Portion Control Diet Results

Start weight: 

 Phil: 167.7lbs

Ngoc: 97.7lbs

End weight: 

Phil: 163.7 lbs

Ngoc: 97.3 lbs

Remember the start of our month long portion control diet? We extended it by 1 week because we didn't have time to take the end pictures and write the recap. That one week did not seem to help much.

These were the rules: 

1. Eat every 2-3 hours. Suggested times are:
• 9AM: breakfast
• 12PM: lunch
• 3PM: snack
• 6PM: dinner
• 9PM: snack
2. Follow portion control guidelines from these websites. I am not strictly predetermining the rules for portion control because we eat Asian foods and will have to determine our portions on a case by case basis.
• http://www.choosemyplate.gov/
• http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-portion-size-plate
• recommended servings on food packaging

THOUGHTS: As you can tell by the pictures and numbers, there was no difference. After week 2, my schedule significantly changed and I no longer kept up with the eating schedule. We still stuck to the portions though not as rigorously. I do not consider this diet a fail because watching our portions has become a habit and our appetite has shrunk as well. It takes me less to get full than before and I naturally get hungry within a few hours. However, sticking to the eating schedule proves too difficult to maintain for working professionals. It is just too hard to step away from your work every few hours to grab a snack. I do suggest that you check out the links for portion control because Most of us probably overestimate our portions and it would be good to learn what a proper portion looks like. If you're looking for results in weight loss, this might not be the diet for you. If you just want to eat healthier, eating correct portions would be a good tool to integrate into your healthy lifestyle.

Watercress Soup

Currently I am in a watercress phase. I used to hate the bitterness so much but my mom made this soup and it just changed my mind completely about this bitter green. Look at the freshly washed watercress! Mom's tip was to buy bundles with the thinnest and shortest stems. These are more tender. I wouldn't dwell too long on this criteria at the market though because they come in bundles and you won't have much of a choice anyway.

 Mmm look at the final result. (Recipe below). This soup was so refreshing and would be great on a summer evening. Once you boil the watercress for some time, the bitterness goes away and the greens and broth are more sweet. Watercress is also very good for you so eat freely and abundantly! I even found a link of nutritional facts about watercress.

RECIPE: (For 2 but it can be reheated and eaten for a few days. No longer than a week though.)

2 bundles of watercress, washed, trim the end of the stems optional

10 oz of shrimp, peeled and deveined

6 oz shrimp/beef/fish balls (your choice)

Garlic cloves to taste

2 cans chicken broth

1 cup water

1. Chop the shrimp as small as you can. It's actually better to pound them into a mush but that's optional too. Mix in salt, pepper, garlic, dash of fish sauce to taste. Set aside in a bowl.
2. Sautee 2 large pounded cloves of garlic in a pot with olive oil or veggie oil.
3. Add the fish balls, cook on high for 3 minutes, stirring. The time you spend cooking them is up to you. I like to let it brown slightly so that it flavors the soup later.
4. Add the shrimp.
5. Add the chicken broth and water. I used my home made chicken broth that I had already seasoned. If you are using canned, you will need to season to taste once the whole soup is done. I would add a bit of fish sauce and tiny bit of sugar to balance if it needs it.
6. When the broth comes to a rolling boil, turn down to medium-high, add your watercress.
7. Let simmer until the watercress is soft. I like to eat it while its green like above but you can let it cook past this part. The greens are pretty fibrous and don't get too mushy. Even if it does, it's still good.
8. Season if needed per step 5. 

Papaya Salad

Who doesn't love papaya salad? Not I! I tried my hand at making papaya salad for the first time. Of course I don't have all the ingredients to make a legitimate Thai papaya salad but I gave it a try and you just can't go wrong with crunchy refreshing green papaya.

Green papaya. I tried a variety of shredding methods from using a shredder, mandoline, and the hand hacking method like this.

The texture was uneven because I tried so many methods but I conclude that the shredder is the easiest way so next time I will only use that.

I don't have authentic fermented fish sauce but I tried using shrimp sauce, crab paste, and seasoned fish sauce in one batch. It wasn't ideal but still ok. The winning combo was shrimp sauce and the seasoned fish sauce.

I didn't have a giant mortar and pestle but I used my salad bowl and just punched the salad with the wooden tossers. Not authentic but still delicious. I will update with this recipe again when I can get my hands on some authentic Thai/Laos fermented fish sauce. Yumms.

Brenda's French Soul Food - San Francisco

Greetings! It has been a long while since I updated the blog. The eating and cooking has not stopped but documenting the food has slowed down. Long story short, changes happened to my schedule and the portion control diet is not faring well. Take for example, my trip to Brenda's French Soul Food in San Francisco.

