You will need 2 full cups of strawberry puree. I used about 3.5-4 cups of frozen strawberries. I do not have a fantastic blender so this step took a while!! I used about 1/4-1/3 cup of water to puree the strawberries.

Mash a ripe banana with a fork in the bottom of the bowl. Crack one egg into the bowl with it.

Add the strawberry puree to the egg and banana. Mix these wet ingredients well. I did not picture the water here but that should be included in this step!

*I did not pay attention to directions and forgot to mix wet ingredients first! They still turned out well but do not forget this step for a better consistency =)

After mixing the wet ingredients, pour in the oats, cinnamon, backing powder, and vanilla.

Add cocoa powder, salt, and chocolate chips! Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients well.

 



I put some strawberry cream cheese on it and it is so good! I got this idea from the original recipe and it is delicious! They are yummy alone but the cream cheese really takes it to the next level.

I revised this recipe from this website!

To the right is the nutrition information for my version:

This version of Grown Up Mac and Cheese is really not nutritionally horrible. This recipe made 6 servings which I guesstimated in size. This is not the best method but I would say one serving is about 1 cup. Next time I make it I promise to measure it responsibly =)



I added 1/4 of an avocado on top of my bowl which was scrumptious! Get creative with toppings, Daniel added bacon to his ;) The avocado would add 63 calories, 3g carbs, 6g fat, and 1g protein.

The Cake Recipe is from Add a Pinch



The Fudge Icing Recipe is also from Add a Pinch



The Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe was from Sally's Baking Addiction

Portions vary from food to food; there are some general guidelines to help keep you on track.

Fruit: In general, one piece of medium or small fruit is one serving. ½ a cup of berries or melon is also a serving.

Vegetables: Leafy greens should equal one cup. Most other vegetables such as zucchini, broccoli, corn, carrots, and beans (legumes) are ½ a cup. I medium potato is a serving

Grains: are split into 2 categories of refined and whole grains. Some examples of portions include ½ cup brown rice; 1-cup whole-wheat cereal; 1 slice whole wheat bread; 1 8inch flour tortilla; and 1 cup of white rice.

Protein: Portions vary vastly on the type. Proteins include nuts, meat, eggs, beans, seafood and soy products. Portions range from 3oz chicken breast; 5oz beef steak strip; 8oz salmon; 2oz shrimp; 1oz nuts; to ½ cup beans.

Dairy: Example portions of dairy include 8oz of milk or yogurt; 1/3-cup cheddar cheese; 2 slices Swiss cheese; and ½ cup frozen yogurt.

Here is a yummy snack idea from Choose My Plate!
Serves 4
Ingredients:

• 8 celery stalks
  
• 2 tbs crumbled blue cheese
  
• 3 tbs fat-free cream cheese
  
• ½ cup fat-free plain yogurt
  
• 4 dried apricots
  
• 4 dried figs or dates
  
• ¼ cup pecans
  

Directions:

1. Chop dried fruit and pecans
   
2. Mix blue cheese, cream cheese, and yogurt until smooth
   
3. Stir in chopped dried fruit and pecans
   
4. Slice celery stalks into 3-4 inch sticks
   
5. Fill celery with spread; refrigerate any leftovers

Setting Goals

Plan to make SMART goals:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time sensitive
 

Specific goals include all the details – what, where, when, how, why.

Measurable ensure you can see progress – pounds lost, minutes exercised, servings of vegetables eaten, or # of days exercised.

Attainable goals should be realistic. You can dream big but ensure it’s something that you can achieve so you aren’t let down!

Relevant goals apply to this competition – weight lost and healthy lifestyles.

Times sensitive goals create a time limit for motivation and progression.

Create goals using these guidelines. You should set goals each week. Decide upon your final goal and then make small goals to help you get there!

Keep a journal, calendar, word document, note in your phone etc… with all of the information in this post! Track weight, exercise, feelings, goals, progress, challenges, successes and so much more! Writing things down allows you to take a step back and sort things out. Start one today!!

Jumping Jacks:
Keep you belly tight and abdominals engaged.
To maximize your Jack, focus on pushing off the ground hard with your toes so that they are fully pointed in the air when jumping out and back in. Make sure your knees bend liberally during each landing. Be especially careful to keep your toes over your knees when you land. By engaging your abdomen and squeezing your gluteus you can help to make sure you are not injured during this move.






Triceps Table Push-ups:
Position yourself with the heel of your hand on a desk or chair. Spread your feet wide and distance them several feet away from where your hands are.
While engaging your abdominal muscles, lower yourself down so that your elbows make a 90 degree angle. Concentrate on using your arm muscles not the muscles in your leg to push your self back up.
To up your toning, hold that last push-up for 10-30 seconds!










Squats:
I usually do this above a low chair or couch to provide consistency. Engage your core and bend your knees to about 90 degrees. If you are using a chair, squat until your bottom is just barely touch the chair. Keep your hands on tour hip, held out to the sides, or hold weights to challenge your body even more.
To up your toning, hold that last squat for 10-30 seconds!





