Today I’m rounding up some of my easy go-to eats during the week and talking about intermittent fasting.
If you’re looking for fancy pants meals and recipes, this is not the post for you.
These are quick and easy things to make (or take out of the freezer… let’s be honest….time is of the essence) that are healthier and faster than take out.

:: GO TO MEALS :: 
Since I am home 99% of the time, these are all healthy-ish meals I whip up at home during the week.

I use the term “healthy” relatively.  If you’re someone who eats all organic, whole, fresh homemade foods all day, you with think this is all garbage filled with garbage.  If you eat fast food every day, you will think this is healthy. It’s all relative.  I used to be the queen of fast food and garbage but 1) I can’t get away with that anymore and 2) I know better know about just how bad the garbage chemical food is for you.
….but let’s be honest…. even knowing what fake chemicals and lab food do to you….. I’d be in that drive-thru WAY more than I am if I could still get away with it as easily….. 

When I’m out, I’m of course indulging and eating all the yummy things.
Occasionally we do takeout or delivery, but in general during the week – especially Monday to Thursday – we eat healthy at home and try to keep the house stocked with good for you foods.
ALSO, I used to be much better at having all fresh/organic, etc.  But with babies at home I’m busy and I don’t get to the store as often as I need so some days it’s full blown freezer meals made with frozen things from Costco or Publix.  When I can, I try to buy organic veggies (at least the dirty dozen) and I always buy organic/grass fed meat – if you watch a food documentary on Netflix TRUST ME if it doesn’t make you vegetarian it will at least make you want to buy organic when you can.

For lunch and dinner, I rotate the same things over and over again until I get sick of them.  When I can, I do higher carb at lunch and lower carb at dinner, but it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.
My favorite veggie filled meal is a huge garbage salad.

Garbage Salad 

I vary the protein with beef, chicken, griddled black bean or veggie burgers, etc.
I top with tons of parmesan cheese (I used to be all about the feta, then the goat cheese, now I’m onto parm, then it’ll probably circle back again.)
For dressing I do pesto or I mix dijon mustard with red wine or champagne vinegar.
The bigger the better. Kardashian size or larger.  (the above photo was clearly to make it pretty, I do it in my huge bowls at home.)

This sounds strange but my trick for liking spinach: I chop it all up very small before I add the other salad ingredients into the bowl.  I will pack SO much spinach in and once you chop it all up it’s not like your eating giant mouthfuls of greens (am I the only one who can never eat a spinach salad at a restaurant? it’s just….. lettuce that doesn’t even go in your mouth with the stems hanging out?) . But when you chop it up really small the dressing gets all distributed and it just tastes better.

Turkey Roll Ups or an Open Faced Turkey Sandwich
I do pepper-jack cheese, mustard, turkey and either a slice of ezekial bread or the cauliflower egg wraps from publix. For chips I am HOOKED on the parmesan whisps.  They are SO good.

Chicken Salad or Tuna Salad or Egg Salad 
Oh my goodness the Egg Salad from Trader Joe’s is BOMB. I just had it for the first time recently. and WOW.
(I can’t find a photo of the egg salad, but it’s GEWDDDD.)

Red Lentil Pasta + Chicken + Broccoli Alfredo
This is a new favorite around here.
It’s a healthier version of Chicken Alfredo.  I feel like this meal is a perfect example of what I try to do with meals.  If I want pasta and cream sauce – GREAT, eat up! – but I’ll do red lentil pasta for more protein and add in lots of broccoli to bulk it up with something good for you.
You can’t see in the photo but the whole bottom of the bowl is lined in broccoli, so there’s lots of veggies in there.
The key to this (other than a homemade sauce of course) is the Rao’s Alfredo sauce.  It is – no surprise – amazing.  Their red sauce is the only red sauce I’ll buy.

Quinoa Bowl (“recipe“, but it’s just all this throw together)
I’ll do vegetarian for this or add chicken or a veggie burger.

Taco Salad 
We’ve always done taco night regularly around here, but I’ll make Kip’s with shells and mine a taco salad instead. I added in some cheddar nutthins for some extra crunch.

