Day 25

The Breakfast Menu:

• 2 blueberry banana bran mini-muffins
• 1 oz. light cream cheese
• 4 oz. orange juice

I had my doubts about these muffins. They called for wheat bran or oat bran. I just bought All Bran cereal. I was also nervous about the berries, but I figured these muffins are so tiny, I really only ate about 4 blueberries between the two of them. I'm going to try to reintroduce berries into my diet, but only once a week. We'll see how that goes. If I don't have any problems, I'll just leave it at that. I miss them, so I don't want to eliminate them, but I obviously don't want to be miserable just because I ate some...

The muffins were VERY good! I would never have thought to put cream cheese on them, but that was good too. A whole ounce of cream cheese was a pretty thick coating on these two little muffins though...

The First Snack:

• 2 cantaloupe wedges
• "post workout" smoothie

Because the website called this a post workout smoothie, I didn't feel right drinking it without having worked out. lol. It actually spurred me to run on the treadmill this morning. It wasn't for long, and it wasn't fast, but it was more than I've been doing.

I was VERY nervous about the smoothie. It was 1/4 cup vanilla yogurt, 1/4 cup egg substitute, 1/2 a frozen banana, and 1/2 tsp. sugar. I wasn't sure how I felt about the egg substitute. Egg substitute is pasteurized, so I assume it's safe to eat/drink raw... But I had a really hard time taking that first swig, just knowing it had raw "egg" in it. But it was surprisingly delicious! Not just good. Delicious! It wasn't much, but it was just a snack, so it kept me satisfied until lunch.

The Lunch Menu:

• 1 cup chicken salsa brown rice soup
• 1 cup cucumber/tomato/balsamic vinegar salad
• 1/2 oz whole grain Wheat Thins
• 1 oz. light cream cheese

Again with the full ounce of cream cheese. It's just overkill. I absolutely LOVE the whole grain Wheat Thins. They are easily the best Wheat Thins I have ever tasted. The cucumber salad was much better than the last cucumber salad I ate. I made 2 servings of it and will definitely eat the second half tomorrow in place of something else that I had planned. The soup was very good.

I missed my afternoon snack, because we rushed out the door for riding lessons. When we got home (just in time for dinner), I was so hungry I forgot to stop and take a picture.

The Dinner Menu:

• 3 oz. sauteed chicken
• 1/2 cup brown rice with fresh tomatoes and cilantro
• 1/4 cup steamed edamame with 1 tsp. butter spread

The brown rice was decent, but I probably won't bother making it again. There are other things I would rather put in my rice. Or maybe if the tomatoes and cilantro were cooked WITH the rice. The recipe called for cooking the rice by itself, then stirring in cold tomatoes and cilantro. So maybe I'll cook it altogether next time.

The edamame was new to me. I liked it! I get more of it tomorrow :)

The Mixed-Up Rest-of-the-Snacks:

• 1 mango, chunked, frozen, and then pureed
• 1/2 oz. raisins

I had this snack at about 8, when the kids had their bedtime snack. The mango was supposed to be the afternoon snack, and the raisins were supposed to go with the evening snack. Things were just all goofy by this point, so I just ate whatever, whenever. Mixed feelings on the mango. I've only ever had one mango before, and it was nowhere near ripe when I ate it. I've had this one for at least 2 weeks, waiting for it to ripen. When it finally did, I couldn't work it into any of my menus, so I peeled and chopped it and threw it in the freezer. When I saw raspberry sorbet on today's menu, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to have the mango instead of more berries. It was JUST pureed frozen mango. No other ingredients. It was pretty good. I liked it more by the end of the bowl than I did at the beginning of the bowl.

The other 2 pieces of snack I was supposed to have today were 10 baby carrots and a 2 oz. chunk of reduced-fat cheddar cheese. I honestly wasn't very hungry, so I skipped the carrots and ate the cheese. Now I'm at less than 1200 calories for the day, so I suppose I might have one more nibble of something before bed, but nothing over 100 calories. I would love a banana, but we're out. Groceries tomorrow!