Healthy Strawberry Smoothie Recipe

Literally, I promise you, you will crave this thing for dessert. It tastes like strawberry shortcake, but you can eat these all day long if you wanted to.

The ingredients aren't that impressive and it’s super simple and cheap (yay, generic!)

Here’s what you need:

I buy my frozen strawberries from Walmart usually. No matter where you get yours, make sure there’s no added sugar. (Check the ingredients!)

For a tall glass of guilt-free strawberry shortcake smoothie, I use about 12 strawberries.

Put your strawberries in your Ninja / blender, then scoop in a spoonful of plain Greek yogurt.

I only use a little bit of yogurt, but you can totally use more.

Then, add your Stevia. I use 2 Tablespoons, but again, you can use more if you like it super sweet.

Add 1/4 cup of water, blend it up and viola!

I feel guilty posting this “recipe” on here because it’s so easy.

Clean Strawberry Shortcake Smoothie Recipe:

12-15 Strawberries

1 heaping spoonful of Greek yogurt

2 tablespoons of Stevia

1/4 cup water

*Blend it all up and enjoy!

Ch-ch-ch-chia!!!!!

ABC called this ancient seed the “it” food of 2013 here. So why are chia seeds so popular?

Well for one, it made chia pets possible. True story! 

Seriously though…

Chia seeds are super high in Omega 3′s , an fatty acid essential to any diet. Omega 3′s benefit everything from your arteries, joints, bones, nerve cells in your brain, hair, complexion, waistline… There’s even an article out there that says they help alleviate PMS symptoms. Whether or not they cure menstrual cramps, your body needs them.

Want more reasons to eat chia seeds?

There is tons of fiber in chia seeds, which will keep you feeling fuller longer. When chia seeds get wet, they form a gelatinous, gooey substance that takes longer to digest. This means you’ll likely eat smaller meals and snack less. In fact, they have so much fiber in them that you’re advised to eat no more than an ounce a day, because the amount of fiber can upset your stomach. Chia seeds are an awesome safe, natural option for someone who doesn’t get enough fiber in their diet, kids and pregnant women included.

AND… Chia seeds are tasteless! You can add them to anything: smoothies, cookies, pancake mixes, salads, soups, cereal, oatmeal, pie crust…. pizza….?? Whatever works! I have known people to put them in water, too, which weirds me out, but whatever.

A super nutritional food that keeps you full for a long time but doesn’t add significant calories to your diet? Why wouldn’t you eat these??

Have I pressured you enough? Here’s where you can buy them.

Weekday Breakfast.

B (boyfriend) and I both love pb&j. You probably already know I'm all about health-ifying or cleaning up my favorite meals so I can still eat them, so here's where I clean up a pb&j. And then eat it for breakfast.

And variety is the spice of life, so try something new!

And let me tell you, starting the day with a Pb&J isn’t so bad. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

(Food bloggers would scoff at my poorly lit photos!)

Organic Crunchy Peanut Butter. I buy mine from Giant Eagle.

Ezekiel Bread. (Sprouted grain bread bought in the frozen foods aisle)

Smuckers Simply Fruit. Black raspberry is to die for.

…aaaaaand if you’re into it, add chia seeds! (Buy here.) You literally can’t even tell with the crunchy peanut butter. (Never heard of chia seeds? Read this.)

Make sure you toast the bread. It has to be kept frozen and it’s not that great un-toasted, trust me.

Reeeeeallly delicious. And it takes forever to eat because of the crunchy peanut butter / dense Ezekiel bread combo.

This, a grapefruit, and a giant mug of tea would make a great breakfast.

What's your favorite healthy weekday breakfast??

GLASS water bottles!

You might not know this yet, but I own 9826501347 water bottles. It’s seriously an obsession. And I go crazy for any type of glass container. (weird, I know.)

These lifefactory water bottles are my absolute favorite. I’m a germophobe, so the idea of glass is really appealing to me. The glass is coated with a rubbery outside shell so when you drop it it doesn’t shatter. I own the white one pictured above and I absolutely adore it. The one I have has a screw-on cap, but they offer flip-top ones too. They’re $22 on Lifefactory.com, but you can find them a few bucks cheaper on Amazon.

Guilt-Free Clean Pasta.

“Clean” and “italian” aren’t normally used in the same sentence regarding food, but there are a few ways you can still eat your pasta.

