Losing weight in Germany

Sport

2010-04-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Hey,
after my walk yesterday I felt really energized and so I decided to hit the gym today.
So after my breakfast, which was a simple yogurt with blueberries and redcurrant as well as some granola...
... I hit the gym. I didn't do any cardio (except for 7 minutes on the elliptical for warm up). But I did do some training on the weight machines.
After my workout I had a banana.
Then I went grocery shopping and came back nearly starving (by then it was 4pm). My mom wanted some noodles with a tomato sauce so I made the same pasta dish I had on the 13th. Just a really easy dish of whole grain Spaghetti and a premade tomato sauce to which I added caramelized onions, fried ground beef and some carrots to the Spaghettis.
Then my mom and I decided to go for another walk in the evenings. But before I could do that i had to enlist the help of an old friend of mine:

This gel is awesome if you hurt yourself during training. It's been my lifesaver for quite some time since I have bad feet. The doctor diagnosed that one of the ligaments inside a bone of the middle of my foot is not torn but too long and so I get those terrible pains quite often when I'm working out. The pain is the bad side of it and the good side...it won't get worse.

So I suck it up (or I try to) and put on this gel which makes it way better.

Our walk was really nice. We did about an hour walk but through the end it started raining. It started of with this weather where the sky is really dark and you know there is something going on. And then the wind started and you could feel the electricity in the air. The power of nature barely leashed... I love that kind of weather!

But unfortunately thi kind of weather is usually followed up by a lot of rain which we had to endure during the end of our walk.

After all this exitement I had a snack. A chocolate pudding with strawberries:

And then while watching "The Biggest Loser" I decided to have some snacks. I will start with the WW meal plans tomorrow and have my meals planned until next wednesday except for the weekend where we won't be at home so I had to use this opportunity to have some chips (Western Style-a little bit of sweet mixed into this BBQ taste):

I complimented this with a Diet Dr Pepper:

And since this was my savory snack I also had to have a chocolaty snack:

My aunt and uncle just came back from their trip to the US so they brought me some WW candies.

So I had two of the WW Butter Cream Caramel with Crispies:

I tried to snap a picture of every kind of the inside but the pics aren't too good.

I also had one of the Coconut ones:

And a German candy. A Merci Petit in the hazelnut flavor:

That's it from me for today. Starting tomorrow I'll be back to working (after my 5 days off) and like I said will be doing a meal plan including a breakfast, a light meal and a main meal and a snack....let's see how that goes!

Long time no see

2010-04-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
first of: I'm sorry that I haven't been blogging for some days. but with my night shifts I just didn't want to make the time. And then my aunt was here this weekend and I just forgot...
But now I'm back and took pictures of pretty much everything I ate today.
I spent my day at the mall because I was off work. My mom and I were there on friday and went to the coffeeshop company and I saw their awesome sandwich collection. But since on friday we just had lunch at Subways before going there I didn't get one. But today I decided to start my day at the mall off with a Ham Flatbread:
It was really delicious. It had ham (of course), cream cheese and real cheese that was melted, arugula and tomatoes.
To go with that I had a large Oreo Shake. I had a couple of sips before taking this picture:

Then I went around at the mall and got some earrings, a shirt and a short PJ (pics following tomorrow as I can't be bothered to go downstairs now)

I had my lunch planned in advance too. Of course I didn't feel like Subway again but right next to it is this place where we usually get our Smoothies. And they also have a salad bar so I decided to try that:

I got Iceberg Salad with 5 veggie options (tomatoes, cucumber, cor, kidney beans and those chinese sprout thingies) and then sunflower seeds as a topping and balsamic vinegar dressing on the side. It was really good and really crunchy especially with the sunflower seeds.

Of course I also had to get a Smoothie:

A Papaya Passionfruit Smoothie made with just fruits and juices (no dairy added). Delicious as always but kinda sweet. The last time I had a Red Mango Smoothie with Mango pieces, Raspberries and Mango yoghurt (all of those frozen) and Mango juice. But my mom wanted to get this one so I opted for the other one.

Then we decided on dessert at the coffeeshop company. So I got another Oreo Shake (same pic I know ;-) and a Donut (which I forgot to take a pic of but I bet y'all know what a donut looks like):

So that pretty much was my day today. Oh and I also got a new haircut on friday...picture following tomorrow.

