Formatting...Weekly Weight Update
The more and more I write these weekly weight updates the more I realize that the reader must be incredibly bored with the structure. At this point, you know I work out on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. You know that I usually run on Tuesday and Saturday and go to OrangeTheory Fitness on Thursday and Sunday. You know that I try to eat right (although this past week has been a bit of a stretch on that with Halloween and all) and we eat the same thing during the week. With that in mind, it is time for a change of format.
Don’t go too crazy, it isn’t as if I’m going to completely drop the weekly weight update or stop writing altogether. I’ve decided to become more regimented in formatting my weekly weight update. So for the foreseeable future (it is, in fact, my blog so I have the option of changing how I do it whenever I please) I’m going to go with a four section structure for each weekly weight update post.
Part I - Tales from the Week: This section will have a single story from the week. Hopefully it is entertaining or informative but it will just be a single story.
Part II - Weekly Weight Update: This is the section I will provide, well, my weekly weight update.
Part III - Bring It On!: This section will continue to provide the rundown of the Bring It On! Mileage challenge that Rizzo and I are locked in. Hard to believe that we have completed 10 months of the challenge.
Part IV - PS: This section may or may not exist depending on the week but it will basically be a recap of pictures I want to share.
Ready to get going? OK, let’s give it a whirl!
Tales from the Week - Making Lunch
Our eating strategy here in the Clizzo household is to decide on our single meal for the week then make it in bulk. So for example, this week I planned to have oatmeal and eggs for breakfast, jambalaya pasta for lunch, and ham for dinner. Same three meals everyday for the week. It usually works out but sometimes the measurements just aren’t right or we may eat lunch on a day that we didn’t plan to eat lunch so by the end of the week we are out of food and we don’t have anything to make for lunch.
That is what happened this week. The jambalaya pasta was amazing (I can’t emphasize this enough) but we only ended up making eight servings even though between Rizzo and I we need 10 servings for the week. For me it isn’t a big deal because working from home allows me more flexibility to go grab something out (even though it is not nearly as healthy). Rizzo, on the other hand, can’t just run out for a quick bite without taking all of her students along with her (that’s a joke) so dining out is not an option.
By Friday of this week we had run out of lunch for Rizzo to take so I took an inventory of what we had on hand and decided to whip up my own version of a macaroni and cheese. I’m going to do my best to describe how to make it but it won’t have many specific measurements because I made it up as I went along. I didn’t actually measure any of these ingredients and just hoped for the best. Like to hear it, here it goes.
I started off by making the pasta. This was just for Rizzo so I made about 1.5 servings based upon the serving size on the box. In this case we are talking about little, tiny macaroni pasta because we had a few extra boxes on hand. I filled up a pot with enough water and boiled the pasta per the instructions on the box until it was al dente, or about six minutes. I poured the pasta into a strainer and left it sitting in the strainer while I made up the cheese sauce.
I made the cheese sauce in the same pot that I used to boil the pasta. I started by melting about 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat then mixed in some milk. Once the butter was melted completely and the mixture was hot I started spooning in a little bit of flour at a time. I didn’t want to add a ton but just mixed in a little bit at a time until the mixture was a little bit thicker but still pretty runny.
At this point I shredded some left over Gouda cheese from Rizzo’s snack this week into the mixture. Rizzo loves cheese so I shredded a lot into the pot and kept stirring until the entire mixture was melty and cheesy. I wanted it to be a bit thinner so I added milk and stirred until I had come up with a nice looking cheese sauce. To finish off the sauce I added some smoked paprika for flavor and cut up some leftover ham for some protein (because we all know there is no protein in cheese).
I added the pasta back to the pot and mixed together the whole thing; pasta, cheese sauce, ham, and spices. It was looking pretty nice but it needed to be backed for awhile. We have some individually sized ramekins so I poured the entire mixture into one of the ramekins and set my toaster oven to 350 degrees. While the oven was heating up I shredded some Parmesan cheese (we always have this on hand for popcorn consumption) over the top of the pasta concoction. When the oven was ready, I popped the ramekin into the oven for about 15 minutes and then, voila, lunch was served.
My own mac & cheese
I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to come up with this kind of creation on my own without help from a recipe. I suppose my monthly experiment with cooking something new (see Make Me a Sandwich!) is really helping me become a better cook. Bobby Flay I ain’t but I can make a few things.
Weekly Weight Update
I’ll say that this week I didn’t feel comfortable with how it was going. I felt like I was eating too much (especially Halloween candy) and not working out enough. I don’t know why because I went for my runs on Tuesday and Saturday and I went to OTF on Thursday and Sunday, as per usual. I suppose that the last few months of being at a plateau has made me feel stagnant which is making what I do seem to not work. I’m pleased to report that I basically maintained even though Rizzo and I went out for our theatre date-night on Saturday right before the weigh-in. This week resulted in a current weight of 207.4 which is a weight loss of a whopping .2 lbs this week's and makes the total weight loss 60.4. Not bad for a Halloween and date-night week.
The first two days of this week represented the end of October and going into it I was pretty confident I’d be winning this month. I had a 3.6 mile lead which isn’t insurmountable for a mileage queen like Rizzo but I was determined not to lose another month. I didn’t have anything crazy but I was consistent and ended up winning the month of October with 167.5 miles to Rizzo’s 163.0 miles. To congratulate myself I’ll be spending a night out with some friends drinking beer and watching an impression of the Dave Matthew’s Band. It will be good times. I also was victorious during the week with 35.4 miles compared to Rizzo’s 32.6 miles. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing to celebrate my November victory but I better start coming up with something because victory is inevitable. #TeamClark #NotAtAllConfident
P.S. Here are some other pictures from the week.
