600 days + Sushi Day + Cardio Day with Shaun T’s Dance Party

As of yesterday I have logged onto My Fitness Pal for 600 days.  I am so glad that I started my journey 600 days ago.  I have had wonderful support from ALL my friends on My Fitness Pal, and I thank you.  Some may think "WOW 600 days and she is still not A Healthier Version of herself yet???"  Yes I am!  But there is always room for improvement.  Not perfection, but improvement.  Never settle for less.

Sushi Day!!!!!

I made this!

Loved them.

I am going to talk food first today because I was very excited and intrigued by the idea of making my own sushi at home.  As I have mentioned I am not a big sushi eater only because I have no one to go with me to tell what I should and should not try.  My extent of eating sushi is, California Rolls.  So today on the meal plan was Salmon Avocado Sushi for lunch.  But we will get to that in a moment or two.

Today’s food…

Breakfast: Egg Quinoa Parfait

  

My new favourite!

I could eat this every morning, I really could.  But then I would get bored of it and not want it anymore and that would be sad.  It is SO good; I will definitely be eating this at least once or twice a week in the future.  You could definitely mix in different fruits for a different flavour.

Snack: Chocolate Mint Protein Shake

This was too minty as the recipe was written.  I only drank half of the shake.  I think next time I will only use ½ teaspoon of mint extract.

So to make up for the half a shake that went down the drain, I had a Red Velvet Cookie.  I had some beet puree leftover from the Red Velvet Pancakes that I made up yesterday, so I decided to try and make up a cookie recipe using it.  

They actually tasted pretty good. 

 The daycare kids liked them.

Lunch: Salmon Avocado Sushi

It was sushi time.  After I made lunch for the daycare kids and served it up to them, I started making my lunch.  While they ate I mixed, spread, rolled and cut.  It was SO easy!  This sushi is made with using Quinoa instead of rice.  I made the quinoa up this morning (I went right to bed last night after posting, I knew the quinoa could wait until this morning)  It only takes 12 to 15 minutes to cook.  I cooked it while I was making school lunches for my children.  I used smoked salmon instead of the sushi-grade salmon.  So  I was ready to go at lunch time.

I did not have a proper bamboo rolling mat so I just bought a place mat (which did have bamboo in it) at the store the other night.  But I forgot to get some plastic wrap, my 1500m roll finally ran out...so I just cut a Ziploc bag and placed it down on the place mat.  I then laid the seaweed sheet on top of the plastic.

I spooned on half of the quinoa onto the seaweed sheet, and then spread it around leaving the top and bottom edges clear.  The quinoa is mixed with a teaspoon of Rice Vinegar.

I then placed the avocado and the salmon across the quinoa (sorry I forgot to take a picture, my mouth was watering by this time), I then rolled the seaweed sheet over the salmon and avocado and then rolled it all up and sealed it with some water.

I passed on the Wasabi and the light soy sauce.

I am not sure if I did it as the pro's do...but they sure did taste great.  

These are definitely going to be made again and again.

Snack: Red Velvet Cupcake

NO…these are not included in the “4 Weeks to A Leaner You” meal plan.  I still had more beet puree and I wanted to try a different way of making the cookies, but I used an extra egg white and the batter looked more like cake batter than cookie dough.  I know that I could have added more oat flour, but I thought… “I already have the cookies; let’s see how cupcakes turn out”…so that’s what I did.  I made the cupcakes for second snack.

My daughter loved them, my son not so much.  The other children in the daycare all tried them and 3 out of 5 ate them and liked them.  Awesome!  Healthy Children = Happy Parents.  The cupcakes are only 90 calories per serving, without the icing, so I added another little snack while I was cooking the chicken up for dinner tonight.

Homemade Salsa and Sweet Potato Rice Crisps

I picked these crisps up at the store the other night and thought I would give them a try.  They are delicious…too good…that good that you would have to hide the bag.  That is if you like sweet potato.

Dinner: Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

This was the icing on my cake of food for the day.

  SO GOOD!

A GREAT day of food today for sure!

I had a great comment left on my blog from Rae, on something that I was a bit concerned about too.

Rae has left a new comment on your post "Rockin’ Body and Zumba Rush Kind of Day": 

“Hi there! I was just reading your food list that you show the picture of...I think that for the snacks, things separated with a semi-colin are separate snacks...meaning, if there are 3 things separated by a semi-colin, then you are to choose one of those options for your snack. I noticed sometimes they use a plus sign + so to me that means eat all that. It just seemed like a big snack to have 1 can of tuna, 2 rice cakes, 1 cup carrots and celery, and a string cheese. That's like 3 snacks to me or a lunch. I could be wrong, but you might want to look into it. I just wanted to bring it up because I don't want you eating more calories than you want. Keep up the great work though and thanks for sharing!”

This was my reply…

“Hey Rae,

Thanks for your concern. I was concerned about it too, and how some of the meals are cooked up. But with looking at the total calorie intake for each day that is given in the magazine meal plan, I am still under all of the calorie counts each day. I will mention this subject in my post later today as others may be concerned as well. In the picture of the tuna, rice cakes and veggies...it looks like a lot of food but if you add up the calories of the carrots and celery, it's next to nothing really. That snack totals 236 calories all in. The article states...

"The high protein, moderate fat and moderate carb approach of this plan will give you the right combo of nutrients to rev your metabolism and fuel you for the training plan on page 74. With an average daily intake of 1,650 calories, 150 grams of protein, 135 grams of carbs and 60 grams of healthy fats, you'll never feel deprived. All of the foods in this plan are clean and simple, and can be found at any grocer".

So to me...that tells me that I should be eating it all. And as it said "you'll never feel deprived"...even with all that food, there are some days I do get hunger in the evenings, but that tells me that my body will dive into the fat stores I have in my body.

Thanks again for your concern. 
Stay Strong!

Trina”

I will use Monday as an example since yesterday and today I changed a few things.  The calories for Monday according to the meal plan should have been 1,633.  My actual calorie intake was 1,582.  I went back and checked each day since I started and I was under the recommended caloric intake.  But I’m okay with that.  It is definitely a change from the meal plan with Body Revolution where you are only eating around 1,200 calories a day.  I am still eating good clean foods, just a bit more of it in a day.  So just be mindful of the ingredients you use in the meals you prepare for yourself.  They could be higher or lower in calories to what they use in the meal plan. 

With eating more calories the weight may come off slower but at least it will come off and my FAT stores on my body will be depleted.  I will have a “Going out of FATness sale”…”Everything must go!”

I know one thing that would hurry along the FATness sale…more cardio.  Even though I did 45 minutes of Shaun T’s Dance Party this morning, I wanted more but did not have any more time this morning.  My afternoon during daycare naptime…it didn’t happen.  And tonight, the night just got away from me.  I will definitely make time on the weekend for extra cardio.

For now I am going to bed.  The last few nights have been rough sleeps again due to little feet kicking me in the back again.  So I will bid you a good night, and talk to you again tomorrow.

Until then…Stay Strong!

Good night

Trina