Opa! It's Time for Greek Yogurt

Branching off of my earlier post on the Great Protein Debate (which is what I will now call it), I wanted to make sure all my readers are crystal clear on what Greek yogurt is.  Greece may not be doing so great these days, but Greek-style yogurt is flourishing just fine.  It comes up in just about any clean eating or weightlifting website or magazine you'll pick up, and for good reason.

Taming (& Still Loving) the Anti-Diet Beast

Just a quickie post from work today for you fine people! 

As an ex-weight loss counselor, and someone who's working on maintaining the healthy lifestyle I love, I am well-acquainted with one of the biggest challenges you might face in your weight loss regime: the significant other.  He/she might say they support you, and they probably really do!  They want you to be happy (well, they better at least!) and healthy, and fit, but when it comes down to dinnertime on a Friday night or brunch on Sunday, they are tempting you with fancy rich dinners laden with fat, sugar, refined carbs, and alcohol.  We want to be with them and still have weekend fun, and not feel too restricted.  What to do??

Flatouts Aregood

Lately I have been very into Flatout wraps.. these things are amazing.  They're slam-packed full of fiber (which I just love in my carb choices as you well know), for under 100 calories (or darn close to it), they are BIG so you can jam them full of fillings, and they taste good.  Great option for lunchtime on the run or at home.  All week I've been packing them full of leftover cooked chicken, or taco meat, or salmon to get a filling lean protein source in midday.  One day, I even cooked an egg sunnyside up and snuck that into a wrap with some spinach, hummus, and sliced kalamta olives.  These wraps are a great way to work on that goal of eating healthier lunches at the office.  ..You are working on that, like we discussed, right?

Your Vitamin Army

When I was a kid and I was sick, my mom would tell me to 'take my soldiers.'  She had this whole elaborate tale of how the medicine the doctor gave me was actually an army of soldiers who went in and fought with the bad guys in my sore throat, and when I got better that meant that they won the battle.  MAN did that work!  I was like, 'Gimme those soldiers!  Get the bad guys out of me!'  Panic-stricken, and not wanting to be any part of why the poor battling soldiers may not win, I always took my medicine.  So, this morning, when Ed said his throat wasn't feeling too great before work, I told him to take his soldiers.  Except I meant more along the lines of fruits and veggies, and their particular branch of the Good-Health Military - antioxidants.

Antioxidants are fab.  They are literally like kamikaze soldiers against whatever 'bad guy' is in your system, attacking it.  In this case, the bad guys are free radicals.  (Of course the body has other bad-guy beater-uppers, like your white blood cells; I'm just talking a-ox's here.) We all know that antioxidants are good and free radicals are bad, but why? 

Beta-Glucan Do It!

The Quaker Oats company teeters on the edge of a monopoly on a certain, greatly prized, long-digesting polysaccharide, Beta Glucan.  And I want you to know about it!  Beta-Glucan often pops up in research on the immune system, as it may be used as a 'biological response modifier' (BRM) - aka, it can be switched on to activate the immune system via various chemical signals and things that immunology scientists explain in their own esoteric dialogue.  For our - well, my purposes, we're not talking about Beta-Glucan as strictly a 'BRM.'  This is for the following reasons:  One, because I don't fully understand it on the chemically-immunology-type-way and thus why should I be so bold as to attempt to explain it; and Two, I want to talk about its use in weight loss and smart nutrition.  Yes, I am blissfully narrow of purpose, on occasion.

Pizza! Ninja Turtles Style.

Ed and I love pizza on Friday nights.  I eat carefully all week, and it's nice to come home to a nice cheesy slice of yumminess on Fridays.  Both Ed and I work on Saturdays, and that has (for better or for worse, but we're trying to be positive here, so I'll say for the better) helped us to not drink too many beers or stay up until all hours eating junk on Fridays. (aka continuing the college lifestyle)  We're only 26, so I guess that's a little weird, but we like to crash on the couch and watch Netflix on Fridays.  We each work long hours and I also have class during the week, so it's our first chance all week to just chill.

Ed's pizza-on-Friday-nights schtick was a thing he and his brother Ray always did on Fridays when they lived together.  When Ed and I moved in together, he wanted to continue the tradition, but I used to sort of dread it - I mean, take-out pizza?  Grease and sodium city!  I have goals, people!  ..but I do just looOOve pizza.  Mmm.  I thought there must be a way to enjoy it without derailing too bad.

After the holidays we went balls to the walls healthy eating.  I'm proud to say that we've stuck with it past the New Year's Resolution phase, and this meant revamping Fridays.. and pizza-fests.  We decided to keep it in the kitchen and adventured into the world of homemade pizza and frozen pizzas.

My Peek into The Great Protein Debate

I'm sitting here delving into my high protein post-workout breakfast, and thought I'd share my latest muse.. Muscle & Fitness Hers Magazine.  I am an Oxygen Magazine fan at the core but I was procrastinating getting to campus last night and I grabbed a copy of M&FHers and a green tea at CVS to kill some time, and now I'm positively stuck on the idea of weightlifting and protein and shakes and when to drink the shakes and, and, Eek!.. It's no wonder people get all fired up over their protein - there are a lot of opinons out there.

If you haven't yet been seduced by my propaganda and free advertising and hopped on over to Livestrong to start tracking your food, or you just aren't feeling that site, M&F Hers has a sort-of similar food tracking system (under the 'Trainer' tab), and theirs comes with a "personalized" training program.  Most of the program components are free, but you of course have the option to fork over some monies to upgrade.  The freebie version is definitely worth giving a shot if you need to focus, organize, or get re-motivated, or if you just honestly don't know what the hell you would do with a dumbbell if you had one.

Triple Dog Dare: Healthier Workday Lunches

Today is my birthday!.. Hooray!  :)  I have some nice little plans laid out for the rest of the day, including a long swim at the gym, some fun shopping, and dinner out with some friends, but I thought I'd kick the day off with a post in here about a topic near and dear to me, and one that seems to foul a lot of people up in their weight loss and clean eating goals: eating healthy on the run.

I am mostly talking about lunchtime at work, under the umbrella of wanting to save money, eat healthy, and not having a whole lot of time to prepare food and eat it during your break.  I totally understand that it would be easier if we could just eat a frozen meal every day for lunch, or grab a Special K bar or the like, but the reality is that there are better choices with less sodium, less refined carbohydrates, more biologically-available protein, more fiber - basically better choices for lunchtime that will keep you full and coherent for the rest of your work day.

I Love Me Some Coconut Extract

MMmm.. coffee.  I've said it before - I've got a problem.  I popped out of bed at 6 am (on my day off) and had to have it!  I'm always experimenting with low-calorie ways to mix it up, so I feel like I'm having one of the fancy drinks I mentioned a few posts back.  Sadly, many of the extras and whips and pumps and whatnots add boatloads of 'empty cals' - messing up what could be a guilt-free and yummy start to my day.  There are so many tempting Coffee Mate and International Delight flavors calling to me from the Dairy section.. are they really worth it?  Can't I find a better (and leaner) option?

What I have been playing around with lately and has served me well:  Extracts!  Hello!  Did I miss someone telling me to just use extracts in my coffee?  Because it seems very obvious that I should have just done that a long time ago.  I especially love coconut coffee - it reminds me of early-morning coffee on the porch at what was our family's cabin at Lake Tahoe.  *sigh*  Even in Philadelphia with crows squaking outside and a mile-long to-do list for today I can find a moment of solace somewhere near the bottom of my coffee mug.