Change does not happen overnight. Sometimes making gradual changes by way of substitutions is a good start. It’s how I did, using things that the family would not easily discern, like mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes (I even fooled my dad on that one, one time!) or a carb friendly tortilla instead of a regular one. Using PB2 powder mixed with water takes a ton of fat and calories out of peanut butter!
I do not like the taste of greek yogurt on its own, but I have found that using it in recipes makes it tolerable for my taste buds. I use it mixed with low fat sour cream and add taco seasoning for Mexican dishes. I mix it with zero sugar cool whip and pudding mix for a fluff to curb my sweet tooth. Cottage cheese is the same! I hate it on its own, but blended or used as a cheese substitute when cooked makes the texture and taste change a bit. I used it in a calzone and it was much like ricotta instead of cottage cheese.
I have a zero sugar cake mix that I’m going to attempt to use greek yogurt to make a cake batter for protein cupcakes. That is my endeavor next weekend – we’ll see how it goes! What is your favorite way to substitute for healthy living?
Ingredients:
2 tbsp avocado oil
1 pound ground turkey
Meat Seasonings
2 tbsp minced garlic
2 cups spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 package sausage and cheese stuffed tortellini
Vegetables to taste
Cook the tortellini according to package instructions. While it cooks, brown the ground turkey, any vegetables you are adding, and seasonings in the oil, adding the garlic at the end. In a blender, blend the spaghetti sauce and cottage cheese until it is well combined and smooth. Turn off the heat and add the sauce and tortellini to the browned turkey along with a splash of pasta water, then add the parmesan cheese. mix until well combined.
The first thing you might ask is “vegetables to taste?” Yes. Not everyone likes the same things. I sauteed an onion and sliced mini bell peppers and cooked them beforehand, because my husband does not like that. I wish I’d had mushrooms to add as well, but alas I did not. And as far as “meat seasoning,” I decided to use the meat house seasoning blend I keep on hand to make it a little “beefier” since it was ground turkey. The avocado oil is being used because the ground turkey does not produce much fat.
Ingredients:
1 cup PB2 Protein Powder
2/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup Lily’s sugar free chocolate chips
Mix the protein powder and applesauce together until it forms a dough. You might need to add a little powder or applesauce to adjust if it is too sticky or too dry. Once it’s mixed to a good dough, add in the chocolate chips and mix well. Use a small scoop or your hands to get the dough into balls and then place on a parchment paper, and let dry out a little bit before putting them into an airtight container for storage.
These little bombs are so delicious! Low calorie and high protein, just like a snack should be. This recipe makes about 15 if you use a small cookie scoop or roll them about that big. I put the ingredients into AI and broke it down with one ball being the serving.
Sunday: “Beefy” “Cheesy” tortellini pasta Monday: Crock pot French dip, dill pickle potatoes, corn Tuesday: Chicken bacon ranch cauliflower bake Wednesday: Crock Pot Pork Loin, rice, peas and carrots Thursday: Steak lettuce wraps
Friday we’re going to grill out burgers! I got some Morningstar grillers for myself, and I’ll make some beef ones for the mister. I am not feeling froggy enough to attempt my own veggie burgers at this time. I am also today going to make some of the pudding fluff, but make it strawberry cheesecake flavored. This week I’m also making a protein packed pie. I’ll be posting the recipe to that this week! There are lots of recipes on the horizon, actually. Going to do the tortellini that I do later, my pickle seasoning, maybe the French dip and definitely the chicken bake.
The pickle seasoning has come from the new Sonic Grillo’s pickles collab. I tried the pickle seasoned tots and now it’s an obsession. I need to come up with something that I can make at home that mirrors it. Roasting potatoes and tossing them in the seasoning will definitely help curb that craving. Here’s to a great week!
I love swimming. It’s an amazing form of exercise for people who have bad legs and knees. The water makes you feel weightless and kicking and the swimming motions of the arms work the entire body. Back pre-baby when I was doing well with losing weight, I lived at an apartment complex that I had access to the pool at late nights. I would go around 10-11pm at night every night and swim laps for a half hour or so for exercise. I was too self conscious to do much during the daytime.
