Trader Joe's Quinoa Cowboy Veggie Burgers With Black Beans & Roasted Corn

We love these black bean burgers and eat them about once a week for either lunch or dinner.  I top with mashed avocado with a dash of honey and garlic powder mixed in.  If eaten at our dinner meal we will also have a side dish such as 1/2 yam or broccoli.  
They are 180 calories so with the avocado topping that brings our burger (no bun) to about 250-275 calories.  If I use the Trader Joe's Guilt Reduced Guacamole then the whole thing comes out to only about 220 calories.
If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you then you might want to try similar products that are available in your supermarket offered by other brands.  I'm not sure how they would compare in taste and cost to Trader Joe's (which I'm partial to), but they assist in creating healthier food options, lowering calories, and are a big help in making meal prep quick and easy.  Since I prepare 3 meals and 2 snacks per day, and don't like to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I appreciate the short cuts these products offer on occasion.

Trader Joe's Pizza Veggie Burgers

Trader Joe's Pizza Patties are a lunch favorite of ours.  We usually have these pizza (soy protein) burgers a couple of times per week.  They are only 130 calories each. We don't eat them on a bun, but I'll top these pizza burgers with either pizza sauce or sundried tomatoes, a couple tablespoons of shredded low fat mozzarella cheese (melted on top), and a dollop of Trader Joe's Reduced Guilt Guacamole that is made with greek yogurt and only 30 calories for 2 tablespoons.  This lunch is under 250 calories.
The pizza burgers are delicious and satisfy our pizza cravings. 
I believe they sell for $3.79 per box of 4 burgers.  So that would make hubby and I two lunches each.

Trader Joe's Meatless Breakfast Patties

I only started shopping at Trader Joe's a few months ago.  I have found so many products that we really enjoy and have incorporated them into our meals on a regular basis.

One of our favorite foods we've discovered is the Trader Joe's Meatless Breakfast Patties.  These patties are a really good tasting soy sausage.  Well, I call it sausage.  I suppose it's faux sausage.  We like these better than the MorningStar Farms brand.  They are $3.29 for a box of 6 patties.
We eat one of these sausage patties nearly every day with our breakfast.  They are only 80 calories and go well with our morning meal.

Our three usual breakfast options that we serve the soy sausage patties with are:

1)  1/2 serving of oatmeal with 1/4 apple, diced peaches (or 1/3 banana, blueberries), cinnamon, almond milk, sugar free syrup...plus 8 oz V8 juice...and the breakfast patty on the side

2)  egg tortilla wrap:  1/2 an egg, 3 tablespoons liquid egg (whites only), spinach, breakfast patty, 1/4 sliced avocado all wrapped in a 50 calories La Tortilla whole wheat low carb tortilla...plus 8 oz V8 juice

3)  1 toasted english muffin breakfast sandwich:  1 english muffin (100 calories), 1/2 egg, 2 T liquid eggs (whites only), breakfast patty, 1 T cheddar cheese...plus 8 oz V8 juice

All of these breakfasts are right about 300 calories and keep us full until lunch about 3 hours later.

The Importance of Planning Meals in Advance

I can't stress enough the importance (for me) of planning out my daily menus.
I keep them on a spreadsheet in Google Docs.  I plan out a week in advance every bite of food I'll be eating for all meals and snacks.  I look at that menu very often, numerous times per day, as a guide to what I get next... and try my best to follow it.  I do make occasional last minute changes, but keeping a plan, an account of my calories and what I'm eating, helps me out tremendously.

I also track my weight every day and notate my morning weight along w/my menu for that day.  I know some sources say to not weigh every day, but that works best for me and is another motivator to keep me on my healthier lifestyle journey. 

Below is a look at 3 days of what I've eaten recently.  Keep in mind that my lifestyle is not very "active" therefore my body does not need a high amount of calories.  At this time, I like to keep my calories between 1050 and 1200.  Sometimes the calories exceed that. So it is usually a bit varied...some days lower, some days mid range, some higher.  To be honest, at this stage, I would like to more consistently stay in the 1050-1100 range, but I don't always manage that and I'm okay with fluctuating a little.  (The column on the right is calories.  The number to the right of the date is my weight for that morning.)

