Green Protein Oats

This recipe morphed from an old one I posted over a year ago. I still eat it almost every day for my first meal, whenever it falls between 10 AM -2 PMish. Yeah, I sorta get into these "food loops" where I eat and crave the same thing daily LOL Do you do that?

What I love about this recipe is that it literally ticks all the boxes. Greens. Check. Protein. Check. Good carbs. Check. Lots of polyphenol-filled berries. Check. Peanut butter. CHECK!

Plus I can make it in no time flat. Minutes. So even though the finished product is not cute (as in no snapchat filter can fix this kind of ugly), promise me to give it a try ;)

Brad Pilon over at ESE has been putting out some very interesting research findings on polyphenols and gut health lately in two of his products- Good Belly, Bad Belly along with his email subscription, The Advocate. Berries happen to have one of the highest polyphenol ratios of almost any food on earth. (If you are an ESE member, you can check those out in your portal. If you are not, you can grab those at eatstopeat.com/gbbb or eatstopeat.com/add-advocate)

Pounding the water today as I did my normal weekly Eat Stop Eat 24h fast until dinner on Monday :) since I work for ESE part time now, I feel like I need to know the program front to back. My sis-in-law, and fellow Venus, Erin got me this AWESOME glass Zulu water bottle for Christmas. I just adore it! Also went for a little 4 mile beach run with my sweet pup Olive Marie. The ocean was smooth as glass, have never seen it this calm! I try to do cardio the morning of my fast days, and prefer to save lifting for non-fasting days as a general rule  enjoying this weather %! 

Just an FYI that the new Diet Pepsi blend is now aspartame free. Usually, I prefer a Diet Coke, but it is a good idea to rotate your sweeteners if you choose to use them. I will now be rotating between Diet Pepsi/Diet Coke for this reason. I generally have one can of diet soda per day, and 2 cups of coffee with stevia. A few times per week, I have acesulfame in my whey protein powdee. I eat sugar occassionally at events (once per month-ish). Sweeteners effect everyone differently, and the best plan is always to reduce and rotate so that you are not over consuming any one. Look at everything you eat from start to finish in a day and try to see how you can reduce and/or vary the sweeteners.  Just how I do things, and what keeps me sane ;)

#flexfriday au natural this week. Busy getting stuff done all week (and weekend). Physical strength begets mental fortitude. Making time for fitness while trying to keep your head above water at work/home is always worth it 💪you have to take care of yourself before you can care for others!

Standing Banded Hip Thrusts - something new for the truly glute obsessed to try  basically you put your giant band across your power rack, I used a purple Spri band. Then you grab the front supports, and walk your feet up so it looks like you are preparing to slingshot yourself  squeeze those glutes as you thrust forward. It took a couple of rounds until I could really get the feel.

Green Protein Oats

Serves 1

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup oats (I use old-fashioned or quick cooking, but use what you want and adjust cooking time.)
• 1 cup greens, fresh or frozen (I use fresh spinach, baby kale, or a blend. Can use powder, just reduce amount.)
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/2 mixed berries, fresh or frozen (I use frozen berry blend, but can use whatever berries on hand.)
• 1 scoop whey protein (I use chocolate from Optimum Nutrition in Gold Standard Whey.)
• 1 tbsp PB2 (or peanut powder of choice) plus water (You can omit and use regular pb here too.)
• 1 tbsp peanut butter

Directions:

Place uncooked oats into large bowl. Blend greens with oat water, and pour over. Place berries on top. Microwave for 2:30 or until oats are cooked. Stir in whey protein. Mix PB2 with water as directed, then stir in regular peanut butter (saves cals). Spread over oats and enjoy!

Nutritional Facts per serving:

Enjoy! X-Liss

Hobo Packet Dinner

This meal is a blast from the past for me. I grew up making it over the campfire at summer camp. And with my mom at girl scout campouts (she was the troop leader). One day recently, it came to mind randomly and I knew I had to make it for my kids. So this is my take without the campfire, and the results are just as good as I remember! Bonus points for being super healthy, has great macros, and is downright delicious.

