Pages

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Eat A Good Amount Of Fresh Produce To Lose Weight Naturally

Because you do not feel good about yourself or you have to lose weight for your health, it is important that you are educated before you begin the process whether you want to lose weight. The article that is following created to help you put on pounds loss knowledge.

Find a weight loss buddy. You might find it easier with a partner. Whether the partner competes you, it will add fun to your endeavor and lead to positive things with you or coaches.

A great method to lose weight is to start out eating tuna. Tuna is one of the healthiest sources of protein around and its simple to prepare. You can mix it with some non-fat mayo and put it on a sandwich, or you can place it in a salad.

Many people are trying to lose weight through a "diet". This approach makes sense: if you want to lose weight you need to cut your calorie intake. But there is a better approach: first look at providing the complete nutrition to your body it needs. Then your system shall manage to cope with losing weight while staying healthy.

You should try making it your goal to lose at least one pound each week. You should try to make an adjustment to reach this goal if you are not losing this. One pound each week ensures that you are slowly losing weight at a healthy rate.

For a few social people weight loss does not come easy: They will eat right, they will exercise, and the pounds just dont want to budge. If this is your situation, there is help. Going to a doctor and weight that is discussing medication will likely be helpful. These medications will help your body lose weight faster, so long as, you are still taking care of yourself.

You need to start focusing on only one thing at a time if you want your diet to be as successful as possible. If your goal is to ultimately lose weight and get in shape, it might be too much too fast to attempt to do both at once. Start with attempting to burn the fat with exercise and diet, and then worry about toning those muscles.

A motivator that is great your weight loss journey is to take photos along the way. Once a month, every ten pound,s or at some other interval that is regular snap an image in the exact same clothing, and marvel at the changes in your body. Humans are visual creatures, so seeing the weight loss in glorious color can be a motivator that is great.

One food that is secret losing weight is avocados. They are packed full with fiber, which helps you feel full faster, and stay full for a longer period of time, They also are high in healthy fats. Eating avocados will help you to find a alternative that is great meat, and you can experiment with many different recipes.

To conclude, regardless of what you main reason is for planning to shed weight, you need to ensure you are informed about the procedure before you begin even. The above article has shown you some helpful tips when preparing yourself to lose weight. Take these tips and use them to your benefit!
Read More..

Spicy Macaroni Salad

One of my favorite summer-time BBQ foods used to be macaroni salad, of course, tossed in mayonaise and loaded with salt.  With the weather starting to get warmer, I was craving one of my old favorites.  I thought I would also make a spicy version to give it some zing.

Spicy Macaroni Salad
Time: 15 minutes
Servings: 2-4
Ingredients:
    Salad:
        1 cup dried macaroni noodles (I used brown rice macaroni noodles)
        1/2 cup canellini or white beans
        1/4 red onion, finely diced
        2 stalks celery, roughly chopped
    Dressing:
        1 cup canellini or white beans
        1+ cup water, more to consistency
        1/2 cup raw cashews, or 1/4 cup cashew butter
        1 Tbsp fresh lime or lemon juice
        1/2 Tbsp miso paste
        1 tsp chili powder
        1 tsp smoked paprika
        1 tsp cumin
        1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
        black pepper to taste
Instructions:
1.)  Bring a medium pot of water to boil and cook noodles until al dante.  Drain and rinse with cold water to cool.
2.)  While the noodles are cooking, prepare the other salad ingredients and the dressing.
3.)  For the dressing, in a high-powered blender, blend all of the ingredients.  Add more water to achieve the desired consistency, which is somewhere between the consistency of mayo and ranch dressing.
4.)  Once all ingredients have been prepped, combine the pasta with the other salad ingredients and pour 1/2 cup of the dressing onto the mixture.  Stir until well combined.  Grind fresh black pepper over the salad and serve chilled.

