21 Day Fix: The Vegetarian Round

For the last three weeks, I’ve been a vegetarian.

Why?

-Because I didn’t know how actual vegetarians do it

-I’m a kooky, fun kind of gal.

It’s actually been a pretty fun, eye-opening experience.

The first week was probably the toughest. Nay, the first DAY. I was hungry, it was lunch time, and usually on a Monday I would whip up some ground turkey and vegetables in a romaine wrap. In my meal prep, I picked recipes off pinterest that looked AMAZING: butternut squash lasanga, sesame cauliflower, sweet potato hotcakes… I had all the ingredients.

Little did I know those all took HOURS to make. Add that to the fact that I am a n00b in the kitchen, I would be eating lunch for dinner.

So that day, I ended up having the wrap, as usual but with a chopped up veggie burger instead of the ground turkey.

Over the next few days, I made some of my chosen recipes, but not all of them. There just wasn’t any time to spend hours in the kitchen. I also realized that a lot of the recipes required a lot of carbs and cheeses. Since I only get two yellows (carbs) a day, it was hard to choose when I would eat which tasty dish. And I only get ONE blue a day (cheese/fats) so I also had to be conscious of that as well. I knew that if I didn’t want to be wandering around my kitchen like a hippie at Burning Man looking for food, I’d have to come up with a different plan.

I started making more things with quinoa. It started with quinoa-stuffed peppers, which were pretty good. Then a facebook friend of mine posted a recipe for Warm Kale and Quinoa Salad and that was amazing. I also bought more veggie burgers, just in time for grilling season, and fish. I already eat a lot of fish in my life, so not much had changed there.

The biggest struggles for me was the urge to snack, and that’s mostly because things got more social as the weather warmed up. I spent a day on a friend’s boat and everyone was nomming on chips and big sandwiches. I brought my Shakeology, but I didn’t want to waste it all at once (Or have to excuse myself to the lower deck to reieve myself 5 times… #shakeoprobz). I was extremely lucky that my boyfriend decided to snoop through the cooler and found some grapes.

We also went to a wedding, and that was tough as well. It wasn’t just tough because of the vegetarian fix… it was more tough because the food there was just everything. I would have struggled with this on ANY version of the fix. For one, the cocktail hour had a zillion food stations. My crew had scored a table RIGHT next to the fried calamari station. I’m all about that fried calamari. Since we were in the back of the room, no one even saw that station behind us. I could have been eating ALL of the fried calamari.

There was a lot of fried food at most of the stations, and some with just meat. Fail and fail for me. But there were stations with fruit and cheese, salad, lox and grilled shrimp. So don’t worry, I had a food plate of DELICIOUS food in the end. But it was tough for me to be drinking lemon water and hearing around me, “The margaritas are AMAZING.” Le sigh.

Since this was my second round of the fix, I’d already been off alcohol for over a month...and I’ve ALWAYS had basically no alcoholic tolerance to speak of. So when the time came for toasts and I sipped my glass of champagne, I got googley-eyed pretty darn fast. I guess it’s a good thing I couldn’t get my grubby mits on those margs!

If you’re looking to get into meatlessness, here are some things I’d highly recommend you keep around:

-Veggie Burgers. Quick to make, and really good!

-Quinoa. There are so many different ways to make it and, like rice, they have other flavors available

-Snapea Crisps… not that you can’t eat potato chips as a vegetarian, but these are better for you and just as addicting. Good for those snack days

-So much fruit… it’s summer and so many great things are in season

-Kale and Spinach: both give you abs and both are amazing when cooked with garlic powder. But isn’t everything?

-Shrimp/fresh fish: I recommend sword fish if you love steak.

5 Ways to make Clean Eating EASIER

                                                                   - The Leaner Creamer -

Made up of coconuts, a derivative of milk and soy, this substitute for creamer and sweeteners is a must-have. I know, a sprinkle of sweeteners and half and half might not seem like a lot, but if you enjoy more than one cup of coffee a day, those calories add up. The Leaner Creamer is tasty, healthy, and an appetite suppressant. A serving size is a teaspoon, so your container will last you a while.

