What I Ate Today (Thursday)

Hiya! Boy do I have a treat for you today....literally! I celebrated the last of my graveyard shifts in style, happy hour with my girlfriends.

One great thing about working the graveyard shift is that when I wake up in the afternoon I have my whole days points available to me. If you eat a high PPV at the end of your day you have to dip into your WPPAs. If you eat a high PPV meal at the start of your day, you might be able to balance it out using little to no WPPA.

I knew I would need to eat something when I woke up. I had a few hours until I was meeting my friends for happy hour and I didn't want to go starving. That is always a recipe for disaster. I ate a scrambled egg and egg white with chicken sausage and red pepper. I am currently dealing with a “grape problem.” Therefore, grapes were also consumed.

I made myself pretty and headed out the door.

I met Danielle, Kate, and Stephanie (who I forgot to get a photo of) at The Cheesecake Factory for happy hour. 

CF has a great happy hour menu with several small plate options for a reduced price. They don't have a really big drink menu but that didn't stop us from finding something to order. CF offers a skinny version of four of their drinks for $5. I ordered the skinny margarita, Kate ordered the skinny mojito, and Danielle ordered the skinny long island iced tea.

I chose CF for the Asian chicken lettuce tacos. I had them on our last visit to Vegas and really liked it. I was happy to see it listed on the Boise “Skinnylicious” menu. Butter lettuce leaves filled with grilled chicken, carrots, bean sprouts, cucumber, cilantro, and rice noodles with spicy cashew sauce. They were just as good as I remembered.

I wrote down several dessert options so I knew the PPVs ahead of time as I was still undecided. When I arrived at CF I looked at the display case and decided on Chris' Outrageous Cheesecake. Layers of moist chocolate cake, chewy brownie, toasted coconut pecan frosting, and creamy chocolate chip coconut cheesecake. WOW! It was amazing. I have had their version of this dessert that was in the form of cake but never the cheesecake. It was a fantastic pick. Danielle shared some with me.

I had a WW leader once give tips for dining out. She said when it comes to drinks, bread basket, and dessert she will have two but not all three. Since I ordered a drink and knew I wanted dessert I skipped the bread basket. I also ordered a cup of decaf coffee to enjoy with my dessert.

This helped me feel full while I slowly ate a few bites of my dessert. Once my tastebuds were satisfied, I asked for a to-go box right away so I could get the remainder of my cheesecake out of sight. It is way to easy to keep picking at something sitting in front of you while visiting at the table and before you know it you have eaten more than planned.

I headed out to Kuna to visit my sister and nieces. On the drive home there was a slight itch to eat out again. However, I knew I had leftovers at home and that I would most likely be eating out on Friday and maybe even on Saturday. So, I headed straight home. I heated up some leftover Balsamic pork roast and green beans. I also had several more bites of cheesecake along with some decaf coffee. I am guessing there is about 1/3 to a quarter of the cheesecake left. I counted the PPVs for 1/3 of the total calories. It was worth EVERY one of those PPVs.

When all was said and done I ended up eating all 30 of my DPA plus 3 extra points, which I had 3 APs to cover it. It was a successful venture eating out and visiting with my friends.