Surprise..... Guest post!

Good morning! This is Mary...... Gina's daughter, tagging in for my first guest post. I am currently living in Northwest Indiana, finishing up my accelerated nursing degree - just about a month left! My eating habits have been shaped by the influence of my knowledgeable mom, as well as my own studies. My first degree was in Kinesiology, and included multiple courses in nutrition. I have always appreciated the effect that nutrition has on the body, specifically on sports performance. While I am no longer a "competing" athlete, I still want to feel good in my workouts and throughout my day.

Well, my original intention with my first guest blog was to do a write-up on breakfast. I absolutely love breakfast. Although, if I’m being quiet honest, I love all three meals of the day. I don’t think that I could pick a favorite between breakfast, lunch and dinner because all three offer such different, and wonderful choices. I love food! For that reason, I think that I will start with breakfast, and work towards sharing more of my meal creations. I find food inspiration everywhere! I enjoy checking out menus, watching food network, sharing recipes among friends and family, and most recently I’ve been really into following food blogs.

Monday was definitely a day of “good eats”. My breakfast started off with an awesome idea I picked up from eatingbirdfood.com. It is a blog maintained by Brittany, who is a vegetarian resident of Richmond, VA. She has been blogging for 3 years and has a lot of great ideas. Anyways, back to breakfast – she blogged about something she called “overnight oats”. It consists of placing old fashioned oats, a liquid and any other goodies you can think of into a bowl or Tupperware the night before you want to eat it. Place it in the fridge and let the magic happen. In the morning, you take out of the fridge, stir, let come to room temperature for 10-15 minutes, and add your toppings.

Since they say that a picture speaks a thousand words, I included a picture of the ingredients that I used: ½-3/4 c. Old fashioned oats, ½-3/4c. vanilla soy milk, a sprinkle of both cinnamon and nutmeg, dash of vanilla, and then I used blue agave to add some sweetness. Just for fun I addedabout a teaspoon of brown sugar on top.

(Serving size for oats and soy milk just depends on how big of a serving you want – but I do equal parts of both).

½ cup of the oats is 150 calories, 4g of fiber, 3g of fat, and 5g of protein. ½ cup of the soymilk is 35 calories, .5g of fiber, .75g of fat, and 3g of protein. I throw all of these ingredients into my Tupperware (I was going to be eating on the go, so the tupperware made this really easy to do!) and end up with something like this:

Mix it up and add your tupperware lid, or cover with plastic wrap. Then place in the fridge overnight. (Brittany did say on her blog that the minimum time is 1.5 hours, so you could do in the morning or for a daytime snack). Overnight the magic happens, and once the goodness has sat out on the counter for a few minutes, its time to add the toppings.

I must admit that I went a little bit overboard on my toppings! I was planning on adding a few banana slices and just under a tablespoon of my almond butter (90cal, 8g fat, 2g fiber, 3.5g protein), but I had just bought some fun ingredients and wanted to add those, as well. Flaxseed (you need the ground stuff, whole seeds don’t give the same benefits!!), wheatberries (which I soaked overnight, and then cooked for about 45 minutes on the stove – great source of protein), and some strawberry slices. I used 1 teaspoon of the flaxseed (10 cal, .7g fat, .7g fiber, .4g protein) and less than 1/8 c. of the wheatberrries(50cal, 0 fat, 2.5g fiber, 2.5 g protein). The wheatberries added a great chewy texture to the oatmeal.

I once read in a Sports nutrition guidebook that you should eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. You need the most energy early in the morning, not right before bed. While I still have filling servings of dinner, I have tried to think wisely about what I am putting into my body first thing in the morning. This great breakfast was very filling and nutritious. There were about 450 calories and about 11g of fiber. Which is almost half way to the daily recommendation of 25-35g of fiber. This kept me full and energized until I had lunch several hours later.

I will leave you with one more breakfast post for the day....super easy and very delicious. I can't even tell you how many times I have heard my mom say that infamous word: moderation! This is truly an idea that she is committed to, and for very good reason. Humans don't do too well with strict, exclusive diets. If you deny yourself sweets (or whatever your craving is) for too long, most people will end up binging on it. This recipe is a great way to show you how I implement moderation in my own eating. I enjoy bacon. However, I don't eat nitrates or nitrites, which severely limits my bacon eating abilities, as most bacon products are loaded with these bad boys. With that in mind, when I do come across nitrate-free bacon, I like to indulge every once in a while. What I will do since I am cooking for one, is buy the package of bacon, cook all of it up to about 75% 'doneness', and then freeze what I'm not using that day. Then, when I'm ready for it, I can take out 1-2 pieces, microwave for 30 seconds, and have bacon ready to use. This morning, I decided it was a good time to use it.

I made a breakfast sandwich after my workout this morning, using multigrain sandwich 'thins' (100 calories per sandwich for the bread). I then took a coffee mug, sprayed the inside with nonstick spray, and cracked two eggs in there. I cut up some green onions and bell pepper and added that to the mug, along with salt, pepper and tabasco. Mixed it all up and put in the microwave, for approximately 1.5 minutes. Then added that on to my thin with my slice of bacon, and had an easy, quick, delicious breakfast. Love a meal with easy clean-up! And remember, I'm not having this bacon every day. Probably 1-2 times a month, tops.

Hope you enjoyed my first blog, and check back soon for more tips from me on snack and meal ideas! Happy eating :)