Yooooo Cafe Rioooooo

It is very important to me to be able to work Cafe Rio into my fit healthy sexy lifestyle.  I'm obsessed addicted in-love.  And I have no desire to try to give it up.  My pal Karen has creamy delicious coffee, I have Mexican deliciousness.  So today, I've looked into how I can work it in as a treat a few times a month. In the past, I've made Wednesday take out night, since I have class tonight and I end up famished and low on energy and ideas for making dinner at 7 PM when I get out of school.  So I like to pick up a grilled chicken salad. And I think that's fine sometimes. Yummm.

You may be pleasantly surprised, as I was, to find that the Cafe Rio flour tortilla (from heaven) is lower in calories and fat than it's wheat counterpart. It also has 1 gram more in fiber, and is equal in carbs.  Unless this is a switcharoo mistake on the Cafe Rio website.  Either way, the differences are minimal, so I would not waste my money paying extra for the wheat tortilla to feel healthy and snobbish.  Treat yourself to the flour.  The important thing here is portion control, as just the tortilla itself comes in at 420 calories. 1/2 of the tortilla is good for me.

So here's the plan:

I eat half of the grilled chicken salad for dinner, then have 1/2 for leftovers (weekend lazy dinner probably). I divide it in half before I start eating--key. I used to always eat a full salad with 2 dressings, the new new shhh is 1/2 salad with 1/2 dressing. Then, other modifications: no tortilla strips, and no sprinkle cheese.  Remember to make these changes while ordering! The strips are great and crunchy and all, but not worth the calories and fat to me, while the dressing and tortilla absolutely ARE. And the sprinkle cheese adds extra sodium, for not a lot of flavor.  Everything else, I get to have!! Black beans, rice, lots of yum lettuce, guac, pico, yum. So there we go.  A plan for power.

Here is my food journal for today, so you can see how easily this works in.  My AM workout wasn't even intense to make up for it!  I'll still do some yoga tonight to combat my soreness I'm having right now, and track that later.  This is a pretty normal food day for me, up until dinner.

You can see that I still have calories left for a few almonds and blueberries this afternoon.  Brilliant.

This was quite an in depth analysis/rationalization on eating my favorite food.... But what's the point of all this living healthy and living long if I'm tortured?  Exactly. Enjoy.