Ramen with Shrimp and Vegetables

It's been one wild and crazy ride here in my house. Lots of long distance traveling (which is made even longer by having a 6 month old with ya) and just lots of events going on. All this while, I'm trying desperatly to stay on my life change plan. Eh...it didn't go so well while we were traveling, but now that I'm back and our traveling is pretty much done for awhile (save for an anniversary get away this weekend) I've gotten back into the habit of things.

After doing some thinking and looking over some stuff, I've decided that I needed to bump my calorie count down from 1480 a day to 1200. I'm not going to freak out if I go a little bit over, but I think this will really help me lose weight. My goal is to lose 2 pounds a week, but if I'm over, that's awesome; if I'm under, oh well, a loss is a loss.

So, while I'm dealing with all this craziness, I'm also trying to find fast foods I can cook which are (somewhat) healthy for me. I came across this recipe in one of my cookbooks and thought I would give it a try. I'm usually not a huge ramen fan, but this tasted really good. More after the recipe!

Ingredients

• 1 lb uncooked peeled deveined medium shrimp, thawed if frozen and tails peeled.
• 2 cups water
• 1 package (3 oz) Oriental-flavor ramen noodle soup mix
• 1 bag (1 lb) fresh stir-fry vegetables
• 1/4 cup stir-fry sauce

Directions

• Heat 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Cook shrimp in skillet 2 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until pink and firm. Remove shrimp from skillet; keep warm.
• Heat water to boiling in same skillet. Break up noodles from soup mix into water; stir until slightly softened. Stir in vegetables.
• Heat to boiling. Boil 4 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are crisp-tender. Stir in seasoning packet from soup mix and stir-fry sauce. Cook 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently, until hot. Stir in shrimp.

Soon after this picture was taken, this bowl was empty

My Take

All in all, I loved this recipe. It's quick and easy to do, and, maybe for the shrimp, you may have everything on hand. There were a few things I changed, but they were very minor, and probably didn't change the taste of it too much.

First of all, I didn't read the ingredients carefully when I went shopping so I bought pre-cooked shrimp. It wasn't that big of a deal, though. I just heated them up in the skillet and took off the tails. It might make it a bit quicker, but just make sure you don't cook them for too long.

Secondly, I already had some frozen asparagus stir-fry in the freezer, so I used that and just cooked it the same. It had some little noodles in it as well, but I didn't mind as I felt that there was a lot of shrimp and it needed more noodles any ways. I think it had to cook for a little bit longer, but it wasn't terribly long.

Also, I didn't have any stir-fry sauce (didn't even know there was such a thing) so instead I added a little bit of soy sauce and a few sprinkles of sesame seed oil. I didn't want to add too much, because I didn't want to overpower the taste from the seasoning packet. 

This recipe makes 4 servings, but since it was all I was eating, I ate 2 servings at a time. Each serving is 210 calories with 4 grams of fat. Pretty cook for a quick, yummy, Asian meal. This will definitely be on my "make again" list.

Until next time, kiddos: Eat healthy, Exercise, and Have Fun!

Late Night Musings

I know, I know. I should be in bed since I have to get up early tomorrow for a doctor's appointment, but I just couldn't sleep and I just felt the need to blog. So, here I am. Blogging on a laptop which it's screen is broken, so I have to use our TV as the screen. Oh how ingenious we can be!

First of all, it has been over 5 months since Lucy was born. Can you believe it!? Time has gone by crazy fast. Just within the past few weeks she's started to become mobile and is now, for the most part, sitting up all by herself. Sometimes I catch myself thinking back to the "good ol' days" when we first brought her home from the hospital. She's just gotten so big!

5 months!

Sitting up like a big girl

Secondly, my diet/lifestyle change has gotten off to a pretty interesting start. Due to personal issues, I started but then stopped last week and started anew this week. Tomorrow will my fourth day in, and I'm doing okay.

I try to weigh myself every Monday. Just lets me know if I'm headed in the right direction. Interesting story about this Monday, however. My cheap little bathroom scale is currently about 5 pounds less than 0. I can't find the little doo-hickey to zero it out (I think it might have broken off) so I just do the subtraction. Anyways, I step on the scale on Monday and it slowly moves to 5 above 0. I'm just so happy. One week of not really trying and I already weigh 0 pounds! Sweet! (Actually, I think I need another scale).....

One major step that I've taken to head towards my goal is doing daily exercises. Now, the ones I'm doing currently aren't terribly strenious (although they feel like it to me since I didn't do anything previous to this) but they are getting me into the habit of doing them daily.

The set of exercises I'm doing originally came from downtownn.tumblr.com. This is called the Starter's Exercise Plan. This is how it goes (JJs = Jumping Jacks):

Day One: 30 JJs, 10 crunches
Day Two: 35 JJs, 15 crunches
Day Three: 40 JJs, 20 crunches
Day Four: 45 JJs, 10 sit-ups
Day Five: Rest
Day Six: 50 JJs, 15 sit-ups
Day Seven: 30 crunches, 10 leg lifts
Day Eight: 55 JJs, 10 leg lifts
Day Nine: 60 JJs
Day Ten: 10 lunges (each leg)
Day Eleven: Rest
Day Twelve: 15 crunches, 10 leg lifts
Day Thirteen: 20 leg lifts, 20 sit-ups
Day Fourteen: 15 minutes jogging in place
Day Fifteen: 10 lunges (each leg), 60 JJs
Day Sixteen: Rest
Day Seventeen: 20 leg lifts, 10 toe-touches
Day Eighteen: 5 minute jog, 15 toe-touches, 10 lunges
Day Nineteen: 20 lunges, 10 toe-touches
Day Twenty: 10 lunges, 10 sit-ups, 20 JJs

If you would like a prettier version of this to print out for yourself, feel free to visit my "Getting in Shape" board on Pinterest, or visit the original poster in the link mentioned above.

