Shrinking Sisters

A Thanksgiving gift: A zero Point cranberry sauce recipe

Doesn't matter whether you're doing Weight Watchers or not -- if you're looking for ways to cut calories painlessly at the Thanksgiving meal, cranberry sauce is a good place to start.

Homemade cranberry sauce is always better than the canned goo, and it's really easy to make. Make it the day before (today!) so that it'll set up for tomorrow's meal.

Here's a recipe for Cran-Blue Cranberry Sauce that, if you are following Weight Watchers, has zero PointsPlus values. If you do choose to add some real sugar, then adjust the Points as needed, but here's the recipe:

Cran-Blue Cranberry Sauce

• 1 bag of fresh cranberries
• 1 small bag of frozen blueberries, thawed
• 1/2 cup of pineapple tidbits, juice drained
• 3 packets of True Orange crystallized orange or 1 tablespoon orange rind
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 cup water
• Splenda to taste (I used 2 tablespoons)

Place everything in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes or until cranberries start popping.

Transfer to a nonreactive container, let cool and refrigerate until it's ready to use.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tunes for Tuesday: Rock My Run

This week, this isn't just one song, it's a whole bunch of songs! Found in the comments section of Roni's Weigh was the URL for the new site Rock My Run.

Wow, what a great resource.

The site is still in beta, but it seems to work just fine. And since it's not officially open for business, you can download fantastic mixes for free.

So far, I have downloaded two: Every Moment Counts, a 30-minute mix of house, pop and hip-hop mixed to 140 bpm; and The Get Up, a 60-minute mix of pop and hip-hop at various bpm.

And because of those great mixes, I wogged (walk/jog) 6 miles on Friday -- I never do that. Even better, I went to the gym yesterday and ran pretty much all of my 2-mile workout.

Here's a cut found on The Get Up -- Boom Shake Drop. Something from down the street in Miami, with DJ Laz, Pitbull and Flo Rida:

Ladies and gentlemen ... PRE. BABY. WEIGHT.

I said I would post as soon as I hit it, and this morning, after sleeping in a Ben & Jerry's tie-dyed Wavy Gravy T-shirt, I stepped on the scale and there it was:

I haven't seen that number since before I got pregnant -- 1997, to be exact. (Yes, the baby is a teenager.) In fact, it's even a half pound less than pre-baby weight.

Yes, I do believe I deserve the applause from the fancy people. This 30 pounds from the all-time high was damn hard. But I feel like I'm over a really big hump. Onward and downward.

Thank you, Bob Harper and Richard Simmons, for making my recent California trip memorable and more active.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, also, to my Weight Shrink, who is helping me work on the most important piece of the puzzle -- the weight between my ears. (And she knows what she's talking about -- she's down more than 120 pounds and super close to her goal weight.)

Also, thanks Weight Watchers Online. I recently decided to go back to it when the scale stalled. Like the Lose It app, it also counts down my tally for the day, but I think the calorie count is a little better in line for me. Also, I can now use its awesome Android app to look foods up on the go.

To celebrate, I'm lacing up my shoes and going for a big long walk. Because I don't want the scale to jump back up. This moment has been 14 years in the making and I'm not screwing it up. Plus I still have a ways to go.

Get Fit Friday: Talking walking with trainer Jennifer Cohen

Hey, check out the interview I did yesterday with trainer Jennifer Cohen. She's featured on the CW reality show Shedding for the Wedding and is a spokesperson for the third annual Weight Watchers Walk-It Challenge, which is May 22 this year. I did the Challenge last year and it was my first-ever 5K. It was great to take part with so many motivated exercisers and exhilarating to cross that finish line.

I talked with Jennifer about how to make exercise a priority and how walking can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be:

To learn more about the Weight Watchers Walk-It Challenge and find a 5K near you, check out www.weightwatchers.com/walkit.

Motivation Sunday: Weight Watchers PointsPlus the perfect kick in the butt

It's the new PointsPlus calculator. I got mine for $6 at the Weight Watchers center.

I'm posting this a day early because it's like Christmas morning for the millions of people who follow Weight Watchers. The program has tweaked its Points system and today begins the PointsPlus era.

Over on the other side of the pond, they're now following ProPoints (any way you call it, it's still PP!).

I recently signed up for Weight Watchers Online, something I had never done before. I had been going to meetings for decades (yes, decades). I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting at age 10, back in the boiled tomato juice and liver days.

The new plan kicks in online on Monday but I couldn't wait, so before I went to my first-ever BodyPump class, I hit the Weight Watchers center to buy a PointsPlus calculator and the dining out and food companions.

Those in hand, I busted my hump in the BodyPump class and headed home to check out the WW goodies. I grabbed a Sharpie and started calculating Points for stuff in my pantry. Carby things like oatmeal and cereal are higher than they used to be; other things are pretty much the same. A cup of plain Almond Breeze is still a Point, but my Me & Goji custom hot cereal blend is now 5 Points. Not really bad considering that my daily Points allowance shot up 6 Points and I now have 49 weekly extra Points.

The new plan will be a real kick in the head to people who grab for snacks that are "only 1 Point." A lot of those foods have doubled or tripled in Points. Weight Watchers yogurt is now 2 Points and their Giant Fudge Bars are now (shudder) 3 Points!

The Lean Cuisine I grabbed out of the freezer for lunch is now 2 Points higher than it was yesterday. So I'll be eating fewer of those "crutch" foods.

But y'know what? It's a good thing. It'll make me rethink every Point I choose to eat in the course of a day, especially since fresh fruit and non-starchy vegetables are now zero Points.

