Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

If your morning bacon and eggs has gotten a little too routine, here is a way to mix it up. I made myself a chocolate and cream cheese omelet on Sunday and it was divine!

Ingredients:

• 1 TBSP butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 TBSP heavy whipping cream
• 1 tsp unsweetened cocoa
• 2 packets of stevia
• 1 oz. cream cheese

Directions

• Put the butter in your skillet and set the flame on medium.
• While the skillet is warming up, mix the eggs, cream, cocoa and 1 packet of stevia in a bowl. The cocoa won’t fully mix in (there will be tiny chunks of it), but that doesn’t affect the taste.
• Once the butter is fully melted and bubbling, pour the egg mixture into the pan and put on a lid for approximately three minutes.
• Mix the cream cheese with the other packet of stevia (you can use the same bowl that you mixed your eggs in).
• Flatten the cream cheese mixture until it is approximately the size of half your omelet.
• Place the cream cheese on the egg mixture and gently fold in half.
• Cook for two minutes more or until the cream cheese is melted.
• Allow to cool slightly before serving (no one wants molten cream cheese lava burning their tongues in the morning).

Nutrition Facts:

• Calories 396.6
• Total Fat 37.2g
• Total Carb 3.6g
• Fiber 0.6g
• Protein 15.3g

The next time you’re feeling chocolate deprived, remember that you can create low carb chocolately food on your own without sacrificing your health.

Update 02-12-13

I’ve found that Sweet N Low tastes better than Splenda in this recipe. Additionally, using coconut oil instead of butter makes it taste especially yummy and only adds twenty calories. I talked about it here:

• Starling Fitness – A Delicious Tweak To The Chocolate Cream Cheese Omelet

Avocados were on sale at my grocery store, so we bought a couple of them. Sunday morning, I made a yummy treat for breakfast.

It was so easy, I feel silly writing the directions here.

Ingredients

• 1/2 medium avocado
• 1/8 cup grated parmesan cheese
• Sprinkle of season-all

Directions

• Cut the avocado in half. Save half for next time and use the other half.
• Sprinkle cheese and seasoning over the top.
• Put it in the toaster oven at 275 degrees for five minutes.
• Increase the temperature to 400 degrees for one minute (or until golden brown).

Nutrition Facts

• Calories 199.3
• Total Fat 16.9g
• Total Carbs 8.5g
• Fiber 8.0g
• Protein 8.4g

The next time you’re feeling like you don’t have anything good to eat, run to the store and grab an avocado. It will be a great treat if you haven’t had one in a while.

I have found a lot of really motivating things on Pinterest lately, so I started a couple of boards to keep you motivated and fed.

• Starling Fitness Motivation Pinterest Board
• Starling Fitness Low Carb Pinterest Board

Whenever I’m feeling like there is nothing I can eat, I look at my low carb board and get some good ideas. Whenever I’m feeling like giving up or skipping my workout, I look at the motivation board and get inspired. They have been very helpful to me.

Please follow me on those boards and enjoy the daily motivation.

There is something in the Atkins low carb shakes that hurts my stomach. I have NO idea what it is, but it really doubles me over within an hour of drinking one.

Not to mention the fact that they just taste wrong. Sure, they’re sweet and taste kind of like chocolate (or vanilla or caramel coffee), but they just don’t taste as good as I’d like.

But I like to have a low carb shake to drink in the morning, so I set out to create one. After a little experimentation and a lot of worrying about why cocoa doesn’t mix in with my almond milk, I finally figured it out. (more…)

When I’ve been eating low carb for a while, I start missing foods that I used to eat regularly. That’s why I’m really excited about this recipe for Low Carb Big Mac Pie. I can’t eat it in the car while I’m on a long road trip, but it will fulfill my cravings for one of my old favorites.

One thing that he addresses that makes the Big Mac so good is the “Special Sauce.” I had no idea that special sauce was just Thousand Island Dressing, but he has a low carb version. You can watch the video at the end of the post, but the ingredients are here:

Here are the ingredients for the Big Mac Pie:

Next time I’m craving a Big Mac, I think I’ll whip this recipe up. It looks delicious and sometimes I really need a way to get past my cravings. (more…)

I was looking for something interesting to eat that was still low carb and I came across these Portabella Pizza Bites. The recipe was made all low fat, so they had to add an egg to help the low fat cheese melt. I took all that out and I’m going to make it FULL fat and low carb.

Ingredients:

• 6 mini Portabella mushrooms (or 2 large Portabella mushroom caps)
• 1/2 cup marinara sauce (Get the kind without any added sugar. Tomatoes have enough carbs on their own.)
• 1/2 oz. pepperoni (approx. 6 slices)
• 2 oz. black olives
• 3 oz. Mozzarella cheese

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
• Clean mushrooms and scoop out the insides and stem with a spoon.Place on baking pan and bake for 7 minutes.
• While mushrooms are baking, grate Mozzarella.
• Remove mushrooms from oven, and turn the broiler to High.
• On the mushrooms layer pizza sauce, cheese mixture, olives, and pepperoni slices. Return pan to oven and broil on High for 3 minutes or until cheese has melted and started to brown.

I can’t wait to try this on my own!

Recipe and photo via Portabella Pizza Bites – P90x Recipes – P90x Nutrition Plan » My P90x Nutrition Plan

If I am only making a few slices of bacon, my George Foreman Grill is the absolute BEST way to do it. Since I’ve started eating low carb, I’ve found the joy of eating bacon again. I can put the grill on high heat, put three or four strips of bacon on the grill and set the timer for ten minutes. When I’m done, most of the grease has drained into the pan under the grill and the bacon only needs a dab of a paper towel to be perfect. It’s ideal: no turning, no draining the grease and no grease splatters all over the stove.

