Week 1-Friday

Fish Friday--Honey-Soy Glazed Salmon
taken from 6 Week Meal Planning 

What you will need:

1 skinless salmon fillet- about 1 lb (cut into 3 pieces)
1 bushel asparagus
1 T honey
1 T soy sauce
Sea Salt
Black pepper
1 bag frozen sweet potato fries

Direction

Steam asparagus until soft-We decided to grill the asparagus following these directions
In a separate dish, mix together honey and soy sauce
**We chose not to follow the directions below but rather these directions for cooking

Place salmon fillets and cooked asparagus on baking sheet lined with tinfoil sprayed with EVOO
Season fish and veggies with sea salt and pepper
Broil for 5 minutes (remove from oven)
Drizzle 2/3 honey/soy micture over fish and veggies

Broil another 2-5 minutes (2 for medium cooked, 5 for well-done)
Drizzle remain mixture over fish-We do this step

ENJOY!

Sweet Potato Fries
While the salmon is cooking put the fries in the oven- the fries we got had to cook for 15 minutes  

Stars
Jessie: 4 out of 5
Jason: 4.25 out of 5

Thoughts:
It took us right at an hour from start to ready to serve. The salmon had to marinate for 15 minutes on each side so while that was marinating Jason got the asparagus ready. Jason said it was difficult do do all three (salmon, asparagus and fries all at the same time). Jason said he gave this meal a 4.25 because he didn't like the sweet potato fries. He also said he thought he could improve the salmon by cooking it more often. I liked this meal, I would almost say I really liked it if it wasn't for the fish. The whole meal was very yummy and very flavorful. I know that we are eating fish so of course it is going to taste like fish so I'm just going to have to get over that. The glaze on the salmon was AMAZING! I would defiantly eat this meal again and I'm hoping the more times I have it that I will get over my dislike of fish! Overall a very flavorful and pretty simple to make meal that we will make again.

2012 Summer Transformation
Weight: gained 1.5 pounds 
Water: 138 ounces
Breakfast: 2 pieces white Goldfish bread with peanut butter and a banana
Lunch: Hamburger and a small salad
Snack: am- 1 cup low fat cottage cheese
           pm-cubed American and Swiss cheese and  grapes, a mini butterfinger candy
Dinner: Honey-Soy Glazed Salmon, asparagus and sweet potato fried
Exercise: 50 minutes of Hydro-fit-This class is going to be a lot of fun. I will start by saying the average age was about 65 and if you were to take Ashley and I out it would probably go up to 70! I'm sure it is a good work out but I will say when I get done I don't feel like I really worked that hard. It is a class where I don't get my heart rate up that much but at least it is 50 minutes of movement so that is better than sitting at my desk right?!? Either way I think the class is going to be a lot of fun!
Sleep: bed at 9:30pm and was asleep by 10:00 (I only know this because I didn't see the news again for a second night!) and got up at 6:35am so I got about 8.5 hours of sleep. I slept pretty good and I don't think I even had to get up and go to the bathroom!

Week 1-Thursday

Slow-cooker Thursday--Slow-cooker Curried Chicken with Ginger and Yogurt
taken from 6 Week Meal Planning 

What you will need:
1/3 C tomato paste
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 T curry powder
1 T grated fresh ginger
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 C water
1 medium onion, chopped
2 lbs bonless, skinless chicken thighs (about 10)
Kosher salt
Black peper
1 1/2 C long-grain white rice-we used whole grain rice
1/2 C plain while-milk Greek yogurt
2 scallions, thinly sliced

Direction
In a 4 to 6 quart slow cooker, whisk together the tomato paste, garlic, curry powder, ginger, cumin and 3/4 cup of water. Add the onion and stir to combine. Place the chicken on tome and season with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper
Cover and cook until the chicken is tender, on low for 7 to 8 hours or on high for 3 to 4 hours- ours was done cooking in 5 hours on low and we didn't eat for another 3 hours so the chicken was a little tough
Twenty minutes before serving cook the rice according to the package
Just before serving, add the yogurt and 1/2 teaspoon salt to the chicken and stir to combine.

ENJOY!

 Ready to go in the crock pot

Broccoli 
One bag of Steamers broccoli

Stars
Jessie: 2.5 out of 5
Jason: 3.75 out of 5

Thoughts:
It didn't take too much time mix everything and get it ready to go in the crock pot or to add the ingredients at the end. Jason said he gave this meal a 3.75 because it was OK but not great. I liked the meal but definitely didn't love it. I think for me it was a texture thing and a look thing. It had a good taste but the overall look made my stomach do flips. Overall a easy meal that was flavorful and we might eat again.

