Health and Fitness Fridays: Fat Burning Foods

 

The saying usually goes you are what you eat. However, some foods may just turn you into a fat burning machine. While eating fat burning foods is not a substitute for a healthy diet and regular exercise, there are plenty of foods available that can help to speed up your metabolism – which means you’ll burn more calories throughout the day. Here are some fat burning foods you may want to consider picking up next time you step foot inside of a grocery store.

• Avocados. Avocados normally get a bad rep as being a fatty food. However, avocados are great for helping you to lose weight because of their healthy fats. Avocados are packed with mono-unsaturated fats, vitamins, antioxidants, minerals and micro-nutrients, which can lead to a healthier you.
• Apples. Apples can do more than just keep the doctor away. According to a study at the University of Pennsylvania, individuals who consumed an apple before lunch consume fewer calories during lunch than those who opt for other, often less healthy, snacks. The antioxidant components of apples can also help to speed up your metabolism.
• Beans. Beans are a super-food when it comes to the fat burning department. Beans contain the perfect balance of ingredients to help fight fat. The fiber, iron, carbohydrates and protein found in beans can help break down fats.
• Vegetables. Eating your vegetables is more important than ever if you are looking to lose weight. This is largely because your body burns calories trying to break vegetables down. Vegetables are often high in fiber, which can be difficult for your body to breakdown.
• Oatmeal. Oatmeal is a super strong fat burner. Oatmeal can be eaten alone or added to a protein shake. Why is oatmeal so great? The carbohydrates found in oatmeal are released overtime. As a result, you won’t experience insulin spikes throughout the day that can have a negative effect on the fat burning properties found within simple carbohydrates.

Quick Meal! Cheesy, Crockpot Ravioli

Delicious and Easy!

Ingredients

• cooking spray
• large jar of pasta sauce (about 50 oz.)
• 1 can of diced tomatoes (14.5 oz.)
• 1 can of condensed cheddar cheese soup
• 2 teaspoons garlic, minced
• 1 bag frozen cheese ravioli (25 oz.)
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

Instructions

1. Spray slow cooker with cooking spray.
2. In a separate bowl, combine pasta sauce, tomatoes, cheese soup, and garlic. Mix well.
3. Spoon ⅓ of the sauce into the slow cooker, top with ⅓ of ravioli. Sprinkle with ⅓ cup of cheeses over ravioli. Repeat twice.
4. Cover and cook on high for 3-4 hours.
5. Serve warm.

*Recipe from barnsandnoodles.com

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie

I’ve never been much of a smoothie maker. In fact, I really cannot remember the fast time I made a smoothie. Actually, I kind of blog-lied. I worked at a Baskin-Robbins during high school and made plenty of smoothies, but never ate them! Strawberry, strawberry banana, peach and wild berry smoothies were pretty much a fact of my life throughout high school.

Last night I was browsing Pinterest and came across a smoothie recipe of a peanut butter vanilla smoothie. I was intrigued but missing some of the ingredients and not liking bananas much, I decided to modify the recipe. 

Ingredients:

• 4 Ice Cubes
• 1 Teaspoon of Chocolate Syrup
• 1 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
• 1.5 Teaspoon of Peanut Butter (I used PB&Co White Chocolate Wonderful, I love this stuff!)
• 1 Cup of Vanilla Yogurt
• 1/3 cup of milk

It was yummy!

Questions for you:

What was your first job?

What is your favorite flavored smoothie?

PB Cookie Dough No-Bake Protein Balls

What else is there to do when you have have a surplus of peanut butter and protein powder? Continue to make more PB and protein creations of course!

Here’s an easy-to-make no-bake PB protein ball recipe.

What You’ll Need:

• One scoop of protein powder (I opted for my NeoCell Belgian Chocolate; Love this stuff!)
• 1/3 a cup of peanut butter (I went with PB Crave’s Cookie Nookie)
• 1/4 cup of honey
• 2 tablespoons of chocolate chips.

(Note: I was aiming for a cookie dough taste, you can use any PB you’d like!)