The Noodles

Regular pasta noodles are made with enriched, bleached flour. An upgrade from regular pasta is either whole wheat flour (as long as the first ingredient is WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR and not enriched bleached anything. or brown rice pasta.

You can find Tinkyada pasta at health food stores, Giant Eagle, even Walmart. I think it tastes even more like real pasta than whole wheat pasta, and B loves it. The first time I made it he asked if it was “real” pasta…. you literally can’t tell the difference!

Nutritionally it's debatable, both whole wheat and brown rice are clean, complex carbohydrates, but they've both been processed into pasta. You can read more about this here.

The sauce:

The sauce is tricky because of jarred sauce’s added sugar, salt, soybean oil, additives/preservatives. Making your own sauce (from organic tomatoes and herbs) gets the Best Sauce trophy, but lets be real, how often are we going to squish 50 roma tomatoes down into sauce for a jar of sauce? (Though I have done this!)

Bertolli makes an organic sauce that I was buying for a long time. It’s delicious and organic, but here’s the ingredients:

Organic Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste),Organic Diced Tomatoes In Juice, Organic Soybean Oil,Organic Sugar, Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Organic Onions, Sea Salt, Organic Garlic, Organic Romano Cheese (Organic Cultured Part Skim Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Organic Basil, Organic Black Pepper,Organic Fennel.

Now, I’m one of those people who over-sauces their pasta (I know, I know) so every little bit of soybean oil and sugar counts for me. So, the better option is….

Make your own from canned sauce and paste!

Hunts (surprisingly) makes a NATURAL (meaning completely free of artificial additives and preservatives) canned sauce and paste.

The only preservative it contains is a natural one, citric acid, which is harmless. (Link to the list of preservatives.)

Also, if organic is your thing, Muir Glen Organic makes tomato sauce and paste also.

Tomato Sauce:
1 can tomato paste (small)
2 cans tomato sauce
italian herbs (basil, oregano, black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes)

Do you need cheese?

If you must, the best choice is a freshly grated brick of parmesan. Stay away from the cheese powder in the plastic shaker, it's not even real cheese and it's loaded with fillers.

Viola! Healthy pasta.
You can thank me later.

Food for thought.

You are offered a Brain Pill. If you swallow this pill, you will become 10% more intelligent than you currently are; you will be more adept at reading comprehension, logic, and critical thinking. However, to all other people you know (and to future people you meet), you will seem 20% less intelligent. In other words, you will immediately become smarter, but the rest of the world will perceive you as dumber (and there is no way you can ever alter the universality of that perception.)

Do you take this pill?

This came from a section of Chuck Klosterman’s Hypertheticals. Sometimes we forget that challenging the brain is just as important as challenging the body… so, take a time-out from your to-do list and think about it. How would you choose in this hypothetical situation?

art by Marc Johns. You can’t not like Marc Johns.

ChooseMyPlate.gov

So if you read this morning’s post about MyFitnessPal and you’re frustrated/confused/mad at me for rambling on and on and on, here’s where I make it better!  Try out ChooseMyPlate.gov. Unfortunately they don’t have an app, but the site is VERY informative. It tells about daily values, nutrition, healthy eating on a budget, daily food plans and menus, and it even features “SuperTracker” which is essentially the same thing as  MyFitnessPal, except it’s USDA approved and it offers a daily food plan, separate from your activity plan, which I think is pretty helpful. Check it out!

The math behind weight loss (and why MyFitnessPal kind of sucks.)

The simple version goes like this: calories burned must exceed calories taken in. To do this, we need to be tracking every calorie we consume, and we must know how much we should be eating.

To determine how many calories you should be eating, here are two calculators:

BMR: Basal Metabolic Rate

BMR: The amount of calories you burn only at rest. This means if your BMR is 1300, you burn 1300 calories per day without even getting out of bed. Calculate your BMR here.

You should never eat less than your BMR because your metabolism will actually slow down, causing your body to go into starvation mode so that any weight that you do lose will be muscle weight, not fat weight. (And you don’t want to be “skinny fat”!)

Activity Level

Clearly this will be an estimation unless you plan on logging every workout (and monitoring calories burned in said workouts with a heart rate monitor EVERY TIME), as well as calculating how many calories it takes to walk around the house, do the dishes, go to the bathroom, etc etc. Since this is basically an impossibility, we use calculators and equations to estimate.

To estimate our activity levels, we calculate our daily caloric needs via this ACE approved calculator that asks you to choose how active you are on a continuum of sedentary to highly active.