Amys Notes:
This recipe requires just one can of beans, divided into 1/2 and 1 cups for the salad and dressing, respectively.  I served my macaroni salad over a bed of mixed greens.  I didnt have any on hand, but I would have topped the salad with fresh cilantro.
This salad would also be great with the addition of some sliced black olives, but like I said in an earlier post, we are running short on some groceries in preparation of going on vacation in a little over a week.
The spicy mayo-like dressing could also be used to make a Nutritarian-friendly spicy potato salad for a BBQ or picnic.  Just use your imagination!


What is your go-to Nutritarian recipe to bring to BBQs or picnics?

Health and Happiness,

Amy

Read More..

Happy New Year and an Update

Dear blogging community,

I have been absent from writing my blog for quite some time, 174 days to be exact.  Since then I have had some good times and some bad times, but for now, lets focus on the good:


My husband Kevin and I celebrated our 1 Year Wedding Anniversary.

I went on a weekend trip to Montana see my sister-in-law, Katie, for a girls weekend while my brother was out of town.  We had a great time going floating down the river, soaking in hot springs, enjoying a few bars in Bozemans quaint downtown, and watching roller derby. (I think the unintentional photo-bomb in the picture below is pretty funny.)

Kevin and I took a trip with some wonderful friends to Leavenworth, WA for Oktoberfest.

I moved from being a temporary employee to a full time permanent employee at my company (with killer benefits!)
My offer letter!
Kevin started student teaching for his Masters in Secondary Education and will be fully done with his masters program in two weeks. 
Cheers to that!

We found out that my oldest brothers wife is expecting twin boys in April/May, and my mom and I threw her a High Tea Baby Shower while they were in town for Christmas.  I made her two knitted foxes like this one.
Really!  What DOES the fox say?!

We moved from our tiny (seriously, tiny) one bedroom, dark, half basement apartment into a lovely third floor, two bedroom apartment with tons of windows, a laundry room (room! not laundry closet! room!), a large pantry, plenty of kitchen storage, a real-sized fridge, room for my yarn storage, and nearly twice the square footage of our previous place.  Did I mention that it comes with an indoor lap pool and hot-tub, all for only $15 more than we were paying at our last place?  Needless to say, I am much more relaxed and happy in our new place.

Kevin and I traveled to his hometown of Sequim, WA to have Thanksgiving with his family.  I successfully avoided cutting any of my digits like two years ago.

I finally made a homemade Christmas wreath that I can use for years to come.  I got all of the supplies from Michaels while all of their Christmas decor was 50%-60% off.  I put together the wreath myself and it cost about $18 (compared to the pre-made ones that go for $30+).

My biggest Christmas present this year was a surprise from Kevin for a Western Caribbean Cruise for our belated Honeymoon in May.  We are so excited to have something so fun to look forward to... 136 days cant go by fast enough!

Lastly, I had a wonderful Christmas and New Years with Kevin, and our friends and family.  We are so excited for the upcoming year to welcome two nephews, to go on a Honeymoon, and to go to Oktoberfest again.  We are also grateful for the friendships we have made this year.

Bring it on 2014!  This year is going to be great!

Please note that I hope to get back into a blogging routine of one or two posts a week.  I havent had too much time to seriously cook or make up recipes over the last few months, but Im beginning to be inspired again!  Thank you all for your patience in waiting for me to return.
Read More..

Day 13 of Metamorphosis

Day 13 went fine, a bit too busy: work, getting the groceries for week 3 (was a bit late as was celebrating on Saturday, and Sunday all the shops are closed in Germany), cooking, doing laundry, cleaning up... Now I still need to unpack - still havent done so since I came back from Sweden!!! Soon a month ago. Sigh. This is just me.

DC was easier today than ever I guess. I was sweating damn a lot, but at the same time, felt strong and cheerful throughout the workout. MS was also OK, but it is still hard to balance, and man I hate planks! They suck :) I can only do like 10 reps of exercises with planks, but well at least it is fun.

Today I updated my level 1 results with some pics, and honestly, was impressed myself! It is working and I am determined to keep it up!

Have a great day yall!
Read More..