I met up with Sherry, who has a beautiful blog that she doesn't share to the world *ahem*, for a popular brunch place in San Francisco. We discussed how brunch as a concept is really popular in large cities like SF and NY most likely due to the population of young city dwellers. In suburban San Jose most people spend their weekends at home with family or on outings so the market for a good brunch restaurant is not in high demand. What a pity because if brunch was always as good as Brenda's I would like to have it locally too.

($2.75) Sweet watermelon house tea. Judging by the name, this could have been a hit or miss. Luckily it was a huge hit. It tastes like sweet iced tea with shreds of dried watermelon at the bottom. I've been rummaging Pinterest like crazy looking for a satisfactory recipe.

($8.00) Crawfish beignet. Much larger than your usual dessert beignets and filled with a creamy gooey crawfish and cheddar center, surrounded by fluffy beignet dough, then the icing on the cake was the thick layer of cayenne and I'm sure there was paprika too on top. These alone are worth a visit to Brenda's.

($12.00) Shrimp and grits. This was pretty delicious also but I'm not a huge fan of grits, especially when its mixed in with mucho cheese. A few bites of cheesy goodness is enjoyable but a whole bowl isn't as manageable. The portion was large too.

($11.00) Hangtown fry. This was basically an omelet with crispy fried oysters, scallions, and bacon and a side of potatoes and a biscuit. Like the shrimp and grits, too much of this proved to be tiresome. The first 1/3 of the omelet was delicious with the crispy oyster providing a nice salty crunch and the bacon delivering its usual fatty goodness. After that first third, the magic wore off and all I could think of was oil and fat and a big hunk of the same taste.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

I highly recommend Brenda's for the watermelon tea and the beignets. The other dishes were great too. The portions are large and perhaps if I wasn't walking around the city all day, I would have taken everything in a to go box and eaten smaller portions later. The large portions probably wore off the initial excitement from the first few bites of each dish because intense flavors need to be taken slowly especially if it's too rich, creamy, or oily. This was one example of how I couldn't manage my portion control or my eating schedule. I was walking around SF the entire day so I couldn't carry too many snacks other than trail mix. Brunch was my only meal before dinner so I overate to ensure I wouldn't get hungry later. Yup...the portion control diet is going down the pooper as the month draws to a close.

Brenda's on Yelp

Euro Grill - Santa Clara

Recently, I met up with some friends and had a chance to try Mediterranean food at Euro Grill, a new mom and pop restaurant in Santa Clara. Euro Grill is located right near campus at the corner of a residential neighborhood. The building looks like a converted apartment from the outside and the inside is cozy, clean, and bright. The restaurant connects to Euro Market which is a small supermarket owned by the same peolple.

($7.99) Gyro: The portion was huge on this one. I was very happy with my order. I've had a mundane experience with gyros before at a shop in my undergraduate college town. This gyro more than makes up for my lowly opinion of gyros. The portion was huge. The description does not say what type of meat this is. My guess would be well seasoned lamb. The meat was tender and soft. The crunchy but soft on the inside bread held a mix of the meat, tomatoes, greens, onions, and yogurt sauce. This also came with a side of fries. This dish was spectacular and I would love to have it again. I only ate about 1/3 of it (you know, the portion control and all) but Phil and I finished the rest later and it was still good.

($8.99) Sarma: cabbage rolls stuffed with beef and rice, servied with mashed potatoes. I was able to try a piece of my friend's sarma and it was also really lovely. Just as interesting in seasoning and spices. The beef on the inside was soft and I was very surprised that the cabbage leaves held together. I would totally get this next time too.

($8.99) Goulash: lamb and beef stew served with mashed potatoes on the side. Ok so I am disappointed I didn't try either friend's mashed potatoes because they look pretty delicious and creamy in these photos. I also tried a bite of this stew with the house bread and it was excellent. I love the fall off the bone type of texture in stews. Who likes a chewy stew? No one...

OVERALL IMPRESSION

Service was attentive and comforting. We were served by a man who seemed like the owner of the restaurant. He had the attitude about him that he seemed to really care about your dining experience, which I attribute to what happens when you are personally invested in the restaurant's well being. The food, well the pictures speak for themselves. Prices were decent. Portions were huge. Taste was even greater. It's always a win in my book when I can eat lamb and not hate it. I have strong suspicions that my gyro had lamb in it and I didn't mind at all. A+, highly recommend.

Euro Grill on Yelp

Winner of the Giveaway

I am pleased to announce that the winner of the OXO 5lb Food Scale is Shawn! See above for how I picked the winner using Random.org. Congratulations Shawn and thank you to everyone who participated. I hope to be able to give away more freebies in the future.

