The Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

Since becoming a clean eater nearly a year ago, hard-boiled eggs have become a staple snack.  Since beginning my dairy-free experiment in an attempt to reduce headaches, they have become almost a required part of my diet.  They are great on their own, with sprinkles of sea salt and black pepper, or with the yolks replaced with a dollop of your preferred hummus.  Eggs are a great source of protein, and the whites have very few calories.

As fabulous as boiled eggs are, they are not without their frustrations.  My aggravation with them comes mostly when it is time to peel them.  There are few things worse than having the majority of a much-anticipated yummy snack stick to its own shell and wind up in the garbage.

I’ve tried lots of ways to make eggs easier to peel: vinegar and/or baking soda added to the cooking water; microwaving for a few seconds before peeling; making sure to use older eggs.  Nothing seems to work CONSISTENTLY well; in the same batch of cooked eggs, some may peel flawlessly, while others look like I peeled them with a cheese grater.

But FINALLY… I have found a method that seems to work about 98% of the time.  I got this method from Serious Eats, but here is my version, in an eggshell (ha!).

11.        Taking into consideration the number of eggs you want to boil, fill a sauce pan ¾ of the way with water.  Heat on the stove top until water reaches a rolling boil.

22.       CAREFULLY, using a spoon, lower the eggs one at a time into the pot of boiling water.  Make sure not to drop them in, or you will have cracked and/or broken eggs!  I’ve had several boiled eggs that were cooked OUTSIDE of the shell!  No good!

33.       Let the eggs boil for 30 seconds, then lower the heat to a simmer, cover the pot, and set a timer for 11 minutes.

44.       After the timer goes off, drain the hot water from the pot, fill the pot with ice and cold water and give your eggs an ice bath for 15 minutes.

Yep, see:  That one floating at the top?  I didn't lower it into the pan gently enough, and I broke it.

55.       I have had the best luck with easy peeling by putting the eggs in the fridge over night after their bath.

And this is what you get:  creamy yolk, tender white, easy-to-peel eggs!

The shell comes off in nearly one piece!

EAT YOUR EGGS, WALTER LEE!

(Probably only high school language arts teachers will get that).

BE FIERCE!

Keeping Clean Eating Simple

The idea of changing your current diet to a CLEAN diet can be daunting.  What will you eat?  What will you feed your family? How do you cook “clean”?  What can you have, and what shouldn’t you?  Is it complicated?  Do you have to buy weird or expensive food?  Sometimes the questions that fly around clean eating can prevent people from taking the plunge.  I would like to put some of those doubts and questions to rest!  You can absolutely eat clean IN A SIMPLE WAY.  Your family doesn’t have to hate you, and you shouldn’t have to make two separate meals.  Here, I give you my top tips that I share with my challengers in order to make the shift to clean eating SIMPLY.

11.        Quarter your plate.  In terms of meals, one of the simplest ways is to quarter you plate, and then fill each section with clean, lean food.  One quarter should be lean protein, like, chicken, fish, lean beef, or pork; another quarter can be from a starchy carb (we frequently have brown rice, baked sweet potatoes, or roasted fingerling potatoes at my house).  The other half should be vegetables, and it should always include something GREEN.  For example, dinner might be a grilled pork chop, baked sweet potato, and frozen veggies.

22.    One-cup servings.  For things that are harder to measure because they are an amalgamation of items, such as soups, stews, and casseroles, a good rule of thumb when it comes to a portion size is to keep it to one cup.  That should help to keep you from going overboard.  If it doesn’t seem like it is enough food, add some vegetables or a salad (which you should probably be doing anyway to meet your carbohydrate from veggies requirement).

33.  Minimize preparation.  Some people prep all meals and snacks on Sundays.  Personally, I don’t have time for that.  For me, Sundays should be for reading, naps, and catching up on the DVR, not three hours of elaborate meal preparation.  I am a firm believer in prepping, and I have found that simply prepping my three snacks a day for the week saves me a ton of time on a daily basis, and if done correctly, can be done in 20-30 minutes.  Keep snacks simple!  Foods that can be easily counted out and divvied up into baggies, like nuts, seeds, or berries work well and don’t take long.  Other items that can be grabbed as a whole and thrown in a lunch bag are also ideal (whole fruits like apples, bananas, and oranges, or a single-serving container of plain Greek yogurt, a piece of string cheese, or a boiled egg).  I try to keep the number of items I have to cut or chop to one; same goes for anything I need to spoon into containers like hummus or cottage cheese.

44.    Reinvent the wheel.  When it comes to meals, you don’t have to develop a brand new arsenal of complicated recipes that you are not sure your family will eat.  Take what you typically have for dinner in a week, and figure out how you can clean it up and make it healthier, and then be conscious of your portion sizes.  Turkey tacos, turkey meatloaf muffins, chicken fajitas, soups and stews, all go over well.  Pinterest is a great source for recipes.  Just pick your poison and search “clean (fill in the blank)”.  You’ll get approximately a million options.