Turkey Meatballs ( recipe here )
I love, love these meatballs.  They’re super easy to make a big batch.  I love them over pasta but they also taste great over a big romaine salad with extra sauce as the “dressing”.

Cauliflower Rice Bowls
I use the Trader Joe’s cauliflower rice and top with a black bean burger and siracha or I have also made the rice and served it with frozen potstickers (from Costco or Trader Joe’s).

Spicy Chicken + Sweet Potato Bowls (recipe)
This is a really easy one to meal prep if you are into meal prepping.
You can make a big batch and have lots of leftovers.
Sheet pan dinners are great for any veggies – roast huge batches and you’ll have tons leftover for the week.

Frozen Dinners : Chicken Pizzas + Quest Pizza’s.
Lazy dinner at its easiest. Chicken pizzas are high protein with a chicken base for crust, and the quest is high fiber and protein.  Still a frozen pizza so not “real food” but hey, it’s good and quick and easy. I’ll make these with a salad.  I like to top the cheese pizzas with pesto.

I also love breakfast for lunch or dinner.  Breakfast is always really easy to throw together quickly too so I love making these when I’m tired at night and don’t want to be in the kitchen for very long.
I do not eat Breakfast anymore (more below on intermittent fasting) but my old go-to breakfast was a Fab 4 Smoothie and they are SO SO good. You can tweak it anyway you like, but my two favorites were a blueberry smoothie or a peanut butter smoothie. (smoothie recipe here, but with spinach instead of greens powder.  I got sick of trying to mask the greens powder and the spinach you don’t taste at all)

Protein Waffles (recipe)

Protein Pancakes – exact same recipe as the waffles,
but griddle as pancakes instead of putting in the waffle maker

Egg + Veggie Scramble
I’ll make a big egg and veggie scramble, or if I’m lazy, buy the egg cups from costco and microwave them and eat them with a Mikey’s english muffin.



Desserts
I will eat pretty much anything for dessert these days because my sweet tooth is off the charts.
I have something for dessert after both lunch and dinner.
My go-to healthier dessert that I eat almost every day is this Baklava that they were sampling one time at a local market. It’s all natural and real ingredients and not packed with added sugars and it is DELICIOUS.  I eat this sometimes for both of my daily desserts (local friends, they sell it at Savi)

I love the dark chocolate and caramel triangles from Trader Joe’s.  I especially love these with a sliced apple and PB2 (PB2 is powdered peanut butter that you mix with water to make peanut butter – don’t knock it till you try it)

Kristin Cavallari’s Almond Butter Cookies are a favorite of mine.

SoDelicious dairy free mousse is insanely delicious and I will never buy Halo Top again.
The peanut butter is BOMB.

These guilt free peanut butter chocolate blondies are delicious.

But not gonna lie, they aren’t as good as the boxed brownies I made over the weekend.
This mix was KILLER.

Also love the dark chocolate almonds from Trader Joe’s and their dark chocolate peanut butter cups.

You can find more posts like this under the wellness tab and under FOOD under the wellness tab!

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On to Intermittent Fasting.

As you know, I know nothing about nothing.

So google intermittent fasting if you aren’t familiar with it.
I know a lot of people are more familiar with it because of the popularity of Faster Way to Fat Loss so here is an article about intermittent fasting.  I do not do FWTFL and don’t plan to – I don’t want to count anything or have low carb days or chart anything in an app – I JUST WANT TO EAT.  But I know people who do that plan and absolutely love it. For my lifestyle it puts too much focus on thinking about what to eat and planning ahead rather than eating whatever the eff I want to eat that day. If I want to eat a salad, I eat a salad.  If I want a bowl of mac and cheese, I eat the bowl of mac and cheese.  But intermittent fasting has shown I can eat more of whatever I want and it doesn’t seem to affect my body like it before.  

