Sweet Potato Protein Cupcakes

So I have a little something to celebrate. I just accepted a new job. I'm super excited to be taking my career to the next step.  Unfortunately, 4 weeks out from my debut show isn't the greatest time to have a celebratory meal or treat.  Fear Not!  Here's a healthy treat that tastes so naughty but is actually packed with protein and good complex carbs!

I adapted this recipe from one I found at www.proteinpow.com  I usually don't have everything on hand or the exact ingredients but I've been pretty successful at getting some amazing recipes from there.  It's a go-to site when I need a protein packed recipe.

These really hit the spot!  I didn't even feel like I was eating something healthy.. it was totally delicious and tasted like a naughty treat, but without the guilt.  I actually got to eat 2 and will have the other 2 tomorrow.. I can't wait!

So let's get to the recipe, then we can get to a couple more pictures!

Ingredients for cake:
212 g Sweet potato (cooked and peeled) this is about 7.5 oz
1/3 cup whey protein (this is about 1 scoop)
1/3 cup egg whites
1 Tablespoon coconut flour

Ingredients for frosting:
1/2 cup greek yogurt
1 scoop protein powder (I used core fit cinnamon bun you can get it at www.livecorefit.com save 20% with the coupon code JenniBean )
2 Tablespoons coconut flour
1/4 cup almond milk (add this 1-2 tablespoons at a time as needed until the desired consistency is reached)

Directions for Cake:
Preheat your oven to 325 F.
Mix all the cake ingredients together into a thick batter
Scoop into a pre-sprayed cupcake pan  (recipe makes 4 cupcakes)
Bake about 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean

Allow the cupcakes to cool before frosting.  I kept mine in the refrigerator overnight.

Directions for Icing:
Mix the first three ingredients together, slowly add almond milk until the desired consistency in reached.  Put the icing into a ziplock back and cut a corner and pipe on to the cooled cupcakes.

I garnished with a dusting of cinnamon.

Macros for 1 cake (out of 4)
Calories:  173
Fat: 2g
Carbs: 19g
Fiber: 4g
Sugar: 6g
Protein: 19g

They are also kid approved. Note the tiny toddler finger photobomb 

4 weeks to go!

It's been several weeks since I did a show update.  I've been working away.  We made diet changes doing a Keto/traditional split cycle.. almost like extreme carb cycling, 2 weeks low following by 2 weeks moderate/high.  I just finished the first week of moderate/high carbs. I missed my carbs.  I'm avoiding breads/pastas, sticking with oats, sweet potato, corn, and green things (green beans, celery, cucumbers etc)

The hardest part by far is getting enough sleep.  I didn't realize how important sleep was and it's SO SO hard for me to get everything done and still get 8 hours. As I type this I have about 30 minutes to get to sleep to get 8 and I don't have my food planned out for tomorrow at all!  I pride myself on being pretty organized and getting everything done. This process will test you mentally, physically and emotionally.  It's stressful.  There are a LOT of things to do. I have a busy life already and this adds a lot to it.  I really enjoy pushing myself in the gym.  I think the most difficult part for me is really planning all the food. Planning it all and prepping all my meals, it's time consuming. It's absolutely worth it, but I think I need to have a little less variety.  Some is nice but too much is just more work.

Continued.. When I typed the above it was almost a week ago. Juggling contest prep and family is no easy task. I'm sure I will get the hang of it with each additional show but for now it's pretty tough. This takes a lot of commitment. I will say though, going through this process has proved to me that you CAN do anything you set your mind to.  A few years ago I "couldn't" find time to get in a workout or prep a meal. I lived off fast food and watched TV for hours a day. This has truly showed me that it's all about choices and priorities. I've come a long way.. I have a long way to go. But I'm getting closer everyday.  4 weeks to show 1.. 6 weeks to show 2.  It's going to get harder from here, but I'm ready to soak it all in.  

