Okay,
so Sunday, I went grocery shopping. I went to 5 (yes, you read that
right, 5) different grocery stores to get everything that was on my list
that I needed
to buy to make it through the first week on the Fast Metabolism Diet
(FMD from here on out). It cost me about $200 to buy everything. Now,
before you go getting anything in a wad, let me explain a little. For
the main part, this isn’t just one week of food.
When you’re making the “main dishes,” it yields like 6-8 servings, so
it will last you more than just one week. Some of the stuff is a little
hard to find. For instance I had to go to Trader Joe’s for only one
thing: Persian cucumbers. I went to Target
first and that’s where I got the vast majority of my food. Then I went
to Sprouts, then Whole Foods, then Trader Joe’s. I went to TJ’s
because the ONE time I’ve been there, last year, I remembered seeing
specialty cucumbers and figured they would have the
Persian ones. They did. YAY! Then, last stop of the day was the
local grocery store chain, HEB, for an Asian pear because, like TJ’s, I
remember seeing them there. I had bought a regular pear at WF’s but the
menu plan calls for an Asian pear specifically,
so that’s what I wanted to get. See, I’m a huge stickler for
instructions and like to follow them to a T if at all possible. I
rarely modify things unless it’s just a super unhealthy recipe but it’s a
food I really like and I want it to be closer to healthy
and then I’ll make substitutions. Also, when I make spaghetti sauce,
it’s never the same twice because I don’t follow a recipe for it. I
just grab whatever looks tasty and toss it in the mix.
After
I went grocery shopping Sunday, it was time for food prep! YAY!
Before I could start food prep, I had to empty the sinks as they were
both full of dishes
needing to be washed. I washed all those and the set about cooking up
the first thing on my list of things to cook: the chicken and barley
soup. I poured the chicken broth, vegetable broth and water into the
pot. Then I cubed the chicken and put that in.
I bought frozen, already cubed butternut squash and had thawed that
out, so I just poured that in. Chopped up the zucchini and onion and
threw all that in. Then I measured out the barley and put that in as
well. About halfway through added the ingredients
to the pot, I realized the pot I had was nowhere near big enough so I
stopped and headed back to the store to buy a larger stock pot. I ended
up with a red stainless pot with off white enamel (so it mostly matches
my current pans which are red stainless with
white enamel). It’s 12 quarts whereas I think the one I had was only
6…at best. I got home with the new pot and transferred over what I had
already put in the pot and then finished putting everything in and then
set it to boil, then reduced to a simmer for
2 hours.
After
I had set up the soup to cook, I started prepping the 5-bean turkey
chili (the recipe states you can use ground turkey or ground buffalo…I
opted for turkey
because buffalo can be hard to find). The chili calls for white beans,
kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans and lentil beans. Plus there is
onion, mushroom, and zucchini in there too. This went in the crockpot
(I think I might buy a second crockpot for
reasons I’ll explain in a minute) on high for 5 hours.
Next,
I tackled the pepperoncini pork roast. Now, I don’t like pepperoncinis
at all, but after it was cooked, I decided it smelled delicious and I
can’t wait
to try it. Anyway, this was supposed to go in a crockpot as well
(hence why I might buy a second one…it’ll come in handy in the future if
I need to cook a lot of food at once again). Since my crockpot was
already being used for the chili, I decided to put
the roast in the oven at 350° for an hour at a time until it “flaked”
easily. This took about 2 hours.
Next
up was the stove top foods. There was 2 of those and the first one up
was the coconut curry chicken. I have never used coconut milk for
anything and
I have also never *actually* made Indian food. There was this one time
I made basmati rice, grilled chunks of lamb and then used store bought
tikka masala sauce and made lamb tikka masala…so that doesn’t count
since I didn’t make the sauce myself. When I
was done, I took a tiny sample of the coconut curry sauce…OMG…so
yummy! I hadn’t read the entire recipe when I was making my grocery
list so I didn’t have any tomato paste to thicken the sauce with. So I
made it without the paste. The next morning, I went
to the store and bought 4 small cans of paste and I pulled the dish out
of the fridge and put it back in the pan, heated it up and added the
paste to it. (see what I mean about I like to follow the instructions
to a T?)
The
final item I made was shrimp and veggie stir fry. That has all sorts
of good things in it…Brussels sprouts, asparagus, baby bok choy, onions,
and of course,
shrimp. The recipe called for 1 pound of extra-large cooked shrimp.
