Better than a Restaurant

How (and why) to dine in on better, cheaper, healthier versions of some of your favorite dishes.

Whether you're watching your waistline or watching your bottom line, you might want to think twice before grabbing your favorite fast food or sitting down to a big plate of comfort food at your favorite restaurant. With a little planning and a few minutes in your kitchen, you can make your favorite foods taste better, cost less and be a lot healthier.

Click HERE to get the ideas.

10-Minute Makeover: Eat Less Without Realizing It

You can eat less without even realizing it. Here's the secret recipe, according to Brian Wansink, PhD., author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Read the article here.

1. Serve meals on nine- to ten-inch plates. Any smaller and you'll be going back for seconds; larger, and you'll pile on more to begin with.

2. Take the serving bowls off the table! The only exception: the ones containing vegetables.

3. Drink from a skinny glass. Your mind perceives height more readily than width, so you'll think you had more.

4. Choose a small serving spoon: In one Cornell study, participants ate 11 percent less ice cream when they used a petite scoop.

5. Control your environment—if the room in which you eat is too bright and loud, or too dark and quiet, you'll tend to eat more because you become overstimulated or linger too long at the table.

Broccoli-A Great Snack!

Do you ever just eat a bowl of steamed broccoli? I love it as an afternoon snack sprayed with my favorite, I can't believe it's not butter spray. I can have ALOT of it for 0 points!

Slimming Buffet Strategies

Did you all read this weeks WW email? I thought there were some good tips.

What are the best weight-loss options at a buffet?

Need ideas for coping with restaurant buffets? Want some good snack ideas? In our Q&A series, WeightWatchers.com nutritionist and food editor Leslie Fink, MS, RD, answers questions about food, nutrition and weight loss.

Q: What is the best way to tackle a restaurant buffet?
Read the article below

A: Stop, look, and listen to your stomach!

In other words, don't take a morsel until you've looked over all of your options and determined which foods really appeal to you. This way, you're less likely to fill up your plate halfway through the buffet only to realize that a few of your favorite foods are at the other end of the table. Once you've eyed all of the goods, try the following tactics:

• Make sure not to arrive on a totally empty stomach. A little food in your belly should help squash uncontrollable temptations.
  
  
• Fill up your plate with a respectable amount of healthy foods: fresh vegetable sticks, lightly dressed salads, shrimp cocktail, freshly carved turkey breast, fruit.
  
  
• Then round out your plate with a few foods that you cannot, or would not, make for yourself but that you enjoy. For instance, would you like to have an ordinary baked potato and eat the whole thing, or would you rather splurge on a few spoonfuls of praline-topped mashed sweet potatoes?
  
  
• Sit and digest for 10 minutes before you go back for round two. It takes a while for your body to know it's full.
  
  
• Scratch the I-must-eat-my-money's-worth attitude. Yes, it's an all-you-can-eat buffet, but if you go overboard, the physical (and for some, the emotional) cost of going off your plan can be costlier than the value of any uneaten food.
  
  
• Consider ordering à la carte. Although your meal may end up costing as much as—or even more than—the buffet, you're paying a premium for built-in portion control.
  
  
• If sweets are your weakness, plan for them in advance with smart planning and by engaging in extra physical activity. Pick out your favorite dessert or two, but make sure to cut each item in half at the buffet table, or ask the server to slice it smaller for you—mega pieces of cake often lurk at buffet tables.

Wii Fit PLUS 40 Hours banked: GOLD Piggy Bank!

If you don't use wii fit yet, you should! skate boarding, boxing and super hula are a few GREAT workouts! (approx. 200 calories in 45 minutes) 40 hours down, going for 50!

8 Energy Zappers—and How to Avoid Them

Read the Oprah article HERE

1. Energy drain: Other people's expectations
Are you living someone else's dream for you? You're putting out energy but starving emotionally. The other person gets all the satisfaction.

Energy move: Declare independence
You bought in; you can set yourself free. No confrontation needed, just "I don't have to expect that of myself." Worst-case scenario: Someone who's not you will be disappointed. You will feel wonderful.

2. Energy drain: Loss of self
As kids, we had to play by the rules; our unique energy got caged.

Energy move: Personalize your life
Ask yourself, If it were up to me, what would I...hang on my wall? Wear to work? Do for fun? Find the pockets of freedom where you can be more yourself.

3. Energy drain: Deprivation
Duties and responsibilities fill your days. You gain weight trying to get emotional energy from food.

Energy move: Add pleasure, beauty, fun
Satisfying experiences, large and small, are the real nourishment you crave. Plan a big treat to look forward to—and a little one every day.

4. Energy drain: Envy
We often don't feel envy directly—but we might find someone else's good fortune depressing.

Energy move: Count your blessings
Comparison is a loser's game. Look at what you have, and actively feel grateful. (P.S. That person you envy—you don't know how messy her life really is. Chances are you wouldn't want it if you had it.)

5. Energy drain: Worry
When you worry, you think you're dealing with things, but you're just suffering. Worry never comes up with good ideas. It torments and exhausts us.

Energy move: Get going
Action is the cure for worry. Do one thing that brings you a step closer to coping. If it's the middle of the night, get up and write a to-do list.

6. Energy drain: Unfinished business
Unmade decisions and postponed projects drain you.

Energy move: Do it or dump it
Forget the perfect decision—just trust yourself and make a choice. Put projects in an appointment book. If you can't find any good time, that's a signal you don't want to do it. So don't.

7. Energy drain: Overcommitment
You're always saying "yes"—to your boss, mother, kids, friends; to requests, favors, meetings.

Energy move: Say "yes" to yourself
Tell someone else "no" every once in a while, just to feel your own power. You'll gain a whole new sense of your ability to take care of yourself.

