Sam's Spot: Producing that Perfect Pizza Pie

Welcome faithful readers!  Small Steps, Big Changes is keeping things fresh with a guest contributor, the beloved boyfriend and Rachel's chef-in-residence, Mr. Sam Steffen.  

Today's post will cover making that perfect homemade pizza.  This is one of my favorite go-to meals.  Pizza is a wonderful outlet to express your cooking creativity.  There are endless varieties to push the boundaries well past the Pepperoni Pizza (though this still has its place).  I have used ingredients that I never would think of putting on a pizza (pear, syrup, apple, lamb, etc.).  Overall, it is simple to make the perfect pizza no matter if you are just starting or if you consider yourself an expert.  Want to know the secret?  Throw away the convention that pizza needs a tomato sauce or mozzarella cheese, and simply top the pizza with your favorite ingredients.  Think about it, how can combining your favorite ingredients on top of a pizza crust go wrong?  You are making it in the comfort of your own home, so no one is judging you if you decide that the crawfish would be the coup de grace ingredient for your pizza (Crawfish & Andouille Pizza for example?).  Most of all have fun making your pie.

The Planning Process 

There are very few rules when it comes to homemade pizza making.  The first step I do whenever I start conceiving a pizza is to go online and search the internet for ideas. Typically, I start with a concept.  For example, the other day I was in an Asian cuisine mood and wanted to try pizza with an Asian twist.  Though, I defaulted to a BBQ chicken pizza to use some leftover chicken, I do have ideas for next time.  I crossed paths with this interesting recipe for Asian BBQ Pizza.  Though, I always try to put a twist on any recipe and would probably use some hoison sauce as an additional ingredient for the marinade.  So now that we completed our Google Search we can start the most important step of pizza.

The Crust

Really the only qualification to make something a pizza is crust.  A pizza doesn't need to have tomato-based sauce, mozzarella cheese, or anything that we consider basic pizza ingredients.  Therefore, I consider the crust to be the most important part of the pizza.  And for me to consider a pizza to be truly homemade, the crust needs to be hand-crafted from a dough made from scratch (exception- dough can be purchased, but a mass-produced Boboli pre-cooked crust simply can not taste as good as fresh, homemade crust).  

I have a default crust recipe that I make in my bread-maker.  It is an herbed wheat dough that I spruce up with fresh herbs and garlic.  I do admit that I should begin to start branching out, but it just tastes so delicious!  

The Preparation - Use a Cooking Stone

After the dough has been made, take out a cooking stone and cover lightly with cornmeal.  A cooking stone makes a huge difference.  Ever seen the wood-fired ovens that some restaurants use?  All of them use cooking stones, there is a reason for that... It allows you to crank the oven up and put a light char on the toppings and puts some crisp to your pizza.  Who wants a soggy pizza?  In the past, when I used a metal cooking sheet, the middle of my pizzas were soggy.  The stone has been the main contributor to getting towards that perfect pizza.

The Toppings

I don't really need to elaborate.  As I said before, put whatever you want on your pizza.

Tips: 

A good sauce goes a long way.

Put vegetables over sauce but under cheese

Put meat over the cheese

Make your pizza look pretty, it'll taste better

Cooking

Always preheat oven and since you are using a stone... crank that heat up to around 450 F or higher.

Serving

Cut the pizza in squares, it tastes better this way and the crust lovers can get more crust than the conventional triangle cut.

Wish we had a better picture of yesterday's pizzas, but rest assured they were delicious!

Cleaning Up

Have someone clean up, you just made a wonderful meal for them, the least they can do is the dishes.

Leftovers

Cook your leftovers (if any) on the cooking stone.  Microwaving is an insult to the pizza's integrity.

That's it.  Really the only tip is to do whatever you want when it comes to pizza-making!

Happy Friday!

Hope you have a great weekend! We are anxiously waiting for Mom & Taylor to arrive in a few hours!!

Finally Hanging the Towel Bar...

