What if you woke up tomorrow . . .

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I was doing my usual morning scroll through Facebook this morning when I came across a post from Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital (officially Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University). In the post, they asked that people who were caretakers of children who received treatment at Vandy to post a photo of their child and tell a little about their story.

It was both heartbreaking and heartwarming to read the comments – over a hundred. Then I came across one comment that has stuck with me.

Morgan Fuller died at the age of 17 from cancer. She was treated at Vandy.  Until I read her father’s post this morning, I had never heard of her.  However, she seemed wise beyond her years – which is common among childhood cancer fighters.  Once, while speaking to a crowd at a Relay for Life event in 2016, Morgan said, ”What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for today?” Read that again:

“What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for today?”

What a perspective! God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit, family, friends, a home, food on the table, freedom, so, so many things to thank God for each day!

Right now my nightly routine after I get into bed each night is to recite to myself The Lord’s Prayer, and then Psalm 4:8. That’s one of my Atomic Habits.  I will add thanking God for all my blessings. What a wonderful and peaceful way to end each day!

Zero-Point Taco Soup

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The weather has turned cooler, and I saw something on Facebook about Zero-Point Taco Soup. I didn’t need persuading – that immediately became what I would make for dinner. I didn’t have taco seasoning on hand, and so I made a quick trip to Kroger to get some.

Within ten minutes of getting home, the soup was simmering on the stove. What could be simpler than opening a bunch of cans, a package of chicken breasts, and some seasoning, and dump it all in the cooking pot! The only other step was to shred the chicken after it had cooked.

I served it with a dollop of nonfat Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream) and a little grated Cabot 75% Reduced Fat Sharp Cheddar Cheese. Both of those are 0-points, too. If I used more (half ounce +) of the Cabot cheese, it would move to a point, but I kept it under 1/2 ounce. It was both tasty and filling. It tasted so good, I had a second bowl – and I counted the cheese as 1 point since I had two helpings of it!

The soup freezes well. So I will put some in the refrigerator to eat over the next couple days, and I will put some in the freezer to enjoy again in a few weeks.

Here is how I made it:

Zero-Point Taco Soup

  • 4 cans beans (black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, great northern beans – whatever kind you like or a combination of beans. I used Kroger’s Tri-Bean Blend)
  • 1 can diced tomatoes
  • 1 large can tomato sauce OR pureed tomatoes
  • 1 qt. chicken broth (you can use less if you want your soup to be thicker)
  • 2 Tablespoons taco seasoning (add more or less, depending on your taste)
  • 1 lb. boneless/skinless chicken breasts
  • diced onion, peppers, garlic – to taste (can use fresh or dehydrated)
  • salt/pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Dump everything into a large saucepan (or crockpot)
  2. Bring to a simmer
  3. Once chicken is cooked through, take it out, shred it, and add it back into the soup.
  4. To serve, you can top with sour cream or Greek yogurt, grated cheese, corn chips – whatever toppings you like

Zero Points on WW Blue Plan. Be sure to add points for any toppings you choose.

1-Point LARGE Cafe Latte!

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Unsweetened vanilla almond milk and Golden monkfruit sweetener

When I got home from an appointment earlier today, I wanted a latte or macchiato; I needed an early afternoon energy boost. I started to make a caramel macchiato but then noticed that the jar of sugar-free caramel had “Refrigerate after opening” on it. It has been sitting next to my espresso machine for a couple months. I tossed it in the trash.

With no caramel (except full sugar – which would add 6 points for 2 tablespoons – and I would want more than 2 tablespoons!), I decided to go with a latte instead.

I got a large glass and filled it with ice. Then I poured 4 ounces of espresso over the ice. And since I REALLY like my coffee drinks sweet, and since I had just bought a bag of golden monkfruit sweetener, I added 1 1/2 Tablespoons of it to my latte.  I finished filling up the glass with unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and stirred it.

The golden monkfruit sweetener is a brown sugar replacement. So it gave the latte a caramel-y flavor – which I loved.

Weight Watchers points? The only ingredient with points is the almond milk – and it’s 1 point for 1 cup. I used less than a cup, but will count a full point anyway. It is delicious! Just imagine: a large coffee drink for 1 point! I will be making these more often!

Get Outside! An Atomic Habit

/ Carol / 2 Comments

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by [James Clear]Sometimes we come across a book that actually changes our lives. That happened to me a couple years ago when I read a book titled Atomic Habits by James Clear.  The basic premise is that if we set big goals, we often set ourselves up for defeat since big and perfect goals take so much time and effort. However, if we work on small habits – 3 minutes of exercise each morning, cutting out one teaspoon of sugar in our coffee, writing one thank you note each week, making two business calls before lunch – then it becomes like compound interest. The benefits snowball over time.

Back in March when this pandemic isolation began, I decided that one atomic habit I wanted to develop was getting outside for just a few minutes each day.  Here is a video I made on today’s walk. Excuse the breathlessness! I had just walked up a hill. I could’ve waited till I caught my breath to start the video, but this is calling “Living Real with Carol!” and the reality was that I was a little breathless at the moment.

