Counting, Counting, and more Counting

Hello World (translation..Hello to the two gals who actually read my posts) !

Yesterday was a looonnggg day!  Work was crazy busy- home was crazy busy- and I was pooped !  Monday night- D and I jogged again!YAY! Yesterday, we jogged at 5am and it was my best jog yet !  Today....NO JOG.  We slept in and we'll just have to make it up tonight!

Last night, I tried a new recipe! Sweet and Sour Chicken......yes... a Pinterest recipe !

It was soooo good !  Martinez loved it !  

I made some adjustments to the recipe to lower calories...and the original recipe called for distilled vinegar and I absolutely hate the smell of vinegar - so I won't ever own any:).. thus it's been deleted from my version:)

Martinez' Version of Sweet & Sour Chicken

3-5 chicken breasts ( I used three and Martinez is eating the leftovers for lunch today)

1 cup of corn starch ( I had a lot left over)

2 eggs beaten

1/3c vegetable oil

Sauce:

4 tbsp of ketchup

2 tbsp of soy sauce

1tsp of garlic powder or garlic salt

1/4c of Splenda, plus 2 tbsp

Directions:

Preheat oven to  350 degrees; Cut the chicken breasts into 1in cubes; dip the cubes into cornstarch (coating completely) and then into eggs; Heat the oil in a skillet and brown both sides of the chicken; remove chicken and place in a greased baking dish; whisk sauce ingredients until smooth and then pour of chicken; turn chicken to coat both sides; bake until chicken is no longer pink (turn chicken over halfway).  It took mine about 15 minutes total... but the original recipe said 30 total. 

ENJOY!  LG sure did!

Tonight will be an easy night~ Leftover Spaghetti from the freezer!  Hopefully, I can get some cleaning done since I won't have to cook.

Another helpful thing I did to lose weight....keep a food journal!  I know this sounds dorky... but IT WORKS.  I kept a log of everything I ate for two solid months.  WRITE down EVERYTHING you swallow... if it's a 5 calorie stick of gum ( and you know you have swallowed your gum at some point).  A lot of times, you don't really know how many calories you intake, even though you think you do.  

Here are a couple of photos of my journal from the beginning... a good day.. and a bad day:)... and yes... even though I'm not logging it anymore... I have kept my journal as a reminder.

Why yes, that does say " Not Counting"....I consumed too many at TGIFriday's that day:)

There is an app you can download called "Lose It".  This app was introduced to me by a friend and it has been paramount in my weight loss!  You can use it to scan the barcodes of your food packages when inputting recipes and it breaks down the calorie count of the entire recipe.  I was totally in shock at how many calories were in my recipes.. especially Chicken Alfredo!  Needless to say, we don't eat a lot of the old recipes like Chicken Poppyseed or Chicken Alfredo anymore!  Those were two of the worst  (although extremely tasty)!

That's really all I have for today!

Until next time....