Hi guys –

Well, the week is almost finished.  I hope everyone had a fun and productive week. I was very busy at work and managed to stick to eating really well all week, too! This is very exciting for me.

I don’t really know what to say about breakfast these days! It’s basically repeating itself day to day especially during the work week.  Yes, on Wednesday and Thursday I had the SAME THING! TJ’s instant blueberry oatmeal. 🙂 I love this stuff – and it does really keep me full all morning long.

On Wednesday, I put half a banana and a spoonful of Barney Butter in the mix. On Thursday, however, I just added a small handful of raisins and a scoop of Aria protein powder. This kept the calories and fat lower. A few raisins is probably 15 calories and a scoop of Aria is 40 calories. When you add BB and half a banana, the calories increase by 135 calories.  On Thursday I lowered my breakfast calories because my department at work had planned to take out one of our colleagues for a good-bye lunch 😦 .  But it turned out that a few people had meetings come up at the last minute, so lunch was canceled.

But back to Wednesday – on Wed. I had an amazing salad for lunch! I added a hard boiled egg, and 1/3 cup of tuna to the salad. It was so good and filling due to the extra protein.  Yum:

I also had 130 calories of Rosemary and Sea Salt crostinis – my favorite crackers in the entire world!!!

The salad was about 190 calories: 40 calories for the lettuce and veggies, 15 for the dressing, 60 calories for the tuna, and 75 calories for the hard boiled egg. The total lunch was 320 calories.

On Wednesday I had to work late at work so I planned a good snack to get me through the long afternoon / evening. This snack was soo great! The almonds added fat and protein and the banana added carbs.

Oh yeah, the Diet Coke was also key – for the caffeine!  The almonds were 111 calories (for 16 almonds) and the banana was the other half of the banana I added to the oatmeal in the morning – another 40 calories. Total:  151 calories for the afternoon snack.

Once I got home, I was pretty hungry for dinner. I had 724 calories remaining for the day.  I had 110 calories of pita chips and 50 calories of hummus while I was waiting for my dinner.  For dinner I had the other tamale along with a table spoon of light sour cream and more salsa.  This time I remembered to take a picture!

Once again, the tamale is 240 calories, the light sour cream is 15 for a tablespoon and the salasa was only about 5 calories!! All together (along with the pita chips and hummus) dinner was about 420 calories.

Later that night I had a couple of snacks, a piece of dark chocolate (33 calories) and three Twizzlers about 100 calories.  Not a smart choice, but that’s ok – sometimes you need to eat what you are craving!
Thursday started off the same, with the lower calorie oatmeal…. and then the discovery that our work lunch fad been cancelled. So, because I had not brought my lunch to work, I decided to go out to Lamberts for lunch.  I was going to get a salad for lunch on Thursday, but I had eaten salads for three days straight. Instead I had a turkey sandwich made at the sandwich bar on whole wheat bread. I had yellow mustard on it, white onions, tomato, and lettuce. I asked for pickles (which is the #1 thing I really, really, wanted!) but they forgot the pickles… bummer! Here is what the sandwich looked like:

I ate half of the sandwich, and I think it was about 300 calories.  My sandwich was amazing even without the pickles. It kept me soo full for the rest of my day at work!  At around 4:30 I had two Starburst candies that had been  in my lunch bag for about a week. I think the candies added up to 50 calories. (Bad eating choice!!)

After work, I picked up Ben from his office and we went downtown to meet up with our friend Nicole!! Nicole lives in DC and we are so excited that she is visiting Boston this week!  Once we all met up we had a great walk over to The Other Side cafe, where we had dinner.  I really love The Other Side Cafe –  but last night was the first time I had gone there. I had heard about it for years though.

So, last night for dinner I ordered a grilled cheese with tomato on multi-grain bread. Unfortunately, the sandwich came with potato chips (yikes!!) If I had known the chips were coming on the side, I would have asked for no chips, and maybe some mixed greens instead. Oh well.

I did not have my camera at dinner, but I had my cell phone. It was pretty dark at the cafe, and my phone does not have a flash… but with some editing, I think you can almost see the sandwich. It was sooooo good!

When Ben and I got home from dinner we watched the second half of season two of Weeds.

I think that about wraps up the last couple of days! See you guys soon. 🙂