- Snapea Crisps -

 I can't tell you the last time I sat with a bowl of potato chips and just nommed away without a care. It's definitely been years. Every once in a while, I just want to mindlessly snack and get my salt-craving satisfied without actually cooking anything. Snapea Crisps are the answer. A snap pea is a legume, like peanuts (if you're allergic to peanuts but not nuts, maybe find out if you have a legume allergy before trying these out). 22 of these are a serving. 22!!!! And only 110 calories per serving! You can totally feel good having more than one handful of these when you're watching The Bachelorette (or whatever your guilty pleasure may be).

- Tamari & Tahini Dressing -

I'm not a huge fan of quinoa... A lot of recipes suggest putting cheese on it, but I try to avoid using a lot of cheese daily. I prefer to get my fats from avocados or hummus. But when I mix a tsp of tamari and a teaspoon of tahini with a drop or two of lemon juice and drizzle that on my quinoa or cooked kale, I can't get enough! 

- Banana and Egg Pancakes -

 Crack two eggs and cut a whole banana into a blender. Make a nice batter. Make pancakes out of that. You're welcome.

                                                      - Shakeology -

My everything. This is BAE of food. The healthiest meal of my day, Shakeology is made up of superfoods. I get all of my daily vitamins in a delicious shake, which saves me TONS of money. Vitamins are expensive! It really helps me with my sweet tooth too. Every day I have my choice between a chocolate milkshake, cake, ice cream, cookies... all with Shakeology. My favorite recipe, which I found on pinterest, is Shakeology Peanut Butter Cups. 

-5 tbsp shakeology

-3 tbsp coconut oil

Mix together, pour into 4 aluminum foil muffin tins, but only enough to cover the bottoms. Make sure you still have some of the mixture left over. Stick those in the freezer.

-1 banana

-3 tsp peanut butter

Blend together for a nice creamy filling and put them into a ziplock. Cut a corner off the ziplock. Take the muffin tins out of the freezer and pour the cream filling onto the chocolate bottoms. Cover the cream with the chocolate. Freeze for 10 minutes. ENJOY!

The Side-Effects of Self Love

   I'm a very different person today than I was a year and a half ago.

  Toward the end of 2013, I found my rock-bottom. I failed. I moved to Boston from New York without having all of my ducks in a row. A small percentage of why I moved was for a guy, and it turned out that he was going through his own life crisis and wanted nothing to do with me. The job I got was not good enough to pay the bills but offered no time to pick up a second job and I realized all of it just a little too late.

  I moved back home, into rooms that were filled with my parents' things and feeling like there wasn't really room for me anymore. I was pressured to go find a job, but I took a month to just be poor and sad. I sent out resumes, but I didn't do much following up until my month of sadness was coming to a close. I deactivated my Facebook, considered going back to school for an entirely different field than wellness and questioned my worth. I worked out a LITTLE, but I really didn't try that hard to eat well or stay in shape for that time. I read about feminism and studied the world around me and played video games.

  I started the new month with a new job, picked up a few group fitness slots at the gym I used to teach at before Boston, earned a spot in an improv group, started writing stand up comedy and slowly started to redefine myself. When January rolled around, I was pudgy and missed my workouts, so I started going to the gym every morning with my cousin. 

   When I met my boyfriend Mike in April of 2014, I was kind of all over the place in terms of self-esteem. Having performed and made people laugh made me feel really cool and interesting. Getting back in shape again made me feel pretty. But I still wasn't sure how I was ever going to get out of my house, and feared I'd never be good enough or helpful enough or smart enough or energized enough to make the money I needed to leave. Going back to school would keep me locked in my house forever, but so would staying still. I was in limbo.

    Within a few months of dating, it was clear to Mike that my passion was in the wellness industry. He helped me believe in myself again. We would brainstorm ways for me to help people and myself. Eventually, we realized the answer was there all along in the form of Beachbody Coaching. It's a job I'm in love with and I'm having a great time with it. But, like any other business, it takes time. I can't be a stand-up comedian AND a Beachbody coach... mostly because when I'm fit and training, helping my coaches build their businesses and studying to be a better trainer, I'm HAPPY. Who wants to hear me stand up and talk about how happy I am? No one.

