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Favorite Things this week

Posted on May 9, 2013 by admin

Here are my favorite things from the past week.

1. New pots and pans. I guess I didn’t realize how bad the pots and pans that I have been using. But my husband finally insisted that we get pans that our food no longer sticks to. We found these Emeril anadized pans and so far I love them. I can’t believe how sticky my previous nonstick pans had gotten.

2. Homemade Bread. I also got a bread machine this week! I have made a few loaves of homemade bread and the family seems to be liking it. This come after I have been continually frustrated looking in the bread aisle for a good, whole grain bread without alot of chemicals and sweetners.

3. Beef. We are stick working on the beef supply that my mom brought to us. Since we very rarely eat beef, this has been a fun change to our usual menu.

4. Pumperknickle bread. So this favorite is more from my husband as this bread is not gluten free. I found pumperknickle bread this week! Pumperknickle bread is great because it is rated as low on the GI index so it helps keep your body in a fat burning zone. My husband also says that it tastes good!

5. Workouts outside. I just can’t get over the joy of working out outside. I love the feeling of beginning a workout in the dark and watching the sun come up as we sweat. I wish we could bootcamp outside all year!

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The Menu Plan this week

Posted on May 6, 2013 by admin

Here’s the thing about clean eating, you have to plan. Planning ahead will save you tons of time and money and help keep you on track with your eating. Even if you are going to go out to eat planning ahead will help you. I try to plan ahead what restaurant we are going to go to, but I also try to plan ahead to see what I can order if the restaurant is new to me.
So I’m taking my own advice and continuing to plan ahead for our meals this week even though a few of them are going to be eaten on the go.

Monday – Porkloin (made in crockpot), Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Broccoli
Tuesday – Date Night (we’re going to go get Thai food and get my favorite Tom Yum soup). Kids are having sweet potato fries and chicken sausage
Wednesday – Dinner on the run. Tuna Salad on spinach with avocado and tomatoes. Clean Eating Mac and cheese, apples for the kids.
Thursday – Mediterranean Chicken, Mediterranean Quinoa Salad
Friday – Beef and mushrooms in crockpot, brown rice risotto, vegetables
Saturday – Running 5K in the morning, Packing tuna, hummus, and vegetables. Crockpot chicken, mushrooms and cream sauce.

More clean eating menu plans are located here

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Clean Eating Menu Plan……clean out the freezer edition

Posted on April 27, 2013 by admin

Here’s this weeks menu plan. As you probably now, we follow a clean eating diet round here and I also take it up a notch by being gluten free. Here’s what we plan on eating for dinner this week.

Sunday – Copy cat Zuppa Toscano (just the the olive garden!), homemade whole wheat rolls for the boys, also a salad. I found some pretty clean chicken sausage to use for this.
Monday – meetings
Tuesday – Hubby and my date night. The kids are having kosher hot dogs (I’ve gotten weird about hotdogs lately so I am only feeding them kosher ones that have three ingredients: beef, water, and salt) and clean eating macaroni and cheese. *****
Wednesday – Maply Balsomic Quinoa, Fig and Goat cheese stuffed Chicken, vegetables
Thursday – Crockpot beef stew, whole wheat rolls
Friday - Spaghetti squash, turkey meatballs, clean eating alfredo sauce
Saturday – Pesto Chicken, lime and cilantro cauliflower rice, cooked broccoli

**Clean Eating MAc and Cheese is the easiest to make ever. The homemade version is just as cheap, but without preservatives and chemicals.

Whole wheat noodles (usually half a box)
1 cup milk
2 T corn starch
1 c. shredded cheese (I buy a brick and shred it)
salt to taste

1. Cook noodles and drain.
2. Put milk and corn starch in a pan after the noodles are cooked and drained. Heat milk until it is just boiling, and reomve form heat.
3. Stir in cheese and pour onto noodles.

You can find my past menu plans by clicking here.

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Top 5: the past week in updates

Posted on April 26, 2013 by admin

The past week in my life has been kind of crazy (hence the no posting). So my top 5 Friday is dedicated to all the craziness in my life the past week. Rather than focusing on the negative here is a list of the things that I am grateful for this week.

1. Girls weekend!!! I got go get away to Chicago last week with my awesome and super fit friend Rachel. We had a blast getting lost in Chicago, I mean adventuring around Chicago. We ate at some great restaurants. We went to Chicago to attend a conference for USANA nutritionals. It was a great educational weekend. I was challenged in some of my lifestyle habits and learned a lot.

2. Endodontist. I am thankful for my new endodonist. What’s an endodontist you ask?? Well, an endodontist is a dentist that specializes in root canals. Yep, root canals. He does them ALL.DAY.LONG. This is the point my week got crazy! Last Wednesday I had a cracked filling replaced and filling messed up my bite. I clenched my teeth so much as night that it started to impact my tooth. I pretty much whined the whole weekend away about my teeth. I thought I was being a baby. Monday night I got really sick, so I took a nap and woke up with a huge absess on the roof of my mouth. 2 trips to the dentist later, I ended up at the Endodontist. Well, my little absess turns out was a BIG absess. It was the largest one that the nurses had ever seen. I had an audience come in when he popped it to remove the puss. I thought about taping it for youtube, but I refrained. I have months of waiting and antibiotic therapy to help fix this crazy tooth infection situation. I lost some bone in my mouth and I have to wait until that grows back to finish the job. Crazy times around here, but in he end I and very thankful for my endodontist.

