Just some things

•So I'm taking a nutrition class for this semester! I'm excited to learn about health, wellness, and the chemistry that happens within the body (:
•the other night, me and my roommate watched a very interesting documentary on Netflix called Forks Over Knives, and I recommend it! It's about the short and long-term health benefits of plant-based dieting and the link between eating animal meats and cancer.

I know this has been a brief post, but I'll leave you with one of my favorite diet-related quotes: "Don't live to eat, but rather, eat to live."

Progress face pic

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I thought I'd show you the progress I've made so far in my face alone! It's always really encouraging and motivating to see progress in your body. Not only have I noticed physical changes, but I've noticed that I also feel better mentally and emotionally. You don't have to permanently give up sweets and fast food, but limit those things to occasional indulgences. It's hard at first, but I promise it gets easier. Now, I can easily turn down that dessert that I was once used to always having. You can do it!

Happy Tuesday, errbody!

Wellness Tips for College Students

• Do not procrastinate. This is not high school anymore! Start working on assignments and get ahead on reading whenever you can. It'll help keep the stress level to a minimum and keep you from cramming before deadlines!
• Refrain from all-nighters. Being sleep deprived impairs your memory and ability to function the next day, regardless of how much you've studied. (You can avoid all-nighters by not procrastinating!!)
• Master the art of power naps. Sometimes a small nap is all you need to get re-energized and keep you alert for the rest of the day. 
• Drink in moderation. Doing something fun doesn't always have to involve liquor and beer. 
• Use protection. Don't put yourself at risk. And don't let anyone pressure you into doing it; sex shouldn't be scary or emotionally/physically painful.
• Keep healthy snacks available. You'll be more likely to eat junk food if you buy it or keep it around. Fruits and veggies are the way to go!
• Don't eat to fight stress. Combat stress the right way and HIT THE GYM!
• Keep in touch with family and friends. If you're homesick, the people you love are only a phone call/Skype call away!
• Stay goal-oriented. College is fun, but remember why you're there and stay focused on the big picture.
• Limit distractions. Find a quiet place to study, and set aside your phone and social networking while you do. You'll get things done faster and retain more information. Stay away from study group floors at the library if you get distracted easily!
• Stick to a routine. Once you learn to manage your time and habituate studying/sleeping/exercising/socializing, your body and mind will learn how to adjust to your daily routine without getting too overwhelmed. 
• Be ready for change. The transition into college is never an easy thing. Keep an open mind and heart, and view change as an opportunity to learn and grow.
• Get involved. Joining campus clubs and organizations are a great way to meet and connect with people who share some of the same interests as you.
• Keep calm. Don't let stress get the best of you! Stress can wear down your immune system and lead to getting sick around testing times (it sucks, trust me). Take it one day at a time.

Best of luck this upcoming semester to all new and returning students! HOOK 'EM \m/  (:

Motivation Monday

Start your morning and this new week off with some morning exercise! If you're not a morning person, morning exercise does not by any means have to be extremely strenuous. Just get up 30-60 minutes before you normally do to perform a small workout to start the day off right!
•Early morning exercise starts up your metabolism and keeps it elevated for hours, possibly even up to 24 hours. This means you'll be burning MORE calories all day!
•A.M. exercise also helps you sleep better at night and helps you get higher quality sleep, which means you'll probably end up needing LESS sleep!
•Activity triggers the release of endorphins, which also happens decrease appetite. That means that morning workouts can help you with appetite and portion control throughout the day!
•If you make morning exercise part of your routine, your body will become accustomed to waking up around the same time each morning and regulate its circadian rhythms. When you regulate sleep and workout schedules, the body won't be confused by different wake-up times, and waking up will become easier. Also, with a morning workout routine, your metabolism begins to heighten even before you wake up, making you feel more energized and ready right from the moment you open your eyes.

If you're not already in the habit of working out, just don't even think about it. Do what Nike says and "Just do it."

