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One thing that makes healthy eating more pleasurable is the way the meal is plated and served.  Although I am guilty of eating a meal in my car when I have to, I much prefer to sit down to a pretty table (a simple placemat and fresh bunch of flowers) with some care taken in how the food is presented.  My girlfriend, Karen, turned me on to the best salad bowls ever and I'm hooked on them!  They are the Blanc Porcelain Bowls from  Sur La Table and they are so perfect because they are wide (9 inches) and shallow.  You can see all the beautiful components of your dish in this bowl and have lots of room to mix things up. A pasta or noodle dish is also perfect in this bowl, but I think it's too big to use as a cereal bowl. The bowls are expensive ($9.99 each) but so worth it.  You can microwave them and even cook up to 500 degrees in the oven, and of course, they are dishwasher safe.  A set of 4 made a nice "thank you" gift for my trainer after the bikini competition too.

If you've been following along this blog for long, y'all know how much chicken we eat around here. Last week, I shared how we typically grill up a bunch of chicken and then add it to our salads throughout the week.  I'm keeping chicken on my menu, but I wanted to find more interesting ways to prepare it.  I'm sure you know how boring chicken breasts can be if they're not salted, flavored with herbs and spices, or added to a salad with dressing.  Today, I'm sharing a recipe for Mustard Lemon Chicken with Fresh Thyme as a healthy alternative to salting the heck out of your chicken.  I've partnered with Sunkist Lemons on this post and if you want more info about sodium and reduced-sodium recipes, check out their website .  I practically cut sodium out of my diet these last few months, and truthfully, I don't miss it.  I do use salt-free seasonings, but here, a little bit of lemon goes a long way toward brightening and adding flavor to this dish.   And som

I'm so happy to share a recipe featuring steak!!!  And this is a really good cut of meat, specifically, beef tenderloin.  I haven't had one of those in ages and I didn't want to mess up the cooking, so my husband cooked that part of this Thai Steak Salad for me.  He got it just right too! Because this meal is a salad, all you have to do is prepare the marinade, and then be patient while the meat marinates at least four hours, or up to overnight.  It's easy to throw the cold salad ingredients together, then I take a short-cut and top the salad with my store-bought peanut dressing!   INGREDIENTS (ingredient portions depend on how many people you are feeding and what you like in your salad). Beef tenderloin or flank steak- 1 pound  Romaine lettuce Cabbage Tomato Red onion Avocado  Mango Cashews (optional) Sesame seeds (optional) Basil and/or cilantro (optional) *Bangkok Padang Peanut Sauce (or other peanut sauce)  MARINADE  Juice of 1 lime Low sodium soy sauce- 3 tablespoo

It goes without saying that if you want to get in shape, you have to eat healthy.  But, it's hard when there's so much going on in our lives and we feel like we don't have the TIME to prepare healthy meals.  For me, I eat five meals a day about 3 hours apart.  I have gotten used to eating the same thing twice a day (usually a grilled chicken salad).  I enjoy my salad, so it's no big deal.  And thank the Lord, my husband eats the same way, so I don't have to prepare another meal for him.   But, that's the caveat with this healthy meal prep, it's the same food twice a day, and lack of variety is fatal for some people.   With our family's busy schedule and needing to have so many meals to eat each day, it's just simpler for me to eat the same thing over and over.  No thinking about it, just prep once, then grab and go.   My meal prep is incredibly easy.   Eating this way takes way less time than preparing several different meals for lunch or dinner.  A

A surprising thing about post-competition is that I'm not all that anxious to eat all of the food that's been off limits during contest prep.  You'd think I'd want to eat everything in sight, but that hasn't been the case.  In fact, the thought of a big, juicy cheeseburger and fries (something I love to indulge in once in a while before) doesn't really sound good to me right now.  I think it feels so good having worked so hard to get in shape, I don't want to "blow it" by eating bad.  It doesn't feel worth it.   FOOD The night the competition ended, we found a nice steak restaurant that was open and ate a late dinner there.  I had baked brie (a favorite of mine!) with dry toasts, filet minion, twice baked potato and iced-tea.  I only finished half of the steak and potatoes and I really wasn't ready for any alcohol.  The next morning, I indulged in Starbuck's banana bread for breakfast before we got on the road to come home. After drivi

After five months of dieting and training (15 of those weeks with my trainer), I finally competed in my first NPC  (National Physique Committee) Bikini Competition.  THANK YOU, THANK YOU for following along on this journey.  Reading your comments helped me feel like I had a lot of friends rooting for me along the way.  On the drive to the contest (4 hours to Dallas), I kept thinking, "I can't believe I'm doing this!" I had dreamed of prepping and competing in a bikini contest in my 20s, and finally accomplished it at age 39 , as a wife and mother to a 4 year-old.  Better late than never, right?  Just goes to show that you can transform your body at any stage of life!  In February, I weighed about 112 pounds and I competed at 100 pounds.  I'm 5 feet even.  I accomplished these changes with diet and consistent, hard! exercise (cardio and weights about 4-5 days a week, a good hour and a half each time).  In addition to my meals, I used BCAA (branched chain amino acid