For the last couple of months, I’ve been on Weight Watchers, trying desperately to lose a few pounds at the urging of my doctor, who wasn’t too pleased at how high my blood pressure was. I lost 12 pounds and my blood pressure was a near-perfect 124/80 when I had my follow-up visit. Weight Watchers indeed works, and it’s not as difficult as you might think. I’m still on it but have been slacking a little and I know I’m going to veer a little during the holidays, but I know I need to eat good most of the time. And most of the time, this diet is not too bad.

This photo is of an egg sandwich I made this week and is a typical breakfast on this diet for me–a whole grain English muffin, scrambled egg, 2% slice of American cheese, turkey sausage patty, and this particular time–a super thin slice of pan seared salami, adding only a half a WW point but enough of a slice to give it some real salami flavor. It was like a meat lover’s egg sandwich and only 8 points.

I’m not telling you this to preach. I’m telling you this because sometimes diets can seem daunting when they really don’t have to be. And I know many of you will contemplate dieting or eating better during or after the holiday season.

I’m not sure what prompted me to call this sandwich “Spring Ahead Sandwich,” but I think it has something to do with the fact that it has a hard boiled egg on it–something that may often be associated with Easter or Passover. Anyway, I intended to make this a vegetarian sandwich, until I fed my son some slices of delicious-looking salami for lunch.

So that was that. I picked up some nice long sub rolls, and sliced one open. I piled it with lettuce, salami, sliced hard boiled egg (Trader Joe’s sells them pre-peeled in a bag), sliced kalamata olives, sliced sweet/hot peppers (again, thank you Trader Joe’s for this amazing new treat!). I sprinkled some olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and dried oregano, and closed it up. And it tasted as good as it looked in this photo. Okay, so maybe I’m not the best food photog, but it still looks good for a Blackberry shot!

Anyway, give this one a shot or some variation of it. It was filling, but I did have to stop myself short of eating two of them. At least on that day I did.

I’m trying to lose a bit of weight, so for the moment I’m cutting back on carbs. But as I looked at a South Beach Diet cookbook this morning, I decided that I was just going to whip up my own recipe. So I made an egg sandwich using fried ham as the “bread,” and used mashed avocado and hot sauce as condiments. It was awesome. Here is how I did it and how you can, too….

Fry up two slices of ham until crisp, but not burnt. In another skillet, scramble two eggs and add salt and pepper. Cook until just set. Meanwhile, mash half an avocado with some salt. Lay ham on a plate next to each other, place a slice of swiss (or any cheese you have on hand) on one slice of ham, and spread avocado on the other. Then slide the scrambled eggs onto the slice with the cheese. Shake some hot sauce, on, assemble the sandwich and eat. As my wife said, it might be low-carb but it’s not low-fat. That’s okay though, I was only looking to cut carbs in my breakfast, and I succeeded.