Calf Raises, Toes Forward:
Stand with your feet a few inches apart, toes facing forward. Raise up onto the balls of your feet and lower your self back down. Focus on balance -- engage your core and tuck in your rear to reduce wobbles. Keep your heels in line with your calf, be careful not to let your foot roll outwards or you may strain your ankle. Work towards creating slow and controlled movements. Do not let your heels cluck back down at the end of each rep, if you have that down then just let your heels gently touch the ground without putting any weight on them.
Keep your hands on tour hip, held out to the sides, or hold weights to challenge your body even more.
To up your toning, hold that last squat for 10-30 seconds!




Walking Squats:
Start with your hands on your hips, above your head, or holding weights. Take a large step forward, engaging core and being careful to keep your foot in line. Lunge forward so that your front leg is at a 90 degree angle keeping toes over your knees. Push off with your bag leg to take a step forward, repeating the motion on the other side. Repeat this until you have done 15 forward lunges with each leg. Focus on creating controlled and deliberate motions. As you lunge forward, use your quadriceps AND your glute muscles to help lower your body and raise back up.







Calf Raises, Toes Outward:
These are the same motion as the previous calf raises. To start, stand in your toes forward position. Shift your weight to your heels and squeeze your rear while moving out your toes to a comfortable position. Take caution to no "over turn out". This will put stress on your knees and cause injury. To ensure this doesn't happen, keep your glute muscles tight for the entire repetition. If you bend your knees, your toes should be directly under them with no discomfort. If this position is too difficult for you to hold, feel free to do more Toe Forward calf raises.





Clams: Quadruple Rotation:
This exercise consists of 4 different exercises on each side. This is the best name I could come up with!
Lie on your side with knees bent and hips stacked directly on top of each other. Keep your tummy tight for balance with your top hand in front of your body to help. This is your base for each of the four exercises.
Throughout all of these exercises focus on squeezing your glutes. Make sure to keep your hips and body as still as possible.

Clam 1: Lift your top leg straight up staying in line with the rest of your body. Slowly lower your leg back down in one fluid motion.
Clam 2: Keep your toes touching throughout this exercise, this position is most like a clam! Open your top knee pulling it as far back to the wall behind you as you can without compromising your form.
Clam 3: Raise your ankles several inches off of the ground, start with what is comfortable and push them higher to give your self more of a challenge. Repeat Clam 1 with your ankles off the floor.
Clam 4: Keep your ankles raised like in Clam 3. Repeat Clam 2 in this position.

Make sure to flip over and repeat this Quadruple Rotation on the other side!!!





Plank Hip Touches:
Get into the elbow plank position. Make sure your form is solid so you do not hurt your lower back.
Dip your right hip down to the floor (it does't have to make contact just dip until you can feel it!). Return back to plank and repeat on the other side. You can do this in a quick fluid motion just ensure that you level your hips out after each dip.

Bicycles:
Start lying on your back. Place your hands interlocked behind your head and lift your shoulders and ankles off the floor. Bend your right knee and touch your left elbow to it keeping your left leg extended. Swiftly switch and repeat on the other side. Push yourself to do as many as possible to exhaust your abdominals.

Push-Ups:
This is probably my least favorite exercise. Ever. Start with your hands under your shoulders. Balance on your hands and toes with your legs extended straight back. I balance on my knees since I am still building strength =) Keep your tail tucked and belly button to your back bone to avoid lower back injury. Bend your arms, keeping your body in a straight line, as much as you can before returning to the starting position. 

A huge huge HUGE benefit of strength training is maintenance of a healthy weight. As I stated earlier, higher amounts of muscle mass means your body is utilizing its food source more efficiently. Your BMR, basal metabolic rate, is higher with more muscle mass. Stored fat mass utilizes very few calories that we eat throughout the day. Comparatively, muscle is an active tissue that burns the calories we eat quicker than fat mass would!

  Strength training when you are younger will help preserve muscles as you age. Preserving lean muscle mass allows your body to run at high efficiency. Without pushing limits to utilize and build muscle mass, our bodies get rid of lean weight by turning it into fat mass – not so good!

Take caution as you lose weight. During weight loss, it is normal to lose some muscle mass, which is why strength training is so imperative.

I have kicked my diet back into gear and have done Medifast for about 5 weeks. I did the very strict version but now I am slowly increasing calories to prepare for my New Orleans trip. Yahoooo!! After the Holidays, my weight crept up about 9 pounds (YIKES) from where I was in December. Not good. I needed to start getting my life together again. I could feel the difference in my body and it made me grumpy and unhappy. I have absolutely no idea why it took me so long to realize that I was slowly by surely creeping back up to my start weight. A few more months and I would have been back where I started TWO YEARS ago!!!

As Michelle from Full house would say, I thought "No way Jose!"

Inspiration and Motivation go hand-in-hand. You must find inspiration that motivates you to push forward. From your motivation, you should be inspired to keep going!

