Cottage Cheese Banana Oatmeal Protein Pancakes

Cottage Cheese Banana Oatmeal Protein Pancakes

If you are on Instagram at all, you’ve seen it’s trendy to cook with cottage cheese now and a super easy way to add extra protein to your food and it usually goes undetected! Try for yourself and report back!

Yields 3-4 pancakes - let me know if you make this!

Ingredients:

½ cup old-fashioned rolled oats, gluten free if desired

½ medium banana

½ tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp cinnamon

1 egg

¼ cup low fat cottage cheese

Optional add-ins/toppings: Fresh berries, chocolate chips, peanut butter

Instructions:

Place all ingredients in a blender/immersion blender and blend until completely smooth, about 30 seconds.

Lightly coat a large nonstick skillet with grass fed butter and heat over medium low heat. Drop batter by 1/4 cup onto skillet. Cook until bubbles appear on top. Flip cakes and cook until golden brown on underside.

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BBQ Chicken Salad

Anyone else love a good salad for lunch?! 🥗 This one is pretty simple to throw together and you can substitute any of the veggies for whatever you have at home! BBQ Chicken Salad with Roasted Chickpeas

Ingredients
* 1 tbsp vinaigrette dressing
* 1 tbsp water
* 2 cups chopped lettuce
* ¾ cup chopped chicken breast (grilled or baked) ½ cup hearts of palm, chopped
* ½ cup sliced cucumber
* ½ cup cherry tomatoes, cut in half
* ½ cup BBQ roasted chickpeas (see the note at the bottom for how to prep these)

Instructions
1) Combine dressing and water in a slow bowl; whisk to blend. Set aside.
2) Combine lettuce, chicken, hearts of palm, cucumber, and tomatoes in a large serving bowl; toss gently to blend.
3) Drizzle with dressing and toss gently to blend. Top with chickpeas and serve!

BBQ chickpeas:
Preheat oven to 425º F. Drain and rinse 1 (15-oz.) can of chickpeas. Combine chickpeas with 2 tbsp BBQ sauce. Spread on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, or until brown and crunchy!

Makes 1 serving.

Portion Fix Containers: 2.5 green, 1 red, ½ yellow, 1 orange
2B Mindset Plate-It: A great lunch option!

What is your favorite salad recipe?

11 workout hacks --> get out of bed and get shit done!

1) Get enough sleep - sounds so easy right? Who doesn’t love sleep, but this is a major issue for most of my clients whether they’re up through the night with little ones, awake from drinking caffeine too late in the day, or wine disrupting their REM sleep. 7-9 hours is the suggested length of deep sleep and the best ways to get this are:
a) make the room as dark as possible - I love black out blinds,
b) use a white noise machine (this is my FAVORITE and under 70 decibels), a sound machine, or white noise app on your phone. The differences are: White Noise Machines offer a steady sound, simulating a fan, it’s doesn’t have a repeating pattern so your brain doesn’t get trained to listen for it, which is stimulating for some. A Sound Machine will have an “ocean”, “outdoor sounds”, “wind”, “babbling brook,” “white noise,” etc and they are usually repeating patterns. Honestly the crickets make me feel like there are things in my bed and the babbling brook makes me want to pee, so neither make me drift off to sleep, LOL, but the kids seem to like them and it works.
c) invest in soft sheets, these sheets on Amazon are my favorite, I have 4 sets.
d) keep the room temperature between 60-67 degrees,
e) drink a warm cup of tea when you start winding down, but make sure it’s herbal, not green or black tea, as those have caffeine and produce the opposite effect,
f) you’ve heard this one a million times, but I’ll remind you again, limit screen time. It stimulates your brain and eyes and sends you to bed with lots of thoughts swirling around and lastly,
g) journal things you're thinking about. When I have a lot of things to do the next day, I worry I’ll forget and it keeps me up thinking / stressing about it. If I make a list of everything I need to do / am thinking about, I’m able to put it at rest and fall asleep much faster.

2) Lay out exercise clothes the night before - I especially do this when I travel because it’s very easy to wake up on vacation and talk yourself out of it. But if everything is ready and staring me in the face, I remember I had intentions of getting moving and I’ll be thankful later. I’m 99% more likely to follow through with my workout plans. Some even wear them to bed, I might have done that before, just make sure if you do this, that your workout bra doesn’t have underwire in it.

3) Put alarm out of reach - the snooze button can be the devil and ruin your day. I never would have believed it till I listened to this podcast on the snooze button by Mel Robbins. Check it out and you’l be moving that alarm clock tomorrow :)

4) Schedule coffee maker to go off at a certain time - the smell wafting from your kitchen will give you just another incentive to get up and crush your workout and it’s been proven that small doses of caffeine on an empty stomach can help you push harder, thus get more, out of your workout,

5) Let the light in - expose yourself to natural light as soon as you wake up. Getting blue light from the sun turns off your brain’s melatonin faucet, which in turn can erase any morning fog you feel and give you energy to get going,

6) Sniff Peppermint oil - a small study found that drinking 500 ml of mineral water spiked with peppermint oil improved power and performance and lengthened the time to exhaustion. Young Living oils are the only oils approved by FDAA for consumption.

7) Fuel up / don’t sit down - chose a bite to eat that’s carb-focused and 100-150 calories. ½ banana and peanut butter or Shakeology stirred with water (as a bowl) are my two favorites, both with 16-20 carbs quickly available for your workout.