And with all the Thanksgiving leftovers gone, I can make a clean start at the grocery store today. First stop: Produce section!

Clean, lean and green (and fewer Lean Cuisine) -- that's my new motto.

And Laughing Cow Light wedges are still 1 Point!

Check out Shrinking Sisters Reviews for my latest post for The Daily Dose of Well-Being sponsored by The Laughing Cow and BlogHer. I'm part of a dozen bloggers who are writing every month on the foibles of living a healthy life. Also, visit The Daily Dose of Well-Being hub to read helpful content each day and for weekly chances to win $100 at the “Play For Laughs” game. If you share a really great tip, they may even use it in The Daily Dose.

 

Leading my own food revolution at the green market

 

I'm gonna sit around and eat lettuce all day. Take that, West Virginia radio dork! (All photos/Gail Gedan Spencer)

The city I live in is about as suburban as one can get. Strip malls, big malls, mini malls (even a vacant mall) and lots of big chain grocery stores. So I was thrilled to discover that Plantation just started a green market three weeks ago at a city park.

It's the perfect antidote to watching last night's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, where the poor schoolkids couldn't tell an eggplant from egg salad. Oliver, a chef who I've long admired, has a tall task ahead of him to win the hearts and minds and stomachs of Huntington, W.Va. (especially that dork of a radio host, who has something against lettuce).

I don't have anything against lettuce or any vegetable, so I grabbed my reusable grocery bags and headed to the green market. 

 I pulled into the parking lot and discovered that the green market was a little smaller than I expected, but better to start out small and feel out the neighborhood. And the neighborhood was loving it. By the time I left, the crowd was three-deep at the row of folding tables.

The goal is to have mostly local produce. And there was, with a smattering of food from throughout Florida and places like Mexico and Costa Rica. But it was all certified organic, except for the hot-house produce, which is harder to certify since it's not pulled from the dirt, explained one of the employees from Baleigh's Organic Produce, which runs the market.

So what did I buy?

That gorgeous head of red-leaf lettuce, at the top of the page.

... A couple of heirloom tomatoes, which at $6.99 a pound were a splurge but totally worth it. They weren't labeled but I think the purplish one might have been a Cherokee and the green one (which stays green when ripe) was probably a Green Zebra. 

I bought a few carrots, which were as sweet as candy, some sweet potatoes and white potatoes and ...

... A couple of monster onions, which were edible from root to tip.

I used one to make a Three Onion Tart, a Weight Watchers recipe so old that it still used exchanges instead of Points. The recipe called for onions, leeks and scallions, so I subbed out all three parts of this big guy. I even made the crust from scratch. Usually I just punk out and buy premade stuff, but I still have a bunch of Ultragrain flour in my freezer, so I was able to sneak in some extra fiber.

Next week, fingers crossed, there will be Rainbow Carrots, which they said they had last week.

While I shopped today, in the back of my head was writer Michael Pollan's credo:

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

That is downright revolutionary.

My Alli-MUFA-Weight Watchers Momentum diet approach

My game plan in 2009 is to incorporate everything that has worked well in the past for me (temporarily) and combine them for a 3-pronged attack on flab.

• I used Alli earlier this year to jump off a plateau, and didn't suffer any side effects, so that's prong 1.
• And I really enjoyed the appetite-satisfying MUFAs (monounsaturated fats) from the Flat Belly Diet, so I'll make sure one of those is included in every meal -- prong 2.
• Prong No. 3 is Weight Watchers new Momentum plan. I just plain need to pay someone to weigh me. I also like Weight Watchers Simply Filling emphasis on real, whole foods.

So that's my plan to Look Fine in 2009.

So how did I do on my Weight Watchers weigh-in? Don't ask

But since you asked, Barbara :), I had skipped the previous week because I saw the scale going up (always a bad strategy) but bit the bullet and took my lumps (and bulges) on Sunday. Almost 5 pounds up in two weeks. Doesn't take much to pack the weight on.

But this week I'm hitting the gym every day and keeping track of what I eat, so things should be better this Sunday.

More on the Weight Watchers Momentum plan

First off, somehow I lost 3 pounds eating leftover fried chicken and ravioli all week. What I think did the trick was sticking to the Points instead of counting calories, because the 29 Points I get is less than the 1,600 or so calories I had been eating.

As for Momentum, Flex and Core have been merged into one single plan. The emphasis is on eating more "filling foods" -- basically the foods that used to make up the Core plan.

Also, the Points tracker is built in to a neat little golden book that's basically your Week 1 book with Points counts of lots of food. The book will fit nicely into a back pocket or purse.

You still get your 35 extra Points to be used throughout the week, and instead of 6 glasses of water, you now can tick off boxes for 6 glasses of liquids. That's not 6 glasses of Pepsi or 6 cosmos -- it's things like iced tea, sugar-free soda and, yes, water.

You also get to celebrate losing 5 percent of your weight instead of waiting until 10 percent so the positive reinforcement comes earlier. There's a new Food Companion and Restaurant Companion (of course) and a great looking new Momentum Cookbook.

Weight Watchers Momentum update

So I went to the Weight Watchers meeting Sunday morning (after hosting a huge holiday party full of Italian food and onion dip -- yeesh!) and turned out I have to wait until this Sunday to get the deets on the new Momentum program.

But here's one lil' tidbit. On the online eTools program, when you input your food, it'll also ask you to rate your hunger, to get your head in the game. Expect more tools like that.