Ingredients
Instructions:
This is zero points on WW (unless you are on the diabetic plan).
I haven’t been making the best food choices lately and I’m trying to get back on track. Yesterday I had some very greasy food that is causing me some gallbladder pain. I read that apple cider vinegar can relieve gallbladder attack pain so I thought I would try this. A few years ago I found a recipe from Trim Healthy Mama called Good Girl Moonshine (completely alchohol free). I thought I’d modify this recipe a bit and make it WW point friendly.
Ingredients
WW Points – 1 (for the honey acv)
To make this I put both tea bags in the mason jar and added hot water to about 2/3 full and let it sit for 5 or 6 minutes. Then remove the tea bags and add stevia, apple cider vinegar, fresh lemon wedges and one squirt of peach syrup. Mix well and then fill with ice all of the way to the top.
This is a refreshing drink and good way to get some apple cider vinegar in if that’s your thing. You can tweak this recipe in many ways to your liking – for example you could use flavored tea and leave out the peach syrup.
Salsa Verde Chicken Tacos are one of my favorite things to make, especially when I have a busy week planned. These are so easy to make. Yesterday, I almost forgot about them, but was able to run into the kitchen in between meetings and get these started in less than 10 minutes. Then when I finished work, they were ready to eat.
Ingredients
Steps
We usually use this chicken for chicken tacos. Here are the points values for the tacos:
What are your favorite healthy crock pot meals?
Winston Churchill said: “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” I have definitely found this to be true in my weight loss journey. On the weeks I plan out what I’ll eat and fill my fridge and pantry with healthy options, I tend to do well. If I don’t plan, I’m more likely to pick up fast food and make poor choices. Here is my grocery haul for the week and my meal plan.
Grocery List
Meals for this week:
What about you? Do you have plan this week? I’d love to see your meal plan or your grocery haul pictures.
These sheet pan eggs are so good and so easy to make that I make them almost every week. These can be prepped and cooked in just a few minutes and then you save the leftovers and heat them up throughout the week for a quick breakfast.
Ingredients
My favorite way to have this is to add it to an extra toasted English muffin with either pre-cooked thick sliced bacon or Canadian bacon and a little bit of mustard. You can also just eat this with a fork like scrambled eggs. I’ll often have one or two topped with a bit of salsa.
If you are cooking for a crowd, you can use a 9 x 13 pan with 12 eggs and a half cup of milk. Everything else is the same.
Last week I did chicken burrito bowls for my weekly meal prep and they were delicious! I found myself looking forward to my packed lunch each day instead of dreading it and wishing it were a cheeseburger instead. I decided to do the same thing this week with ground beef instead of chicken. I thought I’d share both recipes here.
The recipe for these is exactly the same except for the meat. For each, I start with the rice first and let it cook while I prep the meat. I used brown minute rice and did enough to have to have 1 cup of cooked rice in each bowl. I always do four at a time so both of these recipes are for four. While the rice is cooking, it’s time to prepare the meat. For the chicken I used pre-cooked frozen chicken fajita strips and cooked them with a little taco seasoning and a little water to keep it from being dry. For the ground beef, I used extra lean ground beef and drain and rinse it to keep it extra lean. Then prepare it with taco seasoning and a little water. Check out this post for my homemade taco seasoning.
After the rice and the meat is done, it’s time to start plating up the meal prep. I use square glass bowls that I found at Publix. I think the glass helps the food stay fresher longer it’s great for reheating. Divide the rice up evenly between the four dishes, then top with the meat. Next evenly divide a can of yellow corn (drained and rinsed) between the dishes. Do the same thing for two cans of black beans. You could easily use just one can of black beans, but I was trying to make it more filling and I love black beans. You could sub in pinto beans if you don’t like black beans. Then dice up a small tomato for each one and layer it on top. Then to finish it off, top it with fat free cheddar.
Voila! All done! To serve, reheat in the microwave for a couple minutes, mix and enjoy!
The points for the chicken are only 4 or 5 points depending on how much cheese you use. For the beef, it comes out around 7 points. I like to add light ranch to mine after heating and that adds a few points, but it’s worth the extra points for the added flavor.
What are some of your go to meal prep ideas? I’m always looking for something new and delicious.
I started this year with my resolution to lose weight and get healthier, specifically to lose 50 pounds and run a 5K sometime this year. Then I set a couple of daily goals for myself to help me reach those goals. I wanted to try to walk 7,000 steps a day and drink 64 ounces of water a day. Well it’s almost February and I hadn’t met either of those goals at all … until today. Today, I have walked over 9,000 steps and drank lots of water. Why was today different? Because I decided to make it different.
Losing weight is hard. I’m doing WW and I’ve lost 4 lbs already, with 2.4 lbs of that lost this past week. I talked my husband into joining with me and it’s been really great. He’s my accountability partner. I think having him know how many points things are and understand what I’m going through will really help me to stay on track. I’ve been thinking about it and how I said I wanted to do 7,000 steps a day and how I haven’t achieved that yet (until today). I decided that I just need to get out and walk. I can’t go through my normal day and hope that somehow at the end of the day I’ve magically walked enough to have reached 7,000 steps. That works for some people, but my job is spent mostly at my desk. While I do need to get up and walk around every now and then, it’s just no substitute for scheduling the time and taking a walk.
Today, I brought my lunch (boiled eggs, cucumbers, string cheese, turkey, and V8) and ate at my desk while watching a training video. Then I loaded up a few songs on my Amazon Music app, grabbed my jacket and headphones and headed outside. I walked (swiftly) around the building a few times for the remainder of my lunch hour, which was about 15 minutes of walking. I finished all of my songs, had a great time, and felt energized by my walk. Weather permitting, I’m going to do the same thing tomorrow and the next day, and the next.