    Being busy with coaching, teaching classes, personal training, my own self-training and massage therapy makes me extremely happy. Learning how to cook and helping my boyfriend and family eat food and healthy things that taste like they aren't healthy makes me feel accomplished. Going out with friends and being the DD saves me a night of embarrassment from being "that girl" (which I ALWAYS am when I drink) and gets everyone home safely. Drinking water and Shakeology every day makes my skin look better than it ever has, which is a miracle for someone who grew up covered in acne and eczema. Leading a challenge group by example makes me feel like a good coach. Talking to my fellow coaches about everything from their personal lives to their fitness makes me feel like I'm part of an amazing family of like-minded people. I've never felt so good and so loved. 

   But then there is the other side of things. This is where a lot of people fall off. I've seen it so many times. Yes, the voice in your head can be your biggest enemy. But sometimes we have real voices talking to us too. Out loud. 

  Not having a good support system is the hardest part of trying to live a healthy lifestyle. When I started believing in myself, I could hear some of my friends' eyes rolling. Doing all of the things that I mentioned I LOVE doing got in the way of the free time I used to have for things like self-deprecating jokes. Meal prep and coach camps took away from hours of sitting around texting and sending funny messages to people. Being truly busy meant a lot of sentences that start with, "I'd love to, but..."

  

  And some people just wouldn't have that. 

   It's extremely hard when you go out to dinner with people you love and they smile meanly at you saying, "Oh look! She's EATING!"

   It's annoying when people tell you that they feel "done with you" because you can't come to every single thing you used to when you had more time.

   It HURTS when someone tells you that you "suck" because you won't have a drink or eat cake.

  I'm lucky I do have my fit fam. I'm lucky I have a boyfriend who tells me how proud he is of what I'm doing instead of pressuring me to be someone else. I'm lucky I have enough people in my life to remind me that I'm on the right path that I can say, "Yes. I choose me. I choose to do what I love, even if it makes other people feel weird for whatever reason." 

  I'm no one's mother. I don't have to be there for every single event. Everyone is busy and has the things that make them happy. I like to think I make enough time to show the people that I care about, that I care about them. But at the end of the day, if that isn't appreciated, I'm always going to choose myself first. I hope you do the same.

A Little Help From a Friend

Today, I'd like to share something with you that has helped me a lot.

I don't know about you, but the feeling of being in limbo or lost is something I'm familiar with. Sometimes it happens when I'm between goals. Sometimes it's when a goal doesn't go as planned.

So how do I escape the maddening feeling of standing still?

Often you hear that instead of just dreaming, you should be doing. But I say, dream away! Take a piece of paper and a pen and write out your dream life. What do you want one year from now? What would make you very happy? A better golf game? A bigger apartment? A new car? A career in photography?

Imagine it and write it as though it's already happened.

The next day, write another list. A huuuuge brain purge of ideas to help you get to your goal. Literally write down EVERYTHING you'd need to do to achieve your goal for the year. Then divide your brain storm into 4 different lists:

TODAY:
THIS WEEK:
THIS MONTH:
THIS YEAR:

Things may move around a bit. But to have a To Do list is to have a game plan. When it comes to exercise, I often say, "fail to plan, plan to fail." That goes for other aspects of your life too!

There is NOTHING you can't do without a plan and the willingness to put it into action.

I hope this helps you as much as it helped me! If you want to take your success a step further, I HIGHLY recommend buying the book 30 Day PUSH by Chalene Johnson. Chalene is NO JOKE and her book will help you dream bigger and do more!

Happy Monday!!

Fun Facts About Moi

So you think you know me?? But did you knowww....

1) I have a blue-tongue skink named Reptar. He's roughly 7 years old and I've had him for two years. The poor guy has been abused in the past. His first owner didn't feed him, his second owner chopped off his fingers, his third owner was GREAT and couldn't keep him, and now he is my little buddy. 

2) When I read books, I often become so consumed by them that I end up acting like the main character of the book. I try to read a really light and fluffy book right after I finish something dark.

3) I have clubbed thumbs. If you've ever watched Transformers and saw Megan Fox's weird thumbs, that's what mine look like. I look just like Megan Fox.

4) My guilty pleasure is The Bachelor franchise. The Kardashians make me stabby. I think most of the Real Housewives look like they could be their husband's mothers. But The Bachelor? Hot people feeling entitled to love by other hot people? I'm all about it.

