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!
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 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!
I live a crazy busy life. My alarm goes off at 6 am and I roll out of bed immediately and stumble to my home office and log into my work computer, and thusly my day starts. There’s a 6am rush that trickles down about 6:30, a 7 am rush that lasts about twenty minutes, then it’s a steady but random influx of work requests for the rest of the day. My first meal is grabbed around 8 am so that I can take my morning medicine and supplements with it, but I do not have the time to be away from my computer for very long. Whatever I do in the morning has to be fairly fast and something I can gnosh on while I am working at my desk.
Lunchtime isn’t really that much more leisurely; I like to take a shower or get tasks done on my thirty minute break, so that doesn’t leave much time for lunch. It’s funny because before my lifestyle changes and surgery I nibbled and let myself be hungry all day then binge ate when it was time to leave the house to pick up the kiddo. Taking him to school was my morning break and it almost always either ended in a coffee or McDonald’s breakfast run. Those habits are done for, thankfully — so I needed to do some stuff that was easy to get going and wouldn’t ruin what I was trying to accomplish. Enter, TikTok and Meal Prep.
My nutritionist stressed about how important it is to eat more than once a day. We focused on healthy, protein and fiber rich foods to eat. I grabbed some rotisserie chicken and supplies, and did meal preps for the freezer. This was what I grabbed for ingredients:
♥ Rotisserie Chicken (Costco or Sam’s Club memberships are great for this!)
♥ Carb Friendly Tortillas (I prefer La Banderita carb counter over mission. Lower net carb and higher fiber – and bigger)
♥ Greek Yogurt
♥ Low Fat or Fat Free Sour Cream
♥ Taco Seasonings
♥ Brown Rice, Cooked to instructions
♥ Mini Tri-color Bell Peppers
♥ Onions
♥ Mushrooms
♥ Jarred Salsa
♥ Black Beans
♥ Shredded cheese of your choice
These supplies will make two different dishes. First thing you want to do is remove the chicken from the bones, discard the skin (I like to keep the bones to make chicken broth with) If you sautee the onions, peppers, and mushrooms (add garlic if you wish for razzle dazzle) in avocado oil and mix with the chicken, drained and rinsed black beans, cheese and salsa, then it’s ready to divide up. I took the greek yogurt and sour cream, mixed it together along with the taco seasoning. For the bowls, I put a scoop of brown rice at the bottom, the chicken mixture on top, then topped with the yogurt and sour cream mixture. delicious!
For the burritos: I packaged these individually for the freezer so it could be easily pulled out and dropped into the air fryer. I laid out a large square of wax paper then placed a tortilla on top of it. I put a little of the yogurt and sour cream mixture, then the chicken mixture. I wrapped it into a burrito, then wrapped the wax paper around it. I then placed it into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and put them all into the freezer. When I want one, I will take it out and drop it into the air fryer at 375 around 9 minutes. I sometimes smear one of those individual things of guacamole on top of it for some “Freshness”. These things have been a staple of mine along with other quick meals, which I’ll save for another post!
What a week! Yesterday I had the day off (yay Juneteenth! Hope you celebrated by putting funds into black businesses hands!) It really wasn’t much of a day off though because I had a new computer delivery and packed in 2 doctor visit and a lunch playdate with my kiddo. So, let’s get into the doctor visit and how I’m trying to better myself quickly.
The first doctor appointment was a routine two week post-op follow-up. Everything looks good, which is great. I talked to him about my goal of needing to lose 80 pounds before the end of the year to get my knee replacement surgery. I was honest detailing the struggles I faced since getting my surgery now that my stomach capacity was opened up to full. I found out that if I did want to get a sleeve surgery done, I would have to wait six weeks (So literally the first of December) to get that done to let my midsection heal. That wasn’t really the answer I was looking for! He did hook me up with an “obesity doctor” who could help me prescribe medication. I agreed to it, because anything helps, right?
After a fun lunch date with my kiddo where I had a great grilled chicken salad (and balanced it by stealing a few of his fries and a sip or two of his milkshake – hey it had been a very low calorie input day!) it was off to my primary care doctor to discuss phentermine. She was concerned about phentermine being the same as adderall heart-wise for me, so she was reluctant to prescribe it. We put our heads together and brainstormed a plan. Wellbutrin for the ADHD, a medicine for reflux (in case that was what was happening with my weird tummy issues) and an oral GLP-1 to see if it helps. I voiced some concerns because my dad had been on Wellbutrin for assistance quitting smoking, and it made him go pretty nuts. He left his wife, moved in with me, just went 10000% unhinged. So we’re going to start a low-single release version, and have the people in my life watching me just to prevent that from happening. I’ll go pick all of that up after work today.
I’m going to keep on keeping on for right now. It’s rough to be in the mindset that I’m in right now feeling helpless and hopeless. I know it’s fleeting and once everything calms down I’ll be on the other side of this and happier. But right now? Ya girl is struggling. I’m glad I have this outlet to express my worries, fears, and struggles because it’s hard out here for a pimp right now.
Today I made a fun discovery! The panel on my recumbent bike has a little lip that holds my iPad perfectly. This means I can put my tablet on the bike, turn on an episode, and pedal away. I did this for the first time yesterday, and while it wasn’t constant motion, it was a good chunk of it. After that I was on a high! I went to go lay down and finish watching some tv, and I was like “you know, I ‘m laying on my back. Let me move the pillows so I can lay flat.” then I just started doing sit-ups. I did over 100 and would have kept going had my husband not come home. Kiddo even joined me for a while — it was cute! “Mom, am I exercising?”
I feel accomplished because I don’t think I’ve ever gone that hard in exercising since I was in marching band. I woke up today paying for it though! I was so sore! And I did manage about 20 minutes on the bike today due to running errands outside the house. I doubt I’ll even have time to glance at the bike tomorrow with all the outside activity I have to do, but I will get back on it Friday.
My cycle is imminent, like literally should have been here already, If it’s not here by Saturday, I will be taking kiddo to the pool. I’m excited for the first pool visit of the season! Swimming laps makes me so happy and it hurts my muscles but it’s such a good pain! AND I get sun which I desperately need right now. Some natural Vitamin D will do me good. Especially since it’s so hot right now! I’m pretty sure this was the kind of heat that they had Stanley digging holes in. Swimming, biking and sit-ups. There are a few workout apparatuses that I am eyeing on TikTok shop, of all places! I’ll see what happens but for now I’m happy with my half-ass regimen.