5 week out posing practice 

Keto mini no-bake cheesecake

Hey there FitFam! Work is finally easing to a slow steady crawl after tax day, I'm a CPA for those who don't know. This was the first time I've actually been in the office doing taxes on tax day (normally I'm out working on an audit).  It was CRAZY!!  So even though I've been a bit quiet I have still been hard at work in the gym and in the kitchen making all my foods for my ever changing diet.  We are having pretty good success with Keto, but we are going to cycle off for a couple weeks. Before I do though I wanted to share a few recipes with you that will always be my in my Keto back pocket.  Today I want to share with my coffee lovers out there.  (Not a coffee lover..keep reading, I've got you covered too!)  If you're not keto you could sub low fat cream cheese and sub almond milk for the heavy cream to make it lower fat friendly.

Let's start with the odd fact that I am NOT a coffee lover! I drink a little.. I like to add a lot of milk and sugar so, I haven't had coffee in quite a while.  But I do have some mocha cappuccino mix and thought it would be an excellent addition to the mini no-bake cheesecakes I've been making. This is something pretty simple to whip up and since I'm the only one in my house I make a lot of single serve dishes. If you wanted to make a few at once you can just multiply the recipe by the desired number of servings, easy-peasy!

Ingredients:

Basic recipe:
2 oz cream cheese
2 tablespoons heavy cream (I've also used 1 so if you need a bit less fat 1 will work!)
sweetener of choice to taste (this is optional if you're a cream cheese lover you might omit this)

Flavor options:
2 tsp mocha cappuccino (for the coffee lovers.. this had a pretty strong coffee flavor, you could easily cut this in half if you wanted to tone it down)
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder (if you like a chocolate cheesecake)
1-2 tablespoon(s) waldon farms strawberry syrup (calorie free, carb free and delish!!)  I find mine at the local grocery store but you can get their stuff here https://www.waldenfarms.com/

I like to garnish with a little waldon farms syrup too!

Procedure:

Pick your flavor above and mix all the ingredients. If your cream cheese is straight out of the fridge then pop in the microwave for 10 seconds oro so to soften it a bit.

Once its all blended, pour the mix into a small container or glass or however you wish to serve it, and place it in the fridge to set. (30 minutes should do the trick, but I tend to make mine a bit more in advance and let it sit longer)

It should be about a 1/2 cup serving size.  Perfect to satisfy a sweets craving and excellent macros for a keto diet!

Weight loss and Nutrition

Probably one of the most common questions I get is, "What do you eat?" (or "What should I eat to lose weight?")  Well the answer is actually really simple, I eat everything, in moderation. Truth is I didn't have my nutrition totally figured out during the majority of my weight loss.  I was keeping myself at a deficit (if I was diligent about tracking my food). So I lost weight.  However when I found IIFYM (If it fits your macros aka flexible dieting) I had much better success and the results came a lot quicker.  Because I was eating a deficit but also a balanced diet.  I personally have a HUGE sweet tooth so I do treat myself to the occasional "bad" treat. But it's all good if it's done in moderation.  If you're eating on plan 90-95% of the time 1 candy isn't going to set you back.

Anyway, I thought I would do a few posts on nutrition and how to lose weight while still eating normal food.  That being said, I don't eat out often. Mainly because I follow my macros strictly (It's really necessary when trying to get stage ready lean) and I need to know EXACTLY what I am putting in my body.  I do have the occasional meal out but I keep it to a minimum right now.

So my husband did a big costco run this weekend and I took some pictures of the fridge, freezer, pantry and fruit/veggie bowls so I could kind of summarize the "staple" items I always have.
I do not eat the exact same thing day to day.  If you follow me on  www.myfitnesspal.com (user name JenniBeanxo ) you'll see that.  All my meals are pretty similar day to day, but rarely exactly the same.  But I do have basic foods you'll always see (chicken, egg whites, green beans/broccoli etc)

So.. let's go to the pictures shall we?

Ok so it's all pretty normal stuff. Fruits (I limit to 1 a day or less), veggies (sweet potato, white potato, celery, asparagus, bell peppers etc), egg white, eggs, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, almond milk, lean meats (chicken, turkey, lean ground beef), natural nut butters .. Not pictured, whole wheat bread, wheat pasta. Which are also added in very sparingly right now.

