Leftovers and fundraisers

Oh how I love my Saturdays!

I was up at 6:30 am and had a Flax and Oat Power Muffin before my run. Sadly it was the last of my batch. I will be making more of these in the future so watch out for them!

I did my 4 mile run in 36:33 which was really good time for me. I was really happy with it. I would like to be faster, but I know that will just come with time and practice. I don’t exactly have the longest legs around, so I’ll take what I can get!

Then it was home for a Green Monster:

As you can see, the same ingredients I used yesterday. I actually got my dad to try it this morning, and he admitted it was pretty good! That’s right, Green Monsters are the shiz!

All mixed up:

Then it was off to my new hot yoga class!

Yes, the Green Monster went too. I drank it in the car on the way. My class was awesome, an hour and a half of hot yoga; it was really challenging. Of course I am a yoga newbie (besides DVDs) and have some work to do! I am confident that if I keep going I will catch up.

Afterwards, I felt incredible so I came home and did some cleaning and laundry. Then I made a salad and heated up the leftover rolled pita from last night:

Organic homegrown lettuce and spinach, with two strawberries and a drizzle of Ken’s Raspberry Walnut dressing.

The pita:

Not so pretty, but yummy all the same!

Then it was off to volunteer at a fundraiser for Curesearch.org. It’s a great cause and something my sisters and I do every year. It is hosted by a family friend and we have watched it grow from a few people to hundreds. It’s great to see and something I’m proud to be a part of!

Well I’m off for some more organizing and cleaning! I am planning on going for sushi with friends for dinner, so I probably won’t post again today!

See ya healthier!

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Good Eats and a Charley Horse, Oh My!

Wow what a long day!

I was right about that power breakfast; it kept me full all morning. I think I may become a Green Monster addict, so you dear readers will be forced to suffer through many pictures of green smoothies made with various ingredients I dream up.

Lunch was a Roast Beef Wrap from ’Making the Cut’ (I added some alfalfa sprouts) with a side of strawberry/blueberry salad. (Can you tell I bought ALOT of strawberries at the grocery? I am trying to use them any way I can before they spoil.)

Totals: 267 calories, 5.5 grams of fat, 40 carbs, 4.5 grams of fiber and 20.9 grams of protein.

My snack was another Chocolate Banana Bread Bar:

Totals: Approximately 250 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 5 grams of protein.

At dinner I went to Aladdins Eatery. I love to stop here for a quick healthy meal. There are not a lot of healthy or vegan options around my town. Your only option is really Subway if you want something healthy, so I was pretty pleased when Aladdins opened nearby.

I started with a side salad:

Look at the feta cheese: YUM! I love feta!

Followed by a Hummos Tabouli Garden Rolled Pita (I could only eat half, it was so big.)

I love their Hummos. I has a really mild flavor and combined with their Tabouli…well that’s pretty much killer right there. I brought the other half home to have for lunch tomorrow. (No wasting of food when this girl’s around!)

I got a cup of Raw Carrot & Apple Juice to go:

 So good, and so many nice lil’ vitamins too!

Totals: 435 calories, 15.5 grams of fat, 63.5 grams of carbs, 6 grams of fiber & 9.5 grams of protein.

Let’s see…that equals to a grand total of: 1510 calories, 41.5 grams of fat, 23.5 grams of fiber, 72.9 grams of protein and 145.5 grams of carbs.

Whew! That is the first and last day I will count all the calories, etc. in my food! It’s alot of work, I tell you! I just wanted to give everyone a rough idea of what all this added up to, and how much you can eat if you just eat the right stuff. This was a good balanced day, although I must say these numbers are approximations and not exact figures.

In other news; I had a crisis at the gym tonight. 

It started normally: I did Day 9 of the circuit training from ‘Making the Cut’ and (I swear I don’t recall it being that tough!) it worked me out!

I finished up my strength and moved to the bike for 15 minutes. I planned to finish up on the treadmill at an incline walk for 15 minutes.

2 minutes into the incline walk and my left leg literally froze up on me. I came off the treadmill (which was still running uphill) and hopped around massaging my leg like a fish out of water for about 5 minutes. Ack! It was not only painful, but really embarrassing. That put a quick end to my workout. At least I did get my biking time in. I came home and soaked in a warm bath of epsom salts and it is some better now, but still sore. 

Question: What are your cramp/charley horse cures? 

Please share if you have any good ones, because I don’t care to be flopping around like a fish out of water again anytime in the near future!

See ya healthier (and charley horse-less)!

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My first “Green” Monster!

Good morning and HI to all my new vistors! I hope you like what you read here and keep coming back for more. I am rather new at this, and really new at food blogging and updating everyday! I am having such fun so far. I would love to have you along for my journey to a “healthy body, mind and spirit”.

