Sounds Like a Plan (and Mini Meatloaf)

Many thanks to Roni for her encouraging comment. :) It got me thinking about my plan for this blog and where I should be focusing my energies. I think I'm going to post a quick recap of daily calories and exercise, but only to observe my weight's overall patterns. I feel like a common pattern of mine is to count calories for a week or so, see a moderate loss, slack off on carefully tracking the next week, see a less significant loss, then give up because "no matter what I do, I can't lose weight, so it's not worth the effort." This logic is flawed in so many ways. Carefully tracking what I'm eating, combined with getting in more intense exercise, will result in slow, steady weight loss for me. I need to stop dieting for two days, weighing myself and feeling disappointed, then giving up.

For these past three years, I've been scoffing at .5-1.5 weekly losses. If I'd never given up, I'd have slowly and steadily lost these extra 50 pounds! So that's the plan. Track calories and exercise to learn more about how my body works, but give up the scale obsession. And more importantly, I need to focus on really, truly loving myself without make my weight the criteria by which I measure my happiness.

I want to use this space to mainly focus on living my best possible life. In that vein, I want to share a delicious recipe I made for my boyfriend and me! :)

Mini Meatloaf

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of extra-lean ground beef
• 1 medium carrot, shredded
• 1 medium zucchini, shredded and squeezed dry
• 1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 green pepper, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 slice whole grain bread as breadcrumbs
• 2 egg whites
• 1/3 cup tomato ketchup

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly spray a nonstick or silicone muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Crumble ground beef into a large bowl. Add shredded carrots and zucchini, and chopped onion and green pepper. Add chili powder, Worcestershire sauce and breadcrumbs. Stir with a fork. Add egg whites and knead until well blended.

Spoon mixture into prepared muffin pan and top each cup with ketchup. Bake for 25 minutes, making sure that the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees. Makes 6 mini meatloaves.

I served it with steamed broccoli to look something like this:

Delicious and just the right size!

Calories today: 1620

Activity: 20 minute walk around my office building

Feeling: Exhausted but happy :)