Chicken Avacado Wraps and Fresh Pasta alla Checca

So, we haven’t checked in for a few days (if you didn’t notice, you may want to sign up for email notifications when we post on our main page: https://healthyprofessionals.wordpress.com) 🙂, but we have been sticking to our diets. Workouts have been a bit spotty – but whatever. Hopefully, we’ll get a workout in later today…

In the last few days, there’s lots of things that have helped us keep to our diets including Subway and various snacks, but here are two of the most memorable dishes we cooked at home:

Pasta all Checca (pronounced “Kecka”) is a classic Italian dish that features fresh tomatoes simmered in olive oil. I like to throw a few pepperoncinis in there while it’s simmering! 😉

Plated Pasta all Checca. Amazingly, we were able to eat more sauce for less calories than jarred sauce! If I remember correctly, our pasta dinners came in well under 500 calories!

Lisa checking out our delicious Chicken Avacado Wraps with tomatoes and onions! We put a serving of BBQ sauce on top too. 😉

Subway Saves The Day

😦 Lisa and I were really feeling hungry yesterday. It’s getting to the point where we can really feel our stomachs eating themselves. We both did our regular workout plus quarter-mile run. I found that the pain from our ab workout was the only thing that could distract from the pangs of hunger! So, when it came to dinner, Subway really saved the day! I was able to have a nice, foot-long chicken sandwich for only 740 calories, and Lisa’s 6-inch, chicken sandwich with chips was only 680 calories – putting us at the daily totals of 1475 and 1345 calories, respectively.
Subway Logo

Birds Eye Beef Lo Mein

Day three and still going strong. We both did our workout, ran a quarter mile, and came in well below our 1500 calorie goal. Lisa with 1305 calories and myself with 1365! It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, because we really spaced our snacks out throughout the day and had a sensible dinner… Birds Eye “Viola” Beef Lo Mein!!! Not too shabby for frozen, and at only 345 calories for each of us, it allowed us to snack-out on some really nice “Pizza Wraps” and “Parmesan Popcorn”!

Bag of Beef Lo Mein

This bag at 690 calories for 3 servings works well for a light dinner!

Plated Beef Lo Mein

Plated Beef Lo Mein

Small Amount of Pasta – (said as Rainman guy)

Yesterday, Lisa and I both ran a quarter mile again and did our normal workout. Also, we consumed less that 1500 calories each – Lisa with 1365 and me with 1480 calories – staying within our goals. A “small amount of pasta” for dinner really helped us stay within our diet yesterday.

First of all, I could write you pages about how to make the most delicious and decadent plate of pasta. However, that’s not what this is. This is an easy way to enjoy pasta for only 580 calories. IT’S SIMPLE! 2 exact servings of wheat pasta, 2 exact servings of the lowest-calorie, jarred sauce that you can find. Pass GO and COLLECT $200!

Ingredients

By using a food scale and a measuring cup, you can ensure that you’re eating just the right amount. 😉


Plated Pasta

A good tip is to use garlic salt, crushed red peppers, and black pepper on your pasta instead of Parmesan cheese! 😉

Ham and Swiss Lavash Wraps – Diet Month

Lisa and I have a big trip in about a month, so we’re back on a diet and counting calories again! We’re posting them here again, because it keeps us honest with our diets. 😉

Lisa had 1345 calories yesterday, and I had 1370 calories. We both also ran a quarter mile and did a 30 minute workout routine.

The highlight of yesterday was definitely our dinner – weighing in at only 585 calories – two Lavash Ham and Swiss Wraps garnished with pepperoncini’s and served with brown mustard!!!! – made all with ingredients found at Fresh and Easy! I’d spell out the recipe, but you can probably figure it out from the pictures! 😛

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Kryptonic Devistation

When I last left off with this blog, I was contemplating skateboarding more often to get a little exercise, raise the heart-rate a little, little sun, fresh air – you know, all of that stuff. You can read about it here in my last blog. Anyway, the plan was to jump onto my longboard and pedal my way to good health.

The next day, as promised in my previous blog, I starting searching through all of our belongings stored at my parent’s house right now, and it was nowhere to be found. So, I asked my dad if he had seen the board, and he said that it had been out in the garage for weeks. Uh oh. There was no board in the garage. My precious, $90 Kryptonics skateboard had been ganked! jacked! stolen! 😦 It was so beautiful with it’s legendary poured eurthane wheels and extra-hard deck made of equally legendary hard wood. It even had the classic Krypto colors on it to let haters know what the business is.

It was shaped like this.

and it had the original Krypto colors.

After I’d realized that it’d been ganked, I lost all will to exercise. It wasn’t losing the skateboard alone that had crushed my will to be fit; it was how everything seemed to be working against my getting fit. Lisa and I are currently staying at my parents while we look for a condo, because renting and all it’s problems are getting really old. So, we’re displaced and a little depressed, and all we want to do is eat fast food every night and get drunk. Obviously, not a healthy response, but we don’t care.

