Starting Anew!

After putting off (re)starting my low-carb diet because we had too much food in the house that wasn't diet friendly, or because it's just "easier" to not follow the low-carb diet, I have finally jumped back on the bandwagon!  After replacing the battery in my bathroom scale yesterday, I was guilted into not putting it off any longer...it said I had gained 25 pounds since getting pregnant one year ago!  That's half of what I had lost prior to that!  So, we are resetting the weight tracker at 280.0 pounds...I still need/want to get to somewhere around 150 pounds, so I need to lose approximately 130 pounds (a whole person, all be it a small one).

Things that have helped me stay on track so far?  My Mom made a batch of LC Monkey Bread (3.85g for a twelfth of the recipe), pre-sliced and bagged up in the fridge for fast breakfasts, Atkins Frozen Meals for lunch (I had Crustless Chicken Pot Pie today, 5g net carbs), and The New Atkins For A New You Cookbook!  All of the recipes take around 30 minutes to prepare, which is perfect for Garrick to help watch the baby after he gets home from work while I get back into the habit of making dinner every night!  So far, the Greek Meatball recipe is one of my favorites...24 meatballs with a grand total of 8g carb (it's supposed to be 4 servings of 6 meatballs), we split it three ways for 2.67g servings.  It went together in about 5 minutes and only took 20 minutes to bake in the oven, we warmed up a little Spaghetti Sauce to pour over them...it was yummy.

Last night, I made Chicken Continental out of the 500 More Low Carb Recipes book (by Dana Carpender)...again, 8g net carbs for the whole recipe, split three ways instead of 4, we counted it at 2.67g per serving.  This one is just chicken breast, ham, and asiago cheese!  It took a little longer, about 40 minutes, but it was our favorite meal of all week!

Another "helper", to help curb my sweet tooth, is the Fat Bombs I made today...at 2.3g for a tenth of the recipe (which I will share with you), it made for a good dessert after lunch, and they only took 15-20 minutes to make and freeze (and have ready to eat)!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Fat Bomb

• 4 Tablespoons Salted Butter (or unsalted, doesn't really matter)
• 4 Tablespoons Coconut Oil, Melted (don't measure it in solid form)
• 6 Tablespoons Peanut Butter (Use what you like, I used Chunky because that's what I have)
• 8 Tablespoons Sugar Free Hershey's Chocolate Chips (Or any sugar free chocolate really)

I cubed my butter, put it into my 8-cup glass measuring cup, added the oil and peanut butter, and microwaved everything for 30-45 seconds, just until the butter is almost melted (it came right out of my fridge).  Stir to combine into a smooth liquid (melted peanut butter and oil...), then I added the chocolate chips, stirred, and put it back in the microwave for 20-30 seconds, just to melt the chocolate.  Stir one more time, then line a plate with silicone muffin wrappers.  I decided to make my bombs with 2 Tablespoons each (1/8 cup) and I got 10 servings this way.  If you have smaller wrappers, you could do 1 Tablespoon bombs that would only be about 1g carb per bomb (if you run closer to your max carbs for the day, but still need to up your fat, I'd go this route).  Pop them in the freezer until solid, remove from freezer when ready to eat it, they melt extremely fast!

Nutritional Breakdown:
Whole Recipe:  Calories;2002, Fat;184.4, Carb;23, Protein;31.6
1/10 recipe (2 Tablespoons): Calories; 200.2, Fat; 18.4, Carb 2.3, Protein; 3.2

Check your products though, the Peanut Butter I used had 7g carb, 5g net carb!  Tastes just like a peanut butter cup though, and the bits of peanut were yummy!