Craving a Healthy Snack for Your Sweet Tooth?

I'm not too big on sweets as some folks are, but there are occasions when I get a hankering for something sweet. In the past, I would bake some cookies, eat a piece of chocolate cake or reach for a doughnut when that rare moment of wanting something sweet hit me. Today, however, I'm determined to reach my goal weight, and in order to do that, I can't have that cookie, chocolate cake or doughnut... no matter how good it sounds. So how do I satisfy my sweet tooth now? Simple, I have a honey graham cracker, which seems to satisfy my need for something sweet. Yes, I realize graham crackers contain sugar --7 grams to be exact -- but they're also high in fiber and protein, and the best part is they don't have near as many calories as the cookies, chocolate cake and donuts. Therefore, I consider my honey graham crackers to be a healthy snack when I'm wanting something to satisfy my sweet tooth.

What do you consider a healthy snack for someone with a hankering for a sweet treat?

Photo credit: Oskay

The Toughest Challenge Thus Far: Natural Body Cleansing

With healthy diet foods in my refridgerator now, I offically began my natural body cleansing this morning. Since I'm not much of a breakfast person, I normally skip breakfast. However, all that changed today. For breakfast, I had a peach. Come lunch time I was grocery shopping, so I didn't have any lunch. As for supper, the kids enjoyed hamburger helper as I ate salad with Italian dressing. And truth be told, the salad was more filling than I thought it would be. Aside from Italian dressing, my salad had two cans of tuna, lettuce, shredded carrots, cucumbers, homegrown tomatoes and cauliflower.

Each Friday when I go to the grocery store, I usually buy a Pepsi, but today, I exchanged my Pepsi for an orange juice, and for supper, I gave up my sweet tea for grape juice. Yeap, today and tomorrow will only consist of fruits, vegetables, grape juice, apple juice, orange juice and water -- a part of my natural body cleansing.

Although I'm proud of myself, the natural body cleansing is proving to be my toughest challenge thus far. It's hard not actually eating a meal, and then I watch the kids snack on chocolate chip cookies with milk. As hard as it was not to sneak one cookie, I didn't. Instead, I snacked on mushmelon, one peach and a couple cucumbers that I put in vinegar. The hardest thing is knowing I can't have the same thing the family is, but to do this right, I know I'll have to resist those temptations, and come Sunday, I'll get to enjoy a normal meal, which should make things a whole lot easier.

After this weekend, I'll continue eating healthy diet foods, but I'll return to an actual meal for supper. The only difference is I'll be replacing unhealthy food with healthy diet foods, counting my calories, watching my portions and doing 50 reps on the Ab Lounge. Hopefully this will work out for me and I'll lose a few pounds.

Subscribe to my RSS feed or via e-mail to keep up-to-date on my journey to weight loss. I'll be announcing my first weight-in next Friday, August 8, 2008.

Keep me in your prayers, please.

Is It Really Low in Fat?

As I ventured to the kitchen to start supper this evening, I discovered that someone had cooked and eaten all the spaghetti noodles. The only solution in order to have the spaghetti I had planned for supper was to take a 14 mile drive to the grocery store. Although my actual grocery shopping is done on Fridays, I figured I'd at least check out the local farmer's stand on my way, as well as the labels on what I had planned to buy for my journey to weight loss.

Once in the grocery store, I headed straight for the vegetable section. While my plans included buying fruits and vegetables for the week, I love veggie dip with cauliflower, so I decided to read the labels on the veggie dips. I read the label on the regular one and then compared it with a fat-free veggie dip. Would you believe the only difference in the labels was the regular veggie dip had 1 gram more fat calories than the low-fat? It's true, that was the only difference. The calories and everything else were the same, but to top it off, it only had 1 gram less of fat than the regular veggie dip. Truth be told, it's not really low in fat, now is it?

Even though I'd determined I could go with the regular veggie dip, I still opted out of buying it, because it does contain a lot of calories. Oh well, I'll eat my cauliflower raw or in salad with Italian dressing (unfortunately, I'm giving up my favorite Ranch dressing for Italian).

My next stop, after spending approximately 20 minutes comparing food labels in the grocery store, was the local farmer's stand. There I priced organic fruits and vegetables, since I like homegrown tomatoes, peaches and etc. better than store-bought. I had only planned on pricing the fruits and vegetables I wanted to buy Friday (or should I say today, as it's after midnight), but I ended up purchasing 3lbs. of tomatoes anyway. Then on my way back to the van, the lady asked me if I wanted a box of peaches she had. I started to tell her I'd be back tomorrow to buy more, but she told me they were free. Since peaches were on my list, I took them and thanked her for her generosity. I appreciated the free peaches, and I'm sure she'll appreciate my business (I plan on becoming a regular).

Natural Body Cleansing With Healthy Diet Foods

In order to begin my journey to weight loss, I spent yesterday doing a bit of research. Well, first, I had to complete a writing project, but soon after, I was wading through all the free weight loss advice I could find on the Internet. And of all the information I read, I kept coming across the same advice, which suggested that it's best to cleanse your body. As a result, I chose natural body cleansing as my starting point.

Rob, from the Former Fat Guy blog, said, "We should begin to experiment and test and then keep what works and discard what doesn’t." Therefore, I believe I'll do just as he said and experiment to see what will work for me and what won't. After all, Rob experimented and was able to lose a whopping 300lbs.! So I figure if it worked for him, it can work for me too.
I tell ya, this guy is an inspiration, and I'm still reading his archives to see what I can experiment with, and I look forward to sharing those experiments with you.

With that said, this journey and my first experiment will begin Friday. Why Friday? Because Friday is when I'll be able to visit the grocery store to get the healthy diet foods and drinks I'll need to start my natural body cleansing.

Now to explain my first experiment... So far everything I've read about natural body cleansing involves eating only fresh fruits, raw vegetables, and drinking fresh juices such as apple juice, orange juice and grape juice, as well as drinking water. I'll stick to eating only the healthy diet foods mentioned above, as well as drinking juices and water for two days. The experiment will be with the juices. What I've read suggested "fresh" juices, but instead of "fresh" juices, I'm going to buy my apple, orange, grape and vegetable juices from the store. Surely there's not much difference, but we'll know in two days.

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Photo credit: Dlisbona