Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Pumpkin Cheesecake Roll

First off, can I start this post off saying that I did steal this recipe from the "Dukan Diet" Facebook page. Secondly, I was very skeptical of the recipe, mostly because I had never made a regular pumpkin roll. Third, it turned out DELICIOUS!!!


This week has been a good week. I have officially dropped below 150 and am at a firm 147!! 17 pounds away  from my goal weight and 24 pounds down from the biggest I ever was. 


So ignore the yeast and add baking powder. It was Sunday night and I was sleepy. 


Ingredients for the Bread

  • 6Tbs oat bran
  • 1Tbs corn starch
  • 1/2tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 c sweetener/ 4Tbs Truvia
  • 4 eggs, separated
  • 4Tbs yogurt
  • 1c pumpkin puree
  • 1Tbs pumpkin pie spice
  • 1tsp vanilla



Preheat oven to 350 F

Mix together all dry ingredients. (I forgot to take a picture of this.. OOPS!)



Add yogurt, yolks, pumpkin and vanilla, mixing well.

Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

This is mine finished... Peaks hanging high.

Fold whites into batter.. Do not over-fold them because you will break up all the fun little air bubbles you worked so hard to whip up. Or rather you let your mixer work so hard for. Let's face it, we're no Morgan Wilson from Top Chef Desserts!!

Looks promising!! 

Take your spatula and spread the pumpkin/egg white solution and spread evenly on parchment lined jelly roll sheet pan or on aluminum foil if you do not have parchment paper. I did not have parchment paper, I thought I did but it was freezer paper. DO NOT USE FREEZER PAPER, it will melt and ruin everything, I assume that last part but don't test it. Bake for about 15min, or until done. (I ended up baking for about 25 minutes.)


While this is baking and cooling you can relax and then make the cream cheese filling OR you can do what I did and make the filling AND then make batter for a modified Apple Spice inside-out Muffin. Which is way more delicious now that I've modified the recipe, but more on that later. 


Ingredients for Cream Cheese Filling

  • 16 ounces of FF Cream Cheese
  • 1/2 cup splenda (or more to taste)
  • 1tbs of cinnamon (or whatever flavors you want and completely optional)




I opted for some cinnamon and a tad more splenda and changed it up from store brand 10/$10 FF Cream Cheese and splurged for the name brand and it was a GREAT upgrade. 

Here is the bread finished cooking..
 I could still see a lot of the egg whites so don't worry about that!!

I let this bread cook a lot longer than suggested because the tooth pick kept coming out moist. But honestly, I think I could have cooked it for an entire day and it would still be a little moist, I just think that is part of the Oat Brad effect. 

I failed to take a picture of the cream cheese spread out on top of the bread but all you need to do it evenly spread it on top of the bread. Simple enough. 
After you have spread the cream cheese on the bread start rolling the bread like a sleeping bag. Just pinch the one end in and keep going. I used the aluminum foil to help me keep the roll tight, well ha, as tight as you can get it on your first try. It should look a lot better than this but you get the idea. 



So obviously it's not perfect but it's absolutely delicious! I would probably only use 1.5 packages of FF cream cheese next time because it is a lot BUT I love the cream cheese so it's kind of like less is not more, but more is more and that's amazing. So obviously I'm torn. 

Since there is only 6tbs of oat bran you can eat roughly 1/4 of the roll as your oat bran allowance for the day, but only on PV days. 


So on some personal notes... I ate bad chicken on Sunday, well didn't know it was bad until AFTER I had eaten it as leftovers on Monday afternoon. So that sucked. Today I had my appointment with my orthopedic and basically because I have child bearing hips my knee cap is sliding with the tendon. I'm not sure of all of the technical stuff he said but basically I have to wear a brace for awhile and just deal with it until it fixes itself. If it gets worse I get to visit him again and then we'll go from there. Hopefully it won't end up with surgery, HOPEFULLY. Good news is that I get to resume boot camp and do it at my own pace and I'm SO excited for it. It's been such a great experience and I have met some great women. So starting Monday I'm back at it, 3 times a week.... So stay tuned!! 



Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Tuna Steaks

Tonight is going to be strictly a recipe. Well that and a big pat on my back for losing 21 pounds since May. only 15-20 more to go and I'll be happy for life!

So the other night I made Tuna Steaks for dinner for myself and the boys and let me tell you, mmmmmmmmmmmmmm-mmmmmmmmmm! So your first step is to remove the tuna steaks from the refrigerator and cool them to room temperature. I'm not sure why you do this but I remember hearing this on cooking shows and from my amazing chef of an uncle, so I just do it now no questions asked. 
I decided I was going grill them so I put them on a piece of foil. Then seasoned them with pepper and whatever else was in my pantry that was salt free. (My favorites are Mrs. Dash salt free seasonings)



Here is another picture of how beautiful these steaks are. They're definitely going on the list again next week. 



