We are hardly starving.

This was dinner last night. Ezekiel 4:9 pasta, bulked up with ground beef, in Seeds of Change marinara sauce cut with chicken broth. On the side was 2/3 c of spring mix salad, and 1/2c of Roasted Brussels sprouts. We couldn't even finish it! What we did eat ended up being a value of 1S/2C, with a nice hefty 9.5 grams of fiber (aiming for 30g per day).

Most people diet and complain of always being hungry. On the BFC, don't starve yourself! There are options all around you. Even in the middle of the day if you get hungry you can eat with 0/0 values without feeling deprived. Right now I love a stick of string cheese. Polly-O even makes a jalepeño variety for some added flavor.

When you crave something, come up with a Belly Good substitution! The Brussels sprouts above were our replacement for a side of garlic bread. We used the recipe from the White on Rice blog, and then added some minced garlic (1/2 a teaspoon so it didn't overpower). Just remember to start your Brussels sprouts early, we ended up cutting off 2 minutes of roasting time cause we were hungry and everything else was ready!

If you are smart about your ingredients, you can eat til you're stuffed. Don't let the fear of hunger scare you off making a healthy choice for yourself and your waistline.

In other news, I dabbled with a BMI calculator earlier. I always hated the BMI because it told me I was obese! I mean, yeah I could stand to lose a few pounds.. but it suggested I'd need to lose forty pounds in order to be 'fit' and healthy. Even when I decided to diet I thought forty was a bit too lofty a goal. It put the low end of my ideal weight at 105, which to me is practically anorexic. So I thought the BMI was evil and misguided and a poor judge of health.

Then I saw myself in a photo and I realized, yeah... maybe forty pounds could go... I was 125 in college, after all, when my development was pretty much stabilized. Why not aim for that again? And it's good for my life insurance rates, too!

So I entered the numbers into the BMI calculator on Dawn's blog. Starting BMI (March 2011) was 29.2. For the record, that's "Overweight." Some other chart put me at obese at that weight, but I don't know where I found that. Maybe they've updated them to give us fat Americans an emotional pass.
Anyway, today's BMI (August 2011) is 25.5. Still in the zone of Overweight, but only just. It's just more encouragement to keep this going! I can't wait to call up my insurance rep and ask if we can 'refinance' my premium!