The store had them in 12oz bags, which is 4oz shy of a pound, so I had
to buy 2 bags, now I have extra shrimp. Haha.
Monday
was my first day on the FMD and I have to say it went very well. As
soon as I got to work, a coworker offered me a muffin and when I said
no, she pushed
it more toward me and I had to insist that I meant the no I had said
originally because I had just started my diet. Later that day, the same
coworker offered me a girl scout cookie. I said no to that as well.
Tuesday I get to work and they had brought in
a birthday cake for the August birthdays. I LOVE cake. Well, I had to
say no to this as well. It helps that the cake was nowhere near my
work station, so it was easy to forget about.
Monday’s
breakfast, while still completely edible and tasty was a bit of a fail
because I didn’t follow the directions properly because I didn’t read
them all
the way through first. It was an oatmeal and fruit smoothie. It
called for steel cut oats, something I have no experience with. They’re
not flakes like regular oats or whole grain oats. They’re the grain
kernel. Apparently I was supposed to cook them
first. Oops. So, it was a little crunchy and I ate it more than I
drank it. Haha.
Tuesday’s
breakfast was strawberry French toast. It was one egg white mixed with
cinnamon and vanilla extract. One slice of the sprouted wheat bread.
(OH
YEA!!! I’ve never had sprouted wheat bread before…it’s good!) Then I
cooked it on the griddle. Ahile that was cooking on the griddle, I
heated up 1 cup of frozen sliced strawberries with lemon juice and 1/8
tsp stevia. Poured the strawberry mix on top
of the French toast…sooooo good!!! But, that sprouted grain wheat
bread, one, it smells fantastic and two, it tastes great! I don’t think
I’ll be going back to the bread I was having before, even though that
was a whole grain bread. I just like this stuff
better.
My
exercise thus far this week has been spotty. I got up early Sunday and
ran 5 miles and felt great doing it. Monday I was going to go to the
gym, but paying
bills and running other errands took up my whole morning, so no gym on
Monday. Tuesday I was going to run, but I accidentally drank too much
coffee on Monday and slept like crap Monday night, so I didn’t get out
of bed until 10 Tuesday morning.
Exercise
for the rest of the week will be scant. Basically, I won’t have a workout until Saturday (because I’m
working a double
shift Wednesday AND Thursday nights, so no time for workouts on
Thursday or Friday, sleep only) and what I think I’m going to do with
that is drive to the gym, run down the street for 1.5 miles and then
back for 3 miles, then head into the gym, do my jump
box workout, then swim at least 10 laps. I’ll just set a minimum and
if I can do more, then I will. I want to get up early to do this. I
don’t want to be running after 8 if I can avoid it. Then, maybe when I
get home, if I’m feeling up to it (probably
not), I can go for a bike ride. Maybe.
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weight is in pounds and measurements are in inches |
Anyway,
when I get to the gym on Saturday, I think I’m going to ask if someone
can measure my body fat % for me and then at the end of two 28 day
cycles of
the FMD I will get it taken again. I would buy a caliper and do it
myself, but some of the places you have to pinch at are hard to do by
yourself. And besides, it’s free if I get it done at the gym! (well,
not actually free because I’m paying the monthly
dues)
I love having two crockpots. Right now, I have a big one and a small one because I gave my other big one to my mom. As you found out, having two is awesome. How long did it take you to prep all your meals? Maybe I missed it. I like the idea of having a full month's worth of meals planned out and prepped, I just never can follow through. I've been in the mood to bake lately. I'll hold off for a month to not tempt you off your diet :) Love you!
ReplyDeleteI found a crockpot at Sam’s Club that I really want. It’s big and pretty and it’s $35. Meal prep Sunday (that’s what I’m calling it now) takes me all total about 7 hours…that is because it takes up to an hour to get everything ready to go in the crockpot and then about 6-7 hours to cook in the crockpot. Granted, I’m doing more than just cooking something in the crockpot. Last Sunday I cooked 4 different dishes. This Sunday I cooked 6, I think. And then, depending on what comes up on the meal map for the day, I may have up to an hour of food prep to do on any given day (read: veggie chopping, steak broiling, etc). Also, I’m doing this diet for at least 2 months, until I hit 30 pounds lost…but thanks for thinking of me :)
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