Now, the swimsuit that I got at the end of last season is a little baggy. I still wore it today to the pool, during the daytime (while other people were there! -gasp-) and took the kiddo … we swam laps and played around for a few hours. I applied water resistant sunscreen but it wasn’t very resistant at all. Kiddo’s face is red and my face and shoulders/back are bright lobster red.
So here’s the thing that I just discovered: sunburns can effect blood sugar! The stress to the skin and inflammation can cause increased insulin resistance and increased gluconeogenesis, which means the liver produces more glucose and it increases the blood sugar. Increased cortisol levels can also stimulate the release of glucose from the liver. Sunburns can lead to dehydration, which also will concentrate blood sugar levels. Cue “the more you know” jingle.
So moral of the story: I wanted a tan, and I should achieve that after the redness and peeling is over, but I need to find more water resistant sunscreen for the future because it’s not worth the blood sugar level increase to look darker. I’ll bust out the Jergens healthy glow tanning lotion. For everyday wear I use the CeraVe moisturizing suncreen for my face, but it isn’t waterproof so it’d be useless then.
Either way, I had so much fun at the pool and hope to go many more times this year. Swimming is my favorite form of exercise and I will suffer the burns – for now.
Ingredients: For The Chicken
2 large chicken breasts, cut into thin strips
1 cup flour
2 eggs
2 cups Porq pork panko bread crumbs (or ground pork rinds)
Seasonings YOU like!
1 Cup grated parmesan cheese
Olive or Avocado oil spray For The Fries
2 lbs Russet Potatoes
Olive or Avocado oil spray
Salt or other seasonings you like
In one shallow bowl or dish, mix the flour with a generous amount of the seasonings you are gonna use. I use a house blend that I keep on hand that is salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, Texjoy, Tony’s, and Kinder’s Buttery Steakhouse seasoning. In another dish beat the two eggs well with about 1/4 cup of water. In a third dish, mix the porq crumbs, liberal seasoning (the same you used in the flour) and the parmesan cheese. I just use the kind from the shelf-stable container but you can be fancy and use fresh grated if you want. I just find that the finely grated sawdust type tends to mix better with the crumbs. Preheat the air fryer to 400 while you are dredging your chicken.
Dredge the Chicken: Drag the chicken through the flour, then knock off the excess before repeating the process in the egg mixture. Press it into the crumbs in the third dish, making sure it is fully coated, and place it on a sheet pan lined with parchment to sit. Repeat this process with all the other chicken. Take over to the air fryer, and spray a little oil on the bottom of the fryer then arrange chicken in a single layer. Hit the top with a light dusting of spray and cook at 400 for 8-10 minutes.
The Fries: I start the fries a few hours before I’m going to be cooking, because of this crucial step. Cut off the top and bottom of the potatoes, and then cut the potatoes into even sticks. I made mine pretty thin. You can also peel the potato if you prefer no peel but remember – that’s where the nutrients are! Once they are all sliced I submerge in a bowl of water and soak for a few hours to get the starches out. Once I’m done soaking I drain into a colander and dry further with paper towels.
Fries are ready to cook! you can bake them in the oven if you want to cook at the same time as the chicken, but I like them in the air fryer. I just put the chicken in the oven on a warm setting while I do the fries. Either way they get a spray of the oil, shaken around in it, and into the apparatus they go. They cook at 390 for 25 minutes with a shaking around every 5 minutes or so. once they come out hit them immediately with whatever you are going to season them with. I did a pink salt and kept it basic, but you could use anything you want.
To be EXTRA extra, I made a sauce for everything. I mixed low fat mayo, no sugar ketchup, mustard, a smidge of swerve brown sugar substitute, and extremely finely chopped dill pickle with a trickle of the juice together. It was delicious!
For this plate, this is what Nourish told me the macros are:
The only thing that is not great about this meal is it is kinda low fiber for my liking. I might pair it with some fiber rich veggie for another side if you have the wiggle room for calories and other allotments! These were better than any fast food tendies I’ve gotten recently and even my skinny husband gobbled them down! I have leftovers for today as well, so I’m pumped.
