Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers - Penne & Roasted Red Pepper Alfredo

So I've been beyond lazy and behind on blogging lately. Life updates: my ex-roomie moved in our quad apartment last night due to conflicts with the girls she lived with this year. It's nice to have her back, though we're not directly in the same room (which is odd). Being a Student Senator has been fun and awesome thus far, I'm glad I decided to run. Cost Accounting sucks, and I really need to pick up the ball on that and in general get back into the habit of studying, doing homework, etc. I've fallen mostly off the wagon with the healthy eating but manage to keep a tenuous grip and resist temptation partially. I've also been choosing healthier options even when I do eat poorly. Progress, if only baby steps, I'd say.

What exactly brought me out of hiding you might ask? I've been eating a lot of healthy meals over the past weeks that I haven't blogged about for various reasons (read: laziness and forgetfulness) but since I have both the free time and the meal in front of me today, it was a perfect opportunity. Honestly though, the BIG reason I decided to dust the cobwebs off the ol' blog is that this meal is just plain awful tasting. Read all about it:

First Impressions: Upon first unwrapping the package and plopping it in the microwave, all seemed well. I like to heat the sauce package for about 20 seconds to keep everything hot, so I did. Since I got sick last week, I'm still a little stuffy but from what I could smell, everything seemed fine. The orangey sauce and red peppers contrast nicely.

Taste: I opened the sauce to put into the pasta and took a little taste. I have low expectations for anything creamy and low fat, but even this was a little funky tasting for what I imagined. It has a strange alfredo-y aftertaste that I can't quite pinpoint but there is the roasted sentiment that kind of helps the sauce along. After a few bites of the red pepper pieces, I'm having trouble finishing even this small portion of pasta. I normally gobble it up so quickly, but after a good half hour of trying to avoid as many pepper pieces as possible I might be giving up. The peppers are not only slimy but completely mushy and have an almost metallic sharp taste to them. I wonder if the preservatives in the meal are making this awful taste? Also, I know peppers usually have a little bite to them, but this is like a shark attack bite of awful flavor. Seriously, what DID they do to this poor meal?!

Texture: As I said above, the peppers are like disintegrating slime bombs of awful. The whole wheat pasta you can cook to your liking as far as firmness is concerned but the package directions usually yield a decent al-dente to soft al-dente that pleases me. The pasta is now chewy or gummy as some wheat pastas tend to be. In fact, I think the texture of the pasta and ability to control the firmness of the product is about all I like about this meal.

General Thoughts: Keep away 50 feet from this meal at all times! The terribleness of this meal makes me wonder if the people at Healthy Choice even did market taste testing for this meal and if so, who actually liked this meal? I have to say this is hands down the worst meal I've had since I've started my blogging, taking the title away from this entree. I'm a little worried to try this lines other newest creation but because I've never had a horrible meal out of this line apart from this one time, I'm willing to give it a try. If you're looking to give this line a try, then I highly recommend their Steak Portobello or Rotini with Zesty Marinara options which both rate at 4 or 5 stars in my book!

I would NEVER buy this again!


Rating: 1/2 star

Calories: 290
Fat: 5 grams
Healthy Choice Website with Complete Nutrition Info

The Trouble With Skinny Roomies

As the post title indicates, I'm gonna start a mini-rant about my roomies. Nothing offensive, just more that I couldn't find a better word to replace 'rant'. Since moving back to school in late August, I've been trying to continue down the path of food righteousness by not buying things I deem unhealthy. While there's no hard and fast rule, and many of the so called 'healthy' foods I buy do have things like preservatives in them which can be quite unhealthy, I try to stick to under 150 calories and 5 grams of fat for things I designate for snacks or compliments to my main meal and under 500 calories and 12 (or so) grams of fat for main entrees and the like. It's been hard to skip over some of my favorite drink choices, like sodas, juices, and sugary juice like stuff (Gatorade, Hawaiian Punch, Kool Aid, etc). I've been trying to acclimate myself to diet beverages but it's much easier in theory than in practice. I've also been opting for sodium-free flavored seltzers, which have helped a little but fall short of what I really crave.

