Tag Archives: meal planning

Image with ebook cover and preview of worksheet pages.

It’s Time to Meal Plan with Ease

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It’s time for a big announcement!!

Alexia has just released her latest eBook on The Aspire Strategy: Creating Your Own Personalized Meal Plan with Ease.

Cover of eBook showing the title over a picture of healthy foods.

It’s time to trust yourself to be the expert on what you should eat. You don’t need yet another meal plan that someone else created.

For any meal plan to work for you, it has to be tailored to your food preferences, eating style, cooking skills, food budget, and available time.

No wonder those one-size-fits-all plans never work for long.

Come along with registered dietitian and culinary nutritionist, Alexia Lewis, as she lays out a strategy to guide you in how to create your own meal plan. There are also more than 35 recipes to get you started.

This how-to guide is the sum of years of experience leading meal planning workshops and coaching clients to help them find their unique and personalized way to meet their nutrition and health goals.

You can reach your food and nutrition goals when you ASPIRE to plan healthy meals!

Take a look and feel free to share your best meal planning tip – or biggest meal planning challenge – in the comments!

A Gift: Enjoy the Holidays without Sabotaging Your Health

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I am beyond excited to announce a gift to you from me and N.E.W. Motivation Coaching. Because I am so unhappy with the Diet Culture / Weight Loss wheels turning as we come to the end of another year, I am giving away – yes free – both a video course and a booklet this year. 

Survival-Guide-Image

Unfortunately, December is a month when many feel overwhelmed with stress and give up on their health goals believing they will return to healthy habits in January when they make their resolutions.

There is some good in this actually.

If you look at the research on willpower, it indicates that people are not as successful at white-knuckling it / sucking it up / using their willpower to [insert goal here: stick to their meal plan, exercise daily, go to sleep on time, etc] when they are either stressed or depressed.

The trick is to manage the stress or depression first and then re-focus on health goals. If you are stressed in December, then relaxing on your health goals may be 100% appropriate. 

Giving up entirely to eat like a jerk and couch surf for 4-6 weeks, however, can result in a pretty big back-slide on health complete with weight gain and loss of cardiovascular endurance and muscle mass/strength! Oh, and an increase in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugars, and those other health concerns that are totally impacted by your daily food and activity choices.

So, what do we do?

I’ve got an idea: Find a way to both enjoy the holidays and keep some focus on your health goals. It is so very possible to do with a few tricks & tips up your sleeve!

Planning

The free course gives you 5 realistic tips to coast through the holidays while staying true to your health – and weight – goals as well as 3 worksheets and a health coach walks you through making your personal strategy in the videos so you can enjoy the holidays without sabotaging your health!

You also get tips for making traditional holiday foods healthier AND a list of which herbs and spices pair best with which foods so you can reduce fat and sodium without sacrificing flavor.

This course is designed for:

– Dieters who are tired of the repeated cycles of weight loss and regain who want to find peace with food, activity, and themselves so they can improve health and weight

– Adults with – or at risk for – chronic lifestyle diseases who want to find realistic and enjoyable ways to approach lifestyle changes so they can reduce their risk for chronic diseases and live a healthier life.

– People who are confused or overwhelmed with all the conflicting rules and information about nutrition and exercise who want to sort it out so they can find a lasting, realistic plan that works in their unique lives.

True-Health-Requires-Balance

I offered this information last year as an in-person class and just didn’t get to share it with enough people! So this year we are giving it away in order to get this good info into the hands of more people who need this type of support and guidance during the season.

Check it out – try some tips before the next big holiday meal in just a few short weeks – and share this with anyone you think may benefit from it! There is no limit on how many freebies we give away so share it as much as you would like to!

Here is the link text: https://new-motivation-coaching.teachable.com/p/our-favorite-5-tips-to-enjoy-the-holidays-without-sabotaging-your-health

So you know, this is only 50% of the tips we share in our Love Yourself Healthy Plan. We will be sharing more on that soon!

Yes, you can eat the pecan pie AND be healthy.

Recipe: Spicy Mexi-Bowl (Gluten-Free!)

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Here is another delicious gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan recipe. This spicy Mexican-inspired quinoa and beans bowl is a quick to prepare, heart-healthy, and nutrition-rich meal that can be made ahead for take-to-work lunches or you can mix up a big batch for a family dinner.  You could even top it with an over-easy egg and make it a breakfast (although it won’t be vegan with that egg on it!).

Spicy-Mexi-Bowl

And, before I forget – if you join up for our email newsletter before October 1, you will get a special offer on the Go Gluten Free or the Get Started Coaching Packages! Join today!

