Today's topic: Snacks!  As a long time food addict, I love snacks!  Now, I'm not junk food person, though I have been known to savor a bag of chips, movie theater popcorn, buttery crackers and Snicker bars.  My idea of a snack, is a small meal!  Like, a warmed up slice or two of meatloaf & mashed potatoes while I'm waiting for dinner or a bowl of potato salad.  I'm fat because I love food and seconds, not because I hide Snicker bars in my purse!  A hunger pain, I have rarely had.

On my diet, I am happy to say I have found very healthy and delicious snacks to have as an occasional dessert after dinner or when I get home from school before dinner.  Here are my four favorites: 

1. Fiber One Protein bars
2. Planters NUT-rition Chocolate Nut snack packs   
3. Sweet & Salty Trail Mix Zone bars
4. No Sugar Added Fudgsicles  

These snacks really curb my appetite and offer that little bit of sweet or salty that I crave.

I'll start off with the fantastic news!  In three weeks and many slips along the way, I am down 12 pounds!  I put on a pair of jeans yesterday, that I have been wearing quite uncomfortably the last month, only to find out that they fit quite comfortably!  Not big, a little loose around the waist, and super comfy!  I can actually touch my toes in these jeans with the zipper up and the button buttoned!

Now, the not so fantastic news.  I was super gung-ho about writing this blog and I'm totally bummed that I haven't been keeping up with it.  Here's why:

I got some amazing yummies from my neighbor, three acorn squash and two beautiful eggplants.  In order to stick with my protein and vegetable diet, I searched for recipes on how to cook acorn squash and eggplant.  I found two super recipes which turned out super!  I made garlic butter acorn squash and ratatouille!

In the slicing and dicing of said veggies, I managed to slice off a chunk of my right thumb.  Yes, again.  Before you say it, I did use the safety guard!  My eggplant slipped off of it and with that, went my thumb.

So, needless to say, I haven't been able to type or do much of anything else.  I am learning to use my remaining digits while my thumb heals.  I'll be back on the blogosphere as often and as quickly as possible.  Meanwhile, say a prayer for me or send me a positive thought the next time you eat cabbage salad or step on the scale!

We recently celebrated the Hundredth Day of School.  Is this a national holiday you didn't know about?  Only if you're an early childhood educator!  Since I teach kindergarten, counting to 100 is a huge part of my math curriculum.  The best part of the Hundredth Day, for me, is knowing that there are only 80 days of school left in the school year! 

But I digress, the importance of the Hundredth Day is that my class has always celebrated by making Gorp. (A homemade, anything goes kind of trail mix.)  Each of my kids is assigned a different snack item to bring in.  For example, students bring in 100 marshmallows, 100 mini cheese crackers, 100 raisins, etc. Our celebration comes to a climax when we open up all the snacks and mix them together to make a giant punch bowl of Gorp, or snack mix.

In the past, I would have single handedly eaten an entire bowl by just grazing throughout the days and weeks following the celebration.  This year, however, after having eaten only meat and vegetables for two weeks, I could barely stand to sample the Gorp.  For one, it was too sugary sweet and two, it was super salty!  Who knew that two marshmallows, one goldfish, three craisins, two chocolate chips, one gummi bear and one rice chex would make feel like I'd eaten a fully loaded 22 inch pizza and a 12 buffalo wings all on my own?  It got to the point where I could hardly stand to smell the Gorp!  I felt like I was at a dinner party, struggling to chew and swallow the mysterious entree that had been set in front of me.

It gets worse, that feeling of being bloated that I had not felt, was instant!  My belly was like a dry sponge that exploded in a hot pot of water.  I felt like Violet when she blew up like a blueberry and had to be rolled out of the room by the Oompa Loompahs! My hands and feet were also swollen, though not nearly as much, by the end of the day.  I also gained a pound because I felt so guilty, I soothed my ego with a fully loaded soda.  (I'm also an emotional eater. Duh.)

Good news!  Instead of making several more batches of Gorp and serving it to my kids over the next few days, I only made two batches and threw away any leftovers!  (Why make two batches?  I had to use all of the items my kids brought in and it was enough for two punch bowls.  Rest assured, I didn't force them to eat Gorp in one day.  I stretched it over the week with small servings.  Most of them packed in baggies and shared it at home.)

