4 Pre-Workout Snacks to Help You Burn More Fat

FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Peo­ple who eat low-glycemic-index car­bo­hy­drates burn 55 per­cent more fat dur­ing exer­cise than those who eat high-GI foods. To blast fat faster, try one of these recipes.

Cherry-Almond-Yogurt Par­fait
Mix 1 cup non­fat plain yogurt with 1 tsp honey. Top with 1/2 cup bran cereal or whole-grain flakes cereal (like Nature’s Path Her­itage Flakes), 1/2 cup cher­ries, 1 tbsp sliced almonds and a splash of skim milk.

Broc­coli and Cheese Break­fast Bur­rito
Fill a 6-inch whole-wheat tor­tilla with 1 egg and 2 egg whites (scram­bled), 3 tbsp reduced-fat shred­ded cheese, 1/4 cup each chopped broc­coli and onion sautéed in 1 tsp olive oil, and 1/4 cup fresh salsa. Sea­son with salt and pepper.

Wheat Berry Muesli
Fill a bowl with 1/2 cup cooked wheat berries (use 1/4 cup uncooked to yield 1/2 cup cooked), 1/4 cup 1 per­cent milk, 1/3 cup chopped apples and 2 tbsp chopped wal­nuts. Sprin­kle with cin­na­mon to taste.

Fruity Cot­tage Cheese
Mix 1/2 cup low­fat cot­tage cheese with 1 tbsp sliced almonds and 1/2 cup fresh pear chunks. Not a fan of pears? Sub­sti­tute grapes, bananas, kiwifruit or peaches. (But not the syrupy-sweet canned vari­ety!) Sprin­kle with cin­na­mon to taste.

Recipe of the Week: Rainbows and Butterflies Pasta Salad

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 comes from Food Net­work. Dur­ing the month of Sep­tem­ber, Food Net­work is chal­leng­ing its read­ers to eat a home-packed lunch each day of the work­week with its Brown-Bag Chal­lenge. Pre­pare for the chal­lenge with this one-week menu of quick, tasty and nutri­tious lunches.

Brown-bag lunches have count­less health and eco­nom­i­cal ben­e­fits. By pack­ing your own lunch and snacks, you have con­trol over ingre­di­ents and por­tions, mak­ing it eas­ier to keep your diet in check. Brown-bagging it also saves money — restau­rant and fast-food lunches can run up to $15 per day; imag­ine sav­ing that money instead.

Ingre­di­ents

• 8 ounces bow tie pasta, prefer­ably whole grain
• 3 table­spoons plus 1 tea­spoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup corn ker­nels, thawed if frozen
• 1 cup shelled edamame, thawed if frozen
• 1 medium red bell pep­per, diced
• 2 medium car­rots, shred­ded (about 1/2 cup)
• 1/3 cup grated parme­san cheese (about 1 ounce)
• Salt

Direc­tions

1. Cook the pasta as the label directs. Drain and toss with 1 tea­spoon olive oil to pre­vent stick­ing; let cool.
2. In a large bowl, toss the cooled pasta with the corn, edamame, bell pep­per and car­rots. Driz­zle with the remain­ing 3 table­spoons olive oil and toss to coat. Add the parme­san and 1/4 tea­spoon salt; toss again and sea­son to taste.

Recipes of the Week: Prison Diet Recipes

Nearly every Fri­day, we post healthy recipes for you to try. I know that you all have your own favorite healthy recipes that you could share with the group. Please send them to lauren@​bc4​c.​com so that I can post them here instead of a re-post of prison recipes!

BY TRACY
with help from Miss Abby Smith

We hear it all the time: the excuses of “I am too busy to go to the gro­cery store” or “There was noth­ing in the house to eat.”

These excuses are no longer jus­ti­fi­able because I am pro­vid­ing below some recipes from prison that you can make with any­thing lying around the house. Even if the food has passed the expi­ra­tion date, it will prob­a­bly taste the same, so go ahead and try it.

THE JAIL BREAK

• 1 pack­age Beef OR Chicken Fla­vor Ramen noodles
• 1 bag of chips: Dori­tos or Cheetos
• 1 Slim-Jim (beef jerky)
• hot sauce — to taste

1. Boil Ramen in water (with­out sea­son­ing pack) until ten­der; drain.
2. Crunch up bag of chips, then open bag.
3. Pour cooked Ramen, sea­son­ing packet, Slim Jim pieces, and hot sauce into bag.
4. Hold­ing bag closed, shake and mix up contents.
5. Rap bag up like a bur­rito and let sit for 20 mins.
6. Tear bag open along seams and eat from the bag.

