Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Cleaning My Plate


I have been trying to trim down for third trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. My workouts have been on track, but, as always, I was struggling with food. I could come home from the grocery store with the same old stuff -- quick, but not exactly quality. I hadn't been paying attention to portions.


Even though I had stepped up my workouts, the scale wasn't moving down.


While I was visiting my mother, she handed me The Eating Well Diet Cookbook. She used it to help get her and my step-father on a healthy track. She also issued me a challenge: If I drop 60 more pounds (which is my goal) she will donate $200 to Global Alliance for Africa on behalf of my trek.


I got home and got right to work on, well, Eating Well. So far, so good. The pounds have been peeling off as I have been following (more or less) the 28-day plan in the book.


Most of the recipes are simple and beautiful healthy concoctions. Sometimes my kitchen is like some scenes in Julie & Julia -- with me cursing through a recipe that is taking me too long to prepare (ehem, Chicken Divan!).


Cooking more has helped me be more mindful about what I am eating. For example, the egg recipes for breakfast sustain me longer than the Blueberry-Coconut Macadamia Nut Muffins (though they are damn good). I am not rushing through a super-sized bowl of cereal anymore.


I am happy to report I have dropped 20 pounds since that July Vermont visit just by cleaning up my plate.



Fat Woman on the Mountain, the story of my 120-pound weight loss and quest to hike Kilimanjaro, will be available Sept. 14 on my website, http://www.fatwomanonthemountain.com/.

2 comments:

Caroline in NH said...

Do you have any plans to make your book available in any of the e-book reader formats? I'd love it if I could get it in ePub format, Kindle format, or even PDF (I can read any of those formats on my iPad).

taetopia said...

I'm a fan of the EatingWell recipes. They all seem to work. Some are more successful than others. I cooked my way through six weeks worth. http://taetopia.com/cookbooks/my-eating-well-challenge/988.

I am looking forward to reading your book, Kara!