21 Day Fix: Day Seven

I have been terrible about getting the blog posts up, I know. Not because I didn't want to, but I'm still trying to work out a good schedule for myself so that I can fit in my workouts, meal prep (some days there is more of this than others), my 10 hour days everyday this month, and time to take a shower and get a decent amount of sleep. So, for now if my updates are spotty, I apologize and definitely feel free to say, "Kim, post some things!" One of my friends has been doing that and I appreciate it because it keeps me accountable!

I did do some thinking and because I eat a lot of the same stuff each day since I make a few meals that I can eat over a few days I think that I will do brief over views of my days and share my recipes instead of a breakfast, lunch, dinner format I had been doing.

My meals for the last few days have included the Carb Buster breakfast from previous posts (I REALLY like that one because it is simple, easy, and delicious!), turkey bacon and egg cups, buffalo cauliflower buffalo bites, quinoa fried "rice" with blackened tofu, turkey bacon wraps, and these shrimp taco things (that I was not a huge fan of).

Before I post some of the pictures of the yummy, healthy food I ate let me just share with you a picture of the market thing we have in our break room that is so easily accessible, but almost no healthy food. There is the occasionally fruit or veggie cup, but those go pretty fast because they are one of the few healthy options.

The Buffalo Cauliflower Bites that I made are definitely a recipe to make again in the future! It tasted like a cheat meal, but it wasn't! I used Frank's hot sauce for these ones. My little sister really liked these too! It is so amazing that she is wanting to try these healthy things with me. We decided that next time we would make homemade BBQ sauce (with stevia!) to coat them. 

Another things I finally decided to make was Quinoa Fried "Rice"! I used my coach's recipe because it was simple and easily accessible. My coach, Alexa, has a lot of healthy, tasty recipes on her blog you should looks through if you are looking for food ideas. I also made some Blackened Tofu to go along with my quinoa fried rice and it was not bad, but I think I will try something new next time. I love finding different ways to season tofu.

I also made these shrimp wrap things with this avocado corn salsa...but I didn't like it so I only ate it for one meal...I didn't even bother taking a picture or feel the need to link it. I also made turkey bacon and egg cups! I love making these things! Makes quick and easy breakfast for the mornings!

One thing I'm still trying to work on is getting in all my fruits and veggies. I usually get pretty close and part of my lack of getting my fruits in is I normally put fruit in my shakeology, but I'm waiting for things to ripen before I can eat them. I've been doing the mocha chiller for shakeology (the powder and coffe with ice, blended) . The veggies is more I keep running out of veggies and need to get better at making sure I stock up on the things I eat. I wish I could buy mushrooms in bulk, but they go bad so fast that by the end of the week I wouldn't be able to use them. I'm still slowly working out how much of each thing to get and what I can and can't stock up on. I have stocking up on things like beans, corn, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce/paste and things like that.

My other meals have been nothing super exciting...just grilled chicken or fish with sauteed veggies. I get tired of those after awhile though so I've been researching recipes of things that make me feel like I'm eating cheat food, but are actually healthy. One of the things I want to make soon is cauliflower crust pizza with homemade pizza sauce again! I have made it before and it is soooo good. Time consuming, but good!

As far as my workouts go, they are still kicking my ass, but I'm doing them! I definitely don't look pretty when I do it, but it's getting done. Not really noticing any physical changes yet other than I am feeling better. Starting to get less fatigued all the time, my face is clearing up, and my skin and hair are feeling healthier. I am excited to see what other changes happen as I continue on!

21 Day Fix: Day Two and Three

I was so tired yesterday that I fell asleep before I could type up a post. For the month of October, I am working 56 hour weeks so expect that I will not have much of a social life until the end up the month. Not that I have plans yet for Halloween, but that will probably be the first day I'll be able to do something.

That aside, day two went well. I was incredibly sore from Monday's workout. Seriously...it was like my body forgot how to walk and I thought my legs were going to give out! I still did my workout for the day though! It was upper body day so my legs got a little bit of a break. I did my workout after work on day two because I had to be at work so early.