Here is the printer-friendly PDF: Recipe -Spicy Mexi-Bowl

Spicy-Mexi-Bowl

A Mason Jar Meal-Prep Workshop Recipe by Alexia Lewis RD / N.E.W. Motivation Coaching

Makes 1 serving

INGREDIENTS & SUPPLIES

1                          Mason Jar, 2-cup size

1 Tbsp                Red wine vinegar (or to taste)

1 tsp                    Lime juice

1/4 medium      Avocado (Florida), peeled and chopped

7                          Grape tomatoes, halved

1 Tbsp                Red onion, chopped (or to taste)

1 Tbsp                Jalapeño, deseeded and chopped

1/2 cup               Quinoa, cooked

1/2 cup               Black beans, low-sodium canned, rinsed or cooked from dry

1 tsp                   Cilantro, fresh, chopped

DIRECTIONS

  1. Layer all ingredients in mason jar in order listed.
  2. Store refrigerated for 3-5 days depending on quality of mason jar seal
  3. To serve, shake food from jar into a bowl, toss to combine, and enjoy!

Nutrition per serving:

365 calories, 10 grams fat (1.5 grams saturated fat, 0 trans fat), 0 cholesterol, 153 milligrams sodium, 59 grams carbohydrates, 13 grams fiber, 4 grams natural sugar, 14 grams protein.

Notes:

We recommend making four servings at once – that way you use up the whole avocado – and can cook 3/4 cup of dry quinoa which should give you about 2 1/4 cups cooked.

Meal Plan Yumminess

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It’s been a while since I posted a meal plan and I’m back with a delicious week of meals to share with you. I’ve been faithfully planning and prepping and have started to get a little bored with the same old meals. This week, I added a few new recipes.

Do as much prep as you can over the weekend. I chop omelet veggies, make overnight oats, boil eggs (last 5 days if they don’t crack!), make mason jar salads, and do whatever else I can to prepare ahead of time. Notice this week is heavier in cooking the first few days but then relies on leftovers to get through the week.

Not listed is a Chocolate Chia Pudding dessert I’ll be making when I sign off from here because chocolate. Yum.

Sunday: 

B – Egg white omelet made with egg whites, shredded cheddar/jack, onions, mushrooms, and spinach served with a piece of toast with olive oil butter. TIP: Do your breakfast prep for the week by chopping onions and mushrooms that have been cleaned with a paper towel (no water!) and storing in mason jars – you still have to cook; but the chopping is the time-consuming part so this saves time in the morning!

L – White Bean Caprese Salad (added chopped raw videlia onions) served on spinach/romaine lettuce.

D – Baked tofu (press, cube, toss with Italian salad dressing and bake) mixed with zucchini carpaccio (pictured with this blog). Note to self: invest in a mandolin.

S – Boiled egg; cucumbers and Zesty Carrot Hummus – you seriously must try this! DELISH!

Monday:

B – omelet with toast

L – Loaded Sweet Potato

D – Strawberry Cucumber Salad (with balsamic glaze – yes please!) and (Chicken) Sausage Stuffed Zucchini Boats. 

S – Apple with Laughing Cow Cheese

Tuesday:

B – Overnight Oats (were prepped over weekend so easy breezy breakfast) with a sliced banana.

L – Leftover White Bean Caprese Salad on lettuce/spinach

D – Leftover Sausage Boats and Strawberry Cucumber Salad

S – Kefir and blackberries

Wednesday:

B – Overnight Oats with banana

L – Leftover Loaded Sweet Potato

D – Baked fish, steamer vegetables, quinoa

S – Egg salad (egg, mayo) with carrots

Thursday:

B – Overnight Oats with banana

L – Mason Jar Salad (prepped over weekend) with a boiled egg and blue cheese crumbles

D – Fish Bowls (leftover fish, quinoa, chipotle, jalapeno, veggies, sour cream – whatever is on hand and needs to be eaten but with a Mexican twist).

S – Apple with carrot hummus

Friday:

B – Omelet with toast

L – Leftover Loaded Sweet Potato

D – Turkey burgers (tomato, lettuce, red onion, avocado, cheese) and fries (yes – the splurge meal happens for me too!)

S – Kefir and blackberries

Saturday: 

B – Overnight Oats

L – Mason Jar Salad with tuna packet (buffalo tuna is so yum).

D – Turkey Burger Bowls (chopped burger, lettuce, tomato, pickles, blue cheese and the rest of the chopped food that needs to be eaten!

