Healthy Eats: Apple Cider Dijon Pork Tenderloin

This marinade became a fast favorite in my home. Apple Cider Dijon Pork Tenderloin is a weekly staple in our healthy repertoire. We’ve expanded the marinade for use with chicken and turkey tenderloins as well. It’s delicious on grilled or baked proteins. It’s also incredibly easy to put together in a time pinch. I usually marinade the pork for about an hour before we cook it.

Ingredients:

2 pork tenderloins trimmed and silver skin removed

2 TBSP apple cider vinegar

2 TBSP sugar free syrup

1 TBSP Dijon mustard

3-5 cloves chopped garlic

2 tsp each fresh or dried herbs – pick 2 each time, I’ve tried all the combos and they are all delish (Thyme, Basil, Rosemary, Oregano)

Combine all ingredients in a large sealable bag. Shake and move around until the pork is well coated with the marinade. Let sit at room temperature for 30 min – 1 hour before grilling or baking to desired degree of doneness.

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*The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day!

Healthy Eats: Chocolate Granola Pancake

I go to bed excited about the next morning when I know I have a Chocolate Granola Pancake waiting for me! How can something so delicious also be so nutritious? Careful selection of the ingredients and ensuring portions meet your macro meal planning numbers ensures the nutritious efficacy of this TASTY breakfast staple! See original breakfast pancake for base recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup egg whites
  • 1/2 cup Simply Nature Coconut Cacao or Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Granola (found at Aldi) **Note: any other granola may be substituted – aiming for 20 g of carbs per 1/2 cup serving**
  • 1 scoop Super Seed Beyond Fiber

Directions:

Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Meanwhile in a small mixing bowl, whisk together all ingredients. Batter will be lumpy due to the granola. Spray the pan with non-stick cooking spray. Pour in the batter, be careful not to the let the batter sit too long as the fiber powder will cause it to thicken greatly. Cook the Chocolate Granola Pancake until it’s easy to slide a spatula underneath the pancake, usually 4-6 minutes. Flip the pancake and cook another 1-2 minutes.

I like to make a stack of the pancakes on the weekend, wrap each meal in tinfoil, and store in the refrigerator for fast breakfasts on weekday mornings. Pancake as pictured is topped with 1 TBSP natural smooth peanut butter and 2 TBSP sugar free syrup.

Approximate nutrition facts (per pancake with peanut butter topping): 395 calories , 16 g of fat, 33 g of carbs, 33 g of protein

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*The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day!

Healthy Eats: Snack Platter

So as I sit and write this, we are smack dab in the middle of Covid-19 stay at home orders. Even if you are reading this 20 years from now, you’ll likely remember this pandemic and the endless all-day snacking that most people couldn’t refrain from. We have some tricks to make your snacking a little more guilt-free and balanced for your macro needs. Give our snack platter a try – complete with protein, carbs, a bit of fat, and tons of nutrients.

We love fresh veggies dipped in ranch dressing or dip. While you can find low fat/low cal dips they aren’t always wholesome. We do our best to avoid too many “chemical” creations throughout the day. Wholesome is always best for us. So we like to make our own dip.

Ranch Greek Yogurt Dip

  • 1 cup plain, nonfat greek yogurt
  • 1/2-1 whole ranch dressing seasoning package (any brand is fine)

Stir the ingredients vigorously to remove any lumps and clumps from the seasoning packet. Greek yogurt is high in protein, moderate in carbs, and is a good base for many things that use mayonnaise like tuna salad or egg salad. Trick of the trade, replace your mayo with Greek yogurt and a little mustard – very satisfying!

Veggies are largely fair game. Of course there are vegetables with more nutrients than others, less carbs than others, but let’s be REAL, no one gets fat from eating carrots. So wash and slice your favorite veggies – radishes, peppers, grape tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers – these are all really yummy with the ranch dip.

I love chips! The crunch, the salty seasoning, the happiness that spreads through me when I eat them – half kidding half serious! So here comes my find of the century – FLEX chips. They come in 3 different flavors and it is hard to believe they are pretty good for you. Made from plant based protein, they are low in carbs and calories and pack a decent amount of protein in them.

This snack platter has a balanced macronutrient breakdown. You can eat a lot of this and not feel bad! You’ll be having a “meal plan approved” snack. I bet you’ll feel so much better about your eating habits by replacing today’s snacks with the healthier version!