I definitely recommend making a list and using that to move forward. Start by organizing your thoughts about your health goals. Use this list to more clearly define what you are working towards. Be sure to include both short term and long term goals. These goals should, surprise surprise, motivate and inspire you!

Inspiration should be unique to you. I will always recommend that you pick positive elements to provide you base motivation. However, I must admit that I do draw some of my motivation on aspects of my self that I do not like. If you are like me, maybe you don't like the flab in your arms or the undefined tone of your thighs, try to focus on your positive goals. Turn those negative thoughts into something that boosts you up! Instead of thinking "I hate the bulge of my stomach" to motivate you at the gym, try "My next goal is to get to size X pants". While the goals is essentially the same the latter is specific, positive, and has a clear fix -- diet and exercise!

Here is some visual motivation! Something to strive for and some nice eye candy on the bottom right ;)

I only have 2 posts so I am pretty sure I have no followers, but I still feel the need to apologize, mostly to the universe, for giving up on myself and on everyone out there. I started this blog with hopes of firstly keeping myself motivated and informed about nutritional and health topics. My dreams were that somewhere along the way, I would touch a few other people’s lives. I am NOT perfect so just like my health, I believe that this will be a long journey! However, I am committed to trying and I hope that as I move forward I will get better and better at writing and updating! For anyone who is out there – please bear with me as I struggle to keep moving. Lets keep each other motivated and focused =)

Everyone needs to find his or her own motivation and drive. My motivation has developed into many elements, all working towards the same goal. Having lost weight in the recent past, I often focus on how I do NOT want to end up at that weight/state of health again. I use what I felt in the past and what I feel on my bad days, whatever it may be (guilt, queasiness, sluggishness, laziness, disappointment, embarrassment, etc.…), to refocus and move forward. I use motivational pictures, websites, and blogs to keep in mind what I want (healthier body weight, less body fat, more muscle/strength). I also strive to have better nutritional health. Small daily and weekly goals keep me focused on what is actually going into my body.

What I suggest is to sit down and brainstorm! Write down everything you want, everything you don’t want, everything you think, everything you feel, and really just everything related to your health journey! Sometimes I will create motivational boards to keep me going. This includes everything I listed above plus pictures, exercises, quotes, and tips that I can look at every day and draw strength from. The more you think, the more defined your motivation will become =)

In my opinion, the most important part is to constantly refocus and reevaluate. Your goals should always be changing, morphing, and expanding to accommodate your ever-evolving behaviors and goals. Don’t give up on your goals but DO continue to push yourself! If your goal for the past 2 weeks was to eat 2 servings of veggies every day, maybe your goal for week 3 is to make sure that on at least one day you eat 3 servings of veggies! It may seem tiny, even insignificant, but these small changes will add up to huge amazing things in your future!!

As always I hope that this has helped! Please share with me any thoughts, feelings, frustrations, and emotions you are having. Stay MOTIVATED this week!!!

Hello everyone!

This is my first blog post ever so it may take me some time to get used to blogging.

As the rest of my website stated, I am here to get fit and healthy. I am on a quest to find what is right for my body and what works for me. Recently I have slipped a little and I am in need of some re-motivation! The weekends are always the hardest time for me to keep my focus. This week, I am dedicated to trying to find solutions to help me survive the Friday night to Sunday night hurtle that may undo all of the hard work I put in on the weekdays.

When given the choice of a nice lazy day at home reading, watching movies, going on pinterest, and baking or bundling up to fight the cold on the way to the gym, the choice is always easy. These winter weekends make me want to stay home and eat things like those scrumptious cupcakes pictured above! It is helpful for me to browse health and fitness websites. Seeing images of strength, motivation, health, and determination encourage me to achieve some of those attributes on my lazy weekend. The bottom picture from Shape magazine helps me to gain the inner strength to get moving and stay focused on health (picture from: http://www.shape.com/fitness/workouts/top-10-yoga-poses-increase-metabolism?page=5)

Evening out my exercise and calorie intake on the weekend helps me to maintain my weight and motivation. Switching from my Monday to Friday healthy foods and 1-2 hours of exercise a day to my Saturday to Sunday high calorie and low exercise routine creates a roller coaster gone wrong for my body. I am intentionally adding stress and inconsistency to my life that creates even more challenges for my body to process calories effectively. I am sure others can understand the devastation of 1 or 2 bad days. Your body doesn't feel as great, the scale may move up several pounds, and your emotions drop. Depending on the week, this can either motivate you to do better, or discourage you to not care.

The scale has been yo-yoing each weekend for the past 3 weeks or so and I am ready for it to stop. I have actually put on a few pounds due to the radical calorie changes (both what I take in and what I exercise out) from day to day. I can't change the fact that I didn't go to the gym yesterday, but today might be a silver lining. With plenty of time left for the gym, I plan to get a good work out in and to do some brainstorming on how to keep my dedication up come next Friday night!

Stay focused,

Valerie