This is somethi…

This is something different today. This is my rough draft of the culinary article I’m going to submit to the paper. It’s kind of boring. I don’t know. Well here it is.

I’ve always loved food. Ever since I knew what food was, I loved it. Now, you might be thinking, “Everybody loves food. Big deal.” Do you see the heavens open up when you bite into a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Have you heard choirs of angels sing when you smell chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven? I do. I really love food.

In every good relationship, there is an unseen, but completely tangible factor at play. That factor is respect. Until recently, I was a jerk to Food. I abused him. I ate whatever I wanted, and expected Food to be okay with this. He wasn’t. I wasn’t getting any exercise, and I knew I needed to change my lifestyle, but I didn’t know how to begin. Truth is, starting isn’t the hard part. The hard part is staying on the right path. I could go on and on about the annoying parts of living healthy that I faced, like going to Applebee’s and so desperately craving chicken fingers but opting for a “550 Calories or Less” meal, but that’s boring.

Something I think all eighteen-year-old girls can relate to is the sheer terror we all feel when someone brings up the notorious Freshman Fifteen. I’m only a freshman, but I know that sticking to a new, healthy way of life can be hard. That’s why you have to take it one day at a time.

What I mean by this is don’t look at the big picture. Don’t say to yourself, “I want to lose thirty pounds.” Instead, say, “I want to lose one pound this week.” Set healthy goals for yourself. Instead of getting a cheeseburger, cheese fries, and a cupcake at lunch, swap out the burger for a turkey sandwich, and maybe the cupcake for a side of fruit. Let me give you a few tips that any Arcadian can put into action.

 

-                    You have something to read for class. Bring it to the gym. Sit down on a bike, pedal, and read.

-                    Walk everywhere. I mean it. If you need soap, walk to Walmart and back. Kistler, Thomas, and Dilworth kids: walk up and down the dangerous hill on your way to the Commons.

-                    Every day, treat yourself. Do you really love the chocolate chocolate chip cookies from the chat? Well, you can have them if you eat grilled chicken and salad for dinner.

-                    Don’t waste your calories on drinks! Drink water! Save your calories for food! I’m begging you!

-                    LIMIT YOUR CARBOHYDRATE INTAKE. I am asking you of this, friend to friend. You know that big spot in the take out container from the Dining Hall? Don’t fill it with pasta.

 

And most importantly, stop eating when you’re full. Eat what you like, but don’t go crazy. Enjoy your food the way it’s meant to be enjoyed.

It is safe to s…

It is safe to say that this picture accurately describes the recent events of my life: food (tomato and cheese panini, brown sugar cinnamon chips, the gloriously beautiful double chocolate chip cookies), reading (I finished Eat, Pray, Love during this meal), Arcadia (that’s my terrifying I.D. picture), and soda (I texted my mom today saying that unlimited access to diet soda was totally worth the grand tuition of 47,000 dollars a year.)

 

I think God has been looking out for me, telling me, “Hey. Worrier. It’s all going to be alright.”

I’ve been trying my best to listen to him, and I think opening up my ears has definitely helped a bit.

Now besides that let me tell you about cookies.

Am I allowed to blog solely about cookies?

If not, and I’m breaking some ancient rule regarding the laws of blogging, I’m sorry, and please ignore me.

If cookie was a major, I’d be a cookie major.

I think I only love one thing more than cookies. I love my mom more than cookies. And mom, cookies are a close second.

I could eat them all day with every meal but I have to have some restraint, but I’ve decided I can’t go without them any longer. I can do any kind of diet, as long as I can consume the satisfaction of what is a delightfully moist and chocolately cookie.

I’m pretty happy. I’m worrying less. I’m thinking more about happy things and less about tiring, saddening things. I just want you to know- I like food. And you.

Ok, enough incoherent rambling.

Good luck and good night!

Amanda

This morning I …

This morning I was eating these, and I was thinking in blog mode to myself, saying, “I fucking love Cocoa Puffs.”

Honestly, I don’t give a shit about people saying cereal is unhealthy. My cereal with nonfat milk is better for me than your freaking whole grain bagel with cream cheese, OK? GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS.