INGREDIENTS:
♥ 2 cups plain or vanilla Greek yogurt
♥ 1 8 oz. tub of sugar free cool whip, thawed
♥ 1 package zero sugar banana pudding mix
♥ 2 bananas, chopped
♥ 1/4 cup Catalina Crunch cinnamon square protein cereal (or any protein cereal of your choice) per serving
In a large container, mix the yogurt and the pudding mix until well combined. Fold in the cool whip. At this point it is fine to add any sugar free syrups you wish to add. I am a fan of the Skinny Syrups marshmallow sugar free syrup with this particular flavor profile. Mix everything until well combined, and then fold in the bananas. Cover and chill for at least a few hours. Serve one cup of the pudding fluff with 1/4 cup of your protein cereal.
MACROS:
Calories: 202
Protein: 21.3g
Carbs: 22g
Fat: 5.1g
Fiber: 5.7g These are estimated values, not exact science. They are close though! Used through Nourish AI
This is amazing for people with a sweet tooth that love banana! I’m going to experiment with other fruits and flavors. I have some more skinny syrups coming too for add-ins. When I tell you that a cup of it is filling, sweet, decadent tasting, and full of protein which is important on a weight loss journey, it makes dieting seem a little less daunting. I hope that you all get to try this!
I started my new medication this weekend, that included a new wonder drug called Rybelsus. Now this is a semiglutide similar to Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy etc. The only difference is it’s a pill taken orally instead of the once-weekly injection that the other medications are. Now, I tried Ozempic when it was still mostly used for diabetes, and it was working great. As soon as I went from the starter dose to the next step, however, the side effects started hitting me hard. I was so sick I thought I had the stomach flu. Nausea, vomiting, excessive fountain pooping . . . and it lasted for months. We didn’t connect it to the Ozempic at first because I didn’t have any of those side effects on the lower dose. It ended up with me in the hospital after blacking out and slicing my hand open while I was unconscious.
Flash forward to years later, about 2 years ago, when my (new, then) doctor decided to try Mounjaro. I was up front with the doctor about my previous GLP-1 woes and my concerns about trying another, but reluctantly agreed to try with the assurances we’d stop if we started to notice the same side effects trending . I gave it about three months, and started struggling with the same issues, so had to go off it then. I was disappointed, but resigned myself to not being able to take any of the weight loss medications.
This medication you have to take 30 minutes before you put anything else into your mouth in the morning, with at least 4 oz of water. Saturday was my first dose and I started noticing the food noise in my head and the hunger all the time was starting to dissipate. Sunday morning, I didn’t eat until well after noon and even then it was because I knew I needed to. That was a feeling I needed to feel, because the last two weeks have stressed me out post-surgery with all the “food noise” going around. This is going to be wonderful! I’m so excited for this new Rybelsus journey.
I have the luxury of living close to Houston, Texas, which means I have access to the best grocery stores. Anyone from outside of Texas just doesn’t know how good quality HEB is. They hit different. My other favorite grocery store is Kroger because they have amazing deals. Their Buy 5 save 5 gets me every time. The digital deals? On point. If you’re a soda drinker you can find most weeks they have buy 2, get 2 free. My shopping and planning journey is pretty meticulous and it starts on Wednesday. I look at both of the sale ads for the week and use it plus recipes I’ve favorited and saved over the week to plan the meals I make. I usually leave one free night for take-out or easy fun stuff but other than that dinners are all planned out. My schedule starts from Saturday (the day I do grocery shopping) to Friday, I try to keep the dinners easier on the nights I play games with the bois and love utilizing my crock pot. Let’s go over this week as a great example!
Today is Saturday, and I got a microwavable brisket from Costco and I’m going to serve it with boracho beans from HEB and corn on the cob nuggets from Kroger. I like to cook the corn in the air fryer, brush it with butter and use the everything but the elote seasoning. Chef’s Kiss! The beans I got from one of HEB’s meal deals. They like to do a thing where you buy the protein advertised and you get like 4-5 things free. It’s a really good deal. This one was a family pack of sausages and I got corn (used last week), the beans, some HEB brand oreo cookies for free. They had sparkling flavored water but since it wasn’t sugar free, I opted not to grab it since nobody else would drink it. Kiddo will eat the oreos eventually so it was a good deal.
