Tiny (Chicken) Breasts

{Written by Jeremy}

So, tonight I had the smallest chicken breasts ever for dinner. Seriously, they were the size of my index finger. I am very much a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I love huge hearty chunks of chicken, or pork, or beef…and Emily has this gigantic bag of frozen chicken breasts she got from costco for a pretty good deal. Alright, great. Let’s take a look at these babies…

I would love to see the chickens that these breasts came off of. They must have been guiness world record holders for the smallest animals ever to be consumed by man. I’m used to chicken breasts roughly the size of my palm, and about half an inch to an inch thick. These things were laughably small! Did I mention they were tiny? Anyways, I’ll come back to those later…

Today was a pretty good day. I’m always glad once Tuesdays are over because it’s my busiest day and the rest of the week is pretty much a cakewalk. Breakfast was a bit rushed since Emily and I slept in a bit, so I grabbed a slice of toast and a yogurt as I ran out the door to class. Emily met me after class and we went to the gym and had a nice workout. Today we stepped up our cardio just a tad and did running spurts of 1 minute and 10 seconds followed by 1 minute 20 seconds of walking and alternated that for 10 minutes. We will slowly work our way up until we are running more than we walk. After the gym we came home and had lunch together. We each had a sandwich and I had a small salad with mine since our romaine lettuce is going bad. Emily then ran off to her section.

After Emily left for her section, I cleaned up a bit while she was out (I also secured a Wii and Wii fit plus for her on Ebay, for our anniversary/xmas, which I was going to surprise her with but have since had that plan ruined so here it is, out in the open). When she got home we did some re-figuring of my budget, made some phone calls and arranged for our trip to San Jose this coming Sunday as well as our trip to San Francisco next week. I’m really excited because we’re going to see Wicked at the Orpheum theatre and I have been waiting to see that show live for years.

For dinner we had the very small chicken breasts, lightly breaded and baked with a side of mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. Dinner was a bit heavier than usual, but it was gym day so we were really hungry. I had a (100 calorie) fudge pop for dessert.

As I’m writing this blog Emily is taking practice tests for her CSET. She has to take both the CBEST and the CSET in order to prepare for her Masters in Education program, but the CSET is definitely going to be the most difficult. Polishing her rusty math skills and learning how to read and answer the questions just right is going to take some time, but I have faith that she’ll nail this test like she nails everything else academically. She is far more skilled in test taking than I am.

I’m trying to get all of my schoolwork done by Saturday so that we can spend all day Sunday in San Jose and not have to worry about school stuff. We’ll be going to Red Robin on Sunday with my mom and a couple friends before heading to Valley Fair mall to do some clothes shopping for Emily.

We are both very excited for the upcoming weeks and we hope you continue to come by!

Struggling to lose more than our minds,

J&E

Long day…

{Written by Emily}

Hi All! I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying our blog thus far. Writing this blog has really helped to keep Jeremy and I focused on our goals and on track with our plan! So thanks for reading .

So, today is one of my two long days (the other being Thursday), in which I have all of my classes, nearly back to back. This makes it a bit difficult to eat properly, but I try my best and I think I’ve done alright. On the bright side, having all of my classes today made me walk an awful lot (close to 5 miles according to my pedometer!). I started out today by meeting up with a good friend for breakfast at a campus restaurant. The breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs (which had red bell peppers, onions, ham and some cheese), home fries, whole grain toast and a cup of coffee. Now I know this sounds like a lot, but I was strong and didn’t eat it all. Jeremy and I figure this breakfast is about 750 calories, but they do say that breakfast is the most important meal…right?

After breakfast I went to my Detective fiction class in which the professor spent nearly two hours discussing all of the phallic imagery and homo-erotocism in The Maltese Falcon (what’s a lit class without a little phallus and homo-erotic activity?). After this class I walked over to my American Popular Music course in where we listened to some Hank Williams, Rosetta Tharpe, Prince and Georgia Satellites (it’s an interesting class, to say the least, haha). Next, I proceeded up the stairs of death to get to the bus stop. Yeah, these stairs are killer…you get halfway up and look up, of course expecting to be at the top, but NO! There’s still another half left that curves around. Whoever designed these stairs is an evil menace and should be stopped! Needless to say, I reached the top, panting and wishing I was dead, and took a bus home. When I got home I had a yogurt (170 calories, with lost of protein) for a snack, relaxed for a bit, and then went off to my last class of the day. When I returned home, at nearly 8pm, Jeremy, being the sweet guy that he is, had dinner ready for me. For dinner tonight, Jeremy and I had our new found favorite healthy food: chicken pot stickers from Trader Joe’s. Along with these pot stickers we had broccoli and carrots, and a little bit of rice. Dinner was delicious and we estimate it to be about 300-400 calories.

