My new favorite recipe resource:

http://www.bethenny.com/food/recipes/ Bethenny Frankel...

 is an all natural celebrity chef, she was also a "real housewife of New York or New Jersey????  I usually feel let down when I make a healthy recipe because they usually taste inferior to the traditional recipe that contains all of the fat and sugar.  All of the recipes that I have made off this site have tasted fantastic and I have enjoyed them so much!  Cooking healthy recipes can keep the boredom out of trying to eat clean.  Enjoy this site and get in the kitchen! 

Quad Exercise Video

http://www.servicefoods.com/workout/video.php?vid=quads-1

Click on the link above and check out Herb, Kim and my exercise video.  Herb takes us through a few quad exercises.  This video was shot right after I completed the Augusta 1/2 Ironman and I could have possibly been pregnant with Lily.  Crazy how time flies by, what I would do to be that size again :-)  It's coming along, just like I tell my clients, if it were easy everyone would lose baby weight quickly.  Stay happy, healthy and fit! 

Back to cheat meals and triathlon training!

When it comes to trying to lean out and attain my weight loss and fitness goals, I have to set up personal boundries.  One of the most successful boundries I have learned to set is cheat meals.  If I know I can have 1-2 cheat meals over the course of a week, I will eat clean the rest of the time.  All of the pointless calories from a casual glass of wine, cookie, bread basket, fun size candy bar, etc. that tend to accumulate over the week are eliminated.  I plan a meal (or two) per week that I can splurge on which usually consist of something like a dessert (cheesecake) or pizza and of course wine!  Cheat meals keep me honest and eating clean throughout the week and my "cheat treats" taste so good when I finally get to splurge!

Another technique that works for me is planning out my workouts, this has been a huge challenge with a new baby at home, BUT it can be done.  I registered for Iron Girl this May so I would have no excuses to blow off any workout.  I usually try to get 6 workouts in a week, but since I am at home with Lily have of the time I double up on some days when I have more free time.

Double workout days are great "brick" workouts for triathlon, this week I will probably be training for 4-5 days on 2 of those days will be a double workout of bike/run or swim/bike.  I cannot wait for the weather to get warm again I REALLY miss jogging with Lily and the stroller. 

Cheers to triathlon training and cheat meals!

Making baby food with Service Foods veggies!

Lily and her carrots - I think she wore most of them, haha.

Before Lily was even born I decided I would make her baby food.  I did not want to worry about where her food was coming from and all of the chemicals in the mainstream foods that could harm her, so I use our all natural/organic vegetables.  Lily is almost 6 months we are starting her on solids, its baby food time!  Since I have a sweet tooth out of this world I decided that I would get her used to vegetables before I introduce her to fruits.  I don't want her to fall in love with the fruit sugar and spit the veggies out.

We started with carrots, peas and green beans. I get 2 packs of our Service Foods frozen veggies out of my freezer and just steam the veggies in a steamer until soft, make sure they are still a vibrant color if they become dull and mushy you have lost most of the nutrients in the cooking process.  Place veggies and water in food processor or blender until they are a thin consistency it should be a thin soup consistency, avoid a paste like texture, baby could choke.  Pour the vegetables into an ice cube tray, freeze until solid and crack cubes into plastic freezer bag, date and label the bag.  Each cube is approximately a 1 oz serving.  The food is good for 2-3 weeks in the freezer.   You not only will save your child from harmful chemicals and preservatives, you will also save some money! 

Let me know if you have any questions!

Enough already...I set the date...

...for my come back triathlon!  I am the type of person who needs to have a date and goal in mind in order to get off my butt for real!  Yes, I have been "working out" to get the baby weight off, but my regimen has no rhyme or reason, now I have a Purpose!  Iron Girl Atlanta Triathlon, May 15th 2011 will be my comeback race.  It is only a sprint distance and 2 years ago I could have done this distance in my sleep while I was training for the Augusta Ironman, but now I will have to make some adjustments to pull off the training and beat my time from 2009 (pre-mommy). 

