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Weekly Food Prep

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Well, since it has been made public, I can tell you that I’ve been following the Self Magazine Drop10 plan, with workouts courtesy of Tone it Up. I got a copy of the entire plan before it was published because I signed up to be a VIP tester. Along with the workouts with K&K, I’ve been following the plan pretty religiously, with a few meals out here and there. This week, my menu looks something like this:

Breakfast:
  • Cheesy Eggs on Toast: 338 calories.
  • I sauteed the edamame, carrot, soy sauce and oil mixture ahead of time on the stove at home and then I make the eggs separately at work in the microwave. I mix them both together for the final product.
Edamame Carrot Egg Breakfast
Lunch: 
  • Sausage and Pepper Roll: 320 calories.
  • I used the substitution guide and chose mushrooms instead of peppers. I also couldn’t find chicken sausage at my grocery store, so I used two breakfast turkey sausage links instead.
  • I packaged the mixture in baggies for each day, making them easy to grab and go in the morning.
Snack:
  • Lentil Salsa Dip n Chips. 189 calories
  • Lentils make this dish look like gray mush. This does not look all that appealing, but I assure you, it tastes great. I think I’ll be adding this snack to my regular rotation. It is rather filling.
  • I packaged the chips in baggies for quick pre-portioned snacks, as seen above in the first picture.

Dinners:

  • Spaghetti
  • Turkey meatballs
  • Stir-fry
  • Scalloped potatoes and ham
    • This last one isn’t on the plan, but I’ll make sure to have the recommended 450-calorie-sized portion from the recipe we’re making. We have ham leftovers that we really don’t want to go to waste.

200 Free Calories:

  • Often get spent on 2 girl scout cookies and a spoonful of peanut butter. Once in awhile, I’ll have a diet cherry 7up with a shot of Southern Comfort. #YOLO, right?

*Note: Calorie calculations are based upon information entered into the SparkPeople nutrition counter. I entered the brand names and types of food that I used specifically. Self.com has a little bit different calculations than I came up with.

I usually do all my prepping for the week on Sunday, after Hubster does the grocery shopping. This week’s menu took me 1 hour from start to finish, including cleanup. I don’t do a whole lot of dinner prep beforehand though. We usually make dinners and eat them fresh as we go, but I do sometimes make some of the grains ahead of time.

I love this Drop10 plan! I’ve noticed that the balance of protein, carbs and good fats is keeping me pretty satisfied all day. I do have to add in a banana or other snack around mid-morning on days where I’m extra active. Those are the only days where I feel a bit shaky if I don’t eat a little extra.

I feel like I haven’t been a slave to the numbers on this plan either. Self Magazine does most of the dirty work for me, so I don’t have to. The substitutions are amazing, because I can use whatever I have on-hand or left over from a different meal. I eat mostly the same thing every day for breakfast, lunch and snack. Dinners we switch up and I try to incorporate meals that my whole family will eat. Heck, Self even includes a steak dinner. And of course, Hubster totally went for that.
I could hardly take it when I saw that Karena and Katrina are in the development stages of getting their own reality series on Bravo. I couldn’t say anything before it was published, but now I’m geeking out about it. I hope Bravo does an amazing job of catching them behind the scenes and maybe even broadcasting some workout sessions with them. I don’t know too many of the details, but I think that would just be too cool.
Tomorrow I will share a squash recipe with you that I also prepared on Sunday. Stay tuned!

 

Some Healthy Living Obsessions Lately

Lately, I’ve stumbled over some minefields of health and fitness information in my always-insatiable hunger for knowledge. I really will be a student for life, no doubt. Let me share some fun resources for all you other folks who love to learn baby learn:

1. OpenCourseware: The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food course will have to have a whole dedicated blog post, but I’ve been fascinatingly listening in to Professor Brownell’s class about food. It’s really interesting to see how we’re influenced by keen marketing strategies and social constructs. I mean, we already know we are, but it’s interesting to hear about it more in depth and pinpoint it. This knowledge is really an invaluable tool. If we know when we’re being influenced, we have the capacity to disregard it.

2. Eat-Clean Diet®: Now I know this is no new thing, but I think that this “diet” really has lasting power. This is the only diet that intuitively makes the most sense to me, healthwise. It’s not even a “diet” per se, but more of a healthy way of approaching food in its most undiluted, unprocessed form. Sure, you could manage to eat your daily allotment of calories in sugary cereals and Hamburger Helper, but you won’t be doing your body any favors and you probably won’t even lose weight as easily. I feel like feeding your body the most nutrient-dense food is like feeding it a universal anti-any-illness pill. I think science would agree. Might I add: Tosca Reno is a role model worth emanating!