My parent’s house is literally a five-minute drive from all of the following fast food franchises: KFC, Jack in the Box, Carl’s Jr, Wienerschnitzel, Wendy’s, Lil’ Caesar’s, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Del Taco, Burger King, Subway, Quizno’s, Coco’s, Panda Express, Baskin Robin’s, Dairy Queen, Togo’s and Popeye’s Chicken.

In addition, also within 5 minutes, you’ve got the following non-chain eateries: Windy City Sanwich Shop, Las Caritas, Lili’s Chinese, Swiss Doughnut, Port-O-Subs, 2 Marios (yes, both literally within 5 minutes), The 19th Hole, that other bar, NYPD Pizza, Santana’s Mexican Food, that other doughnut shop, La Casita, that French place, Goodies Cafe, Legends Bar and Grill, that other Chinese place, and Joe’s Sushi.

This incredible convergence of fast food mayhem is partially due to our proximity to the freeway, but mainly due to the fact that my parent’s house is just within the city limits of Palm Desert. You see, Palm Desert has a law that no fast-food joint can have a drive-through! (because it’s unsightly I guess?!) So, all of the fast food places are in neighboring cities, just across the street from Palm Desert city limits. Obviously, having a drive-through is WAY better for business and kind of the point of fast food, right?

So, I’ve resigned to being a fat man for now. When Lisa and I finally find the perfect condo, we’ll probably both be ready for another diet and our diet blog will return. In the meantime, we might blog if we find some incredible food to share with you. After all, it’s still a food blog. “Healthy Professionals” might not be a completely accurate title for the time being, but at least we don’t intend to continue getting fatter and fatter for ever. In the end, I feel like that’s the difference between a healthy professional and a fatty laborer. I just hope that I can get into shape before tax season, because it’s hard not to gain weight when you’re sitting at your desk all day.

So, did you itemize on a Schedule A last year or take the standard deduction?

Brian and Lisa Make the Perfect Pizza Yet Again!!!

One of Lisa’s co-workers graciously gave us a Pampered Chef Pizza Stone! Definitely the perfect gift for pizza lovers like us! Therefore in the theme of a super italian food weekend we thought it would be fun to make a homemade pizza with our new cookware.

Regarding the ingredients, we highly recommend the Fresh and Easy for the best pizza. We started with one of their fresh, Whole Wheat pizza dough balls. Leave the dough out for 20 minutes at room temperature. Roll the dough into a 12-14 inch circle. Coat the pizza stone with 1 tsp. of olive oil, and then rub a small amount of minced or crushed garlic into the crust. Top with your favorite sauce, cheese, and toppings. For this one Lisa sliced up some Salami! Then bake for 8-12 minutes.

 

Del Taco Shame

The whole point of keeping this diet blog is to shame myself into losing weight, and that’s not going to work if I’m not accountable to this blog. So, here it goes…

Yesterday, I totally failed. First, with a bowl full of meatballs covered in Puttanesca sauce and Parmesan cheese. Then, on a trip to Del Taco where I had three soft tacos, two 40-ounce Bud Lights, and a carnitas burrito.

By the way, if you were wondering if Del Taco’s new carnitas burritos are any good; they’re awesome – especially considering that they’re only $5 for two! Obviously, it’s not the same quality of carnitas that you might find in an authentic taco shop, but they’re pretty great considering the price.

Hopefully, I’ll get get back on track today, but it’s not enough to just diet every other day. I should really be trying a little harder. Just because I had a bad day yesterday doesn’t mean that I get to put 5000 calories in my body! 😳

Three Packets!!!

Last weekend was our first wedding anniversary, and my diet suffered a little bit as a result. I won’t go into the details, but it was pretty ugly.

Yesterday, I got back on track with a 1,300 calorie day featuring a light lunch and a pretty normal pasta dinner.  Lunches have definitely been the best part of my diet so far. Lately, I’ve been having these Asian soup bowls from Trader Joe’s. Originally, I was sticking to the $2 Trader Joe’s soup bowls, but the $1 soups are pretty tasty too! I thought that they were generic, American noodle soups, but it turns out that they’re imported from Thailand and have THREE packets of goodness that you get to add to your soup. In my opinion, it’s usually a good sign when your instant noodles come with multiple packets. When the directions say, “Empty contents of seasoning, vegetable, and oil packets into the bowl” – you’re in business!!!

Not only are these instant soups delicious and low in calories, but they go really well with the Japanese Sencha that I’m usually drinking in the afternoons. A little Sriracha hot sauce and soy sauce doesn’t hurt either. 😉