So for my weekly "Dude, Get on that Already" challenge, I installed a towel bar in my master bathroom. It's not that I never had a tower bar before, but when I painted the bathroom 2 months ago, I took down the old towel bars and didn't put them back up since they weren't really my style. Unfortunately I didn't take a before pic, but here's the matching hand towel ring, so I'll let you imagine what the two towel bars looked like...

So at the time, I went to Lowes and picked out a new towel bar, but for some reason I never got around to installing it. For 8 weeks I put my towels folded on the closed toilet lid while I showered, and let them dry hanging over a chair in by bedroom for really no reason at all. Because this literally took me about 30 minutes. Like I said, I have a problem with unfinished projects....

Anyway, installing the towel bar was pretty straight forward -  I just followed the directions, which did come with this handy template so I didn't have to measure out space between the brackets:

Then I got to drilling. This is actually the first time I've used my new drill, which I bought along with the towel bar in order to install it (and because I needed a drill in general). And really, I think its probably the first time I've used a drill at all! So for historys sake, here are the first holes I've ever drilled in my own wall haha.

And after that, I just attached the brackets and the towel bar hooked right on! I'm not sure why the walls look so yellow in the pics, in reality it's actually a light tan color, but you get the picture.

At first I was a little worried that it stuck out too far, but once I got the towels on I think there is still plenty of space, so overall I'm pleased with the upgrade! And feeling silly for not knocking this out sooner.

Can you spot another needed upgrade? (other than replacing the hand towel ring and matching toilet paper bar too!) I definitely need a longer shower curtain! I'm thinking of going with plain white, but who knows when I'll get to that... one step at a time I guess!

Recipes: Chicken Tostadas with Avocado Sauce

This was one of the very first recipes I ever made from Cooking Light, and is one of my favorites because it is easy and tasty! We had these tostadas on Monday and I completely forgot to take any pictures... but oh well, the online pic will work.

First, the sauce. This sauce is great and could work with any variety of entrees:

Avocado Sauce
Recipe from www.cookinglight.com
5 minute prep
Yields ~12 tbsp

Ingredients
1/2 ripe, peeled avocado
2 tbsp fat-free sour cream
2 tbsp fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tsp canola oil
1/4 tsp ground red pepper
1/8 tsp salt

Instructions
Process all ingredients in blender until smooth!

Nutrition Facts (per tbsp)
Calories: 30
Carbs: 1 g
Fat: 1.5 g
Protein: <1g
Sugar: <1g
Sodium: 25mg
(all are approximate)

The sauce is great to richen up soft tacos or really anything else, but we usually eat it with the tostadas as follows:

Chicken Tostadas

Recipe & picture from Cooking Light

20 minute prep

Serves 4

Ingredients

Avocado sauce prepared as described above

4 flour tortillas (6 inch)

1 1/2 tsp canola oil (divided)

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, chopped

2 cups of shredded rotisserie chicken (~8 oz)

1 cup shredded lettuce

1/2 cup chopped tomato

1/4 cup crumbled feta (reduced-fat)

Instructions

Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat, add 3/4 tsp oil to pan

Cook 1 tortilla for ~2 mins on each side or until golden brown (keep an eye on it though or it might burn!)

Repeat for remaining tortillas, set tortillas aside

Add remaining oil to pan, saute garlic and jalapeno for 1-2 minutes

Add chicken to pan and cook 2 minutes

Top each tostada with chicken mixture, top with lettuce, tomato, cheese & avocado sauce

Nutrition Facts (per serving, including sauce)

Calories: 325

Carbs: 20g

Fat: 18g

Protein: 18g

Sugar: 3g

Sodium: 750mg

(all are approximate)

I like this recipe a lot because it is fun to cook the tortillas, and because it's easy to prepare the chicken ahead of time. Usually I will buy a rotisserie chicken on Sunday and go ahead and pull off all the meat, shred it and keep in the fridge. I make sure to plan more than one meal that week that will use the chicken, because usually I get about 5 cups, which is more than you need for this recipe. It is always helpful to have some ingredients pre-prepared!

Hope you enjoy!