The Awesome Avocado

If there's one awesome super-fruit to incorporate into your diet, it's definitely the avocado. Here this:

• Avocados are packed with vitamins your body needs to maintain its health. Included in the avocado are vitamins A, C, E, K, and B6, which is why the fruit is sometimes referred to as the alphabet fruit! 
• One avocado contains 975 mg of potassium, about 30% more potassium contained in one banana. Potassium helps regulate blood pressure and prevent cardiovascular disease.
• Half of an avocado contains about 4.5 grams of fiber, which amounts to between 10-20% daily value of fiber for the average adult. Fiber helps keep the bowels moving, lowers blood cholesterol, and also keeps you fuller for longer!
• Avocados are relatively high in fat, but the good news is that avocados are packed with monounsaturated fat, which is the GOOD fat that your body needs. Monounsaturated fats reduce risk of heart disease by lowering the bad cholesterol (LDL) and raising the good cholesterol (HDL).
• The GOOD fats in avocados also help with nutrient absorption when eaten with other foods, such as salads, or other vegetables and fruits. By adding avocados to your meals, you are maximizing the nutritional value of what you eat!
• Avocados are rich in antioxidants which is good for the heart and boosts your immune system.
• Fight off the risk of tumor growth with avocados! Women: the oleic acid helps prevent breast cancer. Men: the phytonutrients help prevent prostate cancer.

Here is a simple, but delicious avocado sandwich recipe that I made last week:

The Grilled Pesto/Avocado/Spinach Sandwich

Ingredients:

• I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light spread
• half a tomato
• 1/5 of an avocado
• spinach
• shredded mozzarella cheese
• pesto (I used store-bought pesto, but if you want, you can use your own pesto recipe!)
• two slices of 100% whole wheat bread

First, turn on the stove and heat up a pan on high or medium-high. While you wait for that, you can prepare your sandwich! (Of course, it tastes perfectly fine not grilled!) Take your two slices of bread and lightly spread the butter on each slice (the butter is meant to be on the outside of both slices so it can fry in the pan). Then spread pesto on one slice, then put on your spinach, sliced avocado and tomato and mozzarella cheese, followed by the top slice of bread. When your pan is ready to go, put the sandwich in the pan. You can press down on the top with a spatula to flatten it out a bit if you want. After about a minute, flip the sandwich over and cook the other side for about a minute. After that, your sandwich is ready to be served! YAY!

Champion Breakfast

Start the day off right with this healthy breakfast egg white omelette!

Ingredients:
•cooking spray
•two or three egg whites (the picture is with two)
•honey
•sliced fruit! (I used raspberries, strawberries, and bananas, but blueberries would be a great addition!)
•granola

Instructions: heat your pan on high with cooking spray. When ready, add the egg whites, followed by the fruit and pure honey. After a couple minutes, fold the omelette in half, then cook for a couple more minutes on medium heat or until ready! Then, top the omelette off with some granola. Boom. Breakfast is served.

Simple, Healthy Snack

If you're looking for a quick, healthy snack, look no further! Toast a piece of 100% whole wheat bread, then spread on some flavored Greek yogurt, and top it off with a bit of granola and fresh strawberries! Yummy, nutritional, and the wheat with Greek yogurt will keep you fuller for longer!

Oatmeal Benefits and Simple Recipes

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It helps you start the day off right by getting your metabolism moving, and if you eat a good, healthy, hearty meal, you'll be less hungry throughout the day.

One thing I like to have on my breakfast menu is oatmeal! To be honest, before I learned a whole lot about nutrition, I was a super huge fan of sugary cereals and would end up eating 2 or 3 helpings in one sitting. But once I began to amend my diet and actually look at nutrition labels before buying things at the grocery store, I started to incorporate more oatmeal into my breakfast! Oatmeal offers plenty of health benefits because of its richness in antioxidants and fiber content. With oatmeal, you can lower cholesterol, build your immune system, keep your bowels moving, and stay fuller longer! YAY!

If your morning meal is normally rushed, buy Quaker Original Instant Oatmeal (bonus: no sugar added, wahoo!). Just empty the packet into a bowl, add 2/3 cup of water or milk, heat it in the microwave for a minute, and BAM. Breakfast is served. Of course, oatmeal tastes quite bland just on its own, but try your best to stay away from flavored oatmeal, because it's high in added sugar and sweetener. Instead, try some of these quick, simple, and healthy oatmeal recipes that I use to spice up your plain oatmeal:

• Chocolate Banana Oatmeal: add a tablespoon of Nesquik Chocolate Flavoring (no sugar added) and one whole sliced banana 
• Blueberry Nut Oatmeal: add blueberries, chopped walnuts or sliced almonds, and a bit of pure honey
• Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal: add chopped apples, cinnamon, and granola or sliced almonds for an extra crunch
• Nutty Peanut Butter Oatmeal: add sliced almonds or peanuts and a tablespoon of peanut butter to up your intake of protein!