FRENCH PEAS

Pascal and I cooked our first roast of 2015 today and it was a good one - chorizo and rosemary stuffed roast pork - we are both a bit fussy when it comes to "stuffing"! I hate fruit stuffing such as apricot and Pascal cant handle anything too rich so this was perfect as we are both huge chorizo and leek fans. We wanted something light as a side to compliment the pork and this green veg recipe from Fay Ripleys cookbook was the perfect accompaniment - simple but not boring!

Ingredients for 3 people:

40g butter
1 leek, trimmed and finely chopped
250g frozen peas
1/3 iceberg lettuce, roughly shredded
50ml vegetable stock
10g fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped (optional) - I actually didnt bother!



Like always prepare the ingredients first - make the stock, weigh out the peas and chop the leek and lettuce.



Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat.



Add the leek and cook for 2-3 minutes.



Throw in the peas and stock.



Add the lettuce.



Season and then put a lid on the saucepan and cook for 10 minutes until the leeks are soft and the lettuce is limp.



Serve with chopped parsley stirred through if you like and enjoy.




This was a delicious way to serve green veg and would go with both meat or fish - it is also super easy and quick. Plus it is pretty healthy so you have calories spare for chocolate!!!

Powered by eRecipe.com
Nutrition Facts Widget Image
Read More..

Friday, April 29, 2016

The Top 5 of the Very Best Diet Tips

Diet is something most people fear, along with such scary stuff similar going to the dentist. But diet plans are really not all that terrible and with this sampling of the very best diet tips, you will find that it could be relatively painless - not unlike a painless dentist.
One diet tip that should happen the top of the list of the very best diet tips is this:
Eat Less, Burn More.
Actually that is the weight loss program itself. If you programmed the calorie related aspects of your living around this tip, you will end up losing weight as effectively as you ever can on any diet program.
Create a vision board
The vision board is simply a real board where you put pics of things that you want to obtain. In this case, if you would like a strong, healthy and slim body discover a body that is exactly what you intend to have and post as many degrees of this on the board as probable. Be sure that you will consider it each day and visualize having that body. If you need to have got lower cholesterol numbers, get a photo of a lab result with the numbers you desire. Time and again, this has proven to be a very powerful and effective tool.
When eating, think small and recurrent.
A three meal a day program is old school as well as ineffective for effective and lasting weight loss. Eating 6 to 8 small meals a day keeps your blood sugar secure and your hunger pangs at clean.
Everything in moderation, do nothing extreme.
You could almost hear the sigh of relief from those reading this specific tip. But it really is genuine, because your body is so well-balanced and well-designed that it offers contingency plans that go into immediate action at the slightest hint associated with an emergency or imbalance. And this is just how it interprets a sudden caloric reduction which accompanies fad diets, thus explaining why they never do the job.
Think lifestyle change, not diet.
Some people think that we are already hard wired to react adversely towards word diet. While I dont know if this is true, it is an unassailable fact of which to most people, diet sounds short-lived. So think of what you will do as part of your weight loss or eat healthy program as a lifestyle change. That simple paradigm adjust can work wonders.

A lot of people are probably stunned at the simplicity of the ideas but make no mistake about that, the best diet tips are in truth the simplest. These five are the strongest and the very best diet suggestions around. In fact if you would likely only follow all five of these people, you would no longer need to keep anything else in mind since theyve already everything covered.
Read More..

Thursday, April 28, 2016

VANILLA FROSTING

April is a busy cake baking month for me with Arabellas birthday and party and Pascals birthday. I am a big Betty Crocker fan and last year made Arabella this super easy cake. This year I used the vanilla cake mix but then made my own frosting from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook which Arabella had bought me for Christmas - she knows the way to my heart! I LOVE frosting and so made a good amount for a 9" cake to ice the middle, top and sides. I also decorated the cake with white chocolate fingers and haribo - you can never have enough sugar right?!

Ingredients for a 9" cake (or 36 cupcakes):

750g icing sugar, sifted
240g unsalted butter, at room temperature
75ml whole milk
6 drops of vanilla extract
A ribbon (optional)
3 packs of white chocolate fingers (optional)
2 big bags of haribo (optional)
A sponge cake (you can follow this cake recipe if you like or this one below)




Bake your cake and leave to cool on a wire rack.



