The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘weight watchers’

So a few weeks ago, I was on a blog that promoted coupons and free samples. I love free samples because they are free and provide me a little mail to open each day. One of the samples posted was for 1 free Bear Naked grain-ola bar. I love Luna and Pria bars and thought this one would be the same so I filled out my information and selected the chocolate cherry variety to receive.

My granola bar came this week and I was excited to give it a try. I brought it to work with me as my mid-afternoon snack figuring it would be healthier than the Zapps chips we keep in the audit room. That thought held steady until I opened the bar and started eating it. I flipped the wrapper around and was shocked to see 230 calories, 10 grams of fat, and 33 grams of carbs – only 4 grams were fiber. I think I would have been better off sticking with those chips! 5 Weight Watcher points, gone!

On to taste, as I mentioned, I selected the chocolate cherry flavor. Unfortunately, the bar tasted more like banana bread and I don’t recall finding any chocolate or dried cherries mixed into this bar. This bar is nothing like the old Luna Chocolate over Cherries bar so if you were a fan, don’t waste your money on this as a replacement.

There was a variety of nuts and grains throughout the bar. I was happy to see bits of pecans as you don’t see those everyday in granola bars. The rest of the ingredients though, sigh. The bar might be natural but syrup, molasses, canola oil, sunflower oil, etc adds up and also makes for a bit of a sticky bar. Yes, this bar is soft unlike the other bars that I have mentioned before so while you could take it on the go and avoid crumbs, you have to keep it in the wrapper or risk it falling about or gumming up your fingers. That could be a plus or a minus depending on where you are running to.

Overall, while I thought the taste was fine, I would not buy a box of these bars at the grocery store. The nutritional ingredients are just way too high in calories and fat and with only 22 weight watcher points per day I can’t afford to spend 1/4 of them on this one product. Also, I want my chocolate and cherry flavors!

Happy Labor Day Weekend!  I’ve taken the day off to run errands – mostly involving my name change.  Bleh!  I hope it will be fast and painless but these are government agencies so you never know what to expect.

My recipe for today is a family favorite.  By family favorite, I mean my entire mother’s side of the family.  I don’t know who developed this recipe or when we started eating it but you can’t pry our fingers away from a pot when it has been cooked.  Normally you have to make 2 batches for us crazy people – 1 to eat immediately and 1 to freeze.

When my grandmother was sick, we use to joke with her that this recipe had special healing powers.  She would go in once a month to have her chemo treatment.  She always picked the first Sunday of the month.  She would feel terrible the rest of Sunday and through Tuesday.  Wednesday was my day off at the time other than Sunday so I would always go over to visit on both of those days.  On chemo week, my mother and I would gather all of the ingredients for this recipe and get to work in her kitchen while she rested and then when it was done we’d bring her a big bowl and she would start feeling better.   I don’t think this recipe really has healing powers but she always knew once she had chicken spaghetti she would be on the upswing the rest of the month.  I guess it was just a small thing to look forward to.

Chicken Spaghetti

• chicken (you can use anywhere from 1 breast to a 1.25 lb of chicken breasts)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 stick oleo or butter (you can cut this or eliminate it – I normally eliminate)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 can tomato soup
• 1 can died rotel (regular or mild)
• 1 pound of Velveeta Cheese (look for the light or 2% package)
• 1 package of vermicelli noodles

1. Boil chicken with 1 bay leaf until cooked (~30 to 45 mins). Let cool
2. Saute onion in butter in an oven safe soup or stock pot
3. Shred your chicken into small pieces
4. Add Can of Tomato soup and can of Rotel into onion pot.  Stir until mixed.
5. Start boiling your noodles.  Boil in same water that chicken was boiled in to add flavor
6. Chop your Velveeta cheese into small chunks.  Start adding to soupy mix.  Stir until melted.  Add more, Stir.  Repeat until all cheese has been incorporated and is fully melted (very important!!)
7. Add in Chicken to mixture.
8. Drain noodles.
9. Add cooked noodles into cheesy chicken mixture and mix very well.  Make sure all noodles are coated and mixture is throughout the mass of noodles.
10. Bake in oven at 350 degrees until the mixture bubbles.  Normally this is 10-15 minutes.  Not very long at all

I don’t have all the nutritional information on this recipe but if you stick with a 1 cup serving it is 6 Weight Watcher points.  This recipe makes 6-8 servings depending on how big your 1 cup serving is.

