Every good thing comes to an end...

Day 87

Well ladies and gents its almost over. The 90 days is coming to an end. Yes I haven’t written in over a month but there has been a lot going on. Let me recap:

Twice Baked Potatoes: Justin has mastered this

Take a medium size Idaho potato and put it in the oven for an hour at 425, right on the rack, don’t cover it in oil or wrap it in tin foil just right on the rack. Once cooked (you know it is cooked when you can easily stick a fork in and pull it out) cut a small potion of the top off (small enough so the top portion can be like a potato skin you find at TGI Fridays). Then take a spoon and dig out all the insides and put into a bowl. Leave a small amount on the edges of the skin so that it does not fall apart when stuffing it back in. In the bowl add 1 ½ oz sharp cheddar cheese, a little bit of milk and combine mix until smooth. If you are not on the P90X diet you can add sour cream or cream cheese to make it extra silky smooth. Justin likes to add broccoli and spinach to his to give it some extra pizzazz but I just like the cheddar cheese. Once mixed stuff the potato with the mixture and top with the small piece you originally cut off. Put back in the oven on top of tin foil (to prevent the mixture from dripping in your oven) and bake for another 10 minutes. Deeeeelicious! Haha it took him about 10 tries to master this but in the end it all worked out!

Kuwait

I tried my best to stick to this diet but when all a country offers is tandoori chicken and rice you kind of get tired of it. For breakfast EVERY morning I had wheat (or brown toast as the natives call it) with PB, an egg white omelet with turkey and tomato and a bowl of carrots. Carrots for breakfast you ask? Yes, fresh vegetables are rare in Kuwait, obviously because its surrounded by the desert, so I had to take what I could get. Lunch was always a hit and miss. Sometimes we would eat at the officers club on the Kuwait Navy base but I only ate the tandoori chicken, pitas and sometimes they had a salad. Dairy was another thing that was always interesting. Their milk was definitely not 1% or 2%. i asked for it one day at the officers club and he laughed at me and handed it over. I took one sip and gagged immediately. It has the thickness of buttermilk but it was sour. Needless to say I never asked for a glass of milk again. For dinner we would try different places. The first night we had Indian, this was the staple in Kuwait, Indian restaurants everywhere. But what was interesting was they served everything from Chinese to “American” food. I put quotes around American food because they considered American food just steak. Pepper steak, fried steak, mushroom steak, it kind of reminded me of the scene in Forest Gump with Forest and Bubba and Bubba talking about the different kinds of shrimp. Another night we had TGI Fridays which was awful because all they had on the menu was salad, hamburgers and fried shrimp. Really?!? When it was my night to choose I chose a sushi restaurant, which was good, but a little pricey. The last night we went to an Italian place which was very good. We went with one of the Kuwaiti officers and he took us to a chocolate bar. He said in America everyone goes to bars to meet people, well since Kuwait it a dry country they do not have bars so they came up with chocolate bars, where all they serve is desert. If I were not on this diet this place would have been amazing. I ate the fruit from the chocolate fondue everyone got. Needless to say I was proud of my will power but disappointed I did not get a chocolate sundae. All in all I did well, I did not get my servings in that I needed but I ate healthy.

Telluride Colorado

One of my good friends recently got married in Telluride Colorado. It just so happened to be on the second to last weekend of our diet so Justin and I were going in with a determination to keep to our diet but knew we were on vacation and it would be hard and that we would keep an open mind about it. Besides, the amount of food we didn’t get would be made up by our drinking (whoops). The first night we were good, mainly because we did not have dinner. Our friend held a cocktail hour at her house to welcome everyone to Telluride so we munched on crackers and vegetables. For breakfast every morning we made eggs and bacon. I opted out of the bacon and had a bowl of cereal with dried cranberries. The second night we were on our own for dinner so our group went to a Mexican restaurant. I ate fish tacos with corn tortillas (much better for you than flour) and Justin had an array of meat tacos with corn tortillas. The fattiest thing I ate was the guacamole, but avocados are considered a fat in the P90X diet book so I took it as a good thing ;) the third night was the rehearsal dinner which was at a sushi restaurant. The appetizers were amazing, probably the best appetizers I’ve ever eaten, and everyone in our group agreed. They had tofu wontons, mini fish tacos, all kinds of sushi rolls, edamame and calamari (I didn’t have the calamari but I heard it was good). Then came dinner, by the time we sat down we were stuffed but we ate it all anyway. Dinner was served family style and we were served blacked chicken and tofu, fried rice, coconut soup, some kind of fish that had a funny name and some kind of meat that had a funny name that I can not remember. I opted out of the friend rice and meat but everything else was good. Needless to say I was stuffed!! The night of the wedding was a sit down dinner. I need to make a note here that Telluride Colorado is b-e-a-utiful, and her wedding ceremony over looked the town and the mountains, it was breath taking…really. Haha I don’t know if it’s the altitude that took my breath away or the scenery. Either way. Before I go into dinner I have to talk about the appetizers, we were served ahi tuna with mango salsa, bison with peppers and onions on a cristini and tomato and mozzarella with olive oil and balsamic dressing. All three were so good. I could not get enough of the bison on cristini. Bison is probably not on the list of lean meat but I didn’t care at this point once I had one I was hooked. For dinner I chose the sea bass and Justin chose the 14 oz steak. I know right!! 14 oz is almost a pound of meat. Sea bass was served with a sweet potato puree and an avocado salsa. I'm not a fan of sweet potato so I took a bite and gave the rest to Justin. I cheated on the desert, I had to try the wedding cake, who goes to a wedding and does not try the wedding cake?!! It was nice and moist with some kind of strawberry mousse in the middle. One piece was enough, because after all the food I had before it took me awhile to get through the one piece.

So it is coming to an end. And I am thankful. I would never want to be a professional athlete, ok maybe I would if I were to be a football or baseball player but that clearly would never happen, but to be on a strict diet takes dedication. I am happy I did this though. I know what is good for me and how much I should be having. I used to eat the whole plate because it was there and I thought I was hungry but now I know when to stop.

I hope you readers got something from this blog. I know it was helpful for me to write what I eat and how I feel to get me through these 90 days. But now what?? You know the answer…five guys :) As Tony Horton would say, “Do your best, and forget the rest”