What You Do:

1. Toss all of your ingredients into a bowl.

2. Mix all ingredients until mixture is even. Dough will be sticky.

3. Roll dough into small balls.

4. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours to firm them up.

5. Enjoy!

Makes 6 protein balls…perfect for one or to share!

Healthy 3 Ingredient Cookies

What do you get when you mix:

-1 sliced apple
-1 cup of protein powder (vanilla) I used vanilla GOtein
-1 cup of peanut butter

Delicious peanut butter cookies!

Simple toss all the ingredients in your food processor and blend til well mixed.

Place teaspoon sized drops on a cookie sheet and bake for 8 minutes at 350 degrees.

Yields 6 cookies

Everyone Should Eat Waffles and Ice Cream For Lunch

Waffles and ice cream for lunch is the obvious choice, right? Naturally! After a long morning of work and traffic (thank you student move-in days), waffles with ice cream is the absolute perfect fix.

 

A waffle with chocolate syrup and vanilla bean ice cream!

This was enjoyed while soaking in the sun and watching the incoming freshman try to navigate their way around the city. It’s hard to believe that was me 10 years ago! Where did the time go?

Waffallonia is a cute little stand found in Oakland with some amazingly sweet treats that are affordable.

Photo credit: Waffallonia.com

 

What’s the best (well maybe bad for you) thing you’ve eaten on your lunch break lately?

Trader Joe’s Obsessed!

What better way to spend a rainy Sunday than grocery shopping? Well, grocery shopping in the pouring down rain isn’t exactly fun but I definitely found some good eats.

What’s your favorite Trader Joe’s item?

This is one of my favorites. I like it better than Nutella.

And I cannot wait to try this in a recipe for dinner tonight! Recipe to follow.

Squat Challenge

Today is day 7 of the squat challenge and I’m doing good. Its a quick easy challenge that can be done all at once or broken up and completed throughout the day. I highly recommend it. It’s crazy to think that by the end of 30 days I’ll be completely 250 squats in one day. Squats are great for balance, mobility, fat burning, and developing muscles. Squats are great for your legs, abs, lower back and buttocks.

Have your completed any 30 day challenges recently?

 

Encouraging Kids to Be Active

I saw what I considered to be rather rare last night at the track in my local community park: parents very much encouraging their kids to be active. The kids were probably between the ages of 8-12 and mom and dad encouraged the children to run around the track once (it’s a smaller track .25 miles is one lap) and beat the runners (which was myself and boyfriend) before they could play on the playground, which included sprinklers which the kids were very much excited about! The kids did “beat the runners” but let’s keep in mind that the runners have already been on the track for nearly 30 minutes! Normally, I see children slowly walking to the playground while finishing up drinks in McDonald’s cups so this was very much a refreshing change.

Has anyone checked out Target’s Simply Balanced products? I came across them yesterday on a Target run and can’t wait to try what I picked up!

 

What are your plans for the weekend?

My plans include plenty of relaxing as my next 3 weekends are full of traveling!

• Put in Bay
• Cincinnati for a Pirates game
• Niagara Falls

Have any fun trips coming up?

 

Enjoy your weekend!

10 am Tummy Growls

Good Morning! Any Bachelorette fans? What would you have done in the Jame’s situation? I think I definitely would have sent him home. I don’t know what I’d be happy keeping a guy around that was looking for essentially a back-up plan if things didn’t work out with me.

Is anyone else like me in the fact that they are starving (despite eating breakfast) come 9:30-10am at work? And nothing is worse than your stomach growling in the middle of a meeting right? What are your favorite morning snacks to help prevent those awful and often embarrassing tummy growls?

Here are some of my favorites:

1. Clif  Bar

2. Yogurt

3. Mixed Nuts

4, Berries

5, Hummus and Pretzels

6, Nutella and Wheat Toast

30 Day Squat Challenge Day 2!

So far so good! But then again I have only completed 105 squats in the past two days and still have a very long way to go to complete this challenge! With a relatively weak lower body, I feel this is a great challenge for me!  This is the perfect way to increase leg strength while improving overall fitness at the same time.