Weekend Project Update

Alright, so I'm finally getting around to writing a front yard update! Sprucing up the beds this past weekend took significantly less time than clearing them out... but also significantly more money! Oh well, haha.

Beware, this post has a lot of pictures of things that are probably self explanatory, but I took the pictures, so might as well use them, right? When we left off, I had cleared all the beds, turned up the soil and resurrected the plastic landscaping barrier:

So the first thing I did this weekend was go to a local nursery to buy new bushes. I had looked some at Lowes and Home Depot, and although the 3-gal bushes were attractively priced (~$10 each), I knew I would be frustrated waiting forever for those little tiny things to grow in and look normal. So I splurged a bit and bought nine $35 boxwoods. I chose the boxwoods because I like that they are simple and easy to maintain, and also my front yard only gets sun in the afternoon, which limited my options. Luckily they all fit in my backseat!

I had measured the bed beforehand so I could calculate how many bushes to buy once I picked them out and knew how wide they would actually get. So when I got home, I spaced them out about 3.5 feet from each other to get a good picture of how things would look, and then I used scrap tile as a placeholder to mark where to dig my holes:

Then it was time to plant (yay!). Luckily we got a good amount of rain last week, so the digging was pretty easy. And once I was done, I was glad I had bought the larger bushes, because they still look tiny!! But I like them and they will grow in some over the next few months. Apparently I didn't get a good picture of the whole lawn at this point, but you'll see what I mean a little further down.

The next step was to add mulch. I debated doing landscaping fabric, but I ultimately decided not to because 1) I'm planning to plant flowers in the next few weeks, so I didn't want to have to cut tons of holes in it to do that and 2) I already cleared the bed pretty well and it's open enough I can weed it pretty easily if there is a problem (we'll see...). So I headed off to Lowes.

That's when things started to get out of control. Once I was at Lowes, I realized I should probably also buy some top soil, since I wanted to plant flowers and my bed had a lot of clay I had turned up while planting the bushes. So first, I went for the mulch, and once I pulled out the drawing I had made of the front bed measurements, I realized I would need 15 bags! So I loaded it all up onto one of those big flat push carts they usually have in the lumber area and headed towards the top soil. Only it turns out that 15 bags of mulch is 450 pounds of mulch... so it was a little slow going! I decided it probably wasn't wise to load anything else on to a cart I could barely push, so I went ahead and checked out. One of the Lowes employees helped me load it into the Civic, and I think he was shocked when I took the big cart and headed back in to the store when we were done! I bought 10 bags of top soil (at 40 pounds each) and luckily it all fit in to the trusty Civic (barely!). 

So I was officially the crazy lady at Lowes loading 850 pounds of stuff into her little car. And it's a good thing I only live about a mile from Lowes, because that car was riding low! Anyway, here's the spread once I got it home, can you believe this all fit? (that's Sam's Corolla in the background, but the Civic is about the same size...)

Oh and Sam would like me to mention that he totally would have helped at Lowes if I had just waited for him to get home (he was volunteering to help clean up a run down Little League field) but he did help me unload once I got it all home.

Okay, so after the Lowes adventure, I got to work spreading the top soil and then the mulch. In the end I only used 10 bags of mulch, but I'm sure I'll find a good home for the rest of it.

See how nice and rich the top soil looks compared to what I had in the bed already?

And here's the mulching in progress (back part is done):

In the end, I was very pleased with the final product! Does this count as finishing my goal of completing the front yard landscaping? I think I will give myself credit for it... even though I still need to plant flowers or something else to spruce it up. But it feels good to have the main work done!

Oh and as you can kind of see above, I also picked up some hanging baskets at Lowes (because there was nothing in the front seat of the car yet... haha). Here's a close-up:

The total project cost so far has been around $425 ($340 for bushes, $65 for mulch/soil, $20 for hanging baskets) which I figure has definitely saved me some money vs. having a landscaper come in. Although it doesn't look nearly as good as it might have with a landscaper, so I'll be spending some extra cash on some flowers to finish it all out...

