Healthy Tortilla Soup

One of my goals with the 'get healthy' resolution for this year is to make smarter food decisions. For me, this does not mean eating salads every day, because 1) I'd be starving and end up snacking a lot more, and 2) it's not sustainable and I'd likely give up pretty quickly. One of my strategies with the smarter decision making is finding meals that are good for you taste great and don't scream "you're on a diet!!" When I sat down on Sunday to plan out my week, I had some support...

Let me introduce you to my friend Rocco DiSpirito. If you haven't seen or heard of him, you need to. He focuses on reinventing delicious dishes that are notoriously bad for you, and making them healthy (like 350 calories or less kinda healthy!)
While he wasn't really sitting down with me planning out my meals, his cookbooks were.
Now Eat This! and Now Eat This! Diet.
All of his recipes that I have made have been surprisingly really good and not too difficult! Earlier this week I made Spaghetti Carbonara and it was awesome!
(now really, who can eat THAT when they are on Weight Watchers?!? ME, thanks to Rocco!)

He recently released a Now Eat This! Italian cookbook which I am anxiously awaiting to arrive from Amazon.

Tonight, I was making tacos (using lean ground turkey) and thought rather than a side dish of spanish rice or chips and salsa, (which would not have been too healthy) I would make Rocco's Tortilla Soup. Arrrribaaaa!! It was tasty, filling and only 4 WW points a serving.

Tortilla Soup with Avocado and Cilantro
Courtesy of Now Eat This! Rocco DiSpirito
Servings: 4

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 corn tortillas
• 2/3 cup low-fat, low sodium chicken broth
• 1 cup diced fire roasted tomoatoes (Hunts)
• 2 chipolte chiles in adobo sauce, chopped fine
• 2/3 cup store bought fresh salsa
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
• 1 cup shredded breast meat from a rotisserie chicken
• 1/3 ripe Hass avocado, sliced
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• Salt and pepper to taste

1.) Preheat oven to 375'F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2.) Cut the tortillas into 1/4 inch wide strips. Place strips in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet, and bake until golden and crisp, 9 mins was perfect.

3.) Meanwhile, combine the chicken broth, tomatoes, chipolte chiles, salsa and corn in a medium saucepan. Bring the soup to a boil over high heat. Turn the heat to medium-low and simmer for 8 minutes. Stir the chicken into the soup, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

4.) Ladle soup into bowls. Top each with avocado slices, chopped cilantro and tortilla strips, and serve.

Traditionally tortilla soup has up to 510 calories and 20 grams of fat... not this version, only 142 calories and a whooping 3.1 grams of fat. Ay CarYUMba!!!

1 down, many to go..

Not gonna lie, I was really dreading today after the promise I made last Friday to eat healthy, stay within my Weight Watchers points and work out.
The weekend had a lot of temptation, especially with brunch and the goodies I bought at the Strip District, and with it getting dark so early it's putting a damper on my outside exercise activity. So when I stepped on the scale this morning and saw that I had lost 1 lb I was pretty darn excited.

It may have been water weight, it may have been that I hadn't had my coffee yet, but I don't care. The number was less than what it was last Friday and that's a small victory for me.
After my initial shock that I hadn't gained 5 lbs, I started thinking that even though I made some poor choices, I made really good choices at other times, and those good choices outweighed the bad this week. It's hard to always stay on track, but knowing when you didn't and being able to adjust for it, is half the battle. A few things I did differently this week..

1) Stopped making excuses for not working out. The weather was gorgeous, so I really tried to get Izzy out for a walk/run almost every day also while sticking with my kettlebell work outs. I put a calendar on the fridge and marked the days I exercised so it's there staring me in the face on the days I don't do it.

2) Kicked my work-outs up a notch. Instead of just walking, I started jogging intervals. Izzy really hates this, but it gets my heart rate up. Even though there are hills on the course we walk, it was becoming less challenging so this spices it up a bit.

3) Stocked the fridge with healthy snacks. Fruits are zero WW points, so I bought clementines, grapes, bananas and cucumbers that were readily available when I had the urge for a late night snack.

I know this week coming up is going to be tough with Thanksgiving. I think it will really just come down to portion control and not going overboard. I'm not feeling too optimistic about next Friday's weigh-in but here's to trying!

TGIF... kinda

"It's Friday, Friday, gonna get down on Friday... Everybody's lookin forward to the weekend, weekend..."
Like the not-so-famous words of Rebecca Black, I too look forward to the end of a long week and a couple days to catch up with the rest of life. BUT there is one thing I do not look forward to.
Dun..dun...dunnnnn........

Friday is my weigh in day for Weight Watchers.

I hesitated going here with my blog because let's face it, this thing makes me accountable now for following through and sticking with it. I can easily face my own defeat on weeks where I know I didn't exercise or eat well, but having to admit them to someone else. That sucks.
It seems a lot easier to commit to updating my house, (that's fun!) than committing to dieting, (not fun!) But bottom line is I need motivation and if I find it through this channel, great! If not, then oh well you just hear me complain about why my pants don't fit. :)

Losing weight has always been a challenge for me. I wasn't born a size 2 and never had the metabolism of super model, but I'm noticing as I'm getting older, it's becoming harder. Just like we were all warned about! I feel like physically whatever metabolism I did have is slowing down and also my lifestyle and eating habits are changing. Prior to getting married I was totally cool with cereal or crackers/cheese for dinner, now I actually have REAL meals. Like meat and stuff.
I talked before about some of the challenges with working from home and not being able to buy snacks that would tempt me throughout the day and I've been pretty good with that, but it's what happens when the work day is over that gets me into trouble.

I decided to join Weight Watchers Online in August for lots of reasons besides just being ticked at myself for gaining all the weight I lost for my wedding and then some back within two years...
1) My sister Sara is getting married in April and her bridesmaid dress color is light yellow, which will be SO not forgiving.
2) We have a vacation planned in May to the Riviera Maya and I really want to be able to wear all those cute bathing suits I bought for my honeymoon again.
3) Was super motivated by seeing two of my friends on Facebook lose a lot of weight recently using Weight Watchers
4) John started working out and dropped 20 lbs almost instantly, NOT FAIR.
5) Confirmed my company/health insurance benefits covered Weight Watchers almost 100% and had no excuse!

I had used Weight Watchers in the past with success but this with mostly through the WW at work program where you went to meetings and weighed in with a person every week. With the online program you are completely on your own in terms of tracking and weighing in which does lessen some of the pressure.
The program has changed since I did it a few years ago and it took awhile to get used to certain foods being worth more / less points than before. The greatest thing is that fruits are 0 points now and that was always a complaint I had with the old program when a banana was worth 2 points and so was a snack bag of chips, I'm choosing the chips!

Within the first month this time around, I logged my food everyday and lost 5 lbs. I was feeling great about my success and here's where the downfall happens. It feels like immediately once I see results I feel like I can let go a little and then my progress stops. It's funny how I forecasted I would see that same 5 lb weight loss every month going forward if I just stuck with it and here I am at the beginning of November with just that same 5 lbs on my weight loss chart, and not the 20 lbs that I was hoping I would be at.

I know what my problem is, the math is quite simple when you are counting calories in  and what is being burned each day. I just need to get serious about what I'm eating and kick up my exercise routine a notch. (...more on that in a future post)

So here it goes... I'm committing to record all of my meals and stay within my allotted point values for this week so I will have something positive to share next Friday... gosh, I hope I don't mess this up!