Mango Stuffed BBQ Pork

Pork...the other white meat.  This one is great when cooking alone or for a special someone :)  It is served with a salad but you can omit that and pair it with something else.

Mango Stuffed BBQ Pork

 

Ingredients:

SALSA:

1 Mango Diced
1 cup canned pineapple in water (reserve liquid)

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

1/4 red onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

PORK:

1/2 lb pork tenderloin, cut into 2 slices

2 tsp canola oil

1 cup Mango BBQ Sauce

DRESSING:
Zest and juice of 1/2 lime
2 tsp honey
1 tbsp Mango BBQ Sauce
1/2 cup reserved pineapple juice
4 cups mixed greens

Instructions:

1) In a large bowl, combine salsa ingredients.  Place 1 cup of salsa in a separate, smaller bowl.  Refrigerate the rest.
2) Trim any visible fat from pork

3) Add oil to a large skillet on medium-high heat.  Place pork in skillet to brown on each side, about 1 minute per side.

4) Add the sauce, cover with a lid and reduce heat to medium.  Let simmer about 5 minutes per side.

5) Meanwhile, whisk dressing ingredients in a bowl.

6) Serve each chop with 2 cups of greens topped with 1/4 cup salsa and 2 tablespoons dressing.

Serving Size: Serving size: 1 of the 2 equal portions: Calories: 439, Total Fat:11g, Sodium: 293mg, Total Carbs: 53g, Sugars: 41g

Recipe and Nutritional Info from Oxygen Magazine May 2011

Veggie Breakfast Casserole

I am a huge fan of batch cooking but breakfast had been an issue for me.  So I came up with this casserole idea that can be batch cooked on the weekend.  Keeps for most of the week in the fridge or can be frozen to last longer.  On a usual morning I eat 1/4 cup oats and 4 egg whites.  I specifically made this recipe so I would be getting those servings and it would be easy to measure out.  I included both the exact measurements if you are using fresh ingredients and the easy bag sizes if using frozen.

Veggie Breakfast Casserole

 

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tsp Dried Basil

1/2 Tsp Oregeno

2 cups of dry oatmeal (I use Shoprite Instant)

32 Egg Whites

3 1/2 cups Frozen Spinach-Half of a 20oz bag

3 3/4 cups Mixed Pepper Stips- Entire 14oz bag

1 1/3 cups Frozen Chopped Onions-Half of a 12oz bag

Instructions:

1) Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.
2) Spray casserole dish with non-stick spray 

3) Pour all ingredients into casserole dish

4) Cook on 375 degrees for approximately 30 minutes or until cooked all the way through

5) Divide into 8 equal portions

Serving Size: Serving size: 1 of the 8 equal portions: Calories: 208, Total Fat:1.3g, Sodium: 361.3mg, Total Carbs: 18.9g, Sugars: 2g

Nutritional Info from Sparkpeople.com

Mango BBQ Sauce

I love this stuff.  It is my go to sauce to put on chicken and rice, dip chicken fingers in, marinade chicken in, use for BBQ chicken pizza...the options are endless really.  Plus it is super easy.  I will add new recipes you can use with it as we go along but for now the recipe is below.

Mango BBQ Sauce

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion chopped
4 cloves garlic minced
1 mango, peeled, pitted and chopped
2 15-oz cans Del Monte diced tomatoes no salt added
1Cup Water
1 6-oz can Hunt's tomato paste
1/2 Cup maple syrup
1/2 Cup molasses
1/4 Cup apple cider vinegar
2 TBS lemon juice
2 TBS Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper

Instructions:

1) Heat olive oil in a skillet on med/high heat
2) Add onions, garlic and mango. Saute until soft, about 3 min
3) Add all remaining ingredients and stir to combine. bring to a boil on med/high heat. Reduce heat, cover and simmer on low for 30min.
4) Remove from heat and allow to cool for at least one hour.
5) Use a hand blender (I pour it into a regular blender) to puree to liquify ingredients.
6. Use a funnel to transfer the barbeque sauce from the pan to sterilized mason jars.

