Get Sexy Summer Abs

Photo by Russ Anderson

It’s spring time! That means everyone is going to be working and doing their best to achieve those sexy summer abs! A lot of people start doing those situps and crunches in the hops that a 6 pack will pop up. But I’m here to tell you a secret, you can do 8 million crunches but if you have fat over top of your abs you’re not going to be able to see them! So in order to get that 6 pack that you’re dreaming of you have to clean up your diet!

Here is a sample 1 day menu for ridding fat from your body.

Breakfast
2 scrambled eggs
1/2 fresh grapefruit

Snack
1oz of almonds

Lunch
Salad with avocado and grilled chicken

Snack

Low fat Greek Yogurt

Dinner

Lemon pepper salmon with sweet potato fries

Foods that target weight loss and help things like intestines and reduce cortisol levels which will specifically target the fat loss in the stomach area.
Note: Make sure you are eating proper portion sizes!

Almonds
Avocado
Dark chocolate
Flax seed
Olive oil
Peanut butter
Nonfat Greek Yogurt
Mushrooms
Eggs
Berries
Grapefruit
Sweet potatoes
Salmon
Garlic
Quinoa
Lemon
Grapes
Peppermint
Lean protein; chicken/beef

Make a menu for a week, pre-plan your meals for the week and you’ll be on your way to a flat belly in no time!

For more in-depth information check out the Flat Belly Diet from Prevention!

My Simplified Plan for Losing Weight

Photo by: Steve Johnson

So it’s the middle of January, are you still following through with your New Years Resolutions? Did you even make them? Maybe you’re like a lot of people and you make them, but you don’t share them with anyone.

I wanted to come up with a simplified way to lose weight. The more simplified something it is, the easier success will be with it. If you ask anyone, weight loss is 90% what you eat and 10% exercise (some people say 80/20, but you get the idea). So if the most important thing is what you eat, then I need to focus on eating healthier foods and make it a habit.

I’ve started with breakfast, I have eggs and bacon every single day. It’s 140 calories and fills me up with protein. For added health benefits I mix in some ground flax and turmeric in with the egg (both of those things have anti-cancer properties!)

Now that eating eggs and bacon for breakfast is a habit, this week I’m going to focus on lunch. I think that I will switch between tuna salad and protein shakes. I could probably eat tuna every day because I like it, but it’s really only safe to eat it 3x a week because of the mercury content.

For dinner we usually have protein and vegetables, but I saw this super disgusting article on how the FDA now approves diseased meat that has pus coming out of it and cancerous tumors, so I think for now I will be going mostly vegetarian until I can get some grass fed beef from a local farmer. (PS another good place to order meat from is Tropical Traditions).

Once these become habits, it means my calories will be under control and I can start switching things up a bit here and there. You can create your own simplified diet based on the foods that you like, have protein and veggies for the first few weeks and then you can start adding in some carbs, I plan to break up breakfasts with some oatmeal on occasion.

 

So that is my simplified plan, I’ll let you know how it works out! I will be documenting myself for 100 days and post the results when I’m done 🙂

 

Cherise

5 Easy Meals to Make for New Moms!

My sister gave birth to an adorable little boy 6 days ago and being that new moms are always exhausted, I decided to make her some toss-in-the-oven dinners so that she would have one less thing to worry about.

So here are 5 Easy Meals to Make for New Moms!

The first thing I did was cook 2-3lbs of boneless chicken breast in a crock pot with a cup of water. I let that sit all day on low while I did my other work and came back to it in the evening. The chicken was used in 4 of the 5 meals.

Meal 1

Chicken and Rice

2 pieces of cooked chicken breast shredded 1 cup of brown rice
1 can of cream of chicken soup + 1 can of water
Add soup and water and mix well, pour 1 cup of rice on the bottom of the pan and mix in shredded chicken.
Cook at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

Meal 2

Easy Chicken Pan Pie

2 pieces of cooked chicken breast shredded or cubed
2 cups of chicken broth
1 can of cream of chicken soup
2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables
1 can of flaky biscuits

Place chicken broth and cream of chicken soup in the bottom of the container, add frozen vegetables and shredded/cubed chicken, place biscuits on top. Cook for time alloted on biscuit can.

Meal 3

2 pieces of cooked chicken breast shredded2 Potatoes cubed
1-2 cups frozen vegetables
1-2 cups of chicken broth
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
Mentally divide the container into 3 parts, in one part place the chicken, in another place the cubed potatoes, add cheddar cheese on top of the potatoes, in the last third add the frozen vegetables, pour in chicken broth over the vegetables and chicken.

Cook at 350 for 40 minutes or until you poke potatoes and they are soft.

Meal 4

3-4 shredded chicken breasts2 cups of BBQ sauce

Mix together, warm up for 15 minutes at 350. Bring buns to serve on!

Meal 5

Best Baked Macaroni and Cheese

2-3 cups elbow macaroni cooked according to packaged directions
8oz of Velveeta Cheese
1 cup of sour cream
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
1/2 cup breadcrumbs

Add the velveeta cheese to the cooked and drained macaroni until it’s melted and incorporated. Pour into the pan, add and mix in sour cream. Sprinkle cheddar cheese on, then sprinkle breadcrumbs on.

To reheat cook at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

There you have it! 5 easy meals to make new moms 🙂

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Winner winner chicken dinner! Loaded Potato and Chicken Bake

This is what I made for dinner tonight and it was delicious! It had just the right amount of salty and spicy and yum yum factor. It took about 20 minutes to prep and an hour to cook. If you like loaded baked potatoes and tender chicken, you will LOVE this. Seriously, you need to go try it now. So good.