After warming up the grill I just took them outside and grilled them on each side for about 8 minutes. Well I grilled them longer and sadly overcooked some of them, which really bummed me out. Another reason I'm making them again next week. One of these day I'll remember to focus on what I'm cooking instead of trying to do 35 things at once. 


While the steaks were cooking I put the asparagus and broccoli in tin foil and covered with pepper and garlic and threw them on the grill as well. At the end of all of this I received this wonderful looking dinner. We each had 2 steaks and I ate all of mine and could have eaten more. I guess that's why I had Ahi Tuna that Friday at Outback. 




This is definitely a meal I'd make again because it's SO easy, quick, and delicious. And especially for those of you who don't like fish, this is a good one to try because it's more of a meaty fish. This is up there with Swordfish in my favorite fish to eat group. 


I hope you enjoyed this short and sweet blog. I will be back again soon to share my Apple Pie Spice Bread with FF Cream Cheese... and all of the disasters that went along with creating it. 

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake


So yesterday I did some googling for some good Dukan recipes and ended up on a regular recipe that I could easily turn Dukan. So here is my account of how it went.. 


Ingredients 

  • 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
  • 1/2 cup splenda
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 pinch ground ginger
  • 1 pinch ground nutmeg

  • Preheat your oven to 325. 

  • Mix the cream cheese, splenda, and vanilla extract together until the cream cheese is completely mixed with the splenda and vanilla. 


Next blend eggs one at a time.  


Once the eggs are properly mixed it should look like so. 

DO NOT LICK THE MIXERS. As tempting as it can be.

Next take a cup of the batter and cover the bottom layer of the pie pan. 


Next add the pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and I added some ginger for extra good flavor. And I don't stick to the measurements, so go wild if you want. 


Take the batter and spread it on top of the first layer of cheese cake.



Place the pie into a cake pan with a layer of water and place in the middle of the oven rack. Cook for 20 minutes at 325. It will still jiggle in the middle a bit when done cooking.
When finished it should look like this... 


Cool the cheesecake in the fridge for 4 hours or longer before enjoying!! 


This really was delicious!

 - The only thing I would change is I would take more than a cup of the original cheese cake mix. The pumpkin cheese cake didn't set properly for me. The bottom layer of cheese cake set perfectly though. 


I hope everyone enjoys this. Also, this is only for PV and above days. I'm a big dummy and thought I could have this every day. Oops. Time to hit 2 PP days this weekend to make up for it. 

Woes of Injury

This week has been a tough week. Last week I hurt my knee, I have no idea how, but since Thursday or Friday last week it's been swollen and painful. Not that awesome. So Monday we did a fairly easy run to begin with and then did some punishment runs. After that we did some more circuit training and more punishment runs. I pushed through the pain but I don't know it was my best idea. By noon on Monday I decided that I needed to get an appointment to have it looked at. So by 4pm on Monday I was getting an x-ray of my knee. Wednesday we did legs and that awful cemetery run but I didn't run the whole time. I did the downhill jogs but never did the uphill because it hurt way too bad. Then we did legs, which with a bum knee is pretty impossible, but not entirely. Mary gave me a few different modified exercises to do so that I could still workout but it was still a struggle and pretty painful. Needless to say, I'm paying for it. I know that I should rest it and take some time off but I have 4 more days left of this class and I'm determined to finish it. 
So as of now I'm just waiting to have my MRI and for the results of that to see what happens next. So I will keep you in the internet world posted. 

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Week 4 Completed

So last week we had boot camp Wed, Thur, & Fri. I forgot how awful boot camp was when you have it 3 days in a row. So I'll give you a little run down of each of the days we suffered. 


Wednesday - Started off with a ladder run, where the person in the back sprints to the front of the line. Well Mary put an extra twist into it and we passed a 15 pound weight from the front to back, then sprinted to the front with the weight in our hand. Still not the worst run we've done. After that we went into our groups to start our circuit weights. We did arms and happened to make most of our time goals. Most of them. We had I think 5 punishment runs. (I've started calling them this because they're awful.) So we did 2 cycles of weights then 2 cycles of cardio, which was not that much fun because it was plyo type of cardio half of the time. But all in all it was a good day. 


