Thanksgiving Recap

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving and ate a ton of delicious food! I was extremely thankful that my family was able to celebrate Thanksgiving back in our house because we were unsure if we were going to be able to. Long story short, we had a house fire back in March and had been living in a trailer for over 8 months while our house was being redone. The date for us to move back in kept getting pushed back so I had my doubts that we'd be celebrating Thanksgiving in the house. By some miracle, we were able to move back in about a week before! I was most excited about our new kitchen. I'd say my sister and I broke it in quite well--we literally spent all day preparing healthy variations of your typical Thanksgiving dishes. They came out amazing so I wanted to share some pictures!

One of my favorite things that we made was a healthy stuffing that had brussel sprouts, butternut squash, apples, pecans, and dried cranberries.

My absolute favorite dish that we made was a sweet potato casserole. I can't even describe how amazing it tasted! It had a sweet maple flavor and it was topped with a cinnamon oat crumble. I'm so upset that we ate it all already!

Finally, we made a healthy vegan apple pie. It only had a few ingredients: whole wheat pastry flour, coconut oil, apples, cinnamon, and stevia. It was a bit of a challenge to make this, but it ended up tasting great!

I didn't get pictures but my sister made honey and roasted garlic baked brie. I'm not a big cheese person so I didn't think I was going to like it, but it actually was delicious!

My thanksgiving plate! Normally I don't really like Thanksgiving food, but after getting into cooking a lot more this past year I finally was able to make some dishes that I really enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I ate my weight in food that day, but indulging every once in a while is actually a healthy thing to do! I overheard some girls in the gym locker room talking about how they were going to have to do excessive amounts of cardio after Thanksgiving was over. I laughed to myself because that's ridiculous. One day of unhealthy eating is not going to make you gain 5 pounds or hurt your fitness goals. And depriving yourself of food that you love ultimately leads to unhealthy eating behaviors. It's all about having a healthy balance. I struggled with this for a while but I finally found it. I'm eating whatever I want, working hard and lifting heavy in the gym, and I'm healthy and happy which is all that matters. For anyone struggling with finding a balance, Jennifer Lawrence has the perfect advice: