Oh My Meal Prep!!!!

Whew!!!! Ok so it's Sunday and Sunday means: MEAL PREP DAY!!!! Oh how I have a love/hate relationship with meal prep!! I love it because during the week it's so easy to just grab and go and not have to think about what I'm going to eat! I hate it because, well...it's time consuming! I have been cooking for the past 3 hours and that does not include clean up (the dishes are still staring at me on the counter...and the dishwasher is full...oh joy).

Either way, this week's menu was planned out yesterday and it includes:
- tilapia with quinoa and cabbage
- spaghetti squash with marinara sauce, chicken and sauteed mushrooms and onions with broccoli
- chicken with 1/2 of a sweet potato and broccoli or cabbage (whichever tickles my fancy when it's time to eat it)
I still have a tuna and cranberry recipe that I want to make, but that might have to wait until tomorrow.  I also planned to make egg muffins, but I used all my onions which leaves me with only mushrooms to go in them (blah) so I'm going to have to hit the store for more veggies before I can make those.

So let's begin! This week I stepped out of my comfort zone and tried 3 new items to cook! 1. cabbage (yes, this was my first time making cabbage in life)! 2. quinoa 3. spaghetti squash.  Everything else was pretty much something I've already had or made before so no biggie on how to prep.
I wasn't sure how to make ANY of these foods since it was my first time, so I utilized the best thing to learn how to do just about anything...YOUTUBE! A childhood friend of mine and a few Facebook friends helped with how to prepare the cabbage.

Cabbage is amazing!! It's super cheap (I got mine for $.26/lb #eatcleanonabudget) and it's super yummy!!! I seasoned my pot with pepper, basil, a little sea salt, and a little chicken broth! I boiled mine as well. I think I now have enough cabbage to last me for the next 2 weeks!! One head will yield a large harvest!

Next up is the quinoa! I got tri-colored quinoa from Whole Foods since it was the cheapest! I had never tasted it before so I didn't want to pay too much for it and risk not liking it. Quinoa is a grain that essentially cooks like rice.  You boil 2 cups of water and add 1 cup of quinoa to the boiling water. Let it simmer until the water is completely gone and viola! The thing with quinoa is that you have to rinse it off first. I decided I would pour mine into a colander to do the rinsing and all of the little tiny quinoas started coming out of through the holes of the colander!!! PANIC SET IN!!! "I bought this stuff from Whole Foods" is what I heard myself shout as I try to quickly stop the quinoa from falling through the holes all over my counter top and into the sink...then down the drain!

So I had to find something else to use....and I found this little (literally) contraption to rinse my quinoa in.  Talk about comedy!! And tedious task because that thing is only big enough to maybe hold a spoon full of quinoa. If you look closely, you can see the quinoa on the sink...those pieces didn't make it into the pot! I poured a little chicken broth into the pot of quinoa to give it a little flavor...I also do this with my rice. My review on quinoa is that it's not bad. It's not the most exciting thing, but not terrible. I'm not sure if the "tri-color" had anything to do with taste or not. Again, this is my first time cooking it and/or eating it.

Spaghetti squash: Ok this was super easy to make as well and it taste really good!! I didn't get a chance to really eat it, but I was able to taste a little bit of it after it finished "roasting".  I learned how to make it via this Youtube video. 

Before

Cut squash in half and clean out all the seeds and pulp in the middle. You can do this with a spoon. 

This was after it was cooked. I'm not sure why it was recommended to put seasoning on the outside of the squash, but whatever..I did what I was told. 

Final product!!!

 Looks just like spaghetti right!? I added the sauce, chicken, mushrooms and onions after I snapped this pic! 

I now have several different dishes to eat for the week! This is when I love meal prep (especially when it's over) and I'm super excited about trying new things! 

Clean up on the other hand....

And this is to put it mildly...I tried to do some cleaning as I was cooking.  Geez...where is Halle Berry when you need her to help with clean up (from Boomerang)????

And now it's time for dinner..and yes...that's a glass of red wine. Meal prep has driven me to drink! LOL j/k! One glass went well with tonight's meal. P.S. I had already started eating before I snapped the pic! 

And all of this has me badly in need of manicure....nail polish chipping like crazy!!! 

So that's this week's meal prep and all it's splendor!! Until next time!! Thanks for reading! 

The Road to Be Fit...

Happy Friday everyone! I hope your week has been awesome!!!

This week has been a pretty amazing week for me in that I have some new adventures that I'm excited about starting in my own life!

For starters, I again want to thank you all for the support of reading my blog and reaching out to me letting me know you are reading and gaining some form of knowledge or inspiration! Over the past two weeks, I've had a few people reach out and have inquired about things they can do in their own lives to live a more healthier lifestyle. One of my goals is to inspire and help others! However, I have to remember that some of the things I'm doing, might not be feasible for someone else to just jump into and be successful in this journey to being fit for life.  With that being said, I have changed my perspective on how I solicit fitness and nutrition advice to friends who reach out to me.