We have tons of recipes and healthy EATS to satisfy your palate!

*The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day!

Healthy Eats: Grilled Tofu & Vegetables

Well I’ll just come right out and say it, I used to be very anti-tofu. I’m not sure why. I guess in my head I determined I had eaten it and disliked it. I’m not sure I had even tried it, and now that it has become a weekly staple in our house. Typically, I use extra firm tofu and slice it into equal portions. I then season it and either grill it or broil it. The result is grilled tofu with a texture mixed between chicken and feta cheese. It tastes great the next day as a protein topper on a cold salad or warm with a plant-based (or regular) pasta dish. I was surprised how much I actually like tofu and I think if you give it a try you might be too!

Again, I think the variety of tofu matters. For us, the extra firm has the right texture, moisture, and macronutrient breakdown (see picture of label below). It’s easy to slice it into 5 equal (as equal as possible) chunks then season with some yummy spices (we like Penzey’s.com) and pop on the grill or under the broiler. We do the same to our vegetables. Season generously and grill or broil.

Since I’m on the topic of seasoning, we get asked a lot about SALT. “I know I shouldn’t have much salt” is something I hear almost daily. The truth is the body needs sodium and as long as you aren’t adding excessive amounts to your food you are probably well within the recommendations for daily intake. If you have a heart condition or high blood pressure, then regulating your salt intake is a bit more critical. If you do not have these ailments, then adding a bit of salt or seasoning that has salt to your veggies should be fine. Make the healthy food taste good so you’ll want to eat the healthy food! One thing we do avoid is adding salt to regular grocery store meat (chicken, pork, steak, etc.). These meats are preserved with a sodium solution that already has plenty of salt in it. So just add salt-free seasoning to your meats.

So if you’re looking for the recipe here, sorry there really isn’t one. Just slice the tofu (extra firm) into proportion depending on what the label says, then season and grill or broil. It doesn’t take long…give it a few minutes on each side. You can also squeeze a bit of fresh lemon on it while its cooking – yum! Pair it with your favorite vegetables and if you’re macros allow for it, add a bean pasta to it. We’ve tried many, the spaghetti varieties have the best numbers, lower on carbs, higher on protein. Here is a picture of the black bean box and label. They have several flavors and several different brands make this pasta now.

There’s more where this recipe came from! Click here to check out additional health EATS!

*The exact portions will vary per person. If you’re wondering how much tofu you get and whether you can add pasta to it, contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day!

Healthy Eats: Partially Plant Based Macro Nutrition

There is a food movement picking up steam and it’s called plant based eating. It seems I get asked almost daily what I think about plant based nutrition. For two fitness professionals (my husband Justin and myself) who have followed macro-based meal planning for nearly a decade, we personally took an interest in the concept and wondered if it would be possible to reduce animal based proteins and still live by our macro-based nutrition plans? For years we thought there was no way we could eat enough protein from plants and beans to still “hit our numbers”. We couldn’t imagine a meal plan that didn’t feature chicken and turkey as it’s main protein sources. Could we add more plant based proteins, healthy seafoods, etc. and reduce animal based proteins?

Aside from growing tired of chicken, pork, and turkey, we had some plant based inspiration from two documentaries. We were a little late to the game, watching 2008 documentary Food, Inc. just last year in 2019. This movie examines the US agricultural business and claims that the food is unhealthy and produced in a manner harmful to our environment and abusive to both people and animals. To say we were turned off from livestock would be an understatement. We had already had our issues with chicken texture, quality, taste, etc., but to see how they are raised, kept and slaughtered was really icing on the cake. Of course there was still the issue of how could we possibly eat enough beans to hit our protein needs? So next, at the end of 2019 we watched the incredibly popular 2018 documentary The Game Changers which follows elite athletes not just surviving but thriving on plant-based nutrition. For years we’ve thought only protein from animals could sustain muscle mass but now our wheels started turning that maybe plant based alternatives could at least partially serve our protein needs and allow us to reduce/eliminate livestock.

So shortly after Christmas 2019 we decided to 86 chicken, pork and turkey from our macro-based weekday cooking. Trust me that was a lot of our everyday eating. If you look through my recipes on my Healthy Eats blog there are many that feature these proteins. So for the past month and a half we’ve filled our protein macros with bean pastas, tofu, fish/seafood, lentils, chickpeas, eggs, grass-fed beef/bison/elk, and nuts. I know we aren’t the first to coin the term “partially plant-based” but it really is how we are eating now. We focus more on the quality of food and less on the quantity of meat. We’re developing yummy recipes that go beyond just beans and allow for us to still live within our macro-based nutrition. Soon, we’ll have a “partially plant based” recipe section to compliment our other clean eating recipes so you too can dabble in the nutrition that has us feeling great.