Got my hands on the new (ish) Quest Blueberry Muffin protein bar! This one is my hands down favorite new bar in a LONG time! 5 stars 💪💪💪💪💪 It was amazing both room temp OR warmed up for 30 sec in the microwave. I want to buy more to bake out into cookies; I bet they would taste just like blueberry muffins. Go try this one ASAP!

SCORED at GNC this past week; all this for $75!!!! Got the Quest bars for $11 PER BOX, that is less than $1 per bar and they normally run about $2.50 each. Got the box of ON bars free for buying the 5 lbs container of ON whey. Combining coupons and offers for the win. I saved at least 50%! Boom!

Side lying external shoulder rotation - a tiny weight is very effective here! I did 3 sets of 8 with a 5 lbs plate and am sore! That is a foam roller under my arm but you could use anything on hand. 

When you're trying to flex your back for #flexfriday but your glutes get you off task 😂 I do put a lot of work in back there!

New hair ❤ ashy silver "bronde", channeling my inner Daenerys Targaryen (if you read the books, the show got her so wrong)!

Alright, so onto the recipe. I had help from my #1 assistant, my daughter. She was a big fan of this recipe and loves that she can pretty much do all of it herself while I work observe ;) we have made it serveral times now and I think it will stay in regular rotation! P.S. Most recently I tossed some spinach over my packet when it came out, and it was a lovely addition of greens!

Hobo Packet Dinner

serves 1 (easy to scale up and down)

Ingredients:

4 oz lean ground beef (I used 85%/15%)

1 red potato, sliced

1 medium carrot, chopped (or baby carrots, chopped)

0.25 cups onion, sliced

1 tbsp all-purpose meat seasoning (I used Chupacabra)

Foil

Optional- 1 cup fresh greens (I used spinach)

Directions:

Prehet oven to 400*F. Tear a piece of foil about 12" long. Form meat into patty and place into center. Top with potatos, carrots, and onions. Sprinkle seasoning on top. Fold foil into packet, place on cookie sheet. Bake in ovenn for 45 minutes. If you want to add the greens, throw them on top of the vegetables in the packet as soon as they come out of the oven. Enjoy!

Totally forgot to get a pic with the spinach on top! *Imagine* it, k? Haha!

Nutritional Facts per serving:

If you have picky eaters, this might be one a recipe where they will actually eat their vegetables ;)

X-Liss

Flat Out Skinny Pizza

So I grabbed these Flat Out wraps the other day at the store. The nutrition was spot on: 90 cals and 9g protein!

And they have been so handy since then. I have used them for this pizza recipe I am about to share (my favorite use), burrito/taco night, and for a wrap for crack chicken.

Our new 1000 lbs rated flat bench for the home gym! Because I sort of, ummm, broke the edge of the other one doing 300 lbs hip thrusts off of it  #gymproblems 

Finally got my hands on the new(ish) @questnutrition Rocky Road protein bar. It was not my favorite room temp, prefer white chocolate raspberry or coconut cashew for that. It was DANG good in the microwave for 30 sec then topped with a tbsp on PB on top though ;)

Glute march! Super duper glute pumper. Also a great isometric glute exercise to ensure equal cheeks ;) do in higher rep ranges. I did 3 sets of 20 each side.

Well I was hoping to get to tell you TOP SECRET Venus news today, but I gotta wait. So instead here are my legs, I think this may be the most definition I have ever seen to date! All from the Venus workouts (and of course our nutrition calculator) WOOT!  And know all of us here at Venus are working extra hard to bring you something SUPER exciting in the near future! 

Flat Out Skinny Pizza

Serves 1

Ingredients:

... feel free to add toppings of choice, I decided on a few olives too at the last minute ;)

Directions:
On a non-stick cookie tray, lay out your flat bread and cover with pizza sauce. (My kids and hubby used the personal size thin crust for this.) Spread out your greens over the pizza sauce then your pepperoni, top with cheese. Bake at 400 F for about 10 minutes. (I had a special helper, who loved this dinner btw!) Enjoy!

Nutritional facts:

373 calories

Pretty good macros for a huge serving of pizza huh?!
X- Liss