The holidays!

So another holiday has passed and I'd like to say that I was careful and sensible and stayed under my calorie limit but I can't.  Actually, no I wouldn't like to say that.  Holidays are celebrations and I enjoyed good food with my family, without guilt!

I was in charge of dinner and I was able to lighten it up a little bit.  I decided to make lasagna and meatballs for dinner.  Now there isn't much you can do with lasagna to lighten it up, but I tried.  First, I made the marinara sauce, nothing special just olive oil, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, tomato and spices.  I also used part skim ricotta and 2% mozzarella.  The biggest cut was the meat for the lasagna and meatballs.  I used lean ground beef (93/7) and instead of pork sausage, I used turkey sausage.  No one noticed and it was delicious.  On a side note, I have the perfect ratio for the meatballs and lasagna; 3 parts ground beef, 2 parts sweet italian sausage and 1 part hot italian sausage.  Shh.  Don't tell anyone.  Also, use a food processor when chopping up the onions, celery and garlic for the meatballs.  I run it until it is almost a liquid.  You can tell people that part...

All in all, I went over my calorie limit for the day by around 1500 calories.  That's not that big a deal every once in a while.  The problem I had was that I had been off my schedule all weekend and forgot to take my blood pressure medication.  I woke up Monday and had gained 8 pounds!  It was 8 pounds of water weight though.  I couldn't figure out the problem until I noticed how swollen my hands were.  I couldn't pull of my wedding ring and my watch was too tight.  Just last week I was thinking it was time to tighten the band and now I could barely snap it closed!  But, I got back on my schedule and most of that weight is gone.