Baked Ziti, an Arctrainer and a boy.

The weekend was not very good where intake was concerned, I visited a friend that I haven't seen in a while and we had pizza for lunch and I did not eat anything that I would call dinner Saturday night, Sunday I ate within my calorie range (besides a bowl of popcorn with a movie) but did not drink nearly enough to cover even a half a day and I think I am off balance for my weekend efforts. Monday came and it was all corrected and 1530 was the number for calories as far as my excel spread sheet goes but I did have to do some "taste testing" with dinner as I tried to make a relatively low calorie Veggie Baked Ziti which turned out pretty good and though I do believe that I am well below my calories I am higher than the excel sheet says, have a look.

Breakfast
8:30 AM
2 cups fruit and grain cereal 240
1 cup 1% milk 110

11:30 AM
1 banana 105
1 T peanut butter 95

Lunch
2:15 PM
1 Italian wrap 100
3oz Capicola 150
1 laughing cow 35
tomato/lettuce 30

Dinner
veggie baked ziti 400
2 slices whole wheat bread 140
smart balance 25

1 apple 100

Fluids
G-Tea 1 gallon
H2O 1/2 gallon

About a month back I forget where we saw it but Wify and I seen on television that to lower the calories in a pasta dish you can shred zucchini and mix it into the dish and since then I have been wanting to try this. Wify bought a whole wheat Ziti and I made a baked ziti with zucchini and broccoli, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses and it came out much better than I had honestly thought that it would. The entire casserole dish came to 2400 calories and I cut it into 6 equal pieces which came to 400 calories per serving for pretty decent sized portions. The only thing that I would change about it for next time would be to put less broccoli in it and more zucchini because the broccoli seemed to be the most dominant flavor, but over all everyone liked it besides my very picky daughter and that was more because she wasn't hungry I think, I will post the recipe up in a separate post sometime but here is a photo of the completed dish until then.


My trip to the gym went pretty good on Monday, I am giving up the treadmill and replacing it with the Arctrainer because I feel like I get a better workout in on the arc vs the treadmill. Yesterday I did my regular 20 minutes on the bike but instead of following it with 25 minutes on the treadmill I did 22 minutes on the Arctrainer, I really cannot state enough how much I am liking that machine. The Arctrainer is zero impact as far as I can feel or see and it gets my heart rate up in a hurry and is easy to find a rpm that keeps it within a limit without too much back and fourth, I set it to resistance level 65 and just go, 20 minutes later I hit the cool down button (which does nothing but starts a 2 minute count down) and bamn! done and simple is always better if you ask me.

I believe that about covers the weekend and Monday, Today I will do the same routine as yesterday at the gym but I will try for 25 minutes on the Arctrainer and maybe some weight lifting. Thanks for following along and for the support now go get a glass of H2O for enduing another long post, that's all I got so it ends here.

As Ever
Me