55.      Intentional Leftovers.  Let’s face it:  at the beginning meal planning can be overwhelming!  I notice my challengers are always stuck on trying to choose something different every day for every meal and snack.  One of the ways I combat this is to make intentional leftovers at dinner.  So for example, last night, my husband made turkey burgers.  There are two of us, and we eat a burger a piece, but when he made dinner, he made four burgers.  When I made my plate, I also packed up lunch for the next day.  Lunch for tomorrow is DONE.  All I have to do is throw it in my lunch bag on my way out the door in the morning.  I do that every night.  It saves a ton of time, makes meal planning simpler, and even saves money because I don’t have to come up with a unique lunch every day.  And no extra prep on Sunday J.

66.     Simple additions and substitutions.  What I have noticed with myself and my challengers is trying to make a shift to a healthier lifestyle when your family might not exactly be on board can be tough.  For example, my husband doesn’t eat very many vegetables – at all.  And by at all, I mean his veggie choices are limited to green beans, carrots, and corn, and maybe some lettuce if it is smothered in cheese, bacon, croutons, and lots and lots of ranch dressing.  So I know that when it comes to veggies, I’m pretty much on my own.  Frozen veggies (without sauce or seasoning) are a lifesaver here.  I like the kind that steams in the bag in the microwave, and I will add some Mrs. Dash seasoning to flavor them up.  The hubs just passes on them, for the most part.  Frequently, I have a side salad with grape tomatoes and sliced cucumbers and a little oil and vinegar, and he can have his cheese and dressing bomb.  It is just as easy to throw a white potato in the microwave with my sweet potato, so that we can both have the “baked” starchy carb that we prefer.

Some changes can be much simpler:  whole wheat for white flour bread; whole wheat or corn instead of white flour tortillas; whole wheat spaghetti noodles; brown rice instead of white.  Ground turkey is a natural replacement for ground beef, and if it is seasoned well, your family may not even be able to tell that they are eating something different.

77.        Experiment gradually.  For simplicity’s sake, PLEASE do not pick a week’s worth of new recipes to try all at once.  First, it is so much work!  You need meals that are familiar and uncomplicated, not meals that require seventeen steps and reading a recipe.  That said, I DO encourage you to try ONE new recipe a week.  I LIKE to cook, so I usually choose to try out a new recipe on a Sunday, when I know I will have time to do it justice.  I have found some great go-to weeknight meals to work into our dinner repertoire this way! 

88.    Be progressive.  Consider that clean eating is a spectrum.  Depending upon who you ask, there are different definitions.  There is A LOT of gray area.  But if you are just starting out, and I tell you that you have to make all of your salad dressing from scratch, you can only eat Ezekiel bread, and you have to give up dairy, that is going to be intimidating and overwhelming for you and you are going to give up before you even get started.  Begin simply; plan your meals, avoid fast food, and read the labels on EVERYTHING.  If there are ingredients you can’t pronounce, either look them up to see what they are or don’t eat it.  Eat food that looks as close to its natural source as possible.  After a while, you may feel comfortable with that and decide that as your experiment that week, you WANT to try Ezekiel bread or go dairy-free.  Or maybe not, ever.  I always consider:  am I making progress?  Am I doing better than I was doing last year or last month?

99.       Plan around the sale ads.  So how do you choose what to eat when you are making your meal plan?  Do what I do – plan around the sale ads!  I frequently shop at Aldi, so I will pull up the sale flier on my computer when I am making a meal plan for the week.  I typically look at two things: what kind of meat and what kind of produce is on sale.  I’ll plan dinners (and intentional leftovers for lunch) around the meat on sale and the recipes I know my husband and I can make on a weeknight in 20-30 minutes.  I plan most of my snacks based on the produce on sale.  This helps me not only get ideas for what to plan, but it helps me to save money on the grocery bill, as well.

110.   Have ONE meal per day that you don’t have to think about.  I’m not going to lie; this all takes effort and work, but it does get easier over time.  That’s why I recommend that you have one “duh” meal per day that you don’t have to think about.  For me, that meal is Shakeology.  With my crazy busy life, teaching over 100 teenagers every day, dogs, working out, taking care of my family, etc I need something that I can depend on every single day. Shakeology takes 60 seconds to make and has all the dense nutrition of several servings of salad all in 150 calorie glass. Hello, flat belly foods ;) The energy it provides me is insane and so important since I struggle I have so much on my plate! Trust me - you’re going to LOVE this. And just in case you don’t (but you will!) there’s a 30 day “bottom of the bag” guarantee, so you get to try for yourself and see.

If you would be interested in learning more about clean eating or joining a challenge group, fill out the application!  I promise I will work with you until we can find something that works for you.

In the meantime…

BE FIERCE!

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Ten Reasons I LOVE Being a COACH

This past weekend, I left the bitter, hateful cold of St. Louis for the bitter, hateful cold of Pittsburgh, PA.  Myself and two other St. Louis Dream Team coaches hopped on a plane (okay, two planes; layover and all) to help our team roll out the red carpet for Super Friday, Beachbody CEO Carl Daikeler, and celebrity 21 Day Fix Trainer Autumn Calabrese.

