I'm very proud of my new eating habits and have continued to try new South Beach recipes (see below). I've exercised 13 days out of the last 14 days. I took a "day off" on Tuesday when I had been up since 445am with Noah and I was home with both boys all day who were both being as challenging as could be. It was one of my hardest days home with them - and by the time we got them to bed at 9pm, I was exhausted and went to bed. But, I did a double workout the next day, so perhaps that counts as working out every day?
Every day I do some cardio plus Jillian Michaels' 30 day shred exercise video - it has literally kicked my butt. I was so sore after the first couple of days, I could barely sit down or climb the steps. But, I've gotten stronger very quickly and noticed a big increase in my endurance. It is very intense and includes 3 different levels of workouts. For the first 10 days I did the beginner level until I could comfortably do the entire workout (without cheating). Now I'm onto the intermediate level which I'm struggling with but every day I'm able to do more and more of it - but WOW it is hard!
I'm at the end of Phase 1 of the South Beach diet but I plan to continue Phase 1 as long as possible. Eliminating carbs from my diet is the fastest way for me to lose weight. I will begin integrating some fruit back into my diet though - summer fruits are my favorite!
So here are the recipes I've experimented with this week:
Vegetable Quiche Cups To Go - I've made this dish for a long time and it is one of my absolute favorites - especially for busy people who barely have time for breakfast. I like to have protein with breakfast but never have time to make eggs, etc. These quiche cups are easy to make and store very well for about a week. I just pop two in the microwave in the morning and can eat them on the go. Sam eats them for breakfast too, it is a great meal for a toddler! I change the recipe slightly and leave out green pepper and add crumbled Morning Star veggie sausage (which I brown first). I also add more onion and I use garlic too. For cheese I use cheddar and mozzareella. Also, I don't use muffin liners, I just put them directly into a greased muffin tray. I like the silicon muffin trays the best.
Portabello Pizza was a good substitute for pizza. I LOVE pizza and ate way too much of it during my pregnancy. I changed this recipe a bit and used a low-sugar tomato sauce instead of the tomatoes and I added more seasoning plus turkey or soy pepperoni to give it a bit of a kick. It is a "fork and knife" kind of pizza - but pretty tasty after I jazzed it up a bit and helped to satisfy my pizza cravings.
Thai Grilled Beef was ok. I recommend saving some of the marinade on the side and using it as a sauce to eat with the beef. I'm not a big beef eater, but Brad loves beef (and would eat it 3x/day if he could!) so this was his dish of the week. The fresh cilantro made a big difference (we added more than it called for).
Stuffed Baked Tomatoes were pretty decent. We made this for a brunch with friends. The fresh basil is critical. My first batch were a bit bland, so I added feta cheese and lemon juice which brightened up the dish tremendously. Scooping out the tomatoes took longer than I expected since I was making this dish for a group of people, but it was a great way to take advantage of the gorgeous summer tomatoes in season right now!
Brussel sprouts with turkey bacon - not my favorite. The sauce made of the balsamic vinegar was terrific and I'd like to find a way to use that sauce on something else. We used turkey bacon instead of regular bacon and ce cooked the brussel sprouts for 20 minutes because they were nowhere close to being done at 10 minutes. They were still not really cooked after 20 minutes either. I think we'll stick with roasting brussel sprouts in the future.
Chicken curry with eggplant and spinach was so great last week that I made it again this week - it is definitely one of my new favorite recipes!
If anyone has a favorite carb-free recipe that you'd like to share, please let me know! Thanks again for all of your support!
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