things will be tried out as Mega-Football-Game-With-Trademarked-Name snacks this Sunday. The rest... well, I'll let you know. This stuff should be a big help in lowering the sugar levels around the house, while still staying in balance. Man, this numbers game is evil... :)

--Jay :)

Recovery & New Ideas...

Good news! Dee has returned to nearly 100% of her former pain-free glory, but she's still laying off the exercise for now. We may get in some this weekend, but perhaps a scaled-down version with lots of precautionary stretching and warming up first. :)

I bought some raw honey a week or so ago, and we've been giving that a go in our morning oatmeal. That's been working out really well, except for the fact that I forgot I'm not supposed to have TWO fruit servings AND honey with my breakfast... oops! A slight caloric and sugar overload there...

Speaking of sugar, Dee had a lot of research time during her recovery, and she's come across a program called The Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise. It's all about controlling your sugar intake, and there's some stuff in there that I like. There's also some stuff in there that I don't like, so I think we'll try out a modified version. We've already started a bit... We're looking into Stevia, which seems to be the most natural faux-sweetener... Dee has scrapped her morning yogurt, and we're looking into buying Greek yogurt and using berries and things to liven it up... We've also eliminated the raisins from our mid-morning snack, opting for more almonds... Dee has scrapped her afternoon fruit serving, replacing with almonds or perhaps string cheese... little changes.

The Belly Fat Cure program tries to get you to approximately 120 grams of carbs and no more than about 15 grams of sugar each day. A quick glance at the healthy eating plan we've been on had us hanging somewhere around 250 grams of carbs and 100 grams of sugar! Through some modification, Dee is down to about the right level of carbs, and I think we have her down to about 25 grams of sugar. We plan to hit up some specialty food shopping this weekend to see what other ideas we can come up with.

The only part of the Belly Fat Cure that's a little strange is the whole Adkins-esque "eat cheese, eat bacon, eat sausage" approach, but that seems to be there just for the sake of those folks who can't live without that sort of thing. I'm planning to combine our previous ideas, while cutting down as much as possible on sugar, and especially our "sugar-free" friends who rely on aspartame and the like. Dee intends to go a little more strict, just to see what happens. The testimonials have folks losing massive inches, and the guy's been all over Oprah and Ellen and junk. Could be interesting.

We'll see how this whole thing shakes out...
--Jay :)

"You Smell Like A Giant Life Saver!"

She does. Wint-O-Green, in fact.

Thanks to some Walgreens Ultra Strength Muscle Rub, and its delightful blend of camphor and menthol. Ahhh...

See? There she is, the poster child for Wint-O-Green Life Savers. Nice.

That set of Gazelle-ing this morning didn't do her a bit of good in the back pain aspect. I think she's finally learned that she's not Super-Exercise-Woman. Now, if she'll rest up a while, then perhaps take it a little easier, I think she'll be in good shape... :)

Laid up and resting for the remainder of today...

--Jay :)

Man Down!!!

Actually, woman down! Dee had to submit to the pain of being injured, and skip the Shred today. She gave it a go for about 2 minutes, then switched to the Gazelle, where she did 1.5 miles in 20 minutes. I think we'll give her a little more rest time before we send her back in the cage with Jillian! She is NOT defeated by any means... she will have a glorious comeback! I'm actually more proud of her for admitting that she needed a break, than trying to struggle through and injure herself more. :)

I made an interesting, simple new lunch yesterday, based on a Trader Joe's marinara sauce. I'm in the process of formulating my own sauce recipe, so I can post a genuine "recipe" up here. :)

--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 4

Well, we're both still headed in the right direction, though I still didn't end up quite where I thought I would. Perhaps the lack of exercise did a little something, ha... :) Let's do this thing:

Weigh In Week Four [1/24/2011-1/30-2011]
Jay: 339.5 (-2.5 pounds for the week; -22.5 pounds for 2011)
Dee: 219.5 (-1.5 pounds for the week; -8.5 pounds for 2011)

Keepin' on!
--Jay :)

Exercise Recap: Week 4

It's the end of Week 4, and my exercise this week is extremely easy to count... I'll give you a hint... it's a nice, round number... :) Dee kept it up quite nicely, though:

Sunday 1/23/2011 [day off]
10:00 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 5 (27 min)

