Recipe of the Week: Tropical Cucumber Salad

Vari­ety is the spice of life. So every Fri­day — or almost every Fri­day — we share a healthy recipe to help keep your menu excit­ing and nutri­tious. If you have a healthy recipe that you’d like to share with the group, we’d LOVE to fea­ture it on the blog, and give you credit! Email your healthy recipes to: lauren@​bc4​c.​com.

Today’s recipe is brought to you by Eat­ing Well and com­bines cucum­ber, avo­cado and mango with a salty-sweet dress­ing for a taste of the trop­ics — per­fect for a warm sum­mer evening!

INGREDIENTS

• 3–5 tea­spoons fish sauce, (see Shop­ping Tip below)
• 1 tea­spoon freshly grated lime zest, plus more for garnish
• 2 table­spoons lime juice
• 1 table­spoon canola oil
• 2 tea­spoons light brown sugar
• 1 tea­spoon rice vinegar
• 1/4 tea­spoon crushed red pepper
• 1 medium Eng­lish cucum­ber, cut into 3/4-inch dice
• 1 avo­cado, cut into 3/4-inch dice
• 1 mango, cut into 3/4-inch dice (see Kitchen Tip below)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

PREPARATION
Whisk fish sauce to taste, lime zest, lime juice, oil, brown sugar, vine­gar and crushed red pep­per in a large bowl until com­bined. Add cucum­ber, avo­cado, mango and cilantro; gen­tly toss to coat. Serve gar­nished with lime zest, if desired.

TIPS & NOTES
Make Ahead Tip: Cover and refrig­er­ate for up to 1 hour.

Shop­ping Tip: Fish sauce is a pun­gent South­east Asian condi­ment; find it in large super­mar­kets and Asian markets.

Kitchen Tip: To peel and cut a mango:

1. Slice both ends off the mango, reveal­ing the long, slen­der seed inside. Set the fruit upright on a work sur­face and remove the skin with a sharp knife.
2. With the seed per­pen­dic­u­lar to you, slice the fruit from both sides of the seed, yield­ing two large pieces.
3. Turn the seed par­al­lel to you and slice the two smaller pieces of fruit from each side.
4. Cut the fruit into the desired shape.

NUTRITION
Per serv­ing: 169 calo­ries; 11 g fat ( 1 g sat , 7 g mono ); 0 mg cho­les­terol; 18 g car­bo­hy­drates; 2 g added sug­ars; 3 g pro­tein; 5 g fiber; 178 mg sodium; 342 mg potassium.

Nutri­tion Bonus: Vit­a­min C (45% daily value), Vit­a­min A (15% dv).

Car­bo­hy­drate Serv­ings: 1

Exchanges: 1 veg­etable, 1/2 fruit, 2 fat

Recipe credit: Eat­ing Well

Protein: Your Muscle’s Building Blocks

This is a re-post from June 2010. Please enjoy the 22 com­ments from last June… and add your own com­ment today!

BY TRACY

You always hear us say that you need to eat pro­tein with every meal, but have you ever asked your­self why? If you are look­ing for a quick snack it seems that there are always car­bo­hy­drates lay­ing around or hang­ing in the snack machine, but how often can you find a piece of grilled chicken to nib­ble on?

The main rea­son you need pro­tein is because your mus­cles are made up of pro­tein, and to build, main­tain or repair them, you need to eat pro­tein. It is a good source of energy and is con­sid­ered one of the build­ing blocks of your body.

Another rea­son we ask you to eat pro­tein with every meal is because peo­ple who eat foods with high pro­tein feel full longer and expe­ri­ence fewer crav­ings. A daily intake of 1.5 grams of pro­tein per kilo­gram of body weight is con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient, and if you eat meat you are most likely get­ting more than enough pro­tein. If you fol­low a veg­e­tar­ian or vegan diet, you should pay close atten­tion to ensure you are con­sum­ing enough plant pro­tein (and the right kinds!) since most plant foods are lower in pro­tein than ani­mal prod­ucts are.

If you are look­ing for pro­tein in sources other than ani­mal prod­ucts (mean­ing meat) you can get a lit­tle extra pro­tein by eat­ing the following:

• Nuts
• Peanut But­ter
• Greek Yogurt
• Cot­tage Cheese
• Soy
• Legumes such as green lentils, chick­peas and gar­banzo beans
• Eggs

Remem­ber, you don’t need to eat an 8-oz steak every day, just remem­ber to eat a lit­tle bit of pro­tein with every meal or snack.

IMAGE CREDIT: Edupics​.com

Log and Blog!

Con­grat­u­la­tions! You’ve com­pleted Day 1 of June boot camp. Only 15 (or 24 depend­ing how you’re count­ing) days to go…

Make the most of this month by fol­low­ing two sim­ple rules:
Log and Blog!