Portion Control Diet Update:

Phil has been running, doing ab work, and shooting hoops a few days a week. It's really paid off because he lost 3lbs so far! He has definitely been cutting back on the portions although following the eating every 2-3 hours plan hasn't been so easy at work. I'm just glad that he isn't eating one or two very large meals a day and there have been at least 3 regular portion sized meals each day. 

For me, I haven't stepped on the scale because I already started at a good weight and I am not concerning myself with the pounds. I've been getting back into running every weekend. The last few weekends I've been running a little under 4 miles for 2 days a week. I'm starting training for half marathon distance (13 miles). It would be really helpful if I could run every other day but with night classes, so far I run on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday back to back which is not doing so well for my knees. I am really frustrated with my busy schedule. It doesn't allow me to do the things I want when I want. On the positive side, I have become accustomed to eyeballing the correct portion sizes and the meal plans have been easy to keep up with during the work day. Packing a PB&J sandwich for class has been really helpful in keeping me from getting hungry throughout class. Recall that I used to pack salads and then get so hungry I round off the meal with a bunch of cookies. At least I don't do that anymore.

Last Call for the 5lb Food Scale Giveaway

Sunday dinner is usually when we get creative and get rid of leftovers in the fridge because trash day is on Monday morning and food that has gone bad or cannot be eaten needs to be thrown. After evaluating our fridge tonight, I made the following dishes.

Broccoli stem salad. This was made by using a vegetable peeler to peel the skin off broccoli stems and slicing them into cross sections. You're not going to get all the skin off because of the nooks and crannies but try to get as much off as possible because it tastes bitter. I added finely minced garlic then sprinkled the entire thing with plenty of sea salt. You can be heavy handed on the salt because all you need is for the salt to draw the moisture out of the broccoli and create a quick brine. Let is brine for 1 hr at least and then toss with Korean pepper powder and some lime juice.

(source) I quickly blanched a bundle of choy sum and cut the bundle into thirds.

Egg noodle soup with fish balls, shrimp, choy sum, and eggs

Directions

1 boiled egg, sliced

3 oz of shrimps

3-4 fish balls, halved

5-6 stems of choy sum, blanched and cut into thirds

Chicken stock, mine is home made but you can use canned

1. Sautee fish balls and shrimp in a little vegetable oil and garlic until halfway cooked
2. Add vegetable stock, I don't know how much but eyeball enough to fill your bowl
3. Let this broth simmer on medium-high while you prepare the next steps
4. In a separate pot of boiling water, dip your noodles in for 10 seconds then drain and rinse with cold water
5. In your bowl, put in the greens and noodles
6. Add shrimp, fish balls, and broth from step 3 to your bowl
7. Garnish with sliced eggs
8. Eat with Sriracha sauce!

 *My homemade chicken broth was already seasoned with fish sauce. If you are using canned chicken broth, you can season using a combo of fish sauce and soy sauce to taste. We did not follow any portion control rules for tonight's meal because noodle soup doesn't fall into any of the classic categories. Also the broth can get you very full but it will digest fast so eating a small portion will not be enough. Just use your own judgment when making your portion.

Sunday's noodles were actually inspired by Saturday's failed dinner attempt. 

(~$4 per bag of 2 servings) I have always been curious to try the pre-made cold noodle packets from the Korean store. Judging by their elaborate airplane food, I trust Korean instant noodles to be a complete meal and this pack just looked so interesting I had to buy it.

Inside the packet, you get enough for 2 servings. 2 packets each of soba, cold broth, mustard powder, hot pepper paste.

After cooking the soba for 1 minute in hot water, straining and rinsing with cold water, everything else was ready to be assembled. It was as easy as placing it in the bowl, adding the cold broth, pepper paste, and mustard powder. I added green onions and boiled egg. For the most part, the noodle was ok but the mustard powder was too much. I put the entire packet in and it was the equivalent of eating wasabi flavored broth. Next time, I wouldn't put any mustard powder, not even a little. Aside from the mustard powder, soba was a too chewy and the dish itself had a one dimensional taste and texture. There's only so much chewy noodles in cold broth without any meat or greens that I can eat. We gave up after less than half the bowl and went out for a journey to find popcorn chicken. We drove to 3 different Quickly boba shops before finding one with popcorn chicken. The second shop was not selling any fried snacks that day because they ran out of oil. How do you run out of oil!?! Anyway, the moral of the story is do not eat things with mustard powder.

OXO 5LB FOOD SCALE GIVEAWAY ENDS AT MIDNIGHT. LAST CHANCE TO ENTER.