where the moon shines

After almost a month of staying away from Trinoma, the boyfriend and I stepped into the mall again yesterday. We had two things in mind: lunch at Conti’s and grocery shopping for my SBD meals that he prepares for me.

Lunch was satisfying. He had lengua, while I had the American grilled spareribs. For starters, we ordered gambas with mushrooms. The meal was completed with a slice of Mango Bravo that we both shared.

From there, we headed inside the mall and walked around a bit. At the Activity Centre, there were cars and scooters on display, among other things. We checked out the Suzuki APV, which would be a nice family car. There was also the Suzuki Swift, a white one, that would be a great first car for just the two of us. But it wasn’t the four-wheeled cars that got my attention. It was the scooters.

First, my eyes were glued to the Kymco Like:

It’s cute, not too small, and has a compartment at the back.

A few steps away, my heart was captivated by the Yamaha Mio Fino:

It has that vintage feel to it, even when it’s actually brand new. The one on display was tinted in gold, but not a very bright one. It looked more brown to me than gold, but since the salesman said gold, then that it is.

Both scooters share the same price range but if I were really to consider buying a scooter, I’d probably go for the Fino.

What would I use a scooter for? To get to and from work, of course. I can potentially save some money in the long run, plus I wouldn’t have to wait for a cab anymore. We can also use it to go to the seminary, or to the groceries along E.Rod. But do I really really want to hop on a scooter? I’ve never been on one, so I’m not really sure. Besides, I can’t stand the pollution so I’m sure I won’t be using it much around major thoroughfares.

Still I really think it would be cool to have one. Besides, my brother and dad have been bugging me to get one since I started working at NCO. I just never really liked the idea of being on a scooter. Maybe that will change.

After the boyfriend bought a pair of jeans, we went down to the supermarket for our last errand of the day. We enjoyed grocery shopping for food that follows the SBD guidelines. Alfred will be cooking for me again this week.

We picked up something that’s not exactly SBD though. Two boxes of Guylian chocolates, La Trufflina. They were on the buy-one-take-one rack because they will be expiring in the next two months. So what. Haha.

La Trufflina is an irresistible combination of Belgian chocolate truffles with a smooth milk chocolate truffle filling. Each truffle is enrobed with the finest milk, white or dark Belgian chocolate and delicately sprinkled with fine chocolate flakes. An unparalleled chocolate dream.

It was a fun afternoon, even if we were exhausted a little since we both came from our work shifts. I also missed an NCO party yesterday because I was tired, and was also having stomach cramps due to dysmenorrhea. Ugh. Yes. Primolut N worked for me that I actually started bleeding again before the month ended. And I’ve been wearing maternity pads for a few days now. Ugh. Sorry, too much info!

I just had one. A bad carb weekend. I’ve stuffed my body full of bad carbs. White rice, and pasta. Ugh.

Winging it with a pseudo-South Beach Diet isn’t working for me. I really need a meal plan, and I should go grocery shopping for the kind of food that should surround me. I’d been eating rice with my meals (just a few spoonfuls, but it’s still rice) and I’ve had a few bowls of elbow macaroni pasta. Hay. The family can’t be blamed really, it is not their responsibility that they make all these bad carbs available. No one forced me to eat those. Haha.

It seems that being in the office, or out at the mall, makes it easier to eat healthy. Odd, but true. I’ve always imagined that being outside would mean exposing myself to temptation, but I guess it’s been awesome that there are just a lot of alternative eating places now that offers healthier alternatives. There are the sandwiches as Starbucks on whole wheat bread, the salads at Gram’s too. And recently, a new store opened at The Loop: Refresher’s

This store is green! They have packed greens and you choose what dressing goes with it (included in the price, unless you choose a premium dressing). If you want more than just greens, they have a nice selection of ingredients like egg, cheese, ham, etc. I get a very filling pack of yummy salad here for 90 pesos. If I wanted to save a little, I’d limit myself to only two extra ingredients.

So let’s back up, you pick a pack of greens, choose your toppings, choose the dressing. Then the staff tosses them all together for you.

You can then enjoy your salad at The Loop, or bring it home. I wonder though if the greens would wilt if I take one around lunch time but eat it at night? Hmm. They also have set salads, meaning they’ve chosen the topping already. There’s nicoise, weight watchers (or something), among others. I tried the tuna nicoise once and it had olives and peas in it which I don’t normally add to my salads. It was good.