We are by no means suggesting everyone should boycott chicken, pork and turkey but for us it just felt like it was time for a change. It’s only been about a month and a half with these changes in place so are we stronger, leaner, healthier? Well it’s hard to answer that because we were already in a good spot health wise. We’ve kept lean physiques for years with our macro-based nutrition. We eat clean and train mean all week long then we live life to the fullest on the weekends. We love to have fun with our family & friends which includes delicious eats and drinks on the weekend. So for us it wasn’t about losing weight or even growing muscle; for us it was about changing the quality of our macro intakes. So far so good. We feel well fed, the food is yummy, and workouts have by no means suffered, you could even say they’ve been better fueled.

We are now more informed and better educated on the concept of plant-based eating. You could certainly go full plant-based and still live by a macro plan. For us, partially plant-based is where we are most comfortable but who knows, we could go “all in” at some point! Stay tuned for recipe inspiration…

Healthy Eats: Cabbage Steaks

I first discovered Cabbage Steaks when I was making a delicious St. Patty’s day dinner for hubby and me. I needed a nice side dish to compliment my corned beef hash. The recipe I found for cabbage steaks brushed both sides with oil, topped with salt, pepper and garlic and roasted in the oven. They were delicious and an immediate hit in our house.

Since macro-based meal planning is what we do and how we eat, I decided to remove the oil from the cooking process and hoped the cabbage steaks would still be delicious. Spoiler alert – they were! So now we make the cabbage steaks sans the oil, just a little cooking spray on the pan. The rest of the process is similar and the cabbage is a staple a few nights a week.

Here’s how to roast up your very own meal plan approved cabbage steaks:

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
  2. Pick a nice medium head of cabbage from the store. Remove the outer layers of loose leaves (usually one to two layers should do it).
  3. Slice the cabbage into 3/4 – 1 inch “steaks”.
  4. Spray cooking spray on foil or parchment lined baking sheet. Then place cabbage steaks on the sheet.
  5. Generously add seasoning. We’ve tried many different combinations. Simple salt, pepper and garlic is perfect, or pictured here is “everything but the bagel” seasoning. You really can’t go wrong – be creative and let me know of any winning combinations!
  6. Add cabbage steaks to the oven and set your timer for 25-30 minutes. Use tongs to flip the cabbage steaks over and lightly re-season the new side of the steaks. They may lose a little of their “steak shape” once flipped. That’s okay – they will still taste incredible!
  7. Return to the oven for another 15-20 minutes. You may want to broil the cabbage steaks at the very end to get a little color on them. 

The cabbage steaks have a buttery taste to them and are so amazing with turkey meatballs. We hope you’ll like this recipe as much as we do.

Check our our entire index of Healthy Eats!

*The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day!

 

Healthy Eats: Blueberry Breakfast Bake

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again…easy meals that you can make ahead of time will save your clean eating efforts. Prepare this moist, delicious and nutritious Blueberry Breakfast Bake ahead of time and in bulk so your mornings are fast, easy and healthy!

On hand, you’ll need egg whites, Superseed Beyond Fiber, old fashioned oats (uncooked), and blueberries. I like to make little loaf pans but you could certainly make these in multiple muffin tins.

Here are the portions for a typical female breakfast. In general, men can 1.5x – double the portion.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup egg whites

1 scoop Superseed Beyond Fiber powder

1/4 cup old fashioned oats

1/2 cup blueberries

For topping:

1 TBSP almond butter or any other natural nut butter

Low or No-sugar syrup (to taste)

Mix the egg whites, fiber powder and oats together. In your small loaf pan, place the blueberries then pour egg white mixture on top. Repeat for as many Blueberry Breakfast Bakes that you plan to make ahead of time. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until the edges pull away from the side of the pan and the center is firm. Cool the breakfast bakes then remove from pans and wrap in tinfoil. Microwave when you’re ready to eat and top with the nut butter and syrup.

The ingredients you’ll have on hand are similar to some of our other delicious breakfasts so you can easily try the Pumpkin Breakfast Bake  or the Protein Pancake.