The menu below is one of my "I went overboard" calorie days. ha

THURS April 28 129.8
coffee	75
1/2 s oatmeal w/equal, walnuts, 1/4 apple/peaches/cinn/alm milk, sugar free syrup,saus,v8	330
1 tortilla, 2 T pb, honey	275
mozz ch stick	50
1 TJ black bean burger w/ 1/4 guac/honey, 1/2 yam w/ 1/2 T ghee	375
1/2 sl cheesecake	550
	1655

 *The cheesecake (above) was in celebration of John's b-day and from Cheesecake Factory where their cheesecakes are very decadent.  We allow occasional splurges.  We have done a lot of birthday celebrations in the month of April and my weight loss has stalled because of it.  I want to try to do better in May and June, eating healthier and watching my calories more consistently, because we have a California coastal trip planned for our anniversary in July and I know we'll have some splurges then. :)

The menu below was a "normal" calorie day.

FRI April 29 130.2
coffee	100
1/2 egg, 3 T liquid eggs,spray oil, saus v8, tort, 1/8 avoc, spin (john orange)	290
TJ (soy) pizza burger w/ mozz, sauce, GUAC/yog	230
1/2 lg ck breast, 1 oz angel hair pasta, broc, 1 T marg	400
popcorn	100
	1120

I do a lot of self abbreviations which I did not change for the blog (I just copied/pasted from my spreadsheet).  Example:  bb=blueberries, ch ch=cheddar cheese, tort=tortilla, saus=soy breakfast patty, s=serving.


Many of the products used are lower in calorie, carbs, fat.  Many are Trader Joe (TJ) products.  I'll show some more of our favorites in later posts.

The menu below was a "low end" calorie day. 

SAT April 30   128.8
coffee	100
1/2 s oatmeal w/ equal, 1/4 banana/bb, milk syrup, saus, v8	290
TJ black bean enchilada, 2 T ch ch, ff s cream	225
m ch st	50
leftover ck, 1/2 c caul rice, broc, onion, mush, stir fry sauce	300
popcorn	100
	1065

 
This is exactly what my layout looks like each day in Google Docs spreadsheets, except they're laid out 2 days side by side in 2 columns (reading left to right) rather than a single column as shown above.  I have a template that I use each month.  I have folders for each month and year.  So it is very easy for me to go back and see what I ate in the past for any particular time period.  I can also look at blog photos from the past (checking the created date on the photo) and then go to that day in my spreadsheets and see what I weighed on that particular date...and what I was eating at that time.  I can see days past where my weight loss was good and what I was eating at that time and try to duplicate those menus if that's my current goal. 
Looking at past meals also helps create my current weekly menus.  I can pull things I know we enjoyed in the past and copy/paste to current menus.
I also title my menus by month/yr and at the end of the month I'll add my lowest weight and average weight to that title so that I can see at a glance of my folders what weight range I was in any particular month and can go back to a month I did well to copy and incorporate some of the meals from that month into the current meal plan.

The menus also show me where I messed up...what days I didn't do so well.  If I see a pattern, certain foods or combinations of foods that didn't work so well for me, or that seem to be a trigger for me...foods that I have difficulty using portion control with...then I can see I need to work on that area.

Anyway...this whole system works for me and I've been doing it for a few years now.  I like to be able to see a whole month at a time on one page of all my meals, calories, and weight.

Healthy Food Swaps: Featuring Trader Joe's Riced Cauliflower and Turkey Meatballs

In a previous post here I talked about portion control.
An alternate technique, to get around reducing the portion size, is to replace an unhealthy/high calorie food with a healthier/lower calorie one.  
For example:  Instead of having a large serving of rice with our chicken (or shrimp) and broccoli/mushroom stir fry I might substitute cauliflower rice for the long grain rice I would have normally had.  The cauliflower rice is a healthier option and far less calories...so I can have a good amount of it and not feel deprived.  We use cauliflower rice in other meals as well.

Another example of a beneficial food swap would be to replace regular spaghetti with spiraled zucchini.
The spiralizer we have is a Paderno.  At this site it is under $30...and that includes shipping.  It is very easy to use and clean.
Zoodles (spiralized zucchini noodles) are very good topped with a ground turkey marinara sauce.  You can add mushrooms, red peppers, onions, etc. to the sauce also.  Another good way to serve zoodles is topped with turkey meatballs and marinara.  You can use zoodles in any pasta dish.