Thursday - This was awful. First we only had half of our group so it made the circuits a little more difficult/confusing. Second, we were all lagging badly so we didn't make time goals often. We ended up doing a total of 7 punishment runs before we did our horrible, terrible, very awful 1.5 mile run IN A CEMETERY. Yes you read that correctly. Mind you, we're doing legs today as well so it's a pretty awful day for our legs. Then we trotted over to the cemetery, the pitch black, no lighting because it's barely 6:05am, cemetery. So I'm thinking cool a quick 1.5 mile and we're done... Ha! I thought wrong. This run took well over 20 minutes and involved more hills than anyone should ever try to run. Needless to say, I never want to do this run again but I'm sure we'll do it the next 2 weeks. Yay? So Thursday and I did not end on happy terms that's for sure.


Friday - Final day of the week. I'm pumped. Well I shouldn't be. My knee is starting to feel the pain from this 3 days in a row and I've been struggling with eating enough food. Which is so weird to me because I LOVE to eat. So Friday we did shoulders and back circuits and then lots of fun cardio and today we only had to do 5 punishment runs. Friday wasn't all that bad but anything was better than Thursday. 


So currently I've lost 21 pounds since I started my battle with my weight. It's sick. I can't believe that I had 21 pounds to lose and still have 15-20 pounds to go. I will never go back to that weight. I've made a few new recipes but still need to tweak them a bit so I can share them with everyone. (all zero people who read this blog) But last night I was bad. I went out to the bar and drank and also had a bowl of cereal when I got home, but still managed to lose weight so I'm not all that upset. Also, I have my "wall of shorts" that have 3 different pair of shorts hanging up all different sizes. I've been working to fit in the bigger pair and then move down from there. Today I fit into the middle pair!! I skipped the larger pair and can fit into the middle pair which has given me about 4 more pairs of shorts to wear. I am so pumped. 


So for now I'm very happy with the way things are going and am going to add in weekly goals for myself. 


Goals for next week
1. Go to bed earlier, 10:30 at the latest!
2. Eat more food.
3. Walk on my "off" days
4. Research more Dukan recipes


I don't want to keep the goals boot camp specific, some week's it'll be "make bed every day" or whatever. I just feel like if I write them out, it'll keep me more motivated. Tootles for now. 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Another Week Beginning

So today was the first day back to boot camp. I lost another 3 pounds! Woo Hoo!! Today was kind of tough though. I didn't go to bed early enough and I paid for it sadly. I don't really have much to talk about other than I baked Dukan Pumpkin Inside Out Muffins


Ingredients (I doubled this recipe, it originally only made 6 muffins)
8 tbs. splenda
12 tbs.of oat bran
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tbs. of ginger (I did a heaping tbs.)
1 tbs. of cinnamon (I did a heaping tbs.)
1 tbs. of nutmeg (I did a heaping tbs.)
2 tsp. of baking powder
10 tbs of pumpkin (NOT the pie mix)
4 eggs
10 tbs FF sour cream


Each of these muffins has roughly 1tbs of oat bran. We use the high fiber oat bran.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together, then add the pumpkin. Once that is all mixed together, add the eggs.

Mix well then add the FF sour cream.

Now to make the filling. Take an 8oz package of FF Cream Cheese and mix with 1/2c splenda. I use a fork to mix this up instead of the whisk because I don't have a fancy stand mixer, yet. Next summer we're getting married and if we don't get it from the wedding, I'll just purchase it myself. 


Evenly portion the muffins into 12 muffin cups. Don't leave your muffins unattended because you will end up with only 10 muffins because your dog will eat 2 muffins, liner and all. 

Now take your finger and swipe the inside of the empty bowl. Proceed to lick your finger. Yes, it's that delicious. 

Put a good sized dollop of your cream cheese filling in the middle of each muffin. It gets a bit sticky so be careful or you'll end up flipping your muffin like I almost did. (Oops!)
See how the center muffin looks a bit smooshed... Yea I almost ruined that bad boy. Nick helped me save it though!!

Throw these puppies into the oven at 350 for 20 minutes and you will have super delicious Dukan Diet Pumpkin Inside Out Muffins. 




We have tried Chocolate and Apple spice and this is by far the best of the 3 recipes. The chocolate I may try again and tweak the recipe a bit but honestly they don't keep well at all. The Apple Spice ones were awesome I think I just needed to add more apple spice and cinnamon and maybe nutmeg as well. To make the Apple Spice ones just omit the pumpkin and ginger. 


I hope everyone enjoy's these muffins as much as we do in this house. I have boot camp Thursday and Friday and will update again this weekend. Maybe I'll throw in some wedding stuff I've been working on as well. 