The experience was amazing.  This was my first “BIG” Beachbody event, and I didn’t really know what to expect.  Would I know anyone other than the two ladies I was traveling with (and even then, I had only met one of them ONE TIME at a St. Louis Super Saturday event)?  Would I feel like an oddball?  How would the other coaches, some considered Beachbody royalty, treat me?  What if I was a billion miles away and miserable?

I should never have worried.  This trip made my passion for this business burn even brighter and hotter.  It confirmed for me that I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing, with exactly the people I should be doing it with.  Here is my list of reasons:

1. Beachbody Coaches are REAL people.  I guess I didn’t really know what to expect; on Facebook and the rest of the Internet, they all look so polished.  What could I possibly have in common with such perfect people?  Certainly none of them crave McDonald’s, drink too much coffee, or curse like sailors – right?  The answer is EVERYTHING.  So many of them are Type-A perfectionists just like me!  And they aren’t perfect; sometimes they want a big fat juicy burger, and many of them told me that they were on VACATION that weekend, and that meant indulging in delicious food and beverages.  Yes, there were tons of amazing female biceps there, but I saw people push themselves to failure during Autumn’s workout; I know I certainly could not do ONE MORE push-up.
2. I already knew most of the people there – and they treated me like we had been friends for years!  Let me just tell you how WEIRD it is to meet people in person for the first time that you have only seen on the Internet before.  Sure, I’d talked with them in trainings, Google Hangouts, and Zoom calls, but they just looked so… REAL!  I cannot even adequately explain it; I was somewhat star-struck.  I felt like I was surrounded by coaches I had admired for so long.  Not only did I recognize them, THEY recognized ME.  It was then that I knew that I REALLY was part of the team.
   
3. The mission of the company is TRULY, HONESTLY, to help people lead healthy and fulfilling lives.  Yes, coaches make money.  Beachbody coaching IS NOT a get-rich-quick scheme.  You put in a lot of hard work before it starts to pay off (and I have learned that with consistency it DOES pay off).  So you have to be willing to help people.  I’ve heard Carl Daikeler say it.  I’ve heard all of the top coaches say it.  If you focus on HELPING people in your business, the rest will come.  Imagine being surrounded by SO MANY people who genuinely want to help others.  It gives me a lot of faith in humanity.
4. The CEO is awesome.  Carl Daikeler?!  Why is he awesome?  Aside from being personable and likable; aside from exuding passion and excitement for what he does; aside from treating coaches like family; aside from creating world-class products that WORK; aside from creating an awesome and rewarding opportunity for people who help others – he just has a wicked sense of humor.
   
5. Working out with celebrity trainers.  So, Beachbody coaches work out at home.  Usually alone.  I don’t really like workout buddies; it ties me to someone else’s schedule, and I just do better on my own.  But once in a while, it’s good to work out with other people who like to do the kind of workouts you like to do.  And when that person just so HAPPENS to be the real-live person you work out with to the TV in your living room, well, that’s just COOL.
6. Happy, positive people.  You know what I noticed this last weekend?  A serious lack of complaining, trash-talking, cattiness, snarkiness, jealousy and back-stabbing.  Why?  Because people who love themselves enough to take care of themselves – and others – the way coaches do DO NOT feel threatened by other people.  They do not need to tear others down to feel better about themselves.  They know that the best way to make themselves feel better is to HELP people and to build them up.  And that, my friends, is the real SECRET SAUCE.
   
7. MY coach is incredible.  Somehow, someway, I ended up with literally THE BEST coach in the business.  She was named the #1 coach in all of Beachbody for 2014.  That makes her team, the Dream Team, the number one team in Beachbody.  Melanie Mitro contributes her success to her team, because Beachbody coaching is a team sport.  Melanie knows what good leaders know – that it is her job to remove the obstacles for her coaches so that they can be successful.  She had done so much for me, from one-on-one calls and mentoring to creating amazing training to help me push my business forward.
8. Training from top leaders on the team.  This weekend, Melanie set up some Dream Team training for us.  It was a three hour session on Saturday morning.  I have a bladder the size of a walnut, and I had two cups of coffee, a Shakeology, and a whole lot of water.  I had to pee REALLY badly for the last hour, but all of the information and speakers were SO GOOD that I didn’t want to miss a single second of it!  I left that session with copious notes and my mind reeling for ways to help people better.
   
9. Getting dressed up for events.  Pretty much after you become and adult, the last truly fancy outfit you wear is your wedding dress.  Sometimes it is fun to get all dressed up like you are going to the Oscars!  Now I have a reason.
10. Meeting people just like me!  For the longest time, I felt like such a weirdo.  I didn’t know many people who liked to work out and eat healthy.  I didn’t know many people who wanted MORE out of life than just to “get by.”  I didn’t know many people who wanted to keep growing and learning, or people who wanted to attract positive things to their lives.  This weekend, I met hundreds of them.  I realized that there is nothing unusual about those things; I just hadn’t found my people yet.  I’m so excited for what the future holds!
    

If you would like to learn more about being a coach on my team, fill out the application below, and we can chat!  Maybe YOU will find your place, too.

STAY FIERCE!