Monday 1/24/2011 [work day]
8:55 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 6 (27 min)

Tuesday 1/25/2011 [work day]
7:20 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 7 (27 min)

Wednesday 1/26/2011 [work day]
7:30 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 8 (27 min)

Thursday 1/27/2011 [work day]
8:15 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 9 (27 min)

Friday 1/28/2011 [day off]
9:15 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 10! (27 min)

Saturday 1/29/2011 [day off]
8:25 am - Dee - Shred Level 2, Day 1 (27 min)
6:50 pm - Dee - Gazelle Level 1 (30 min, 2.0 miles)

Dee hurt her back muscles pretty badly after that first Level 2 Shred, and wasn't very mobile all day Sunday. I had to leave for a music practice at the church, and while I was gone, she decided to get up and Gazelle for half an hour! Apparently, it felt good to exercise, but when she was done again... not so much. Poor, broken Dee!

She did get in over 3 1/2 hours of exercise this week. Oy...

--Jay :)

Shredded

Dee has officially completed the tenth and last day of Shred Level 1! She had a happy, emotional moment, because it was such an amazing feeling to have stuck with this thing and accomplished a huge goal. She kicked this thing for 10 solid mornings in a row, no breaks, no wimping out! Tomorrow is her first day of Level 2, and we're sitting here watching it right now, just to see what she's in for. :)

I've been extraordinarily slack on the exercise front this week, mostly due to the fact that we slept in late on Monday after being at the party the night before, then I was cooking a pot of chicken barley soup for our lunch on Tuesday morning this week, and the other mornings I was most likely just being lazy. Ah, laziness. :-D

Dee's scale results have started swinging back in a good direction, so we think her body is getting adjusted to the new exercise routine. Hopefully, kicking it into Level 2 tomorrow doesn't scare the crap out of her muscles again! I'm down about 3.5 pounds for the week thus far, and should fall squarely on my goal of 4 pounds per week. Awesomeness.

Rock it!
--Jay :)

Motivation

We survived the annual office New Year party, rocked some karaoke, chose some pretty healthy options and portion sizes for dinner, and drank only water. Sweetness!

Dee has been doing more research and came across something that said you may gain some weight when you first start working out, due to the fact that your muscles will try to hold onto some of your water intake to stay healthy and hydrated. After a few weeks, everything should balance out. Silly muscles, making our weigh-in numbers look less than stellar! :)

Dee has been re-motivated by the fact that she can tell her clothes are fitting better, and she received a compliment out of the blue yesterday that her face and neck are looking skinnier! After struggling through her post-party Monday workout yesterday, she was right back on it in full force this morning for Day 7 of the Shred.

Whoop whoop!
--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 3

Man, we woke up late this morning... well, later than we've become accustomed to lately. I think we slept until a whopping 9:45 or so! :)

We were hosting karaoke at a friend's birthday party last night, and didn't get home until about 12:30 am, so we needed that sleep! We were good though, not partaking of the foodstuffs at the party... Plus, we're hosting karaoke again tonight for the company I work for, at their annual "kick off the new year" party, and we intend to be just as good at avoiding the foodstuffs, or at least filtering them to find healthy options.

Anyway, it's the end of another week for us, and time for a weigh-in!

Weigh In Week Three [1/17/2011-1/23/2011]
Jay: 342.0 (-2.5 pounds for the week; -20.0 pounds for 2011)
Dee: 221.0 (+2.0 pounds for the week; -7.0 pounds for 2011)

The workouts seem to be having quite an effect on Dee, and it looks like she's in a muscle-building phase right now. Even I didn't lose quite as much as I thought I would, but we're both seeing little changes in our bodies already. They always say that the more muscle mass you have, the more fat you burn, so eventually I think we'll even out and start to see more significant losses.

