Two diets at Once-Day 2

I've been using the word "food plan" with Elijah instead of "diet" because in our household diet is a word used frequently in January when my husband and I are trying to shed those pounds gained over the holidays. I do not want him to confuse the two. With the in mind, my struggle today is to meet the needs of both Elijah's additive free diet and the traditional shedding pounds diet that Russ and I are trying to follow. Last night, I made some homemade "healthy" granola bars, but the calories in those made the numbers red on my husband's "my fitness pal" app. for yesterday. The boys loved them though. And what could get me out of bed on a Saturday morning after being up several times in the night with a fussy 3 year old? Simple Mornings Muffins. I saw these new additive free muffin mixes by Dunkin Hines at the store yesterday and was excited to try them since we love to have muffins on Saturday morning. The Blueberry strussel muffins looked delicious (and were!) but at 200 calories a muffin, it was not exactly diet food. My husband made scrambled eggs instead. I indulged in 500 calories worth of muffins. My son gobbled them up with his pear juice (no tears this morning!). Then, it was on to what to make for a birthday party cake. I was originally going to make the weight watchers cake where you put a diet cola in a boxed devils food cake mix, but since there were additives in both the mix and the soda, that was out of the question if my son was going to be able to eat it. I started searching for other diet cake recipes, but most had margarine instead of butter. This would be good for us, but again, not for my son. Finally I found a weight watchers recipe that used 2 T of butter in with the other ingredients. I did a little dance, made my low-cal, low-fat, preservative-free, aspartame-free, dye-free chocolate cake and everyone was happy! In the Feingold materials, they suggest not combining this with any other type of dietary restrictions because it will be too much to handle. Now, I know why! The search is on for snacks and desserts that the whole family can enjoy!