Banana Almond Butter Muffins

Because I love food.

I’m not big on peanut butter, so I’ve found almond butter to be a good alternative. This recipe has been adapted from a recipe posted by Bunsinmyoven. I don’t use the blueberries as the original recipe does. They didn’t compliment the muffins very well when I made them with the blueberries, but that’s my opinion.

Not very pretty, but this was my first ever attempt at making these.

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe banana
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of no-stir almond butter (try to avoid the natural kind that separates)
• 1/4 cup of rolled oats (sometimes I put a little more if the batter looks too runny)
• 1/4 cup of maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

Directions:

Add all ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth and creamy. I use a regular size greased or sprayed muffin pan. The recipe won’t make a full dozen, maybe 7-8 muffins, so I usually double it.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.   (I usually do 8-10 and them check them because my oven is stupid)

The muffins will puff up pretty nicely, then fall after taken out of the oven. They may not look very pretty, but they’re delicious! They’re pretty dense too.

 

It’s Been a While

It really has. I haven’t been on here as much and I haven’t been going to the gym like I’ve wanted. I hurt my back about 2 months ago. I believe it’s a herniated disc. Normally, when I fall off the “workout wagon” I get pretty down and discouraged. Luckily, that hasn’t been the case. I have been SO focused on my finance blog and other *new* blog that I am giving my back the necessary time to heal without me feeling like a big fat blob. Though I have tried to stay mildly active, doing this thing called WALKING whenever I’m too paranoid to workout due to my back or know that I just really need to get up and move.

My back injury has definitely brought to light everything I have read about when it comes to the negative effects of sitting. I felt them first hand. Sitting for too long was just uncomfortable. Then that made me think about when I’m healthy…it’s the same. Just because my back isn’t hurting to tell me “sitting is bad”, it’s still bad.

Which is more reason to get out of my current office job and start my own business, or freelance 😀 It’s coming. I haven’t lost hope.

Stay motivated and move towards your goal.

Why You Should Do a Triathlon

No seriously, don’t laugh. I’m not talking about doing an Ironman or anything like that. Sprint triathlons are quite doable. Some of them are even aimed at beginner triathletes. There are also training and support groups aimed and beginners. If you’re intimidated, but even mildly interested, I would encourage you to find a training group in your area. These groups can be incredibly supportive and provide good information.

Doing a triathlon should be on your bucket list. It’s empowering to complete one.

Triathlons have different names according to their length. Sprint is typically the shortest one, but the course length can still vary by event. You can search for triathlons on such sites as Active.com and Trifind.com

Heck, if you have questions, I’ll even give some input if you like, but don’t count yourself out!

My Struggle with Sleep

It went on for months. I had the hardest time sleeping well. After a while I got to the point where I realized something is wrong. I couldn’t accept daily life like this. I was exhausted.

I started thinking…something had to have changed. What could I have possibly changed? I mean I can drink Diet Mtn Dew and go right to bed. I scoured through my daily routine in my head. Nothing major. But, I had started taking those delicious little gummy multi-vitamins. In an attempt to drink more water I had also bought some cherry water flavoring stuff. Dye. That had to be it! Both the gummy vitamins and the water flavoring contained Red 40. I used the water flavoring both during the day and when I got home from work. The vitamins, I would take one in the morning and one at night. After some research, I couldn’t find anything serious, but I did find a common complaint of it possibly being linked to ADHD in children. I stopped using both items.

And sleep came again.

Such a relief. I now make sure if I buy any sort of red water flavoring to only drink it during the day and limit myself. Vitamins (which I shouldn’t need unless I’m not eating right anyway) I only take in the morning, or skip all together.

Be aware of what you put into your body and any changes that may be caused by it. You’d be surprised of the ingredients that are legal here in the US, but banned in other countries.

How I Stopped Hating My Body (Part 1)

I want to share with you how Paleo (and Crossfit) has positively impacted my life, even though I don’t follow the Paleo diet…

I was kind of a Paleo downer when I first heard of it. Anything that gets so many hardcore fans that like to tell you “I do Paleo”, just kind of gets on my nerves. However, I started reading into it. By reading into it, I mean I mostly checked out various Paleo recipe blogs and read what these people had to say. A lot of them claimed that it didn’t irritate various digestive issues that they had or lessened symptoms of certain things they had been diagnosed with. Ok, well that’s cool, but there’s not really anything wrong with me. (I’m sure there are tons of people out there that think that because they don’t even realize what “normal” feels like.) That aside, reading the recipes, they all contained fresh and organic ingredients. While I can’t afford to eat all organic, eating whole fresh foods I can do. Paleo recipes really harp on fresh, whole ingredients, not stuff out of cans or boxes. I certainly didn’t grow up on Hamburger Helper, but since living on my own I was tired of fixing the same old stuff (pasta, tomato soup from a can, and baked potato with sauteed veggies were my go-to easy meals). These recipes showed me how to use some vegetables differently and how to incorporate some new vegetables.

It gets better. I no longer calorie count.

I grew up during the era of “low fat” eating. This meant checking every package you picked up in the store to see how fattening it was and for me it meant checking the calories too. I obsessed over this and my weight for years. Always checking the scale. It was an unhealthy obsession that I am glad to be rid of. Another thing that helped this process was when I had my good cholesterol checked. My work offered to have our cholesterol checked, so I figured sure, even though I was the healthiest one in the room. To my surprise, I was told that my good cholesterol was low. Then the nurse read off things that could help me raise it. Yeah, things I didn’t really care for like nuts, fish, and avocado. I’ve now made a point to re-explore some of these foods as an adult. This helped break the barrier of “healthy fats” for me. Eating some almond butter will not kill me. Using some coconut oil to cook something will not kill me. Slowly realizing that it was ok to eat fat, and I was not gaining weight, I was finally able to let go of my obsession and stop checking the scale.

I would be lying if I said Crossfit didn’t have a lot to do with it. The types of workouts we do have allowed me to build muscle and keep my metabolism going to the point where I don’t have to over analyze and scrutinize everything that I eat. I can look at my body and see differences.

I don’t need to measure my progress in how much fat or calories I didn’t eat, or what the scale shows.

Paleo has opened my eyes to how I should be eating. It seems to work great for some people. I’ve read article after article about how after switching to this type of eating that ______ symptom is now gone. My body seems to tolerate most things pretty well, including wheat or gluten. Me being the carb fan I am, I still eat bread. In fact, I love bread, in almost all forms…pasta, pizza, waffles, cereal etc. But this type of thinking has led me to try to weed out a little bit of my unnecessary bread consumption. I used to take a Lean Cuisine or some form of microwave macaroni and cheese to work for lunch. That was on top of two bread laden snacks I took. I always crashed in the afternoon. My lunch is no longer carb focused and I no longer consistently get the afternoon crash.