They also sell salad dressing in bottles, and some sandwich spreads too. No added preservatives. They have coffee grounds too, some veggie chips, and potted herbs.

Last week, I walked from the office to the Digiprint outlet in Morato (I had a roll of film processed, see my Lomo and Toy Camera Photography post for the results). It wasn’t really that far, but because I was wearing my high heels (the same one I put on at Mayeen’s wedding), I felt that I needed to take a break at this nice place, HalfMoon Cafe. I noticed a long time ago that they seemed to have merged with the breakfast place I Have Two Eggs, but we hadn’t been there in a long time, years really. Since I needed to lay off my feet for a while and my stomach was grumbling, I went in.

It turned out to be a very good decision, I had found another place to satisfy my salad cravings.

This salad is really good! It had strips of beef tapa, eggs, croutons, mangoes that weren’t sour, tomatoes and greens. The house dressing was good too. I had coffee, and I proudly shunned from the chocolate bibingcrepe in the menu. haha!

I think it’s wonderful that more and more places are offering Halo or Splenda without one having to ask for it. Is it more expensive for coffee shops to stock on this sugar substitute than refined sugar? I guess so. It’s sad though because outside HalfMoon it says that they have Roti bread. When I asked the waiter, he said that because they’re merging with the other restaurant, the asian café offerings were no longer available. What’s left is only the bibingcrepes. Oh, those are sinful!

Anyway, as soon as I stepped out of HalfMoon, I felt my feet start to hurt again. There were tricycles just across the road waiting to take me to where I was going but I was determined to walk my way to Morato circle. I didn’t stop to eat and then just give up, did I? So I made the trip and took a couple of snapshots using Pinky. I hope the shot of the boy scouts’ memorial comes out good.

Okay, here are the last food photos for today. This is from our last meal at Kenny Roger’s Roasters at SM North:

Healthy, no? But, I’ll have to confess that we couldn’t resist the new desserts that the waitress was offering. I just had to try their new pannacotta and crème brûlée!

It was my first time to try crème brûlée, it’s a lot like leche flan pala but less sweet, and with the torched sugar on top. Incidentally, P-Dub published her crème brûlée recipe on PW Cooks. You have to go checkout that recipe, you’d know why I so want to make crème brûlée! I don’t care about having to do SBD phase one all over again if it means I can make this and have it too before the strict phase. Haha Go see the recipe!

So it’s been a week since The Sexy Chef stopped delivering my SBD Phase One meals. How have I been? Pretty good, actually. So far, I’ve made myself proud for not totally slipping back to the way I was used to eating. First though, let’s have a recap of my two-week rations of South Beach Diet Phase One meals.

These are just a few of the meals I enjoyed for fifteen days (it’s supposed to be just fourteen but I was able to stretch it up to fifteen because of my irregular sleep patterns on the weekends). They rarely duplicated dishes, except for the shrimps which I loved, the breakfast omelets (that I did NOT like much), and the snack food. Most of the dishes were very tasty, and definitely filling. There usually is a meat or fish dish paired with either soup or a vegetable dish for lunch and dinner. There were times when the vegetable dish was a simple pack of greens (lettuce and very few cucumbers) but they did vary the dressing it came with. I loved the Asian dressing, but the balsamic vinaigrette surprised me; I loved it.

One of my favorite dishes is the Stuffed Sayote. It’s sayote stuffed with ground beef and some cheese. I would be lucky if I could reproduce that, and would appreciate anyone who can cook one up for me.

I really appreciated the one dessert and two snack items per day that came with the meals. They were my go-to items whenever I had a craving, or was hungry before meal time. The chicken salad was a little too bland but not altogether that bad, while the tuna salad was usually too salty. Though very normal, and not so exciting, I actually liked the jello. For dessert they would also pack in some vanilla cream (not quite ice cream) and others like it. Not bad. For snacks, there would be kani, tuna or chicken salad, also a handful of plain peanuts or cashew nuts, and cheese wedges or strings. Sometimes though, munching on cheese got me more hungry than I was before opening the small package.