I’ve been eating as clean as I can lately, and man can I tell the difference! I ate a small McD’s fry one day and it actually made me ill after eating so healthfully. If that isn’t motivation enough…

Source: indg.ca via Krista on Pinterest

3. Healthiest Foods on Earth and Healthiest Meals on Earth: Keeping in the healthy eating vein (the area I admittedly need the most education in), I checked these two books out at the library. These books are just brim-full of food education. I will never look at a piece of broccoli the same again. When you know a food is actively fighting potential cancer cells, you sigh and rejoice a little when you eat it. And hey, whey protein is listed as one of the healthiest foods on Earth. See, it all came around full circle.

Just check out this one snipped from the book: “Recent human studies have indicated that as little as one carrot a day could possibly cut the rate of lung cancer in half” (p. 30). Just reading the section on mushrooms blew me away because of their effects on cancer. Shiitakes could lower blood cholesterol by as much as 45%!!!! Greens have a pharmacy of nutrients. Onions vs. Cancer. I’m all over that!!

Healthiest Foods on Earth, Diet books

4. I’ve mentioned my quest for an ExerciseTV replacement and I’m really happy to have found some exceptional resources. Livestrong Woman and Tone It Up make the transition oh-so-easy and fulfilling. Even though I miss the full-length workouts and variety on E-TV, these resources more than suffice.  I will gladly follow the cues of Karena and Katrina and all the trainers on Livestrong.

Also, if you haven’t stumbled upon it yet, BodyRock is super-amazing when you’re feeling hardcore. The workouts are only around 12 minutes long (super do-able) and I imagine they feel a little bit like P90X routines. But they’re missing that $100+ price tag. They’re completely free! And of course, I’ve mentioned Cassey’s POPilates too. Big fan! Now, I’m all set.

Source: bodyrock.tv via Laura on Pinterest

Garden Veg Risotto Boats

I really hope this health food kick that I’ve been on lately really lasts. I always strive to eat healthy, but sometimes I don’t have the wherewithal to make it happen. Something about fresh backyard garden ingredients, farmer’s market picks, a certain Clean Eating book, and the lightness of summer has been perpetuating good things in my life and body.

I’ve been trying more new-to-me foods and making good on my pre-summer goals. In addition to all those goodies I tried a few weeks ago, we can now add eggplant, quinoa, bok choy, Swiss chard, and romaine hearts to the list. I have tried those things before, but I have never made a concerted effort to actually source them from the grocery store/farmer’s market and cook them myself. However, I’m sure glad I did. Some things just make sense–like eating foods packed with nutrients.

Last week, I made an abbreviated version of a risotto and stuck in some veggies I had on-hand in my kitchen. Here’s what I did:

Garden Veg Risotto Boats

Ingredients:
2 c minute brown rice
2 c fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
1 can black beans
1 handful chopped zucchini
1-2 chopped garlic cloves
1 handful of quartered cherry tomatoes
soy sauce for seasoning
12 whole romaine leaves

Process:
Prepare the brown rice substituting chicken broth instead of the water indicated on the box. Towards the end of the cooking process, stir in your garden vegetables and rinsed black beans. Cook until the veggies heat through and the zucchini gets soft. Add a tablespoon of chicken broth here and there if it gets too dry.

Pretty scientific, huh? I’ve never been a good recipe follower and I encourage you to be the same way. Experiment with whatever veggies/legumes you have on-hand. Just use the abbreviated risotto base as a starting point. Basically, risotto is prepared by gradually stirring broth in as your brown rice is cooking, but I don’t have the patience for that.

I prepared two cups of rice, which was enough to feed me lunch for four days. Each day, I filled three whole romaine leaves with the risotto for lunch and squirted soy sauce over the top. They really do look like little boats, which makes them much more fun. I haven’t been this excited about lunch in a long time. All ingredients are either from my backyard or Aldi’s. Yep, I’m having a love affair with Aldi’s lately. Don’t tell anyone;)

Rissoto Boats, Rissoto in romaine leaf

It’s All on the Menu

The best smart-eating tip I can offer: you gotta plan out the menu people!

And these are my best strategies for menu planning:

1. Make a list of all the common meals you make for yourself or your family. You can do this with snacks and drinks too. I want to add my very own list to this blog very soon so I have my own record. Because sometimes when it’s time to go to the grocery store, you just plumb can’t think of anything to make. Continue adding to this list as you add new recipes to your repertoire.

2. Do a search at Cooking Light or SparkRecipes for more healthful versions of your favorites or try to do a few heart-healthy swaps (light sour cream versus the full-fat version). I bought a Taste of Home Comfort Food Diet cookbook that improves upon a good share of our family favorites in one book. Printing real recipes with actual nutrition labels also helps keep you honest about each serving.

3. Now go back through that meal list and place notes next to each meal listing the ingredients you’ll need for each recipe.

4. Each week, plot out every breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. This is not as hard as it sounds. It’s perfectly OK to have nutritious waffles with blueberries all week so you need only buy those two things. For snacks, all you need is a carton of eggs for a hard-boiled snack or a bag of apples and bottle of peanut butter. Add the ingredients for these meals to your weekly shopping list.