Serving Size: Serving size: 2 Tbsp.: Calories: 20, Sodium: 45mg, Total Carbs: 5g, Sugars: 3g

Nutritional Info from Sparkpeople.com

Recipe from Oxygen Magazine May 2011

Recipes to make with Mango BBQ Sauce:
Mango Stuffed BBQ Pork

Emotional Drinking to Just Emotional Eating

Wow it has been a week from my last post.  I am sorry I have not been on the ball.  Things have just been crazy.  Lots of happening with work that I will announce once I have more details.  I also had all day meetings this week Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Then tons of catch up to do for being out of the office for those three days.  I had a hard time with my food and drink.  Going into the week I was only half a pound away from being down five pounds.  Now I am two.  I need to be focused the next couple of days to meet my goal on the 31st.  One highlight of the week is my team slected me to do a presenation during the week as the most innovative person on our team. It won me a free day off :) 

Today I had an emotional, dramatic and stressful day.  Normally I would have come home and opened that bottle of wine and gorged myself on food.  I even thought about going back out to the store and getting wine but I was like nah i don't feel like it.  So I will admit to my emotional food gorging but I didin't drink.  I am ok with.  For now maybe I binge with food but not alcohol and then maybe next week I don't binge at all.

I made a new meal plan for myself I am prety pumped about.  Everything has things I like to eat and can get excited about.  I find that it's really hard to stick to a meal plan when the food eh.  So tomorrow I should have some great recipes up for you.  Well good night for now, until tomorrow.

Ready Set Go!

Transform your body in 6 months for a bikini competition in April.  Ready…set …go.  The Get in Shape Girl helped me devise a plan today.  I am pretty excited.  My schedule is as follows:

Mon - Monday's ST workout (chest/ back) from site + HIIT Sprints

Tues - 45 min cardio choice

Wed- rest

Thurs - Wednesday's workout from site (legs/ abs) + HIIT Sprints

Fri - Saturday's workout from the site (total body)

sat - Friday's workout from site (shoulders/ arms) + HIIT Sprints

sun – rest

I know it is in my nature to take on too much, set too many goals or too many restrictions to just get discouraged and quit or quietly fade out like no one will notice.  So the GISG and I am working to build up the confidence I have in myself and my abilities.  The goal is to get through one of the three sets for the next two weeks (this week, plus the next two full weeks).   After that, it should put us at the first full week of November, go through all of the circuits twice.  After 3 weeks of that I should have enough endurance built up to make it through all 3 circuits each day.

I am starting tomorrow with legs and abs and HITT Sprints per the schedule.  I am excited, kind of anxious and scared though all at the same time. I have it all written out in my tracker so I am ready to hit the gym in the morning.

Eating has improved but the no drinking has been tough.  I made it through today drinking iced tea all day.  I need replace it with something other than water.  I have my bodybugg all charged up and ready to go for tomorrow too.  Just one more thing to track with and make sure I am on target. 

To accomplish this in 6 months is going to require dedication.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

BAD

Yesterday started with me taking a trip to crazy town.  I recently moved into my new apartment and was just able to get my dog Bella-Boo moved in.  Sunday night was her first night staying over.  Since we are on the second floor and she was previously used to running out to a fenced in yard I was concerned about her making it down the hallway, then the elevator and out the door before she had an accident.  I purchased a Puppy Loo (do not buy BTW it is a piece of crap) to put on my balcony for her.  It is a 3’ x 3’ tray with synthetic grass inside.  Well she refuses to use the thing so it’s like potty training all over again.  Yesterday I final got her out then in to eat breakfast then out again to go one and two.  Once that was done I was all happy I was up early and I was going to hit the gym.

This was the first time I went to the property gym and I am not a fan.  I am an elliptical queen.  I like the ellipticals that slide up and down a track with NO moving arms.  When the ones they have more glide and have arms attached that swing opposite the feet.  Hate it!  I did 5 minutes of cardio and left.  On the walk back to my unit I was sooo frustrated.  My dog is having potty training issues, I moved into this “luxury” building for the amenities like the gym and turns out I don’t like the gym and on top of that I need to eat my meal plan when all I want to do is eat CRAP when I’m upset. 

Well I got back to the apartment, looked at apartments online and even emailed my realtor to find me a new place (I have also been contending with noise from the upstairs neighbor).  I was done with this place.  I text my mom, text my fitness buddy and then hoped in the shower so I wouldn’t be late for work.  Well in the shower I finally relaxed and turned the car around from crazy town.  I moved to CT October 2008 for a job.  Since then I have moved to CT I have moved SEVEN times.  SEVEN TIMES IN FOUR YEARS.  I have commitment issues if you can’t tell and this morning almost became number eight.  So once I turned the car around I thought…this is great that Bella is sticking with her potty training going outside.  It will be good for her to stick with that instead of learning some new synthetic grass so she is a normal dog.  Plus I want to eventually move into a house and who wants to carry synthetic grass around when I go visit my mom.  This is really me being inconvenienced and me being lazy.  Next, I shave always wanted to become a runner.  Well since they don’t have “my elliptical” I am going to make friends with the treadmill.  Plus I still have a gym membership at Crunch.  If I really have the urge to be on an elliptical I can go there.  I still can do all my strength training at the property gym.  So crisis averted!!!

