Thought for the day:
"You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be." -David Viscott
Yesterday my friend Mary and I attended a "Happy Hour Party" given by "Hungry Girl", Lisa Lillien. We had a awesome time! It's been quite a long time since I've been out to a "Happy Hour" and an even longer time since I've enjoyed myself so much at one. The crowd was huge, mostly female, and either trying to lose weight or maintaining a weight loss. I met women barely old enough to consume adult beverages and women possibly as much as 20 years older than me, all having a good time, and all of us united in our struggle to fit into our unforgiving jeans.
I tried some party foods and cocktails that were amazingly low in calories, fat and carbs. Can you believe it, a Margarita for only 115 calories! I'm impressed, Now, I had already figured out most of the calories in cocktails are from the sugary mixers. I've also made my own simple syrup and sour mix substituting Splenda for the sugar. "Hungry Girl" swaps flavored versions of rum and vodka or uses sugar free Torani syrup for the liquors in favorite cocktails, which makes a lot of sense, because a liquor is just a grain alcohol with sugar and flavor from either fruit, herbs or spices. I have also noticed that her recipes gain flavor from powdered drink mixes like Crystal Lite. How clever!
Now, for the food. The recipes are YUMMY! Especially the "Devilish Eggs" which were absolutely delicious and difficult for me who loves deviled eggs, to detect the swap of mashed cooked orange cauliflower and "Laughing Cow" cheese for the egg yolks.
Meeting Lisa and chatting for a few minutes was great, she was very gracious and we had her sign our copies of "Happy Hour".
I really like the "Hungry Girl" cookbooks, "200 Under 200" is my favorite and I've found some really great swaps on the web site http://www.hungry-girl.com/.
Two of the ladies we met were using a method of weight loss I found quite surprising. They stated they were participating in a medical study at Washington University. They have a G-tube(a tube that is surgically placed through the abdominal wall into the stomach); they eat whatever they want and then they attach a small machine to the G-tube and evacuate the contents of their stomach. Thankfully the procedure was not demonstrated. One of the women proudly stated she had lost 40 pounds in the past year of participation in this study. I didn't have the heart to tell her I had lost 36 pounds in less than 4 months eating and following the Weight Watchers program.
My friend Mary, who is also a nurse, admitted to being shocked by the idea of what we both thought was medically supervised Bulimia. While not shocked, I was surprised that a Medical School would trial this method for weight loss and also rather curious about the psyche of someone who would participate. Although medically supervised, I can't imagine how it could possibly be healthy, or teach a person how to maintain their weight loss. For me it screams desperation.
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