Happy 2012!

A new year is always so exciting to me. It's like a fresh slate, a start over. It seems like anything is possible and I always seem to feel inspired and hopeful as I look over the coming year. For 2012, I am hoping to be in better health. And to continue my journey towards being alot healthier than I have been in the past year. Part of that is weight loss, but unlike most people (which I count myself as in the past) who dream big, only to crash a few weeks, or maybe a few days later, I want to continue on what I have started.

After being diagnosed as a diabetic last year, and after much lecturing from my Dr how I should have gastric bypass surgery and I know she means well, but no, that's not for me....I embarked once again on the low-fat/calorie counting adventure...determined that this time was going to be last time. Although I have said that many, many times in the past. And so I did. For about 5 months, I starved myself and counted calories. After having metabolic testing done, I did find out that after years of yo-yo dieting my body has decided that it maintains my weight at a bit under 1700 calories a day. Now if I was to confess my body weight, you would be amazed. ;) My dietician could not believe it. She said with my weight I should be able to eat 2200 calories a day and still lose weight! Oh no. Not me. :( So I kept count 1200 daily calories and that gave me 1 lb a week weight loss. I honestly don't know how I survived this for 5 months.

My Dr kept telling me I was one of those "carb sensitive" diabetics. I eat the carbs and my blood sugar goes sky high. I eat veggies and salads and my blood sugar is happy. After 5 months of starving and only losing 22 lbs, I finally decided to listen to her and quit eating the bread, potatoes, rice, and all those yummy flour products. The result? Blood sugars are once again in the "nice" range & I lost 20 more lbs in only 2 months!! What's even better? I'm not hungry all the time! Am I eating one of those crazy low carb diets? Not exactly. I call it a "low-ER" carb diet. I'm actually vegetarian and I don't eat meat (beef, chicken, pork, etc) but I do eat fish. (No I'm not one of those crazy PETA vegetarians...I just can't digest the meat and tried to start eating fish a few years ago with success). I eat ALOT of veggies and salads with my soy protein and fish. So while I can't claim it as a "low carb" diet (most of those people only eat 25 carbs a day) I do call it a "low-er" carb diet since I eat about 50 - 75 carbs a day. With weight loss success!!

 Hopefully one day I will be able to eat the yummy carbs again, but for me it will be awhile. I'm actually "enjoying" this low carb food and wonder if I will ever be able to eat the  normal "carb" diet again.  I wanted to share today about a simple tea I had at home and it was all low-carb goodies. yes, I'm so proud of myself. LOL.

My husband bought me a 3-tier tray that I had seen for Christmas. I can't find alot of my tea things since we moved. I think most are still packed in storage! So while I do have trays, I didn't have one at the moment. We were sitting at the table on New Year's Day and he asked what I was going to do with it. Well use it of course! So while he went out on a service call, I decided to have "afternoon tea" ready when he came home. Talk about surprised! :) It was an impromptu tea and I really enjoyed it.  I felt inspired! It was afterall the first of the year when all things seem possible. So I thought I'd give it a try and see about having one every month. Life is too short to live without tea parties, right? :)

So I thought I'd share my little impromtu afteroon tea on New Year's Day! Since I grew up on the Eastern Coast, I should tell you we always celebrated holidays with fresh seafood. I guess I haven't outgrown that because I still do the same even though I live 350 miles inward now in the mountains.

Wishing you a healthy and happy 2012 & year full of inspiration and creativity!

have a TEA-licious day!

SHERI

Shall we start with Pan-Seared scallop salad with champagne vinaigrette & she-crab soup? The salad was featured in this month's issue of Tea Time Magazine.

My new 3-tier tray with lots of goodies!

On the bottom we have Shrimp salad on cucumber, spinach artichoke spread with smoked salmon on low-carb bread, and my low-carb cheesecake looking yummy in the background. ;)

The middle tray I tried out a new recipe for low-carb mini scones. Actually not bad!

Yummy cheesecake with strawberries

coconut macaroon cookies

And tea of course! I love these cups. The dinner set is very precious to me because they belonged to my Irish grandmother. I always loved having tea in these with her.