Having good night!

Stef

Back to work again

2010-04-14T04:09:00.001-07:00

Today was another late shift day before going into night shift tomorrow.
Juts like yesterday I started my day off with a big, warm meal:
Whole wheat Spaghettis with lean ground beef and a premade pasta sauce in the flavor basil. Sprinkled all of this with a little bit of cheese and some veggies:
So I started off cooking the spaghetti and some carrot pieces. In a pan I fried half an onion in a little bit of oil and then the ground beef. Then I added this pasta sauce:

The ingredient are pretty good: 97% Tomatoes, basil, starch, salt, fructose, native olive oil, things to make the stuff sour (whatever that might be), and then something I think is cream of tatar (from what I read in recipes so far I think it is), and pepper
So this stuff doesn’t have any points and has chuncks of tomatoes in it. Very delicious!

Then I had a yoghurt with strawberries and blueberries and some granola right before leaving for work:

And I had another of the Chocolate Rice Krispie Treats (not the caramel one as pictured, darn got the wrong pic but well...)

And I prepared my pita sandwich for work. I added a piece of cucumber and my apple:

At work I also had some chocolate covered pretzels because somebody felt the need to open this box of cookies….ggrrr
My shift was very relaxing though. It started off pretty bad because we weren’t enough people even though we were way too many for my taste. Let me explain: I work in the ER at the moment so there is one nurse that does all the administration. And then we also have a small ward with like 6 beds for patients that cannot go to their ward because it’s full. So another nurse has to go there. And then we had two more nurses in the late shift for the actually work in the ER which isn’t enough. We had one though who had like a middle shift, so they tried to get another finished nurse to come when he left. Added to those ppl we also had 2 guys that are currently working on becoming a paramedic and me as a close to finished nursing student. But they did get a finished paramedic to come in late but he was like absolutely clueless about the work and no help at all…(in my humble opinion). So it was luck that there wasn’t a whole lot to do.

After getting back home I had another bowl of sweetened strawberries and bananas and a rice cracker with PB:

Trying to get back on track

2010-04-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

Even though I’m not counting this week officially I’m still kinda calculating my points in my head and those last two days were kinda over the top. But that’s no problem as I still have my weekly points to dig into…
But I tried to keep closer to my daily points allowance yesterday which was not so easy since I was off work and thus had more time to eat ;-)
So the key for me is to start my day off with my main warm meal that is really filling. Yesterday I decided on a German Favorite “Milchreis” (milk rice) it’s kinda like rice pudding and a sweet risotto. You need round grain rice like the one you’d use for risotto but instead of putting broth into it you use milk and sweeten it. So I used a mixture of milk and water because I wanted to cut down on the calories. And I sweetened everything with artificial sweetener and Vanilla Extract for more flavour.
As toppings I had either unsweetened applesauce and sugar/cinnamon:

Or I mixed unsweetened cocoa baking powder into the rice and topped with frozen raspberries:

Soooo good. I had this whole pot full and I ate it all! Afterwards I was comfortably full. I make it my goal to have one meal a day where I really eat a lot so I’m nicely full. WW in germany has this part where it actually promotes that. Because you have certain ingredient either carb rich (i.e. potatoes, noodles, rice…) foods for 7 Pts or Protein rich (lean meats, eggs..) foods for 5 Pts that you can eat for that amount of points until you’re comfortably full.

So my breakfast did hold me full a long time. And I had my next meal maybe around 4pm. I had one of my Turkey Pitas with low fat mayonnaise, Avocado cream and cheese. I added to that some tomatoes and as dessert had a rice cracker with PB:

When I went shopping I got some more of the ice cream I have loved lately and of course had to have some as a snack around 5.30pm:

My portion:

Then I went into my room to watch TV but still thought about how I needed more fruits. So I went back downstairs and cut up some strawberries and a banana which I sweetened a little and added to that 2 rice crackers, one with PB and the other with strawberry Marshmallow Fluff.

Tomorrow I'll be back to work. But I'm doing a late shift so I can sleep in and have a comfy day before heading to work.

See y'all later!