Great Apps

For all you iPhone owners out there, here are a few sweet apps I have on my phone that are great for people looking to get healthy & fit!:
•myfitnesspal - I use mfp to track everything I eat as well as some of the workouts I do (I don't track all my workouts, because I mainly use it for nutritional purposes). Shows you the amount of calories you consume/burn off, the nutrition labels on what you eat, pie charts of your daily intake of protein/carbs/fat, and helps you keep track of your dieting progress! You can also add your friends to view their fitness goals and daily food diaries (my username is coolbeans_britt). I use this all the time to make sure I'm eating a proper, well-balanced diet.
•Nike Training Club - Along with Insanity and distance running, I use NTC for exercise. With NTC, you can get lean with high-intensity cardio, get toned with light weights and intervals, get strong with increased weights and reps, and get focused with workouts targeting specific areas of the body.
•Nike + iPod - I have a chip in my Lunars that I synch with this app, and it tracks my running distance, pace, and calories burned.
•Fooducate - This app lets you scan barcodes on foods or search items and it will tell you all about the nutritional values, weight watchers food points, or things to be on the lookout out for. Great app that I use whenever I go grocery shopping!

Sweet Tooth

For everyone craving a healthy, but yummy snack, try this simple recipe! All you need is a banana and your choice of flavored low-fat yogurt (we chose a banana with vanilla yogurt because bananas taste amazing frozen, but you can use berries also!). Peel and cut up the banana, then dip the pieces in yogurt and let it sit in the freezer for about an hour! The result tastes like frozen yogurt bites with ice cream in the middle, but without all the extra calories (:

Keep Dinner Light

• Most of us find ourselves relaxing after dinner and after a long day of work/school/play. It's pretty standard to eat dinner, then kick back in front of the tele until bedtime. In that case, the body's energy is only used toward digestion, and the rest that isn't burned off is stored as fat. Rule of thumb: breakfast is the biggest meal of the day, followed by a light lunch and an even lighter dinner. 
• Eating a lighter dinner will help you get a better night's rest. Your body won't be using as much energy trying to digest a heavy meal, so it will be able to rest more fully. 
• What does a "lighter" meal mean? Keep it to salads (easy on the dressing, y'all), water-based soups (not the creamy stuff), fruits, and veggies! Try to not eat carbs or heavy meats at dinner, because those foods are more processed and require more energy to burn off (that's the stuff you need early in the day for energy and before workouts!)
• Try to eat an early dinner before 6 if possible. Late dinners and foods consumed after 6pm are metabolized more slowly overnight, which leads to extra fat storage. 
• If you're used to that midnight snack, try drinking water instead. Thirst can sometimes be mistaken for hunger, which leads to overeating.

Eating Habits

Being healthy and fit doesn't only come from working out, but it comes from maintaining a proper, balanced diet. Here are just some of the eating habits and rules I've learned to abide by since adopting a healthier lifestyle:
•Take a daily multivitamin! It's important to get the proper nutrients and vitamins your body needs to stay healthy.
•Limit consumption of refined sugar as much as possible. Learn to say no to baked goods, pastries, ice cream, sugary cereals, candy, and chocolate. Instead of putting refined sugar in coffee, try using milk or honey!
•Stay away from trans fats and keep consumption of saturated fats to a minimum. No fast food!
•Salads are healthy for you because of the lettuce. If you use too much dressing, you might as well just have a burger and fries! Instead of dressing, I like to put Parmesan and fruit or sautéed mushrooms for flavor.
•Going on a diet doesn't mean only counting calories. 200 calories of candy is much worse than 200 calories of fruit. The less processed your meals are, the better!
•Starving yourself is NEVER good. Your body's metabolism will slow down, and once you stop dieting, you'll quickly gain back what you lost. Always eat at least 1200 calories a day, and aim for 5 smaller meals spread throughout the day instead of 3 big meals.
•Eat whole grain pastas and bread! Look at the ingredients on food labels and say away from "enriched" or "refined" flour, which doesn't contain any nutrients.
•To all of you broke college students out there: RAMEN IS SO BAD FOR YOU !!!! You're better off making ham sandwiches or PB&J on wheat bread.
•If I'm hungry for a snack, I try to stick to fruits and stay away from salty foods like crackers. The salt will just make you crave more and you'll end up eating more than you want to.
•Drink water, never soda or concentrated juices.
•Limit alcohol consumption!