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Crazy moving week and a gluten free unfried chicken recipe!

I know I have been seriously neglecting you this week. We are in the process of moving and there are boxes of stuff sitting all around right now, everything is chaos as we try to get everything where it needs to be! The good thing is, I don’t need to go to the gym because lifting heavy boxes and walking up and down stairs and going back and forth 8,000 times has it’s benefits of being a full body workout.

The good news is, I have a delicious recipe for you today and I know you’re going to love it!

(Photo credit, Flikr: Andrew-Hyde)

Gluten Free Unfried Chicken  🙂

Calories per serving: 310

Ingredients
¾ cup Bisquick Gluten Free mix
½ cup grated Parmesan Cheese
1 tsp. Paprika
½ tsp. Garlic Salt
1 pound Boneless Skinless Chicken Tenderloins
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3 TBS butter, melted
Instructions

Mix Bisquick, Parmesan, Paprika, and Salt together.
Line a cookie sheet with foil, and spray lightly with cooking spray.
Dip chicken into eggs then Bisquick mixture. Place chicken on cookie sheet
Repeat, by re-dipping the coated chicken into eggs then Bisquick mixture and returning to cookie sheet
Drizzle olive oil over the chicken
Bake at 450 degrees F for 8 minutes, and flip chicken
Return to oven and bake for another 8 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink in the center.

Yum! Now you have dinner all planned out for you 🙂

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Have allergies? Try beans!

Are you suffering from allergies or asthma?

Research from John Hopkins School of Medicine says that beans may be your answer! You could be low in folate and scientists examined the medical records of over 8,000 participants in a natural health and nutrition survey. They found that if you were low in the B vitamin folate you had a 40% more chance of wheezing and 31% more risk for allergies. People lacking folate had higher levels of immunoglobulin E antibodies, which is what your body makes when it detects a foreign invader such as an allergen. The more you create, the more likely you are to have allergies because it creates more histamines that cause allergy symptoms.

How can you get more folate into your diet? Eat some beans! Beans are an awesome source of folate. Eat them in chili, spread them on toast, have some lentil soup, make a bean dip out of pinto beans and hot sauce.

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Paleo Red Pepper Bacon Burger

I love bacon and I love burgers! So I decided to make a Paleo burger, which is basically just a burger with no bun. I like slightly spicy foods, so in general I always add a little heat to whatever I’m cooking, because it’s just better that way. 😉

What you will need (Makes 4 servings)

4 slices of thick cut bacon, cooked and set to the side.

**

1lb ground beef
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp oregano
pinch of salt and black pepper
Lettuce, for a “bun”
Spicy mustard for topping

Mix the ingredients from ** and beyond together and form patties. We use a George Foreman grill, because we love it. Seriously, it’s like my favorite piece of equipment in the kitchen. If you don’t have one, you should buy one, but in the meantime you can use a pan on the stove. In the George Foreman grill you place the patties for approximately 8 minutes or until it is no longer pink in the middle, to cook it in a pan cook for 4 minutes on one side and 4 on the other – check the center for pinkness.

When they are fully cooked, you put them onto a nice large piece of lettuce, add a little bit of spicy mustard and the bacon and voila, delicious and paleo friendly 🙂

 

{Meatless Monday} 3 Cheese Toasted Cheese

For the next few days I’m just trying to use whatever we have in the cupboards, so for Meatless Monday, we were debating between two choices, but ultimately decided with cheese, because well, we love cheese.

So what goes in this lovely toasted cheese sandwich?

We used Italian Bread, because that’s what we had on hand, but you can use whatever kind of bread you enjoy.

2 Slices of Bread
2 Slices of Sergento Provolone-Mozzerella Cheese
1 Slice of White American (no yucky cheese dyes for us, please!)
1 tablespoon of A1 Steak Sauce – yes, this is a surprisingly delicious combo, trust me.

Put the cheese and A1 Sauce between the bread and you can either grill it on a panini press (we have this George Foreman grill/panini press combo) or you can heat up a pan and put a little bit of coconut oil in it and grill it on each side for about 2 minutes (or until cheese is melted and toast is browned) on medium heat.

Enjoy!

I’ve lost 3 dress sizes and I’m getting my abs back – ask me how 🙂

 

Veggie Casserole

Super easy lunch or dinner veggie casserole. This recipe comes from my friend Lu 🙂

What you’ll need

A bag of mixed veggies of your choice
A red pepper diced uncooked
5 small potatoes cooked
1/2 an onion diced uncooked
2 cloves of garlic uncooked
4 chopped hard boiled eggs
Sausage or ham diced

Mix everything together and enjoy!

Cherise

I’ve lost 3 dress sizes and I’m starting to get my abs back – ask me how!

Healthy Teriyaki Sauce Recipe

 (Chicken Teriyaki on a bed of quinoa)

I love chicken teriyaki and after the most recent Master Chef where the one team made chicken teriyaki for the elementary students I have just been craving it! So today, I decided to come up with a healthier version of the teriyaki sauce because it’s usually loaded with calories and well this is great!

What you’ll need;

1/2 cup of low sodium Soy sauce
1/4 cup white wine
1 clove of ground/mashed garlic
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp onion powder
1 tablespoon sugar

Total calories: 96

You can use this on steak, chicken, quinoa, or whatever you’d like! Definitely healthier than the alternative of 273 calories for regular teriyaki sauce!