Snack Time: Kale Chips

Mr. S and I went out last night to celebrate my birthday. There was a little too much tequila involved, I'm not going to deny it.

So here I am, guzzling water bottles and craving a salty snack. I'm craving that greasy hangover food!

Instead of running through the drive through and grabbing some greasy fries or scarfing a bag of potato chips, I'm making my own healthy alternative to get me back on track. I'm making kale chips!

Recipe below!

Ingredients:
 1 bunch kale
 1 TBSP olive oil
 1 tsp seasoned salt

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2. With a knife or kitchen shears, remove the leaves from teh thick stem and tear into bite sized pieces. Washe and thuroughly dry kale with a salad spinner. Drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with seasoned salt

 3. Bake until the edges brown but are not burnt, about 10-15 minutes.

Sweet Snack: "Fried" Honey Bananas

I have the day off today and so does Mr. S. We've been intermittently getting chores done around the house and lounging with our dogs on the couch. It's been a really nice, relaxing day. It's almost 3pm though, and I'm craving a sweet pick me up before my workout. Enter, "fried" honey bananas. Yum!

Ingredients:
1 firm banana, sliced evenly
1 TBSP honey
coconut or olive oil
Dash cinnamon (if desired)


Directions:
Heat a skillet over medium heat and drizzle a small amount of oil in pan.
Place bananas in pan and cook for around 1-2 minutes, then flip and cook for another 1-2 minutes.
While the bananas are cooking, dilute the honey with a TBSP water, to thin it.
Remove pan from heat and drizzle with honey mixture
Sprinkle with cinnamon if desired


Recipe courtesy of rachelschultz.com

What's for dinner?

I needed something quick and easy for dinner tonight because I've been running around like crazy all day. This is one of my healthy and fast go-to meals that the hubs requests again and again.

Pesto Chicken Roll-ups

Ingredients:

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Low fat mozzarella cheese sticks

Pre-made or homemade pesto sauce

Directions:

Pound out (I do this in a Ziploc bag) as many chicken breasts as you want to make.
Then spread about a tablespoon of pesto sauce on one side.
Cut low fat mozzarella string cheese sticks in half and place on top of the pest you have just spread.
Grab one end of chicken and start to roll upwards, around the mozzarella.
Place each roll in a glass baking dish.
Top with more pesto if desired and bake uncovered at 350 for 30 minutes or until juices from chicken run clear.
Enjoy!

Getting bikini ready!

I can't believe that we're halfway through January already!!! Yikes! Before we know it, we'll be shedding those puffy winter coats and thick sweaters for sheer fabrics and (gulp...) bikinis! I refuse to spend another year fretting over every jiggle and bulge in my bathing suit. What about you? Are you ready to make a change and enter summer as a new, confident you?!?

My team's last 30 day challenge had an average weight loss of 15+ pounds. That could be you!
Email me at gethealthywithchelsea@gmail.com for more info or visit my Facebook page and shoot me a message.

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!