Power Breakfast: Overnight Oatmeal Pancakes

You must know by now breakfast is my favorite meal.  It's painfully obvious.  I'm not shy about favoring this meal.  Lunch...meh.  But every morning, I sit at the table for breakfast, crank open all the blinds, let the sun flood in (if it's up yet) and savor every minute of the beginning of my day.

You should also know by now that I'm a brave pioneer and love to try new recipes of any kind.  Thanks to those of you who are my testers, bless your brave kind souls.  I have tried many recipes, and many don't get repeated.   This leads to puzzled expressions if you ask my kids what their favorite thing I make is..."but she doesn't make anything twice...except lemon cake...".  Hmmm...

The first recipe I made is Overnight Steel Cut Oats + Quinoa from Mel's Kitchen Cafe.  Quinoa is an ancient whole grain that has all it's grainy parts attached and is also packed with protein, which is rare for a grain.  It is nutty and delicious, and combines so well with the steel cut oats.  I'm a roughage, nutty, rustic kind of gal and this sat perfectly with me.  Adding cinnamon, maple, bananas, and a dash of toasted coconut made it purely delightful.  I posted this on @fitnessinreality, so now here's the recipe!

The second is Overnight Oatmeal Cinnamon Pancakes, also from Mel's Kitchen Cafe.  Can you tell I'm obsessed with overnight?  Something magical happens when ingredients are allowed to really get to know each other in a close, confined, and cold environment.  Think "stave off hypothermia" kind of close.  This pancake recipe calls for only 3/4 cup whole-grain-wheat flour in addition to 2 cups oatmeal.  Complex carbohydrate win!  It was a cinch to make my own "buttermilk" using Mel's handy substitution recipes.  In addition I used plain Greek yogurt for another protein-packed breakfast.  The sweetener is honey which also makes the A-list for being natural and beneficial.  Top with raw natural peanut butter and no-sugar-added homemade applesauce and you've just graduated from The Perfect Plate 101!  I feel like I've won the breakfast lottery.

So that's my food post for the day.  Obnoxiously healthy?  Maybe.  A little laborious? Not more than usual.  The work is worth it when it helps me feel good about the food I prepare and eat, teaches my girls to eat well, and satisfies us all. 

Have a full and happy morning!

How To Remove Gel or Shellac Nail Polish

I love gel nail polish.  It has such a glossy finish that stays on my hard-working hands for 7 days.  And it is immediately dry, no bumps, dents, or chips.  I changed my nail-lacquering life for. ev. er.

But after about 7 days the polish starts to lift around the edges I start to go peel-crazy.  With my nail type, peeling the polish off also peels off several layers of my finger nail, leaving peeled, damaged and unsightly nails that won't hold polish, even gel, well.  Gel polish gets a bad rap for being bad for your nails, when really it's all about the way you remove it.  Peeling = damaged nail beds.  Listen up.

Don't peel.  The RIGHT way to remove gel polish is by soaking them in 100% acetone.

First, scratch the surface of the polish thoroughly with a nail file.  This allows the acetone to seep down under the top coat.  Can you see the peeling?  It takes all the self-control I have not to just quickly rip it off.  No-no!

Next, soak a cotton ball in acetone, place it on your nail, then wrap in aluminum foil.  OR they make these handy nail envelopes with a foam pad inside.  Just pour a enough acetone to soak the pad, then slip over your nail.

Let them soak until the gel polish comes off EASILY.  It takes 7-10 minutes, so do both hands at the same time.  No scraping or scratching, please.  Just brush the flaking polish off.  If it doesn't brush off easily, put 'em back in to soak.

Wash your hands with a nail brush and apply lotion.  Viola!  You have successfully removed your gel or shellac nail polish, and you're ready to put on a fresh coat!  After you wash off the lotion, of course.

Now you're a gel/shellac pro!  My favorite gel product is Gelishhttp://gelish.com/products/gelish Nail Harmony, which you can find at Sally Beauty Supply or Amazon.co.  My favorites are, from left to right: Gossip Girl, Red Roses, Tiki Tiki Laranga, & Garden Teal Party.
 

Happy painting!