To bring this post back to it's title, I live with two other girls, who are skinny and therefore each just about whatever the hell they way. If you opened my freezer door right now, you'd see Stouffer's entrees and pizzas, Ben & Jerry's ice cream pints, TGIFriday's appetizers, Cheesy Garlic Bread and Eggo Waffles loaded to the top. The door of the freezer contains most of my stuff (minus some frozen chicken and freezepops) which is either frozen veggies or healthy frozen entrees. The fridge is slightly less of a caloric nightmare but there's still usually some incarnation of Mexican/Chinese/Italian leftovers as well as fatty salad dressings, juice or high sugar drinks, and for the moment cinnamon buns scattered in every corner. I can usually resist these temptations a bit better than a pint of 'Smores but there are even more temptations baiting me at every corner of every drawer and cabinet of the apartment. Some highlights (or would 'low' be more appropriate) include my old buddy Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, various cookies and sweets, and currently a jumbo container of tri-flavored popcorn sent to one of my roomies from her family. I admit I've dipped into the popcorn (with permission of course) and have been a fan of the 12 and 13 grams of fat buttered and cheddar cheese varieties.

Whew. Thankfully I have such a guilty conscience that I couldn't rightly scarf down someone else's grub or else I'd be even more up the creek than I already am. I just managed to choke down a Healthy Choice Pad Thai (not a favorite, don't recommend it at all) and sip on lemon-lime seltzer while ruefully dreaming of mozzarella sticks and cheeseburgers. They even had a hot dog cart outside of the dining hall today, which smelled absolutely amazing!

Now I try to adjust my attitude about my room mate's eating habits but sometimes I just want to scream 'Do you know how many calories that Banana Bread has in it?!' It sucks because I feel that for every healthy meal I have to their fat and calorie laden frozen meal, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. They seem to gain little or no weight while not even working out and here I am, dreaming of pizza and eating hummus with reduced fat crackers instead. It reminds me again that my metabolism is complete shit and that having PCOS really fucking blows.

I'm definitely only wading in the pond compared to my head first dive into dieting approach that I took in Summer 2008. I try to remind myself that I've been doing what I can and to appreciate the more modest changes (skipping a snack here, electing for Cheerios instead of Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs) but I still feel like I'm getting nowhere. I ride my bike to and from classes and can tell that already my legs are a little stronger and I struggle less going over certain hills but I estimate if I've lost any weight at all, it can't even be 5 pounds. I was at 254 pounds when I went for my last GYN exam a week before I came back to school so if I were to find a scale somewhere, I could test out my hypothesis but I honestly think that the results would just depress me more.

I'm trying to vent my frustrations right now because in about a half hour I'm heading over to my school's Crime Prevention Fair, where I will be looking to attend the Woman's Self-Defense Panel. I was planning to go to this all along, but due to joining my school's Student Senate this past Monday I am now required to attend the event as a Senator. No one wants to see a pouting politician. It's just unflattering.

In any case, I'll just have to gather myself up and 'Carry On' as Tim Gunn would say. I'll get nowhere fast with a poor attitude so I'm going to try and salvage my day and enjoy the beautiful weather! How is it that the first day of Fall is Sunny and in the mid-70's?!

P.S. The Barenaked Ladies put me in a good mood, as do the almost daily compliments on my awesome Hello Kitty Bike, so I'll be blasting the tunes as I ride over to the Fair. That should help me buck up!

Real Life Gets In the Way

I've been back at school for about a week now and I'm getting back into that familiar 'never have enough time' pattern. I grew up in a pretty lackadaisical household so I feel like in general, I'm just lazy/unorganized/prone to being unhealthy in every aspect of life. I eat poorly, forget to brush/floss my teeth, hardly exercise, and spend too much leisure time and not enough homework time. I'm working to try and change myself on all these aspects (I've been brushing/flossing/mouth washing like a fiend since getting my first cavity a few weeks ago) but DAMN is it hard to take on all that plus 5 classes, work study, and have a social life. The blog has been so low on my priority list that I've been struggling just to get myself to do a post a week! That's a far cry from when I was in Salem with nothing to do but eat, blog, and watch stuff on Hulu.

Tonight I was doing some homework with Maria in our apartment and she had Bravo on. A new show came on during our tenure on the couch which is called Thintervention with Jackie Warner. I have to admit the whole show really hit me close to home and actually made me want to work out for once, which is quite a feat, but on the whole I feel like this sort of show is pretty negative and damaging on people such as myself trying to lose weight. It really gave me this hopeless feeling like I'll never be able to change and get to where I want to be weight wise. Jackie tasked the participants with throwing out everything in their house with more than 5 grams of sugar in it (I'm hoping this is PER SERVING, because otherwise it's pretty impossible). This got me to thinking about all the do's and don't's of eating and exercise and it just got me super bummed because it's like no matter what I do, it's never enough -- in terms of how hard I'm exercising, or how much I'm cutting down on X or Y there's always Z to worry about.

