Recipe Wednesday - Protein Popsicles

During the hot and humid summer months, there's nothing I love more than Popsicles (except possibly a refreshing glass of Relax Reisling.) Unfortunately, frozen sugar water isn't usually the most nutritional snack choice.

In an effort to justify consuming mass amounts of frozen deliciousness, I decided to start making my own Popsicles. I was initially going to stick to the standard fruit/coconut water blend, until I came across a recipe for fudge pops using chocolate whey protein powder. Protein Pops?! Yes, please!

Not only are these super simple to make, they taste great, and they're a yummy way to get more protein in your diet and to combat those pesky chocolate cravings. Texture might be a bit of a roadblock for some, since protein powder makes them slightly gritty, but it didn't bother me, and if you can get past it, they really hit the spot.

Ingredients:
1 can of coconut milk, I used the full-fat, but it's up to you
1 tbsp agave nectar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 scoop chocolate whey protein powder (though any flavor will work)

Blend all of the ingredients in a blender, making sure to scrape down the coconut milk goop, until smooth. Divide evenly into Popsicle molds or disposable paper cups (if using cups, insert Popsicle sticks halfway through the freeze time). Freeze for 4 hours or overnight.

Back on Track After 2012 Zapped my Happiness and Busted My Waistline

I know I haven't posted anything in a while and I won't make excuses as for why. Ok, I will... I haven't had anything new to talk about! I fell off the health wagon for a bit, and I'm really just now getting back on, or I guess I've been back on for a few weeks.

To update you on my goings-on lately, I have now lived up here in the Artic North (Illinois) for almost a year. In that year, I have been blessed to be able to spend an abundance of time with my wonderful family, something I was never able to do down South. Unfortunately, all of that family time has not blessed my waistline. My family loves to cookout, eat out and go out for drinks... none of which are very conducive to a healthy diet. Needless to say, I've put on 10-15 pounds. Not a tragedy, but still not the direction I was looking to go.

Even with all of this family time, my happiness level has been steadily dropping. Since this blog is about health (not just bodily, but mental health as well) I feel the need to delve into this sadness and what I'm doing to fix it... just for a minute. I won't bum you out too much. Let me just start my explanation by saying that being a single mom sucks - big time. I love my kid to death, but a bouncy rambunctious four year old is just EXHAUSTING! After the running and constant talking and playing - not mine, hers - I go to bed every night just completely worn out. Have you ever watched someone run a marathon and felt like you needed a nap afterwards? It's like that. Vicarious exhaustion. And never having the opportunity to say, "Hey, watch the kid. I'm going out for an hour" catches up with you. I also don't really know anyone around here to go out with, other than my family, so I've been lonely.

Enough explaining. So what am I doing to actually FIX things? Like I always say, "If you don't like something about yourself, fix it." Well, first I addressed the sadness. It's hard to lose weight if you're sad or stressed, so I needed to fix that before I started on anything else.

Back in October, the 30th to be exact, my grandfather passed away after a short battle with pancreatic cancer, and my stepmom took it really hard. At her suggestion, I went to church with her the following Sunday. She hadn't been in a year, and I hadn't been... since my mom quit making me go in high school. Neither of us are very religious, but we went, and I took my daughter to Sunday School. After watching my mom cry during the service and hearing my daughter rave about her "school", I decided to start attending regularly, not so much for me, but for them. After a few weeks, I noticed that I was feeling better. The weekly fellowship gets me out of the house, and even if I don't get as much from the ministering as others, certain things do sink in. I've met nice people in my area, and I was even convinced to join the Mothers of Pre-schoolers group, where I've found other women my age with that same look of hidden exhaustion and sadness. It helps to know you aren't alone sometimes. I also joined the church's volunteer cleaning crew. I only clean for an hour a month, but most of the people on the crew are old, and they got so excited about "a young person" (I'm thirty) helping out, that I couldn't help but feel happy and appreciated.