7-Point Pizza (WW Blue)

/ Carol / 1 Comment

I made personal pizzas tonight – one for my husband and one for me.  Pizza is one of my all time favorite dishes!  The last time we had pizza was during the summer when I ordered one from Domino’s Pizza, and it was less than delicious. It was so bad, in fact, that it turned me off from wanting pizza for a couple months.  However, lately after eating so much chicken and tuna and lean beef, I have yearned for something a little more indulgent.

After reading about 2-ingredient dough, and then researching and finding an even better (supposedly) dough recipe, I decided to give home-made pizza another try.

First the dough. I got the recipe from My Bizzy Kitchen. Here’s that recipe:

Dough:

2 cups self-rising flour

1 teaspoon yeast

1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 cup Fage Fat Free Greek Yogurt

1/2 – 3/4 cup warm water

  • Heat oven to 450 (see notes).
  • In a bowl, mix the flour, salt and yeast together. Stir in the yogurt and mix until it starts to combine. Start with 1/2 a cup of water and see how the dough comes together. If there is still a bit of loose flour in the bowl, add a couple tablespoons of water at a time, until it forms a ball.
  • This dough can be used within an hour of making, but truth be told, I normally don’t use it until day 2 or 3. On the first day I let it rise in my microwave all day, then store it in a ziplock bag.
  • On the day of baking, add a tablespoon of flour on your counter. Wet your hands and grab desired amount of dough for your pizza. Most of my individual pizzas are 5 ounces. Top with desired toppings and bake for 10 minutes, or until desired doneness.

I didn’t  put my dough in the microwave to rise. As a matter of fact, I didn’t let it rise at all because we were making pizza right away.

I divided the dough into four equal parts. We used two of those for our two individual pizzas tonight. I put the other two parts in a Ziplock bag in the refrigerator for pizza later this week. (Note added: We used the extra dough three days later for another two pizzas, and it was perfect! So it keeps well in the fridge for at least three days). The flour is the only ingredient with points. So each of the four parts contain 1/2 cup self-rising flour – which is 5 points on WW Blue Plan.

The photo above shows our two pizzas ready to go in the oven. That’s mine on the bottom – and Ron’s at the top. He added additional sauce on top of his other ingredients. It looks like a barbecue pizza, but it isn’t – just lots of pizza sauce! That’s because he doesn’t usually each much pizza crust because of his blood sugar. Thus, he wanted to be sure he had plenty of the toppings.

In the photo above, the pizzas are on a pizza stone that I bought from Pampered Chef years ago. I had put the pizza stone in the oven while I made the dough. So it was piping hot when we put the dough on it.

I sprayed my hands with butter flavored Pam to smooth out the dough on the pizza stone. Then once we had it spread out, my husband and I added our favorite toppings.

Toppings

These are the toppings I put on my pizza:

Onion, finely chopped (0 points)

fresh spinach, torn into small pieces (0 points)

fresh chopped tomatoes (0 points)

Ragu Homemade style Pizza Sauce (1 point for 1/4 cup)

Sargento Light mozzarella string cheese (1 point per stick), cut crossways into thin circles. In the photo above, you can see the small circles of mozzarella.

3/8 oz Cabot Cheese, Sharp Cheddar, 75% Reduced Fat (0 points for 3/8 oz.)

At the top of this post is a photo of my baked and ready-to-eat pizza. I forgot to take a photo until I had cut it and put the pieces on a plate.  It was delicious! The crust has a little bit of a tangy taste from the yogurt. I really liked it. One great thing about this recipe is that the dough took only a few minutes to put together. And, of course, the toppings were delicious.

And the best thing of all is that the whole pizza is only 7 points. My first pizza in over two months. And I still have 5 points left for today!

When Problems Become Idols

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I was reading a devotional book the other day, and it talked about how sometimes we let problems and worries take over; they become idols to us. It was a different way of looking at things we tend to obsess over, and it made me realize that my weight issues have become like an idol to me.

Commitment versus Motivation/Willpower

/ Carol / 1 Comment

I am a member of many Weight Watchers groups on Facebook. One frequent comment that is posted numerous times a day by many different people is something along these lines:

I lost my motivation. What can I do to get it back?

I do really well all day, but then at night I lose all my willpower!

I keep forgetting to log my food, and by the time I remember I’m already over my points for the day, and I just give up! What can I do to get the motivation to get back on track?

Recently I read that the difference between succeeding or failing is in whether we rely on motivation/willpower or we rely on commitment.  Motivation and willpower are hard to pinpoint. They’re often intangible and vague, whereas a commitment is a concrete thing,

Back in July when I MADE THE COMMITMENT to start WW again, I knew that this time was different. I wasn’t going on a diet. I wasn’t going to “try” this and see if it would work. I was committed to a different way of living for the rest of my life.

As I write this, it is 10:30 in the evening. Awhile ago, I heard the Baked Cheetos in my pantry calling my name. I’ve used all my daily points, I have only 7 weekly points left, and I still have two more full days before my points re-set for a new week.  I craved those salty, cheesy, and crispy Cheetos. However, I reminded myself of my commitment to REAL change. And real change is learning to say no to those cravings. The more I give in, the more I give in. The more I resist, the more I resist. I know I’m not hungry. I had a healthy dinner and I had some grapes for an after-dinner snack. I’ve had more than enough food today. So I bypassed the pantry and wrote this post instead.