There are so many guidelines of what we're supposed to be eating and not be eating. If you take all of them into consideration, a normal grocery store probably contains less than 10% of the stuff we should be eating versus what products they make and market. Once again, I don't believe that blaming companies who make bad for you products on my unhealthy habits, but I'm starting to recognize more and more how our culture and attitudes towards food fuel these companies to make these bad things and the cyclical nature of it all. As I learned during my time as a Journalism major, most things imitate life and companies will only produce and market what their audience wants our would accept. Take Oreos for example. Sure they have a reduced fat Oreo, which is still pretty awful at 150 calories and 4.5 grams of fat per 2 cookies, but compare that to the amount of products they churn out that are even more unhealthy than the last. Colored oreos for the seasons? Loaded with dyes that people claim cause this or that disease. Peanut butter filled Oreo Cakesters? Two of these will set you back 220 calories and 10 grams of fat! How about White Fudge Covered Oreos? One cookie is 100 calories and 5 grams of fat. That's almost a full snack's worth of calories and about 10% of your daily fat allowance (assuming you go with the FDA's upper limit for fats at 65 grams per day). To top it off, the white and milk chocolate fudge covered Oreos are marketed as 'Limited Edition' which spurs consumers to buy these and try them right away. Companies continually release 'Limited Editions' as a strategy to get us to buy because gosh, those oreos look so yummy and if you pass it up today, it's uncertain if they'll be around tomorrow. Multiply this one Oreo example by every Lunchable, Cracker, Frozen Pizza, etc and you get so many irresistible offers to try insanely unhealthy foods it's mind boggling. Clever, but ruthless.

While I'm on the subject of the FDA guidelines, take a look at the sodium recommendation of 2,400 milligrams or less per day. That sounds like a lot, right? WRONG. Anything frozen or processed (which is probably 90% of most people's diet, me included) is usually loaded with sodium to enhance and protect taste as well as lengthen shelf life. Diet foods are often the worst offenders because as you remove the fats (aka flavor) there's a tendency to pack in the sodium so that we don't notice we're eating colored cardboard sucked dry of everything we crave. Then factor in what health gurus and professionals recommend we actually intake for sodium, fat, calories etc and your head will really be spinning. It's like everything you could possibly eat is the enemy, waiting to split the seam of your favorite pants or stop your heart in a few years. What pressure!

To bring things back a little bit, consider what humans (and humanoid ancestors) ate before true civilization. Roots, grasses, meats, berries and maybe some fish probably made up the majority of their diets. As we evolved and became more civilized, we discovered things like salt. Salt and other spices were good because we could pack them on to disguise the bad flavors of rotting meat and help preserve stuff for long trips before refrigeration. We sort of became dependent on them through the years if you think about it. We can keep stuff fresh now without the aid of preservatives and salt, yet we're so hooked on that flavor and that convenience factor it cripples us. I'm not trying to say that I'm living the twigs and berries lifestyle or converting anytime soon, I just feel that it's important to me that I identify the factors in my life that facilitate my obesity. Of course low calorie and fat frozen entrees aren't the most healthful thing for me to be eating, but it's such an enormous to make eating changes for me I can't help but try to use these resources despite their inherent flaws.

Alright, so I:m rambling a bit and it's getting pretty late so I'll have to wrap this up. In any case, my first class is canceled tomorrow meaning I get to sleep in a bit and (hopefully) motivate myself to get some exercise. I admit I was pretty bad today and had a chimichanga from a new Mexican place in town but I did make the effort to ride my bike for an hour around campus and challenge myself to some moderate uphill inclines. I know it wasn't enough to offset the dinner I ate but I feel that part of my lifestyle change is trying to enjoy things like exercise for what it is and not just use it as a means to an end. Part of me has always wanted to enjoy something like going on runs but my weight gives me shin splints and other difficulties which equals pain which equals not enjoying the activity but resenting it. The gym is a new torture in itself -- unflattering clothing and jiggling around while svelter, gym-loving skinny people watch? Ick! Not to mention the whole American way of hiding our shames, which is something I can't do by going out to the gym (it's so public!)

Ok, ok, rambling again. I'm cutting myself off here. Last note: had a great weekend, saw my favorite band live in concert, got more compliments on the Hello Kitty bike today.