2012 Summer Transformation
Weight: lost 2 pounds 
Water: 122 ounces
Breakfast: 2 pieces white Goldfish bread with peanut butter and a banana
Lunch: leftovers Cheeseless Pasta Bake and Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut Granola Bar
Snack: am-1 cup nonfat cottage cheese
           pm-slice of banana chocolate chip bread
Dinner: Slow-cooker Curried Chicken with Ginger and Yogurt and broccoli
Exercise: 50 minutes of Total Sculpt and Tone-today was our first class and it was a great workout! We did some arms, squats, and ab work.
Sleep: last night I went to bed at 9:30pm and was asleep by 10:00 (I only know this because I didn't see the news!) and got up at 6:45am so I got about 9 hours of sleep. I slept ok, I had some weird dreams but overall I felt rested. -NEW CATEGORY I'm adding sleep as a new category since sleep can play a big role in the success or failure of weight loss.I am going to try to track what time I go to bed and get up and how I slept so I can see if there is any pattern.

Week 1-Wednesday

Chicken Wednesday--Lemon Pepper Chicken
taken from 6 Week Meal Planning 

What you will need:

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast or 3-4 lb. full chicken
1/4 C. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 lemons or 1/2 lemon juice
3 tsp. minces garlic
1 tsp. ground black pepper
Salt

Direction

Preheat grill to 500 degrees
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the EVOO, lemon, garlic and black peper.
Season the chicken well with salt and toss into a bowl. Marinate the chicken for 15 minutes.
Grill chicken until marked and cooked through, 8-10 minutes per side.
Squeeze the juice of the reaming lemon over the cooked chicken

ENJOY!

You can also roast the chicken and here are those directions:
Preheat oven to 450ºF
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the EVOO, lemon, garlic and black peper.
Season the chicken well with salt and toss into a bowl. Marinate the chicken for 15 minutes.
Put chicken in a large, cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat with 2 turns of the pan of EVOO, about 2 tablespoons. Sear the chicken, meat side-down until golden brown, about 5 minutes, then turn over and transfer the pan to the oven. Roast until cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Potatoes 

What you will need:

2-3 large potatoes, washed, peeled and chopped-I didn't peel them because we like the skin
1/2 an onion, chopped
Butter, margarine (or Earth Balance if you're dairy free) to taste-I used 2 tablespoons and it seems to be perfect
Baby carrots, chopped and steamed

Direction
Put the potatoes, onion and butter in pan and fry

Carrots
Baby carrots, chopped and steamed-we boiled the carrots for 10 minutes and they were perfect

Stars
Jessie: 5 out of 5
Jason: 3.87 out of 5

Thoughts:
Jason and I split the cooking with this meal; he made the chicken and I did the potatoes and carrots. It took us right at an hour from start to ready to serve.  Jason said he gave this meal a 3.87 because it is not quite a four (hopefully that was helpful to someone!). I loved this meal! This is actually a meal we have eaten before minus the carrots so it seemed like a "normal" meal to me. We used frozen chicken breast since that is what we had on hand but in the future I would use fresh and I don't think it would have been quite as dry. Overall a very easy meal and very flavorful.

2012 Summer Transformation
Weight: gained 1/2 pound 
Water: 118 ounces
Breakfast: 2 pieces white Goldfish bread with peanut butter and a banana-I ran out of my Skippy reduced fat peanut butter so I borrowed some Sunflower butter from my co-worker. It was pretty good but very oily/watery so I think I will go back to my regular stuff tomorrow!
Lunch: leftovers Cheeseless Pasta Bake and 1 cup low fat cottage cheese
Snack: am-no snack
           pm-slice of banana chocolate chip bread
Dinner: Lemon Pepper Chicken, fried potatoes and cooked carrots
Exercise: none- I missed my first workout class, Hydro-fit, because I left my bag at home! Tomorrow starts Total Sculpt and Tone

Week 1-Tuesday

Pasta Tuesday--Cheeseless Pasta Bake and Salad
taken from 6 Week Meal Planning 

What you will need:

2 cups cooked whole wheat pasta-We used Healthy Harvest Rotini
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup hummus-We used Wild Garden Traditional
1/4 red pepper, chopped thinly
10 leaves of fresh basil, chopped
1 large handful of grape tomatoes, chopped
1/3 tablespoon pepper
Sprinkle of salt
Pasta sauce to top-We used Prego

Direction

Preheat oven to 375 and grease three small ramekins-We don't have ramekins so we used an 8x8 baking dish
Cook pasta according to box and drain
While pasta is cooking: chop up red pepper, fresh basil, grape tomatoes and beat eggs
In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except for pasta sauce
Pour mix evening into ramekins and bake at 375 for 25 minutes or until egg is firm
Remove from oven and drizzle with pasta sauce

ENJOY!