I had to realize that I haven't always been a clean eater. In fact, I will confess that in October, I was arguing my case with a sorority sister about how I should be able to get fries from McDonald's and it should be nothing wrong with it as she discouraged me from doing it.  Well...I had a Monopoly piece to redeem a free medium fry and I was getting my free fry!! Oh and please believe, against her admonishment, I got it, ate it, and enjoyed it! In the beginning of January, my sister offered me a Healthy Choice frozen dish to eat before I got on the plane to head back to Virginia, and I turned it down to accept a 2 piece fried chicken meal at Popeye's in the Memphis airport.

I also remember times when I tried to eat something healthy, and the taste was bland or just straight gross!  Or I just "knew" in my own mind that I wouldn't like something, yet I had never even tried it before. There were also other foods that in my mind, I saw them as healthy, but a seasoned health fanatic would have told me "actually Ashley, that packaged oatmeal really isn't as healthy as you think it is"! I also refused to embrace the whole 80/20 rule believing my way of putting in hours upon hours at the gym would yield me great results as I felt good about working out on a consistent basis and still enjoyed all the foods that I wanted to eat.

I was also the one who would work out really hard with a specific event in mind that I wanted to look physically good for (i.e. a vacation, wedding I was in, high school reunion, birthday, etc.)  Then after the event was over, I'd fall off the bandwagon and go right back to my old ways. I wasn't consistent at all.

So everyone starts from somewhere and everyone finally decides they are going to do what it takes to get serious about getting healthy and fit for life. With that being said, I am truly encouraged to help others so I have decided that I will meet people where they are and we can work together from there! I have a friend who just e-mailed me about help, and I asked her first "where are you in life when it comes to eating healthy and working out"? Do you enjoy healthy foods or do you not know what a good healthy dish is? How often do you work out? Knowing where someone is will help them more than telling them what I do because I might be at a different place than they are. Everyone has to go at their own pace and gradually get to where they want to be! Consistency is key and progress is slow, but it all pays off when you just keep going! Take it one day at a time and embrace this as a lifestyle and not preparation for just a specific event in your life!

If you have any questions or need some help, I'm more than willing to help! I am not an expert, but I know a little something and we can do this together!! I find it highly effective when you have someone encouraging or motivating you along the way! E-mail me at road2bfit@gmail.com!

Have an awesome and safe weekend!!

"Clean eating"...I don't even know what that means...

...no one knows what it means....it's provocative...it gets the bloggers GOING!!

Just kidding!!!  A little Saturday morning humor for you :)

Lately I've been asked what exactly is clean eating and what does it entail? I'm glad you guys are giving me feed back by asking questions.  Questions means I need to clarify a little more! Also, asking me questions is great for me too because I might not know the answer, but research is becoming my best friend so I'm up for the challenge of finding out! Knowledge truly is power in this thing. This whole eating clean and working out healthy lifestyle can seem overwhelming, but taking it one day at a time and gathering information as you go definitely makes it easier to comprehend.  

So you might be thinking clean eating looks like this...

or maybe you're thinking more like this and only this...

Well that is part of it.....wait no...just eating lettuce is ridiculous and people that joke about that's how they are eating aren't funny.  You can't sustain life on just lettuce! Eating clean does not mean starving.

According to Clean Eating Magazine, clean eating is consuming food in it's most natural state or as close to it as possible. It means eating 5-6 meals a day (remember portion control while doing this), drinking lots of water, reading and understanding ingredient labels (the shorter the list the better....if there are several things in the list that you can't even pronounce, that's not clean), avoiding processed and refined foods, but this does not mean avoiding carbs all together. Complex carbs like whole grains are clean and acceptable. It means eating organic as often as you can (it's expensive to eat all organic, but do what you can).  Meat, eggs, and dairy should be eaten organically if your budget allows. My budget doesn't always allow this, but I do try to eat organic as often as possible.  It means consuming healthy fats (all fats are not bad...olive oil, avocado, nuts, etc are examples of good fats that our bodies need).  

Like I said in the last post, I got my start on understanding all of this after I read Tosca Reno's book The Eat Clean Diet.  Here is a link to it on Amazon if your local library doesn't carry it. The Eat Clean Diet. Now Tosca has several books out, but I would just start with this one to get the basics. If you want to look into reading more of her books, by all means, check her out!

Another very helpful resource that I've used and highly recommend is the Gracious Pantry.  Their website has a segment called Clean Eating 101 that I think you all should check out! It's pretty awesome! I totally think you can find anything you're looking for with this resource! Clean Eating 101

After you start understanding what clean eating is all about, you will soon understand that it looks more like this....

And it's rather delicious and you won't feel like you're missing out or sacrificing taste!! All of these pictures were taken from Instagram pages of people I follow who eat clean and have provided a recipe for the following dishes.  The first 3 pics came from fitmencook and the last one came from bgg2wl.  Check them out on IG!!