I'm hoping my Mom will lend her flower expertise this weekend while she's visiting, so there should be more upgrades to share soon!!

Monday Weigh-In & How to Calculate your Metabolism

So since my BIG project for this year is weight loss, I figured I'd post an update each Monday on my progress. So, here's the weigh in:

Monday Weight In

Start of Week: 144.6

End of Week: 143.0

Pounds Lost: 1.6

Total Lost: 27 (yay!)

Not too bad! But it was a little less than what I planned. If every week was like this week, I'd reach 130 pounds by May 21st - my goal is May 12th (2 weeks before Sam & I leave on a cruise! Need to leave time to buy a new wardrobe beforehand! haha). So next week, I need to lose a bit more to ensure I'll meet my goal.

To help make a basic plan for the week, I use the 1 pound = 3500 calories calculation to keep track of what my metabolism is doing. Ever seen the "based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet" on nutrition fact labels? That's a good starting point to estimate your daily metabolism (how much your body burns each day just doing basic tasks, keeping you alive, etc.) but it can vary a lot depending on how active you are during the week and I'm sure other things too. And I think for men 2,500 is a better starting point (?).

In order to meet my target date of May 12th, I need to lose 13 more pounds in ~7 weeks, or 1.9 pounds/week. So, if my metabolism stayed pretty steady at 2000 cal/day, my plan would be:

Weekly Plan

Weight Loss: 1.9 lbs/week or 950 cal/day

Food Intake: 1200 cal/day

Metabolism: -2000 cal/day

Exercise: -150 cal/day

Net Total: -950 cal/day = -1.9 lbs/week (check!)

So I use this as a starting point to figure out how much I need to exercise. After the week if over, I use my actual weight lost/calories eaten/exercise and calculate what my metabolism was actually doing. If it seems substantially lower than 2000 cal/day, I probably need to ramp up my exercise the next week to more than the usual 150 cal/day! 

Keeping track of your metabolism really isn't necessary, but it can help explain if you see a sudden plateau or just a change in how fast you are losing weight. Mine seems to be changing a lot recently, which is frustrating, but it is what it is. Here's the breakdown for last week:

Actual Last Week

Intake: 1150 cal/day avg

Exercise: 200 cal/day avg

Weight Loss: 1.6 lbs

Metabolism: 1750 cal/day

So, all in all my eating and exercising were on track, but my metabolism slowed down. One thing I’ve noticed is that is always slows down if I exercise less – cardio definitely has the extra benefit of not only burning calories during, but also ramping up your metabolism to burn more throughout the day.

Since I want to lose more this week, I either need to exercise more or eat less (and I don't really feel comfortable going too far below the 1200 cal/day on food) - so maybe I'll add an extra bike ride on a weekday? Assuming my metabolism stays around 1750, I need to up my exercise to 400 cal/day (2000-1750 = 250 more I need to burn with exercise). I’ve found 400 cal/day is pretty doable so hopefully it will pay off!

Okay so I promise not to bombard you with all of the calcs next time, but I thought it might be somewhat helpful for anyone looking to come up with a weight loss plan and a reasonable time frame! It's not magic, it's just math! If you count calories on what you normally eat for a few weeks and you are maintaining a constant weight, you will know your normal metabolic rate. Figure out how far back you are willing to cut calories and how much you are going to exercise each week, and can easily calculate how much weight you can expect to lose each week! 
And (nerd alert!) you make a cool spreadsheet too:

See how my metabolism (blue dots) is all over the place? That's why I usually look at a weekly average, not the daily number. It was so predictable there for a little while in January, but those days are over haha. But I do love seeing that red line of constant weight loss - it's a good reminder that the hard work is paying off!!

Weekend Recap

So I'll share the productive things I did this weekend later on this week, but for now, how about a recap of the fun?

A few weeks ago, Sam & I went to the Humane Society for a volunteer orientation, and Friday was my first time volunteering there. Basically, you can show up whenever you want and play with a dog or cat - score! And they are very happy to get some one-on-one time! On Friday, I played with beautiful dog named Stormy, a 3 year old Black Mouth Curr, and she was so good natured and sweet. Some one please adopt her!!

