What's for dinner?

I'm making a fantastic meal tonight, butternut squash soup and grilled chicken.  In fact, it's one of the meals my husband requests the most. Oddly enough, it's simple and full of whole, real foods and easy to make!

I usually make this soup on Sunday night and then put it in the fridge, so on busy work nights, all I have to do is heat it up and throw a couple of chicken breasts on the grill. Just because I'm busy, I can still be successful with my eating.

Ingredients:

1 large butternut squash
1 granny smith apple
1/2 yellow onion
2 TBS butter
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
2 1/2 cups water
1 tsp sage
1tsp salt
3/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper (if desired)
1/3 cup unsweetened coconut milk

Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 425 and line a baking sheet with foil.

2. Split Butternut squash in half lengthwise and remove seeds.

3. Place halves skin side down on baking sheet and season generously with salt and pepper.

4. Place 1 TBSP butter on each half of squash.

5. Bake squash halves for 50 minutes to one hour, or until knife tender.

6. Dice 1/2 onion and whole apple and place in hot dutch oven or sauce pot, prepared with a drizzle of olive oil.

7. Add 1tsp sage to apples and onion and cook approximately 8 minutes.

8. Remove pan from heat and set aside.

9. When squash is cooked, take out of oven and place baking sheet on wire rack to help cool.

10. Once cool enough to touch, scoop flesh of squash out of skin and place in pot with apples and onions.

11. Add chicken broth, water, nutmeg, and (if desired, crushed red pepper).

12. Bring to boil over medium heat, then reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring to break up large pieces of squash.

13. At this point, I taste and add any more salt and pepper if needed, add the coconut milk and then take off the heat to cool.

14.At this point, you can either blend the mixture in small batches in a blender, being careful with hot liquids. Or you can do what I do and put it in the fridge. Then, when you're ready to eat just blend and then heat!

Yum! Enjoy!

Workout done!

I had a rough night's sleep last night, and an early wake up so I wasn't exactly chipper while I stumbled my way to the coffee maker this morning. I'm pretty sore from my workout yesterday too, so even getting down the stairs was tough. I honestly thought about just calling it a rest day and staying in my jammies on the couch all day.

That's when I remembered why I'm doing this. I remembered what we've gone through to be able to have children. I remembered why we wanted to start a family in the first place. I remembered that it's no longer about fitting into that bikini tucked in the back of my closet, but it's about the choice between diabetes and being able to have children.

That's all the pep talk (coffee didn't hurt either) that I needed. I marched, well....hobbled, my sore butt up the stairs and got those workout clothes on and killed my workout! Turbo Fire HIT 20 kicked my butt, but I was still rearing to go. I decided to take a short jog around the neighborhood with my dog to finish off my workout. Whohoo! I went from dragging and no energy to feeling pumped!

I'm always amazed at how much of what holds us back is mental. I felt like I couldn't possibly complete a workout. Heck, even going upstairs to change seemed like it would take too much energy, but I did it anyways. I told that little voice to shut the heck up and now I feel so much better for it. In fact, I still have energy to clean my kitchen!

Wanted to add a little transformation tuesday pic for y'all. I still have a ways to go, but I'm definitely seeing great results and will continue to work towards progress.

Before:

The day my hubs left for Afghanistan. I was depressed and at my heaviest ever. 

After:

I now feel confident in sundresses!

I even completed an amazing Mud Run! 

I still can't get over how tiny my legs have gotten.

Welcome home Mr. S!!! Although I lost weight, you can see, I still kept my curves! I felt gorgeous here!

Get your challenge started today! Contact me for more info on how you can change your body and your health as well. 

Awesome results

Over the last three years, my husband and I have been dealing with a very personal issue, infertility. Just after we were married, we discovered that I suffer from an endocrine disorder called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). This condition causes me to gain weight rapidly and have extreme difficulty to get that weight off, not to mention the fact that it has caused us to be unable to start a family.

We have been under the care of a fertility specialist for the last 2+ years and have been through many rounds of oral and injectable medications as well as abdominal surgery earlier in the year. We're at the point now, where we may be running out of options due to insurance coverage.

Naturally, it's been a heartbreaking journey, and coming to the end of it with still no addition to our family, I was feeling lost. That is, until I found Beachbody.

I have done a couple of the workouts here and there in college and enjoyed them, but never really followed through with them for one reason or another. I had also heard about their notorious product, Shakeology, which claimed to be an entire day's worth of vitamins and minerals and increase weight loss in one shake per day. I was beyond skeptical. I figured my whey protein shakes were just as good. I mean, I ate relatively healthy overall, so I was convinced that I didn't need their products and that I could do it all on my own.

