Surviving special days can be done!

So, as I said yesterday, it was my little guy's 6th birthday. For his birthday he wanted to go to IHOP for breakfast. I had tried to look up nutritional information online, but they only had information for their light fit which is fake everything - fake eggs, fake cheese... and well, to me, that is worse than eating the real thing. Dieting should not be about eating artificial ingredient substitutes. That's not healthier just because it's lower calorie.

When we got there, however, they have the calorie count for everything. I LOVE that, but holy calories Batman! But then when you look more closely, 490 calories are the buttermilk pancakes as the side! (without counting the syrup, but counting the mounds of butter). So, I ordered my favorite omelette which is the country omelette. That alone had about 600 calories. I took off the butter from the pancakes (they put more than a tablespoon dollop on top!) and left them for anyone who wanted them. That kept me full until 3 pm.

Then, for a light lunch/early dinner I had hummus with veggies and then at 7 pm I had a slice of birthday cake and I was not hungry. The cake I made was a European style which, for someone with blood sugar issues, is a lot friendlier. It has a cake with a consistency much like a sponge cake (but less sugary). The ingredients: 12 eggs, 12 tablespoons of sugar and 9 tablespoons of flour. That's it. The icing is a custard mixed later with butter. It's 6 whole eggs, 2 cups of milk, vanilla, 4 tablespoons of flour, 2/3s of a cup of rum all cooked together and a bit less than 2 cups of sugar all cooked together until it forms a custard. You let the custard cool and then add in room temperature butter, beat it and then spread it over the cool layers of cake. So the cake has less sugar and WAY less flour than a traditional cake and a whopping 18 eggs! and 3.5 sticks of butter for more fat. Not a health food, but not as unhealthy as American style cake.

The funny thing with the cake was that I made the cake the night before for it to sit in the fridge for a day, but I didn't get to decorating it until the next afternoon. So, the icing is custard icing, but the decorations are made with traditional American icing as that's easier to work with by far. I spent two hours decorating it and then five minutes later we sang happy birthday, carved it up and ate it. At least we have pictures!

And yes, my calories came in GREAT for the day. I enjoyed and I saw a drop on the scale today of .4. I didn't even get exercise in yesterday I was plain WHIPPED.

Stats for 4/23/11:

Beginning weight 255.6  Now: 219.4 (a bit more than 36 pounds lost)