As far as food goes, it was a pretty solid day. I made Greek Yogurt Pancakes and I also mashed up a banana in the mix. They tasted yummy, but the addition of the banana changed the texture a little bit (obviously) so they fell apart a little easier than they would have before. Not too bad, but I did notice as I was flipping them. I also cooked up a side of turkey bacon to go with it. I love the sweetness of the pancakes and salty, crunchiness of the turkey bacon together! I put a little bit of syrup on them , but not too much, I don't like a whole lot of syrup on my pancakes.

For lunch I ate another serving of the Quinoa Taco Bake that I had made the other night. I forsee this recipe getting made a lot. It is a relatively cheap dish and I get 4 servings out of it, plus it is super easy to make or make alterations to. I found a site that has the recipe up too. For anyone interested this is the recipe I used: Quinoa Taco Bake. My snack was more greek yogurt with raspberries and blackberries. Then for dinner I again had the salmon with mushrooms and asparagus. I actually ended up have my shakeology after working out in the evening. I like having it after a workout because I feel that it fills me up without and mu body feels good if I drink it after.

21 Day Fix Begins!

I missed a few days posting partly because I wasn't feeling well for awhile and partly because I went out with some friends for the first time in about a month. We ended up eating out and although I maybe didn't make the best choices in the world, I did at least watch how much I ate. I didn't gulp down an entire basket of fish and chips like I normally would have. I ate half and took the rest home. Made myself some yummy breakfasts those days, Greek yogurt pancakes with turkey bacon, yum! I'm thinking about making those for breakfast tomorrow so I'll post the recipe I use and some pictures in tomorrow's post. Instead of trying to catch up on the last few days and have a crazy long post, I am going to just continuing on with today.

Today was the start of the "Hot For Halloween 21 Day Fix" Challenge group I'm in! Super excited! All the ladies in my challenge group seem great and there is already a lot of encouragement and suggestions happening which I love! I'm also working a lot of overtime this week so I am really having to keep myself on track. I started out the morning with two simple breakfast burrito, just two eggs, mushrooms and onions wrapped in whole wheat tortillas (the little 6" ones). I also drizzled a little bit of ketchup on there, but just a little! Condiments in moderation is what I am trying to get myself to do.

After breakfast, I relaxed for a little bit and then did my workout. Oh, by the way, I was up at 6am this morning. For some people that is not a big deal, but with my work shift I usually don't get up until maybe 9am at the earliest and I am a night owl so I stay up late. Since I am working overtime this week I had to be at work at 9:30am instead of 11:30am and since I knew I wouldn't have the energy to workout when I got home at 9pm I was a good little girl and got up nice and early. Day one was the Total Body Cardio Fix and boy are my legs still on fire. I can't do the moves nearly as well as they can in those videos, but I can definitely feel that I was doing something right.

After getting ready for work I made my morning shakeology. Today I just put shakeology, cold coffee, and ice in my shaker cup and took it to go. Drank it on the bus and it was quite delicious!

For lunch I made one of the 21 Day Fix recipes which I am in love with now! If you know me, you know that I am a sucker for a quinoa bake. I made Quinoa Taco bake! If anyone is interested in this recipe let me know! I will type it out for you. I am not doing that tonight because I am in dire need of heading to bed so I can get up early again tomorrow, but just look at it! So yummy!

The rest of the day I had Greek yogurt with raspberries and blackberries and for dinner I had grilled salmon with asparagus and mushrooms! I didn't quite get all my containers in for the day a) because that is a lot more food than I am used to and b) I really need more groceries for certain things (fruits!) but payday is a few days out.

Oh! and I made these delicious treats with some over riper bananas!

Two for One

I didn't post yesterday because I was exhausted from work and took the night to relax and because I had sort of an off day so today is two days in one. Sunday mornings always throw me off because I have to be at work two and a half hours earlier than I do any other day of the week. I woke up too late to make breakfast so I had my chocolate shakeology with frozen banana, peanut butter, and almond milk which is my FAVORITE combo for my shakeology. I had planned on have the Carb Buster Breakfast that I had on Saturday morning and I knew that I would be short a meal with missing that so I grabbed what I already had made which was more of the bean burritos I had made. I ended up having two for a snack and two at lunch time so I got more carbs in than I had planned, but figured that was better than getting hungry at work and be tempted by the not so healthy market place in the break room! Also, ate the burritos with some salsa, OM NOM!

