So I started this 101 days of summer challenge at 169 and I lost a whopping – 1.6 for the month.  I remeasured myself, and while my hips, waist and chest stayed the same, I lost 1/2 an inch on my bicep and 1/2 an inch on my thigh.

While I was expecting a better result, two things came to mind while reviewing my food journal.  A lot of days my calories from fat were above 30%, and the extra glasses of wine (which somehow never make it on my food journal) might have been the reason I basically maintained the month of June.

But then I look at the good news!  When I log into the bike machines online network, I biked 92 miles for a total of 7 hours and 32 minutes!  I am 8 miles shy of biking 100 miles for the month!   So my goal for July is to revamp my calories to ensure each day is under 30% of calories from fat, and to go easy on the wine! 😀

It was a good old breakfast sammie for me – I shredded zucchini into my eggs – makes them so creamy!

With watermelon and blueberries on the side:  311 calories, 37 fat, 20 protein, 11.4 fat and 5.9 fiber

I forgot my blood sugar Accu-Chek machine at home.  I always like to check it before working out to see where I am at.  While Tony was willing to bring it to me, I decided to just listen to my body and see how it went.  The sad thing is that to me, a good blood sugar number and a high blood sugar feel the same – its only when I start to drop that I feel anything.

I did a really hard bike ride yesterday – I didn’t realize that in the 8 mile ride at one point a hill climb was at 40% and that the last 1.6 miles was a steady hill climb!   I did eat one glucose tab while working out and I felt fine 😀

When I got back to work, lunch was a turkey wrap and my Wisconsin beer cheese soup. Although I did not make this soup!  My co-worker made my recipe and while she did put the onions in (pureed) it was absolutely delicious!  Thanks R! 😀  It’s cute because when she makes dishes, her husband rates the dishes – i.e., if they are good, they make it on the menu as if they owned their own restaurant.   This soup made it on their menu! 😀

For dinner I made Greek marinated chicken kabobs with corn on the cob, roasted red pepper and re-heated spaetzle.  I bought the kabobs at my store – only $1.25 for each kabob!

We both thought the marinade was on the salty side, but it was still tasty! 😀   And I loved eating outside!

Stats for Tuesday:

• 8.1 mile bike ride
• 1,351 calories, 127 carbs, 110 protein, 49 fat and 18.6 fiber

Some things to check out:

• Katie at Chaos in the Kitchen has her favorite 4th of July recipes – I am going to make the sirloin steak with corn salsa 😀
• Amanda just made her PR on her last 5k – under 30 minutes 😀
• Al gave me his recipe for making pickles! 😀

How did you do this month?

I have a half day of work – Hannah’s home today!  She has taken 800+ pictures so that will be quite a slide show 😀

Oh, and Tony did some research – our eggs on the gazebo are from a green shield bug!

Wow, after what seems like weeks of thunderstorms, Chicagoland’s weather could not have been better yesterday!  In the 70’s, blue skies, and perfect sleeping weather – I think it got down to 50 degrees last night 😀

For breakfast I scooped out half of a baked potato, leaving 3.5 of the shell.  I scrambled 1 egg, 1.5 ounces of deli ham and red pepper and stuffed that in the potato, then put it under the broiler with .7 ounces of American cheese – delish!

And more strawberries – breakfast comes in at 335 calories, 39 carbs, 22 protein, 12.1 fat and 6 fiber.

I went to the gym and did the bike machine again – I warmed up with something called “the chaser.”  Basically you ride the bike to grab tokens, then have to find the object on the token within a certain time to get points – it had me riding super fast, uphill, downhill – it was really fun!  I did that for 10 minutes, then did a 6.9 steady hill climb – in the end I did 41 minutes on the bike for 8.1 total miles.

I was hangry when I got back to work – quick and simple, just heated up my vegetarian chili with chips and fresh jalapenos:  lunch is 502 calories, 81 carbs, 25 protein, 11.2 fat and 16.6 fiber 😀

I need to thank my co-worker for bringing me these pickles – while I prefer dill pickles to sweet, these babies are jalapeno pickles from a farmers market!  I need to make these – you start out with the sweet and slowly the heat creeps in.  Have you made pickles before?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to use our fresh herbs, and decided to add some to my spaetzle batter  – it turned out great!

I love my spaetzle maker – also found on Amazon.com for about $10 bucks.

I had grilled pork chops on the menu to go with the spaetzle – Tony picked up this marinade, and while I didn’t marinate the chops, I brushed it on at the last minute – gave the chops a nice tangy taste!

I tossed the grilled zucchini in a tablespoon of this dressing – I know it says onions on it (it’s actually Hannah’s!) but I liked it!

My plate:  521 calories, 52 carbs, 45 protein, 13.8 fat and 0 fiber

Then about 9:00, I could feel my blood sugar start to drop – must have overestimated the carbs in the spaetzle?  So a weird event happened here on BDL – I had dessert!  These shortcake shells are 60 calories each, with 2 giant sliced strawberries and whip cream.  I woke up this morning and my blood sugar was a perfect 101! 😀

A big thank you to Leslie – I won one of her gorgeous handmade bags, and I hope she doesn’t mind that I am giving it to my daughter – she loves green – thanks Leslie!

And have you seen our friend Lynn’s movie yet from Actor’s Diet yet?  It’s called White on Rice, available on demand. Tony and I watched it last night – it was so good!  Parts of it had us laughing out loud.  You have to check it out! 😀  Great job Lynn!