3. Nutrimeal. Due to the crazy tooth times, I have pretty much been on a liquid diet. I have drunk Nutrimeal often and I have been so pleased that it has kept me fueled and full. It has given me enough energy to still teach boot camp in the midst of the infection craziness.

4. Lights. To add to the crazy of the week, boot camp started!!! I am running 2 camps at the same time so that means 5 days a week for me! The Tuesday, Thursday camp is in Champaign and we are outside at a park. A park that has some construction so they don’t have all the lights on. So am developing a large light collection. I don’t feel like I have found a light that is bright enough but I am still going to keep looking. On Thursday, I gave everyone their own flashlight and that was fun.

5. Shredding workout. Speaking of boot camp this week. Wednesday we did a workout called a “shredding workout.” It was a little crazy but very fun. It basically consists of one high intensity move followed by a strength training move. There was a lot of jumping, and sweating.

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How to stay motivated to work out

Posted on April 18, 2013 by admin

It doesn’t happen often, but some days I just don’t feel like working out. *GASP* My current workout routine has me working out 5-7 times a week. I am busy preparing for bootcamp which will be 5 times a week, plus I try to workout at least once a week just for me.
Today is rainy, very rainy and cold. I just didn’t FEEL like working out early this morning. I had some time around noon so I figured I could squeeze it in later. Then later came, and I didn’t FEEL like driving across town to the gym. Then I got to the gym and I stepped on the treadmill and I literally thought, “I don’t feel like this right now.” But, alas I worked out anyway. So what do I do to keep me working out when I don’t feel like it? Here are a few tips.

1. Wear your workout clothes. If I put these on at the start of the day before I am going to workout I am more likely to actually get it done. The times that I have gone into work for a few hours with my workout clothes on I get comments. This pretty much guarantees that I will go run ect.

2. Schedule it in. If I am working out during the day, I put it in my schedule. I also make sure I have more than enough time to commute to and from where you are going also. If you have to drive to where you workout and perceive that you are going to run out of time, you won’t go.

3. Work out with someone. When I workout for myself, I prefer to be alone but I valued the accountability of working out with someone. I met up with some friends a few weeks ago at a park. Knowing they were going to be there made sure that I got my work out in.

4. Reward yourself. If you really need motivation, think of a reward you can have after you are done. I love listening to podcasts (anything from sermons, leadership, financial advice, food news). If there is something that I am looking forward to listening to, or a show I am looking forward to watching I save it for when I work out. Then I can multitask as I run. I also like to go tanning (bad, I know but it’s so nice and warm in the winter), so I would not let myself go tan unless I worked out first.

5. Have a plan. When I was trying to lose my 68 pound weight gain from having my son Nathan I was saved by my workout plan. I went through several books and followed the workout plans that they provided. Knowing that I was walking in the door knowing what I was doing made it easier for me to make time for it. A plan also kept me challenged when I was working out.

Hope this helps! Have a great week!

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Top 5 Friday

Posted on April 12, 2013 by admin

I take time every Friday to share the great things from my week. Here are the great things I’ve found this week.

1. Medicine ball workouts. I have been busy practicing for my upcoming bootcamp. This bootcamp we are using medicine balls. It has been really fun and challenging to see what we can do with this little ball. I think the moves I enjoy the most are the when you throw the ball. Ball slams on the ground are great for your arms and core.

2. Clean Eating Baked Apples. I actually made dessert once this week. I very rarely make dessert for my family. I just cut up apples and baked them with cinnamon and alittle maple syrup. I topped the apples with some plain yogurt when we served them. This was a great treat and was just the right amount of sweetness.

3. NEW running shoes!!! I am a New Balance shoe girl (no sponsorship, I just like their running shoes). Their “B” width always works great for me and their shoes just work well. I was looking for a shoe that would match our bootcamp colors (pink and black) and I found these! They are light weight and I am hopeful that the black will resist wear. The best part? They were on clearance for $45, WAHOO

4. Salmon cakes and risotto steel cut oats. I really likes this dinner this week. I forgot to get a picture of my plate, but this is my husbands left over box. I made salmon cakes with spinach and they were great! I’ve made salmon cakes before and the spinach made these nice and moist. I cook alot of brown rice, so I was excited to try out a risotto oats recipe. Steel cut oats are great because they are filling and high in fiber. These oats tasted just like brown rice risotto.

5. Hill Intervals. I will be posting this workout soon. But let’s just say I killed my legs by sprinting up hills and jogging down them. This was a nice variety to my normal interval routine.

