Day 1 - Fast Forward Phase 2!

As I opened my Cinch! Book this morning back to the page with the recipes for the Fast Forward phase, my Shape magazine tear-out page of the Fruity Waffle Sundae fell out from the front of the book. It looked so delicious; I haven’t tried it yet. Wouldn’t you know I can’t eat it? Temptations, temptations…

I made the same tweaks as the last time I did the Fast Forward phase to make it work for me:

• I add a small pinch of sugar to my breakfast raspberries only
• My smoothie snack is in the middle of the day instead of at the end of the day, and I eat the almond butter on the side with a spoon
• I eat vanilla yogurt instead of plain yogurt (and this time I am eating greek yogurt with natural sugar instead of vanilla yogurt with high-fructose corn syrup!)
• I don’t eat the raspberries at my dinner meal
• I cook the spinach for my dinner meal instead of eating it as a salad

Today was actually much easier than I thought it would be. Around 11:30 am, I was sitting right in the middle of a meeting at work thinking about the yogurt parfait that I wanted to eat. My stomach rumbled, and I told it to stop immediately before I became embarrassed. And then, I got hungry again around 3:00 pm, which is usually the time when I have my daily dark chocolate. I ended up having a mug of hot chai green tea & guzzled a lot of water. That seemed to help.

Here was my day:

BREAKFAST (7:30 AM)

Spinach Scramble with Berries and Almonds:

1 cup fresh spinach (sautéed in EVOO spray) and 1 cup frozen raspberries, thawed
1 organic brown egg
2 TBSP slivered almonds
Dash cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon for the berries
Dash oregano and chopped garlic for the spinach scramble

(There really is a cup of berries in that dish under all of the almonds!)



LUNCH (12:30 PM)

Parfait:

1 cup fresh raspberries
6 oz. 100% honey vanilla Greek yogurt
2 TBSP slivered almonds
Dash cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon

Here is my new love (yogurt that is…)



SNACK (4:30 PM)

Smoothie:

1 cup frozen raspberries
6 oz. 100% honey vanilla Greek yogurt
2 TBSP natural almond butter
Handful ice
Dash cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon

DINNER (7:30 PM)

Spinach “Salad”:

2 cups fresh spinach (sautéed in EVOO spray)
1 hard-boiled egg, sliced
2 TBSP slivered almonds
Dashes each balsamic vinegar, curry powder, and chopped garlic

This one might sound weird, but it really was quite delish!


My poor non-stick skillet has been showing signs of deteriorating, and it’s a known fact that once your skillet starts losing its coating, you need to replace it because chemicals in skillets can be cancerous. So, I’ve been skillet shopping. I’ve been doing tons of research (in addition to all that research I did when we registered for wedding gifts!). I do have a high quality stainless steel cookware set, but now I’ve realized that I will be replacing my "non-stick" skillets every 3-5 years. I think that I have settled on the Analon Advanced 12” Open Skillet. Don't want to spend big bucks on All Clad, Cuisinart, Calphalon, etc since I will eventually be replacing it again someday.

But what non-stick skillets do you have? There’s 800+ views on this page. Leave me a quick comment below – I know you're out there. :)