Stats for Monday:

• 1508 calories, 204 carbs, 94 protein, 38 fat, 24 fiber
• 8.1 total bike ride
• 5 minutes abs on the ball

I’ll leave you with something creepy – look what’s growing on our screened gazebo!

Have a great Tuesday! 😀  It’s another gorgeous day!

Weekends are going by way to fast!  Although I am excited about this week – Hannah comes home from Germany this week! We talked to her on the phone yesterday – her host family has treated her so nice and actually said they wanted her to come back to visit at Christmas!

Since it was stormy yesterday morning, Tony and I decided to take our Sunday papers and go out for breakfast.  I got something called a “Farm Steak” and really wished I would have gotten Tony’s chopped steak.  The only way I can describe this “steak” is that it was kind of like gyros meat – not actually sure what it was but it was shaped into a steak!

I ate the eggs, 1/2 the potatoes, 1/2 of the”steak” and 1/2 a piece of rye toast.

One of the things on my menu this week is homemade ravioli.  I decided to make the dough ahead of time and made six ravioli as a practice run.  Two things I need to do next time – roll out the dough thinner and cook the ravioli longer.  I make my pasta dough in the food processor – so easy!

• 2 cups flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 4 tablespoons water

The dough should look like this:

I then dumped it on my counter and kneaded it for about 5 minutes.  I had seen on t.v. where someone had put herbs in the dough so I thought I would try it.  My dough wasn’t rolled out thin enough to see it though!

My lunch: 1/2 cup of my marinara sauce and four ravioli.  The ravioli filling is just ricotta cheese, salt, pepper and fresh picked basil.  Later in the week when I make it again, I think I’ll add marinated artichokes to kick it up a notch.

We were disappointed with the .39 cent tomatoes at the store yesterday.  Most of them were yellow, or bright orange.  I picked the darkest ones to make more baja fresh salsa!

Using our fresh picked cilantro brought this batch over the top – I could seriously eat it with a spoon!

I decided to make the steak I had on the menu last night, and decided to grill the green beans too – they were good!  Nice and cripsy.  I cooked them naked, then tossed them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

We went with ribeyes:

My plate:  I ate 1/4 of the baked potato, all the green beans and 1/3 of the steak.

I want to give a shout out to one of our 101 days of Summer Challengers!  John just finished his first triathlon of the season – only the second one of his life!  But here’s the kicker – John weighed in December 31, 2009 at 344 pounds . . . now weighs 250 pounds and is going to do another tri in just two weeks!  You have to check out his race recap – way to go John!

Hope everyone had a great weekend.  My goals for the week: Jillian 30 day shred 3 times this week, and don’t do exercises that I don’t love! 😀

Okay, I was really grasping at straws and only had enough to put together my breakfast!  I can’t wait to go grocery shopping!!!  I haven’t been in three weeks!  Looks like I’ll be making a lot of pasta sauce and salsa!  Check out the price of tomatoes!

For breakfast I had egg tostadas – 2 tostadas, 2 eggs, 1 ounce cheese and yes, pickled jalapeno and carrots on top – its okay to have spicy for breakfast!

With the last of the strawberries – breakfast comes in at 444 calories, 30 carbs, 26 protein, 15 fat and 5.7 fiber.   I put the tostadas in the toaster to crisp them up – so crunchy!

All morning at work I was debating whether or not to work out or go to the Farmers Market.  In the end, since I needed to pick up something for lunch, the market won!  Sadly, even though I got there 1/2 hour after it opened, nothing was set up!  When I remarked to the cashier about nothing being out yet, her response was “it usually takes us a couple hours to get everything out.”  Um, okay, so start setting up at 10:00 a.m. instead of noon when you are supposed to be open!

I knew there was a Panera in this mall, but upon opening the door, the line was 20 people deep!  So I walked down to:

The first time they opened one of these up near my office in Chicago, I ate there every day for a week!  I was trying to see what my healthier options were, and settled on the skinny turkey with hot peppers and a cup of their tomato soup.

OMG, this soup was so good!  I told Tony it made up for my shitty market experience!

So of course I check the nutrition after I ate – it kind of surprised me – I expected it to be around 400 calories – but it was 550 calories, 101 carbs (totally doesn’t seem right to me!), 32 protein, 4 fat and 10 fiber.  There is no way lunch was 101 carbs, because my blood sugar would have been through the roof and it wasn’t.

I did buy three things at the market though – jalapenos, an heirloom tomato and baby cucumbers.  The tomato and pepper were the inspiration for my party pizza Friday!  I made Tony a BLT pizza, and I had a Mexican pizza.  Sadly, when I do two pizzas in the oven, somehow Tony’s pizza doesn’t get a crisp crust so his pizza wasn’t as good – sorry Tony!

While that cooked I sliced and salt and peppered the tomato slices:

Then topped it with shredded lettuce:

The base of my pizza – the sauce is 1/4 cup refried beans mixed with 1/4 cup of my baja fresh salsa. Then I tossed 2 ounces of chicken breast from our herbed chicken last night with 1 tablespoon of taco bell taco sauce, then put corn and fresh sliced jalapenos – these were so fresh and spicy! 😀

Then I added shredded lettuce and Chipotle Tabasco on mine 😀  I need to remember to only cook one pizza at a time to get a good crust on both!

Stats for Friday:

• no exercise (which means I have to do level 1 and 3 of 30 day shred today! – I’ve always hated level 2 for some reason)
• 1,574 calories, 189 carbs (don’t think that is right), 84 protein, 57 fat and 22 fiber

On tap for today?

• laundry
• clean kitchen, back room and bathroom
• make my BSI vegetarian chili using bulgar wheat
• ??

Have a great Saturday!