Friday night, Sam & I went out for sushi (I saved up calories by eating lower cal than normal all day) and then watched NC State basketball of course!

Saturday was mostly about yard work, but we also went to Starvin Marvin's to celebrate Adrienne's birthday (my Beaumont BFF!). It's crawfish season around here, which is pretty serious business for any southeast texan! I didn't take any pictures for some reason, but it was a good time.

Today we did a long bike ride, got the grocery shopping done and mostly just hung around the house. I did make a crazy recipe for dinner (it involved swiss chard, making crust from scratch and putting broiled bell peppers in a paper bag... haha), and it turned out pretty well! I'm not going to feature the whole recipe this week, because it is longggg, but here's the link - Cooking Light Pizza Rustica.

 I'm excited for my mom and sister to be here next weekend!! Weekend project updates to come later this week... sneak peak:

Happy Friday!

Hope you get a chance to relax this weekend! Ruby certainly will...

With any luck, I'll have lot of front yard progress to share next week!!

Dude, Get on that Already...

I am officially the queen of unfinished projects - for some reason, I just have a hard time finishing up the smallest things! So, I've decided to start a "Dude, Get on that Already" challenge inspired by Sherry at Young House Love (a blog I seriously LOVE). She's been doing one small project a week to finally tackle a room full of homeless items after their big move last year, in the midst of a huge kitchen remodel, full-time blogging, writing a book, etc. So, I figured if she can do it in the middle of all that, I could probably handle one these small un-finished (some even un-started) projects each week and hopefully put an end to some of my procrastination!

Anyway, this week I tackled a super easy project, but one that has taken me nearly 9 months to do (like I said, I have a problem). Last summer my family bought me this print of the Britt's Doughnuts, an amazing doughnut shop at Carolina Beach, NC where we vacation each year. I bought a frame, and since then it has sat around waiting to be hung on the wall. And now that I think about it, it may have actually been two summer ago that they gave it to me (again... its a problem).

So yesterday I finally hung it up in the hallway, along with one of Sam's family photos that they took over Christmas this year, which he has been wanting to hang for weeks now.

You can see in these pics another major unfinished project - I recently painted the hallway walls & trim, but haven't gotten around to the doors yet, which is why they are that awful off-white color. Because really, who likes painting doors? My least favorite ever. Other future upgrades definitely include a cuter light fixture to spruce up this little hallway at some point... we'll see!

Sorry for bad quality iPhone pics, I can never seem to find my camera recently...

Anyway, stay tuned for a weekly "Dude, Get on that Already" challenge update. I'm pretty sure you'll be amazed at how many loose ends I have around here, but whatever, I have no shame. Please tell me I'm not the only one with this can't-finish-a-project-to-save-my-life syndrome?

Recipes: Tomato-Basil Lasagna w/Prosciutto

So I'll be the first to admit, I have never been the most confident cook. But, this calorie counting business has forced me into it and I've learned it doesn't have to be that hard. Granted, there are lots of difficult things to cook, but I try to avoid those and there are still plenty of great recipes left! I try to make at least one new recipe per week, and usually Sam does too.

This past week, I made lasagna and discovered that although it is time consuming, lasagna definitely does not have to be difficult! Also the first time I've ever bought prosciutto, which was very easy once I finally found it at the deli counter. Sorry for the lack of pics (included one from cooking light... rest assured mine was not nearly as beautiful haha), but here's the details:

Tomato-Basil Lasagna with Prosciutto
Recipe & picture from www.cookinglight.com
20 minute prep, 60 minute bake
Serves 8

Ingredients
5 tsp minced garlic
16 oz fat-free cottage cheese
8 oz fat-free cream cheese (block style)
1 1/2 tbsp dried basil
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 egg
12 lasagna noodles
4 oz chopped prosciutto or ham
5 cups fat-free pasta sauce (can be tricky to find in store - I used Prego light smart traditional)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (fat-free if you can find it, I used regular low-moisture, part-skim)