Training Tip Tuesday: Muscle Confusion

Most of us get in a rut with our exercise.  We do the same thing repeatedly.  This can obstruct our goals of increasing fitness or losing weight, due to a little phenomenon called "muscle memory".  Basically, when we do things over and over our muscles get trained to do them more efficiently.  Sounds good, right?  Yes, if you're training for a marathon or long bike ride.  When your muscles are efficient they use less energy, or calories, to do said exercise.  But for weight loss and muscle gain,
we want more!

What we want is for our muscles to work hard and burn more calories.  The way we can get this is by creating "muscle confusion".  This means keeping our muscles on their toes! It helps us avoid a fitness plateau, where we stop gaining strength or losing weight.

Some common ways to achieve muscle confusion are HIITs, cross-training, and bricks.

HIITs are High Intensity Interval Training.  It's just what it sounds like.  High intensity in short duration.  They involve every muscle group and keep your muscles doing different actions.

Cross-training would be mixing different activities on different days.  Running or walking, bike riding, HIIT, weight training, swimming, roller blading, trampoline jumping, basketball, soccer, etc. This ensures that we strengthen all our muscles including our lateral-movement muscles (important for women in avoiding injury), our core, our arms, backs, etc.

Bricks are usually what triathletes do.  It means doing 2-3 different exercises in one session.  The three disciplines are swimming, biking, and running.  The toughest is to go from a bike ride to a run, which is the order of events in a triathlon.  Even though running and biking are forward motion leg-centric disciplines they use vastly different movements.  When you start running after a bike ride, your legs really do feel like bricks!

From this we can learn that the best way to avoid efficient low calorie burn movement, and the best way to burn lots of calories is to create muscle confusion.

During your workout hour, mix it up by doing a combination of two different exercises;

Walk + 15 min squats and arm presses

Run + jumping jacks and plank

Bike + 15 min running

HIIT + 15 min Yoga

These are a few examples but the sky's the limit!  If you have 30 minutes, do 15+15, and so forth.  Play with your kids, shoot hoops with your hubby, climb on the jungle gym, do the monkey bars, have a family dance party.  Fitness and muscle confusion doesn't have to happen only with typical "exercise" disciplines.

Confuse those muscles today, and get your max calorie burn for your time!

Make It Monday: Paleo Poppyseed Muffins & A Healthy Dinner

Today on the docket are two recipes.  One for grain-free & naturally sweetened muffins and the other a super simple healthy dinner idea from the group.

Katrina sent me this fantastic easy dinner idea:

1 Costco Turkey Burger, broiled or grilled

1 cup steamed broccoli

Add a small red potato, 1 cup sweet potato, or 1/2 cup brown rice to make it luxuriously yummy!

       

The nutrition info for the turkey burger puts it at 200 calories it has a monumental 35 grams of protein!  That's worth every bite!  Turkey is a great low-fat high-protein meat.  Thanks, Katrina!

The other recipe is one I found from the blog Civilized Caveman Cooking.  It's a blog dedicated to Paleo eating.  I got a hankering for poppyseed muffins after I made Challa bread, sprinkled with poppyseeds for dinner last night.

Without going into huge detail, Paleo is a hunter/gatherer way of eating, avoiding agricultural products & domesticated animal products.  The diet is heavy on animal protein, vegetables & fruits. There are many levels of Paleo, and I like some recipes for their lack of grains.  There are lots of Paleo desserts that look amazing. You can read more about Paleo on Diane Sanfilippo's website Balanced Bites, or read her outstanding book "Practical Paleo", found here.  Paleo diets in various forms are used to help solve health problems like diabetes, IBS, auto-immune disorders, and more. 

For baked goods Paleo recipes use almond flour or coconut flour.   Alternative flours lack gluten, which is what makes bread chewy and helps them rise.  So baking with almond or coconut flour results in a slightly different texture and crumb than you're used to.  Paleo baked goods typically have more protein than the usual, and while these flours are low in carbs, they are high in fats, albeit healthy ones. So just like always, moderation is key!

You can find the recipe for the Paleo Lemon Poppyseed Muffins I made today here, or below.  (And I'm still loving the date bites from last week.  So satisfying!)  As a testament to my weird pursuit of health foods of all types I had all the ingredients on hand.  You can find everything you need at your local store, usually in the health food aisle.