CELL BLOCK BURRITOS

• 10 pkg ramen noodles
• 30 tor­tilla shells
• 2 beef salami (8oz)
• 1 cheese spread (4oz) 1/2 cup diced onions
• 2 pinches of garlic
• 1 jar of peppers
• 1 bag of cheetos
• 1 jar of picante

1. Boil ramen noo­dles , drain water.
2. Dice salami, onions and peppers.
3. Crush up chee­tos really fine.
4. Mix veg­gies, salami, chee­tos and cheese with noo­dles in bowl (it should become thick almost like a paste).
5. Dish out to oth­ers in small bowls, should serve 10 of your fel­low inmates.

TAMALES

• 5 oz chili fritos
• 6 oz dori­tos or cheetos
• 2 pkg ramen
• 2 cups instant rice
• 1 cup dehy­drated beans
• 2 cups sum­mer sausage, chopped to mar­ble size pieces
• Optional: grated cheese, sour cream, salsa
• 8–12 plas­tic sand­wich bags
• 8–12 sheets newspaper

1. Put fritos and dori­tos in plas­tic freezer bags and pound until it all looks like grainy corn meal.
2. Pound dry ramen noo­dles until quite small.
3. Add fritos and dori­tos, ramen, ramen packet dry rice and dehy­drated beans, mix together then add chopped sausage.
4. Heat cup of water to boil­ing, let sim­mer on stove.
5. Put 1 1/4 dry mix­ture in each sand­wich bag.
6. Add 3/4 cup of water to each bag.
7. Close top and knead mix­ture so water is absorbed, after absorbed form the bag into the form of log or tamale.
8. Wrap the bag with news­pa­per so it is easy to handle.
9. Let it sit for 5 min so rice and ramen will cook.

Editor’s note: The recipes above are not rec­om­mended as part of the boot camp diet, but you will get a free pass for try­ing it if you bring photo doc­u­men­ta­tion of your adven­ture. I bet Yomi would be the last to try any of the above.

From the ‘The Con­vict Cookbook’

Recipe of the Week: Blackened Tilapia Baja Tacos

BY KATHLEEN

In your quest toward healthy eat­ing, you may find your­self stuck in a rut, eat­ing the same 10 things that you know are “healthy” over and over again.

As you know, 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.

Cook­ing Light always has tons of great, nutri­tious, and tasty recipes. I found this recipe in this month’s issue.

Ingre­di­ents:

• ¼ cup reduced-fat sour cream
• 2 tbs. chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tbs. fresh lime juice
• 1 jalapeno pep­per, seeded and chopped
• 1 cup thinly sliced white onion
• 1 ½ tsp. paprika
• 1 ½ tsp. brown sugar
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• ¾ tsp. gar­lic pow­der (not gar­lic salt)
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ tsp. ground cumin
• ¼ tsp. ground red pepper
• 4 (6 oz. tilapia fillets)
• 1 tbs. canola oil
• 8 (6-inch) corn tortillas
• ½ ripe avo­cado, thinly sliced
• 4 lime wedges

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Com­bine the first 4 ingre­di­ents in a food proces­sor, until smooth. Com­bine with the onion in a small bowl.
2. Com­bine paprika and the next 6 ingre­di­ents (through the ground pep­per) and sprin­kle over the fish.
3. Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skil­let over medium heat. Add fish to the pan and cook 3 min­utes on each side.
4. Warm tor­tillas accord­ing to pack­age directions.
5. Divide fish, onion mix­ture, and avo­cado evenly among the tortillas.
6. Enjoy!

Yield: 4 serv­ings. Calo­ries: 362; fat: 13 g.; pro­tein: 37 g.; carb: 27 g.; fiber: 4.9; sodium: 388 mg.

IMAGE CREDIT: Cook­ing Light

Recipe of the Week: Google

Look­ing for healthy recipes? Just Google it.

Search by recipe name, ingre­di­ent, or even hol­i­day, then just click “Recipes” in the left-hand nav panel on the search results page. You can even fil­ter your results by cook time and calories!

Enjoy and let us know what you find!

Please share your healthy recipes with BC4C. Email your recipes to Lau­ren to be fea­tured on this blog in our Recipe of the Week series.