That all changed when I met Jess. She encouraged me to give it a shot and gave me the information I was searching for. I was able to try a 5 day supply of Shakeology and Jess set me up with a great meal plan to follow.  She checked in with me every day and encouraged me to keep it up. All I had to do was follow it and do one 1/2 hour per day of cardio.

PCOS makes it challenging to lose weight, especially because of the fact that it causes me to have issues with my blood sugar. The only way that I have been able to lose weight in the past is to cut out all sugar and basically all carbs, including breads and even severely limiting fruits! I wasn't sure that this plan would work for me because of that, but luckily, all of my issues didn't seem to matter.

Within two days of my challenge, I found that I had more energy, felt thinner and was uh hmm... more regular... By the end of the week, I had lost over 3lbs and several inches all over. I was amazed and definitely wanted to keep up the progress. I decided to order a Challenge Pack to include Chalean Extreme and Shakeology.

Only a few weeks of including Shakeology and a workout into my routine, and I am seeing amazing results. I am still consistently losing between 1-2lbs per week and truly enjoy eating healthy. I don't crave any of the junk that I used to, especially sugar! Even better than that though, I have started ovulating on my own, something I usually need fertility specialists and copious amounts of medication to convince my body to do!

I am absolutely floored that by simply taking charge of my own life with fitness and nutrition, I am able to make more of a change in my body and potential future family growth than all of the medications have been able to over the years. I have a newly established faith that we may be able to start a family without the help of medications after all.

Beachbody and Shakeology has given me a new hope, and I want to be able to share that with you as well. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want to begin your journey too!

Eating Clean

For years I thought I was an overall healthy eater. I would eat oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, veggies, lean proteins, etc. in an attempt to lose weight. Working out and seemingly eating right, I still wasn't losing weight. Sounds familiar, right? Well, I've found the problem. I was only really pretending to eat healthy. I wasn't reading labels and truly eating natural, whole foods.

Upon being diagnosed with a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, I learned that my fluctuating hormone levels had caused me to be pre-diabetic. How could this be? I was 23, relatively healthy (despite the 20lbs I had recently put on) and realizing that I was in total denial. My hormone fluctuations were directly related to my insulin levels and were even wreaking havoc on my potential to have children. As a young, married woman, this terrifies me! I began doing my research and discovered that many PCOS patients have issues with sugars and refined starches such as bread and pasta. Well, this made sense to me. Every time I had tried a lower carbohydrate diet in the past, I always lost weight, only to return to my carb loving ways and gain it all back. This was different now though. This was not only affecting my size, it was affecting my moods and my potential to have a family with my husband.

After all of my research, I found that the majority of those who had conquered PCOS had adopted some form of a clean eating plan. For those who don't know what clean eating is, it is eating whole, natural foods and avoiding anything processed as much as possible. Yes, it does mean giving up cereals and pre-packaged "diet" meals. Upon evaluating my diet that I thought was healthy I discovered that I had been going about it all wrong. While greek yogurt is a great food on its own, I was eating a variety that was full of unnecessary sugars. That low calorie frozen entree was pumped full of salts and preservatives. I was even passing trail mix with chocolate bits in it off as health food. I was doing it all wrong.

I'm not saying, eat salads for the rest of your life. Personally, I'd go crazy. I've just never been a huge salad person. I'm asking you to challenge yourself to eat a cleaner diet. Basically, read the ingredients on the things you're buying and truly educate yourself on what you're putting into your body. You may be surprised to find out that you're not eating as healthy as you thought. You may be cheating yourself from achieving your weight loss goals simply because you didn't take the time to investigate.

So I urge you to feel better and lose weight while doing it. I have not only lost 20lbs, I have never had more energy in my life. Even just a few short months of eating this way has made a drastic difference. Previously, anything more than sitting on the couch for the day was seemingly exhausting. Since changing my diet, I feel like I can take on the world. I sleep more soundly, I wake up refreshed. I have more energy to take on a workout, and I have learned so much about my capabilities as a result. I have also built a new confidence in myself. The best result of all however is the fact that I am no longer pre-diabetic and may have in fact restored my ability to have children. I truly credit clean eating with all of these improvement and want to share my results so that hopefully it can help someone else to change their life for the better too.

Instead of a diet entree of macaroni and cheese, make yourself a real plate with whole wheat noodles and low fat milk and cheese. The key for indulgences is portion control. Why would you want to eat a lot of something average tasting when you could have a little of something amazing?