The outcome is a number of calories that you need per day to maintain your current weight, exercise and daily activity included.

Activity Level in the MyFitnessPal app.

Disclaimer: If you’re only using the MyFitnessPal app to log your food but you don’t log your exercise, you’re not using the app correctly. The app asks you to estimate your daily activity levels in your job. At no point does it ask about exercise, because it assumes you will log your exercises daily.

Here, you have three options:

a. Use the app the way it’s intended to be used by logging every single workout (using MyFitnessPal’s calories-burned estimator OR your exact amount of calories burned by using a heart rate monitor)

b. Account for your regular exercise when it asks you for your daily activity levels. This is basically a guessing game and why I don’t particularly like MyFitnessPal; Your numbers won’t be incredibly accurate because everyone burns calories at a different rate.

c. (what I do) If you don’t plan on logging your workouts, determine your ACE recommended Daily Caloric Needs here and then override the numbers in MyFitnessPal (in net calorie goal).

Now, if you recall, this number we have put into MyFitnessPal is the number of calories that you need to consume to maintain your current weight.

Lets assume from here on out that you’ve overridden your Net Calorie Goal with the ACE Daily Caloric Needs number.

So how do I lose?

To lose weight, we need to create a caloric deficit.

To safely create that deficit, we need a number between our BMR and our Daily Caloric Needs number. A safe amount to lose (without screwing your metabolism) is 1-2 lbs per week.

If you want the math, here it is….1 pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories, so to lose 1 lb you have to create a 500 calorie deficit per day (500 x 7 days/week = 3500 calories). This means eating 500 less calories than your ACE daily caloric needs number (or 1000 less per day if you’re trying to lose 2 lbs per week). Remember, your normal exercise is already accounted for in your chosen activity level, so to create that deficit you must eat less, or adjust your exercise output and exercise more than normal.

To reiterate, in order to lose 1 lb a week, create a 500 calorie deficit each day by eating less and exercising more. (Which could mean either eating 500 calories less per day, OR eating 300 less calories but adding an extra half hour or so onto your normal workout routine.)

So, for a real-life example, if my daily caloric need is estimated at 2,300 (I am very active, and this number reflects my workouts), then I need to eat 2,300 calories to maintain my current weight. If I want to lose weight, I would reduce my calorie intake by 500 (or reduce by 300 and burn an extra 200 at the gym on top of my usual workout).

Get to the point.

The point of this post is not to give you a headache.

The point is that if you’re using MyFitnessPal to log your food but not your exercise, your numbers are probably skewed. Example: If you don’t log your workouts and have a desk job, you probably chose “lightly active” or “sedentary”, but since your workouts aren’t taken into consideration, MyFitnessPal is probably telling you to eat less than your BMR which could be doing harm to your metabolism.

If you’re using MyFitnessPal, the best way to do it is by tracking your workouts using your heart rate monitor’s calorie count and making absolutely sure that you’re logging EVERYTHING, every time. This is the only way it doesn’t suck.

If you aren’t logging your workouts (I don’t, personally) you can and probably should still use MyFitnessPal because logging your calories is incredibly important to weight loss, but make sure you’re doing it right: calculate your BMR and daily caloric needs in the calculators above, compare them or override the generic numbers that MyFitnessPal gave you, then adjust your eating and exercise habits accordingly.

And never, ever, no matter what MyFitnessPal tells you, eat less than your BMR!

Subway, eat "fresh"?

Subway is supposed to be a healthy alternative to fast food. Jared lost how many pounds eating Subway? And they have vegetables (even dabbled in avocados for a little while!) so it must be good for you, right? 

A meal at Subway involves vegetables and it’s not deep fried, so yes, it’s relatively better than McDonalds or Burger King. They’re famous for their “6 grams of fat or less” subs, which is much better than the 40-something grams of fat in a quarter pounder. So, if you’re in a life or death situation where you need to choose between two evils, Subway is (arguably) the way to go.

But, if you’re really trying to clean up your diet and only wish to eat nutritious foods that don’t harm your body, Subway is not the way to go. The truth about Subway is that, not unlike other fast food joints, their foods contain TONS of preservatives and additives. Preservatives are man-made chemicals put into food so that the bacteria and microorganisms in the air don’t cause it to spoil when it sits on the shelf (or in the fridge) for way longer than food is intended to sit on a shelf. Or in a fridge. Additives are extra chemicals like artificial coloring, flavoring, and sweeteners. Research continues to show that these chemicals are harmful to our bodies. For example, two common preservatives, sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid (or vitamin C), create a carcinogen (cancer-causing chemical) when put together.  Preservatives and food additives have been linked to several types of cancers, ADHD, obesity, obstructive lung diseases and asthma, heart disease, birth defects, belly fat, digestive and appetite problems, …. basically, you name it. Here is a list of preservatives and additives and their effects.