This morning I made another Green Monster:

Beginning:

 

Look at all that yummy goodness just waiting to be ground up in the VitaMix!

Let’s see if it turned out green unlike yesterdays.

 

Oh yes it did!

This one was actually better than yesterdays and had twice the amount of spinach!

I put:

1 frozen banana

2 strawberries

1/4 cup (or around that) blueberries

2 generous handfuls of spinach

1 scoop whey protein

1 tablespoon natural unsalted peanut butter

1/2 cup organic skim milk

ice

for a total of 358 calories, 9 grams of (good) fat, 42 grams of carbs, 31 grams of protein and 7 grams of fiber!

I added a Flax and Oat Power muffin:

This made a great breakfast that I could easily run out the door with!

Angela posted the nutritional value of the muffins (I must not have printed that part of the post) and they are as follows:

200 calories
9 grams of healthy fats (from flax and olive oil!)
6 grams fiber
6.5 grams of protein

So that makes for a breakfast of 558 calories, 18 grams of fat, 42 grams of carbs, 13 grams of fiber and 37.5 grams of protein that’s sure to keep my belly full all morning long!

This may seem like a lot to some of you, but I am a big believer in filling up at breakfast for good fuel all day long. I had the same thing yesterday for breakfast and was down a pound on the scale this morning! That makes for a total of 13 lbs lost in a month and a week! I also like to remember that I push myself hard at the gym every day, so I need the food to keep me going.

Have a great day and see ya healthier!

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Yummy salad and fuzzy pics!

I am so disappointed in myself!

I made the prettiest, tastiest salad for lunch and once again no picture! I will include the recipe anyway and you can just take my word for it.

Chicken Salad with Mango and Strawberries

Marinade

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon lime juice

1 teaspoon orange juice

1 tablespoon mango-ginger chutney

2 teaspoons 0% Fage yogurt

1 teaspoon Honey Dijon dressing

1 teaspoon Raspberry Walnut vinagrette

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/4 teaspoon red wine vinegar

Whisk ingredients together in a small bowl. Pour into a ziploc bag with the chicken. Let marinate overnight.

Take chicken out of marinade, cut into cubes. Pan fry in a small amount of olive oil until chicken is no longer pink. Set aside. Slice 3 strawberries and 1/8 of mango. Set aside. Mix 1/2 cup of spinach with 1 cup of leaf lettuce.

Arrange strawberries and mango over salad. Add chicken. Drizzle with Raspberry Walnut vinagrette.

For a snack I tried my experimental LaraBar. They were so good! These were a lot thicker and had a better texture than the Chocolate Chip Cookie ones. I mixed some parts of the Chocolate Chip recipe with the Banana Bread recipe (Chocolate Banana Bread maybe?)

Chocolate Banana Bread Bars

1/2 cup of chopped dates

1/2 cup of chopped dried banana

2/3 cup of almonds

1/4 teaspoon of vanilla

2 tablespoons of chopped dark chocolate

Mix the banana and dates in the food processor for 1-2 minutes. Remove and put in small bowl. Grind the almonds in the processor for 1 minute. Add almonds, vanilla and chocolate to the date mixture. Mix well. Pat into a square on a piece of wax paper. Cut into 4 bars, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate. Enjoy!

 

Please excuse the fuzzy pictures. A new camera is on my list!

Dinner was Oven Baked Tilapia with a side of steamed broccoli and Skillet Potatoes.

 

Doesn’t that look divine? I love tilapia!

As far as exercise goes, it was strength and then a 2 mile run as planned. 1.5 hours of sweaty torture bliss!

No baking for me tonight. I am worn out from the gym and work! I plan to take a nice relaxing bubble bath and read a good book. Any book suggestions?

See ya healthier!

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Aren’t Green Monsters supposed to be GREEN?

Since I have loved so many of Angela’s recipes, I decided to try a Green Monster for breakfast this morning. I did not have my camera handy and was in a hurry (that pesky oversleeping thing again), so no pics; but my Green Monster ended up brown! 

It was really tasty, I used half a frozen banana, about 1/2 cup of organic skim milk, 3 strawberries, a scoop of natural salt free peanut butter 1/2 a scoop of whey protein and a generous handful of spinach. I think I may have put a little too much peanut butter and not enough spinach, since it turned out a murky brown color. Jenna and Angela’s are always a bright green! I didn’t taste the spinach at all though and loved how I got green veggies and extra protein in with my breakfast! I also had a Flax & Oat Power Muffin on the side. Yum-O! Those things are killer.

I am so excited to have a change from my usual bowl of Kashi or All-Bran and blue berries. I think I will try the GM again tomorrow, but this time try to make it green. Isn’t that the point of a Green Monster after all?

