Guest Post!! Lara from Thinspired!

Hello, smoothie lovers! My name is Lara and I write the blog Thinspired. I am so happy that Deb asked me to write a guest post while she is away. I am only a recent reader of Smoothie Girl Eats Too, but I was hooked from my first interaction with Deb. I love this blog and am honored to be featured on it.

At Thinspired, I blog about my struggles and successes with maintaining a healthy weight loss while living abroad and juggling newlywed life in my twenties. After my college graduation two years ago, I moved to England and I have been living here ever since. In that time, I was able to take off my college weight gain and then some.

Deb has asked me to share some tips with living well. Since I am still in the learning process of healthy living, I am going to pass on some advice given to me by other people. These words have always stuck with me and I return to them often:

From my grandmother: “It’s not what you eat, it’s how much you eat of it.”

Though I am a self-confessed volume eater, there are certain foods that I am just not willing to sacrifice for the sake of my waistline. When it comes to those things, I try to remember this rule. Because the truth is, there is just not a food on the planet that will make you fat if you only eat two bites of it.

From my mother: “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”

Ok, I am not sure Mom intended for this advice to be about food. But I think it works. Maybe I didn’t follow Grandma’s advice and I ate two hundred bites instead of two. My natural inclination is to throw in the towel and just keep on eating. But I always try to remember: it’s never too late to do the right thing. Stop. Have a drink. Take a walk. Maybe read Deb’s blog to get a smoothie recipe for the morning :)

From my father: Drink water.

I know, it’s a diet cliché. But my dad has the most enviable metabolism on Earth and I believe it is due partly to his ridiculous water consumption. The man eats an insane amount of food, but doesn’t touch soda, coffee, juice, or even tea. It’s water all the way. At restaurants, I joke with the waiter to just bring him a hose. It’s that embarrassing.

I remember him explaining to me as a child the importance of drinking water. “Imagine trying to clean a rice cooker without water.” Yuck. That image stuck with me. Drink water. It cushions your organs. It hydrates your cells. It helps you feel full.

Speaking of volume-eating…

I am a big chili eater. I can get full on minimal calories and get in lots of veggies without it feeling like too much work ;) I have tried many chili recipes since I started blogging. Vegetarian chili, TVP-chili, etc, but the Weight Watchers One-Point Hearty Chili is my favorite. It’s filling. It's comforting. It’s light. It’s perfect for Fall. And, best of all, it’s easy.

I am sure the recipe is online somewhere, but I have it on an old photocopied recipe card that was passed onto me by my sister. We both love it!

Weight Watchers One-Point Hearty Chili

Ingredients:

10 ounces extra-lean ground turkey breast
1 medium onion, diced
1 (28-ounce) cans diced tomatoes
2 medium zucchini, diced
2 medium yellow squash, diced
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained (In the above recipe I used cannellini and kidney beans)
2 (15-ounce) cans fat-free, low-sodium beef broth (I have also used chicken or veggie broth)
4 celery stalks, diced
2 green bell peppers, diced
1 (1 1/4-ounce) package dry chili seasoning

1. Spray a large nonstick skillet with nonstick spray and set over medium-high heat. Add the turkey and onion and sauté until browned.

2. Transfer the browned turkey and onion mixture to a large soup pot and add the tomatoes, zucchini, squash, beans, broth, celery, bell peppers, and chili seasoning. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Continue to simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.

That’s it! Easy and delicious.

Per 1-cup serving: 76 kcals, 1g fat, 0g sat fat, 8mg chol, 270 mg sod, 11g carb, 3g fiber, 7g protein, 1 WW Point.

Thank you for reading and thank you Deb, for the posting opportunity! We miss you!