GOOD

Some of you may have noticed Tosca Reno checked out my blog yesterday!!! Who is Tosca Reno you ask? Well first of all get out from under your rock!!  I include this from her bio on her blog. 

“At age 40, author Tosca Reno found herself miserable, overweight, stuck in an unhappy marriage, and living an unfulfilled life. She was able to turn her life around and is now a successful author, motivational speaker and wellness consultant, media personality and model. Tosca has penned eleven books, including the incredibly successful Eat-Clean Diet® series, has appeared on numerous national television and radio programs and now travels across North America appearing at book signings and seminars to deliver her message of health, wellness and inspiration.”

Let me also remind you that she inspired me to dedicate the stage to Dad with her Reps for Bob (her husband who just recently passed away).  So now that you understand who she is you can understand how incredible it was to have her view my blog and compliment me on it.  It is really crazy how the internet can make the world so small.  You get the opportunity to meet people you never thought you  would be able to.

UGLY
Now to the worst of it.  I completely turned my day around.  I changed my outlook on the morning, Tosca saw my blog, I was pumped.  Then I got home….Another thing you need to know about me is I have never been single.  I am 29 years old and have always had a boyfriend/husband/fling/One on the side.  I am not proud of this but I want to be honest on here and nor am I saying they were all quality men to be hanging out with.  Not only to I have an issue committing to someone but I also have a hard time committing to myself.  I don’t really like being alone.  It gives me anxiety.  I think it’s because I use other people to distract me of things about myself I need to focus on.  I don’t like conflict either so I don’t want to deal with the conflict of facing myself.  Ok so getting back on track…I got home last night and once settle it was just mean and the Boo.  Shit now what I do.  I went back to old habits.  I had three beers left in my fridge from the weekend.  Why I didn’t throw them out I don’t know.  Maybe I wanted to taunt myself?  Maybe I wanted to prove to myself I could look at them and say no?  A friend of mine told me once that getting to know yourself includes knowing positions you cannot put yourself in because you know how you are and you know the outcome.  Well I should not put myself in the position of having temptations in the house at this early stage and think I am going to be able to turn them down.

Last night I didn’t blog last night because I was hiding.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share.  If readers would consider me a fraud or be disappointed.  My fitness buddy reminded me this morning that someone may actually be able to relate to this too and that this is a progress.  It is ok to make mistakes and not be perfect.  Acknowledge it, learn and move on.

Weekend Wrap Up

I had a fun weekend.  Made some mistakes but learned some lessons.  I was at a wine festival Saturday and brought my food but kept it in the car.  I had good intentions to go back to the car and eat and then come back into the festival.  As soon as I saw the loaded baked potato cart it was over though.  I should have brought my food in with me and had it close by.  I also had some timing issues.  Getting yourself to eat every 3 hours can be tough and also annoying.  People I was with just didn't understand the importance.  I hope once I have a show date down it will be easier though.  I can then say "I am doing a show in blank I need to eat every 3 hours".

I find myself really overwhelmed with knowledge.  Which is the right diet the right workout program, the right books .  I am just trying to take it all in.  There is also a mix of emotions or an internal battle I am having.  My old self is still fighting to sit on the couch while my new self is saying let's go we need to keep this momentum. 

I leave you with this article I found in Fitness Rx Magazine August 2012 issue.  It's by Shannon Dey with Team Bombshell.  I didn't feel like typing the whole thing so I hope you guys can read it.  I like her tough love take on concquering your eating.

Tomorrow starts no drinking...ae you ready Mom?  Anyone else want to join us?

Food Prep Looking Like a Drug Deal

Very productive morning.  I went grocery shopping at Shoprite and then to Costco.  I love getting huge bags of individually frozen chicken and fish.

I was able to get all my meals prepped for the week one of the Fall 2009 Off the Couch Issue meal plan.  It looks like I am preparing for a drug deal though.  I know this is not the most green approach to food prep but my tupperware has been depleated due to a recent move and I need this food to take up a small amount of space so they can all fit in my bag this weekend.  I do try to reuse the bags when I'm able too. 

Tomorrow the hard part begins.  Actually following through with all of this....

So Lets Get Started

Over at reasonstobefit.tumblr.com you can get a daily dose of motivation.  They have some great pics that really speak to me.  I am gonna start us off at the beginning and since there are over 700 of them we are gonna need to do a couple a day. 

