Category: healthy breakfast

December 15, 2013

Weekly Food Prep

Upon entering Phase 2 of the South Beach Diet, I’d like to share what a typical menu looks like on this plan. No, I do not eat salads for every meal (hardly eat them at all!). And yes, I do cheat just a little bit. This week, I’m finally allowed to have a few carbs including one fruit and one starch, which will be quinoa.

Left to right: salsa meatballs over a bed of quinoa,

egg scramble and turkey sausage, broccoli/cauliflower, apples

Breakfast, 265 calories:

5 egg whites + shredded zucchini, mushrooms, onions and a sprinkle of cheese
3 breakfast turkey sausage links

Snack, 210 calories:

Apple with cinnamon
20 almonds

Lunch, 299 calories:

Quinoa + salsa meatballs with sauce (similar to this recipe, but with ground turkey)

Snack, 177 calories:

Raw broccoli and cauliflower with hummus
1/2 cup 1% cottage cheese

Dinners:

Turkey chili dogs (minus the bun)
White bean chicken chili
Taco salad
Something with turkey bacon
Etc.

I’m really loving the variety I’ve found with the South Beach and low-carb recipes out there. I brought a stack of cookbooks home from the library, flagged pages like crazy, and saved all the recipes I knew I would actually use to a Google document. Then, when I sit down to plan my menu for the week, I just scroll through to see what looks good. I’ve been sticking with eggs and sausage in the morning and just change up the veggies in the eggs because I don’t see myself getting sick of this breakfast. I try to keep the snacks easy too, usually along the lines of plain Greek yogurt with nuts, cottage cheese or veggies and dip. That way, most of the planning goes into lunches and dinners and prep time is still manageable. I also eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day to keep things simple.

Dinners, we typically plan like normal for the family, but I just switch things up a little bit for my diet. For example, this past week we had spaghetti on the menu. Instead of having noodles like Hubster and Peanut did, I used shredded zucchini that I roasted on the stove for a bit. I still eat hot dogs and burgers too, just without the bun or wrapped in lettuce instead. They still taste great! Really, you have to try it to dig it. We had pizza mozzarella burgers on the grill and it tasted so delicious wrapped in lettuce, I didn’t miss the bun. All the great taste is in the burger itself, not the bun!

Every night before bed, I pack all the various pieces of my lunch in my big lunch bag and stash it in the fridge. The next morning, I literally only need to grab the bag and go. This food prep plan keeps me on time for work, fully prepared and allows me to fully adhere to my meal plan.

What are you eating this week? What are your best tips for meal planning?

October 22, 2013

Big Healthy Breakfasts

Some people think of healthy meals and all they can picture are those teeny tiny little gourmet meals where the glaze looks like more of the meal than the meal itself in their mind. Looks a little like this, right?

{Source}

Does this ring a bell with you? You feel like you can only eat a tiny bit of food and that you’re surely going to be starving within an hour. I want to show you exactly what I eat for breakfasts quite regularly so we can explore this idea a little more closely.

Let’s dispel those myths, shall we?

I’ve noticed that I can pack quite the doozy of a breakfast for fewer than 500 calories. I mean, we’re talking tasty egg dishes and oatmeal and a smoothie–all at once. See that? I have what appears to be three breakfasts in one! All for fewer than 500 calories, and with tons of lean protein. The best part is, I stay full for several hours with all of this food and I can even have a snack a little later in the morning.

Let’s break it down so you can see how this works

1. One packet of Great Value maple and brown sugar oatmeal, prepared with water. 150 calories

{Source}

2. Five egg whites with a pinch of shredded cheese and spices of choice, 91 calories (18g protein!)

{Source}

You can also add a ton of veggies and make a veggie scramble, which adds minimal calories and packs a TON of vitamins and nutrients. And aside from salt and pepper, Mrs. Dash is a wonderful way to spice up the eggs.

3. One fruit smoothie or milkshake. My regular morning staple is 1 cup frozen mixed berries, 1 scoop protein powder and water. Sometimes I make a milkshake with a few Tbsp milk, one frozen banana, 1Tbsp peanut butter, water and 1/4c Greek yogurt. 190 calories (or 255 calories for the milkshake)

{Source}

Total calories for three breakfasts in one: 431!!!

Then, around 11:00am, I usually have a light snack. Sometimes I’ll make chickpea salad or just munch on a serving of cottage cheese. This usually amounts to another 150 or so calories. So, I’m still under 600 calories by lunchtime.

Wanna know what other myth this defies? The one that says that healthy food takes so much longer to prepare. Wrong! Oatmeal packets take about 5 seconds to prepare. Egg whites can be scrambled in the microwave in minutes and a smoothie prepared in a Magic Bullet takes about 15 seconds. That’s faster than drive-through, my friends! And it’s so incredibly healthy and nutrient-packed that it makes little sense to eat any other way.

Healthy eating really can be that easy…fun…colorful…nutrient-dense…fast… I could go on!

What’s a typical breakfast like for you?

*all calorie estimates were based upon my own ingredients using the Sparkpeople.com nutrition calculator

October 22, 2013

Big Healthy Breakfasts

{Source}

Let’s dispel those myths, shall we?

Let’s break it down so you can see how this works

1. One packet of Great Value maple and brown sugar oatmeal, prepared with water. 150 calories

{Source}

2. Five egg whites with a pinch of shredded cheese and spices of choice, 91 calories (18g protein!)

{Source}

Total calories for three breakfasts in one: 431!!!