Ingredients

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

• 2 cups almond flour (185 grams)
• 3/4 cup coconut flour (90 grams)
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tsp baking soda (3 grams)
• 2/3 cup raw honey, melted
• 2/3 cup coconut oil, melted
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons unsweetened full-fat coconut milk
• 1-2 teaspoons pure lemon extract
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (176 Celsius).
2. Sift almond flour, coconut flour, sea salt and baking soda in a large mixing bowl and stir with a whisk to combine.
3. Place oil and honey in the bowl of a food processor and process for 2 minutes.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each addition.
5. Add coconut milk, lemon extract, and lemon zest, and poppy seeds. Continue to process until well combined.
6. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients and thoroughly combine using a wooden spoon until smooth
7. Pour batter into muffin liners in a muffin pan and bake for 20 minutes
8. Remove from the oven, remove from the pan and let cool

This week I'm starting my 100-mile Little Red Riding Hood training in earnest. Time to commit!  You can read more about the non-competitive women-only Little Red 2015 event here.  I feel really strong with all the cross-training I've done, even though I haven't devoted a ton of time to the bike.  My neck and sit-bones are what need a lot of conditioning!  This week I'm looking at 5 hours on the bike, and 3 hours of cross training.  I couldn't find my training schedule for last year (boo), which was ideal and put me it terrific condition for the event, so I tried to recreate it as closely as possible.

The trick with training and trying to lose weight is to time my meals to fuel me throughout my workout, and to have a high-quality recovery meal after, particularly after long rides.  Wish me luck!  When I train like this I just start eating everything in sight!  The Summer Slim Down has definitely taught me some great skills in choosing healthier foods, rather than digging in for a handful of cold cereal 3 times in the afternoon.   

I had a cheat WEEKEND, and it was horrible!  I was gassy, bloated, lethargic, had a stomach ache, and a sore tongue.  Sugar and those darn refined grains are not all they're cracked up to be!  I really savored my eggs+cottage cheese+veggies & my whole grain+oat pancake this morning.  And a good helping of my daily water to wash it all down.  I feel better already!

So, what's on your agenda for the week?  Hopefully some healthy menu planning and a bunch of fun exercise!

Have a happy Monday and get back on that wagon!

Summer Slim Down: Week 4

Our Summer Slim Down Week 3 was a success!  Three cheers for healthy habits, saying no, and getting strong!

There was a little bit of confusion on the challenge that I want to clear up so everyone gets points correctly.  You have to give up TWO - 2 - II bad foods, and you need to chose the TWO from these four options: fatty/fried foods, fast food, sugar (except honey sparingly), refined grains.  If you have any questions about what these mean, check the blog for this post I did about it, or email me.  You only get a point for the day that you successfully eliminate BOTH foods.

Here's the week at a glance:

WEEK 4 - 4/11-4/18 Saturday -Friday

1. Challenge: Cut-it-Out (see paragraph above for clarification)
2. Drink 8 cups (8 oz) of water
3. Eat 5 fruits & veggies (1 fruit serving = one whole fruit, 1/2 cup berries, 1 cup chopped fruit; 1 veggie serving = 1 cup)
4. Exercise for 60 minutes daily
5. Weigh-in Saturday 4/18, 8:30-9:00 AM

Points Break-down:

• Write everything down = 1 point/day (please have all your boxes marked on Saturday including your challenges, and write clearly the minutes you exercised in the "time" box)
• Drink 8 cups water = 1 point/day
• 5 fruits & veggies = 1 point/day
• Challenge (Cut TWO items out) = 1 point/day
• Exercise 60 minutes = 1 point/day; 30 minutes = .5 point/day
• Come to weigh-in Saturday - 5 points
• Lose weight = 5 points; gain or no change = 0 points

Bonus: come to the group fitness session and get 5 points.  It will be Thursday, April 16 at 8:00 PM at the upper Crestwood meeting house.  It's a super fun & hard workout, so be there!  

Last note: if you feel you are plateauing try adding strength training, running instead of walking, try something new like a fitness class (Thursday), or go longer.  Your body will have periods of plateau so don't fret, just keep going! I will post more strength workouts and some other tips this week.

Jump start your amazing week by having a healthy weekend!  Don't fall off the wagon!