Time to shred

So a couple weeks ago, my honey, my sister, her boyfriend, and I decided that we were going to book a cruise to South America!  Yup, heat, sun, and very little clothing on a ship or beach or jungle for 7 days....sounds like fun right?  Well, it's definitely a little intimidating when you have gained a ton of weight.  The challenge is helping a ton and the cruise is a great motivator for me now that it's booked rather than being a reward IF I can lose weight.

I've been doing relatively well.  I'm following a modified Paleo type lifestyle (about 80/20 right now) and have started moving a lot more not that the weather isn't beastly hot!  In fact, the kids and I played on bikes and running up and down the skate ramps in town on Sunday for a good hour and played at the park yesterday for over an hour.  Tonight we have appointments and such, but before that we'll take a picnic dinner to my "secret spot" in town where I'm planning a couple photo shoots to spend some time together before we go to our appointment.  On my lunch, my intention is the new 30 Day Shred DVD I got in the mail yesterday!  CAN NOT WAIT to do something new and right here in my living room to break up my work day.  I'm hoping to get a good workout and have it be some good stress relief from the day as well.

I'm fairly happy with where I am in the competition right now.  More so, I'm happy that my energy levels are through the roof, my stomach issues have settled down, and I'm starting to feel "normal" again....well as normal as *I* can be anyway....What IS normal anyway?  Oh forget it. That's a topic for another day.

That's all for now folks....here's a recipe I shared with my fellow competitors that I whipped up last week and the whole family loved!

Inside Out Pizza Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

6 HUGE servings - 269 calories per serving

4 sweet potatoes lightly sautéed
1 large yellow onion - sautéed
One package of sliced mushrooms - sautéed
1 lb ground sweet Italian sausage
3 cans of diced tomatoes seasoned with salt free Italian seasoning and garlic
1 cup of shredded Parmesan.

All in a glass baking dish and baked for about 30 minutes!

This little invention came from the fact that we LOVED pizza stuffed sweet potatoes, but they were a little cumbersome to eat and took some time to prepare, so throwing them in a pan and baking was a lot easier on both ends! :)