Review: Hungry Girl Recipe Cards

Several weeks ago at the beginning of my diet I made a spur of the moment purchase.  You know, it caught my eye and I liked the idea that instead of a cookbook (book space being sparse in our house) they were a box of recipe cards.  I didn't think much on it.

Well, when I got home and began actually looking through them I found that most of the recipes (especially desserts) were useless to me because they call for artificial sweetener.

Frankly, although there are a few good sounding recipes in here there are also no brainer recipes that I thought everyone already knew of - like hotdogs wrapped in pillsbury crescent rolls.  I have to say that I do not find it worth the $17 I paid for it.

Really though, all the recipes with artificial sweetener are the worst part, so unless you are a fan of such poison I suggest skipping on purchasing this.

Star rating only a 1 out of 5

Background

I was incredibly lucky and throughout most of my life I could eat whatever I wanted without gaining an ounce.  I am 5'6 and weighed around 102 lbs for most of my adult life.

About 7 years ago, I started gaining weight.  At first not much, the first time I remember noticing weight gain I was 108 lbs.  Didn't bother me at all.  In fact, the opposite.  I had always felt I was too skinny and I kind of liked the extra few pounds.

However, it didn't stop there.  By last Fall I weighed 130 lbs.  Part of that due to "comfort eating," which I had started doing heavily when my sister Debi became terminally ill and of course it only got worse once she passed away.  Then about 18 months later, my other sister Becky suddenly dropped dead after arriving home from work.  I hate to say I was depressed because people think that means you were suicidal, which I was not, it was just kind of a constant deep sadness for several years.

It was finally this year that I really started feeling better.  I became involved in helping organize a local UFO/paranormal conference and that gave me something fun to do, kept me around people and just basically made me feel happy.

After the 3 day conference was over, thinking that I must have lost weight because I had been walking around and doing stuff much of the 3 days, I weighed myself expecting that I had lost some weight.  Much to my horror I had actually gained 5 lbs!  Then came to mind the great buffet at the conference and especially a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy that I stuffed my face with.

Something had to be done, but I never having had to watch my weight I had no idea what it was.  I did know people that belonged to Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, but that didn't really seem for me.  I have a feeling the foods they have and suggest are laced with aspartame.  Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are something that I will not eat.  I totally blame them for my sister's brain tumor (google aspartame and brain tumors) because she drank diet Pepsi all day, every day.

I knew there were people that lost weight simply by counting calories and exercise.  That is what I decided to try, but I had no clue how many calories I should eat or anything like that.  Thank goodness for google which led me to the site "My Fitness Pal."  I answered a few questions there like, my age, how much I weigh, how much I wanted to lose and it told me how many calories I could have per day.  So that is where I started.

More to come.