Easy lunch

Lunch doesn't need to be difficult or without flavor when you are watching! 

Tomato & feta cheese sandwich with Tuscan herb hummus & balsamic drizzle on everything bagel thin! 

It's satisfying & quick. This was with tomatoes from the yard so it was exceptionally tasty. 

Only problem the tomatoes did not want to stay in so I had to fight them lol. 

If you are watching your carbs you can skip the bread & make a thicker cut of tomato for the base. 

If you are doing 21 day fix your containers will be:

1 yellow, 1 blue & 1/2 green

Enjoy 

Pepper & Hummus sandwich on Asiago bread

So I was trying to figure out what in the world to have for lunch the other day & if you guys are like me you can open & close the fridge a dozen times as though something different will magically so it's face! 

This time however my beautiful red & yellow peppers were screaming my name but what to make? 

My mom had given me a few pieces of asiago bread (which not the best for a diet but ok overall ) 

So pepper sandwich was born. 

I cut up the red & yellow peppers not too small but you can cut them how you like, I am also addicted to mild banana pepper rings. I layered them all on & put Tuscan hummus on both pieces of bread. 

I zapped it for a few minutes on each side in a pan coated with coconut oil cooking spray. 

I used the remaining peppers for the side dipped in more hummus & a side of grapes! 

Simple but delicious 

If you are doing the 21 day fix this would equal to 1 green, 1 1/2 blue (a little over the recommended but it's hummus so all good) , 1 purple & 1-2 yellows. My bread was the smaller end pieces but I would still count them as 2 yellows 

Enjoy! 

Update schedule

Hello, if you guys & gals follow any of my other blogs you know that I now have 3! So I have decided to give myself a posting update schedule for each with dome exceptions here & there! 

This one is the one I am giving 3 days to.

They are: Mondays, Wednsdays & Fridays. 

I will still be telling my story on my journey but will be adding in some exercises & recipes that I have made to help me along the way & now to help you. 

If there is any recipe that you would like please let me know. 

Spinach & Artichoke stuffed portobello

This is another 21 day fix dinner I made for myself. Another one of my favorite things to eat are portobello mushrooms. On occasion I chop it up to add to other stuff but mostly I love them stuffed! Before starting this diet I would fry up loose hot sausage to put in it but not now. 

Serves 1

Ingredients:

For mushroom:

1 portobello cap wiped clean, & stemmed 

Frozen spinach-thawed

A few artichokes hearts from a jar or can

Some jalapeño diced tomatoes drained

Pizza or marinara sauce

Feta

Balsamic vinegar (optional)

Sides: 

Sweet potato with cinnamon

Salad tossed with balsamic vinegar

Directions:

Spray sauté pan with cooking oil (I use coconut) or very little olive oil

Sauté spinach & artichoke hearts till warmed through. Toss in a bit of crumbled feta and let melt. 

Preheat broiler to low

Add some pizza or marinara sauce to bottom of caps and fill with spinach mixture, a few jalapeño diced tomatoes & a little more feta. 

Put under broiler till cheese melts 

Drizzle with balsamic vinegar if desired

Serve with a simple green salad tossed with balsamic vinegar & baked sweet potato drizzled with cinnamon 

Containers:

2 green

1 blue

1 tsp

1 yellow

Balsamic vinegar & cinnamon are free foods! 