Tomorrow will be a recipe that I took from Southern Living Magazine. I have a bunch of subscriptions to cooking magazines. I get Food Network, Southern Living, Food and Wine, Pioneer Woman, and Real Simple. I go through the magazines when I get them and tear out recipes that I think are interesting, and then I set them aside. If I make them and it hits, it goes into rotation. This dish is an “in rotation” one. It’s stuffed pork loin with bacon and greens. HEB had a sale on pork loan, the large ones. I managed to cut it into quarters for four different meals, wrap up the other three individually and put them into the freezer It calls for mustard greens but I prefer turnip greens, so I got those. Bacon I had from a sale last week. It will be served with mixed brown and wild rice and peas and carrots.
Monday comes from the Food Network pasta edition. It’s listed as fettuccine with carrots and peppers. This is one that I’m going to alter for weight loss purposes. I’m going to substitute the fettuccini with Banza spaghetti (made from chickpeas). I’m also going to add some of the leftover sausages I put in the freezer from the HEB meal deal. This has carrots, squash, and bell pepper in it as well. I’m very excited to try this one!
Tuesday is an egg roll bowl, so I grabbed a package of cole slaw mix to save time and tears on my part. It’s got the shredded cabbage already ready to go, along with carrots. I got some ground pork to season and got some ginger to throw in as well as garlic. This is a fun favorite one for me, but I have to alter it where it’s not as “Asian tasting” to keep the hubbers happy.
Wednesday is a favorite. I have chicken breasts in the freezer already divided up for easy grabbing from a previous Costco trip. I saw a video on Tiktok where they made chicken tenders and fries that were around 550 calories for the whole plate, so I am going to recreate those. I am so excited for this one. I might try to make a low-cal version of the McDonald’s creamy chili dip to go with it.
Thursday this week is my free day. I have plenty to pull out of the freezer with the quick meal prepping I have done, and I can grab something fast for the boys. I am excited for this week and hopefully can post some recipes!
Costco has become one of my favorite biweekly stops. Not only has it helped me find some new treats to enjoy by the samples they give out (which are usually plentiful on a Saturday!) They’ve helped me plan and prep meals that are healthy and keep them affordable. This photo here is what was included in my haul today (along with some other non-related goodies) that will help me.
♥ The rotisserie chickens are such a value! I shred and use in the spanish bowls and burritos I love to keep in the freezer. I’m going to be using at least part of this for chicken salad to make lettuce wraps.
♥ I got a brisket to heat up! We’re going to have some for dinner tonight and then I’ll use the rest to prepare brisket wraps for the freezer.
♥ Bell Pepper Crisps – I don’t know what I was expecting with these, but they were better than I thought! They are these really crispy dehydrated pieces of bell pepper, all the colors. I enjoyed them today with a few pieces of Babybel cheese. Big fan!
♥ Guacamole cups – Better to keep around than fresh avocado because you have more than a three second ripeness window, in single servings, and I compared it to the cups of smashed avocado. For .5 oz more of a cup, it was less calories. Probably because there’s ingredients other than avocado and avocado can get up there in calories. Oh, but the fiber!
♥ Catalina Crunch Protein Cereal – I got this for a specific reason. I’m making “fluff” with greek yogurt, sugar free jello puddings, fruit and fat/sugar free cool whip. This will add a nice crunch factor that is low cal and high fiber/protein. I might have some for breakfast sometimes too!
♥ Wilde Protein Chips & Garden Crisp Crackers – I’ve had the wilde chips just in a different flavor before, and they are pretty good. The garden crisps were the best “bang for your buck” cracker that had the least carbs but most fiber and protein.
♥ PB2 Powder – I’ve been enjoying this from a smaller container for a bit, but this was a great deal! I’m going to mix with unsweetened applesauce to make protein balls (and add some lily’s choco chips or banana as well).
♥ Crunchy Chickpeas – I tried two flavors of these and they were amazing! They are very crispy and super dry! I would say they’d be great as garnish for salads, but one pack of them is 120 calories and packed with protein and fiber, just like real chickpeas!
♥ Canned Chicken – I am so stoked to get this stocked up. I have seen a few videos on tiktok that I want to use with this canned chicken. I even saw how to make chicken nuggets! We are gonna have fun with future recipes, that’s for sure. This is for when I want a different texture than the rotisserie will give.
I am so excited to start creating with these. Today I also started my new medicines and so far so good! I can already tell a difference with my hunger. It’s wild. Next post I will talk about my regular grocery haul for the week!
