Tag: healthy

January 19, 2023 – Craft therapy

Rough week? Find something that will feed your happiness. After a few rough days, I picked up a project I had started working on before Hurricane Ian. Crocheting is relaxing to me and keeps me from smacking people. Today I finished two of these sea turtles.

Find your bliss.

Thanks for reading!

January 17, 2023 – Successful food prep lunch

Yesterday’s food prep made me be able to easily pack this healthy lunch. Sautéed chicken breast (3 oz.), quinoa (1 cup), roasted cauliflower, broccoli, sweet potato and butternut squash (1 cup). I’ll be drizzling with 2 Tbsp of Bolthouse Farms Classic Ranch.

492 Calories, Fat 11.4 grams, Carbs 57.2 grams, Protein 38.5 grams

Roasted veggies, chicken breast and quinoa – It’s what’s for lunch.

Reheated in the microwave for two minutes. Delicious!

Do you have any good food prep recipes you would like to share? Please comment and share.

Thanks for reading!

January 16, 2023 – Food prepped and ready to go!

It’s been a few days since my last post. Work and home have been busy. It’s been hard to eat healthy when so busy so we came up with a plan to get our weeks food ready to go on the weekend. Today was our food prep day. We are trying the mix and match type of lunch food prep. We cooked:

  • 2 large chicken breasts cubed and sautéed in a pan. Let cool and put in container in the fridge.
  • 2 cups broccoli florets and 2 cups cauliflower sprayed with olive oil spray and seasoned with salt and pepper. Roasted in the oven 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Let cool and put in container in the fridge.
  • 1 sweet potato cut up, sprayed with olive oils, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then put in the air fryer at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Let cool and put in a container in the fridge.
  • 2 cups butternut squash, seasoned with salt and pepper, and roasted in the over at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Let cool and put in container in the fridge.
  • 2 cups of small potatoes cut up, sprayed with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. Cooked in the airfryer at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Let cool and put in a container in the fridge.
  • 2 bags of boil in bag brown rice, cooked, cooled and put in a container in the fridge.
  • 2 bags of boil in bag quinoa, cooked, cooked, cooled and put in a container in the fridge.

Mike and I will be mixing and matching these foods for our lunches. He can come home and throw his in the microwave. I will pack mine in a container to bring to work.

Photo by Ella Olsson on Pexels.com

If you have any suggestions for easy mix n match food prep lunches, we’d love to hear them.

Thanks for reading.

January 10, 2023 – Healthy substitutions

One of my go to healthy substitutions is to slice cucumbers and use them like chips or crackers.

100 grams of plain, unsalted potato chips has 536 calories.

100 grams of crackers (Ritz in this case) has 492 calories.

100 grams of sliced cucumbers has 15 calories.

See how many calories you can save by switching?

This little guy love cucumber slices.

Smart swaps are your friend.

January 7, 2023 – Small victories!

How to not go on a binge? Find ways to treat yourself that won’t break the calorie bank. Today we went to Krispy Kreme donuts. They all looked delicious. However, they were 280 calories for one donut. YIKES! Then I spotted the mini donuts. At 90 calories each, I was able to have two minis for less than the calorie “price” of one regular size. Small victories!

January 5, 2023 – Get moving!

Movement. It is something you don’t think about until it becomes difficult for you. Several thing contributed to my ever increasing stiffness and lack of mobility. From past car accident injuries and subsequent surgery, the pandemic, the hurricane, to clinical depression, so many things contributed to the stiffening of Kathy. But, if I’m going to be honest here, I have to admit that the main cause is LAZINESS. I just didn’t want to move and I didn’t care.

Fast forward to now. I have decided that I’m tired of being 56 and walking like an 86-year-old. I’m tired of eating foods that taste good but make me feel horrible. So, for the first time in my life, I really WANT to eat healthy and exercise.

Me walking when I am stiff

One of my goals is to reduce the amount of empty calories I eat. After our last tasty indulgences at Norman Love Chocolate on December 31, 2022, I have stopped eating candy and adding sugar to my coffee/tea. I don’t miss it! Yesterday, while at work, I reached into my desk drawer where I used to keep my tea candies. I thought they were all gone but I found one. I absentmindedly opened it and put it in my mouth. As soon as I tasted it, I said “OH NO” and spit it out. It was only 15 calories but I knew that if I ate it I would go back to candy and sugar. I really made myself proud.

I’m not following any specific diet plan. I am using the CICO method. That is calories in/calories out. If I eat less calories than I expend, I will lose weight. I learned a lot about this from The Chris Terrell Podcast. You can learn more about Chris at www.christerrellcoaching.com.

Today I increased both my caloric output as well as my step count. I’m feeling pretty good.

Do you have any “go-to” websites, books, recipes that you are using on your health journey? Please share in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

January 4, 2023 – Non-scale victories

Today was a good day. Besides losing one pound, I had several non-scale victories.

First, I’ve been very good at staying within my calorie goal each day this week. I even stayed within today when we ordered Chinese food! I split the food in half and saved the rest for lunch tomorrow. In the past, that wouldn’t have happened. I would have snarfed that whole thing down.

I have been moving a lot more. I set a reminder to get up and walk at work. On one of my movement breaks, I went out of the office and did several laps around the hallway. Plus, I started doing yoga again today. There are really some great yoga videos on YouTube if you want to start your own practice. I really love it.

The yoga, stretching and extra movement has really helped loosen up my joints. I touched my shins for the first time in FOREVER and it didn’t hurt!!

Do you have any healthy recipes or beginner workout videos you would like to recommend? I’d love to hear from you.