Potato and Veggie Stir Fry Recipe

I'm going to try to post a recipe or two each week as I get into writing more. Some of them will be recipes that I've come up with and some will be recipes that I've gotten from some of the great blogs and webpages that I like to follow. I have to admit that I don't typically follow a recipe when I cook, but instead end up "guestimating" the amounts and maybe increasing or decreasing them. For example, I LOVE onions so any recipe that calls for 1/2 of an onion will end up getting an entire onion in it. I just figure you can't go wrong with more onion! For the sake of the blog, I'll try to keep track of the amounts I use in case any of you would like to try them out yourself.

For today, I'd like to share one of my main go-to side dishes for a lot of meals. As I've gotten a better grasp on eating clean, I've resorted to a few staple meals and side dishes and have been branching out and getting more creative as I go. So when I don't have a lot of time and don't feel like being too terribly creative, I make my potato/veggie stir fry side dish.

Ingredients:

• 3 medium potatoes (diced, can peel first or leave skin on)

• 1 medium onion (diced)

• 1 (16 oz) bag of frozen vegetable stir fry (I use Great Value brand, but any will do)

• 1/4 cup chopped cheese of your choice (go for the good cheese, with just a few ingredients)
•  Coconut or Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Italian Seasoning to taste
• Onion Powder to taste

Directions:

• Heat up a pan with a little bit of olive oil or coconut oil
• Add the onions and potatoes
• Cover and cook for about 15 minutes or until mostly cooked, stirring occasionally
• Add frozen vegetables
• Cook another 10 minutes or until everything has cooked through and is soft, stirring occasionally
• Add cheese and cook 2 minutes or until it has melted

* May need to add more oil as you cook
* Again, I haven't measured the spices I use while I'm cooking, so you can feel free to play around there
* Serves 2 - 3 (we like big servings)

Typically, I pair this stir fry with a piece of chicken or pork chops and then make a salad on the side. The meat serving is usually 3 - 4 oz (or about the size and thickness of your palm) and the potato/veggie stir fry will take up most of the plate. It is delicious, full of different vegetables, will leave you full, and you can save the leftovers for breakfast the next morning!

I'm always open to suggestions or comments if anyone finds a yummy substitute or can recommend another recipe, so feel free to share!

Friday Weigh In

Fridays are my weigh in days. I'm a bit out of schedule posting this on a Saturday, but I'll get back on track next week!

I've found a really cool website that allows you to join in with friends and family, or even strangers, to create weight loss challengers. The cool thing about it is that you can keep track of your weight, but nobody else can see how much you weigh. All you have to do is sign up (it's free!), create or join a challenge, and put in your info! You can set the challenges to last any number of weeks that you choose and you can also decide which day you'd like to be your weigh in day. There's even an option to have them email you to remind you about your weigh in day. At the bottom of the page is a discussion board for members who want to share motivational words or maybe brag about their weekly losses!

As I said above, nobody else can see your weight. You enter your starting weight, your goal weight, and each week you enter your current weight, but the website converts the numbers to percentages. So all everyone else will see is the % of weight that you want to lose from your total body weight and each week it will report how much weight you lost (in %). It will keep track of each week's loss (or gain) and then keep a total running and arrange the members from top to bottom in order of highest % lost. So it's nice also because you don't have to lose the challenge simply because you have less weight to lose than another person. You can win based on percentage of weight lost per your total starting body weight. It's great!

So what is this website called?

www.thintopia.com

So, I started this year off at a weight of 197.4. Since then, I lost about ten pounds, but then had a slip up and gained it all back, plus some. My weigh in today is my first weigh in back on track since that slip up. I weighed in at 196.5 so I'm slightly under what I was at the beginning of the year, but still higher than I could have been had I not gotten off course. Tomorrow I'll talk about "treating ourselves" and whether it's worth it or not. I hope everyone has a good weigh in and have a good weekend!

Escali Glass Square Digital Bathroom Scale

The Way I Eat

I'm not a fan of the term "diet" because I feel that "diet" has become a negative word to describe the self inflicted torture that we put ourselves through, eating only two different foods, in an attempt to get rid of those unwanted pounds. I feel that what we eat is a lifestyle rather than a short term fix, but since lifestyle way of eating is much longer, I'm going to use "diet" to describe how I eat.

I would say the way I eat is most like the Paleo way of eating, but I don't follow it exactly. What is the Paleo diet? Wikipedia defines it as:

"The paleolithic diet (abbreviated paleo diet or paleodiet), also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a modern nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various hominid species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic era—a period of about 2.5 million years which ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture and grain-based diets. In common usage, such terms as the "Paleolithic diet" also refer to the actual ancestral human diet. Centered on commonly available modern foods, the "contemporary" Paleolithic diet consists mainly of fish, grass-fed pasture raised meats, eggs, vegetables, fruit, fungi, roots, and nuts, and excludes wheat, grains, legumes, dairy products, potatoes, refined salt, refined sugar, and processed oils." Click for full article.