Weekend

2010-04-11T13:38:00.001-07:00

Hey,
Breakfast started off the same as yesterday on Saturday, just that I didn’t have time to eat at home and so had to take the toast and eat it in the train.
My yogurt for work was with redcurrant again. Plus the usual Granola and a banana, because we were out of apples.

Lunch started off with a salad. Drizzled with Mango Dressing again.

Afterwards I had my main: Polenta made with cornmeal, chicken broth, milk, cheese, onion, tomatoes and carrots. I topped it off with a toast schnitzel.

My dessert featured strawberries and banana sweetened with sweetener:

Then I had a Chocolate Rice Krispie Treat as a snack.

After my mom returned home we watched a DVD (Night in a Museum 2) and had ice cream.

Sunday started with oatmeal. I added: oats, hot water, yogurt, vanilla extract and frozen raspberries.

I topped the finished product with Strawberry Marshmallow Fluff.

Since I was feeling snacky yesterday at work I today decided to take a Caramel Rice Krispie Treat in case I felt like that again. But having it in my bag of course prompted me to not be able to forget it and so I had the bar in the morning.

At work my yogurt had blueberries in it and I had an apple again.

After work I was extremely hungry and made myself a salad with Mango Dressing again.

Dinner was Ostrich Steak, white asparagus, potatoes and Sauce Hollandaise.

During TV tonight I had a Green Monster in a bowl topped with some granola and chocolate sprinkles.

Well, that was my food for the weekend. I had to work both days in the early morning shift which startes at 6.15 am. Since I live so far away I had to get up at 3.45am so y'all can imagine that I didn't really do a whole lot this weekend as it was my 3rd and 4th early shift and I'm a night owl...

Tomorrow will be my one day off and then I'm going to have one late shift and then 2 nights...

Quick Recap

2010-04-10T10:03:00.001-07:00

Hey,
today will just be a quick recap of yesterdays eats.
I started off with 6 small whole grain toasts, two of them with strawberry marshmallow fluff and one with reduced fat peanut butter. As my fruit side I had some strawberries:
Then for work I had the usual fat free yoghurt with blueberries and redcurrants this time. My apple and some granola.

Dinner after work featured an omelette with these ingredients:

3 egg whites and one egg
Bell pepper
Corn
Cheese
Ham

And to go with that a cornmuffin with half fat margarine. Here’s one right after pulling it out of the freezer: (sorry, kinda blurry)

Then as a snack I had some more of the same ice cream as I had yesterday with some of my granola.
For dinner I forgot to take a pic. Here are the dirty dishes:

But I had one whole grain slice of bread with peanut butter and some strawberries cut into pieces with sweetener.

Then the last meal of my day was salad with homemade mango dressing which includes:

Mango
Onion
Vinegar
Oil to fry in
Unsweetened apple sauce (actually an apple but I didn’t have any)
Mango Chutney

Well see you tomorrow for a combined Saturday-Sunday post!

Going shopping

2010-04-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hey there,
so yesterday was really good because the weather was awesome and I got to stroll around town and do some shopping.
The day started off way early though. I had prepared breakfast the night before since I had planned on eating it on the train. But I was awake early and didn’t want to go back to sleep as it is always harder to get up after that. So I already had my Pita pocket filled with turkey, cheese, light mayo and avocado cream at home at around 4 am:
The banana was my snack right before starting work so I ate it at about 6 am.

During work I ate my usual Granny Smith apple and plain nonfat yoghurt with raspberries:

Like I said I went to town after work ( well okay, I was in town just stopped on my way) and went to the mall. There I picked up a Nintendo DS game and afterwards went to Starbucks. I had some money left over since the game was supposed to be 30 € and ended up only being 20€. So I got myself a Mango Passionfruit Frappucino which I enjoyed while walking to my next stop: the Lush store

After indulging myself at the Lush store and getting some gifts for my aunt. I decided that it was getting pretty late and I still had the journey home and the dinner preparation in front of me. So I went into the Dunkin Donuts and got a classical Dunclaire…which is basically a Long John.

I had this beauty on the train but beforehand took a picture of it with my Nintendo DSi for which I earned a lot of strange looks! But who cares…

So back home I decided on pasta and lot’s of veggies. So I had whole grain pasta and carrots:

Topped off with a sauce of tomatoes, red bell peppers, onions, a tsp oil, a package of italien seasoning and water…

Then I watched this nice video on youtube about what to do when you’re craving something and what you can substitute. Well this video made me crave the ice cream I picked up at the store on Tuesday so I had a bowl of that as a “Betthupferl” as we say in germany…just a sweet treat that you eat right before going to bed. (Okay it is usually a tradition for little children to make them want to go to bed but don’t we all have to take care of our inner child?)

