Motivation for 2014

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! 2014 is here!!! It is time to renew those old goals and make some new ones! I had a WONDERFUL holiday full of fun, family, love, and plenty of cheats! But now that the new year is here it is time to refocus and continue working on those goals!

Over the holiday I was able to do a lot of soul searching and thinking about where I want my body to go. I have gone back and forth about where I want to end my weight loss journey. I've finally decided that I would like to lose about 20 more pounds before I decide to stop actively losing weight! I am also focused on toning my body and building more muscle. I have been VERY happy with the progress that I made in 2013 and look forward to much more!!

For today's post I thought it would be great to share some of my favorite motivational pictures. I have actually printed these out and will be using them on my 2014 vision board. I think it is a great idea for anyone to create a vision board for themselves in order to help with visualizing your goals. When I have completed my board I will be happy to share it with you all! For now please enjoy these motivational quotes and feel free to use them however you'd like!

Snack Attack

I wanted to talk about snacking. Some think that snacking is not allowed when trying to lose weight. That cannot be farthest from the truth!! Depending on yor fitness goals eating regularly can be very important. I tend to eat every 2-3 hours and have at least 3 snacks a day. 

Of course your snacks should be healthy, low in fat, low in added sugars, etc. These are the snacks that I tend to buy the most. Usually I will find something I like and stick with it. So, here are my favorite snacks of the moment. 

1. Fruit

I have a serious sweet tooth and I use fresh fruit to satisfy it. Strawberries are my favorite fruit of all time! I've loved them since I was a young child. Grapes are also a deliciously sweet snack that I eat often. Other fruits I enjoy include cuties, apples, and blueberries. 

2. Hummus

Need I say more?? Hummus is so great and can be enjoyed with fresh vegetables. I prefer to eat my hummus with baby carrots. I also enjoy eating my hummus with smart pita pockets. 

3. Baby carrots

As I've a least mentioned I love eat if baby carrots with hummus, but I also love eating them with other things, including salsa, guacamole, and lite cheeses. 

I have found that baby carrots can often be a great clean and healthy replacement for chips or crackers. 

4. Hard boiled eggs

Eggs are an excellent source of protein. I eat a lot of eggs. Sometimes I will eat just the whites, while other times I will eat them whole. Either way eggs are good for you, especially when boiled. 

5. Rice cakes 

I almost forgot about one of my favorite snacks! Rice cakes are great plain or topped with different things, including mustard, salsa, or peanut butter (or other types of nut butters). It's fun to get creative with rice cakes. They make a wonderful canvas!

What are some of your favorite healthy snacks? I'm always looking for new ideas!

My Green Smoothie Recipe

Good morning, ladies! 14 days until Christmas!!! Are you ready?? I still have a LOT of Christmas shopping to do. Most actually! I am a procrastinator to the fullest!

Anyway, I just wanted to share my smoothie recipe with you all today. I love this recipe and generally drink this as my morning snack on the way to work. Adding the raw oats makes the smoothie a little more filling and gives it some substance. Adding spinach also allows you to increase your veggie intake for the day. I definitely recommend this as a snack. This is a high sugar smoothie due to the fruit, so keep that in mind. If I have this smoothie I usually don’t eat anymore fruit for the day. It is also high in carbs due to the oats as well as the fruit.  

Ingredients:

½ banana

1 handful fresh chopping spinach

1/3 cup berries of choice (frozen or fresh)

About ½ cup Unsweetened vanilla almond milk

½ cup raw oats

Combine all ingredients in blender (I use a personal sized blender). Blend for about 1 minute and enjoy! 

The key to this smoothie is the green color. If it’s not green then you didn’t add enough spinach!

Nutritional Info:

243 calories

47g carbs

4g fat

8g protein

15g sugar

Baked Oat "Muffins"

Happy holidays! I hope that everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving and didn't eat too much! I definitely enjoyed my holiday. I love spending time with family and eating good food. I did enjoy a few cheat meals over the holidays and definitely recommend indulging yourself every now and then. You should never deprive yourself of anything! It will only lead to terrible binges! I have learned the hard way. Planning on a day to cheat is recommended by a lot of people in the fitness community!

