“LiveFit: Kids” & Breakfast Prep Part:1

When I first decided to start this blog, my intention was solely to keep a “diary” of my own fitness journey.  I wanted to have a place where I could share my recipes, my training, my progress, my goals, my struggles, my thoughts, and everything surrounding my fitness “life”.  I never in a million years would have dreamed that it would have transformed into something so much greater for me.  Over the course of the last 2 years, I have been able to reach so many women through my stories and my food.  From cardio bunny, to strength training, to overcoming an eating disorder, to flexible dieting, to intuitive eating, to sharing struggles, and other small glimpses of my life… I now feel like my own journey has come full circle.  The amount of emails and private messages I get is overwhelming sometimes, but words can’t express how blessed I feel to have women share their stories and their struggles with me.  Words won’t ever express how thankful I am to hear that in some way, I have touched even one woman’s life in one way or another.   Of course as a mommy, the ones that hit the closest to home are ones from young girls with eating disorders and the ones from fellow mommies just starting their own journeys.

Many of the emails I receive are from women struggling to get the WHOLE family on board with a healthy lifestyle.  They decide they want better for themselves, but find it difficult to balance their new lifestyle with being a mother & wife.  Also, as much as they want to ensure they are giving their kids the best choices when it comes to food and exercise, their kiddos are more than reluctant to hop on that train.  I’m not sure if I’m just lucky and have kids that do what they are told because I make them OR they truly enjoy eating how they do OR if simply leading by example has made an impact on them.  My guess is a little of everything I suppose, but I will say that overall my kids do pretty darn good when it comes to being “healthy”.  My youngest (almost 10) does better than her older brother (almost 17), but I’m pretty confident in saying that we ALL live a pretty healthy lifestyle.  It’s amazing what can be done by making small changes here and there!

I’ve spent so much of my journey focused on my own nutrition and training, but because so many mommies reach out to me for help with their own kids & family I figured it was about time to expand my posts, stories, and recipes even more.

It’s time to include THE KIDS!!!

It makes so much sense for me to do this especially considering how many mothers reach out to me with questions about how I feed my family, what they eat, and how I juggle it all.  So… I’m adding another series to the blog based solely around those ‘little’ people in our lives’.  My intention here is to provide my philosophy surrounding kids nutrition and overall health and my best mommy tips, tricks, meal planning, food prep, breakfast/lunch/dinner ideas, and everything in between!  Very excited for this adventure!!!

Here is a tentative outline of everything I have in store:

• What do I want to teach my kids about food?
• Do I make separate dinner/ meals for myself?
• Favorite kid “friendly” smoothies
• Getting kids to eat more vegetables
• Dealing with a picky eater
• Food & ingredient substitutions
• Kid approved dinners
• Keeping kids active

No time like the present and I might as well jump right into it!!! To quickly kick things off today though, I’m going to start off with something I just started a few weeks ago…

PART 1: Prepping Breakfast for the ENTIRE school week

If you are anything like me, sleep is absolutely precious.  I’m definitely a morning person and when I wake up, I’m ready to attack the day!  You won’t ever see me hitting snooze, that’s for sure!  I look forward to each and every day I am given here on earth and can’t wait to see what it has in store for me!  However, if I can squeeze in an extra 5, 10, or 15 minutes BEFORE that alarm goes off… please sign me up!  I will always take a few extra minutes when I can!

Last school year, I felt SO incredibly rushed in the morning.  Between getting school lunches ready, getting breakfast into my kids, and figuring out which route to take for our 20-25 minute journey to school, and then driving back home I usually came back feeling like the entire process took me 4 hours.  Kids lunch was always pretty healthy, but breakfast?  Totally different story.  As hard as I would try to make sure it was a well balanced and nutrient dense meal, it usually ended up being a bowl of cereal, something packaged to pop in the microwave, or a frozen ‘breakfast’ type item from a box.  Easy?  Yes.  Optimal choice for kids to start their long day at school?  Probably not.

I decided this year would be different though!  I thought it might be a good idea to try and make breakfast meals for the ENTIRE week on Sundays as a part of my regular food/meal prep.  I figured that adding in an extra 10-15 minutes prep to make 5 days worth of breakfasts on Sunday’s would give us a bit more time to sleep in the mornings. That way I won’t have to ‘cook’ anything (again, even an 5-10 minutes sounds good to me) AND I would reduce the amount of stress and scrambling around I normally end up doing.  An added bonus is there would be no complaints about what the kiddo would be eating.  I would ask for suggestions on Sunday while I’m prepping so my daughter would get exactly what she asked for.  I wasn’t sure this new system would work, but it was worth a shot!

