Pescetarian for the New Year!

I decided to go pescetarian for the new year.  What's a pescetarian?  A vegetarian that also eats fish.  It's not too complicated.  I still eat eggs even though I don't eat chicken and I absolutely love cheese and still add milk/cream to my recipes...becoming vegan will be difficult so I'm taking baby steps.  I went vegan all at once back in 2012 and got sick, sick, SICK.  Seriously, I ended up with bronchitis which even with medicine, hardly cleared up until I started eating meat again.  I tried again...got bronchitis again.  Apparently my body was detoxing in overdrive because of my sudden switch so I'm going easy on myself this go around.

I discovered black bean burgers at Buffalo Wild Wings and they became an instant favorite.  Then disaster hit!  I ended up getting food poisoning at a local grocery store's deli (national chain that shall remain nameless).  I should have known better but I've had their tuna subs before.  This go around was probably as typical as you're going to get I suppose.  After almost 24 hours of waves of nausea not to mention the whole, "I can't keep water down" shtick, I went to the doctor who confirmed that I had gastroenteritis most likely caused by food poisoning and gave me some anti-nausea medicine, the kind that dissolve on your tongue as I couldn't drink water.  It worked.  I was finally able to eat, albeit it was cream of shrimp soup followed by two oranges.  I felt like I could fly over the moon after the oranges which let me know my blood sugar was especially low.  Today is the first day I could see my veins since last Thursday so I am confident I am sufficiently hydrated.

The good news is I lost some weight!  Prior to this I was trying out the whole eating within an 8 hour period, fasting 16 hours thing...almost two weeks and I lost 2 pounds.  Then the food poisoning.  I lost an additional two pounds.  I'm sitting at 156 even now.  I figure I will probably gain the last two pounds back but so far despite being back on my eating schedule, I seem to be holding steady.  My waist at the belly button went down 1 whole inch (31 now, woohoo!).  Yes I am celebrating a bit.  I am back to where I was (weight-wise) in May 2013.  My doctor was impressed with my weight loss from December 18th (when I went for the chest wall inflammation).  I lost six pounds according to her scale.

Well, what have I been doing lately?  I got back to the gym for the first time today!  I've been doing small workouts at home but it felt good to work up a sweat at the gym.  My husband wouldn't let me dive right in so we did some modified strength training to accommodate my inflammation issues and worked on stretching more.  He's also showing me the proper way to run by showing my the technique and form.  Apparently I'm a natural.

I've also been cooking.  Now generally I don't like to cook.  I do like to eat and I love good and beautiful food.  I'm also an artist so I should be able to do a little something but I like to keep things simple.  Steam, foil bake, boil...anything that doesn't fit within those confines remains uncooked.  Well becoming a pescetarian challenged my limited abilities.  First off, developing a love affair with black bean burgers meant shelling out $7.99 + tax to Buffalo Wild Wings ($3.73 with the $5 off survey coupon).  That just seems so fiscally irresponsible I just had to find a recipe.

The Homemade Black Bean Veggie Burger from Allrecipes.com is great easy and tastes DIVINE!  In my opinion when it is done fresh...not when it is reheated in a microwave as I am forced to do at work. 

So I am good for the week on that.  The recipe made five huge patties.  I bought some chipotle cheddar cheese (yes I know, terrible but I don't care...) to eat with them.

My Quiche...isn't it lovely?

Then I decided to make a quiche.  I LOVE QUICHE.  Emphasis on L-O-V-E.  The thing is I had never made it before.  This go around it was About.com to the rescue.  I was struggling with the whole "crust" thing when I noticed the low-carb option in google for a Crustless Quiche.  I bought some evaporated milk and a deep dish 9" pie pan along with some other niceties that I won't have to buy again for awhile and made a broccoli, spinach and cheese quiche.  I threw some diced onions and green peppers and blue cheese in for good measure.  I followed the recipe to the letter.  The results were simply divine.  The kids weren't thrilled and hubby didn't try it but who cares?  More for me.  Since quiche tastes good cold as well I don't have to do the whole "microwaving" thing.  I absolutely abhor microwaves but that's a post for another day.

What's my next recipe?  I'm thinking Kale chips :-). Or Zesty Kale Chips...  Oh and a Crustless Smoked Salmon Quiche...

Last thing...I can see my results!

August versus January

 The left picture was August 24, 2013.  The right picture was January 13, 2014.  I started working out in October.  That's roughly four months, 9 pounds and several inches.  Can you see the difference?  Even my face lost weight.  There's the case of the disappearing boobage but I guess that can't be helped as long as it is taking belly fat with it.  Now I need to work on muscle definition.

Remember back in October when I said I needed help giving up Zaxby's?  I haven't had Zaxby's in months!