2 Minute Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie

So yesterday I was craving some sweets, and seeing how I haven't eaten any real junk food in a while I felt like treating myself. I was looking at candy at the grocery store and realized most of it contained potato sugar or starch, so I couldn't eat any. I came home and found this great recipe for a chocolate chip cookie. It's super easy to make and I wouldn't even consider it a cheat.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find this recipe on the website anymore. But they do have a lot of other great recipes.

Goals of the Week: September 28

This is going to be a short one. I just finished doing food prep and even after having a mid-day nap, I'm still exhausted.

Weekly Goals:

• PRACTICE PROPER FORM AND EXECUTION SO YOU DON'T INJURE YOURSELF. After doing box jumps last Monday I hurt my knee, and that put me off for the entire week. I've done back and arms for 3 days in a row. My form is always really good, but I tend to use one side (the stronger side) of my body more than the other, hence why I injured my good leg. Whenever I would land, that leg would take most of the impact. 
• Eat actual meals. Too often I come home and eat cereal and a banana for dinner instead of what I actually prepared. -_- 
• Find a good spaghetti squash and zucchini muffin recipe! 
• Work on grip strength. I can deadlift over 100lbs if my hands weren't so weak and I could actually grip the bar for more than 3 reps. 

Now that September is coming to an end, I'll have to make goals for October. One of my goals for September was to hit 5 or 6 risers while doing box jumps, and I did that last Monday!! 

When the Group Ex room is empty at the gym, I like to do circuits. This one consisted of deadlifts, box jumps, pistol squats, weighted punches and ab work. 

Now it's movie time and bed. 

Goals of the Week: September 21

So, I don't think I hit any of my goals from last week. I did a great food prep on Sunday and stayed away from everything potato but that was about it. I blame it on my stomach. I was getting bad, shooting pains from Sunday-Wednesday, which I found out was the result of the fibre supplement I was taking. While that was happening, I couldn't really eat much. I could hardly ate any of the food that I prepared, which sucked, but my Dad got a few good meals out of it. I cut out the inulin supplement and that seemed to help. I've also been getting full extremely fast and my appetite has been almost non-existent which is really strange because I can usually eat so much. I didn't work out once last week due to everything that was going on. Between my stomach hurting and not being able to eat much, I've been tired and lacking energy. I'm positive this week will be better. I got in a small workout at home tonight and I signed up for some Crossfit classes which I'm super pumped about. My stomach is starting to feel better since I've cut out the potatoes and the cravings are subsiding. I'm probably going to take it easy the next few days until I see my doctor and see if there's anything I can do to boost my energy.

I don't have any set goals for this week. This is my personal week, I'll do what I want.

Sweaty from my workout earlier. My cats make my at home workouts difficult. 

Made myself a treat today because why not.

Now I'm going to listen to the wind howl and go to bed. These cool September nights are perfect for sleeping.

Sunday Food Prep

Food prepping is a great way to set yourself up for the week ahead. I like having all of my food prepared in advance so I don't have to worry about what I'm going to be eating each day or have to save extra time to get my lunches together. I only really prepare my snacks and lunches, and I'll cut up vegetables in case I need them for anything. These pictures are from the food prep I did last week. 

The main things you need are: a strainer, cutting board, ziploc bags and tupperware. You don't need to use a food scale but if you're counting calories, it's super helpful. They're inexpensive and definitely worth it.

Before I do anything, I turn on the oven and get whatever meat or fish I'm cooking ready to go. That way, I can start portioning other food while that cooks. I usually only cook fish (I'm not a huge fish person so I make tilapia because it's very mild) and sometimes chicken. 

Once the fish or chicken is in the oven, I start with the fruit. Take whichever fruit you're portioning and rinse it well, and then just separate it into however many bags you think you'll need. I portioned the grapes at roughly 200g a bag, so that's about 138 calories/bag, which is enough for a snack. I try to use ziploc bags whenever I can because it's easy and requires less dishwashing. :D

BUY ORGANIC STRAWBERRIES!!!! I know buying organic can be expensive but if you're going to buy ANYTHING, make it strawberries, butter, or coffee beans. One thing I learned from GLPTI is that strawberries and coffee beans are the most heavily sprayed with pesticides. And organic butter is actually GOOD for you! Non-organic butter is loaded with the bad, artery clogging fats, but organic butter is loaded with a ton of good things that will make your body happy. (I'll post a link at the bottom of this for more info on butter.) 

Now for the berries. Usually I'll also have blueberries but the grocery store was sold out of them this week. Blackberries are great to add in there too. I don't weigh the berries because of the fixed size of the tupperware containers, so already I know how much is going in each.

And that's about it for fruit to be prepped. Anything else (apples, bananas, oranges) you can just grab to go. Sometimes I get kiwis but I'm not sure how long they'd stay good for after you peel and slice them. I'll have to find out. 

So I kind of forgot to take pictures of veg prep but you get the idea. The only thing I use kale for is smoothies, so I just washed it and put it in a large container. I did the same thing with spinach. I didn't have a lot of vegetables to prepare this week because I switched it up and made a huge batch of rice with vegetables instead of portioning vegetables by themselves.

The end result!!! 

• Mixed berries, grapes and carrots (hiding behind the grapes) for snacks
• Tilapia with rice and vegetables for lunch
• Kale and spinach washed and put aside to add to smoothie. I also put the leftover berries in a bigger container for smoothies. 
• Cut up red peppers and mushrooms to quickly add to any salad or omelette 
• Diced cucumber to quickly throw in salads 

If you want more variety, you can cook different kinds of meat and vegetables to have for a meal. Usually I prep green beans, broccoli and peas to have for lunch. I leave them raw until I'm ready to eat them. I also have salads some days for lunch, but that's easy to put together in the morning. 

So yes, that's kind of what my food prep looks like. I'll switch a few things up every week but most of it stays the same. I have a really limited diet and these foods are just what work the best for me. If you decide to food prep, let me know how it goes! 

And here's that link on butter. 

http://bodyecology.com/articles/benefits_of_real_butter.php#.VB-UhSiIVvA

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Goals of the Week: September 14th

At the end of each week, my personal trainer and I discuss what accomplishments I'm proud of and what I need to work on during the following week. I set monthly goals and write them down on a white board in my room, but I like setting mini goals to work towards during the week.

I took last week off from the gym as I strained my lower back and wanted to give it a rest. I had a nice week off and spent the one night re-doing my living area.

 It still needs work but I'm happy with what I've done so far.


So for this week, I was planning on doing my meal prep, portioning everything out and starting to count calories again. I don't like counting calories but I feel way more in control of what I'm putting into my body when I do. I talked to my trainer about this and she suggested instead of counting calories, to just meal prep and start eating slower. I know I should take the time to chew my food but I've always been a really fast eater, which isn't good, because you can inhale more food than you need before your brain tells you that you're full.

So the goals for this week are:

• meal prep
• eat slowly and drink more water with meals
• work on that 10 minute squat 

Things That Once Were