 This is the half of the dish we didn't eat

Salad

What you will need:

1 bag spinach or romaine salad mix

2 small tomatoes, chopped

1 cucumber, chopped

baby carrots, chopped

dressing of your choice- I added cottage cheese and a small amount of ranch 

 This is the half of the salad we didn't eat

Stars

Jessie: 3 out of 5
Jason: 2.5 out of 5

Thoughts:
Jason made the meal tonight since I had to be at a board meeting until about 8:00pm. Jason got to eat the meal right out of the oven whereas I warmed it up in the microwave. It took about an hour from start to ready to serve and there was lots of chopping involved. Jason said he gave it a 2.5 since there was no meat but if it was served again he would eat it. I really enjoyed the pasta even though mine was reheated but the salad wasn't my favorite. I gave it a try but I just really don't like carrots, tomatoes or cucumbers. I would defiantly have the pasta again but I would serve it with just a lettuce salad none of the veggies. 

2012 Summer Transformation
Weight: down 2 pounds 
Water: 133 ounces
Breakfast: 2 pieces white Goldfish bread with peanut butter and a banana
Lunch: leftovers Turkey Tacos and a low fat chocolate chip muffin
Snack: am-1 cup low fat cottage cheese
           pm-slice of banana chocolate chip bread
Dinner: Cheeseless pasta bake and salad
Exercise: none

Week 1-Monday

Mexican Monday--Turkey Tacos with rice
taken from 6 Week Meal Planning 

What you will need:

Lean ground turkey-1 lb.

Whole Wheat tortillas--I used regular because we already had them and I couldn't see wasting them

Taco season package

Mango Peach Salsa-I couldn't find this at the store so we used regular taco sauce

Shredded lettuce

Shredded cheddar cheese

2 tomatoes chopped

1 cup brown rice or package of instance rice-I used Uncle Ben's 90 second microwave rice

Direction

Brown ground turkey, drain

Add 2/3 cup of water and taco season mix to meat and let simmer

While the meat is simmering cook rice and warm tortillas in the oven or microwave

Add meat, rice, cheese, lettuce, tomtoes and salsa to tortillas

ENJOY!

I would give this meal 5 out of 5 stars! It only took 20 minutes from start to ready to serve on the table. We eat a lot of beef in my family and have never tried turkey as a substitute so we were a little nervous about how it would taste, look, etc. but we could not taste the difference and since the meat was browned it looked just like beef. The other positive thing about using turkey meat was there was little to no grease. The meal was also very filling and we had leftovers for lunch on Tuesday.

2012 Summer Transformation
Water: 72 ounces
Breakfast: 2 pieces white Goldfish bread with peanut butter
Lunch: had leftover Olive Garden and a piece of pizza
Snack: Apple fruit bar
Dinner: Turkey Taco's
Exercise: none

2012 Summer Transformation--The plan!

The 2012 Summer Transformation has six things I want to really work very hard on this summer:
1. Water-get at least 64 ounces each day
2. Eat breakfast EVERYDAY!
3. Bring my lunch to work
4. Make good snack choices
5. Cook dinner at home
6. Exercise at least five days a week

I am going to attempt to blog everyday about the meal we made and how I am doing on the six things listed above.

Today, Monday, May 7th is day one and here are the beginning pictures:

I posted this back in January but I wanted to share it again:

As a side note I finally gave in and got a Pinterest account, you can find my pins here, so many of the things I will be blogging about have come from the great ideas I found on there.This is one of those ideas:

I made two jars as you can see. One says Pounds to go and the other says Pounds lost. To be at the ideal weight for me, in my eyes not the eyes of that stupid height weight chart, I would like to lose 61.5 pounds. Each stone in the Pounds to go jar represents half of a pound so there are 123 stones in that jar. Hopefully each week I will be able to move stones over to the Pounds lost and soon enough all the stones will be in that jar!

And here we are again...

Seriously how many times can I post that I have a NEW plan? I was just looking back at my last three post and all are NEW plans...OK! I'm done! Today truly starts the 2012 Summer Transformation!

There are two parts to the 2012 Summer Transformation; Food and Exercise 


Food
About two weeks ago I found a pin on Pinterest about a 6 Week Meal Planning guide. This thing was seriously made for dummies! Jason and I are what I would qualify as "picky eaters" so when I first looked at this I thought NO WAY! but then I thought again if this 2012 Summer Transformation is really going to happen we need to make a change. We also agreed we needed to start branching out so that Kinley would too because the last thing the world needs in another picky eater.

Today was my first day of "summer hours" so that means time for change. Since I will get off work EVERYDAY at 4:30pm I can be home by 5:00pm which makes me a super happy girl! There are so many things I get to do during the summer; help Jason cook dinner, go on a family walk, work in the yard, clean the house, the possibility are endless so we thought why not start the 6 Week Meal Planning. I will try to post daily about our new food adventures and give a quick review.

Exercise
One great thing about working at a University is they offer fitness classes year round! This summer my co-worker and I found two great classes we are excited to take.  Monday, Wednesday & Friday we are taking Hydro-fit (a water aerobics class) and Tuesday & Thursday is Total Sculpt and Tone (Shape up your core and redefine your muscles).

I will also be doing several races over the summer including the first one the Saturday which is a 4-mile-race.

Hopefully, this will be the last time I have to post a NEW plan! Happy Monday!