Healthy Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Muffins

Tonight, I decided to forego the gym, because I was just way too tired to go. Instead, I decided to get to work on baking for our team meeting tomorrow. Every few weeks, we have a team breakfast. It's our way of celebrating the birthdays of the month, and it gives us something nice to look forward to! Many of our breakfasts have consisted of a potato dish/casserole, egg dish, fixins for yogurt parfaits, bagels with various cream cheeses, croissants with Nutella, and sometimes fruit. What do I reach for? The fruit. I make sure that I come prepared to our staff breakfasts with a full belly. Now, you might be wondering what I bring to the table (ha, literally) when it's my turn to contribute. Well, this week it's my turn and I'm bringing Healthy Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Muffins. They tasted best fresh out of the oven, still warm. They were fairly easy to bake and all of the ingredients came together rather quickly. The recipe called for regular peanut butter, but I really don't mind the taste of Reduced Fat, so I used a mixture of both (1/2 regular, 1/2 reduced fat). Not too shabby! You can find the recipe over at Emily's Bites. She includes WW points and nutrition facts, which is just fabulous when you're attempting to be nutritionally conscious.

XoXo
Brittany

Morning Workout

This morning, I decided I was going to attempt to throw myself for a real loop and trade my afternoon workout for a morning one. I'm there now, so, we'll see how I do, I suppose!

I've always wondered how people do it, especially those with kids. How on earth do they fit everything in? Maybe this os one of the ways. After all, I'm always wishing that u have more time to myself in the afternoon to finish work I've taken home, or to cook, clean, etc. Unfortunately, by having my workout in the afternoon, that takes up a good 2.5 hours between the workout itself and drive time.

Drive time, that's a whole other story. It takes me a half hour to get to the gym on a good day. Then if there's traffic, forget about it! When I'm home in Syracuse, I love it, because the gym is literally down the street. Queen of cramming too many things into a small amount of time, so decreasing my drive time is very beneficial to my already jam-packed schedule.

That being said, the workout I'm doing today is:

Morning:

35 minutes on the elliptical
7 Crossramp, 9 Resistance
400 calories, 3.42 miles

Afternoon: (abs and arms)

3 sets of 50 crunches
3 sets of 20 air bicycles
3 sets of 20 bent-knee hip raisers
3 sets of 12 side lateral raises
3 sets of 12 front dumbbell raises

It's very important to pair weights with cardio. When I first started working out, I was unaware of this. Was easily the queen of cardio, sometimes working out twice a day, but it wasn't coming off the way it should have been. Enter Kelsey Beyers' blog. The routines I do come primarily from her recommendations with a few personal tweaks.

Xoxo,
Britt

Sticking to Skinny During Lent

Well, yesterday was Easter! You might say this post is quite overdue being that I'm primarily going to write about how I stuck to eating "skinny" during Lent. Probably would've helped, oh, 40 days ago-but who's counting, right?!

Let's get to it. This was the first Lent that I was actually full fledged eating healthy I had started slowly last Novemver, but wasn't nearly as strict on myself as I am now. Let me you first, I'm not a fan of seafood. Naturally, my go-to Lenten meals consisted of grilled cheese, pizza, mozzarella sticks, and macaroni and cheese. Clearly, I would be needing to find a better substitute for seafood on Fridays. After wracking my brain, I settled on Sushi. I went with the most mild option: California Roll (crab and veggies). I opt for the brown rice instead of the white rice for an added healthy bonus. Now, I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "Britt, that's seafood." It is, but it's tolerable-with one additional condiment that is: enter, Frank's Red Hot. Zero calories, tastes delish! Many opt for soy sauce with their sushi, and if you choose to do so, I recommend the light soy sauce (green bottle).

1 pack of 8 rolls fills me up, and is only 180 calories for the entire thing! Bring it on! (I choose to go to Wegmans for my sushi-they have it pre-packaged with the calorie count right on the outside of the package.) If you are more of a "fresh is better" sushi person, Wegmans will make it happen.

Try it, you might like it!

Xoxo,
Brittany