Sift the icing sugar through a sieve into a bowl and add the butter.



Beat together with either a handheld electric whisk (which I used), or in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment, on a medium -slow speed until the mixture comes together and is well mixed. I put my apron on for this part as it can be pretty messy!!



Combine the milk and vanilla extract in a separate bowl and then add 2 tablespoons at a time to the butter and sugar, with the mixer on at a slow speed.




Once all the milk has been added, turn the mixture up to a high speed and beat continually for at least 5 minutes until the frosting is light and fluffy. You really need to put the effort in and "believe" - it suddenly does come together and the longer the frosting is beaten, the fluffier and lighter it becomes. Remember no pain no gain!




Spread on to the cake with a wide knife / spatula. The beauty of covering the cake with sweets and biscuits is that you dont need to be neat about it!






Dont forget to lick the bowl!

As soon as the icing is on the cake, stick on the chocolate fingers (you could use kit kats or anything similar). Dont wait around as they become difficult to stick - I had to go to 4 supermarkets halfway through as I ran out of fingers and white chocolate ones arent that easy to buy - I ended up having to make the icing a little damp to prevent the fingers falling off!



Then top with as many sweets as possible!



And tie with a ribbon!



Voila!! I have to say I was very very proud of this cake - it not only looked fab but it tasted amazing too. This frosting is out of this world….unfortunately this cake is also a bit like pringles, once you start, you cant stop. This one is already nearly eaten after just 2 days and I am making another one for Friday. Pascal doesnt like sweets so his one will be covered in chocolates like munchies, maltesers and minstrels, reeses peanut butter cups, m&ms….my mouth is already watering at the thought!!

Read More..

Rest day and the power of indulging

Today was my rest day. Not very resting though I have to tell you. I woke up at 6am because some builders were making noise outside my window... At 6am!!! I am still sleeping at that time, and they are already "noising" around!!! And I have to tell you, I went to bed only at 2... So, not much sleep.

At 9 I had to be at the university at the structural equation modelling (SEM) course - which to be honest was interesting and exciting, so I was not - thankfully - falling asleep. After that - as a normal PhD student - I got so excited, I went back home and started using SEM for my own data... By the evening I was exhausted from work, and sleepy. 

I did let myself indulge in a little bit of dinner: carrot-parsnip puree, quinoa (yes, I found it thanks to one of my readers Nina - Thank you so much!), several olives, a slice of cheese, pureed tomatoes with garlic and some weird bio-diet-ham (of only 8 cal a slice... weird! but I simply had to try it). All that with a little glass of wine, some candle light and instrumental piano music of genious Ludovico Einaudi... Perfect evening, just wish my sweetheart was here in person and not just on Skype... :)

Dinner, Week 7 with some extravagances... :)
I LOVE candles... Long time ago I used to find them a waste of time and space... Now I love the little flames...

Read More..

New Job and Recipes to Come

Hello my lovely readers!  Im so sorry that I have been a bit absent this week. This is week three at my new job and I am just starting to settle in from all of the excitement and newness of it. As a result, Ive been fairly mentally tried when I get home, so I have shied away from anything too complicated or innovative in the kitchen.

On Wednesday, Kevin and I had a fun evening with my parents when I made them a new dish I have been loving, but is not quite blog ready (at least picture-wise). All I will tell you is that it is an Indian dish with lots of greens and a spicy punch Mmm!  I also tried my hand at making homemade tahini. After lightly roasting the sesame seeds and blending them to heck in my food processor (unfortunately with a little bit of oil to help it along), I ended up with the perfect consistency of store bought tahini. The taste was not quite what I was hoping for though. I think I toasted the seeds for a little too long because the final tahini had a bit too much of a browned taste to it. I decided I could do better next time I tried by not roasting it for nearly as long and be able to make it without any oil. I will let you know how my next batch goes.

