New Year Resolution Update

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Amazingly enough I am still doing good on my New Year Resolution. I have been pretty good this year so far. I eat lots of veggie and fruits, lean meat, and still doing my morning jog. Although I will admit with our cloudy weather I have not been as good. When it's cold and wet outside, it is just a little too hard to get myself out of bed at 5am to go on the track. You know the feeling right? I hope I'm not the only lazy one who wants to snuggle down into my warm blankets in the morning.

So, here's the updates. Since Jan 1st I have lost an additional 10lbs. My goal was to get down to a size 8 by Valentine and I'm almost there, but not quite yet. My size 10 are much more comfortable around my waist, but to be a single digit sounds so nice. So since I started my diet in Oct I have lost roughly 40+ pounds. I follow a low carb, low fat, low calorie, low taste...ok, the taste isn't too bad. However the peanut butter that my kids eat smell so good that sometime I just want to kiss it off of them.

I'll post some new pix of me as soon as I get a chance to take some and download them so you can see the progress.

So here's a recipe below for you to try out. This is typical of what I eat for lunch and dinner with an apple for desert.

Taco Salad
1. Prepare the meat topping

• Dice up 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, 1c fresh cilantro, 1 green chile
• Heat up 1/4 cup of chicken broth. Place onion, garlic, cilantro, and chile in the broth and simmer until it is soft.
• Place 1.5 lb of ground beef into the mix. I use the leanest I can find which is 97/3% so I don't precook the beef and drain the fat.
• Add 2 tsp oregano, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp paprika, 2 dried bay leaves, 1/2 tsp sea salt, 1/4 tsp black pepper.
• Set aside the meat once it is done cooking.

2. Prepare the "rice"
I found that following a low carb diet, it made me crave carbs less. However I still love rice and the best substitute I could find for it was cabbage.

• 1/4 head of cabbage. Dice very finely.
• Dice 1/2 onion and simmer in chicken broth. Once the onion is soft, place the cabbage in it. You can season it with oregano, paprika, cumin, etc...or use about 2 tsp of taco seasonings.

3. Assemble the salad

• Chop up some lettuce, I prefer Romain. Chop up 1 tomato. Chop up 2 Tbs of purple onion
• Place lettuce, tomato, purple onion, "rice", and meat and enjoy!
• If I am going to spoil myself that day I will add some whole beans, avocado, and maybe a little bit of chedder cheese on top of it.

I hope this recipe inspires you to find more low fat, low carb alternative. I am not into the Atkins diet where you eat no carbs. This isn't Atkins because I eat lots of vegetables and fruit in my diet. Basically I avoid the whites, such as flour, sugar, rice, and other process food. I cook everything from stratch and avoid buying food that has ingredients that I cannot pronounce. It takes a little to get use to, but this works. If you want more recipes and ideas, feel free to comment and I will update with more ideas.