Now on to the recipe. This is another one of my favorite go-to breakfast foods. They remind me of eating muffins (which I often miss). They are quick and easy to make and you can easily heat them up in the morning for a quick and filling breakfast. I have made these many ways and love to add blueberries to them. I either eat them alone (usually two for breakfast) or with yogurt (0% plain Greek of course) and fruit. Some people like to eat it with milk as well. These are very low in fat, which is great for those on a low fat diet. I will plan to go into more detail of what a typical day of food looks like for me at a later time.

So. These are the ingredients you will need:

3 cups oats

½ cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

1 egg white

1 whole egg

1 cup unsweetened apple sauce

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

*I added in a few sprinkles of nutmeg

Combine all ingredients together and mix with a spoon or spatula. 

It should look something like this when completed:

Spoon into a muffin pan until distributed evenly. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

This recipe will make 12 "muffins." Very easy, right? Try it and let me know what you think!

Estimated Nutritional Info for One “Muffin”:

125 Calories

2g Fat

24g Carbs

2g Fiber

10g Sugar

3.5g Protein

Strawberry Shortcake Refrigerator/Overnight Oats + Coffee Talk

Refrigerator oats are one of my all-time favorite breakfast meals! They are something easy and quick I can prepare the night before and just grab in the morning. They also satisfy my super strong sweet tooth. They can be made in many different ways with different toppings, including fresh fruit. For this variation I have added fresh strawberries and strawberry preserves for a fun twist. Here's what you'll need:

Also forgot to include this ingredient wih the rest of the group, so it gets its own picture. It's also pretty awesome and I use it a lot:

1 cup milk of choice (I use vanilla unsweetened almond milk)

1 cup 0% fat unflavored Greek yogurt

1 cup uncooked oats 

1 tablespoon of honey

About 4 strawberries, diced

3 teaspoons of low sugar strawberry preserves 

First you will mix the first four ingredients together. 

When finished it should look something like this:

Then divide the mixture into three equal parts (factors out to a little over 2/3 cup per serving). I use Tupperware to store, but you may use mason jars with lids if you have them. 

Cut up your strawberries and divide them evenly among the three servings. 

Add a tablespoon of the strawberry preserves to each serving. 

Mix it all together. 

Cover and place in the refrigerator overnight. And in the morning you have a delicious breakfast to enjoy!

This recipe does have a fairly high amount of sugar, but it's not out of hand. To give you a comparison i try to limit myself to about 30g of sugar a day. I would just recommend watching the rest of your sugar intake for the day. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do! I'm looking forward to eating this in the morning. Give it a try! Let me know what you think!

Nutritional Info:

Without toppings (I.e., no strawberries or preserves):

177 calories

2.5g fat

21g carbohydrates 

3g fiber 

9g sugar 

12g protein 

With toppings (strawberries and preserves):

208 calories

15.5g sugar 

The rest of the info is pretty much the same. 

Now for some coffee talk. A lot of people unknowingly sabotage themselves with their daily coffee, but drinking coffee doesn't have to hinder your weight loss. Coffee itself is actually pretty healthy and has benefits. It's the things that we add into coffee that make it bad for us. Those flavored creamers that are so delicious and make our coffees so creamy are high in sugar and fat. And let's not even get to restaurant lattes! I now use healthier alternatives with my coffee. It's not the same, but I still enjoy it! My recommendations: stevia or truvia in place of sugar, unsweetened vanilla almond milk in place of creamer, and the fat free powdered creamer. I also enjoy flavored coffee. That allows you to get the hint of flavor without the extra calories. Hope that helps!

What's Next?

As I sat down and began planning out my blog and future posts I tried to think about the order in which I wanted to begin sharing information. So I started thinking about how I started on my journey and figured that would be the best way to go. 

Back in January 2013 when I started my weight loss journey I decided that I would start by drastically changing my eating habits. I began doing a lot of research on clean eating and decided that I wanted to try it. Clean eating means different things to many people, but to ME eating clean means avoiding any processed foods. Sticking with the basics: fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts, dairy, grains (rice, quinoa, pasta). 

I also began calorie counting. Many people hate the idea of counting calories, but I think it is very important to keep track of what you are putting into your body, especially at the beginning of your journey. A lot of us don't know how to eat properly and it's shocking to some when they find out how they should REALLY be eating. I recommend using My Fitness Pal. It's very convenient and also has an app for your phone.