Alright, so my happiness level is creeping up, and now come New Years, I was ready to address my weight again. I debated for a little bit on what kind of diet to do. I'd had good results with the Paleo diet, as you all know, but it makes me cranky, which is counterproductive to my new-found happiness. Also, I'm not on my thyroid meds, so I need every happiness boost I can get. I'd also had great results with the Alli diet in the past, but I didn't want to spend money on pills. I decided to try something in the middle. I acknowledged the fact that I eat too many carbs, so I decided to lower my carbs and raise my protein. I started adding proteins to each meal - putting peanut butter on whole wheat bread at breakfast, swapping my Yoplait yogurt for Chobani Bites (greek yogurt is really the one area where I really think the added expense is worth it.) At a tip from Bob Harper, I try not to eat carbs in the evening. I also eat dinner really early so that I can burn off more calories before bed. At first I thought that eating at 5:30 would mean that I'd be hungry again by 10:00, but I'm really not. If on the rare occasion, I find that I am, I suck it up and wait until morning. Once I got into a diet routine, I logged onto MyFitnessPal.com and added my daily meal plan to see where I was at and where I needed adjustments. MyFitnessPal gives you a suggested calorie intake (based on your weight and activity level) and calculates your calories, fat grams, carbs and proteins. I was right where the program suggested I be. The Alli diet holds you to less than 1500 calories and 45 grams of fat per day, and with my new diet plan, I'm coming out at 1150 calories and 40 grams of fat. I still get carbs, but I have enough protein to keep building muscle. On the new plan, I'm seeing better results than I did on Paleo or Alli, but I'm still happy and the diet is effortless and easy for me (which your diet should be). I even allow myself an "off-day" once a week so that I can still go out with my family. If you want to take a look at my exact diet, you can find me on MyFitnessPal by looking for artex1024.

With the diet under control, I'm working on getting back into the workout routine. It's winter, so I can't just go out and go for a walk, like I used to. I've had to find things that I can do indoors, which takes more motivation. That's why I still love Fitocracy. I can use the "leveling up" concept to keep myself going. During my hiatus, I stayed level 12 FOREVER, so I made a goal to reach level 15 by Spring. I'm 2/3 of the way through level 13, so I'm fairly certain that I can achieve my goal. (If you're on Fitocracy, you can also find me there as artex1024.) I'm staying active through a combination of body weight strength exercises, like push-ups and squats, workout dvds, and I even jump on the treadmill when I'm at my stepparents' house for dinner. I'm hoping to be considerably more toned and jiggle-free by Spring, and to have actually hit my body goals once and for all by Summer. 2013 is going to be the year of determination, so stay tuned!

6 Week Challenge

A few months ago, I signed up for a website called NerdFitness. It's definitely for nerds (like me) and it's set up like a video game, probably so that we don't feel too much out of our element. The concept is great and if you remember my Fitocracy post, studies have shown a correlation between those who excel at video games and those who excel at fitness.

Anyway, NerdFitness does these 6-week challenges, where you set up a challenge thread on the forums for yourself. You pick three diet/fitness goals and one life goal and at the end of the 6 weeks, those participants who were determined by the other members to be the "winner" (by the highest success toward your personal goals) wins a t-shirt.

I signed up for this go-around and it's my first challenge, so I'm pretty pumped about it. The three diet/fitness goals that I chose were:

1) maintain a 100% paleo diet (I post my paleo recipes here)
2) lose 10 lbs of body fat
3) learn to run 2 miles

and my lifestyle goal is to read 15 books for my book review blog, starting with "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence" (which I'm half-way through).

Once I got to reading some of the other challenge threads - some of those people go hard or go home - I decide to add another little test to mine. Since my overall goal is to improve my general fitness level, I decided to test out how many push-ups and crunches I could do without stopping and how long I could hold a plank. I logged them and I'm going to try it again every day to see how much I can improve in 6 weeks.

My initial numbers were:
kneeling push-ups: 31
crunches - 50
plank - 30.1 seconds

Today is day 3 of the challenge, and I'm making decent progress. I even decided to take a few pics to judge my physical appearance progress. Here they are - shield your eyes! :P

I'll keep you all posted on the progress as it goes along. Personal improvement is the name of the game right now!

If you're a member of Nerdfitness, you can follow my thread. My username is "epaleocookbooks". 

A Cool Way to Control Portion Size

While talking to people, I find that although a lot of them eat fairly healthy food, they tend to wreck it by eating massive portions. My roommate is the worst about it. He eats pretty well, but then he'll come home craving mac 'n cheese, and decide that since he ate well all week, he could afford the treat. But then he eats the entire pot in one sitting.