Sure, to you veteran work-outers, this may not seem very hard, but man my shoulders were sore after the first day of doing those jumping jacks. I sometimes wonder if I'm doing my crunches right because I haven't felt really any pain in my core, but maybe that's a good thing...? After I get done with this plan, I'm going to take a day of rest, and then move onto her Level One Exercise Plan. I like these because they're fairly simple and I don't need fancy equipment or a gym membership to do them. I can actually do all of them in the comfort of my own living room. Yay!

And here is the embarassing part, my "Before" pictures. I hate taking body pictures of myself, and even more, I hate putting them up on the Internet. But, I think that if I do this, then it will really show me how much of an improvement I'm making, even when I feel like I'm not making any. So...without further ado....Shiloh's

Before Pictures:

Front shot

Side shot

Sorry for the bad shots. I don't have a full length mirror so I kinda had to work with what I had. But you get the jist of it, I hope. Main problem areas for me are my upper arms and the whole tummy area. But, hopefully, those will be blasted away in the future.

I think I have babbled on enough about me, so, my loyal readers, what about you? Are you on your own weight loss journey, or are you thinking of starting one up? I hope that by me sharing mine with you (all the ups and downs included) that it will make you think about starting one yourself, if the need is there.

Until next time!

Healthy Eating

I need to get into shape. Okay, so I've made this statement several times before, but I really need to get on the ball of this. Not only because it would be awesome to have a hott rockin' bod, but it's a major health reason for me as well. On one side of my family, heart disease is the main issue, while on both sides, diabetes is a problem. It's not just for me anymore, I have a kid I have to watch out for. Soon she'll be cooking with me, and I want to teach her healthy eating habits, not just eat whatever you want whenever. Maybe she'll get lucky and have Dylan's energy and metabolism.

My overall goal is to drop from 192 lbs to 135 pounds. That sounds like a ton, and it is, but if I just do it 10 lbs at a time, then it may be easier. I've been on diets before, but I really need to do a whole life change. There are some things which I have been doing for awhile which have helped me be a tad bit healthier, such as using low-fat margarine instead of butter (I don't ever remember buying butter since, like, ever), eating whole wheat bread, using ground turkey instead of ground beef in recipes, and trying to get as much low-fat stuff as possible.

I think one thing I really need to do is eat more fruits and veggies. As it is now, I barely eat any, so that's one thing I really need to change. I just went grocery shopping today and bought some yellow squash, frozen blueberries, and some red potatoes. Not a whole lot, granted, but in my opinion, it's a step in the right direction.

Another thing I really need to work on is doing some sort of exercise. I hate exercise, so I think this will be the hardest thing for me. I think running/jogging will be out of the picture for awhile, because 1) I hate running for anything and 2) because of my weight, it puts a lot of strain on my joints and I think it's doing more harm than good. There's some exercises I've found on Pinterest which I think I may try and start off with in addition with maybe walking a bit with Lucy. She seems to enjoy them, but we may hold off until this extreme heat wave passes us.

I'll still be posting recipes and the like, but I'm going to try and post healthy ones or ones that I've adapted as healthy. I need to stick to serving sizes, as that's another down-fall for me. Hopefully some of you readers will find this helpful and maybe we can walk on this journey together. Feel free to contact me by either commenting or by e-mailing me.

Getting Into Shape

Since it has been over 6 weeks since I had Lucy, I got the go-ahead from my doctor to pretty much do anything (yay!). So, with that in mind, I'm going to try my darned hardest to get into shape. I'm not going to say "get back into shape" 'cause, well, honestly, I haven't been in shape since I was a kid. Unless you count round. Round is a shape, right?

Moving on from horrible jokes....

I would love to lose 60 pounds. I understand that is going to take a long time. For me, it's not a matter of looking pretty or being able to fit in certain clothes. Those are nice, but I have to do this for my health. I am at severely high risk for diabetes and heart disease (both run in my family. Yay...?) Technically, I'm obese. I know I don't look it. I hide my fat well. But it's true.

So, the time has come for me to shed all this excess baggage and start down a healthier road. It's going to be hard as Dylan and I have such different needs regarding food. He needs a high-calorie, high-protein diet because of his manual labor job. I, on the other hand, do not need all those calories.

This is going to be difficult. Dylan and I love pizza. We have it at least once a week in some form or fashion. But I must resist (Dyl actually made a frozen pizza last night and I'm sure there are leftovers....) I must be strong. I must stand my ground, and fight against the calories which come my way.

I threw myself under the food bus by making brownies last night. Baaaaad move....

An online tool which I'm hoping will help me is called the Super Tracker. It's actually put out by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Not only does it show you how many portions a day, but I can track my food intake and my physical activities. It also gives me a personalized plan showing me how many calories a day I'm suppose to eat, taking into account me trying to lose weight as well as the fact that I'm breastfeeding. It's really nice, and I'm hoping that by having to track everything, it'll keep me accountable.

Yesterday was my first day of tracking everything. It was a so-so day. I learned that I eat a ton of empty calories and I barely eat any dairy. I also went over my limit of sodium as well. Not good. Today I'm hoping to get a bit better.

Sidenote: Soda is definitely out. Drank a can of root beer yesterday. Had 152 calories in the whole thing. Empty calories? 150. Eww.....

So, in addition to the recipes and random stuff about babies I put up from time to time, I also am going to share my weight loss journey with you. If you, too, are wanting to lose weight, I invite you to join me in this life-changing experience. I'm not planning to go on a "diet". Rather, I'm wanting to have a life change; change the way I view food.

So let's share our ups and downs. Share tips and ways you've found to combat the evil fat monster. As Red once said, "Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together."