With my second helping of the burritos that was my lunch I also ate some celery with peanut butter. I dislike celery most of the time, but I can tolerate it when peanut butter is involved. I just measured my peanut butter and put it in my red container because I didn't have any other small container left to put it in.

Now for dinner Sunday night, I made something I have been wanting to make for quite some time and now that I have made it I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner. What is that you might ask?

ZUCCHINI BOATS

That's right. They were SO good. I have pinned a couple zucchini boat recipes before, but I decided to do this 21 Day Fix recipe because it told me all my portions without me having to think about it. SO GOOD. I think next time I will put a little less salt because I did use the turkey bacon which makes it pretty salty too. Oh! I also used mushrooms instead of tomatoes! I think I mentioned before that tomatoes and I are only good friends for certain dishes. I usually replace them with something else for most things though. I plan on making these more in the future and trying different ways to season!

For dessert I had an oatmeal chocolate chip banana "cookie" that I had made some of the other night. I was so excited to eat it that I forgot to take a picture, haha, but it is one of the recipes from the 21 Day Fix book and I just swapped out raisins for mini chocolate chips.

Today, I did much better than Sunday and I was much more prepared. I made sure everything was packed in my lunch bag and waiting in the fridge instead of putting everything in, in the morning. The veggies that I had prepared for the Carb Buster on Sunday I used this morning instead. I also had my chocolate shakeology, banana, peanut butter, and almond milk shake again. I seriously love that more than almost anything else I eat all day. Black bean burritos for lunch with salsa (I think I only have one serving left and that will be tomorrow's lunch as well). For my midday snack I had carrots and hummus! I love carrots, but I also love dipping them in something and I am allotted more of a portion for hummus that dressing so I went that route. It was quite good! I had both baby carrots and regular carrots in the house, but I think the regular ones have more taste (not sure if they actually do, but I like them better!) so I cut some up and measured them out in my green container and hummus in my blue container.

Dinner was some marinate salmon with sauteed asparagus and mushrooms. If I could, I would eat salmon for every meal. I love it so much! I just marinated it in a bit of olive oil, Bragg's Amino Acid, garlic, salt, pepper, and I think I may have tossed in some paprika and onion powder. The asparagus and mushrooms were just sauteed in olive oil, salt, and pepper. So simple, but it was sooooo good.

The last thing I ate today was just some Greek yogurt with a little stevia and both raspberries and blackberries. I did pretty well today, I think. Still need to up my water intake though. I do well when I have lemons in my water and so today I though I would try mint and lime since people have told me they like those in their water. I was not a fan....I'll stick to my lemons and occasional strawberries in my water. I do love my diffuser cup though!

I am starting to realize things that I will need to have as staples in the house. Asparagus, mushrooms, Greek yogurt, and berries are definitely on that list! Once I kind of figure out what works best for me I can make more servings of a certain type of food as well. Right now I just don't want to make 5 servings of something for the week and turn out I don't like it or something. Tomorrow is a new day!

The beginning!

Today I started off my day with a with one of my favorite breakfasts and I'm not sure why I haven't made this more often. Awhile back I found a recipe for Carb Buster Breakfast and it is pretty simple, but quite delicious and filling. This morning I modified the quantity of the recipe a bit and just measured the veggies into my green 21 Day Fix container and I omitted the tomato because I wanted to be able to have more of the zucchini. Oh! Just sprinkled a little bit of mozzarella cheese on there instead of the wedge of cheese from the recipe. I have only ever tried to poach an egg once before so my eggs aren't pretty, but they were darn good! I think I will play with the seasoning of this dish, but I think this is definitely something I need to start making my go to breakfast.

I took my Shakeology to go this morning. I forgot to wash out my blender cups though so I just put some chocolate Shakeology and black coffee in a shaker cup with ice and it was actually really good like that! Lunch was Turkey Bacon Wrap again! I had these for lunch yesterday too and I'm in love with them! I even managed to get my sister to eat these as well and she really liked them, in fact, she requested to have them again.