Yeah, so that's it from today or better yesterday.

See y'all tomorrow

Stef

First Green monster

2010-04-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
I’m sorry the post for my Wednesday post is late. But I am on the early shift at the moment which means my alarm goes off at 3.45 am!! So I can catch the train at 4.39am.
Yesterday was also my WI but I neither lost nor gained…which makes me pretty sad since I was so good over Easter and everybody in my meeting was raving about their great time on Easter and which delicious foods they enjoyed and how they had lost weight anyways…

So I started my day off with a Cinnamon and Raisin Bagel which I plopped into the toaster:

Then I smeared some Strawberry Marshmallow Fluff onto it and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar mixture. Since we still had 3 eggs left from Easter I decided to add a color coordinated egg:

Then for dinner I had one of my favorites. Spätzle! Which is a typical german kind of pasta. And to go with it I made a sauce with milk.

But first things first: I started off sautéing an onion:

Then I added one package of Spätzle (not quite all of it since I left some for dessert).

After those were lightly browned I added a Cup of milk (well a little bit short of that …see dessert) and also added the corn. I let that boil until the milk thickens and then added some salt…easy and delicious.

My Dessert featured pretty much the same ingredients. Just this time I nuked the Spätzle and milk in the microwave and added some vanilla and sweetener to it. I also added in some frozen raspberries and topped it all off with some unsweetened apple sauce.

My late night snack after my meeting consisted of my first Green Monster, which was very good (I just used a banana, an orange and spinach). To go with this I had another WW Naan Bread with Turkey, cheese and Avocado and 20 pretzel sticks on the side and a piece of Easter chocolate to compliment the sweet Green Monster.

Tomorrows post will probably be just as late as this one but well…I’m not gonna get up earlier just to blog so y’all just have to wait!
See ya tomorrow!!

metabolism shock

2010-04-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

Hey,
so with WW you get a daily points allowance and then also a weekly allowance that you can either use at once or a little at a time or not at all. I found through trial and error that not using them doesn't work for me and that the best way for me is to use them all up on one day (or at least a majority). So that's what happened today. I hadn't planned on it but as life wents and since I was off work today this was how it worked.

But let's start off with breakfast. I decided while still in bed that I wanted some waffles. So I used the Aunt Jemima buttermilk pancake mix to make waffles. But instead of using oil I used apple sauce. I also added in some chopped pecans which gave the waffles a delicious taste.

I had a little bit of each of those toppings:

Aunt Jemima Original Sirup

Caramel Sirup

unsweetened apple sauce

1/2 a banana

The other half of the banana went into my yoghurt parfait:

It consisted of 2 Minimuffins of Devils Food cake made with pumpkin purre that I crumbled in the mixer. Then one layer was plain yoghurt with vanilla aroma and sweetener and then the banana cut into junks. Very delicious!

Then my mom came home from my grandmas and told me she was hungry. So we were thinking about what to do with the day and what to eat for lunch. I'm usually getting up late so I ate my breakfast at around 11.30am and my mom was back at about 12.30pm.

So we decided to go ahead and rent movies. We got Inglorious Bastards and New in Town ( a movie with Renee Zellweger). After picking those up we went by the bakery to get bread for my dad for dinner and got ourselves a little treat for later.

Then we went to get our main lunch. A German staple fast food: Döner. This was invented by a turkish immigrant right here in Berlin where I live. In Turkey they have the same style of heating the meat which is pressed into a big lump and then roasted on a stick and they shave off pieces of that meat (usually lamb). The specialty here is to put it into a corner of a large pita bread and add sauce and veggies to it:

I cut mine into 3 pieces to eat it because I find it easier that way and not as much can fall out of it.

Then later on we had our treat from the bakery:

A poppyseed roll. Just like a cinnamon roll just larger and made with poppy seeds..delish!