Instructions
Preheat over to 375F
Cook lasagna noodles per instructions on package
Blend cottage cheese and garlic in food process until smooth
Add cream cheese, basil, pepper and egg and process until well blended
Spread 1 cup pasta sauce in bottom of 13x9 pan coated with cooking spray
Arrange 3 noodles on top of sauce, cover with 1 cup cheese mixture, 1/3 cup prosciutto and 1 cup sauce
Repeat to create two more layers
Place last layer of noodles on top, cover with remaining pasta sauce and sprinkle with mozzarella
Bake covered for 45 minutes or until bubbly, then bake uncovered for 15 more minute

Nutrition Info (per serving)
Calories: 338
Carbs: 47g
Fat: 7g
Protein: 26g
Sugar: 13g
Sodium: 1531mg
(all are approximate - this is based on the exact ingredients I used)


The worst part about this recipe is the time it takes to bake - on a weeknight this had us eating pretty late! But it was delicious, and I really didn't notice a difference in overall creaminess or taste by using nearly all fat-free ingredients. As far as the nutrition facts, the sodium is really the only kicker on this one... but if you are eating healthy meals throughout the day it shouldn't be an issue. This one is also great leftover - Sam and I usually cook meals with 4 servings to have dinner and lunch the next day, but this one lasted us for most of the weekend.

Hope you enjoy!

Weekend Project: Front Yard Landscaping

This past weekend I set out to finally conquer the front yard flower beds, another one of my goals for the first three months of this year. I wish pictures could do it justice, because the situation was pretty much out of control...

See how you can't even tell where the yard stops and the flower weed bed begins? Like I said, out of control.

When I bought the house in Nov 2009, the front yard wasn't in the best shape, but it was manageable. Over the past year, however, I'm not so proud to say that I just ignored it. As in a 4ft dandelion was growing next to the sidewalk I use every day type of ignoring. I'm kicking myself for not taking a better picture of that beauty, but here's a similar one in the side yard (a well hidden area... good project for wayyy down the road haha).

Anyway, I brainstormed a few different ideas about what to do with the front yard. The bushes I had were in okay shape if I were to trim them up and weed the bed, but there was still that annoying empty space in front of the big window, previously occupied by some unknown type of bushes that were dead when I moved in (thanks Dad for pulling those up!).

So I decided to just clear the whole bed. Some of the big bushes were growing over the smaller ones and all in all I figured it would be easier to start from scratch. Saturday morning I got to work clearing out the weeds and digging up the bushes. Luckily, my neighbor volunteered to help, which saved me a lot of digging time. I cut the branches off of each bush, and then we busted out the big guns... can I get a high-five for Texas, land of the pickup truck?

Here's a shot after 8 hours of work on Saturday (with some help from Sam). I left behind the five small bushes thinking they were small enough that I could probably dig them up and move them to the backyard, because really, why get rid of so many perfectly good plants?

Then Sunday when I was at Lowes I saw similar size Nandinas selling for $10 each, and I figured it was totally worth spending $50 later to not have to dig holes in the backyard anytime soon. What can I say, I was sore from Saturday's weeding-fest. A couple of hours later Sam and I had dug up all the roots and loosened up the dirt enough to make a nice pretty bed.

While I was weeding and digging up the old bed, I found some plastic bed edging buried under there from who knows when, and luckily I was able to reuse it. One less trip to Lowes! All of the rocks you see in the back were also around the front edge of the bed before, but I'm not sure what we will do with all of those yet.

Now just waiting for new bushes this weekend! Not sure yet what I am going to go with, I'm going to try to keep it basic and see what the folks at the nursery recommend. Oh and please excuse the extra long grass, it has since been mowed :)

Oh, and there's a bonus! This tiny little bed is so small and random that I was never really sure what to do with it, so I figured it might be a decent use for some of the rocks I dug up from around the edges of the old bed. Plus, we've kind of been wanting an easy little herb garden, so I bought basil, mint, rosemary and cilantro for $3.50 each and planted them right in there! Even used a bit of basil for dinner last night - Sam was pretty excited to pick it right from our own plant.

