With all of the food research I’ve been doing, I’m to the point of starving. I think I’m going to scramble up some egg whites. It’s about 100 calories but that really makes no sense to me. Egg Whites are 17 calories, when you scramble them you only add a dash of low-fat milk, how does that little dash make so much of a difference? If anyone can explain it to me, please let me know!

I’ve been up for about an hour and I’ve yet to eat anything. I haven’t even had my usual morning tea. For some reason I’m feeling very - blah - today and I can’t tell if it’s because of the lack of food or if it’s just because of how tired I am this morning. I probably should have gone back to sleep this morning but I really just wanted to get out of  bed.

Last night Baby and I took a nice long walk with the dog. My ankle was bothering me a little bit, it’s very stiff, but I think that’s because I haven’t done much walking in the last week based on how sick I’ve been. I was lucky to be able to stand without falling over, let alone walk a few miles.

I’m probably going to cheat on my diet but this is strictly for experimental purposes. I’ve been craving Pizza for quite some time. Growing up in New York I had excellent pizza readily available to me whenever I wanted it. Living in Delaware, however, is a completely different story. There isn’t one person down here that knows anything about good pizza. Pizza that is considered “The Best” is Grotto’s and that’s on my WORST list right up there with Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Papa Johns. I don’t like any ‘chain’ because they take away from the quality of the food for mass production. This is why I’ve always enjoyed mom and pop shops.

So, right now Food Lion is having a sale on “Take & Bake” which is their own store brand of bread but it’s only half way cooked and you just have to throw it into the oven for about 12 minutes. It’s actually really good bread and it would make fairly decent pizza crust. So I’m going to throw together a low-fat Italian Red Sauce and then some low-fat cheese and bake the bread making my own mini-pizza.

The problem with being a chef is the fact that I’m very set in my ways. I grew up in a New York Italian household, I have recipes passed down to me from 4 and 5 generations of Italian women. Turning these recipes into health dishes just seems like blasphemy to every thing I’ve ever known about cooking. Most Italian cooking is high carbs, high calories and high fat. Hopefully I’ll be able to take the family sauce and turn it into something great that won’t tip the scales for me.

My stomach is bothering me a little today. I’ve avoided snacking so that I don’t upset it any more than it currently is. I would have only had a few crackers anyway, that’s 60 calories and not that big of a deal. I just don’t want to put anything in that will make a … reappearance in the near future. I’ve also found myself to be very thirsty. I’ve already had about 3 of my 8 glasses of water today and I’m still sitting here with a dry mouth. I don’t think my cold went away as quickly as I thought it did. Something tells me it just subsided and is going to turn into something far worse than the sniffles.

Since my cold seems to be subsiding, I found myself waking up about 10:30 this morning. I did my usual morning routine and started off my calorie intake. I had a cup of tea with a dash of low fat milk and a tablespoon of sugar, approximately 30 calories. I followed it with a mini croissant for 90 calories and after a quick mile to enjoy the beautiful weather, I had five saltines and a crystal light, 65 calories in total. So I’ve had two of six meals and have already taken in about 185 calories. I just hope I can keep this pace up.

I can’t seem to get any calorie counter to work for me. I’m trying to figure out how many calories someone over 240 pounds can burn walking 4 miles a day. 3500 calories is one pound of fat. It’s my goal to lose about 7000 calories a week, this is two pounds a week. Over the course of a year it will be 104 pounds lost. That will put me in the 140 range which I feel is a bit thin for my frame so I may go down to about 160-170 at the absolute lightest. I’m sure I’ll be able to keep it up.

I really can’t wait until the club house is open. I’m itching to get onto all of that exercise equipment.

I had to reinstall windows on my laptop but while that was being done I was floating around in a few stores getting supplies for things around the house. Bella has damaged three mini-blinds so I’ve had to replace those, there was also no real food in the house so I picked up some things for dinner as well. When I got back I threw dinner in the oven and replaced the blinds in the house. I had roasted chicken and vegetables for breakfast so at least I kept to my diet. I had cereal this morning, that was about 150 calories with the milk but it was tasty either way.

I’m still feeling sick but I’m no longer dizzy. I’m going to take Bella on a long walk tonight with Baby, we haven’t really spent much time together and I think the walk would do the both of us very well. I guess I should finish installing all of my programs, I’d like to get to bed early tonight and I’m waiting (almost too patiently) to get my server email back up and running.