DECIDE.COMMIT.SUCCEED---Beachbody program begins again with 21 day fix

It would be a few more years before I would turn towards Beachbody products again, it was there to welcome me back. The first one back for me was 21 Day fix. The newest program on the block and the newest Beachbody trainer was the one that got me to commit again. The trainer was Autumn Calabrese. I have posted a video on a previous post to show what the 21 day fix is about so here I will give you a brief overview. I bought the challenge pack which came with my first month of Shakeology (which I will post about separately)and a bonus disc of plyo fix. So your workouts consist of: Total body cardio fix Upper fix Lower fix Pilates fix Cardio fix Dirty 30 Yoga fix They are 30 minute workouts. Some have 2 rounds of 4 workouts, others have 4 rounds of 2 workouts. Each workout in the set lasts 1 minute which sounds short, but is killer! And each workout in a round is done twice. You do one workout a day and with the various workouts you will never get bored! The program also comes with colored containers and a meal plan. When you get your containers you will most likely say what all of us did, and that is OMG they are so small I am going to starve, but what will actually happen is you will realize just how much you were overeating before. You get a certain number of each container a day and the way to figure it out is A. take your current weight x11=your caloric baseline B. Your caloric baseline + 400n(fix calorie burn)= Your calorie needs C. Your caloric needs-750 (calorie deficit)= Your calorie target This will be used to find where you fall on the calorie chart. Myself I fall in the first bracket as do most people. It's 1200-1499 What that meant for me is that I got the following containers a day: 3 Green-veggies 2 Purple-fruits 4 Reds-protein 2 Yellow-carbs 1 blue-healthy fats like cheese and nuts 1 orange-seeds and dressing I learned quickly when making a salad just how BIG these containers actually were and you will as well. The other thing I learned was how to fail and move past it. Sounds weird I know but if I had not tanked those first 21 days I may not have realized just what was truly needed for the program and for me to get where I wanted to be. PREP IS KEY! I heard this throughout the program and assumed ok I am having this for breakfast and this for lunch then I would get home for dinner and realize oh crap I thought my sweet potato was a green but its a yellow and now I am over and I am too tired to do my workouts. Once you get use to it, it will become easier just like everything else as long as you know what you will have that day. You are going for a lifestyle change and so this program does not limit what you eat just how much. Also there are the normal culprits that you need to curb. I always drank my coffee with a ton of cream and sugar and that was one thing I had to learn to do without so I cut it down to 1 cup a day and it was black with no sugar. I was amazed that I was okay with that but now it is second nature. And as someone who likes her sweets I had to curb those as well because lets face it, it would be the reason I look the way I did and feel the way I did and so I had to let those fall away but not completely. This workout lets you have treats in place of certain containers and even wine is on the menu. After all that, there are many free things on the lists as well and easily fit into the program. So I did 3 rounds of the program and I am getting ready to incorporate a 4th round into my newest Beachbody program Les Mills Combat which I will post about on a separate post. In all I have lost around 13Lbs & about 13 inches. Seems to be my lucky number. I enjoyed this so much that I wanted to be able to help others with this program or any other beachbody programs and so I made the decision in May to become a Beachbody Coach. I will continue to post on here about all Beachbody programs and even some workouts that are not. But I will always be here for any questions that you have. If you want to sign up for Beachbody and have a free coach then head on over to my website to join: http://www.beachbodycoach.com/DRACARA On there you can sign up for a free account, shop, send me questions if you do not want to post them here and I can even get you into a closed group on facebook to help with your progress, they worked very well for me.

Lose up to 15 pounds in only 21 days! | 21 Day Fix | Autumn Fitness

Naan white pizza - 21 day fix approved!

This is one of the easiest and most varying recipes! I love Naan bread and anytime I am craving pizza I turn towards one of these. 

Ingredients:

1 Naan bread I use garlic but you can use whatever you like

Olive oil

Sprinkle of garlic powder or fresh garlic depending on your taste

Toppings of your choice for this I normally would use fresh tomatoes but the only one I had was bad so I had to turn to del monte no salt diced basil & herb tomatoes drained

oregano (I had some I dried from the fresh oregano in my yard last year)

Sprinkle of crumbled feta

Fresh Mozzarella torn into a few pieces

Parmesan cheese sprinkled 

Fresh basil

Directions:

Normally I follow the time on the Naan flatbread but sometimes that leads to a soggy center. 

Preheat oven to 350•  I used a pizza stone so I left it in the oven while it preheated.

Brush olive oil on flatbread and sprinkle with garlic powder or minced fresh garlic. (You can skip this if you feel the garlic Naan bread is garlicky enough, me I'm Italian so there is no such thing as too much garlic) 

Put on stone & bake for 5 minutes, remove pizza and add tomatoes, sprinkle on feta, more oregano if needed, and put back in oven for 2-3 minutes just to warm up the tomatoes & start melting off the feta. 

Remove from oven and rip apart fresh mozzarella so you can maximize the space needed with just your 1/2 blue container. Since the other half will be for your feta 

Bake on stone for another 3-5 minutes or until cheese melts. 

Remove pizza and julianne fresh basil to sprinkle on top. You can add a drizzle of balsamic vinegar on top if you want. 

21 day fix containers:

Pizza:

1 yellow

3/4 blue

1/2 green

1 tsp

I served it with a side salad of spinach & Kale & saved some of my blue container of feta to sprinkle on top & used balsamic vinegar & mrs. Dash original blend salt free

Salad:

2 green

1/4 blue

I also saved a yellow so I could have a glass of wine

Wine:

1 yellow

Enjoy! 