Log: You’ve prob­a­bly heard it hun­dreds of times: write your goals down. But do you know why this step is so impor­tant? When you put pen to paper — or fin­gers to key­board — you turn your thoughts into some­thing tan­gi­ble. That’s why we strongly encour­age you to use your log books. It’s part of the boot camp pro­gram because it works. Use your log books daily to keep track of your nutri­tional and fit­ness goals and accom­plish­ments. You will quickly see how the act of writ­ing these things down helps keep you moti­vated. Now you can down­load and print just the pages you need (print page 11 to track your meals)…

Down­load and print log book (PDF)

Blog: Have you ever heard that work­ing out in a group is one of the best ways to stay moti­vated? It’s true! Hav­ing peo­ple there along­side you to share in your expe­ri­ence and encour­age you along the way is often­times the dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful exer­cise plan and one that tends to fiz­zle out over time. Share in your chal­lenges and your suc­cesses with your fel­low BC4Cers, and be sup­port­ive of their efforts as well by check­ing this blog after every workout.

You can also stay in touch with your fel­low BC4Cers via our Face­book page. Go ahead… go there and Like us today!

Read on to learn more about your log books…

We at BC4C would like you all to take a few moments and con­sider where and how you are get­ting the food you eat today.

• Do you plan to grab break­fast while hang­ing out your car window?
• Do you plan on grab­bing a hand­ful of M&M’s from your co-worker’s desk and call it a mid-morning snack?
• Do you plan to stand in line for lunch and order the fastest item that can be prepared?
• And do you plan to eat what ever is left on your child’s plate and con­sider your din­ner taken care of?

When we were in school we were forced to do a num­ber of sim­ple cal­cu­la­tions in order for us to add and sub­tract like sec­ond nature; the same prin­ci­pal applies for our nutri­tion journals.

We asked you to main­tain a jour­nal this month to keep track of how and what you eat — forc­ing you to refo­cus on your nutrition.

Log­ging your meals — though tedious like math — will help you devote some time and energy to plan out where and what you eat. We ask you to eat five meals a day — not three meals and two snacks — because each time you eat you should use it as an oppor­tu­nity to get in the nutri­ents you need. The five meals you eat should be the vehi­cles for you to obtain your 9 serv­ings of grains, 4 serv­ings of veg­eta­bles, 3 serv­ings of fruit, 2 serv­ings of dairy, and 5 serv­ings of pro­tein the USDA rec­om­mends we eat every day.

While using a nutri­tion jour­nal, we hope that when you walk out the door every morn­ing, you do so with a plan of how you will get the nutri­ents you need to stay active and healthy — which will even­tu­ally become sec­ond nature.

Remem­ber, print page 11 to track your meals…

Down­load and print log book (PDF)

Tell us how you’re doing on Day 1. Leave a com­ment by click­ing the “Com­ments” link at the top of this post.

Recipe of the Week: Brown Rice Breakfast

Celebrity Nat­ural Foods Chef Bethenny Frankel teaches you how to make her favorite quick and healthy breakfast.

Biscuit vs. Bagel vs. Donuts – The Big Debate

BY TRACY

We were dis­cussing Yomi’s log book the other day and were debat­ing the evils of the bis­cuit vs. the bagel. I said I would do some research inves­ti­gat­ing the health ben­e­fits of each so we could defin­i­tively answer the age old ques­tion — When given the choice, should you choose a bagel or a bis­cuit? Then, Leigh got involved in the dis­cus­sion and included a donut so I told him I would add that to the debate.

First, some facts.

I used the incom­pa­ra­ble and pre­mium break­fast resource, Dunkin’ Donuts, to do my com­par­i­son. The main rea­son is because they serve all three vari­eties of our Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, and also because they unabashedly post their nutri­tion infor­ma­tion on their web­site. The spec­i­mens were then cho­sen: the plain bagel, a plain bis­cuit, and a plain glazed donut.

The results:

So, which one is it? The bis­cuit? The bagel? The donut? All three at once?

The answer isn’t really clear cut. Bagels usu­ally come with cream cheese or but­ter, which obvi­ously adds to the calo­rie and fat con­tent. But putting that aside, if you are look­ing to add car­bo­hy­drates then go with the bagel, due to its lower sugar/carb ratio. If you are try­ing to count calo­ries and lose weight, go with the donut (but you can only have one). There are health­ier bagel and bis­cuit options out there, but in this debate there is only one clear choice — you should never go into Dunkin’ Donuts. And never ever eat the Sausage, Supreme Omelet and Cheese on Bagel break­fast sand­wich (730 calories!).

But seri­ously, if you are faced with a road trip where Dunkin’ Donuts is the only food source in 200 miles, then you should go in and have an Eng­lish Muf­fin. They are only 160 calo­ries, 2 g of fat, 31 g of car­bo­hy­drates and 5 g of pro­tein. Even bet­ter yet, get the Ham, Egg, and Cheese on Eng­lish Muf­fin sand­wich and up your pro­tein content.