I already failed at my only getting salad and fruit for lunch every day this week, and proof is in this picture. I just really wanted some effin’ goldfish and I wasn’t going to let the man (aka my stupid rules) tell me what I could and couldn’t do. After this tasty lunch I read more of Eat, Pray, Love, which by the way is a phenomenal book that I recommend to you all, and then I did some meditation for the first time. I closed my eyes for about 40 minutes and didn’t move my position at all while I breathed the word Hamsa to myself. I read it in E.P.L. and while I did not see a choir of angels descend through the heavens and I didn’t see the big man with Jesus on his lap, there was something really spiritual and personal about the whole process. I think I’ll try it again tomorrow.

Then I went to the gym (-500 calories) and I got my dinner. Which was heavenly and the cookies weren’t too great for me but I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. So here it is. (Tomato and cheese panini accompanied by a 100 calorie pack of pretzels and two chocolate chip cookies, Hallelujah amen)

 

Also, tomorrow is the first newspaper meeting here.

I’m really excited, and I told the editor that I’d be most interested in writing opinion pieces, but THEN I FOUND OUT THAT THEY HAVE A SPOT for culinary pieces. So tomorrow I’m going to tell her I want to do that. I hope not too many people are doing that now (I doubt it.) Today was a pretty good day. I hope yours was, too.

Amanda

I’ve decided t…

I’ve decided that I’m too busy and too ditzy to take a picture of every single meal.

So, instead, I will try my best to take pictures of every meal, but more realistically take a picture when I remember to. Which seems to be happening once a day.

Today for breakfast I ate Lucky Charms and a banana. Let me tell you. I love Lucky Charms.

This week, I vowed to myself to only eat salad and fruit for lunch, accompanied midafternoon by a 100 calorie snack. (Or two.) 

For dinner, I’m doing what I’ve been doing. And then at night I can eat one more snack when I get hungry. Which is about………..now.

I’m stressed.

About school, about making friends, about extracurricular activities, about keeping my old friends, about maintaining my relationship with my family. About being a good person. About not being good at anything and wanting so desperately to be good at something.

Anxiety.

Anyway, this was my dinner. It was good. But then again, I think just about anything is good. I need to get much more judgmental if I want to become a food critic.

I ate blueberry…

I ate blueberry waffles for breakfast, sugar free syrup, hold the butter, accompanied by a pear. Obviously feeling bad about yesterday.

Got General Tso’s, tofu, split it up for lunch and dinner, maybe not the most healthy choice, but I haven’t eaten anything else all day and I don’t feel the desire to. Probably because of all the hardcore binging I did yesterday. 

Also burned 500 calories on the ellipticals. So I’m slowly recovering from yesterday.

Goal for the week- eat only salad and fruit for lunch every day.

Today, I ate th…

Today, I ate this for breakfast.

 

After that, I ate some Twizzlers. And then some of these.

 

 

Then I ate this cupcake, and this apple.

 

Also these.

Then for dinner, I ate this.

 

^ And that’s my dog in the background. (If you’re wondering, I’m home. That’s why I’m eating so poorly. Mom says you have to treat yourself. So in typical Amanda fashion, I’m going overboard.)

On top of all of that terrible-ness, I’m going to eat cookie ice cream later. And I weighed myself, right after all of the crap I ate today (something you should never do unless you want to kill your confidence), and it read 4 pounds heavier. Dear lord, I better be four pounds lighter breakfastless tomorrow morning.

My light mood has gone down the drain.

Meh.

Amanda

T-t-t-tasty tas…

T-t-t-tasty tasty

Fergilicious def

Fergilicious def

Fergilicious dd–dd–d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dd

Anyway this is so good, me and the roomies brought the food back to the room because we at lunch at 2:30, and the dining hall closes at six, and we weren’t hungry at the time. So I had a nice serving of deliciously college cold pizza, a salad with my usual fix-ins, some canned pears and peaches, and what I’m guessing was a Cocoa Krispies rice krispy treat. The krispy treats here fall apart way too easily and I’m not a huge fan of that, but it was good nonetheless. 

I would say in all this meal was probably around 600 calories. Not too bad considering at most I’ll probably only have a 100 calorie snack after that. My stomach hurts. It’s growling at me. Maybe I won’t have that snack after all.

Amanda

I’ve reached a…

I’ve reached an official point of ashamedness.

This is the garbage left over from my lunch today. I remembered, after I threw away the container. Now, you see, I have a semi excuse for this one. It turned out, by some funky way the school’s system works that if you got food in the dining hall at all before four o’ clock on a weekend you weren’t allowed to come back until after four without paying out of pocket. Balls.

Anyway, me and my roomie were mighty pissed about this since we already pay, what, like $50,000 dollars to go here a year. So we thought them charging us $5 for food when we have MEALS to use on our meal plan was a dick move.

