Tag Archives: popcorn

Weekend Wrap Up!

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Toffee at rocket fizz

Hey everybody! I had so much fun this weekend, despite the 102 degree heat in my hometown…  Friday night, Matt and I had dinner at our favorite local Indian food place, Clay Oven. I ordered Matar Paneer in honor of my paneer-flop from the night before. It was deeeeelicious! After dinner, we went next door to Rocket Fizz, a soda and candy shop! We sampled a couple different types of toffee and I tried a low-cal rootbeer, sweetened with honey. It was only 30 calories and so refreshing to try a soda made with natural ingredients as opposed to buckets of aspartame, nutrisweet, sucralose, etc.

Pre-lobster snoozing on the sand

On Saturday, I went to water aerobics with my buddy Virginia and did some aqua-cardio for an hour. The fun in the sun didn’t stop, because Matt and I headed out to Zuma beach in Malibu where he boogie-boarded in the waves while I read and accidentally fell asleep on the sand. Note to self, and helpful hint for everyone else: If there is even a SLIGHT possibility that you will fall asleep on the beach, RE-APPLY SUNSCREEN. I am stupidly suffering from my mistake and cringing every time the crease of skin behind my knee cap moves, which is often. My legs seriously look like I’m wearing red tights, and the best part is how white my bum is in comparison. My lower half looks like a peppermint. No, it’s not sexy. Who says wisdom comes with age?

After the beach we went and saw Beasts of the Southern Wild, which is a very interesting film. Slightly depressing, but really interesting to see and learn about the people of Louisiana who live in the impoverished “bathtub” and choose to live free from modern civilization. It was a phenomenal acting job by the 5-year-old who played “Hushpuppy”, but it’s not a movie I’d pick again for a feel-good Saturday night flick.

Shelley and I rock the golden togas

Today, we went to a Golden Christmas in July party! My sweet friend Merrie hosted with her friends Brian and Erin at their gorgeous house in Thousand Oaks. The party was catered with amazing turkey, ham, roast potatoes and cheeses, and I kept well hydrated on the free flowing lemonade and iced tea. Because my friend Shelley is a creative genius, she came up with these gold togas and hair flowers for the party. Aren’t we cute? She’ll be selling homemade toffee soon… it’s out of this world, you can bet I’m going to link it as soon as her site is up!

Sweet, sweet watery relief.

 

One of the highlights of the party, besides the wonderful people and amazing food, was the crystal clear pool. I waded in and it felt like a chorus of angels singing sweet cooling relief to my sun-chapped calves. Don’t I look ecstatic? At this point Shelley and I had changed out of our stylish gold togas, because while as glittery and beautiful as they were, we quickly learned that Lamé does not breathe. It was a fabulous party, and after several hours I had to peel myself away from the cheese tray and head back to the ‘burbs to work on my thesis.

This weekend was jam packed with fun times, and while I had some food challenges (cheese tray, popcorn, birthday cake), I didn’t majorly overdo it and managed to squeeze in some exercise. I’ll be posting a weight-in post soon, but if you’ve been following the My Fitness Pal counter on the side of the blog, I’m down about 7 pounds when the scale is accurate kind to me. The past week has been a little wacky and I’ve been yo-yoing a  bit, but I think that’s more due to some salty choices and weird heat than actual weight gain, because my jeans are feeling loose. (I LOVE that feeling. Such a good feeling.)

Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful week! I start my new job tomorrow, so send me some happy first day vibes, please! :) What did you do this weekend that was fun?

 

 

 

Enter for a chance to win Skinny Pop Popcorn!

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Yummy SkinnyPop!

Hey Bloggies! You know how I have a loud mouth and asked SkinnyPop for some popcorn to give to you? Well, sometimes asking is a good idea – because the kind folks at Skinny Pop sent over a giant box of popcorn for me to give to you! As you recall, Skinny Pop is my newest and favorite find from Costco. It’s delicious and only 155 calories for four heaping cups. While the fat grams are a little higher than I’d like, this is a wonderful, salty snack that packs major volume and taste for few calories. Let me tell you – it’s actually been kind of dangerous having a giant box of popcorn sitting in my house. It’s not guilt free if ya eat the whole bag. (I haven’t done this yet. But I’ve come close. The whole bag is 699 calories. Not shabby… but I’ll try to avoid eating the whole bag.)