The USDA authorizes the use of over 3,000 chemical preservatives that are unrecognizable by anyone without a chemistry degree. Why? Because they suck, and you live in a free country and are blessed with the choice to eat or not to eat these foods.

Below are a few ingredients lists in Subway’s foods. Keep in mind that with any food, you should be looking at and scrutinizing every component of the ingredients list of everything you eat. As a general rule, if you don’t recognize something, you shouldn’t be eating it. Making bread really only takes 3 or 4  ingredients, all of them actual foods: flour, yeast, water, maybe some salt or honey. If you want to see what a bread recipe should look like, Clean Eating magazine has a recipe for clean whole wheat bread here.

Now check out Subway’s bread….

9-grain Wheat Bread

Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine 
mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, whole wheat flour, sugar, contains 2% or less of the 
following: wheat gluten, oat fiber, soybean oil, wheat bran, salt, wheat, rye, yellow corn, oats, triticale, 
brown rice, barley, flaxseed, millet, sorghum, yeast nutrients (calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, 
ammonium sulfate), vitamin D2, dough conditioners (DATEM, sodium stearoyl lactylate, potassium 
iodate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide), caramel color, refinery syrup, honey, yeast extract, natural 
flavor, enzymes.

Catch my drift?

CHICKEN BREAST PATTY

Chicken breast with rib meat, water, seasoning (corn syrup solids, vinegar powder [maltodextrin, modified corn starch and tapioca starch, dried vinegar], brown sugar, salt, dextrose, garlic powder, onion powder, chicken type flavor [hydrolyzed corn gluten, autolyzed yeast extract, thiamine hydrochloride, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate]), sodium phosphates.

If you made chicken breast at home, the ingredients would be:

chicken. spices.

and it would look like this...

You know, like real chicken.

FAT FREE HONEY MUSTARD

High Fructose corn syrup, water, prepared mustard (distilled vinegar, 
water, mustard seed, salt), Dijon mustard (distilled vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, white wine, citric 
acid, turmeric, spices, tartaric acid), country Dijon mustard (distilled vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, 
white wine, spice), distilled vinegar, honey, food starch-modified, cider vinegar, contains less than 2% 
of lemon juice concentrate, salt, phosphoric acid, artificial color (titanium dioxide), sodium benzoate and 
potassium sorbate (as preservatives), xanthan gum, dehydrated onion, egg yolks, dehydrated garlic, 
caramel color. Contains eggs.

This next one’s my favorite…..

Mind you, this is supposed to be an egg. As in, “ingredients: egg.”

EGG OMELET PATTY (Regular):

Whole Eggs, Egg Whites, Water, Nonfat Dry Milk, Premium Egg 
Blend (isolated pea product, salt, citric acid, dextrose, guar gum, xanthan gum, extractive of spice, 
propylene glycol and not more than 2% calcium silicate and glycerin to prevent caking), Soybean Oil, 
Butter Alternative (liquid and hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavors, 
beta carotene (color), TBHQ and citric acid added to protect flavor, dimethylpolysiloxane (antifoaming 
agent added), Salt, Beta-Carotene (color). Contains egg.

You get the point. Don’t put this stuff in your body.

To stay away from preservatives, buy:

-organic: no preservatives or harmful pesticides involved

-fresh: (or frozen, but check the ingredients label for additives!)

-natural: The USDA’s definition of “natural” is crap, but it generally means chemical-free.

So is Jared lying?

No, Jared really lost the weight because he exercised and made sure that he burned more calories than he ate. If you ate bacon cheeseburgers but burned more calories than you ate and you are as deconditioned as Jared was, you would lose weight. (Recall this post on how to lose weight.) You can also lose weight by replacing meals with cigarettes, developing a drug habit, or taking one of those weight loss supplements that were banned twenty years ago, but that doesn’t make you healthy, nor does it make it safe.

Go to the grocery store. Buy bread, meat, veggies and cheese, and make yourself a sandwich.

....or a wrap!

 Eat “fresh”, Subway? Come on.