What I Ate Wednesday!

Hey everybody! Today I’m participating in a link up called #WIAW – What I Ate Wednesday!

I started the day with some Special K Red Berries with milk and a sliced banana. I’m not a huge cereal person, but this was on sale at the store and I’ve been getting sick of my Greek yogurt/English muffin combination. This was tasty and light enough not to weigh me down.

Breakfast

I have a couple days off before I start my new job, so I cleaned ALL DAY. Whew. If you ever want to work your booty off, bust out the shop vac and start sucking up the corners of your house. I never knew that much cat hair/spider webs/dust was possible. (Yeah, yeah, I know – who has a day off and cleans? This girl.) When I was sweaty and gross from cleaning, I had some lunch… a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with a side salad with fat free ranch.

Lunch

Then I did some errands and some more chores before having a mid-afternoon snack of rainier cherries and a Hansen’s soda. Rainier cherries may be prettier than Bing, but I don’t think they’re any tastier. I’ll stick with my blood-red cherries, thank you very much.

Cherries and Soda

Dinner was a little bit of a treat – something way heavier than I usually eat. Matt and I picked up some sourdough bread from Boudin on our way home from Lake Tahoe, and we paired it with Italian beef with sweet peppers. I grew up eating this Chicago classic – a pot roast cooked all day in a crock pot with onions, green peppers, garlic and Italian seasonings. Spoon it over some toasted bread with melted cheese and you’re in Heaven. This sandwich came in at about 475 calories… high, but worth every bite.

Knife N' Fork Italian Beef Sandwich

Then, Matt and I watched the first episode of this season’s Breaking Bad… (OMG! Anyone else watch?! CRAZZZZZY!) and then I needed some dessert. I settled on this mini Cadbury Caramello ice cream bar at 160 calories.

Image used from Goodhousekeeping.com

I ended the day with 97 calories leftover, and I’m pleasantly full. Today was a good example of how eating for weight loss doesn’t always have to be a drag – I got to eat plenty of food that was delicious and yummy and stayed within my calorie count. I’ll now be weighing in Fridays at my awesome RD’s suggestion (my weekend bloat can screw up my whole “healthy eating” mindset if I weigh in on a Monday). I’ve also gotten some good workouts in this week, so I’m excited to see what next week’s weigh in looks like!

So, now it’s your turn – what did you eat on Wednesday? If you want to blog it, visit Peas and Crayons and don’t forget to link up!

Review: Uncle Sam Cereal

Hello friends: This is my first food review! Special thanks to Attune Foods and Uncle Sam cereal for reaching out. Please note that I was provided a complimentary review sample of this cereal in exchange for a review.

Cereal and I have a weird relationship. At one point in my teen years, I stockpiled four boxes of Count Chocula cereal after calling multiple stores in the area to find it. I never liked Cheerios, Kix or Wheetabix – but the sugary, chalky pellets of puffed who-knows-what always tickled my taste buds, and I’d chow down on bowls of Lucky Charms or worse, Reeses puffs. As I grew aware of how being fat was seriously unhealthy, I gave up my affair with sugar-bomb cereal and traded it in for a bland but stable relationship with whole wheat toast.

In my college years, I found the glories of fiber and became a fan of Trader Joe’s “Twigs, Flakes and Clusters.” Since then I’ve dabbled in a few high fiber cereals, as I find them to be filling, low in fat, and much easier to digest than the brightly-colored fatty-flakes I once loved.

The cereal - no artificial colors here!

In a wonderfully written letter about the product (Copywriters can’t help but notice the words – clever, informative and succinct! Well done, copywriter), I found out that Uncle Sam cereal was once lauded as a “natural laxative cereal.”  That’s a claim that may frighten people who don’t want their bowels quaking shortly after breakfast, but I found it to be true in the most ungross way. Sorry – fiber is so important for your body, and this cereal helps move everything along! A 3/4 cup serving packs a whopping TEN grams of fiber! For comparison: 3/4 cup Captain Crunch has less than gram of fiber. Fiber fail, Captain Crunch!

Four Core Ingredients

What’s the most important thing about this cereal? How it tastes! I’ll admit – I was skeptical at first of a cereal that lists only four ingredients. (Isn’t it sad that I’d probably be less suspicious of  an ingredient list longer than the bible?)Thankfully, my suspicions were wrong, and the taste is nutty, simple and light, with a nice crunch. It’s not sweetened, so people who are used to the taste of “Artificial O’s” might think it a bit bland, but I drizzled some clover honey over the top of it and it was perfect. I ate mine consistently with 2% cow’s milk and a drizzle of honey – very good in the morning, it kept me satisfied until lunch time. I wanted to try grinding the flakes in a food processor and use them for onion ring breading, but my busy work week got the best of me and I actually LIKED what I was eating, so the box disappeared in pure breakfast consumption.

Milk, Honey and Uncle Sam

One more thing: Uncle Sam cereal is a verified product in the Non-GMO project. This means that it’s made out of ingredients that aren’t genetically modified. This means no cloning sheep, no neon green dyes, no harvesting crushed beetle shells for super powers. This is a good thing – and a cause that makes me happy to support a brand.

I recommend Uncle Sam if you’re looking for a filling, healthful breakfast cereal. You can find Uncle Sam at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Wal-Mart and most grocery stores nationwide. If you try it, let me know what you think!