Of course there are 3 other people that live in my house (note the toddler photo bomb in the last pic). So there are things in there that I don't eat. Also I'm trying to get incredibly lean for a show so for an overall healthy and fit physique you could still be a little more flexible than I am right now. 

What I ate today. Ketogenic.

Hi there #fitfam .. Just over 5 weeks out O_O .. About to wrap up 2 weeks in keto and go back to a "traditional" 40/40/20 bodybuilding split. I've kind of gotten the hang of keto. Still sometimes have a hard time getting all the fat without many carbs or the protein level I was used to. I took pics of all my food yesterday so you could see what keto is looking like. 

So here's everything I ate and a total from myfitnesspal on macros for the day. 

2 pieces of bacon, egg white and cheese omelet 

Homemade keto "mounds" bar.. I skimped on the "chocolate" a bit :). And mozz stick 

Chicken and asparagus. (Probably the least keto of all my meals) 

OMG these were delish! I have a bad sweet tooth and these hit the spot. 

Mini mocha cappuccino cheesecake and a mozz stick 

Green bell pepper with some ground beef and cheese. 

My carbs are a bit high.. About half come from fat sources though so it's not like I'm eating startchy things. Still figuring it all out. After 2 weeks on 40-40-20 I get to try my hand at keto again.  Will be looking up some recipes and things getting ready. 

7 weeks out and Diet info

Hello everyone!

It's been a while.. where does the time go??  I've been super busy working and hitting the gym. We've been doing a lot of decision making.  So I posted about a month back that we decided to delay our original "debut" show date.  We hoped the extra time would help with my conditioning (leaning out for the stage)  It's still been REALLY slow coming on the fat loss and progress.  We have been carb cycling but I still haven't had much success.  This week we are starting a keto diet. Half way through Day 1.. I'm not as hungry as I thought I'd be. However, my meals have been pretty interesting. Switching from high protein to high fat has really been difficult.  I think I'm getting a better handle on it. I even found some flax meal muffin and pizza crust recipes I'm going to try out. (will post them if they are edible!) :)

So, I wanted to post a little bit more about my diet. Now keep in mind if you're not cutting for a show you probably don't have to be SO strict but I've had a lot of people comment on how lean I'm getting and ask me what I've been doing.  So carb cycling. The last several weeks we have been carb cycling. I started with 6 low and 1 high day, and we moved to 3 low days, 1 high, 2 low, 1 high rotation. I prepare 99% of my own food. Even on my high carb days I rarely went out to eat because you really can't be sure what you're getting. I think I had some decent progress doing carb cycling. I count all carbs (even veggies) I guess a lot of people don't.. I'm not sure if it would have been more effective to get more starchy carbs and feed my metabolism that way?? BUT...

We are getting into super crunch time here and my legs especially have a way to go. We are going Keto.  I also started tracking my macros and water more diligently with my weight fluctuations so we can track changes more effectively.  This whole process is a lot of trial and error. There is no right or wrong way to do this.. ok, there are probably a LOT of wrong ways, but different things work for different people. This is the first time we are doing this so it going to be a HUGE learning experience. I've already learned a lot and we still have so far to go.  I'm going to post below a few examples of what I ate on different low and high carb days.  You can follow me on myfitnesspal (Username: Jennibeanxo ) to see what I'm eating everyday.  (but please don't follow it blindly, it's based on my height, weight, goals and activity level)  I've also started to track ALL my cardio with my Polar watch too. Because those machines and even the myfitnesspal estimates are not accurate to each individual.

Low carb day 

High carb day:

Just a note.. I kept my fats relatively low and protein high. This isn't typically how carb cycling works. Protein stays consistent and fats and carbs cycle (one high, the other low). This might be why I didn't see the results I hoped for. I think when I try again in the future I'll have a better handle on the process. It's all a lot of trial and error. The key is to stick with it and continue to make adjustments.