Later on in the day I had one of my staples... a Granny Smith Apple:

And now just a couple of minutes ago I had another yoghurt with redcurrant and my chocolate granola:
Well, that was my day food wise. Nothing special happened today. I will go ahead and do some more grocery shopping today as I am running out of fresh produce (and frozen). And somebody got me lettuce for a salad but didn't get tomatos or bell peppers just a cucumber (which is gone now, which reminds me that I had a piece of that before the apple!)

See y'all tomorrow!

my Easter

2010-04-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all

So my Easter holidays were pretty unexciting as I had to work.
Foodwise my days were all the same:
I got up and ate breakfast with my parents. I usually had 2 breakfast rolls one with Marshmallow Fluff and the other with Peanut Butter. And one or two Easter eggs.
Then right before leaving for work I had a small chocolate snack: either a piece of chocolate or a Rice Krispie Treat.
Then at work I had Weight Watchers menus:
On Friday I started off with the Penne Mediterrane which was just Pasta with a Tomato Sauce and Zucchini, Bell Peppers and Onions in the Sauce.

On Saturday I had the WW Tomatentopf (tomato pot) which was a tomato sauce with a few noodles and ground meat patties. And the only one I forgot to take a picture of the package.
On Sunday I had the Spaghetti Bolognese which is just a normal Bolognese Sauce with Spaghetti. And yesterday (on Monday) I had the Spaghetti Carbonara, which are spaghettis with a cream and egg sauce and ham. I had an apple or orange to go with that every day.
Then after returning home I had another light snack such as a Cornmuffin with margarine or an egg.

First Day

2010-04-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

Hey,
so this is my first day of journaling everything a eat in here.
My day started off with a nice breakfast with my parents. I had one of my favourit yogurt concoctions:
I need 1 Banana which I mashed up:

Then of course my fat free yoghurt which comes in this huge container. But I only use about 1 Cup:

And Blackberries:

I then added all the ingredients together:

And topped it off with some chocolate muesli after stirring:

That's the package of the brand I used:

And after that I had a typical German breakfast roll:

with Peanut Butter (reduced fat) on one side and Turkey slices on the other:

At the moment I'm working in the ER at a hospital which is kinda far away from where I live (about 1 1/2 to 2h) so i had this Rice Kispie Square in chocolate caramel before leaving.

I started work at 2 pm and it was pure chaos. there is just something about holidays that makes people come to the ER with the most unimportant injuries (nose bleeds, headaches that they've had for weeks...).

So my lunch break was pretty short and during Easter I decided to be lazy and eat some of the WW menus offered at our stores. So I had the Penne Mediteranean today. It was basically pasta with a tomato sauce and zucchini, bell peppers and onions in the sauce. And I had an apple as dessert.

I also had 2 chocolate covered small pretzels and an oatmeal cookie at work which I didn't take pictures of.

After returning home (I got back at 11 pm) I was extremely hungry and decided to have another of the sandwiches I described in my last post:

This time around I paired it with some steamed broccoli and carrot which I added a Tbsp of Terriakie Sauce to:

After finishing this post I will have my last snack for today ( well it's officially the next day by now but who cares...

It's a chocolate pudding. I haven't had this kind before. i usually have this brands lower fat kind but they didn't have it. This one here has 3g of fat per 100g and the other one has .1g fat.

I'm sorry if the pictures are kind of messed up. I had to make all of them small so I could switch their positions and then enlarged them again. But since I used the click and draw method some might be kinda weird..

Well better get to my chocolate pudding.

See you tomorrow!

Hello

2010-04-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

Hey there,
so this is my first post. I plan this on being a food blog.

I'm 21 years old and have been on Weight Watchers for 1 1/2 years so far. I have lost close to 33lbs so far.

I live in Germany but love american food and when saying that I'm not solely talking about fast food, even though a lot of Germans think that's what the american cuisine is all about.

So let's start off with yesterdays lunch, which will make a reappearance today:

I had this beautiful sandwich which featured

a (British) WW Naan Bread,
some light Mayonaise,
a slice of light cheese
grilled turkey breast and
Avocado Dip (mashed avocado with lemon juice and salt)

My complete meal included the sandwich, a package of (British) WW Chargrilled Smokey Bacon Flavour Corn Bites and tomatoes ont he side.

So starting tomorrow I'll try to take pictures of everything I'm eating to show y'all.

Have a great day!

Stef