Eventually I began keeping track of my macros, or macronutrients, which to me is just a fancy term to describe keeping track of the specific amounts of fats, carbs, proteins, sugar, fiber, etc. that you consume on a daily basis. I basically try to stick to a low fat, high protein, low sugar diet. 

I highly recommend paying attention to macros, especially when you experience a plateau. A lot of people make the mistake of focusing on calories and forget that you should also be paying attention to how much sugar, fat, and carbs you eat. As I've said before I am not a nutritionist so I don't know much about the topic, but I do know that it's worth looking into. 

The next few blog posts will focus on some of my favorite clean and healthy recipes that I personally use on a regular basis. All recipes will include macros and pictures. I hope that you give them a try and add them to your meal rotation! Most recipes will be easy on the wallet and include cheap ingredients that you can buy in most places. No fancy or weird ingredients that you can't find or pronounce. :)

WELCOME!

Welcome to my new blog! I am a working wife and mother who has recently lost about 40 pounds (36 to be exact). Many people have started asking me how I did it, so i figured I would start a blog in order to share what has made me successful. I am in no way perfect, nor am I a professional personal trainer or nutritionist. I am also still a work in progress. I started my weight loss journey in January 2013 and will not give up until I have the body that I want!!  I'd like to lose about 10 more pounds and focus more on toning my body through weight lifting.

This blog will be geared more toward women who are like me. I work 40 hours a week. I commute 2 hours a day. I do not belong to a gym. I don't have a personal trainer. I don't always eat the right things. I am not particularly wealthy (or at all wealthy!). I am just a "regular" woman. I have worked very hard for my fitness and have had to get pretty creative in order to make it fit into my budget and lifestyle. I plan to share specific workouts, recipes, tips, and tricks that have helped me to be successful.

Please feel free to ask questions and make suggestions for what I can discuss here. I also am open to being a source of support and encouragement for those who are experiencing hopelessness on their journey or need a kick to get started. My hope is to motivate and encourage other women to lose weight when they feel that they can't make it work. I used to think that I couldn't make it work and I did!! I hope that you can, too!

I will close this post with sharing a few pictures that I could find of me on my journey so far. To be honest I did not purposely take any pictures of me at the very beginning of my journey because I was very pessimistic about weight loss. This was not the first time I have tried to lose weight. I didn't know if I could even lose weight. So I've only recently started taking pictures of myself for comparison purposes. That is a big thing I regret and definitely suggest that you start your journey with taking pictures in order to see your progress. Now on to the pictures!!

This was me (and my wonderful husband) about 6 months after giving birth to our beautiful daughter (who is now three years old). Can you believe I was power walking about three miles a day, 5 days a week? Yeah, I was. But THEN I would leave and eat at McDonald's for lunch (at least 2-3 times a week), or drink multiple sodas a day, or drink large sweet teas. My eating was terrible! I weighed about 205. I think my highest was 210.

This was me about a year later. At this point I had pretty much given up on exercising since I wasn't seeing any results. I think this was also when the denial set in. Now when I look back at pictures I can't BELIEVE I was this big! I think I had tricked myself into thinking I was smaller than I was, even though I couldn't fit into my old clothes and had to buy larger sizes. The brain cam be a funny thing!

The first picture was taken on Valentine's day 2013 (date night!). I had just started losing a little weight (may 5 or 10 pounds?), but was still very negative about weight loss. Second picture was taken in early July 2013, going out to celebrate my sisters birthday 20 pounds lighter! I was feeling great! Lol. This was when other people started noticing I was losing weight, which motivated me to keep going!

This picture just shows a range of how I have looked during three different stages of my weight loss. First picture was toward the beginning of my journey before I started noticing results. Second picture I think I was down 10 pounds. I think the last pic is me down 20 pounds.

Left is at the beginning of my journey (already posted), right is one of my most recent pics of me at my lowest weight, which is currently 168.

And now, the finale! I debated with myself for a long time about sharing this picture for many reasons, mainly because, well, it's embarrassing!! I remember back in August I thought I was hot stuff because I had managed to lose 20 pounds. Keep in mind I never thought I would lose one pound! So I thought I looked good!! Honestly after taking the first picture my feelings were hurt. I thought I'd looked a lot better than that! I almost became discouraged. But I didn't give up and ended up losing another 14 pounds between pic one and two (and many inches). For the first time I can say I am now happy with my body. However I have a lot more work to do! Will you join me??