Tracking is my “life”.
Yes, it gets boring. Yes, it can be hard. Yes, it takes time and effort. Everything worth doing, is worth doing right and isn’t always going to be easy.
For me, I look forward to my post workout bagel and “dessert” the most, out of all my meals. Both of these are mostly or completely carb-filled. Sometimes my “dessert” is a full casein protein shake (oats, peanut butter, all the good stuff), sometimes it is the delicious peanut butter & chocolate Cheerios, and my other go-to is Halo Top (pretty much any flavor will do, go try the pumpkin pie if you haven’t yet).
This heavenly little treat is usually at 9, after the kids have gone to bed. 9 o’clock by my standards is late. I always felt like I couldn’t eat right before bed. I always thought my body would just store all of that food as fat, because I am not doing any work to burn it off. I was wrong.
While you sleep your body is repairing itself. It needs fuel even at night to do these things. I tear my body down early in the morning and need the right amount of rest and repair to do it all over again the next morning. The calories I burned that morning count for the whole day. Not just for that hour that I kicked my butt.
Eating before going to bed is not a bad thing. It becomes a bad habit when you are going over your allotted calories for that day. My “extras/dessert” are not pushing me over my macro goals, they are helping me meet my goals. I am guilty of holding off on the carbs throughout the day so I can have that extra snack at night. This is the beauty of tracking my food. I know exactly how many grams of peanut butter and chocolate Cheerios I can have tonight, because I have plugged in everything I have eaten. I can add 65 grams of Cheerios to my app, before I even take a bite to make sure I can have that big overflowing bowl (don’t forget to measure the milk).
The BEST thing is I can eat that big bowl guilt free. Before I would feel bad having dessert, even though it might have fit in. Now that I have been tracking for a while, I know that I can have those extras when they fit. There is no need to skip functions because you can’t eat what they are serving. If you plan correctly you can fit it in.
When you know you are going to a party and plan on having a few drinks, some yummy food, or dessert PLAN FOR IT. Don’t just eat like you would normally eat. You are going to have a surplus of calories that night, whether you plan to or not. It is very hard to go out with friends and not have a drink, grab a fry or ten off someone’s plate, or give into the brownie topped with vanilla ice cream.
I am not saying starve yourself by any means. What I like to do is space out small meals throughout the day so I am not going without food for too long, because well muscles need food and I can’t not eat. The small meals will keep you satisfied and keep you in a deficit so you can enjoy your get together, guilt free. Eating late at night is not going to hold you back from meeting your goals. Even eating “bad” food won’t hold you back from your goals. Over eating will keep you from reaching those goals. Set your macro count and stick to it. If you want to indulge at night, plan for it. If it fits your macros, you can eat it!
M • E • N • U
When I am looking through cookbooks or browsing the internet for new recipes, I hate to say it but the pictures are what get me interested. This picture of the avocado, almonds, and sweet potato just look so good. I didn’t even read all the way through the ingredient list before I put it on the menu.
After I was done drooling over the picture and thinking about what meat I could put into this bowl, I finished reading the ingredients. The dressing has tahini and barbecue sauce, two things I would never think to pair together. You definitely want to check your sauce labels and keep a check on how much sugar/carbs it has. Sauces usually have a lot more carbs than you would think.
Tahini is made from sesame seeds and carries a lot of fat. 1/3 a cup is a pretty good amount to have in a salad dressing. I am going to make the dressing as it is written but I will be conservative with how much I am putting on each salad. To measure out my salads, I almost treat them like a chili recipe in my app. I will add all the ingredients and weigh the total amount. Once I have the total weight I can play around with serving sizes, depending on what I want the macros to look like.
I am going to add slices of steak to this bowl. The tahini and barbecue sauce should compliment steak well.
I am beyond excited for deer season. Not for my husband to be gone most afternoons, but happy to stock the freezer with meat! Josh killed a doe on opening day, thank you Jesus, and we now have deer meat again. Last year he was so focused on a big buck that he never would kill a doe…ugh. The way our two kids eat, we need about 6 or 7 does this year to last us until next season.
I grew up eating your typical fried cubed steak and just never knew there was any other way to use cubed steak from a deer. Dummy. Seriously I researched tons of cubed steak recipes that did not involve frying it and came up with very little. I don’t know why I thought I had to have certain special recipes for cubed steak. We get into these routines, even with food, and it is hard to get out of them. In saying that, deer cubed steak is my meat of choice for these sandwiches. It is tender and thin that you are never trying to tear your meat off the sandwich. I still like to tenderize the meat before I cook it and it always turns out perfect.
The sauce is made up of non-fat Greek yogurt, pickled jalapenos, and lime. So good and easy. For me the more sauce the better, I love a good messy sandwich or wrap. I haven’t ever tried this inside of a low carb tortilla, but I am sure they would be great as a wrap. If you don’t have cubed steak handy, sirloin or skirt steak will work just fine.
Most of the recipes I post are “meant” to be vegan/vegetarian recipes, but I always add meat to them. So if you are looking for vegetarian options, just leave off the meat!
This bowl is as simple as it gets. Bell peppers, onion, some good seasoning, kale, and your carb of choice. They paired this bowl with brown rice, but I will likely use jasmine rice, because it is the best sticky rice to me. I am going to sear cubed steak in the cast iron pan with the same seasoning as they use for the bell peppers to top this salad off. I am going to skip the avocado.
The recipe gives you the macros for this bowl, but take note that they did not use ANY oil on the bell peppers when they baked them. If you use any oil, you have to account for it.
It was chilly at the pumpkin patch this morning and that got me craving all my favorite winter soups. It is a toss up between this soup and the butternut squash soup on which is my favorite. They are nothing alike, but both hold their own. I haven’t cooked this soup since last winter and I can’t wait to have it this week.
I have been using a pump lately to spray my pans with olive oil instead of pouring 1-2 tablespoons of oil over the vegetables. The vegetables need oil so they won’t stick to the pan, but they don’t need to drowning in all the oil and you surely don’t need that extra oil if you can help it. Instead of full fat coconut milk, I am going to use non-fat or light coconut milk. While the cauliflower cooks, you will have plenty of time to prep other meals and get them finished.
I am going to cook pork loin chops to go with the soup.
We had white chicken chili a few weeks ago when hurricane Michael came barreling through Florida and South West Georgia. My friend Gray was making this right before the storm was coming and she said she wished it had been more spicy. If you are looking to spice things up, add in red pepper flakes and fresh jalapenos. I try not to make things too spicy anymore because Scarlett wants to eat everything we are eating and I try to get Anderson to try everything I cook, before I resort to a meat and vegetable.
If you don’t care about counting macros and don’t care about how healthy this chili is, I would use a rotisserie chicken. If you do care about your macros (and I hope you do), I would use chicken breast. You can even boil the chicken to make it super simple. Once the chicken is cooked, just chop it up and put it into the pot with the beans. I use the entire jar of salsa verde (Mexican Green Sauce) when I cook my white chicken chili. Make sure you keep a note pad handy, so you can write down how much the whole soup weighs, so you can create servings.
If you need help figuring out how to make recipes and servings, don’t hesitate to ask! Everyone has to start somewhere.
Don’t forget the list!
& Go DAWGS!