However easy the bacon is to cook on the George Foreman grill, I was still reluctant to write this entry. Here is a tip to make cooking bacon easy, clean and fast, and yet, I was unwilling to post that picture of my own grill stacked high with bacon. Why?

Because bacon has been considered an evil for my entire life.

High in fat and calories, bacon was a guilty pleasure for me. It was avoided when I was “on program” and a binge-worthy desire when I was off. Now that I’m eating low carb, bacon can be an every day breakfast. I can’t even write the words that I should write: bacon is a HEALTHY breakfast.

I’ve lost TWENTY pounds since I started eating low carb in June. That’s TWICE as much as I lost all last year while I was starving on Weight Watchers. That kind of reduction in weight is considered a GOOD thing for my health, and I did it by eating plenty of bacon.

So, YES! Bacon IS a healthy breakfast.

I should feel no shame in writing that, yet it goes against everything I have been told for my entire life. Of course, everything they told me ended with me starving and paradoxically obese, so maybe it’s alright to just do my best to put all that old “wisdom” out of my mind.

If you want to easily cook bacon, here are a selection of George Foreman Grills at Amazon. My favorite is the first one (pictured at the right) and lucky you, it’s MUCH cheaper now than when I bought it several years ago.

• George Foreman GRP90WGR Next Grilleration Electric Nonstick Grill with 5 Removable Plates
• George Foreman Next Grilleration 4-Burger Grills with Removable Plates
• George Foreman GR20B Family-Size 60-Square-Inch Nonstick Grill
• George Foreman GR10B 36 Square Inch Nonstick Countertop Grill, Black

I bought myself a subscription to Oxygen Magazine and every once in a while they have something interesting to talk about.

The September 2010 Issue had an article about protein bars and how they are just expensive candy bars. They then gave a few recipes for protein and energy bars that you could make yourself for less calories, more protein and FAR less money.

The most interesting recipe was the one for Bulge-Free Brownies. Each brownie costs 51 cents to make and they are only 100 calories apiece. I haven’t tried the recipe yet, but it looks interesting.

I also love the Stretch Your Way Strong article. It gives detailed descriptions and pictures for eight stretches. Over the years, I’ve tried to describe and take photos of many of these stretches, so I know how hard it is to get it right. They did an excellent job on that article and make the whole magazine worth it with just four pages of detailed photos.

I HATED the cover of the September 2010 issue. The model Alicia Marie, looks more like a body builder than a specimen of a healthy female. I wish they would show more normal women in this magazine. Seeing women like Alicia just makes me want to give up. Oxygen Magazine has a long way to go to become the type of magazine I’d read from cover to cover, but at least there are a couple of articles each month that make it worth it.

This morning, I was disappointed with my cereal. I measured out a serving and the bowl looked so empty that I felt deprived. I knew that I needed a fruit serving, so I cut up my apple into bite-sized pieces and threw it in the bowl. Suddenly, I had a large bowl of food and I felt so happy to eat my meal!

What I didn’t count on, however, is that my half a cup of skim milk, which usually is enough for one serving of cereal wasn’t enough for this tremendous bowl of apple cereal. I didn’t want to spend the points on another half cup. I didn’t want to skimp on the milk for my coffee (man that stuff is bitter without some milk!).

Then I remembered a trick from when I was a kid.

A couple of times when I was a child, we were close to running out of milk. Mom hadn’t gone to the store to get more and we needed to make a little bit of milk last for both Stacey and me (my mom was a saint and didn’t eat that morning). Mom took the milk jug and added some water to the milk. She swished it around, mixing in the water and suddenly there was enough milk for the both of us! It was like magic to my eight-year-old eyes!

I tried the magic this morning. After pouring in my half cup, I poured in a half cup of water into my measuring cup. I swished it around to get every last drop of skim milk clinging to the sides and poured it into my bowl. Just like when I was a child, suddenly I had enough milk to last my whole bowl of apple and cereal.

After eating so many cereals with the word “apple” in their title, NOTHING can compare to the taste of fresh apple with cereal. I didn’t notice the watered down milk, but I certainly noticed the crisp squirt of apple between my teeth with each bite. Next time you’re feeling deprived by your small serving of cereal (make sure you measure, because cereal is one of those foods that you’ll accidentally serve yourself more of), add an apple. For only one WW Point, it makes a depressing bowl a full-fledged MEAL.

A long time ago, I told you about a recipe that I mistakenly called Toad in the Hole:

• Starling Fitness » Toad in the Hole

I learned last month that this dish is NOT called Toad in the Hole. That is a sausages in Yorkshire Pudding dish, which I have never made nor tasted. This dish is called Eggs in a Nest. Mike’s mom always called this dish Toad in the Hole, so that’s what I called it here (since he taught me to make it).

I love to make Eggs in a Nest, but eating it every day can get boring, so I made a variation of it that is a little like French Toast without the syrupy calories.

Eggs in a Nest

Ingredients:

• One slice of whole wheat bread
• One egg
• Non-stick cooking spray (or canola oil – add 1 Point per teaspoon)
• One packet of Stevia
• Cinnamon to taste

Directions:

• Spray the pan with non-stick cooking spray (or add the oil to the pan).
• Using a glass, cut a hole in the whole wheat bread and place the bread in the pan.
• Crack the egg into a bowl. Mix half the packet of Stevia and cinnamon with the egg and beat lightly. Pour the egg mixture into the hole.
• Sprinkle the rest of the Stevia packet and cinnamon over the toast and egg.
• Put a lid on the pan and cook for four minutes.
• Toast the round piece (or throw it away if you want to limit your Points).

Calories: Approx. 150 WWPoints: 3 (4 if you use canola oil)

You can see all of the photos here:

• Eggs in a Nest – a set on Flickr