Category: healthy food

Pita Pizza- Low Carb and Low Fat

On By LarissaNapolitanIn healthy food, lunch, pita pizzaLeave a comment

This is one of my favorite go to lunches because it is low calorie and is so easy and simple. And for someone who cooks for one, this is a great lunch or dinner!

What you need:

I Low Carb Pita (This kind of pita has 16 g of Carbs and lots of fiber. I can find it in my local Hyvee)- 130 Calories
2 Tablespoons of tomato sauce- 10 Calories
Garlic, Basil, and Oregano seasonings
Spinach leaves- 4 Calories
2-3 ounces of Grilled or cooked chicken chopped up- 60 Calories
Veggies (In this case I use cherry tomatoes, and red pepper)- 40 Calories
1.5 ouncesLow-Moisture Skim Mozzarella – 119 Calories

Approximate Calorie Count: 363 Calories

How you put it together:
1. Set the oven to 425 degrees, so that after you put everything together you can just stick it right in the oven.
2. Cut the pita in half—and by this I mean slice around the edges to peel the pita into two thinner circles…(does that make sense?) I wish I would have taken pictures of this….it’s hard to explain.
3. Lay the out side of the pita down on the baking sheet. Cover each side in 1 Tbsp of tomato sauce, then sprinkle garlic powder, oregano, and basil over the tomato sauce.
4. Layer the spinach leaves on top of the tomato sauce….it can be a few leaves or if you want more green you can put a ton. (I like a lot of spinach, it doesn’t taste as bad on a pizza.) Add chicken and veggies to each half. The cover each half in cheese. ( You can use more cheese if you want, but in order for it to be somewhat low cal, I have to cut back on the cheese.)
5. Bake for 12-13 minutes.
6. Enjoy all on your own or share and add something else to your meal!
What kind of things do you like to put on your pizza?

Chocolate Banana Cupcakes–LOW FAT!

On By LarissaNapolitanIn chocolate, cravings, cupcakes, healthy food, substitutionsLeave a comment

Yesterday, I was seriously craving chocolate and I didn’t have a BBQ to mooch of other people’s efforts! So I decided to make something to enjoy myself.

I did have a hamburger on our nations B-Day (ya know….just to be patriotic and such), so I wanted to make sure I made something that was low in fat and bad stuff. (I don’t think sugar is terrible for you. 🙂 )

Did you know that lots of other things can be substituted for eggs in baked goods! Yeah, I know…CRAZY! You just need eggs or something there to make all the ingredients stick together. SO I sort of invented a recipe based off information that I got from google! (Gotta love google)
To make it easier, I just used a box mix, but I am looking forward to finding recipes that use more whole wheat flours and oats and such. I will post a picture of the cupcakes later! I didn’t decorate them or anything, but I didn’t really need to….it was just me eating them!

ChocoBanana Low-Fat Cupcakes

1 Cake Mix- (I like Betty Crockers Devil’s Food, but you can use anyone that you want…you could even find a sugar free one if you are feeling guilty about making them anyways.)

1/2 cup of Mushed Bananas per egg (Again depends on the recipe, but this one required 3, so I mushed up a 1.5 cups of bananas…luckily I had some that were going bad sitting around.)

1/4 tsp of Baking Powder per egg (this helps it not be so dense apparently…so says google)

1 cup of water (the box recipe required 1.5 cups but I added 1 cup and mixed and it looking runny enough.)

Once you get it all in the bowl, mix it with a mixer or hand mixer for 2 minutes. (I don’t have a Kitchen Aid mixer yet…so I just used a hand mixer.) Mixing it helps add a little air to the dough so that it will be flufflier.

This mix makes 24 cupcakes, but you could make a cake instead.

Anyways, I use this nifty website called Recipe Calculator that helps me calculate the total calories per serving, after entering the ingredients I get this:
Per Cucpake: 98 Calories and 2 grams of fat!

Needless to say fulfilling my chocolate fix will not be followed by a guilt trip!

What are you guilt free tasty recipes?

Munchie Mondays

On By LarissaNapolitanIn challenge, change, healthy food, losing weight, snacks1 Comment

This weekend, I struggled with the munchies. I don’t know about you, but when I am bored I tend to eat. I wish that I could say that I have lots of self-control, but I don’t. So my trainer and I worked through my food journal, and talked about what good things I could munch on.

(If you don’t have a food journal or some way to record what you eat, you should. There are tons online for free, I use one through my gym, but I am sure google could help with that.)

Angie, my wonderful trainer and I talked about my snacks, and we came to the conclusion that I wasn’t eating bad things but I need to make some small adjustments. Most of the time it is just making small adjustments to what you are doing that make the biggest difference. So, I thought I would share some of my snack ideas.

My morning snack:
Protein powder mixed with 8 oz of skim milk
Apple

Afternoon snack:
16 Quaker Quake Rice Snacks (My new discovery, very filling)
1/2 of Greek Yogurt (I get the Yoplait kind but there are other kinds that you might get cheaper.

Evening Snack:
Wheat thins
Laughing cow cheese

My new goal is to plan my meals out carefully and stick to them. However, as great as my goals sound, I have to remind myself why I make these goals and continue to make my up my mind that I want to change my thinking about snacking and food.

So what about you, what sort of small adjustments to you need to make to help you with whatever goal you are trying to make? What is going to help you be motivated to reach those goals?

Snacks

On By LarissaNapolitanIn healthy food, losing weight, snacks, vegetables1 Comment

Sometimes I just need that “crunch” to satisfy the munchies. So I have found a few snacks that do that but don’t cost me a lot of calories. I like to think about my calories as a budget for everyday and I have only so many to spend. It helps me think “is that worth what it is going to cost me.”

So here is a snack that I enjoy, especially in the summer!

Veggies & Hummus

Veggies are pretty much 0 calories so you can eat a lot of them and they fill you up!

Red Peppers- Tastes so great with hummus
Carrots- satisfies the crunch
Broccoli- lots of fiber
Cucumbers – lots of water, fills you up
(Or any fresh veggies that you enjoy)

I usually buy a roasted garlic hummus. 2 Tablespoons of it is about 70 calories. Sabra brand is my favorite, but Athenos is pretty great too!

What are your favorite snacks that are low in calories but high in satisfaction?

Breakfast

On By LarissaNapolitanIn breakfast, healthy food, losing weight3 Comments

I love breakfast. It is just my favorite meal of the day. There are so many good things you can eat at breakfast. Sweet things, salty things, eggs, bacon, bread, fruit, and coffee.

So when it comes to losing weight and cutting back calories I had to find a way to still eat wonderful things for breakfast. I have made simple substitutions and found ways to still eat what I like. This is what I had this morning.

Yogurt and Granola: (You could call it a yogurt parfait but I didn’t put in a cup, I put in a bowl.)
4 oz of fat free vanilla yogurt – 70 calories
1/3 cup of Special K Granola – 80 calories
4 strawberries cut up – 25 calories

4 oz of Orange Juice- 65 Calories

Total Calories for Breakfast: 240 Calories

Other options that I have for Breakfast:
–Fried Egg and Mini Whole Wheat Bagel w/ Fat free cream cheese
–Low Carb Pita and Scramble Eggs-1 whole and 1 egg white w/ green peppers and onions
(I discovered that you can freeze peppers and onions chopped up. Revolutionized my meals!)
–Oatmeal w/ Blueberries

What do you eat for breakfast?