Hope everyone else has as fab a day as I plan to have. Can’t wait to hit the gym for a little strength (Jillian!) and running this evening.

And a little spiritual food:

^{Romans 1:16-17} It’s news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else! God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: “The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives.” (MSG)

See ya healthier!

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More Food Reviews

As soon as I saw that Angela (OhSheGlows) had posted a recipe for “SkinnyMini Glo Buns” I knew I would not be long in trying them. I actually had planned to wait until Saturday, but I was in a baking mood when I got home from the gym. I made the Glo Buns and her Flax & Oat Power Muffins.

Glo Buns

These got rave reviews all around! My mom, dad, and two little sisters loved them! In the words of my four year old sister: “Whitney, dees are ah-licious! My mom and I both sampled one as soon as they came out of the oven. Warm, and oozing a little of the brown sugar… oh so wonderful. Definitely a crowd pleaser. Mine did not turn out quite as fancy as Angela’s but that I am sure has nothing to do with my kitchen prowess!

Flax & Oat Power Muffins

These were a hit as well! They are very dense, with a wonderful banana flavor. I can’t wait for breakfast tomorrow, so I can have a whole one and not just the taste pinch that I took off the one in the left corner (shhhh). That Angela sure knows what she is doing in the kitchen! Everything I have tried off her blog I have loved. The great thing about it? All her recipes are packed with good fiber, protein and complex carbs. I will definitely be trying more of her stuff in the future.

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Meatloaf Review and more

Today was the day of the big meatloaf tast test! I am pleased to say they passed with flying colors. The onion, although I was a little skeptic at putting a whole onion in the recipe, really gave it a nice flavor. I did put too much brown sugar in the topping, and I may just stick with plain ketchup in the future. They were very moist, not dry at all despite the reheating. I really recommend this recipe, as you can mix up several, freeze them and cook as needed. It’s great if you are on the go as much as I am. I love to mix up extra of something and have it in the freezer where it is easy to pop in the oven and go!

At breakfast I had my usual Kashi Go Lean with organic skim milk and blueberries. I ate it in a cup running out the door as I overslept a bit this morning! That’s one of my favorite breakfasts on the go. Kashi Go Lean is really filling with 9 grams of protein and 8 grams of fiber to 1 cup; and the blueberries add a nice tartness to what would be an otherwise rather blah bowl.

Lunch was the aforementioned meatloaf (another plus to this meatloaf is that you cook it in a cupcake pan, so you don’t overdo it on the serving size) with a side of steamed broccoli and one of my Trader Joes finds: a Fiberful dried fruit leather for dessert. I am really pleased with the Fiberful. It has 60 calories, 6 grams of fiber, 14 grams of carbs and 1 gram of protein. Perfect for a small between meals snack or a dessert!

My midday snack was a Homemade Chocolate Chip LaraBar that I made from a recipe I got off Angela’s website; OhSheGlows. It had a wonderful flavor, really the only complaint I have is that it wasn’t big enough! I think next time I make them I will add some oats to give the bar a little more texture. It was very thin and I had to freeze it instead of refrigerate it because it did not set up quite like the Banana Bread one did. I think it was the vanilla the recipe called for that made it stickier. Still it tasted wonderful, and it had chocolate in it!

Dinner was another meatloaf (I used the last one) in a whole wheat tortilla with spinach. Very filling and nice difference from lunch. My mother ate one of the meatloaves for lunch today as well, and she put hers in a steamed vegetable sandwich and really liked that combo. See why I love this recipe? It’s so versatile and you can make so many meals out of one batch.

I did Jillian Michaels again for strength training at the gym. I love how I get in at least 1 hour and 15 minutes of cardio and strength with these workouts. They are very simple, but you can feel them working! I also did 30 minutes on the treadmill at an incline of 15 at 4.2 miles an hour for cross training today. I love walking on an incline because it is easy on your joints (which you need to be if you are a runner) and it scorches the calories! I burned 395 calories in my 30 minute cardio session. I am also thinking about taking some yoga classes so that my muscles are not so tight from running. This will be especially important as I add more and more distance to my runs. My question is: What type of yoga do you recommend? I really have heard good things about hot yoga classes and want to try one of those, but I also would like to hear comments on power yoga and others.

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Post Memorial Day fun

So, I am fresh from a nice long weekend wherein I did nothing but lie on the beach and bask in the sun (with 50 SPF of course). It was wonderful, I’m not gonna lie. I hope everyone else had an enjoyable Memorial Day. I really took advantage of it, because I have never had Memorial Day off! At my old job it was not a paid holiday so I always worked, much to my disappointment. I was always working while my friends were at the lake or barbecuing! My love for my new job grew deeper when I realized we had Memorial Day off!