5) I'm a feminist. I hate the reputation that feminists have as "man-hating". A feminist is just this: someone who believes women should have equal rights to men. If you share this idea and want a laugh, go to twitter and follow @notofeminism. It's satire and it's hysterical.

6) I met my boyfriend on Tinder. We found love in a hopeless place.

7) My favorite band is The Beatles. John Lennon is my spirit animal.

8) I obtained most of my jewelry from deceased relatives. None of it is real, but they still mean a lot to me.

Blurry pic I took of Mike Birbiglia

9) I have a disorder called Trichotillomania. It's a form of OCD where a person plucks their hair out without even noticing or with an inability to stop. I am really lucky because it was never as bad as other cases. I talk to women in a support group who wear wigs. I mostly plucked my eyelashes growing up and I wore falsies through most of my senior year. It's something I still struggle with in phases, but I've gotten a LOT better at controlling it.

10) I'm a comedy junkie. Some of my favorites are Mitch Hedberg, Lucille Ball, Louis CK, John Mullaney, Conan O'Brien, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Gaffighan, Aziz Ansari, Amy Shumer, Daniel Tosh, Hannibal Buress and Bill Burr. 

I hope you enjoyed this revealing insight into my life, dear reader! xo

How To Shop Health Consciously

Do you think the thing that keeps you from losing weight is hiding in your kitchen? Let's fix it!

1) Go into your kitchen and throw out the following:

-Fried chicken

-Canned vegetables with added salt

-Flavored yogurts

-White bread, white rice, pasta that isn't whole grain

-2% milk

-Sugary drinks

-Ice cream

-Cookies

-Potato chips

-Crackers

-Anything that is marketed to kids and has a cartoon character on it or added sugars.

We can replace all of that with:

-Grilled meat instead of fried

-Fresh vegetables

-Plain yogurt (add fresh fruit and granola YUM)

-Whole grain bread, rice and pasta

-Coconut of almond milk

-Freeze bananas and cover in dark chocolate for a more healthy option then ice cream
-Brookside chocolate covered blueberries/pomegranate/crunchy clusters. These are SO filling and the crunchy clusters taste like a little crunch bar!

-Check instagram for healthy "cheat" meals, get recipes and add them to your grocery list

-Crackers made from seeds, like Mary's Gone Crackers. SO good with hummus. 

Healthier muffins! Thanks @neuroticmommy !

2) Make yourself a grocery list and a list of recipes you're going to make for the week with all of our replacement items. Go onto pintrest and instagram for other healthy, tasty things that look good to you and add those ingredients to your list. Two AWESOME accounts to look at for healthy recipes is @skinnykitchen and @neuroticmommy. They both actually give you amazing recipes to try instead of teasing you with tempting food photos.

3) EAT A MEAL. Never go to the grocery store hungry. If you do, the following will occur:

-You will buy what you CRAVE and veer away from your new list

-You will spend more money than you intended

-You will lose your temper with the old lady who is standing right in the middle of the aisle instead of just saying "excuse me" like your mama taught you.

4) Go to the grocery store. Try to avoid the aisles as much as you can. Get your vegetables and fruit from the fresh produce section. You can get frozen fruit if you're really big into smoothies and you don't think you'll use your fresh fruit before they go bad. 

5) Avoid anything with "trans-fats". Trans-fats are put into food to make them last longer on your shelf. Don't buy anything that you intend to keep for a long time. And remember, just because it says "gluten free" on it, it doesn't mean it's healthy. It just means it was made without gluten. It can still be full of sugars, trans-fats and other things you don't need. 

6) Go pay

7) Go restock your kitchen full of the goodies you've just bought! 

Bonus: Here's a quick and easy way to fill your tummy!

-Prepare a veggie burger. They make some really great ones, my favorite is the California veggie burger by Dr. Praeger's.

-Put some lettuce and cut up tomatoes in a whole wheat wrap

-Put a tsp of red roasted pepper hummus in the wrap

-Chop of the veggie burger and put that into the wrap

-Wrap it

-Eat up! Very yum. Enjoy!

Niki Webber: A Love Story

          N I C K I  M I N A J ?  T R Y   N I K I   M A S S A G E....

