At Issue: My Dinners

My inspiration: Julia Child

Mornin' all! I have not stepped on the scale yet (I'm now doing weekly weigh-ins at home on Fridays), but I sense some of this holiday weight may be starting to come off. My clothes feel just a tad bit looser. I also kicked into high gear with my fiber-based diet and that has cut grazing in its tracks.

The way I see it now, I have absolutely no problem keeping my breakfast, lunch and snacks low calorie. You know I eat similar things every day and I like it. At issue is the dinners -- which to shed weight through calorie reduction, I must keep at around 300-400 calories. This is proving very difficult for me. On some days I am taking in 500-600 calories (estimate) for dinner. If this continues, the 15 lb. weight loss effort will be painfully slow for me. I need to be at around 1,200 calories/day to lose weight.

Now, you all know how much I love to cook. It is very, very important to me. I have a ritual where I go to the grocery every day; select my ingredients; spend time on prep; the dish cooks for awhile; then we enjoy the finished product. This is an entire process that gives me great pleasure and satisfies the creative streak in me. I tried just cooking for my husband while I ate 4 oz. of chicken or fish and a small salad, but folks I reached a point where I could not sustain that anymore.

When I join my husband in eating my creations I am happy as a clam.

I have turned to Eating Well magazine and other publications to get recipes and ideas for things I can prepare that are interesting and sometimes complex (I love a challenge). And I've been testing those out and some are very, very good. I must be careful to measure out my serving size, and I admit this has been a struggle. The dish looks and smells so good that I want to have a hearty portion. Sometimes I've been good, but other times I've given in to my cravings.

Then we have our once a week dinner out (we're committed now to just going out once a week), and as always I view that as a "reward" for watching my calories. Granted, we don't go to fast food restaurants or restaurant "chains." But the places we go to do have highly caloric dishes. And those I want the most!

However, I am not going to just give up and go back to cooking high-calorie dinners and eating with abandon. Been there, done that. I will keep searching for new ideas, do a little experimenting myself, and really target my portion size. I think that will be key for me.