8) Drink up - dehydration can have a huge effect on physical performance since you lose ~ one liter of water during your sleep through sweat and breathing. I have a lot of ideas for ways to flavor your water without adding extra calories, so try to drink 16 oz. water when you first wake,

9) Stay accountable with a group - telling yourself you can’t work out is easy to do; making that excuse to someone else is a whole other story. studies have shown those that check-in with an accountability group are 20% more likely to succeed and get better results than those that go at it alone. I offer BOD Groups every single month and you’re always invited to join so make that commitment to show up every day and let do this together,

10) Download a new playlist - create a “wake-up” list of energizing songs to get you motivated to move. Research shows that music can reduce the perception of effort and increase endurance up to 15%! Beachbody Super Trainers shared their favorite playlists if you need some new ideas; now go crush that workout,

11) Workout @ home - you’re more likely to workout when your living room, playroom, study is your workout space and you walk by it and hear it call your name. You’ll save money, miss out on germs and save the commute time so there’s really no reason you can’t fit it in. Beachbody on Demand has programs from 10 minutes up to 90 minutes so there are plenty of options to fit the time you have available.

Fruity + pretty = delicious!

Passion fruit is tart and tropical and the perfect match for the mellow, creamy flavor of Vanilla Shakeology! If you’ve never bought passion fruit, look for fruits with purple, yellow, or orange skin - it should be smooth and free from bruises. Heavier pieces will have more seeds and juice. Cut the fruit with a sharp knife and scoop out the seeds and pulp like you would a kiwi!

Can’t find passion fruit? Canned passion fruit nectar can be used instead! Can’t find canned?! Try pineapple and add a squeeze of lime 🤤

Ingredients
* 1 cup water
* 1 scoop Vanilla Shakeology
* ¼ cup frozen passion fruit pulp -OR- 3 passion fruit, peels and seeds discarded
* 2 tbsp chopped fresh mint leaves
* 1 cup ice

Instructions
Place all ingredients in the blender - cover and blend until smooth.

Portion Fix Containers: ½ Purple, 1 Red
2B Mindset Plate It: Enjoy as part of breakfast

1st cleanse in 2020! Day 1 is in the books!

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Timing is everything, isn’t that what they say? Well, I didn’t nail the timing on this one, but I also don’t back down on a commitment so here I am, crushing day one and already looking forward to tomorrow!

A little background, yesterday I had oral surgery and had a tooth removed, yeah, GONE! Nothing was put in it’s place and this is the first smile since surgery. I’m delightfully surprised that ½ my face isn’t drooping. They suggested meals that are “mushy” or can be sipped through a straw, so I thought this would be the perfect timing for a 3-Day Refresh. Right? Wrong! ha!

From top to bottom, left to right:
1) Breakfast - I started with water and added a squeeze of lemon to make it more exciting, followed by Pumpkin Spice Shakeology. Note - this is a vegan cleanse so you can chose pumpkin spice, vanilla, chocolate, cafe latte, peppermint mocha, or salted caramel, but it needs to be the vegan formula.

2) Fiber sweep (am snack) - just the name makes me want to visit the toilet, but this cleanse does not have you glued to the bathroom one bit. In fact, I don’t notice any changes in my bathroom habits except possibly more peeing from drinking extra water to cleanse my body. Fiber sweep is lemony and gets quite thick, very fast, so I pour it in a breakfast glass + add 10 oz water and chug! (think back to your college days, down the hatch!)

3) Lunch - so delicious and oh so filling. I mean, seriously, this is a cleanse yall?!?! Look at all this food while others are fasting, juicing, or starving themselves. I choose to “eat” Vanilla Fresh protein shake rather than “drink” it, I just think it’s that good and want to savor it. Clean dark roasted peanut butter (1 healthy fat) is pretty damn delicious swirled in I must say, but you get a few healthy fat options (avocado, hummus, etc) if you aren’t feeling nut butter. Tip —> Almond butter is preferred over peanut butter because it has less bloating effects. I had a side of blueberries (1 fruit) and red peppers & cherry tomatoes (1 veggie) for a great combo!

4) Zing juice (pm snack) - I can’t believe I’m 42 yrs old and this is my 1st time juicing?!?! My 7 yr old even knew how to do it so he showed me. Any chance I have to get my kids in the kitchen is a win in my book. Of course after making my “juice” we needed to make some fresh lemonade. Cheeky monkey. Juicing is an option so if you don’t have a juicer, no dramas, you can do 1 veggie and 1 healthy fat (think celery and PB, cucumber, tomatoes and avocado salad, etc) and stick with the plan. I think I prefer the raw food over juicing, I just hate to see all that fiber being tossed out, but with my dental situation, I’ll try to juice each day. See 3-Day Refresh recipes here.

5) Dinner - Last Vanilla Fresh of the day and I was missing my peanut butter, but still delicious. I was worried about my teeth and thought about blending my salad, but thought I’d tough it out and see how things go. Delicious although I ate like a bird being very cautious of my stitches. That salad is huge and should have salt and pepper on it, along with pumpkin seeds, but I chose to add extra olive oil instead in fear a pumpkin seed might get stuck in one of my stitches. So many veggies, I love it!

The last beautiful picture is me winding down for the night with my ice pack strapped on my face and I was trying to drink water when it dawned on me, I couldn’t do both. Ha! I have ice for 5 days and then heat for a week. Wish me luck, this is going to be a long recovery! Read about Day 2 and Day 3 too!

Do you like vegetables? if not, what’s the hang up for you? If so, what’s your favorite?