*The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day!

Healthy Eats: Stuffed Cabbage

I talk often about convenient meals to help keep you on track during the week. Stuffed Cabbage is both convenient and healthy. The smell they emit while baking is just like Grandma’s kitchen! Assembly is easy and tinfoil pans make clean up a breeze. Stuffed cabbage should definitely be a staple in your “meal plan approved” arsenal.

Here’s how the stuffed cabbage leaves come together:

Place a big head of cabbage in a large pot of boiling water, reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 10-20 minutes. You may need to rotate the cabbage head if part of it is not covered with water. Once tender, remove the cabbage from the pot and let cool before handling. To peel the leaves, cut the stem off and gently remove each leaf. Make a pile of 10 leaves. You can chop up the remaining cabbage and place on top of the stuffed leaves once finished.

For the filling, we use ground turkey (93/7), but you could also use lean ground beef or ground chicken breast. You’ll need 40 oz. to make 10 leaves. Season your meat with Italian seasoning, garlic powder, pepper, and fennel seed. Use a paring knife to cut out the thick part of the cabbage stem. Then measure 4 oz of meat and place on the cabbage leaf. Roll and tuck in the sides like you would a burrito. Place each stuffed cabbage seam side down in the pan.

Sometimes I make a big pan of just stuffed cabbage and other times I use a few smaller pans and divide them up. On top of the cabbage pour low sugar tomato sauce generously. I also top with a variety of chopped vegetables such as onions, mushrooms, zucchini and tomatoes. This is where you can also add the chopped up remaining cabbage.

Bake the stuffed cabbage covered at 400 degrees for 20 minutes then reduce the heat to 350 and continue to cook for another hour. Each stuffed cabbage is a 3 oz portion of meat when cooked. Top with your allotted portion of feta cheese (typically 1/4-1/2 cup) and enjoy!

Healthy food can taste great too and we know how to do it! Try our other tasty healthy EATS by clicking here.

*The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day! There is no need to guess at how you should eat – let us help you eat right for your body type and goals!

Healthy Eats: Kale Chips

In terms of veggies, usually green means good and Kale is KING! Kale is one of the most nutrient rich vegetables and is chocked full of vitamins and antioxidants. Kale only has 33 calories per cup. There are many ways to prepare this leafy wonder but perhaps my favorite way is to bake it into crispy Kale chips.

To make Kale chips, buy (or grow) Kale stalks or the chopped kale in a bag. Wash the stalks thoroughly then remove the fibrous large center stem. Tear the Kale into small leafy pieces and place on a tinfoil lined baking sheet. If you did buy the chopped Kale, still go through it and remove any of the big stems. Spritz the Kale with non-stick cooking spray and sprinkle with sea salt.

Bake the Kale on 350 degrees for 20 minutes (give or take a few minutes depending on your oven). The Kale should shrink dramatically in size. You’ll be left with crispy, salty, healthy chips. It doesn’t matter if you can’t stop after just one…eat the whole tray if you’d like!

If you like our Kale Chips, you’ll love our index of healthy eats created and taste approved by us. Try our other healthy recipes here.

*The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day! There is no need to guess at how you should eat – let us help you eat right for your body type and goals!

Healthy Eats: Pumpkin Breakfast Bake

Whether it’s fall, spring, summer or winter, the Pumpkin Breakfast Bake is a delicious treat you will want to eat all year long. They are moist, balanced and packed with fiber. Make several at a time in loaf pans and store in the refrigerator for a fast, on-the-go solution for your early mornings.

The recipe is simple:

3/4 c egg whites

2 whole eggs

1/2 c old fashioned oats

1/2 c pumpkin puree

1 scoop protein whey concentrate (or vanilla whey protein)

1 scoop Super Seed Beyond Fiber Powder

1 TBSP coconut oil

1/4 c dried cranberries

1 dash of ground cinnamon

Combine all of the ingredients in a medium bowl with a whisk until smooth. Pour into a loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes. I usually make 3 Pumpkin Breakfast Bakes at a time in order to use the whole can of pumpkin. Each bake is approximately 2 breakfasts for women and 1-1.5 breakfasts for men. There is no need to guess at how much you should eat though. *The exact portions will vary per person. Contact us for more details on your portions and macronutrient breakdown per meal/per day!

Try our other tasty healthy EATS by clicking here.