Healthy eating really can be that easy…fun…colorful…nutrient-dense…fast… I could go on!

What’s a typical breakfast like for you?

*all calorie estimates were based upon my own ingredients using the Sparkpeople.com nutrition calculator

February 25, 2013

Weekly Food Rundown

I am one of those people that can eat the same thing every day for five days. It makes prepping on Sunday for the week a whole lot easier. I try to plan what I’m going to have for the following week by Friday. That way, I can put together the grocery list for Hubster by Saturday (he does the grocery shopping. Whew!) and prepare everything on Sunday.

Here’s what’s in my lunch bag this week–all healthy and as “clean” as possible. I am participating in a health bet (more on that to come), so I have been making very health-conscious decisions about my weekly fare. Even more so than normal! Here’s what’s in my lunch bag for the week and the approximate calorie counts for how I prepared them:

Breakfast:

The Breakfast Cookie with coconut flakes and raisins from the Fitnessista
368 calories

Snack #1:

Cottage cheese with pineapple bits (1/2c and 1/4c respectively)
119 calories

Lunch:

Lentil meatloaf from SparkRecipes (with a few tweaks) + 1 banana
259 calories

Snack #2:

Chickpea broccoli salad with raisins from Eating Well
180 calories

It took me all of about 1 hour to prepare a week’s worth of food on Sunday night. That is a very short amount of time compared to the time it would take to prepare all these meals–or different meals–separately throughout the week. While working in the kitchen, I am always preparing multiple things at once. For example, while the lentils are simmering, I’m mixing up breakfast cookie batter ingredients. I also have a tendency to choose very easy recipes so I’m in and out of the kitchen as fast as possible. I’m a low-maintenance cooker–I like my food healthy, fast, easy and tasty. You know, no pressure.

The breakfast cookie is awesome because it tastes like an indulgence. And, because you prepare it the night before, you have zero to prep the next morning. This is good for me, because I’m always running perpetually late on weekday mornings. The breakfast cookie is actually my recipe for being on time. No joke!

I’m on a chickpea kick, so I googled “easy chickpea recipes” and came up with this whole chickpea slideshow on Eating Well. I chose a simple super nutrient-dense salad that tastes amazing. I would probably add chickpeas to anything. Well…except breakfast.

I also have a goal to incorporate more lentils into my diet since they’re amazing. I never had any growing up and only recently discovered their magic. I’ve been researching lentil recipes for awhile now in an attempt to add more lentils to my recipe library.

Dinner will depend upon my family. I have some healthy butternut squash mac ‘n cheese up my sleeve as well as mini whole wheat English muffin pizzas (DIY to come). By the way, no I am not a vegetarian, but I do try to eat as little red meat as possible and am willing trade meat for healthier vegetarian options sometimes.

Perhaps one day, I can build up a nice array of these meal plans to help you, my readers, create your own healthy weekly menus. Would you be interested?

How do you prepare for the week?

April 17, 2012

My Garden is My Diet

Some exciting delicious things are starting to pop up in the garden already. Namely, asparagus. Oh, and the chives and orange mint are completely ready for snipping. The asparagus stalks only shoot up a few at a time–just enough for mama to enjoy a delish egg scramble. And it took three long years of waiting to be able to snip any at all. The wait was long, so the gratification is so sweet.

I have vowed this year to put together some yummy recipes for all the vegetables we plan to grow. I hate to say it, but we end up wasting a lot of our fresh fare because, well, what do you do with all of that zucchini? We shredded a bunch of it and put it in the freezer. Left some in people’s cars, for real. But we could really do a better job eating from our yard. So, I’ve slowly been gathering tomato, zucchini and cucumber recipes so my toolbox is all ready come harvest time. No excuses!

Right now, I’m just enjoying the simple bounty of a few asparagus stalks here and there, mixed with Egg Beaters, snipped chives and whatever else is in the crisper. This time, it was mushrooms and yellow peppers. Then, I served myself with a side of turkey bacon and whole wheat toast. Oh yum!

August 24, 2011

My Champion Breakfasts

When it comes to breakfast, cereal just doesn’t cut it for me. At all. I will be ravishingly hungry by about 9:30 with cereal, even if I go waaaaay over the standard 3/4 to 1 cup serving. A good bowl of Kashi might cut it on a relatively sedentary day. But, I’ve found a handful of healthy breakfasts I thought I’d share that do keep me very satisfied until lunchtime. And by that I mean around 12:30, not at almost-11:00. Not only are they diet-friendly, but they’re also super-fast and simple to prepare and very inexpensive. My kind of meal!

1. Waffles: Two whole grain toaster waffles, 1/4 c sugar-free syrup, 1/4 c cottage cheese on the side and sometimes a sprinkling of blueberries over the top. A sweet applesauce/syrup mixture is also a great way to sneak in fruit.

2. Oatmeal: 1/2 c quick oats, 1/2 c milk, 1/4 c sugar-free syrup and 1 mini box of raisins all heated in the microwave for about 1.5 minutes. I use milk instead of water for my oatmeal to make it richer. Then, I have another cup to drink.

3. PB&Honey Toast: Two slices whole wheat toast spread with 1 T peanut butter each and a drizzle of honey over the top. Side of canned pears.

4. Eggs: Scrambled Egg Beaters with two slices of buttered toast. Side of fruit. I like to mix whatever I have on-hand into the scrambled eggs if possible: mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, deli meat, green pepper, shredded cheese, etc.