Pictured above are the Trader Joe's brand frozen cauliflower rice and the turkey meatballs that we like and keep stocked up on.  They are quick and easy.  It just takes a few minutes to heat them in the microwave.
Since we no longer buy beef the turkey meatballs are a good swap for us.  I also use ground turkey to replace beef in other meals.  It's great as a burger patty or in taco salad to name a couple of options.
We have learned to eat our taco salads without the tortilla chips we used to have.  So now just lots of spinach, ground turkey w/ taco seasoning, a bit of light Catalina dressing, black beans, avocado, salsa, and low fat sour cream.  We are more particular about when we choose to have our carbs.


With many food swaps, I have come to enjoy them and don't find them a terrible trade off.  
Believe me...to hear myself making the above statement almost makes me turn my head to look to see who said that.  It boggles my mind to think that I could now feel that way.  I think I had preconceived ideas about food and was just set in my ways about what I thought I liked, disliked, and what I thought I would and wouldn't enjoy eating.  I just had to give these healthier foods a fair chance and give myself a chance to realize I could be happy and satisfied using them as a better option in many of our meals.

Portion Control: Plus a Before and After Pic

Before: Dec. 2011,161.8 lbs.  After: April 2016, 129 lbs.

The nearly 33 lb. difference, as displayed in the above photos, has made a huge difference in my life.  Even though I don't have an extreme 100 lb. weight loss to talk about...it is a significant amount to me.  I know that I am much happier and healthier having shed those pounds.  I also know I've struggled all my life with gaining and losing them (plus more).  This is the longest I have ever stayed on a diet ...and a healthy one at that.  I consider my current way of eating a permanent lifestyle change, even though I may call it my "diet".
 
I have learned that the amount of food I (in the past) thought I needed to feel satisfied was not an accurate amount of what I really do need to feel satisfied.  I just had to practice eating less and re-train my brain a bit.  Making a conscious effort at each meal, day after, day, week after week has made eating smaller portions more of a normal habit. However, I still have issues with portion control and must always think about keeping things reasonable. I will always have to be diligent at keeping my mind in check with the reality of what my body needs.  But, the more I do it, the better at it I get and it becomes less of a struggle.
My pre-planned meal guide is extremely important in helping me stay on track and I'll talk a bit more about that in a future post.

To exercise portion control I have reduced the amount of food I put on my plate at each meal.  I have a set number of meals to eat per day (6).  I count my 2 cups of morning coffee as meal 1...although I know it's not really a meal, but I'm not ready to eat food until about 2-3 hrs after I've started sipping on the coffee.   So breakfast comes usually between 10-11am ish.
The meals are not spread out too far from each other...so I know if I only get so much at meal 2 that's okay because in just 2-3 hrs I'll get more food.  I have found that the smaller portion I used to think might be too little to make me happy is just enough to satisfy me, be healthy for me, and keep me going until my next meal.  My afternoon and evening snack enable me to have a reasonable and healthy sized lunch and dinner.
One example of a portion size for me now:
Pasta at dinner time... In the past I might have eaten 3 ounces which is 1 1/2 servings.  Now I will eat 1 ounce of pasta which is half of a single serving.  I will use different varieties of pasta, depending on the recipe, and will bulk up the dish with chicken, turkey, or shrimp and vegetables. 
If we are having a low cal sauce, I use a lot less of it than I would have in the past.  If making an alfredo I make a healthier version using 2 T marg, a little unsweetened almond milk, 3 T fat free cream cheese, and a little light/low fat italian cheese, garlic powder, salt substitute, and pepper.  I make a quantity (for the two of us) that will lightly coat the pasta, not drench it....and will add chicken or shrimp and lots of broccoli to the 1 oz of fettucine alfredo.   Mmmm...so good.  (No more 1/2 n 1/2, loads of butter and full fat cheese.)

Another example of a revamped portion:  On a work day I'll use only half a can of albacore tuna for my lunch (about 2pm) rather than a whole can.  I will add a little low fat mayo to it and make a wrap with a low carb 50 calorie whole wheat tortilla.  I'll also put spinach in it to bulk it up a little more.  That will keep me satisfied till my 3:45pm low fat mozzarella cheese stick. 
Oh, and I must add, that for breakfast on work days I'll take with me and eat oatmeal.  1/2 serving of oats w/ unsweetened almond milk, walnuts, 1/2 banana, blueberries, sugar free (15 calorie) maple syrup and a Trader Joe's soy breakfast sausage patty along with 8 oz V8 juice.  So I have a hearty breakfast around 11am.

So just eating a bit less, making healthier choices as much as possible,  and eating at regular intervals has really worked for me.