Dinner: Elaborated On

In the picture below, you see 3 main components:

A Bean & Cheese Burrito
Chips & Salsa
Jalapeno Poppers (and Ranch Dressing! Holla!)

I know, I know, I keep talking about food. But let me tell you why I'm so dang excited about food. I'm a food junkie. I love food. Whenever I try to lose weight, it's food that defeats me. Sometimes I do really well at exercising, and when I get in my groove I know I can do that, but it's the onion rings beckoning me, or the craving for a certain off-limits food that gets me every time. And then I get that stupid attitude in my head about how I just blew it so I might as well throw out the rest of the weekend... and I'm off the wagon.

Right now, I feel like I can actually stick to this thing! I either read on WW or HG about not eating food you don't love, and I think that's my problem. Whenever I've tried to diet, I've crammed the Chick Fil A grilled sandwich down my throat, or whole wheat tortillas (YUCK!)...

So for me, the trick is having food that I actually enjoy eating, and feeling full, or at least satisfied, after eating.

And tonight, after that dinner, I was full! In a good way. :) In case anyone wants to know how I pulled it off, here's the rundown:

• The burrito was a Mission Carb Balance tortilla, so it only had 2.5 grams of fat and 11 grams of Fiber! For the cheese, I used a whole 1/2 cup of fat-free shredded cheddar, and the beans were Rosarita Non-Fat refried beans. While cooking those, I added a little bit of water to give them a thinner consistency. In the end they almost were like beans from Baker's (mmm). Once I put the beans and cheese on my warm tortilla, I microwaved it for 15 seconds to get the cheese nice and gooey.

• The chips were baked tostitos. They actually taste good. I've always tried to do this with baked blue corn tortilla chips from Trader Joe's (yuck!), but these Tostitos are a great substitute for the "real" thing.

• The Jalapeno Poppers (called Jalapeno Swappers in the cookbook), were just jalapenos halved and de-seeded filled with a mix of 1/4 cup fat-free cream cheese and 1/4 cup fat-free cheddar cheese, then dunked in Egg substitute and coated with Fiber One crumbs with some salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

• For the ranch dressing, I used a packet of Hidden Valley ranch mix with some fat-free sour cream. And I only had 1 tbsp of it, which was almost enough for all 5 of my poppers. They were too hot anyway, so I couldn't finish them. Plus, I was full.

Eventually I'll stop blogging about food, there is a lot more in life to be thankful for. But right now, I'm getting a lot of joy out of these successes and I hope that maybe someone else reading this can be inspired or feel like maybe they *can* lose that weight after all. I'm actually feeling like if I had been choosing these options all along, I wouldn't have gained so much weight. And that's making me feel like once I lose it this time, it's gone for good. :P