Jerry the Blogger

I was running out of interesting (yet still healthy) recipes to make at home so I decided to visit the "Recipes" link here on the Start Making Choices website and found the recipe for Angel Hair Pasta with Chicken and Shrimp. To describe this angel hair pasta dish as "heavenly" doesn't do it justice ... and it's sort of a bad pun.

The entire meal only takes about 30 minutes to prepare and each serving is 283 calories with only 3 grams of fat. Overall, it's a very healthy meal that tastes absolutely fantastic. I won't re-type the entire recipe in this blog so if you're interested in the complete list of ingredients and step-by-step cooking instructions then check out the "Recipes" link on this site.

The reason I mentioned this particular recipe is because it sparked a few creative cooking ideas in my own mind. I'm a huge fan of eggs and have been since I was a child but I often struggle with finding unique, healthy ways to enjoy this nutritious staple. One of my new favorite ways of cooking with eggs is to use eggs as a substitute for another meat ... usually chicken. Seriously, eggs are essentially protein with vitamins and minerals essential to a healthy body, and most meats serve the same purpose.

I've found that eggs make a wonderful substitution for meat in a variety of dishes ... including the "Angel Hair Pasta with Chicken and Shrimp" recipe in which I removed the chicken and put in some scrambled eggs. If you're concerned about cholesterol another wonderful alternative to regular eggs are Egg Beaters. Since I have high cholesterol I sometimes use Egg Beaters Original since this egg substitute is made from real eggs but contains no cholesterol and no fat.

I hope you give the recipes on this website a try and I encourage you to try a few creative changes to the ingredients list. Just remember to think healthy.

As part of my "Start Making Choices Balanced Life Plan" I've chosen to make nutrition a daily consideration in my life as well as regular exercise. That being said, living a healthy lifestyle isn't always easy, and every day requires that I make decisions that can either help my continued weight loss or set me back.

For example, last week one of my co-workers celebrated his birthday and he was nice enough to bring a giant cookie cake to the office for all of his coworkers to enjoy. Some people can't live without steak, some people are addicted to ice cream, but my Kryptonite is soft cookies. It doesn't matter if it's a chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter, or plain old sugar cookie. If it's soft and a cookie I cannot say no.

I was successful in resisting the urge to eat the giant cookie cake for the first half of the work day, but by the time 1:00 hit I just couldn't say no any longer. I ended up cutting three slices of that cookie cake and eating them before I realized what I was doing.

I went online and did some research and discovered just how dangerous the giant chocolate chip cookie cake is to my healthy lifestyle. Each slice of the cookie cake in question contained 440 calories and 21 grams of fat. In other words, in one afternoon I ate 1,320 calories and 63 grams of fat! That's more than half of my daily recommended calorie intake and much more fat than I ever needed to eat in one day.

What did I learn? Living a healthy, balanced lifestyle requires that you take responsibility for the things you do and the food you eat. Each and every one of us has to make choices about our nutrition and exercise every day.

Sometimes it's as simple as cooking with PAM no-stick spray instead of oil or butter. Other times it means eating a bowl of Healthy Choice microwaveable soup instead of going out during lunch and ordering a double cheeseburger. And, yes, sometimes it means not eating three slices of a giant chocolate chip cookie cake.

I personally won't make that mistake again ... at least not anytime soon. I hope your healthy lifestyle choices come a little easier than mine.

Let's face a few cold, hard facts about modern life for a few moments. There's a reason fast food restaurants and "convenience food" exists: We just don't have the time to dedicate to preparing healthy meals when we're balancing work, family, exercise, socializing, romance, and a dozen other things all at the same time. It isn't easy to just take a few ingredients, toss them together, and create a healthy meal in 5 or 10 minutes. But what if it was that easy?

Over the weekend I found myself in a difficult situation; my wife was visiting friends out of town and I was left to take care of our daughter all on my own for three days. While there are literally tens of thousands of Americans who work as single parents every day, the last three days were a complete shock to my system. Before making the choice to get fit and eat healthy I used to survive chaos like this by picking up the phone and ordering pizza or driving to a local fast food joint. Now that I care about nutrition, those "convenience food" options are no longer available.

For breakfast I had to come up with something for my daughter and I to eat and still have enough time to get showered, dressed, and get my daughter ready as well. My 5-minute solution: fruit crepes. I started with pre-packaged French-style crepes from the grocery store (40 calories and 1g of fat each). I added fresh blueberries, fresh strawberries, and a little Fiber One strawberry yogurt (80 calories and no fat) to help make the fruit stick together inside the crepe and then wrapped the crepe. That's it! This healthy and nutritious breakfast tastes great and took only 5 minutes to make.

By the time dinner rolled around I had a little more time on my hands, but no energy left to deal with complicated cooking. I wanted nothing more than to pick up the phone and order a pizza ... even if it meant eating more calories and fat in one meal than I need in one day. Instead, I walked over to the kitchen pantry and created the following meal without any recipe to guide me.

I took a can of black beans (90 calories and 0.5g of fat) and put it in a pot with one whole diced tomato (35 calories and 0.5g of fat), some jalapeno hot sauce, garlic, skinless chicken breast (120 calories, 1.5g of fat) and mixed in a small bag of microwavable brown rice (100 calories, 1g of fat). After cooking thoroughly in a pot I seasoned the mix with a little sea salt and black pepper and served the mixture with whole grain tortillas (100 calories, 3.5g of fat). This tasty and filling meal took only 10-15 minutes to prepare and the grand total comes to less than 500 calories and 7 grams of fat!

Bottom line, you don't need to sacrifice healthy eating for the convenience of fast food. All you need is a few healthy ingredients and a little creativity to craft nutritious meals that don't require much time or energy.