The meal options I came up with had to be: #1 things that would be fairly easy to prepare (I wasn’t about to take an extra hour on Sunday to make something elaborate), #2 had to be foods I could easily manipulate the nutritional profile for (ensuring a balance of protein, carbs, and fat), #3  the food had to store well in the fridge or freezer, #4 they had to reheat well in either the toaster or microwave OR be eaten cold right from the fridge, and #5 ideally, they needed to be things she could easily eat in the car on the way to school (remember, it takes us at least 20 minutes with no traffic to get to school so eating in the car gives us even MORE time to sleep lol).

The rough breakfast list I came up to satisfy all of that were the following:

1. pancakes or waffles
2. overnight oats
3. egg scrambles
4. sandwiches
5. parfaits
6. smoothies
7. French toast
8. wraps
9. baked goods (muffins, bars, etc.)
10. casseroles

For my first ‘trial’ week, I gave my daughter a choice between pancakes, waffles, an egg scramble, and overnight oats.  To make sure there was enough variety, I decided to let her pick two items.  I would make 3 days worth of one thing and 2 days worth of the other.  That way she can alternate her meal choices.  She ended up picking a scramble and overnight oats for the first week.  Sounds easy enough!  I think I spent a total of 10 minutes making these FIVE breakfasts for her.

While I’m not quite ready to say this might be the BEST idea I have ever come up with quite yet, I will say that the first week of this was a HUGE success.  I can’t even tell you how much more relaxed I was in the morning.  Alarm went off (10 minutes later than last year), I got dressed (well kind of anyways), I came down stairs,No stressing out, no feeling rushed, no arguments or funny looks when I hand over a breakfast, AND the extra 10 minutes of sleep I got?  Priceless.  So far, I’m a FAN guys!!!

And to make things even easier for YOU, I’ve decided to make ALL of the recipes I come up with for this breakfast prep printable!  That way, you will be able to eventually print out an ENTIRE school year of meal prep/breakfast ideas to utilize on your own!!!  You can put them in a folder or binder, have your kiddos pick out what they want each week and have it all nice, neat, and ready to go each year.  The great thing about the recipes I’m planning on is everything will be highly customizable.  Your kid doesn’t like ham?  No problem.  Use sausage.  Your kid doesn’t like strawberries.  Easy, use bananas.  The basic blueprint will be here for you!

Also, I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Persicope lately prepping a LOT of our meals, food prepping on Sundays, taste testing products, and answering all kinds of questions LIVE!  Its been so fun interacting with people directly.  If all goes according to plan, you can catch up me on Persicope a few times a week! Come visit with me and say hi!!!!

That being said, here is WEEK 1 of LIVE FIT KIDS: Breakfast Idea Recipes:

FIT KIDS: Egg, Sausage, and Potato Scramble

Print recipe

Serves	2-3
Prep time	5 minutes
Cook time	10 minutes
Total time	15 minutes
Meal type	Breakfast

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup egg whites
• 1 Large whole egg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 Large red potato
• 3oz turkey sausage
• 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Optional

• 2 handfuls chopped spinach

Directions

Step 1
	Coat a sauté pan with non stick spray or coconut oil and heat to low/medium heat. Cook potatoes until slightly softened. Add crumbled turkey sausage and cook through until no pink remains.
Step 2
	In a large bowl, combine eggs, egg whites, salt, and milk. Add mixture to pan and cook eggs until fluffy. Stir occasionally.
Step 3
	Turn off heat and stir in cheese and optional spinach. Let cool completely, divide, and separate into microwave safe containers. Add sliced avocado if desired.

FIT KIDS: Strawberry & Nutella Overnight Oats

Print recipe

Serves	1
Prep time	2 minutes
Meal type	Breakfast

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup quick oats
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds
• 1 teaspoon cacao powder
• 1 scoop Chocolate Cream KidzShake Protein (www.kidzshake.com)
• 2 tablespoons Chocolate MuscleEgg egg whites or plain pasteurized egg whites (www.muscleegg.com)
• 1/4 cup milk of choice
• 15 drops Chocolate Sweet Leaf Stevia drops or sweetener of choice
• 1 tablespoon Nutella
• 1/4 cup chopped or sliced strawberries

Directions

Step 1
	In a small mason jar, add oats, chia seeds, and protein powder. Add in egg whites, milk, stevia, and Nutella. Stir until well combined. Add more milk if you prefer a thinner oatmeal. Keep in mind oats will thicken up slightly in the fridge after 3-4 hours. Place sliced/chopped strawberries on top of oats, cover with lid, and refrigerate.