On Diet and Health, a podcast by Beverly Meyer, is a great resource for learning about the Paleo way of eating. As I said, I follow the Paleo way of eating to an extent, but what do I do differently? I already don't eat many legumes, so I don't cut them out completely. I don't think having them from time to time is a problem. I love chili, and you can't have chili without beans. Not the kind I make anyhow! I particularly love the Skinny Taste recipe, Turkey Taco Chili, however, I usually make my own taco seasoning mix to make sure I'm not getting any extra "goodies" in those processed packages. I follow recipes like this one from AllRecipes.com and it's great because you can play with a little bit to fit the recipe to your preferred taste exactly.

Another exception to the rule is that I do still drink cow's milk from time to time. The reason you aren't supposed to drink the Wal-Mart or other big company cow's milk is because of the hormones and other lovely chemicals that the cows are exposed to before the milking process, which does then end up in your milk. I don't use it often though and have gotten into alternatives such as coconut milk, but I do use cow's milk from time to time as needed.

Basically, I have given up wheat and anything that comes processed, with the exception of frozen veggies (no sauces or other additives), as those are considered processed as well. I stick to foods that are located in the perimeter of the grocery store and foods that do not have those lovely "added ingredients". I like to tune in to another podcast done by the Nutritional Weight and Wellness team called Dishing Up Nutrition for more wonderful tips on how to eat healthy. This podcast gives you examples of what to eat, but also explains the science behind it so you can understand and know how to move forward on your own. The biggest part of it is to get away from the "fat-free" and "light" versions of food and stick to the whole, real foods. They also say to get in one healthy protein, one healthy fat, and one healthy carbohydrate in each meal and snack. I'll talk about healthy vs. not so healthy foods in a future post.

Eating this way, just clean, wholesome foods, leaves me full of energy, I don't feel like I'm starving myself throughout the day because I stay full, and best of all, I still lose weight. The more I get into posting, I'll break down the lifestyle I've chosen to follow and you all can decide if you'd like to try it or not. I don't think that there is any one particular right way to eat; each body is different and reacts differently to the different foods. So you have to find something that works for you. This is what works for me and I hope you'll enjoy learning about it, as I continue to do, in future posts!

For some great recipe ideas, check out:
The Primal Blueprint Cookbook by Sisson, Mark/ Meier, Jennifer [Hardco (Google Affiliate Ad)

Variety

I talked about variety in my last post as a means to keep from getting bored. Variety is important for a few other reasons though too.

Flexibility:

Doing a variety of workouts is great for keeping your body limber and in the best shape that it can be. If you are constantly doing the same type of workout, you are limiting yourself. You'll still be more flexible and stronger than people not doing anything, but I really feel to get the maximum benefits, you need to incorporate different types of workouts.

Strength:

When you think strength, you might think of weight training, but variety comes in handy here too. Sure, you will get strong pumping iron, but you also gain strength overall including running, swimming, and even yoga into your fitness schedule. If you think yoga is just for girls or isn't a "real" workout, then you have been misinformed. Check out this video: In The Yoga Studio and tell me that you yoga is to be overlooked.

Shaping Your Body:

One of the best ways to get the body that you have always dreamed of is to include variety in your workouts. In this way, you build strength, flexibility, endurance, burn more fat, and really get the tone look that you are looking for. You cannot spot train and melt fat or tone just one area of your body at a time, so by adding variety to your workout routines, you can achieve the thinner tummy or toned arms, while also strengthening your heart, increasing your stamina, and toning your booty at the same time.

So what kind of workouts can you do to get the maximum benefits?

 

Ideally you would like to have a good blend of these types of exercises: 

 

Strength training: lifting weights, weight machines, pilates, body weight exercises (pushups, squats, etc.)

Stretching: Yoga (there are several different kinds) and stretching

Cardio: running, biking, interval training

HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training): Intervals of strength and cardio moves with very short rests between.

I can't say that one is more important than the other. They all work together to give you the overall effect that you're hoping to achieve. Plus, it's just more fun to have variety and something new to do each day. And always, always remember to warm up, stretch, and cool down before and after your workouts and always drink plenty of water too.

Getting Started

I find myself in this stage fairly often. I've been giving excuses as to why I can't do my workout today or why I deserve the piece of chocolate. One day turns into two and soon I find that I am heavier than when I started and I feel horrible. Anyone else go through this cycle?

I'm starting this blog to help keep myself motivated, to help others in their journey (however I can), and to just have fun writing. I plan to research different fitness and nutrition articles, compare workout programs, and share all my findings with you! The more I learn, the more equipped I feel to take on this task of getting myself healthy... more tools in the tool belt to get the job done, as they say.

I've written out the reasons why I want to get healthy, lose weight, and trim up. I plan to post motivating quotes and pictures every day and also hope to have an article on something related to nutrition, fitness, or other general weight loss. I'm open to comments and suggestions as I go.


To start out, I plan on keeping variety in my schedule. I get bored if I have to follow anything for all that long, so I plan to do a variation between jogging (trying to get back up to my half-marathon level), Ripped in 30 by Jillian Michaels, and new to the DVD world of things is Zuzka Light with her ZCut Super Cardio Series. All these things are definitely very different and should provide plenty of options for me to keep me from getting bored. When I get bored, I give up!

I'll try to write a review of the different products I've tried tomorrow too. Good night and keep your chin up! There is a light at the end of this tunnel!