Today, all you have to do to enter to win one of three sets of two bags of Skinny Pop – (I know that’s confusing – basically I have six bags to give away, so three winners will get two bags each!) is leave a blog comment! I know RaffleCopter caused some confusion last time, so here’s what you have to do.

1) Leave a blog comment by scrolling to the bottom of this blog post and hitting “Leave a Reply”. You must leave a blog comment to be entered to win.

2) Press the gray button on Rafflecopter (embedded below) that says (+1 – Do It!).
a Rafflecopter giveaway

3) It’s up to you, but you have a few more chances to win if you follow the directions in RaffleCopter (ie, tweet, like on Facebook) and then just press the (+1) every time you complete a task. It’s easy, I promise!

Let me know if you have any questions! SkinnyPop did provide me with free popcorn for purposes of this giveaway. And it’s delicious. Oh so delicious. The giveaway ends next Wednesday, 7.18 at 12:01 AM EST. Please share with your friends for an extra dose of salty and buttery karma. If you win, I will ship out your popcorn and soon you’ll be on your way to guilt-free poppin’! GOOD LUCK!

A Popcorn Fiend’s Review: Skinny Pop Popcorn

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Picture to show scale. This is a giant bag, folks!

This week while husband and I roamed around Costco (him begging me to hurry up, me  distracted by 10,000 bars of soap and a barrel of cheetos as big as my head), I spotted a new face in the snack section. It lay gleaming in a bin like a shiny, oversized pillow – but it was filled with popcorn! And not just any popcorn … SKINNY POPCORN!

Those of you who have been following my blog for awhile know how much I love popcorn, so I’m kind of an expert on this topic. I bought the bag for a mere $4.99 for a sack that shamefully only lasted three days (Don’t worry – I had help), and I want to share my findings with you!

1) Love how it doesn’t have the stale, kind of styrofoam texture that most pre-popped and bagged popcorns have. It tasted light and crunchy, and was surprisingly very fresh.

2) It’s very simple – no fake cheese powder here. Just three ingredients: sunflower oil, corn, salt. Tasty and not loaded with preservatives. Two thumbs up.

135 calories for lots of crunchin'!

3) The best part was, I could have a gigantic bowl for only 135 calories. With me, volume is the key to satisfaction, and a nice big bowl was the perfect snack for studying that didn’t deplete my calorie balance for the day.

Skinny Pop didn’t send me anything to review or pay me for my opinion, I just felt like sharing this good find with all of you because I personally think snacks are one of the hardest parts of dieting. Maybe they’ll like this post and send me some popcorn for a giveaway for you! ;) Check out Skinny Pop here, and if you see it, give it a try and let me know what you think!

Weekly Weigh In June 11th

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Water Aerobics has been helping me shed some flubber! PS - Like my new swimsuit?

I approached Monday’s morning’s weigh in with a little bit of caution – I had been tracking well, but splurged on movie theatre popcorn, and also went slightly over my calories on Friday night. All in all I knew I didn’t “blow it”, but I wasn’t sure I’d be in the weight loss zone. Well,  I must have done something right, because this week I….

Lost 2 pounds!

YAY! I was kind of in disbelief, because this marks two consecutive weeks of having awesome weight loss success. I’m down five pounds in two weeks, which is shamefully more than I’ve lost in a year. Damn yo-yoing. Anyways, It just goes to show you that sometimes it’s just the smallest little things that can make a huge difference. Here’s what I’ve been doing that’s contributed to my success so far:

1)   Meeting every week on Monday mornings with my registered dietician. She keeps me in check and helps me work through upcoming challenges… and she reads my blog!

2)   Drinking water. Lots of it! It’s crazy how sometimes I confuse hunger with being thirsty. I’m trying to drink water now when I feel snacky.