Then I thought of the quote above: Commitment strengthens over time but begins with a single decision. Next time those Cheetos call my name, it will be easier to decide to forego them. The only way to stop eating late in the evening is to stop eating late in the evening. Each single decision I make that supports my commitment makes me a stronger and better person.

My mother – my role model for good health

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My mother is 97 years old. She still lives on her own, although she is able to do that only because I have 3 siblings who live in her town and can check on her daily. My mother has been on her own since my father died in 1986.. Over the years she has developed some habits of good health. Here are some of them:

(1) Walk with purpose. She has always walked briskly in order to get a little more benefit for her health. Although she frequently uses a walker now, until the last few years, she was always a quick walker. How much better for our general sense of well being to walk briskly as much as possible. She still walks out to the mailbox to get her newspaper and mail each day, and she bustles around the house doing daily chores. She wears a Fitbit and keeps track of her steps.

(2) Eat an apple, a banana, and half an orange every day. She says the apple is important for regularity, the banana helps with leg cramps, and the orange is for vitamin C.

(3) Keep the refrigerator and pantry stocked with foods that build health: apples, bananas, oranges, low-fat milk, cheese, eggs, whole wheat bread, carrots, potatoes, butter, honey.

(4) She doesn’t have anything against pork, but she doesn’t eat it unless there isn’t another choice. She prefers beef over chicken or turkey because she remembers the days when chickens and turkeys were sold alive, and the housewife was the one who had to dispatch it and clean it before cooking it. I recall, as a young child, watching my mother kill and clean chickens that parishioners gave our family. She eats both chicken and turkey, but she prefers beef. Of course, if she had to butcher a cow or observe one being butchered, she probably would decide she didn’t care for beef either.

(5) Natural foods are the best. She doesn’t count points. As a matter of fact, I don’t recall her ever dieting. She eats whole wheat bread only, lots and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and small portions of meat. She drizzles local honey on her toast at breakfast.

(6) Use very little salt or sweeteners. When my father had a heart attack, my mother stopped using salt almost entirely. I complained at the lack of flavor in many of the foods she made, and I would sneak in a few shakes of salt whenever I could. However, in terms of health, my mother was right. We should enjoy the natural flavor of foods rather than depending on so much salt. Still, I like a little salt.

(7) Probably my mother’s only “weakness” when it comes to food is ice cream. She loves it. She keeps a couple of cartons of black walnut ice cream on hand at all times.

(8) She enjoys coffee – and she seems to especially enjoy the vanilla lattes I make for her when I visit. I used to go to Starbucks each morning to get them, but now I make them myself. She always drinks every drop and talks about how good it is. When she is on her own, she usually drinks a very weak cup of coffee with milk in it. She talks about how she and my father would always end a meal by sitting at the table, sipping coffee, and talking.

(9) She keeps her mind busy. She has always read a lot. Right now she is reading through the Bible again. When I talked with her yesterday, she said she was into the Psalms. She underlines as she reads.

(10) Last of all, she drinks lots of water. She takes TWO glasses of water back to her bedroom each evening to get her through the night, and she keeps a glass of water next to her during the day. Thanks to my sister, Janice, and my niece, Amanda, for reminding me about how my mother always drinks plenty of water and encourages all of us to do likewise.

That’s about it as far as the habits that I want to emulate. Just think, though, about how we could build our own health by following the 10 guidelines above.

Comparison is the thief of joy

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I’ve joined a lot of Weight Watchers groups on Facebook.  Multiple times a day someone will post something along these lines: 

I have tracked every single bite this week, I’ve guzzled so much water I’m drowning, and I’ve walked 10K steps every day, and at my weigh-in, I ONLY lost 15  pounds! I’m so upset and frustrated, I want to quit.

That’s really not much of an exaggeration. I just read one post where a woman said she’d lost 30 pounds in two months. Really?

I read posts like that and think, “Yeah, I’ve been at this for eight weeks, and I’ve “only” lost a little over 8 lbs.”

Theodore Roosevelt had it right: if we start comparing our lives with others, we will often lose our joy because there will always be those who have more, do more, spend more, eat more, lose more, paint more, travel more, etc.

The word “only” should be banned. It a word that diminishes and trivializes, and we don’t want to diminish and trivialize things that are important to us. It’s denotes a false and unbecoming humility that we use so no one will think we are bragging.

Losses each week of 1/2 lb, or 1/10 lb, or 1/100 lb add up. If I stay the course, it will eventually equal a big weight loss. And what does it matter if it takes 3 months, 6 months, one year, two years, or more to reach my “ideal” weight? The time will pass anyway; wouldn’t it be better during the passing of that time for me to be doing what is best for my body? Wouldn’t it be better that I spend the time developing habits that will serve me well into the rest of my 70s, into my 80s and 90s?

So I pledge to congratulate others on their achievements, but to remain happy that despite what the scale number is, I am now in my 9th week of taking better care of myself. My whole self – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.