It may seem like a lot of rules, but once you get used to eating well, you'll start to crave food that is not only good, but healthy for you as well!

-Brittany

And I'm Rachel

And throughout the last few months, I've come to realize that being fit and healthy is incredibly important to me. Everyday that I don't workout, I feel sluggish, and my body is so accustomed to frequent exercise that it craves the workout. I've had health kicks on and off for about a year now, but these past few months I have been really buckling down and getting straight to business. I have been working out the hardest I ever have, and managing about 5-6 workouts a week.
The first few weeks I had been working out, I already started to see results. You'd be surprised at how quickly you could see a difference in your body. I'm not saying to expect results in a week, but you will for sure see a difference in 3 weeks. However, another huge factor in losing weight/toning up is your diet! If you don't clean up your diet, you won't see much of a change. I've been eating a lot better recently and the combination of working out and eating healthier has made me feel so much better, and I hope you all can (AND WILL) feel the same.
The hardest thing about working out is the motivation. Sitting on the couch probably sounds so much more appealing than throwing on some running shoes and heading out your front door. I totally understand, but I promise you the workout really is worth it. Not only will you feel great, but you will be more motivated to be productive throughout your day!
Daily exercise also boosts brain power, prevents disease, jump starts your metabolism, improves your mood, and relieves stress. It generally improves your health and lessens your chances of having a stroke or heart attack.
We will post pictures, recipes, tips, exercises and much more to keep you motivated, so don't miss out! Merry Soreness!

If you're like us and love to listen to music while making a mess in the kitchen, click here for a great "cooking time" playlist! We'll also link it up on the sidebar for easy access (:

And with this first blog post, I'm going to go ahead and start out by saying that I, Brittany, LOVE FOOD. It's no secret; just ask my friends. Eating could almost be like a hobby for me.  


Also, I'm a college student, and if there's one thing about college, it's that there are about a thousand opportunities to consume excess calories in a day, including the enticing dessert table in the dining hall (which happens to be strategically placed on the way to the exit door), the free food opportunities at campus events and various organizational meetings, the college parties and 24-hour eateries, and the midnight snacking that occurs during those dreadful late nights studying at the library. My first semester of college, I was all about eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. It took me almost 15 pounds and a chubby face to realize that yes, the "freshman 15" is very, very real, and that I wanted to quit my unhealthy habits before I got too carried away. Let me tell ya: it's hard to resist all of the sweet temptations. But, once you break that habit and realize how strong you feel, you don't want to go back. 


Here are a few simple tips on living a healthy lifestyle:

• Drink plenty of water! Make it a point to have 6-8 glasses of water a day. Drink one big glass before every meal, and you'll find that you'll be fuller faster and eat less!
• Cut out the sodas (yes mom, that means no diet sodas!). Sodas dehydrate you and they're high in calories and sugar! No bueno :(
• Stick to whole wheat bread instead of white bread. Whole wheat is healthier and keeps you full longer, whereas white bread with "enriched" flour (which basically means they strip the bread of all its healthy nutrients) is starchy and spikes your insulin levels (that's bad).
• Never let yourself get to a point where you're starving, because that leads to lots of overeating and regret! Keep healthy snacks handy if you know you will have to go a long period of time without a full meal. During meals, listen to your stomach and stop eating when you're full, not when you hate yourself!
• Set aside at least 30 minutes every day to do some sort of exercise! That doesn't mean you have to hit the gym for a hard workout every single day. Go out for a leisurely stroll or a nice bike ride!
• Find a health buddy! Mine is Rachel (: Having a health buddy keeps you motivated!

I wish you all good health and happiness!

-B