3)   Realizing that little bites, licks and tastes add up. The things I pick at when I’m cooking can definitely add up, so I’m trying to be mindful of tracking every single thing that goes into my mouth.

4)   Allowing myself at least one good “splurge” a week – but realizing I need to balance it out with good choices otherwise, like the movie popcorn last week. I made a conscious decision to eat light the rest of the day and the week, and it didn’t mess me up on the scale.

5)   Letting myself feel crazy motivated and enthusiastic about my success. I’m a pretty enthusiastic person, and when I’m happy about something, I feel that much more propelled to keep going. I have some momentum now, and I love sharing with my friends that I’ve had some good weight loss.

How’s your week going so far?

Cake, Cake, a Smackerel of Cake!

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Using the star tip to ice sugar cookies

Tonight I started my first Wilton Decorating Basics class at Michael’s Crafts. It’s only $22 for a four week session, and I get to learn basic icing piping techniques like shells, stars, flowers and ribbons. Tonight we started by learning star tips on cookies. While in class, the topic of weight loss came up, and as usual, a few people were shocked that I was trying to lose weight while taking a decorating class. “Isn’t it, like, torture?” asked one valley-girl teenager, smacking her gum. That’s what’s so weird… cake is fun and pretty and fancy and all, but I’m not a craver of cake. You all know by now that my poison is popcorn and salty crunchies…not cake! Cake, Cupcakes, Cookies – no worries. These cookies will be eagerly devoured by my co-workers anyways, so they won’t be loungin’ around my stomping ground for long.

Star Tipped Icing Cookies

Cakes and cookies and other crap aside, speaking of junk food, this week I saw 21 Jump Street with my gal pal Kelly. (It’s super funny, by the way!) I had decided to treat myself to some popcorn, so I diligently bought a small bag and passed on the butter. So – it was totally delicious and salty and yummy, but I should have stopped half way through, but I kept going and ate it all – and then, I had a gnarly stomach ache the rest of the night and woke up at 3:30 AM with heartburn, which I NEVER have. It’s really interesting how even just a week or so of healthy eating can translate into “Oh hi, junk food. We’re going to use you to remind Alyssa’s body that junk food is bad in oh so many ways. Let’s start with a stomach ache, then add heart burn, and then we’ll finish off with crazy bloating!” So it was good food for thought for me. I enjoyed the popcorn, but I don’t know if the side effects were worth it.

Do you guys notice that even subtle changes you make in favor of a healthier lifestyle can make a big impact on how you feel? It might have been my hyper sensitive imagination, but I even felt like I was more sluggish and low energy today after my junky treat. What do you think – are you what you eat?

Weekly Weigh In #3

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Today was my third weigh in, and I’ll admit that I approached it with a somewhat pessimistic attitude. After last week’s weigh in, I was frustrated and disappointed that a week of staying on plan had gained me a gain! This morning, I got on my scale and was irritated that the number hadn’t budged in the direction I was looking for – in fact, it had stayed exactly the same. However, through my drama I knew I had to wait until I actually weighed in at the Weight Watchers meeting to make any decisions about the plan or my progress. So every time that little weight-loss rebel popped up on my shoulder, I told her to stuff it!  And happily, today I am

down 1 pound

It’s not a gigantic loss, but it’s a pound. And if you think about a pound in terms of hamburger meat, is a good chunk of blubber. I needed this little loss, because I needed an “attitude adjustment”, and now I’m encouraged to keep tracking, keep exercising, and keep losing weight.

My breakfasts as of late... Greek Yogurt, Fruit and Coffee. 5 points!

I’ll admit – this weekend will have challenges. I’m visiting my friend Monique in Seattle (She’s getting her Master’s in Social Work at U-Dub – cool!) and I tend to get a little out of control when I’m out of town and having fun. Wine, popcorn, dining out – these are the traps into which I often fall. But she’s also health conscious and I think we’ll try and hold each other accountable and get some exercise into our days. I’m now down 3.2 pounds in three weeks, and next week I’d love to hit five pounds.

So yay! Weight Watchers is working! I’m working! It’s working! Sometimes, a little encouragement is all you need!