As far as Jeremy is concerned today, he had oatmeal with a banana mixed in, toast and water for breakfast. After his section, he came home and had a tuna sandwich and a yogurt for lunch. Jeremy was very below his calorie intake for the day today, so we’re trying to really think of ways for him to eat a bit more than me since he needs more calories in a day than I do. I’m trying to make sure he’s eating right and not starving himself  haha.

We ended the night watching “The Biggest Loser”, which we love, and were perfectly happy to see Tracey go. It was pretty incredible to see how far each of the players has come and I’m really excited to see how they all look at the finale. Jeremy predicts that next week Liz and someone else will be sent home, and I wouldn’t be too surprised by that.

Anyways, that’s all to report from today. Hope you all are having a great week!!

Stay tuned as we continue to lose more than our minds…

J&E

Plowing along…

{Written by Jeremy}

Greetings all!

We apologize for not writing yesterday. We are both swamped in a lot of work, but still want to make sure that we write in this as often as possible to help record our progress.

Emily and I didn’t have breakfast on Sunday (tsk tsk) and had 2 slices of a supreme Digorno pizza and a side salad for lunch (~500 calories). We watched the Chargers-Raiders game which resulted in the Chargers 13th straight win over the Raiders. Woo hoo! Following the game I went back to my apartment and did some laundry and finished grading the mid-terms that I had as well as began reading for my readings in Modern Japan seminar. For dinner we had a chicken salad (~400-500 calories) with cucumber, tomatoes and cheese over hearts of romaine and topped lightly with ranch dressing.

Today I had apple/cinnamon oatmeal with sliced up banana in it for breakfast (~200 calories) , a homemade teriyaki bowl (400-500 calories) for lunch, 2 slices of digiorno supreme pizza for a mid afternoon snack (~400 calories) and after that I was still hungry so I went to a campus restaurant called “Joe’s Pizza & Subs” and got a small tuna sandwich and a side of fries with a medium diet coke. Emily says she’s very proud of me for not caving and getting 2 slices of pizza and a gigantic Mr. Pibb. I was tempted, briefly. Still, the sandwich was very good and the fries were great, though I wish they had a smaller size.  Emily had 2 slices of Digiornio pizza for lunch (~400 calories), a small bowl of cereal for snack (~200 calories), and a Lean Cuisine (Chicken in basil cream sauce) with a salad on the side for dinner (~450 calories) and a yogurt for dessert (170 calories).

We each have our own vices when it comes to food. Emily misses cheese dearly (though we still have shredded cheese on salads and the occasional cheese-stick as a snack) and I just miss, well, everything else. At the same time I shudder at the thought of some of the food I used to eat without second thought: Panda Express for lunch, 10 double stuf oreos for snack in the mid-afternoon followed by some Papa Johns and topped off with a Ben and Jerry’s for dessert, as an example. We are working really hard to make things work, even when we go out to eat. There are a number of tempting trips that we are going to be making in the next few weeks, including our 3 year anniversary trip to San Francisco in 2 weeks. We’ve been looking at CalorieKing and some other sites to see what we could eat that wouldn’t be too bad. And then of course there’s the daunting event known as Thanksgiving.

I’ve come to the conclusion that November and December should just be titled “The time that diets die”. I mean, how could you not want to toss your whole diet plan overboard in the face of a beautifully brined turkey, piles of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, stuffing and ham? Who could have the nerves of steel in order to resist a stocking full of candy? Freshly baked sugar cookies topped with cake icing and M&M’s or sprinkles? Yet, in the face of such challenges, Emily and I are going to try our best to perservere.

It’s getting late, so I’ll sign off here.

Working hard to lose more than our minds,

J&E