Keep it up!
--Jay :)

Exercise Recap: Week 3

All righty, we've reached the end of the exercise for Week 3 (technically Week 1 of officially exercising, but Week 3 of the healthy lifestyle do-over). Here's what we did:

Sunday 1/16/2011 [day off]
11:00 am - Dee - Gazelle Level 1 (30 min, 2.0 miles)
11:30 am - Jay - Gazelle Level 1 (15 min, 0.9 miles)
11:30 am - Dee - Core Rhythms Full Workout (38.5 min)

Monday 1/17/2011 [work day]
6:40 am - Jay - Gazelle Level 1 (11 min, 0.5 miles)
6:40 am - Dee - Core Rhythms Partial Workout (20 min)

Tuesday 1/18/2011 [work day]
6:10 am - Dee - Gazelle Level 1 (20 min, 1.4 miles)
6:10 am - Jay - laid on the couch, keeping the cat company

Wednesday 1/19/2011 [work day]
6:10 am - Jay - Gazelle Level 1 (11 min, 0.6 miles)
6:10 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 1 (27 min)

Thursday 1/20/2011 [work day]
6:40 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 2 (27 min)

Friday 1/21/2011 [day off]
7:50 am - Jay - Gazelle Level 1 (11.5 min, 0.6 miles)
7:50 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 3 (27 min)
1:45 pm - Jay & Dee - Zumba Express Workout (20 min)

Saturday 1/22/2011 [day off]
9:00 am - Dee - Shred Level 1, Day 4 (27 min)
2:15 pm - Jay & Dee - Zumba Express Workout (20 min)

On Shred Day 4, Dee started using the proper 3 pound hand weights, and finally tossed my ghetto soup & tomato sauce can idea to the curb.

Whew!!! I tried to do something productive at least every other day, and worked in a total of about 1 1/2 hours of exercise for the week. Dee went the "every single day" approach, and got in just over 4 1/4 hours of exercise this week!

Weigh in tomorrow morning!
--Jay :)

Weight A Minute...

Well, we did it. We broke bad yesterday, made the trip to our nearest "city", and plopped down six whole bucks for a pair of 3-pound hand weights. Oh yeah! Dee was feeling the pain, using those bad boys for Day 4 of Shred this morning. They don't feel all that heavy until you do multiple reps of multiple exercises...

Now, all we have to do is saunter over to my aunt's house, as she has graciously offered up a yoga mat for us to use in this whole adventure. Once we procure that, we'll have a veritable home gym over here. :)

We've just finished a late lunch and are about to hit up some Zumba again... another 20 minute "express" Latin dance session, and we should be pretty good on exercise for today.

Tomorrow is weigh day, and we'll see how things turn out for the week!

--Jay :)

"Zum" Went The Strings Of My Heart

You may have guessed from my lame attempt at a pun in the title of this post... and actually, more people are probably familiar with "Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart" by Judy Garland or the Coasters, than "Zoom Went The Strings Of My Heart" by the Cadillacs... but I digress...

My point? We decided to finally give Zumba a go.



That's right... it's the Hottest Latin Dance Workout!!! Actually, it's been around for about 10 years, but Dee had read all sorts of good blog entries around the web about it, and it still seems to be quite popular. We picked up the newer version, which features female teachers along with the program's creator, Beto.

We just finished the 20-Minute Express workout, which has four 5-minute sections of Latin dance. I found it remarkably easy, but I was doing some simplified versions of the moves. We both broke a sweat and felt like we were doing something, so it makes a good addition to our normal exercise routine that we did this morning.

Dance on!
--Jay :)

Can You Love Her & Hate Her Simultaneously?

Jillian Michaels.

Dee popped Day 2 of the Shred yesterday, and Day 3 this morning. Sometimes I think she'd like to run up and plant a fist into the television at points during the workout. Of course, Jillian has usually drained all her energy by then, so it's not even physically possible. Good thing. I like our TV. A lot. :)



On a serious note, Dee has been rocking her way through. I joined the exercise fun on the Gazelle both Wednesday and today, stifling the urge to yell "You can doooo it!" like Tony Little on the commercials.

We're both feeling remarkably good. I remember this happening last time we started exercising too, but it's so easy to forget that sometimes, getting your fitness level headed in the right direction... feels good. Dee has been less winded during workouts and theatre rehearsals, and she's been having more energy, which is a surprise. You'd normally think you'd feel worn out, beat down, smashed in the mud. Surprisingly not.

So, Jillian Michaels. Sometimes you want to rip her face off. But then, you realize that good things are happening. (Plus, you'd probably get arrested, or have to pay a fine or something. Pick up trash on the side of the highway in an orange jumpsuit.) We're not losing a ton of weight this week so far, but we're attributing that to the fact that maybe... just MAYBE... the exercise might be building some muscle. Who knows if it works that quickly?

Keep it up!
--Jay :)