Of course I did not totally bask in the sun the entire time. I went for a nice 4 mile run on Sunday morning. I didn’t have the exact mile markers, so I just paced myself at a 10 minute mile and jogged 40 minutes. It was warmer than I am used to though! I thought I was not going to make it back to the house! Of course I did and all was well.

This evening after the gym I went to Trader Joes (only because we do not have a Whole Foods nearby, much to my utter dismay) and stocked up on some goodies! I was so excited to try the Homemade LaraBars that Angela at OhSheGlows raves about. I made the Banana Bread and the Chocolate Chip Cookie varities, and then sort of combined the two and made a Chocolate Chip Banana Bar. It was quite tasty.

I also had been dying to try Tara’s Mini Turkey Meatloaf from The Biggest Loser, so I mixed up a batch of those for lunch tomorrow and froze the rest. They smelled delicious, a full review on those will come after the taste testing!

For dinner, I made a tuna salad. I love tuna and chicken salad and have been brainstorming a way to make it healthier for a few weeks now. I mixed up a recipe tonight that I was rather pleased with.

1 can low sodium tuna

2 spoonfuls 0% Fage yogurt

1 tablespoon organic lite cream cheese

1 tablespoon dill relish

1/2 teaspoon pepper

dash of salt

I mixed this up and ate it on a slice of Ezekiel bread, with a salad with mango and strawberries topped with raspberry walnut dressing on the side. It made for a tasty dinner packed with lots of protein! If you are a celery eater, you could also add some of that for an extra crunch. I am going to try it with chicken as well and see how that works out.

On the fitness side of things I have still been following the workouts in Jillian Michaels book ‘Making the Cut’, just because I have seen such great results from these work outs and I feel I can use the strength training. I don’t know about you, but I do so much better with strength training when I have a program to follow. I also love Jillian’s work outs because they are in circuits, so you don’t get bored easily. I have been adding extra cardio to the end of my work outs so I can continue to burn fat and also because I am training for a marathon in December. I did the half marathon last year, and vowed that I would do the full one this year. It may be the only marathon I ever do, but come December I am going to do it!

I am training for it very similar to how I trained for the half. I used a program designed by Hal Higdon for that and finished better than I expected, so I am planning to use his program to do the marathon as well. Until I start the program though I am just working on adding distance to my runs. Today I did a two mile short run  and I will do the same Thursday, with a four mile run on Saturday. I will keep posting on my progress until I officially start the actual training program.

Well that’s it for tonight, bye dear readers!

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Haunted Houses?

This past week, I have really been struggling with some adversity in my life. (Let’s just say that I have some friendships that have slowly been growing apart, and it all culminated in the last week.)

So, instead of doing my usual (bashing, gossiping, crying; although I did that too. Forgive me.) I have really been getting into the Word to help me through this. I found a few verses on love that were really helpful; mainly:

Luke 6:35
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

and

1 John 4:20
If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

I read these verses several times to help keep love in the fore front of my mind. I found them very helpful, but even more so was the Bible study I attended Tuesday. It was just what I needed to hear!

Our bible study leader played a video that was excellent. The minister was speaking of letting go of the ‘old you’ and letting the ’new you’ take over. He spoke of how it is no longer our nature to sin after we are saved, and how to change your mindset from a sinner to a saint. He called letting the ‘old you’ back in ‘haunting’. I realized that the aforementioned gossiping, etc. was the ‘old me’! I was letting my ghost in to haunt me! It really clicked with me and made me feel reassured to know that yes, I had sinned, but it was that tricky old Devil haunting me and not actually the ‘new’ Christian me.

So I ask you, is your house haunted? I found that yes, mine was, but I am working on banishing that ghost! 

~Whitney

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Green (as in veggies)

I grew up a picky eater. Picky like: no salad, no green beans, no broccoli, nothing green. When it came to veggies I ate carrots and carrots alone. (Oh and squash pie, that counts right?) 

The older I got, the more vegetables I added to my diet. I now eat nearly any vegetable you put in front of me, was a vegetarian (for a very short time) and salad is a daily diet staple. I have come a long way from the eight year old who hid her green beans under her napkin, but (you knew there was a but in here, right?) the two vegetables I have yet to conquer are celery and bell peppers. I have tried and tried (I even attempted, yet again, celery and peanut butter for a snack today), so I thought I’d throw it out there (kind of like I threw the celery in the trash).

Who has an absolutely fantabulous (fantastic+fabulous=fantabulous) recipe using either of these vegetables that I will not be able to resist?

C’mon throw them out there! The celery/pepper lover buried deep within is begging you!

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