There are all different versions of it (how many hours you fast (12/14/16 or fasting for 2 days a week while eating normally for 5, etc.)  But it’s NOT about eating less food.  I eat just as much food as I did when I ate breakfast if not more, I just eat in a shortened window so my body isn’t working to digest food all day and all night.  I’ve listened to lots of podcasts where guests talk about intermittent fasting and the thing that really got me was that essentially your body is either working to digest the food you’ve eaten or is working to do great things like heal, regenerate cells, boost immunity, etc.  When you’re eating all day long (and late at night like I like to do) and waking up and eating first thing, your body doesn’t have nearly as much time to be doing all the good stuff.  That’s my VERY dumb summary of it.  Like I said, do your own research.  Don’t listen to my dumb ass.

I started intermittent fasting about 3 months ago and it partially came about because I had been wanting to try it but I stuck with it more because it worked well with my schedule (and by my schedule I mean the girls schedule – they dictate all.)  Trying to eat a meal when the girls are awake is nearly impossible – at least for me.  I don’t like to be rushed and throwing food down the hatch – I want to sit and eat while I watch a show or work on my laptop, etc.

omg is this Melissa?!? WOWOWOW she looks different…. but I digress….. 

Also…. in order to not break your fast “they” say that it should be less than 50 calories.
I have 2 cups of coffee in the morning before I have lunch but I use A LOT of the Nutpods Hazelnut creamer so I think I am having more than 50 calories of creamer in my 2 cups? WHATEVER.  I need my coffee and as someone who despises the taste of actual coffee, I need all the Nutpods I can get in there.

I started with just my usual 12-13 hour fast (I normally eat until 8:30-9:00 at night, and then would eat around 9-10 AM before intermittent fasting).
I thought I would be starving if I waited longer than that to eat but surprisingly I wasn’t.

I slowly worked my hours up and I now fast for 14-16 hours.  The girls go down for their afternoon nap at 12:45, so I make a big lunch after their down to break my fast.  I also workout in the late morning and don’t like to have breakfast before I workout – it makes me feel sluggish and nauseous a little bit.

My usual “eating” window is 1-9 PM.  I like to be eating dinner while I’m watching my TV shows and being on the east coast the shows come on LATE.  Plus the girls go down at 7 PM for the night, and then I’m busy with cleaning/dishes/laundry/etc so I usually don’t have dinner MADE and ready for me to eat until 7:45 or 8 PM.  For most people (my husband included) this is way too late.  I’ve yet to hear anyone that intermittent fasts say their window goes until 9 PM.  But for me, I love it.  Night time is my ME time and it works for me.

** I didn’t do any fasting of any king while nursing/pumping.  I waited until I had completely finished weaning, which was right before they were 7 months old. Pumping while intermittent fasting was a hard no for me.  YOU DO YOU.  For my supply, it never would have worked.  I ate round the clock while pumping and attribute my strong milk supply to that (and water and lactation cookies and stuff too…..) but whenever I didn’t eat in the middle of the night (I ate the lactation cookies or a protein bar while I would be up pumping and feeding the babies in the middle of the night) my supply would drop.  So for me, eating nonstop was a must. My husband was shocked at the amount of food I would eat.  Nothing was off limits.  It was GLORIOUS.  And to be honest, it may be luck or genes, but my body didn’t care how much food I consumed it was like a furnace making all that milk and kept burning it off.  (But truly a FURNACE – I would soak the sheets and the mattress with sweat all night long and have to swap out towels every time I woke up to pump and then change the sheets every morning….. ugh postpartum….) . just keep in mind that if you’re like me, if you want a milk supply, it’s time to chow chow chow chow chow all day and all night long.

but I digress…….

I don’t always follow intermittent fasting and if I’m hungry I start eating.  Usually I’m not hungry in the mornings though because I drink tons and tons of water, drink my coffee, and am not much of a breakfast person.  (If I’ve had cocktails the night before, I always eat earlier the next day.)

I’m not sure how long I’ll keep doing it but I do think it definitely has given me more food freedom.  When I’ve had super indulgent weeks or weekends and lots of eating and drinking during the holidays for example, it hasn’t affected anything.  I feel really good and have plenty of energy while eating this way so for now that’s my schedule.  Once the schedule for the girls changes I’m sure mine will too, though.  And I know when they’re a little older it will be important for us to eat dinner together as a family, so that will change all of it too.