Any of you been up to major weekend projects? I'm cutting it a little close on my goal to finish the front yard landscaping by the end of March, but hopefully I'll make good progress replanting this weekend!

Small Steps: Weight Loss

Okay, maybe they aren't all small steps, but I thought I'd start by sharing the nuts & bolts of how I've lost 25 pounds (in 10 weeks!) despite the fact that I didn't think I could. Basically, I've been planning my meals in advance, keeping a food diary and counting calories like a fiend!

The first thing I do each week, and probably most important, is to plan all of my meals in advance. On Sundays, Sam and I make a meal plan for the whole week and do our grocery shopping. I plan all three meals for each day and two snacks, all adding up to ~1200 calories each day. That may sound tricky, but I do the snacks last, so I can fill in more calories if needed, or pick super low cal snacks, like applesauce or string cheese if there aren't many calories left. I say this step is the most important because as long as I execute the plan each week, I don't really have to keep track of everything I eat in the food diary... although I do anyway.

I use the website www.myfitnesspal.com to track what I eat every day. They have tons of foods in the database, and the iPhone app has a barcode scanner, which makes things super easy. In general, I haven't been eating out much, but when I do, I make sure it is a restaurant that publishes nutrition facts so I can get an accurate count. I literally keep track of every single thing I eat each day.

I also used their website to determine my daily calorie target of 1200 calories. That's a pretty aggressive target, and it's also the lowest daily calorie intake recommended, so I try not to be far over or under. In general, a good rule of thumb is that to lose 1 pound/week, you need to cut 500 calories/day from your current diet. If you want to get started, you can use the tools on the website to set a goal, but to be the most accurate, keep track of what you are currently eating for a couple of weeks, and then set a daily goal 500 calories lower (or 750, 1000, etc.)

Just keeping track of the calories in what you eat can be really eye-opening - there are lots of foods that you already know are high calorie, but some can be surprising. Eating healthy, wholesome foods is not necessarily the same as eating low calorie. Even whole wheat bread has >100 calories per slice, a cup of avocado chunks has >200 calories, a cup of orange juice is 110 calories, even a banana has 100+ calories! I'm not saying I don't eat these things, but just being aware of the calories in every little thing helps.

I'll share some of my go-to breakfasts and snacks, my best sources for low-cal recipes, and the new recipes I'm trying each week. I won't tell you it's not a lot of work, but it is totally worth it. And it definitely gets easier the longer I do it.

If you want to get started, small step one would definitely be to start a food diary. I can't say enough about keeping track of what you currently eat. Don't make yourself feel guilty if the total is higher than you would have thought, just consider it preparation for small step two: setting a calorie target to meet your weight loss goals.

Welcome!

In 2012, I’ve decided to finally make good on my New Year’s Resolutions – the biggest one being to lose 40 pounds! I’m hoping to share my progress on weight loss, home improvement, exercise and other miscellaneous goals this year, as well as a little bit of everyday life along the way!

At the beginning of this year, my list of 2012 New Year’s Resolutions was:

• Lose 40 lbs
• Complete a half marathon
• Year of the Yard: front yard landscaping, improve backyard grass
• Keep the car clean
• Floss more
• Get to work earlier 

But I decided it might be a little more manageable to break down my goals into bite-sized chunks. Because, let’s be honest, goals for the whole year are always postponed until at least October! So, my short list of goals for Jan/Feb/Mar was:

• Lose 10 pounds (complete! I’ve lost 25 since Jan 3rd)
• Run a half marathon (complete! On March 10th)
• Landscape front yard (in progress)
• Floss more (hmm… not much progress here) 

I can’t believe the progress I’ve made, especially on weight loss. Before I started my current plan (more details to follow) I had never successfully lost weight, and I was starting to think I never would. I’m excited to use this blog to share what I’ve learned and keep myself accountable on my goals for the rest of the year - Apr/May/Jun goals coming soon!!