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Clean Eating Menu Plan

Posted on April 7, 2013 by admin

Here’s is the menu plan this week. I wrote about my grocery haul here.
Last week, my mom brought us organic grass fed ground beef so I wanted to use some of that this week. I also have some leftovers from Easter that I froze and need to do something with.

Saturday – Turkey and vegetable soup (leftover turkey bones and meat, carrots, peas, onion, celery)
Sunday – Low Carb Shepard Pie
Monday – Burgers with avocado, carrot fries
Tuesday – Date Night, Clean eating mac and cheeese with whole wheat noodles
Wednesday -Clean eating Salmon Cakes, cucumber and carrots, best hummus ever, asparagus
Thursday – Breakfast for dinner, protein pancakes, turkey bacon, sauteed spinach
Friday – Sesame Garlic Chicken, roasted broccoli, brown rice

Snacks – Paleo Trail Mix, Clean eating crockpot applesauce, Carrots and taco hummus, banana flax seed crackers, Clean Eating Apple Cinnamon Muffins

Want more clean eating menu plans? Click here to see the archives!

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What I bought to eat clean this week

Posted on April 6, 2013 by admin

This might seem strange, but I read another fitness blogger’s account of what she bought at the grocery store and I found it very interesting. So, I thought I would share what I bought this week to keep eating clean.
This was also interesting for me to realize what I buy. As our family has transitioned to clean eating, I have bought more and more produce. This week, I have plenty of meat in the freezer so I didn’t buy any. I menu plan for the week ahead and go shopping once a week, so this is what is needed for next week’s menu. I typically stay close to my list, mainly because I have children with me and shop half distracted.

Fruit
I often eat apples with peanut butter as a snack. I bought extra this week to make crockpot apple oatmeal and possibly some apple butter or applesauce. I also picked up extra bananas because they are on sale and we go through them quickly. If bananas start to get brown I peel them and freeze them. I got the strawberries to use for a strawberry salsa tonight.

Vegetables
I almost always buy avocados if they are under $.70 a piece. Avocado is a great source of good fat and I also just like them. Cucumbers are to use instead of chips to dip in hummus this week. Asparagus was an add on to the menu when I found it on sale.
Normally I try to chop up any fruit and vegetables that need it when we get home from the store, but not many need it this week.

Milk, dairy
I would love to say I was just stocking up on eggs, but the truth is that we go through at least 2 dozen a week, plus whatever I use for cooking and baking. I got honey yogurt for the boys and greek yogurt for me. Turkey bacon is for cooking with this week. I recently transitioned us from shredded cheese to buying block cheese. If I have to cut cheese or shred it myself I use less so it’s helping to keep from adding cheese to every dish I make.
Don’t get me started on the hotdogs. I was so hopeful to find organic hotdogs from Oscar Meyer. I read the ingredients and they contain sugar! Back to the good old kosher dogs for us.

Grains
These are mainly snack foods. I got Nathan Oat bread for his lunches this week. I was excited to find a trail mix with just raisins, seeds and nuts. Prepackaged granola is hard to find without sugar, so I was excited to find Musli (which is similar to granola) made without sugar. I found all natural dried bananas and cranberries, which I am planning on using for snacks and to make a homemade trailmix for the boys.

Posted in Food, Menu Plans, Ramblings | 1 Comment

Top 5 this week

Posted on April 5, 2013 by admin

Here are my favorite things this week.

1. Bolt House Ranch. While I wrote about my homemade clean eating ranch here. I found this greek yogurt dressing last week, and it tastes great! Find it in the produce refrigerator. This is not technically “clean” because it does have some not pure ingredients (“natural flavors”). But this is pretty close to clean and is low calorie.

2. Mapmyrun. I think this favorite things post has to include something about the weather warming up! I’m so excited to be running outside again. However, I have yet to finally bite the bullet and by a GPS watch to tell me how fast and far I am running. So, until then I really like the map my run app. There are audio prompts that tell you every mile your distance, time elapsed and pace.

3. Protein pancakes. Still loving protein pancakes this week, I shared my latest recipe here.

4. Grapefruit. For some reason, I am kind of loving grapefruit this week. I found an easy way to peel them here and I have enjoyed them in the afternoon all week.

5. Squeeze’ems. Here I shared my delight at squeezable babyfood for my kids. My kids have loved these. And I have loved no mess I just found these are Walmart and they are great. You don’t need a special fill system or anything, and they cost $7.99 for 2! I already used these for yogurt for lunch and they worked perfectly. I look forward to using these more and more. Even better the company that makes these is founded by a mom. Love!

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Spring Protein Pancake (with spinach shhh!)

Posted on April 3, 2013 by admin

I have loved the idea of protein pancakes, but I have yet to find a protein pancake recipe that I like. So, I decided to get creative and come up with my own recipe. I eat breakfast after I teach bootcamp, so I look for breakfast options that are high in protein (need it for muscle recovery). You can find more of my high protein breakfast suggestions here. I also want a breakfast that has some good, complex carbs and fiber. I eat gluten free, so I have become more and more concerned about my fiber intake lately. Lastly, I have to actually like to eat the darn thing!