I too am a mac 'n cheese fan, and I recently came across this really cool way to make sure that you only eat a small portion. You can bake your mac 'n cheese (or other things, like meatloaf) in a muffin tin! Then you only get a muffin-sized portion. Plus, it looks kind of fancy. :)

It's easy to do. Just prepare any mac n' cheese recipe (Rocco Dispirito has a good low cal one), but cook your noodles two minutes less than the recipe instructions. Then, spoon your mixture into your muffin tin, sprinkle with panko bread crumbs and back at 350 for 15-20 minutes. Let it sit for 10 minutes before removing them from the pan with a spatula. Voila!

Cute, right?

Words of Wisdom

I saw this today on Pinterest and I thought it was worth a share. :)

I think I'm going to print it out and stick it on the fridge!

365 Project - A Great Motivational Tool

Let me start by saying, "Happy New Year!"

Do you make resolutions? If you do, have you made yours yet?

I made mine, and I didn't make just one. I made two. One is to finally FINALLY learn to run, and I swear I'm going to follow through on this one! The other is to work on my art more.

To make sure I follow through on these, I'm turning a popular project idea into a motivational tool. The project is called The 365 Project, and people do all kinds, but the basic concept is that you do something every day for 365 days. Some people cook a new recipe everyday, some take pictures of certain things, some create new art everyday (which is what I'm doing).

So, whatever your New Years resolution is, you can adapt it to a 365 model to ensure you keep with it. If your resolution is to eat healthier, try one new healthy meal every day for a year. If it's to exercise more, make yourself get out there and do something athletic every day. Then, create a blog to track your progress.

If you're cooking healthier meals, take pictures to post on your blog. If you want to be more active, blog about how what you did and how you feel. Having that record will keep you accountable, and may even motivate others to do the same.

For example, my second resolution was to work on my arts and crafts more. I'd like to improve my skill, and being creative helps keep my mind active. So, I started an art blog to post what I do everyday. If you want to check it out and get some ideas, the address is http://feelingartsy.wordpress.com

My other resolution is to learn to run, which if you follow this blog, you'll know that running is my arch nemesis. For the next 365 days, I'm going to force myself to go out once a day and just run as far as I can. I'm not going to set any goals other than to try it everyday, and hopefully, by this time next year, I'll be an Olympic track star. :)

Recipe Wednesday - BBQ Burger Biscuits

I don't know about you, but the times that I eat the least healthy are the times that I'm pressed for something, be it money, time, ingredients, etc. It's those pressed times that it's just more convenient to swing by a drive-thru somewhere and pick up fast food. It's also those times that I think every home cook should have an arsenal of recipes at their disposal that are quick, easy, cheap and healthier than fast food. This is one of those recipes.

My friend Alison came up with this recipe (or maybe she saw it somewhere) when she was in college, and now that time has passed and we all have our own little families, it's been resurrected. Not only is it easy, cheap and made of basic fridge staples, but it's a favorite with our husbands and kids.

Ingredients:

1 lb lean ground beef (or ground turkey or chicken. I like 90/10 ground beef)
1/2 bottle bbq sauce (any kind, but the lower in sugar, the better)
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 can of biscuit dough (any kind)
salt and pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to whatever temp your biscuit directions require. In a skillet, brown ground beef. When beef is cooked through, drain off any excess grease. Season with a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper. Pour in 1/2 bottle of bbq sauce and stir together. Remove from heat.

Spray a muffin tin (12 ct, not mini muffin), with nonstick spray. Open the can of biscuits and press each biscuit down into the cups of the muffin tin, creating little "biscuit bowls". Spoon hamburger mixture into the biscuit bowls and top with shredded cheese.

Place the muffin tin on top of a baking sheet to catch any bbq sauce that may run off, and bake according to biscuit directions.

That's it. Serve one of your little bbq burger biscuits with a salad or steamed veggie, and you have a quick meal that's healthier and cheaper than a drive-thru burger, and your family will love it. This recipe's also great for bachelors and college kids. Our mom circle has had plenty of requests for the recipe from both!

P.S. - If you want to try another variation, swap out the bbq sauce for taco seasoning and a little water. You can also swap out the beef for any leftover meat that you need to use up - pulled pork, fajita meat, ham or turkey. It's a great recipe for those end-of-the-week days when you just haven't made it to the grocery store yet.