I had some plain Greek yogurt with a bit of honey to sweeten and a purple container full of blackberries. Now, I actually hate yogurt, but I'm trying to convince myself that I like it so I'm forcing myself to do it. Definitely prefer Greek yogurt over any other kind of yogurt and I can only get myself to eat it with the honey and loaded with fruit.

I then forgot to take pictures of the rest of my food as the day went on. Dinner was some homemade chili with ground beef, onions, tomatoes, chili powder, and Frank's hot sauce. My mom and I cam across this recipe about a year or so ago and we love it so much we make it quite often especially in the fall/winter time. I ended up eating my chili with another turkey wrap. Following the 21 Day Fix program I am realizing that I have been struggling getting all my protein in, but today I did well. In fact, looking at my list of food for the day I actually got all my servings in! I didn't quite get enough veggie or fruits servings in....I was one shy on each, but I call today a win so far. At least I didn't reach for the Hostess donuts in the work market right?

Tomorrow's meals are prepared except for dinner. I'm off earlier than any other day during the week tomorrow so I will be making myself some zucchini boats when I get home. (Yes, I may have bought a lot of zucchini I needed to use up...haha!) On the lunch menu for tomorrow are these bad boys I whipped up tonight:

I had made some black bean burritos awhile back that I really liked by following a recipe and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was so I kind of improvised on these. I was going to use corn tortillas, but I have trouble getting them to not break on me...so I went to get some more whole wheat wraps and I found these. What are they you might ask? They are a combination of whole wheat and corn tortillas! The insides are black beans, onion, orange pepper, corn, jalapeno, garlic gloves, a little bit of mozzarella cheese, and seasoned with paprika, cayenne pepper, cumin, and salt. No meat, so in this case my protein is the beans. I will see how that taste tomorrow, yum!

No workout today. I am still on some medication for my chest pain I had been having over the past few weeks for a few more days. So, the workout part is starting on October 6th when my challenge group starts. I just figured I would start the food part prior to the group.

Let the journey begin...

I haven't used this blog since 2010...whoops! I am going to re-purpose this blog and use it to keep track of my weight loss journey. I've done so much yo-yo dieting through out my life and I've hit a point where enough is enough. I do really well with my eating and exercise for awhile and then I get caught up in life and I drop it and fall back into my bad habits. I've tried changing my habits on my own, but I am not quite to the point where doing it on my own is cemented into my every day life.

I've done Weight Watchers, no carb diets, cut out sugar completely, cut out dairy, cut out gluten...you name it and I have probably tried it and failed horribly after awhile. Yes, it works for a bit and I see results, but I give myself unrealistic goals to continue on with so I fall back to pizza, pasta, brownies, fried foods, etc. Over the past year I have gotten better and choosing the healthier options for some of those things. CAULIFLOWER PIZZA CRUST. For real, it is delicious, but time consuming. I have the right idea substituting equally delicious foods that are better for me, right? The struggle is to continuing to make those choices. I struggle with making those good choices when I'm with friends especially. It is hard to pick the salad when everyone is chomping on fried chicken wings or that giant plate of cheesy pasta.

So what am I going to do about it? First of all, I'm going to start planning my meals ahead of time. I'm going to sit down each week, plan my food for the week, and make a grocery list. You know what else? I'm going to allow myself to eat carbs, sugar, dairy, gluten, whatever! I'm going to focus on portion control. I'm going to stop myself from the binge eating foods that I tried to deny myself in the past.

This week is the start of my food planning. On October 6th I will be doing a 21 Day Fix challenge group which I am pretty excited for. I had tried to do a PIYO challenge group right before PAX and I didn't plan enough for time management to be successful and I kind of dropped the ball...I was pretty upset with myself...but now, NO MORE EXCUSES. I need to remind myself that slow progress is better than no progress. I need to do this for both my mental and physical health.

I am going to be logging my food and exercise through my blog to add to the accountability. I do not expect other people to follow, but if people want to go for it! I hope that I can get myself together and maybe one day it will inspire someone else to as well. I will be posting pictures and recipes. This is a blog for me to see where I'm coming from and where I hope to be in the future. Also, a great way to keep tabs on what recipes I like and don't like.

This is a word heavy post, but I'll start posting pictures in them from now on!