As always, questions, comments, and concerns are welcome. I totally jakced the photo ideas from Pioneer Woman's blog so deal with it. 

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Back At It! Dukan Begins


So this is now the second time I've started to write a blog post and then accidentally closed out the blog window. I'm infuriated!!! Okay so a few notes... PS this blog entry is going to be SO long so deal with it.

The rules of Boot Camp-

1. If you're late or forget to turn in your food logs, everyone runs or does some sort of awful cardio.

2. If you don't make time, the time that Mary (our trainer) sets for us to get set into the newest exercise or run, everyone runs or does some sort of awful cardio.

3. Basically anytime one person doesn't follow whatever rule is set that day, everyone is punished. Which sucks and is awesome all at the same time.

Those are basically the rules. So now on to week one of boot camp. My usual schedule is M&W 5:30am and Thurs 5:30pm. My first week due to travel stuff, I did M&W 5:30am and Tues 5:30pm.

Day 1 - I was so amped! I got there at 5:20am ready to go. I got my bag ready the night before. I worked so hard and exhausted every effort to complete boot camp at 110%. When we didn't make time, we ran. When we didn't run hard enough, we ran more. It was not cool at all.

Day 2- I was amped again but forgot to eat before class and honestly it was the hardest class I've ever been in. I had no energy to do anything but I worked as hard as I possibly could and sadly there wasn't much gas in the tank. We ran and did an insane amount of legs. I drove home and literally could barely stay awake at the wheel. I was so exhausted.

Day 3 - Oh my goodness I don't think I've ever been so sore and had to do legs... AGAIN. I don't know that I've ever worked my legs as hard as I did these 2 days in a row. Needless to say, I was friggin exhausted. Wanted to die right then and there.

So the remainder of the week I struggled to walk in my heels and stand up or sit down. Now most wouldn't think too much of that but I drink a LOT of water, like a gallon a day of water sometimes mixed with diet coke or coffee or both. So getting myself to and from the bathroom was pretty awful. Wednesday night I could barely put the Lazy Boy "legs" back down. Mind you, as I'm dying of being sore and exhausted I'm supposed to be getting my house ready for my mom to visit and Nick's parents to visit. Luckily Nick is amazing and did a good clean up of the house for me so I could just rest. I mean even my back was sore because my legs were so tight, it was a terrible combination.

So Saturday I started feeling even worse in my back so I stretched a bit more than I usually do and even took some Motrin because I figured it was swollen muscles, well it wasn't. I ended up going to the emergency room around 5am on Sunday morning because I still hadn't fallen asleep because I was in so much pain and really all I could think of was "last time I was in this much pain I ended up in the hospital for 5 days with a terrible kidney infection" So with that thought in mind I woke my mom and Nick up and they carted me to the ER where they doped me up and sent me home with a kidney infection. Luckily my body gave the infection the middle finger so quickly that I was able to avoid any serious infection or hospital time, just had to rest and relax and spoil the remainder of my mom's visit. Luckily we got one good day in together before I started to poop out. So fast forward to Monday, I skipped boot camp for the entire week because honestly I just didn't have the energy and I know that last time I did too much too soon and ended up sick again shortly after my original hospital stint. I was determined to avoid that. Apparently I'm growing up, learning from past experiences, and taking care of myself. It only took me 27 years...

Now over the weekend I decided to make a change in my eating habits that started this Monday, 3 days ago to be specific. My mom gave me a book called "The Dukan Diet" a few months back and she actually started that diet and seriously, I hate how skinny she is because it just makes me jealous. But I read the book a few months ago and decided I wasn't ready to make the leap just yet. Recently I just haven't been making the best decisions when it comes to food and talked to Nick about doing this "diet" with me and he agreed. I hesitate to call it a diet because it really isn't a diet, it's a lifestyle change and not as restrictive as you would think a diet is. I mean in the beginning it's pretty restrictive but at the same time it's not. During my attack phase, which is 3 days long, I'm only allowed to eat from a few categories but there is SO much to choose from in the categories. It's high protein, low fat during the attack phase; thankfully it's only 3 days long!

The second phase begins tomorrow and I get to add most veggies back into my diet and I'm so excited for that, I love veggies! I can eat as much as I want within the certain restraints I've been given but truthfully I'm okay with that because once I finish all 4 phases I can really eat whatever I want for the rest of my life as long as I abide by 2 rules. 1. Once a week, the same day each week, I eat only protein (phase 1) foods. 2. Every day I have 3 tablespoons of oat bran. Other than that there are no restrictions but it's also not saying go and eat cupcakes every day and expect to be skinny. You still want to focus on eating a low fat diet but with so many things available that are low fat, it's not that hard to accomplish these tasks. Regardless coupling this lifestyle change with boot camp should yield some amazing results and hopefully continue to give me the motivation to stay fit.