The Journey begins

Hello all, I will be putting pictures of my progress up soon along with questions, recipes, different fitness programs and the like. For now however let me take you part way down the path. All throughout high school and even a bit afterwards I did not have a weight problem at all, but like any kid at that age I though I did. I remember if I got anywhere near 100lbs I dieted until I dropped back down. I am only 5ft tall so imagine that stupidity that I had gone through. I can not even imagine going that thin again, I am so glad to leave that girl behind except for her adventurous spirit. With that being said I worked hard after high school and just went through the motions, work, friends, food, sleep, work again with not a thought of what I was funneling down my throat, after all I was still young and never had an issue with what I was eating before so why would I think about it now. Well that was completely wrong. Where the point that I got fat started I am not sure. I do remember looking at a picture that was taken of me and wondering who it was. It was at that point somewhere that I said enough and vowed to lose the weight but I did not know how I was going to do that. Now this was around 15-20 years ago give or take. I was like most people that said I will just cut back on food that should take care of it, but it barely scratched the surface. Don't get me wrong food is a big part of it but as I had to learn it was not as simple as cutting back. I had to learn about what I was putting in my body and when. I also had to learn about exercising the right way. As a kid running around constantly and never really stopping helped but as an adult there was no way that was going to cut it. I dieted here and there with the weight going up and down but it wasn't until I got into Tae Kwon Do that I noticed the significant change in my body. I was at about 115lbs then and still was looking to lose 5 or more pounds because I was still in that mindset of it being too big. I was mostly muscle at the time but that scale was still ruling my life. I have always had big thighs, it is the one thing that has never changed in all this time and it was the one thing that I just kept seeing as a problem. Had I stopped to think of my past of youth cheerleading, some gymnastics, volleyball and at that time Tae Kwon Do it would have hit me that all of that involved a lot of leg work and therefore is where my "big" thighs came into play and the only change in that would be to lengthen my muscles and not try to rid them all together. And if the thighs were not enough here came the dreaded belly! I always had what most of us call the "pouch", I am Italian after all and pasta and bread was in almost every meal and so no matter what, it was going to be there. But then it grew and grew and grew and suddenly all I saw was belly, it even made me forget the thighs! So now what? I started to get into yoga and even thought about heading to Colorado for the yoga journal yoga convention but as anyone who has done yoga from tapes (yes those were the media of the future then lol) knows it is one thing to do tapes it is quite another to go into classes and so I thought I needed to get into some classes before committing to going to the convention and so at the time I was living in Lower Burrell, Pa and my bus I took into work always passed a Tae Kwon Do place and the sign in the window had listed many of the classes that were being offered and one of them was yoga and so it was set, I would go take the class and then head off to Colorado. However when I had called the classes were not being offered at the time but I was welcomed to come try Tae Kwon Do since it was also on my list of things I wanted to do and so I did. I remember thinking that I was just going to observe a class and so I was in jeans and that became my first uniform that I worked out in but I quickly fell in love and so now I had a new outlet to kiss weight goodbye. It worked for awhile and I got to my brown belt which was just 2 belts away from black and then I decided to buy a house. Yep bye bye money and bye bye class. I was back to my circle again except things fell by the waist side and it became work, food, sleep work, repeat. Even though I was no longer available to go to classes the huge thing I forgot was that I still needed to practice and I still needed to eat right and so back on the weight went and back to the yo yo diets my body went. By the time things had even somewhat settled down to where I was thinking to possible go back to class 10 years had went by and with no practicing there was so much that I had forgotten and so I threw it back out of my mind. I topped out at somewhere around 160lbs at some point afterwards and so once again I did not even notice getting that big until I saw a picture and that is when the gym membership came about. I had a trainer at the time who really worked with me and got me stronger and I was down to 139lbs. A place I would kill for right now, but more about that later. Eventually I was done with my training and really did not have the money to commit to anymore time on it but still stayed with the gym until one day I got sick and had to take time off. Just a simple cold and yet it brought me to a fitness black hole and so when I went back it became less and less time I was spending at the gym to the point where I pay and have not been there in months. I needed something else that was going to fit in my schedule and that is where Beachbody came in to play. It started a few years ago with P90x and as a bigger person who sat on her butt instead of going to the gym this program was killer but I still loved it and after 2 rounds of it I saw progress but knew what I needed to practice on and that little voice in my head still would not go away and once again I went into rotation of work and sleep. Thanks to house that seemed to suck out any sort of money that I had I had to start thinking of different ways to make money to pay for it and so I slumped into a bad rhythm again. That is until now! In future posts I will document my Beachbody journey and how figured out the eating thing so far. I hope any of you reading this that are going through the same thing find this useful and informative! I am still on my path and I welcome the company!