5. I always find it helpful to jot down the meals and snacks I’ve planned on a white board or scrap of paper so I don’t forget by Thursday what I actually had in mind. I scratch the meals off as I go.

This one simple meal-planning strategy sounds way too easy, but it really works. And as a bonus, it keeps our grocery bills much lower than ever!

Is an active job a workout?

I had a small argument with my dad about this. After a trip to the doctor, we was told his chances of having a heart attack were off the charts due to a combination of factors, including smoking, high cholesterol/triglyceride/everything readings, eating a full bag of Cheetos in one sitting and sleeping every hour he wasn’t at work. My dad was previously a construction worker for over 20 years of his life. The man has some pipes. But he also has quite the belly and much-too-high cholesterol levels.

I know construction work can be exhausting. But just because you work in an active job doesn’t mean you earn rights to eat anything you want. Just because you lift heavy objects all day does not give you license to neglect other body parts and your flexibility. Just because you only eat a small amount per day doesn’t mean that calorie allowance should be filled with filth. And just because said lifting builds muscle, it doesn’t mean you are getting any cardiovascular exercise, elevating your heart rate for an extended period of time. There is a HUGE difference. Let’s not even get me started on the smoking, daddy-o!

And dad refuses to switch from white foods to whole grains; refuses to eliminate popcorn drowned in extra butter melted in the microwave; and refuses to eat most foods from the produce section, and that’s just a start. He swears he doesn’t eat that bad, but a real, honest food log would tell an entirely different story. I don’t mean to rip on him, but I just have a hard time not getting mad. Now that I’ve made healthy trades and sort of jumped over to the “healthy” side, I absolutely hate excuses and I am easily saddened by situations where people decide not to take care of themselves. I suppose that’s because I’ve done a lot of reading and research about how certain foods and exercise affect your health. Unhealthy people have probably not done so (or ignore the facts) and don’t really understand what they’re doing to their bodies.

I’ve helped when I’ve been asked. It’s a gentle subject and I know the worst thing I could do is persist. I’ve given him a diagram of exercises to help strengthen his back and alleviate his pain, which I’m pretty sure ended up as a coaster. I made an entire booklet of information for him about healthy nutrition, because he couldn’t afford to go to a nutritionist. Even though I was asked, I was still insulted (basically told I didn’t know anything) and the book was completely ignored (i.e. discarded). Hours and hours of work down the drain is enough to make anyone angry.

When I became a mother, I lived, breathed, spoke, thought, and constantly worried about my health and that of my child. I think that’s a natural reaction for a parent. I can’t imagine losing anyone this close, especially for reasons that are within their control. I can so clearly see this teetering on a tightrope and it nearly makes me sick. I don’t want to see my daddy hurting, especially like this. Please pops, can you do better than this so we can enjoy your presence for much much longer?

Learning the Licorice Ropes

I can proudly say that I have established a workout habit that has taken a firm root in my calendar. I am very good about the exercise thing. On the other hand, there’s the healthy diet thing. I have heard from a lot of people that they’re good at either one or the other. It’s rare, in my experience, to come across someone who does well with both, with the exception of health professionals. Many even say that one is better or more important than the other for them, which is untrue. Both are equally vital.

Well, I’m the type who does well with exercise and not as well with nutrition. I have improved though in the last year or so with my eating habits.

My best piece of advice would be to learn something about diet/nutrition every day. I like to keep my eye on studies and health news. My favorites are Medline Plus (daily published results from health studies) and Yahoo Health. I don’t necessarily remember or apply everything that I read, I just like to pick up little tips here and there to try. And once you hear the same thing repeated several times, it tends to stick.

The second piece of advice would be to temporarily (or habitually if you can manage it) track your food intake. And I don’t mean estimating. I mean getting out the measuring cups, food scale and restaurant guides to track every morsel. This may sound a little bit obsessive, but once you do it for a few days, you’ll receive some eye-opening information, I guarantee it! I recommend Sparkpeople for a free, comprehensive food tracker. The best I’ve ever found. Just being aware is enough to give you a quick kick. Going back and doing this every once in awhile also helps you bust through plateaus and steer you towards more healthful choices. I, for one, go overboard almost every day on my fat intake and could use a few more vegetables in my diet. I wouldn’t really know or admit that if I didn’t see it on paper.

The final piece of advice would be to use a search engine to look up healthy snacks, and maybe even healthy meals. I keep a list of healthy snacks (such as sliced cucumber with salsa or apples with peanut butter) that I can reference when I head to the grocery store for weekly provisions or the fridge for a nibble. I also have a stack of healthy go-to recipes so I’m never at a loss for what to eat.

I always thought that dieting meant being constantly hungry, deciphering every scientific percentage on the food labels, creating some elaborate menu that would break my budget, or giving up my reason for living (chocolate). But these ideas are so far-fetched it isn’t funny. By making a little headway every day towards something I was not that good at brought me to a place where I feel quite comfortable about what I’m eating.