I am so determined to make homemade tahini, (1) because store bought is way too expensive, (2) I want to see exactly what goes into it (no salt or preservatives), and (3) a reader of mine requested that I recreate and nutritarian-ize Trader Joes Goddess Dressing that she enjoys. I got a bottle of this dressing last week to have a comparable and to be able to look at the ingredients list.  Tahini is the main ingredient for this dressing, but it also has quite a zing to it. Im planning on giving its recreation a shot this weekend and hope to have the recipe ready for a post next week.

Again, sorry I dont have any new recipes for you this week!  Hope everyone has a wonderful and healthy weekend!
Read More..

Carnivorous Husband Health Challenge and My Gym Challenge Day 1

Hello Readers!  It has been way too long since I have posted!  I realized I was on day 3 of week 5 of my 6-week Eat to Live health challenge the last time I posted, and for those of you who have been following.... To sum it up: I cheated and let things slip, I tried my best to stick with it, but then certain events came up including my birthday, having house (apartment*) guests stay for nearly a week, having a large basketball tournament downtown and eating on the go, eating out often with friends and family, and then a trip to the other side of the state for 4th of July weekend and staying with the in-laws. Id like to think that I made the best choices I could in the situations I was in, but those choices ended up becoming further and further away from the Nutritarian lifestyle.  This is sad for me to admit, but we all have mistakes and setbacks and this was one of mine.  What do you tell yourself when you fall off the wagon?

In other news.... I have some pretty crazy news that I never thought I would ever hear: my very meat and potatoes carnivorous husband is going to try the Nutritarian diet.... For one week.... With a catch.... I will have to do everything he says at the gym for the week.  The reason this "deal" came about was when we had gone to our small apartment gym yesterday after not having worked out since all of the commotion that led me off of my 6-week challenge. I wanted to go because I was needing to read a bunch of blog emails and was going to power walk on the treadmill while I did. I thought I was being quite productive since I would normally sit my lazy booty in the back porch and do the same thing. Kevin, who went hard on the stationary bike, told me that when I go to the gym I should be dripping in sweat and pushing myself to work hard and improve. That is all fine and dandy, but not something I would normally do. 

Later on that evening Kevin decided to make me a deal: he would eat however I wanted him to for a week as long as I would do whatever he said at the gym for a week.  One week of hard working out to get my husband to seriously try eating Nutritarian?  IM IN!  So this is what brings me back to blogging after my shame of not completing my 6-week challenge: documenting my husbands first tracks in Nutritarian shoes!


We started all of this today, and I have to say that it didnt go half bad. Here is how Kevin (and I) ate today:

Breakfast: Dr. Fuhrman Antioxidant Rich Breakfast Bar (find the recipe in Dr. Fuhrmans Member Center), 1 apple

Lunch: large romaine (me, spinach) salad with broccoli, cucumber, chickpeas and OMG Walnut Dressing (recipe from My Beef With Meat), 1 apple
Dinner: corn on the cob, Broccoli Mushroom Bisque (recipe in the Dr. Fuhrman Member Center), Better-Milk Biscuits (My Beef With Meat), sugar snap peas, and blackberries

Overall, Kevin was a great sport other than thinking the soup was way too bland, but he liked it with the biscuits I made. He said this was so much more food than he was used to eating (volume-wise), but that he liked the fruit. He was disappointed that today happened to be Free Slurpee Day and he wasnt allowed to have one. As for my hard work out, I was definitely sweating much more than I am used to at the gym, but feel energized and ready to go for tomorrow. 

Im looking forward to the rest of the week and taking on new challenges at the gym and in the kitchen. My husband will not be the easiest person to cater for while eating Nutritarian, but I will make it work, and hopefully he has a longer list of vegetables and Nutritarian dishes that he likes by the end of the week.

Do you have any recipes you would suggest for a meat and potato guy going Nutritarian?  He loves broccoli, romaine lettuce, and cucumbers.... But not too many other veggies. 

Oh, and here are some fun pictures from our shenanigans over the last few weeks since I have posted:







Read More..