The Iron Girl is 1/3 mile swim/18 mile bike/3 mile run. 

Here is my plan:
Run 3x week (1 long/1 hill/1 speed workout
Swim 1-2x week (I have been a fish my whole life so I don't need to pay extra attention on the swim and for this distance I could probably get away with only 1x week of swim workout.)
Bike 2-3x This is the challenging part, I can't bring Lily with me on my bike and the time that it takes to train on the bike is very long.  I will most likely have to do a lot of training on my indoor bike trainer, spin class and hopefully get out on the road at least 1x week. 

After I paid for the race yesterday, it was like a switch went on inside of me and I was competitive again.  I got in a swim workout yesterday before teaching Pilates and it felt awesome and I got a run in this morning after breakfast.  Hopefully our winter won't be too long because I miss my jogging stroller runs with Lily, that was her nap time, she loves the motion. 

I am planning on doing at least 3 races this season, maybe the Acworth women's tri and possibly an Olympic distance race.  Hopefully I will see some of you out there!

Cheers to triathlon and getting back into shape!

Snow Day Recipe

Check out my eating-right chicken curry snow day recipe!
http://eating-right.servicefoods.com/

YUMMO!

Atlanta Snow Day!

Happy Snow Day!  We got almost 5 inches last night the roads are closed and we are snuggled inside or playing outside.  Ben wanted to build princess Lily a snow man, she loved it and so did Otis (the dog), his chubby little butt was going crazy in the white fluff.  xoxo from Georgia!

9 things I learned when Lily had her first flu bug..

1. Call the doctor no matter what... the doctor said if we would have waited longer we could have ended up in the ER.  Her temp was 102, all of the papers say that 103 is when you should call, thank God I called the doctors office (not to mention it was New Years Eve on a Friday)

2. Don't give a baby under 6 months anything but Tylenol, Advil was buy one get one free :-(

3. Their appetite stinks so you have to feed them more frequently instead of every 4 hours I fed every 2 hours

4. Anti-viral medication can make them have runny green poop or should I say diarrhea

5. Mommy did not sleep because all I thought about is her temperature rising in the middle of the night.  Have a thermometer upstairs and downstairs, and anal temp readings are the most accurate (fun fun).

6. Breathing treatments work, when the cough came the breathing treatments were a life saver! You cannot give a baby anything for a cough so the breathing treatments really helped. 

7. Seeing Lily smile after being sick for a few days made me light up inside. 

8. If the baby is sick you will probably get sick or worse your husband will and then you have 2 babies!

9. I never knew any of this stuff before Lily was born, thank God for Ben, family, friends, pediatrician, and my maternal instincts. 

Princess Lily travels to Florida for Christmas!

We had a blast in Florida seeing the family and Lily had so much fun getting to know her great grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins.  Too bad we missed the snow up here in Georgia, we enjoyed the beautiful sunsets on the beach in Daytona at mom and dad's place and the sunshine in St. Pete at Aunt Linda and Uncle Jeff's (even though Florida had record cold temperatures it was still better then Atlanta!) 

The holidays are officially over and it's time to get back into the routine of :life."  Ben starts school up again next Monday, he did great on his finals and we can finally see the end of the school madness! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years!  We all relapsed with getting sick so our New Years was spent in bed and catering to Lily's needs, she had her first flu bug of her life which scared the heck out of me!  Good thing we have an awesome pediatrician and she gets a lot of TLC from her mommy and daddy, the temperature broke in 1 day!

 Lily getting excited for some dinner she starting eating baby food the week before Christmas!

 We started her early... she wanted to help us bake Christmas cookies!

 Lily meeting her Great Grandpa Snapp, Lily and her cousin Carter made Grandpa's Christmas!

 4 generation Snapp picture! Great grandpa, Dad, brother Nick, nephew Carter and Lily and me!

 The Yarns :-)

 The Snapps!

 Lily playing with her Great Grandma and Papa Deak...we had so much fun....papa starting dancing around the living room.

Lily testing out her piano skills, I say she is a natural, but she also spit up on the key board - sorry papa!