Meal Planning

Meal planning - seriously one of the best ways to make sure you stay on track.

I know when I don't plan, I tend to stray.... I end up eating out or I binge eat any unhealthy things I can find in my kitchen.

Make sure your kitchen is always stocked with ingredients to make your meals. Make sure you always have quick healthy snacks on hand that you can just grab and munch on. And most importantly (for me at least), make sure you have something to satisfy your serious chocolate cravings... haha. I like to keep a bar of dark chocolate hidden away for absolute emergencies.... If I have a bad chocolate craving and don't have any chocolate, I will end up eating everything in sight and never get full until I have some chocolate..... it's really a problem.

If you're like me and tend to be very busy all the time, plan out your meals in advance! It will help you to stay on track, so you don't have to stress about it when you're hungry. And always have healthy snacks on hand too!

Examples:

I baked a big breakfast fritatta for Rommel and I to slice up and have for breakfast for the next few days.

Frittata (mostly egg whites) with broccoli, onion, jalapeno cheddar, and leftover ham from our NYE dinner

Last night while making dinner and our breakfast frittata, I marinated some chicken, grilled it, chopped it up, then saved it to throw on my salad for lunch today.

Chicken breast marinated in lemon juice, lemon zest, garlic, and dill

Salad with heirloom spinach, arugula, grilled chicken, dill, green onion, lemon juice, and pumpkin seed oil

For dinner tonight, we have  lentil soup cooking away in our slow cooker right now :) I prepped everything for the soup last night so it is quick to throw in the slow cooker this morning. All veggies chopped up in a bag with herbs and dried lentils. Tube of tomato paste sitting on top of the bag in the fridge, so I didn't have to search for it. Chicken broth and all seasonings sitting right next to the slow cooker.

All the ingredients ready to go!

Everything thrown in the slow cooker in 1 minute this morning!

Tonight, I will marinate some flank steak, grill it, and chop it up for our lunch salad tomorrow.

Tonight, I will also start to prep dinner for tomorrow night. I will bake a spaghetti squash and get ingredients ready to make make marinara sauce in our slow cooker tomorrow morning. I also saved a little bit of the grilled chicken to mix in there.

Happy New Year! Eat well, plan well, exercise, and meet your health goals!

~180 Calorie Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake

This time of year always brings out my cravings for desserts, baked goodies, and, of course, PUMPKIN. And ESPECIALLY Cheesecake Factory's Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake. OHHH MAN.... That stuff is GOOD. But! Have you seen the nutrition information for it??!!? 1080 CALORIES PER SLICE!!

(from http://www.cheesecakefactorynutrition.com/restaurant-nutrition-chart.php?)

GROSS!!!!

I really wanted to satisfy my craving, so I created my own version that was much healthier! I based my recipe off of these two recipes: using part of the "Eat Yourself Skinny" recipe to use as my crust and the filling for the "Bon Apetit" recipe to use as my filling (and made my own modifications).

http://www.eat-yourself-skinny.com/2012/09/mini-maple-pecan-pies.html

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2011/11/pumpkin-cheesecake-correct

I like using ricotta because it is much lighter and fluffier than cream cheese, sour cream, or mascarpone. Just be sure to blend it well, so the final result is smooth and not grainy (which seems to happen with ricotta). You don't get as much of the sour taste like in a traditional cheesecake, but I like that it makes the flavor and texture much lighter. Also, instead of a traditional crust, I just used the filling recipe for the pecan pies and pressed it into the bottom of a pan - this pecan layer will act as our crust!

**Note: for anyone that wants to make this with regular sugar, stevia, or any other sugar-substitute instead of Splenda, just make sure you conversions are correct so your final result has the right amount of sweetness! The granulated Splenda I used has an measures the same as normal sugar. But the Splenda brown sugar blend is twice as sweet as normal brown sugar, so if you are using normal brown sugar make sure to double what is in my recipe. If you are using stevia or any other sugar-substitute, convert appropriately based on what brand you are using.

Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake

Crust Ingredients:

- 1/4 cup egg beaters

- 1/4 tsp maple extract

- 2 tbsp Splenda brown sugar blend

- 1/2 cup chopped pecans

- 1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice

 Filling Ingredients:

- 2 1/2 cups reduced fat ricotta

- 1/2 cup + 1 tbsp reduced fat cream cheese

- 1/3 cup Splenda, granulated

- 4 egg yolks

- 2 whole eggs

- 3/4 tsp salt

- 1 cup canned pumpkin puree

- 2 tbsp Splenda brown sugar blend

- 1 tbsp unsweetened vanilla almond milk

- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line an 8 inch spring-form pan with parchment paper and wipe with some canola oil to prevent sticking.

2. Mix all crust ingredients in a bowl then press evenly in to the bottom of the spring-form pan.

3. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until this layer has set. Set aside the crust and start working on the filling!

4. Change oven temperature to 300 degrees F.

5. Blend ricotta, cream cheese, Splenda, egg yolks, 1 whole egg, and 1/2 tsp salt. Be sure to blend well until it is very smooth or your filling may come out grainy.

6. Set aside 1/2 cup of this filling and pour the rest of the filling over the cooled pecan "crust."

7. Blend the remaining 1/2 cup of filling with the other whole egg, pumpkin puree, Splenda brown sugar blend, almond milk, pumpkin pie spice, and remaining 1/4 tsp salt.

8. Pour pumpkin filling in a layer over the ricotta filling and use a spoon to make decorative swirls.

9. Wrap entire cake pan tightly with foil (use one piece to cover the bottom to prevent water from seeping in and a separate piece to cover the top to trap in then later release steam).

10. Place cake pan in a roasting pan and fill roasting pan with hot water halfway up the sides of the cake pan.

11. Bake for 1 hour.

12. Open the foil over the top of the cheesecake to release steam every 15 minutes then reseal foil. The cake will need an additional 45minutes - 1 hour in the oven until the cheesecake is set.

13. Remove foil and allow to cool completely to set. It is best if it also has time to cool in the refrigerator to set completely.

I sliced pretty small slices (a good size for me) - getting about 16 small slices out of the entire recipe. This comes out to 178 calories per slice!!!! MUCH better than Cheesecake Factory's 1080 calories per slice!!

I liked having mine with a drizzle of some sugar-free caramel syrup and some Trader Joe's Pumpkin Spice Rooibos tea!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! Stay healthy! :)

Simple Late-Night Dessert

Here's a sweet, yummy dessert I made a little while ago.

This is probably about 1/2 or 3/4 of a cup of nonfat, plain yogurt, about 1/8 of a teaspoon each of vanilla extract and almond extract, stevia to taste, and a few blackberries. Really yummy and I LOVE the flavor of sweet almonds with berries MMMMMMMM.

Lunch: Salmon-Salad Sandwich

Here's a quick, simple lunch I put together early this morning before work:

I made a salmon-salad (like chicken-salad but salmon instead) by mixing canned salmon with a little bit of reduced-fat cream cheese, reduced-fat olive oil mayo, lemon juice, lemon zest, lemon pepper, and a little salt. I made an open-faced salmon-salad sandwich by topping one slice of Trader Joe's European Style Whole Grain Bread (the kind that's super thinly sliced and dense and all whole grains, seeds, and nuts that you can actually see... SUPER nutritious) with arugula, some avocado, and my salmon-salad! Yummy!!

RESTART

So it's been a long time since I have posted anything in here... I was looking at my last post and noticed this:

"Happy eat-and-get-fat season"

What a TERRIBLE thing to say. I totally jinxed myself because I gained SO MUCH WEIGHT. Back in December I had actually NEVER been that disgusted with my weight in my life.

When January hit, my boyfriend and I started doing South Beach Diet. We started off pretty strong, were cooking well, and didn't have any issues with cravings for the first month (surprisingly) and both lost some weight... yay! Until National Chocolate Cake day came upon us.... Friends came over to make chocolate fudge cake and chocolate cake shots and it all went downhill from there....\

Mmmmmm... The death of my diet...

Then my birthday came up, friends and relatives were visiting from out of town, went on a Vegas trip, now my brother is back from spring break, and a wedding and one of my best friend's birthday are coming up this weekend - basically a bunch of things making it EXTREMELY hard to get back on a healthy diet....

SO starting after this weekend, it's back to South Beach Dieting!!! And I've decided I'm going to restart this blog with South Beach Diet / healthy eating as theme blog. I'm hoping that incorporating the dieting and the bloggin together will help me keep on top of both =P