8. Energy drain: Holding on to loss
Fresh loss is an emergency. But old losses you can't let go of are dead weight.

Energy move: Cry all your tears
Indulge in big-time mourning. Take off from work, stay in bed, and do nothing but cry till you're dry—and bored. Then go out and embrace life.

Frustrated by slow weightloss...

or in my case steady weight gain? It's no time to slow down or worse yet, give up! For me I'm going to stop weighing myself DAILY, and keep really good track of what I eat. I'm giving myself this week to get back on track.
I just love this writer. I wish he had a weekly meeting I could attend!

The 10% Solution

You May Not Need to Lose as Much as You Thought

-- By Mike Kramer, Staff Writer Read his article HERE

Are you a weight loss failure?

Before you answer that question, let’s talk about what failure means.

A recent study found that, in the nonsensical weight loss world, most failure has more to do with failing to meet faulty expectations than with failing to lose weight. This may not seem like a big difference, but in reality, it’s HUGE.

In other words, you may be experiencing success, but still feel like you’re failing. So, we must find a way to use our expectations to motivate rather than to berate.

According to the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the average "Dream" weight loss is 38% of the dieter’s current weight. Also:

• a 31% weight loss would make the average dieter "Happy"
• a 25% weight loss would be "Acceptable".

And most disturbing of all,

• a 15.7% weight loss would be "Disappointing".

So the 200-pound woman who loses 30 pounds would actually be disappointed in her results!

No wonder there are so many frustrated dieters out there. They may be frustrated even when their programs are working!

Phyllo Fruit Tart

Haven't tried this one yet but I think I could eat all 8 servings!


A light summer dessert with one of my favorite things, white chocolate!! This would also be wonderful with mixed berries!

I am taking a little family vacation, so I asked my friend Gina Dunn to guest post. Gina and I have a lot in common, we both love to cook light, we both love cooking magazines and cookbooks, and we have the same name! She recently started her first blog, Point-less Meals, but has been emailing her recipes to a long list of friends almost daily along with photos for a while so she was able to fill up her blog with lots of recipes from her past. Please welcome her!

Phyllo Fruit Tart
Recipe from Point-less Meals
Servings: 8 • Serving Size: 1/8th • Points: 4 pts
Calories: 183 • Fat: 6 g • Protein: 4.5 g • Carb: 26 g • Fiber: 3 g

• 1 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• 8 sheets phyllo dough (14 x 9)
• 1 pkg. (8 oz) FF cream cheese
• 3 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 cup Cool Whip Free
• 1 can (11 oz) mandarin oranges, drained
• 4 kiwifruit, peeled and sliced
• 1-1/2 cups sliced strawberries
• 1 oz white baking chocolate, melted

In a small bowl, combine butter and oil. Place one sheet of phyllo dough on a baking sheet. Brush with butter mixture. Repeat with remaining sheets. Bake at 400 for 5-7 minutes or until browned. Cool completely.

Beat cream cheese until smooth. Add powdered sugar. Beat well. Fold in Cool Whip. Spread over cooled phyllo. Top with fruit. Melt chocolate in microwave and drizzle over fruit.

Original Source: Taste of Home's "Healthy Cooking"

1 PT Jamba on a stick!

(Thank-you HG for this heads up!)
Jamba Yogurt & Sorbet Bars
PER SERVING (1 bar): 80 - 90 calories, 1 - 2g fat, 20 - 25mg sodium, 18 - 20g carbs, 3g fiber, 12 - 13g sugars, 1g protein -- POINTS® value 1*

The smoothie people are spreading their talents around, and these bars definitely have our attention. In Vanilla Blueberry Pomegranate Perfection, Vanilla Strawberry Jubilation, and the SPECTACULARLY AMAZING Coconut Pineapple Passion Smashin' (yeah, we're playing favorites), they could be the sweet treats that help you beat the heat. (End rhyming spree.)

Re-Post

I know that I posted this back in May but it deems reposting. Sometimes we get caught feeling sorry for ourselves and assume the victim mentality and forget the power we all have within us to make things happen.

The Victim Trap
Stephen Covey: Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

Half of us spend time on urgent things—and not important things. It's like an urgency addiction: We need what we're doing to be pressing, or we feel guilty about it. But to succeed at change, you must become the creating force of your own life. That means instead of focusing on the urgent thing—it acts on you—you must focus on the important thing and making it happen—you act on it.

One habit that gets in the way of success is the victim mentality. I worked with Viktor Frankl, a Nazi prison camp survivor, for many years. His initial response at the hands of his captors was, Why do I have to suffer so? But later he began to change the question to, What is life asking of me? Each time he started to feel himself the victim, he would find someone suffering more and give half his meager rations to the person. His mantra became, "He who has a 'why' can live with any 'what' or live with any 'how.'"

I phoned Viktor before he passed away and told him how grateful I was for his life's work. He said, "Stephen, you talk to me as if I'm checking out." He was in the intensive care unit. He was blind. His wife was reading to him five hours a day. And yet he said he had two more projects he was trying to finish up.

Even if you feel like a victim of your circumstances and have no formal authority, try to create your own moral authority. Show that you have personal courage.

Heinz Simply Heinz Tomato Ketchup

PER SERVING (1 tbsp.): 20 calories, 0g fat, 190mg sodium, 5g carbs, 0g fiber, 4g sugars, 0g protein -- POINTS® value 0*

Lovers of ketchup and natural ingredients, prepare to par-tay! While there are other all-natural options out there, everyone knows Heinz makes the best ketchup. This sugar-sweetened condiment does away with high-fructose corn syrup, so you can dip, douse, spread, and slather while keeping things anti-artificial.

Self's Healthy Food Awards

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