If certain foods make me feel so bad, why have I continued to eat so poorly my entire life?  Admittedly, this is the first diet I've been on for longer than a week and where my goal is not in losing the weight, but in feeling better.  I can honestly say, I don't enjoy feeling sick after every meal.  Collectively, my family and I have lost a total of 42.5 pounds. We did not all start dieting the same week, so some of us have been eating healthier for longer.  I was the last one to jump on board.

Perhaps next year, we'll make Gorp with carrots and celery sticks!

Here are some of the benefits I am enjoying on my new diet:

• I suffer from fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis.  Despite the medications I take daily to help combat my symptoms, I am still very tender and swollen at the end of the day.  However, from the very first day I stopped eating grains, rice, carbohydrates and sugar, I noticed that I am no longer swollen at the end of the day!  My shoes aren't crushing my toes, my ankles aren't oozing out of my shoes and I don't have an urgency to unbutton my pants in the middle of the day!

• I don't have dragon breath all day!  I live in fear that when I am speaking I am offending everyone around me with my dragon breath.  I used to carry mints and chug water all day.  Granted I don't have minty fresh breath from dusk to dawn, but my mouth doesn't taste nasty anymore and I don't feel like I am burning my friend's eyelashes with my dragon breath.

• I am not tired during the day!  I used to yawn constantly and feel like I never got enough sleep.  Now I rarely yawn and feel very rested in the mornings.

Admittedly, I have gone off the wagon more than a few times, and the bloating, swelling in my joints and ache in my belly are enough to make me want to keep changing my eating habits.  Hooray for me!  

If you're a food addict like me, then you know how important it is to plan your menu and execute it.  I work in an elementary school and I only have 35 minutes in which to eat, check email, use the restroom, refresh my lipstick, phone a parent and make copies.  So when embarking on my new diet, I knew I had to go grocery shopping and actually make my salad all in the same day or risk having rotting mush in the drawers of my refrigerator. 

I also pack my salad in separate containers for the entire week and take them with me to school on Monday mornings.  If I don't, I will end up driving like a mad-man to the closest fast food restaurant, ordering a combo meal and inhaling it in the car on the way back to school!

Who knew when making these life changing habits, that it would be dangerous?  I nearly lost my thumb making salad this week!  (I swear I could have used a couple of stitches!  I'm still using two plastic bandages to cover up my salad wound!)  My boyfriend bought me a mandolin slicer and I absolutely love it!  I can chop and slice everything in less than half an hour (including my thumb), and it is one less excuse not to eat a healthy lunch everyday.  

Don't mandolin slicers have a safety attachment, you ask?  The answer is, yes. However, I had one smallish piece of apple to slice, totally not worth smashing on the end of the safety attachment, so I ran it through without the safety attachment and in the blink of an eye, added some thumb to my salad.  Lesson learned!  Now, I use the safety attachment every single time and just eat the smallish bits of veggies instead, it's far less dangerous!

I have recently decided to change my eating habits in order to live longer and be healthier.  In doing so, I have given up grains, rice, beans, dairy products, most carbohydrates (potatoes) and sugar.  I am instead eating protein (beef, chicken, pork, fish) and vegetables.  I am not counting calories or weighing my food.

I am eating three meals a day, having a healthy snack and getting in the occasional exercise.  I am also keeping a daily journal where I write down every single item that I eat.  My friend's father-in-law gave me this advise: "Write down everything you eat the first week and the second week, eat everything you wrote down!"  Therefore, I write everything down to the number of almonds I eat to the number of sips of soda I have.  I figured, no one is going to see my little "Diet Book," so who would I be keeping secrets from except myself?

That, dear friends, was my TA-DA moment!  Why would I want to keep secrets from myself?  Who am I cheating except myself?  Who is losing out on healthy lifestyle except me?  So, mistakes, cheats, lapses in judgment, I write it all down!  So far so good!  Instead of eating that handful of chips and feeling guilty or lying to myself, I eat the chips, write it down and move on.     

That discovery is also why I started this blog.  I figure, it's another way of chronicling my new eating habits and making me accountable to me.  Never mind, while I write this locked in the bedroom, I am not scrounging for food!