 I was born with a desire to be needed and to nurture. This has come with a lot of consequences, but leaving college and abandoning my journalism studies to pursue a career as a massage therapist was not a bad one. Now, I've been in the wellness industry for over five years. I am a licensed massage therapist, a certified personal trainer and I'm studying to obtain a certification in fitness nutrition. But my favorite title is Beachbody coach. It's the way I help the most people become healthy and increase their quality of life in an affordable way.

   First came the massage license. My plan was to work and save enough money to get liposuction. I had a brutally honest friend in massage school tell me that if I were to start spouting out information on how to live a healthy life, people probably wouldn't take me all that seriously, ESPECIALLY if I got liposuction. He said, "We are going to do a triathlon next year."

  Well, we didn't. But that doesn't mean I dismissed what he said. In six months, I was down from a size 12 pant to size 6 by eating well and doing a DVD workout called Turbo Jam on rainy days. On nice days, I was riding my bike or running, which were things I used to hate to do. I became passionate about exercise in those six months. Not as much about food, but I can say I haven't had a bowl of Cocoa Puffs since that time, so it was a start. 

  After a year of being licensed, massage therapy started to wear me out. I was being worked to the bone, literally on the verge of carpal tunnel, by a corporate spa. A majority of the people who came in didn't come in because they were stressed or had anything wrong with them. I was unfulfilled. My heart was in fitness.

I   L I F T   T H I N G S   U P   A N D   P U T   T H E M   D O W N.

  I cut my hours at the spa and went to school to become a personal trainer. I was also drinking Shakeology and for the first time, I could see some definition in my arms and legs. I started reading more about nutrition, too. When I was done with school, I started doing Insanity (since I'd learned about the benefits of HIIT) and I got my first training job at a beautiful fitness center at a golf club.

  I LOVED working at the fitness center. I even got to work out there, which was amazing. I adored my clients. I felt great. My parents saw how I was feeling and joined the gym near our house. They even started drinking Shakeology with me and benefitted from the energy. After two years, I decided to move to a big city in another state and get a job at a bigger gym... a corporate gym. 

  The gym was wonderful. It was pristine, the equipment was brand new and there were even A-list celebrities working out there regularly. But even as a trainer, I was intimidated. The clients were in better shape than I was. The other trainers had run marathons and Ironman races. I had the highest body fat percentage of all the girls there. One kid repeatedly called me "meatball." I know he was trying to be cute, but it made me feel extremely self conscious and it hindered my confidence, which made it difficult for me to talk to clients. I was losing money, fast. The commute to work was running me into the ground because train tickets were gone fast and parking was absurdly expensive. I had to eventually realize that I failed and I went back home.

S T A R T I N G   O V E R

   For a month, I stayed at home to figure out what I wanted my life to look like instead of crawling back to the places I'd left. I felt humiliated. I deactivated my Facebook because I couldn't play pretend with the world. Until that time in my life, my happiness never felt faked or forced so I didn't want it to start then. In that month, I realized that big gyms and spas and fancy clients were not ever going to truly make me happy because all along, the common denominator was that I didn't feel like I was actually helping anyone. So, I got a job at a smaller spa where I work with paralyzed clients, cancer patients, survivors, dancers, and athletes. I started teaching group fitness classes and I went back to working on myself using the products that had given me success in the past- Shakeology and Insanity. Then I did the 21 Day Fix and it brought my fitness and self-esteem to a level I never knew I could achieve. I used the meal plan from the fix and exercises from Insanity to train for and kick ass in a triathlon. I missed training people in a gym so much, but none of the jobs seemed like they would make sense in my life. Working in a gym is fun, but you can only see about 10 people a day and that's only if you don't have other jobs (and I like my jobs too much to give them up). And ten people a day seemed exhausting. How can I eat my six meals a day and get my own work out in? I want to help people, but I want to live by example myself.

   The answer to my happiness hit me like a ton of bricks one day. I was doing my third round of the 21 Day Fix and my whole family was doing it with me. I was telling people about it and they were interested. People like ME. People I'm friends with. People I went to high school with. People who have been down and couldn't afford a gym membership but really wanted to turn things around. And that's when I decided to give my all to Beachbody. 

    It took me six years to get to where I am now and I'm so glad it took this long because I've learned so much about a lot of things: what works, what doesn't work, what failure feels like, how beautiful it is to rise again, how to fit self-care into a busy schedule and how to fall in LOVE with myself. I can't wait to share that information with the world.