Okay, I'm almost done, I promise!! This week I returned back to boot camp and again I was ready to rumble!!

Day 1 - Back at it! I got up early, took my pre-packed lunch and breakfast with me all ready to take on the day with my workout and new "diet" foods. On my way I was eating my breakfast which was my delicious vanilla greek yogurt with oat bran mixed it... SIKE, it totally wasn't vanilla. It was plain greek yogurt and my body just HATES it. I had to force myself to choke it down because I HAD to eat before working out or I'd probably just die. I don't think I've ever been so upset about eating something in my whole life. Well who knows, but it's been years. I can almost always stomach things I don't really care for but this time I was literally holding it down and forcing myself to eat it. Pathetic I know. Anyways...... Got to boot camp and we had to run, YAY. I felt a little out of shape but overall felt good. Got into our groups and then had to run becuase we didn't make time. Apparently we started late but who knows, I start when Mary says to, didn't realize she waited for us to get ready. So we did 3 suicides after our first initial run, not that awesome but great cardio. (Sidenote, all of our suicides are uphill) Then we got into our groups for circuit weight training. My group, not me personally, but my group didn't make time 3 times in a row so we did football style Down/Ups with a jump at the end. I was less than pleased. We did bi's, tri's, and shoulders then ended the day with abs, my least favorite thing ever because I have never had ab muscles but I did increase my sit ups by 11. We do as many as we can in a minute but they have to be good reps or they don't count. Yay accountablility. :) Left feeling really good and wasn't as sore as I thought I'd be. Phew!

Day 2 - Today - I was very leery of today because last night I didn't sleep that well and didn't get into bed early enough so I ended up with less than 6 hours of sleep. Lucky for me, I felt alright and still do. We started this morning out with a nice 1.5mile timed run, I finished mine in under 15 minutes but don't know my official time yet. Luckily the run is uphill to begin with and finishes downhill so it really helps you with your pace. Today was legs, I was pretty scared but knew that it couldn't be nearly as bad as the 2 days back to back. I also think we got off a little easy because one of the groups takes about 5 sets of weights when everyone else takes 2 so we ran out of weights for one of the exercises. We did circuit exercises and made time almost every time until the very last circuit. We have 4 different groups, 1-4, 1 being the most fit and 4 the least, groups 1 & 2 had to run a long sprint up hill and back, half of the group did not make time so as a lovely punishment we had to do a 3 touch suicide directly after finishing. Groups 3 & 4 got to go rest, those lucky dogs. My hamstrings were unbelievably tight though, I thougth I was going to injure myself doing some of the exercises because they were so tight. Luckily I survived!!


So there is my super long update. I have not proof read this yes so I have no idea if any of it even makes sense. Feedback is always welcome. I'll be back in a few days to update again.


Pre-Bootcamp


Ahhh. The bliss of not knowing. I've been searching for a boot camp for almost 5 months now. I found one a few months back that had a waiting list and cost over $300 for 12 weeks, 2 workouts a week and some nutrition advice. I decided to pass on that one because honestly, who has that kind of money on hand to just throw around. Plus, it would be a HUGE struggle to get to a 6pm class when I get out of work at 5:30 and it's 35 minutes away. Well, while out scouting for work I drove by a smaller gym that was advertising boot camp. Did a little research and it turns out, it's super affordable and has classes 5 days a week at 3 different times, which makes it easy to tailor it to my schedule. It also requires me to track my calories weekly and turn it in each week. I also am getting an eating plan, but I haven't seen it yet so we'll see how much I follow it. If nothing else, I will use it as a guide and tailor it as necessary. The only downside is there are only 2 times that I am able to attend and neither of them are really ideal. The morning time is 5:30am, which requires a 4:30 wake up, and then 5:30pm, which requires me leaving work early. So I've opted to do Monday & Wednesday 5:30am, and then Thursday 5:30pm. I figure I have more control over my mornings than I do the ability to leave work early multiple times a week. 
So this weekend, is my final weekend of freedom. 
I will try to post a blog update at least once a week and share my struggles, successes, and general opinion on what I'm doing. It's toted on their website that I'll lose anywhere from 5-12 pounds in the 6 weeks, so here's to hoping it's 12!!! And if I like it, I'll probably do it one more time before the wedding, most likely after the New Year. 

Stay positive.

Boot Camp - Body Evolution, Macon Georgia