But I know that, more than anything else, people are interested to know if I actually lost any weight. I did. It wasn’t as much as I hoped though. On the Sexy Chef website, they mention an 8-12 pound loss within the Phase One period of SBD. In my previous experience of doing SBD, that is accurate. This time though, I didn’t lose as much. I did lose 4 pounds, and I haven’t gained it back. What’s more important though is that I felt lighter a week into the program. My clothes also started to fit better. Oh, and I fit in a ready-to-wear dress that I bought in the department store.

For the past week, though not strictly adhering to the SBD guidelines for Phase Two, I have managed to stay away from rice and bread. I had cake on my birthday, and again yesterday. But I don’t think I’ve had ice cream at all in the past three weeks. I have chosen to eat salad when possible. I am thankful that Kenny Rogers has healthy alternatives for people like me who need all the help they can get. How many times have I ordered this high protein meal? It comes with rice but Alfred takes care of that for me.

If I had money to spare, I would spend it on two more weeks of Sexy Chef deliveries. It’s just more convenient and I need not worry about avoiding unwanted food because I just focus on eating what they give me. Sadly, I do not have the funds for this. Being on the guided SBD has again given me the resolve to stay away from advertised top diet pills. I’m not saying they don’t work because there really are people who swear by them, but they’re just not for me. I think that diet pills only really work for people who don’t need to lose as much weight as I do. They can be more like maintenance pills, rather than the cure, if you know what I mean.

So this weekend will be spent planning the next two weeks: drawing up meal plans and listing what to get from the grocery or identifying where to dine when in the office or out and about elsewhere. This weekend too, I need to work more physical activity into my daily schedule. It’s the only way I can achieve my weight loss goals without completely starving myself. Besides, my recently bought comfy workout clothes are hardly getting worked out. Haha.

After only two to three months with my first Qwerty phone from my|Phone, I sold it to get another one. This one, a super girly version:

I love it. It’s cute and very small. It has Swarovski Zirconia for the buttons and the interface is loads better than the other myPhone handsets. I’m still getting myself familiarized with the features though. I swear to stick with this one for at least the next 12 months. Not because it’s expensive (because it’s really not), but because I really shouldn’t be spending like crazy as I’ve been doing this whole month!

This photo was taken while we were having a break at Iceberg’s. Diet killer!

Oh, don’t worry about me! I haven’t fallen off the South Beach Diet wagon yet This huge serving of mango split (no bananas, but generous with mangoes) was what the boyfriend had. I was perfectly happy with my sugar-free chocolate cashew scoops:

I have to be honest though, I didn’t like it so much Oh well. One can’t have it all.

218 was actually yesterday’s magic number. A few days before that, it was 222.

It’s now 18 minutes past 7 in the evening. I should be sound asleep because there’s work tonight. But, as it would be my first day back from my off, my body clock’s still off. It’s like this every week. And I’m really sick of it.

What I’m not sick og though, is my diet Today’s lunch was particularly filling and tasty:

Fried bangus, tinola soup and ube pudding

I couldn’t help but swoon at the smell of the boyfriend’s lunch though: Lucban longganiza. I had teeny tiny bit just to satisfy my taste buds. A little cheat goes a loooooong way. Brekky was yesterday’s lunchmeat (was supposed to be a snack) with today’s tuna and hardboiled egg. Yum. Oh, I had buco pandan pudding too. Is this really dieting? There’s a funny dilemma tonight too. I don’t know whether to eat the day 5 dinner now, or have it for day 6 breakfast at midnight later? But that would mean I’d have an extra meal and two extra snacks for tomorrow. What a conundrum! Haha  Ang laki naman ng problema ko, lol!

Last night’s dinner was so yummy too, promise! As soon as I opened the container marked Korean Beef Stew, I could smell it and it just intensified when I heat it in the microwave. The side dish was a cucumber salad that had a bit of sweetness in it. I’ve always liked having cucumber in vinegar, but this one was something else.

On Sunday, I was out with my girlfriends. I had to eat dinner at home though before meeting up with them. Good thing too because being full was the only way I could have resisted all those yummy food, including the cakes at the coffee shop we stayed in. I have pictures from there (of my friends, not of the cake!) but I’ve again no time to post those. Gotta hop on the Orbitrac again, I did 8 minutes yesterday!