So I ate my feelings.

And it was oh so delicious.

A turkey, cheese, lettuce, and tomato panini. Hold the chips, because I want to have double chocolate chip cookies. Diet Pepsi. (no Coke available.) Get back to my room, grab a pack of 100 cal pretzels to go with my panini.

Eating my cookies, I said, “I feel the need to blog about these cookies.” First time I said something like that out loud. But it’s true.

Those cookies were fucking BOSS. Let me tell you that.

Earlier today, I walked to the Glenside Farmer’s market and bought  locally made pastries. (The walk burned 150 calories.) They look crispy and puff pastry-esque, and they’re drizzled with chocolate. I’m bringing them home tomorrow so I hope my family likes them.

On a different topic I’m trying to be Ms. Really Responsible College Student, so I’m basically drowning in all of this work I feel obligated to do, none of which my professors said I needed to do. Whatever. Also, I did about 320 calories on the ellipticals so maybe this day hasn’t been a complete failure.

Okay, college is fun yay,

Amanda

I just wrote a …

I just wrote a whole post and it got deleted, and I have nowhere near enough time to re-write.

Here’s the gist:

I took pics of bkfst and lunch from yesterday, but forgot to take pictures of dinner yesterday and breakfast this morning. Dinner yesterday was a veggie burger, salad, and an unsatisfyingly small brownie. Breakfast today was better. I had pears, a banana, french toast and eggs. Mmm.

I’ll let you try and guess the food that’s in these pictures. Most of it is fairly common.

So I ate lunch….

So I ate lunch. The picture is dumb, like me. Because I remembered that I had to photograph my meal after I finished my salad. The other part that is dumb: that vegetable-y looking substance? Yeah. I didn’t eat that. It was supposed to be sweet and sour chicken, but I only got one piece of chicken in it. A more accurate name would be sweet and sour boiled vegetables. Disgusting. That little tapioca pudding with a dollop of whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles, however, was quite satisfying. And then, since my sweet and sour chicken was a massive disappointment, on the way out I picked up a tuna melt thing on half a bagel. Maybe not the most healthy choice, but hey, it’s college. I could’ve done a lot worse.

 

I got my dinner to-go, because my roommates were headed to Walmart and I wasn’t sure if anyone would be in the caf that I knew. (Plus my International Studies Professor assigned a 70 page reading that needs to be done by Tuesday. Not to mention it was the first class. [Fun side note: As I am writing this blog I really should be doing my homework. Yay for blogs.])

The picture is a bit deceiving because it looks kind of gross, but this was probably one of my more satisfying meals as a college student. They were out of the romaine lettuce I usually get with my salad so I had to get the spinach leaves, and they were also out of ranch dressing so I was stuck with honey mustard. I stuck to my typical garnishes of cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and craisins, and the salad ended up being one of my favorites thus far. Mind you, I’ve eaten probably 12 salads already. I’ve been here for 6 days.

The alfredo noodles were delicious, but bland. I didn’t care, though, because I never ever ever ever get noodles because the calories can add up so quickly. I went for it anyway because a small portion like the one I got isn’t going to make me gain 3 pounds.

The yogurt in the left corner is covered in granola. I didn’t want fruit, and I didn’t want to get dessert from the cafeteria again in one day, so I went for yogurt. While granola may be high in calories it doesn’t even compare to what can be in some fancy desserts.

I’ll probably end a long night of reading and getting things done tonight with a 90 Calorie Brownie- or a Nutella-covered rice cake, if I’m feeling adventurous. We’ll see.

Enjoy!!

Amanda

Eating tips-

Always always always always make the salad the biggest portion on your plate. Put something fun on it, like craisins. Throw in some vegetables. Don’t go crazy with too much dressing. If you want pasta, or say, fried chicken, just get a small portion. It won’t kill you. I promise.

Eat snacks throughout the day. Like a 100 calorie pack of pretzels, or an apple, or banana, or a bowl of cereal. Don’t starve yourself, you’ll be more likely to make a mad dash for the dessert table if you make yourself too hungry throughout the day.

Vary your diet. You’re going to get bored with a veggie burger every day, or a turkey sandwich every day. Get soup one day. Get a different soup another day.

If water bores you, get a light lemonade! Light lemonade tastes very much like normal ‘ade. I get it all the time. And I’m sacrificing about 10 calories for it. So worth it.