Next lets make some goals.  You need to know where you are going before you can get there.  The end goal (for right now) is to compete in a bikini competition.  How long will it take to get there?  That's what I need to find out.  There is no better way to motivate than to register and put money up.  So I am off to do some research for that one. 

In the meantime..let's start with something small.  I remember when I did Weight Watchers they would give you a goal of 10% of your current weight.  Ok well that's 18 pounds for me.  Shit 18 pounds!  This is becoming more real with ever sentence I type.  Let's dissect this to something even smaller..5 pounds.  The suggestion for healthy weight loss is 1-2 pounds per week.  So lets say 3 weeks. 

I AM GOING TO LOSE 5LBS BY OCTOBER 31ST.

Action items are what we use at work to make steps in the right direction for us to make our year end goals.  So my action items are as follows...

Stop Drinking-As you read yesterday my drinking is becoming a problem and drinking and weight loss really don't mix.  I am a social drinker on the weekends and after work during the work week you can almost always find me with a glass of wine to unwind after work. 

So this weekend I am attending a beer, wine and wing festival.  I am going to drink and have fun and Monday I begin no drinking.  I know some of you are reading this and saying you have heard this before from me.  Well you would be correct, you have.  However, where I have failed in the past I still need to have hope that I can be successful.  Fear of failing again is not going to get me any closer to my goals.  I appreciate all of your support with every failed attempt you, my family and friends were always supportive when I came up with a new plan. Mom...get ready becasue Monday we begin.

Drop 10 lbs or More in 21 Days-The fall 2009 Off the Couch issue featured a quick start guide to help you gain momentum in your weight loss.  If you stay strict and get in touch with your militant side you can lose 10 pounds or more.  The meal plan is below in case you want to follow.  You need to drink your weight in ounces of water.  So if you weigh 150 you need to drink 150oz of water a day.

Check back tomorrow for my progress...

Dedicating the Stage

A year ago today my dad died. He had a heart attack. My mom found him on the bathroom floor. He was only 60 years old. My dad was a rock. He scared every boyfriend I had growing up. He was mister fix it. He had the answer/resolution for everything. He survived lung cancer. I witnessed him going through chemo and then though surgery where they cut him sternum to spine. That was the only time I can remember my dad hurt. I remember sitting next to him in the recovery area with all sorts of tubes coming out of him and he hated me (so it seemed) seeing him like that. I prepared at that time for him to pass away...but he survived instead.

After the surgery he worked on gaining his strength back but he never seemed happy. I think he was depressed still afterwards because he wanted to recover faster than he was able to, his kids had both moved away and my mom and him separated. He was living in a 3 bedroom house all alone. I don't tell you this because I want you to feel bad or to my family to feel guilty. I moved away too and he wanted me to. He wanted me to live my life. I am just trying to paint a picture of a survivor still being trapped by his environment, his body, his mind and emotions but still he always wanted the best for me.

You can never really be prepared for your dad to die. I remember my immediate reaction when my brother called me was "you're not joking are you Jake?" I don't want to lie...I was a bitch to my dad up until college or so. I was a typical teenage, mean to my parents, maybe meaner than most. We finally had it out and I felt like we finally had a chance at the father daughter relationship I always wanted. I just wish we had more time together once the white flags were flown.

The last weekend I saw my dad he bought me a bike for my birthday. It was a rode bike I was going to ride in my first triathlon. I rode it once between the time he bought it and the time he passed and I have never got on it since. I hate looking at the thing or even moving it. Sine he died I have also grown 4 dress sizes and hate to admit it but I have a drinking problem. I drink probably every day now but manage to keep myself composed so no one knows. I remember my girlfriend looking at me and saying "really no way Corinne" when I told her I was 40 pounds over weight. I ate and drank my emotions for the past year.

No more.

My dad would never have wanted me to live this way. He would have wanted me to be the best I can be. To give a 110% and not to quit. He would wanted me to be happy and healthy. Not sitting in my living room drinking a whole bottle of wine (I'm talking about the big ones) by myself and still wishing I had another one. I have done this for a year and have run out of excuses. It's time to mourn my father in a positive way.

For those of you who follow Tosca Reno she did reps for Bob. She did it right away after his passing. For me it took a year of depression and mourning. I'm dedicating this year, this journey, to getting myself onto the competitor stage for my dad. If he can go through cancer, then I can handle this challenge. If he could handle always being my rock, then I can handle becoming a rock. I know he will be with me every step of the way. He will cheer me on, be my mister fix it and help me be honest. I am going to live the life he wanted me to live AND the life I want to live.

I hope you're ready for this Dad, 'cause I am gonna need all the energy you can send me. I love you and I miss you every day.