Kale Chips

Happy Easter everyone! This weekend I visited my sister and we had a ton of delicious healthy food! One thing that we made that I had been dying to make for a while is kale chips.  For anyone who loves chips, this is an amazing alternative.  Kale is packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and is less than 50 calories per cup-- so you can snack on kale chips without being worried about the calories, fat, sodium, etc that come along with regular chips!

Ingredients:
1 bunch of Kale, washed and dried well
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Spices: You can use whatever you want. My sister and I used garlic powder, black pepper, and oregano. You can use sea salt, parmesan, whatever you'd like !

Preheat oven to 350. Make sure the kale is dried well.  Tear off the leaves of the kale into chip-sized pieces and place in a bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil (about 1-1.5 tbsp; you don't want to do too much or else the kale won't get crispy) and toss until coated.  Arrange the kale on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Sprinkle on spices of choice.  Bake for 10-15 minutes until it is crispy, but make sure to watch it so you don't burn it!

Banana Bread Protein Muffins

So for those of you that follow me on instagram, you saw the banana bread protein muffins that I made today! And well since I don't have baking powder in my apartment I only used baking soda, and the tops deflated! But they still tasted sooo good! I don't care about the aesthetics of my food, as long as it tastes good that's all that matters to me.  Here's the recipe (with the baking powder!)

Ingredients:
1 medium ripe banana
3/4 cup oats (I used Whole Foods organic old fashioned rolled oats)
3/4 cup egg whites
1/2 cup chobani plain greek yogurt 0% fat
2 scoops vanilla whey protein (I used GNC 100% Hydrolyzed Protein)
12 packets truvia, or 1/4 cup baking stevia (stevia is 4x sweeter than sugar, truvia is 2x sweeter than sugar...you can adjust how much you use of either to your liking)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon (pretty sure I added more than this... I love cinnamon!)

Preheat oven to 350. Blend ingredients together in a blender.  Distribute evenly in muffin tin using foil cups (make sure they're foil so they don't stick) or you can just spray the muffin pan with non-stick spray.  Bake for 15-17 minutes.

Nutrition facts per 1 muffin:
54 calories, 9g carbs, 1g fat, 6g protein, 2g sugar

My deflated muffins ^ whoops! Going to add some PB2 into the crevices... I totally did it on purpose :)

My Favorite Healthy Snacks

Being a college student means constantly being busy and on-the-go, and the easy route would be to take a packaged snack of some sort with me to class.  However, majority of the time these packaged snacks are horrible for you! There are many other healthier options that still allow you to eat on the go.  I aim to eat snacks that are high protein, low carb, and help you feel full so you aren't starving until you can eat a meal.  Here are my favorites!

1. 2 Plain Rice Cakes with PB2 and cinnamon on top

2. ~4 oz. Chobani Greek Yogurt (Plain) and add whatever you want. I mix in a little bit of vanilla extract, 1 packet truvia, and cinnamon.  You can add fruit too!

3. Carrots and Turkey Slices

4. Quest Bar

5. Carrots and Almond Butter (or Peanut Butter)

6. Tuna Fish Salad (Mix Starkist Low Sodium Chunk Light Tuna packet with a tbsp of greek yogurt, add any vegetables you'd like)

7. Egg White Egg Salad (Recipe is on my blog!)

8. Protein Shake

9. 1/4 cup of Nuts

10. No-bake Energy Bites (Recipe is also on my blog)

Casein Protein

Casein a high quality protein and is abundant in milk.  It has a slower rate of digestion than whey protein, and results in a slow but steady release of amino acids.  It has been shown to have anti-catabolic effects by supporting muscle growth and blocking protein breakdown. It also can promote fat loss by increasing your metabolism and reducing hunger.  This is why a good time to take casein is right before bed, where you are going a long period without the chance to refuel.  The most effective form of casein is micellar casein (this should be the first ingredient for the best results).

Tuna Salad with Greek Yogurt

I used to eat tuna salad all of the time when I was younger. However, it's typically mixed with globs of mayo to make it a creamy texture.  Instead of using mayo, which is high in fat and calories, I discovered that if you use plain greek yogurt you can't even tell the difference! Plain greek yogurt is a great substitute because it's high in protein and eliminates the fat.  To make this tuna salad, I just threw a bunch of different things together, and it turned out to be delicious!