Today I rejoined Weight Watchers.  I didn’t officially join in as that would be an extra budget expense I can’t afford right now, but I did “rejoin” at home today with my pen, paper, and the scale.  I hopped on the Wii Fit Balance board to take my Starting Weight and my Wii Fit Age so that I can track my progress along this fun journey.  I am not participating in any challenges right now but I’m hoping to remember to check with the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans in time to sign up for their next challenge. Their normal weekly weigh in is on Wednesday but I feel that stretching it out till Wednesday gives me an excuse to overdo it on the weekend and “fix” things by the time I face the scale again. Normally, that means a 0 weight loss and normally a 0 weight gain each week. Not very motivating as you can see. So I’m just going to be a tad early for the Wednesday Weigh in and try to keep myself on track all week.

So according to the Wii Fit ->
Starting Weight: 153.2
Wii Fit Age: 34 years old

Goal: 1 pound lost in 2 weeks, 10 pounds lost by Thanksgiving. Wii Fit age equal to my current age of 27.

A few years ago, I decided to try Weight Watchers and one of the best support systems I have found has not been attending the meetings, but rather reading posts on Dottie’s Weight Loss Zone. It is a regular message board atmosphere focused on the ups and downs of weight loss while on Weight Watchers. I have found numerous recipes in the forums that I make over and over. Cheesy Chicken and Rice is one of them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to cook this week, but I went shopping in my pantry and found all of the ingredients and knew it was a sign. So right now Cheesy Chicken and Rice is about 30 minutes away from being dinner.

All you need are 7 simple ingredients:

1.5 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts (or tenders), 1 cup instant brown rice, 1 envelope Lipton’s dry garlic/mushroom soup mix or onion soup mix, 1 can of Low Fat Cream of XYZ soup, 2 cups water, and 4 oz Velveeta Light.

Start by layering the bottom of your casserole dish with the brown rice. Like so:

Next cut the cheese into small chunks. Once you are done combine the water, soup, soup mix, and a few pieces of cheese and heat until the cheese melts. Add more cheese, heat, stir, and repeat until the cheese and soup have melted into the water.

Next, remove the chicken from package and assess the size. I find tenders work the best for this recipe but breasts will do fine. If you are using breats, you might want to consider cutting them into small pieces and even using a meat tenderizer to decrease their thickness. Just be careful not to pulverize the chicken if you choose to use a tenderizer.

Place chicken pieces on top of brown rice, and then pour mixture over the chicken and rice. Cover with a piece of foil and cook for 60 minutes on 375 degrees.

Make sure you check on the mixture during the cooking process. I tend to take it out every 15 minutes to stir so that the chicken and rice cook evenly as well as ensuring the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.

After 60 minutes are over, uncover and let cool before serving.

This recipe makes about 6 servings at 6 Weight Watcher Points per serving!

I’ve tried off and on to be a meal planner. In fact, last Christmas, my father found a cute chalkboard to hang in my kitchen to help with my meal planning. At first, I was really good about writing the names of the recipes I wanted to cook that week or in the next two weeks. Then I started slacking off.

Now that we are back from the wedding festivities, honeymoon, and work is slowing down, I want to try and start meal planning again. I read about it on other blogs and in my weekly Weight Watchers meetings as a great way to help keep grocery prices down and lose weight. With everything that has gone on lately, Mike and I need help with both of those things.

So as I sit here on a Sunday night and plan our weekly trip to the grocery store, I want to ask. Do you have any tips or tricks for meal planning? Does meal planning work for you? Have you found any other benefits from planning your meals in advance? How far in advance do you plan?