For me, the key to success is planning and consistency. I need to plan my meals so that I am eating healthy and plan my exercise so that I can jumpstart this weight loss and help get some of my energy back. I have my Bellicon and I’m also going to try to consistently do 5 mins of light bouncing every day. I’ve done my five minutes for tonight. So, in the spirit of that – here is my PLAN (not my goal… which was apparently not a strong enough word for me to consistently achieve it):
I’ll check in with y’all tomorrow to let you know how it’s going!
Today was a lazy day. I slept late and then watched a Hallmark Christmas movie. Yes, I’m that person. I have about 20 Christmas movies recorded and I’m looking forward to watching all of them. Then I took the kids and we went swimming at the local recreation center with a friend. So that was my exercise for the day. I don’t think it really counts, because honestly I didn’t do a whole lot of swimming. I just floated around a bit and chatted with my friend. The water, even though it’s heated, was just too cold to swim.
Afterward, the hot shower made me reminiscent of the steam room at my local gym. I used to workout and then steam for 15 – 20 minutes. It was so nice to sit in the steam and just be. It was a time completely to myself to just relax as a reward for working out. I haven’t been there in ages but I think it’s time to change that. I want to commit to one day a week at the gym. On Thursdays I can bring a friend for free, so that’s a good day to try. Unfortunately this week I need to travel for work so I’ll be out of town for the later half of the week. But hopefully, the following week I can get to the gym at least once. I have the trampoline at home and the online workout videos, but I think it might be good to get back to the gym.
When working out a home, I either need to get up early enough to do it before the rest of the house is awake or try to workout when we get home. The problem with working out in the evenings is that if I try to do it before I put the kids to bed, I often get interrupted and I just feel too guilty to lock the door and let my husband handle the kids while I workout. There isn’t that much time between the time we get them from school and the time we go to bed. I feel bad for not spending time with them. If I wait until they are already asleep them I’m usually too tired and just want to relax. I think I should start re-thinking my “me time” and instead of going out to get a pedicure or shopping or Starbucks, spend the time at the gym instead.
Do you workout at home or in the gym? How do you like to spend your “me time”?
Hello again! I totally missed writing yesterday. I fell asleep watching TV with the hubby and then was too tired to write. I didn’t get my 7,000 steps but I am doing better with drinking lots of water. I didn’t do my online workouts either. I need to start getting up early and exercising before the rest of the family gets up. One of the reasons I wanted a Bellicon in the first place was because it is so quiet. I’ll try to get up early and bounce a couple of days next week and see how it goes. Maybe if I can get my bounces in during the morning and do the workouts in the evening I’ll start to get in the rhythm of things.
Even though I didn’t post anything yesterday, I did work on the blog a bit and added a side menu with a calendar of my posts (all 4 of them after this one), an easy link to follow the blog, and some of my Goodreads stuff. I’m still working on it to get it how I like it, but it’s shaping up nicely. When I tried to view the site on my laptop at home though, the side bar wouldn’t fit because the page was too small. It really was difficult working on such a small screen when my day to day at work is with two 24″ monitors. So, I decided I needed an upgrade at home. I searched around a bit and found at 31.5″ Dell LED monitor at Staples on sale for $139.99. I couldn’t resist. So it took a bit of moving things around but it’s totally worth it. I love the screen. And, as a bonus the screen will work great as a way to view my online workout videos for the both the online training and the Bellicon Home videos.
What do you think?
First things first – how did I do with my two baby step goals? Not terrible, but not great. I did drink at least 64 ounces of water if coffee counts. I think coffee with no cream or sugar should definitely count. I’m normally a “have a little coffee with my cream and sugar” kind of person. So, the fact that I had two cups of coffee today, both with only Truvia to sweeten it and no cream at all is progress to me. I only had two packs of Truvia in each coffee too, which some people think is way too much, but I quite like my two packets thank you very much. Maybe I’ll work my way down to one packet in the future, but come on. I normally have at least 4 Tbsp of creamer and a couple Truvia and maybe even a little sugar on top of that. You know what was really cool about the coffee I had today, I could actually taste the coffee! 🙂
So, next baby step goal – FitBit steps – not as great. As of right now I’m a little over 5,000 steps. I’ll get in some more before bed, but I doubt I’ll hit the 7,000 mark. Oh well, I won’t let it get me down. Tomorrow is a new day to try again!
I did get a little bit of workout time in tonight. I’m doing online personal training. She posts videos each day and I’m supposed to follow along doing as much of it as I can. I did almost half of it tonight. I didn’t stop because I couldn’t finish. I stopped because my five year wanted all of my attention and I was trying to check on the dinner that I was cooking at the same time. My arms are already sore and tomorrow I probably won’t be able to wave at anyone. But that’s good, right?
Now, on to dinner. I know I’m trying to do a low carb and make healthier choices, but I had bought all of the stuff to make tonight’s dinner before the New Year and I wanted to go ahead and try it out. It was actually really good! It was definitely not low carb though. It was a dish called Chicken & Noodles that was sort of a cross between chicken and dumplings and chicken noodle soup. It had the consistency of chicken and dumplings, only with noodles instead. I made it in the instant pot and it was a one dish, super easy meal.
This is the recipe that I used but I made a couple of changes.
After cooking the chicken, I left it out while I cooked the noodles. After reading a few reviews I decided to cook the noodles for 9 minutes instead of 5 and they turned out great. After cooking the noodles I added the shredded chicken back to the pot and mixed everything up. My husband and my five year old LOVED it. Both of them had a second helping.
Alright, that’s enough for today. I need get a few more steps in before bed. Goodnight, all! See you tomorrow!
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Southern Charm with a Geeky Flair
Southern Charm with a Geeky Flair
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