Ingredients:

1 packet Starkist low sodium Chunk Light Tuna in water

1/4 cup plain greek yogurt

1 hardboiled egg (just the whites)

1/2 cup cooked spinach

a few small cut up pieces of red bell pepper

1 tsp honey dijon mustard

1/2 tsp of Mrs. Dash Italian Medley

1/2 tsp of garlic powder

Open the packet of tuna and drain out the water.  Then combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. I put it on a piece of ezekiel bread.  You can also wrap it in a low-carb/high fiber tortilla, or even lettuce!

Fasted Cardio

Hi there! So I've decided to start doing fasted cardio in the morning in addition to my lifting routine later in the day and cardio afterward.  Fasted cardio is doing some form of cardio on an empty stomach.  I was pretty skeptical to do this because I've looked into it and there's so much debate as to whether it causes muscle loss, but it is known to be the quickest way to burn fat because your body uses fat instead of carbohydrates for energy.  Obviously if you have more fuel in your system, you should be able to train at a higher intensity and burn more calories.  Also, if you burn more carbohydrates during a workout, your post-workout fat burn should be greater.  So this makes it seem as though fasted cardio does not have any benefit over doing cardio after a meal.  It's an extremely debated topic, but I've talked to some NPC bikini competitors and they swear by it, so I'm going to give it a shot!  It differs with everyone as to whether it works or not, so don't shut out the idea until you've tried it.  Bodybuilders use this as a way to get really lean.  In my opinion, if you do it the right way, you're not going to lose your muscle mass.  Taking BCAAs before fasted cardio is a good way to prevent muscle breakdown (look at my post about BCAAs a few weeks back!)  According to an article I read, a good way to do fasted cardio is like this:

Wake up, take supplements (fat burner, etc.)
15 min. later, begin sipping BCAAs
15 min. later after consuming 1/3 of BCAAs, begin cardio
Sip another 1/3 through cardio
At end of session, finish last 3rd
15 min. later, eat breakfast!

A good rule is 3.5 g BCAAs per 15 minutes of fasted cardio.  I'm probably going to start out with a half hour of fasted cardio, and have about 10g of BCAAs total.  We'll see how it goes! :)

Vegan Chocolate Avocado Pudding

Ingredients:
1 avacado, ripe and soft
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup almond milk
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Cut the avocado in half, and remove the pit. Scoop out the flesh, and add this and the remaining ingredients together into a blender (magic bullet works).  Blend until smooth.  Add more agave if you'd like the pudding sweeter, and almond milk if you'd like it looser.
*If you don't have agave, you can use maple syrup.

Makes 1-2 servings.

Low Carb Gluten Free Cake Bars

We made these cake bars in my Food Service Management class the other day (best class ever, legit all we do is make a ton of food and eat all of it!) I'm not a huge fan of desserts, but MAN these were delicious!!! I know there is heavy cream still in the frosting, so I'm going to try to find a good substitute for it when I make them at home but for now here's the recipe.

Ingredients:
2 cups almond flour
2 cups hazelnut flour
1/4 cup gluten-free oat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
12 tablespoons margarine, softened
24 packets truvia
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Frosting-
6 tablespoons margarine, softened
monk fruit packets to taste (nectresse)
3 to 5 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 and line a 9x13 inch pan with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour, oat flour, baking powder and salt.  In a large bowl, beat butter and truvia until creamy.  Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract, and then beat in almond and hazelnut flour mixture until dough comes together.  Press dough firmly into prepared pan and smooth top with a flat-bottomed glass. Bake 30 minutes, until just golden brown around the edges and slightly more firm to the touch.  Remove and let cool in pan.

For the frosting:
Beat together butter and 10 packets of monk fruit.
Add cream, 1 tablespoon at a time, until desired consistency is achieved.  Stir in vanilla. Taste, and if not sweet enough, add more monk fruit packets until desired sweetness is reached.  Spread onto cooled bars.
**We had pureed beets lying around from another recipe and we added a little bit to the frosting, and it tasted so good, but not everyone has pureed beets lying around haha.

Fruit & Nut Salad

I saw this recipe on Pinterest the other day and it looked really good, but it had mayo and a few other ingredients I didn't want to use so I made a few minor adjustments.  It came out so good!

Ingredients:
2 cups seedless red grapes, cut in halves
4 apples cored and diced
1 pear cored and diced
1 stalk of celery, diced
1/2 cup silvered almonds
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1.5 cups plain greek yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon

Mix the greek yogurt, vanilla extract, and cinnamon together in a bowl (use as much cinnamon as you like, I like a lot because I have a cinnamon obsession!!).  In a separate bowl, combine all of the chopped fruit and nuts. Pour the yogurt mixture into the bowl of fruit/nuts and mix well.  Refrigerate the leftovers!

source: tastykitchen.com