S – Carrots with carrot hummus

Thanks for the inspiration as always to Clean Eating Magazine (just the recipes please people, not the articles! Food is NOT “clean” or “dirty” unless of course, it needs to be washed), SkinnyTaste (easy, low calorie, and crazy good recipes) and this week to my new find, Minimalist Baker.

Let me know if you try any recipes this week and if you like the Meal Plan posts!

Spiralized Sweet Potato

Happy New Meal Planning!

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I returned to work today and the majority of people are focusing on meal planning as their current focus with their renewed enthusiasm of a new year. Meal planning and preparing foods ahead of time is a wonderful way to have a successful week in terms of meeting your nutrition goals. Two quotes come to mind:

  1. Ben Franklin is purported to have said: He who fails to plan, plans to fail.
  2. Mel Robbins kind of said (forgive me Mel, I paraphrase your Ted talk): You can have anything you want – it’s simple; but it’s not easy.

By the way, I really encourage you to invest 20 minutes in watching Mel’s Ted talk. I watch it every time I need a  motivation boost.

In the interest of helping others who struggle with meal planning, I decided to share my meal plan for this week and links to recipes where possible. I warn you though, this takes time and effort. Expect to spend a good 4 hours in the kitchen… but then relax because your food for the week is DONE!

Sunday:

B = egg white omelet with mushrooms, onions, spinach, shredded cheddar cheese(veggies chopped on Sunday for the week), L = green salad (veggies chopped on Sunday for the week) with Asian Sesame dressing with chicken salad (canned chicken, olive oil mayonnaise, red onion, celery, red grapes, black pepper); Zesty Lime Shrimp and Avocado over brown rice, vegetable soup (garlic, onion, tomato, zucchini, low sodium chicken broth, black pepper, red pepper flakes, basil).

Monday:

B = overnight oats (made for week) with oatmeal, unsweetened almond milk, chia seeds, peanut butter powder, cinnamon, cocoa powder, and vanilla extract with banana sliced into it in the morning, L = Zesty Lime Shrimp on romaine, D = Mexican Sweet Potato Casserole, broccoli, Snacks = yogurt, crackers.

Tuesday:

B = omelet, L = tofu sandwich (chipotle baked tofu, lettuce tomato, whole wheat bread), vegetable soup, D = Mexican Sweet Potato Casserole, brussels sprouts.

Wednesday:

B = omelet, L = green salad with chicken salad, vegetable soup, D = pork chop, edamame pesto pasta (copied from a recipe book so can’t link sorry!) with grape tomatoes, sauteed squash and mushrooms.

Thursday:

B = oatmeal, L = tofu sandwich, vegetable soup, D = pork chop, leftover pasta, green salad.

Friday:

B = omelet, L = green salad with chicken salad, D = Mexican Sweet Potato Casserole (from frozen), broccoli.

Saturday:

B = omelet, L = sandwich, crackers, D = a leftovers meal with whatever remains!

My snacks aren’t planned day by day but they include celery/carrots with hummus or peanut butter; yogurt with grape nuts; or crackers with cheese.

I hope this helps!

 

 

groceries

Vegan Experiment Shopping Day

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I have found myself wondering if eating a vegan diet for five days will be more expensive than my typical diet. I believe there are two ways to go with vegetarian/vegan eating. One is to use whole natural foods and shop in the conventional grocery stores and one is to use the vegetarian/vegan-specific marketed foods and shop in the specialty grocery stores.

Now, that I write that, I realize that’s true no matter what type of diet one follows.

Today, I spent $55.33 at a conventional store on groceries for the next six days. I already have some staples on hand, such as quinoa and dried beans, and I just got a nice harvest (curly kale, carrots, onions, and basil) from the university’s organic garden. I am so looking forward to those kale chips I’ll be making tomorrow with the beautiful organic curly kale! I couldn’t find a soy-only protein powder, so I still need to pick that up for about $10-$12. Even if I had to purchase the quinoa, black beans, and garden vegetables and adding the cost of the protein powder, I think ~$75 to feed 2 people for six days is pretty darn good! That’s just $6.25 per person per day, or around $2 meal!

Here’s my list. Don’t worry – the meals and recipes will be coming over the next five days as I live this experiment!

Produce: avocado, bananas, green/red bell peppers, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, portobello mushrooms, apples, limes, and canned pineapple

Proteins: silken tofu, sliced and whole almonds, peanut butter, canellini beans

Grains: cereal, rice cakes, whole wheat spaghetti

Misc: soup, salsa

Any ideas what I’ll be making?