Pulled Chipotle Chicken & Slaw Pizza

...insert drool here

Oh my goodness you guys...we made this pulled chicken and slaw from the Team Beachbody Blog a couple of weeks ago and loved it but then it hit me to turn it into a pizza, I mean who doesn't love BBQ Chicken Pizza? And one that is good for you!! Like so good for you, I can eat it while doing my program without any guilt! THAT's A WIN! Plus, I love having pizza on the weekends! It's my jam. 

Pulled Chipotle Chicken with Cilantro Slaw Pizza
 4 servings, about ¾ cup chicken and ¾ cup slaw each

Ingredients:
½ cup apple cider vinegar, divided use
7 tsp. olive oil mayonnaise
2 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp. raw honey
½ tsp. celery seed
4 cups shredded cabbage (or half a small cabbage) --> (I buy this shredded at Trader Joe's)
1 tsp. olive oil
½ medium onion, finely chopped (yeah, I use 1/4 onion, we aren't onion people though)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped
2 Tbsp. adobo sauce (the sauce from chipotle pepper in adobo sauce)
½ cup barbeque sauce, no sugar added (I used a local company, Pappy's, it was NOT no sugar added though)
3 cups cooked chicken breast, boneless, skinless, shredded (I used rotisserie) 
For Pizza:
Extra BBQ Sauce (2 tsp per pizza) 
Shredded Cheddar (4 tbsp per pizza) 
Golden Home Ultra Thin Whole Grain Crust, Individual Size (or other crust of your choice) 

Preparation:

1. Combine ¼ cup vinegar, mayonnaise, cilantro, honey, and celery seed in a large bowl; mix well.
2. Add cabbage; mix well. Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
3. Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat.
4. Add onion; cook for 4 to 6 minutes, or until onion is translucent.
5. Add garlic; cook for 1 minute.
6. Add chipotle pepper, adobo sauce, barbecue sauce, and remaining ¼ cup vinegar; cook, stirring occasionally, for 6 to 8 minutes, or until sauce thickens slightly.
7. Add chicken, cook, stirring frequently, for 4 to 5 minutes, or until chicken is well coated and heated through.
To make into a pizza:
8. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, once preheated, place the crust in the oven on a foil lined pan for 3-5 minutes.  Careful not to burn it.
9. Take out the crust, spread 2 tsp of BBQ sauce on the pizza crust. Top it with 3/4 cup chicken and 4 tbsp shredded cheddar cheese. 
10. Place back in oven at 350 for another 5-8 minutes or until edges are golden brown. 
11. Remove from the oven and top it with 3/4 cup slaw.

Slice and enjoy! 

For my Fix Family (without the pizza): 1 Green, 1 Red, .5 Yellow, 2tsp
For my Fix Family (with pizza): 1 Green, 1 Red, 2 Yellow, 2tsp

Crockpot Chicken Fajitas

I love Mexican food. Any kind.  I could seriously eat Mexican every day of the week in some form or another...it probably isn't a coincidence that Margaritas are my favorite drink too! Which, by the way, don't forget to check back on Cinco De Mayo for my Skinny Margarita recipe! 

These fajitas were really good and I doubled the amount of chicken from what the original recipe called for so that we could have extra for tonight's dinner! 

Crockpot Chicken Fajitas

Prep Time: 20 min.
Cooking Time: 2-5 hours (just depends)

What you need:

1 (14.5-oz.) can diced tomatoes (or diced tomatoes with green chiles), no salt added
1 medium onion, cut into quarters, sliced
1 medium red bell pepper, cut into strips
1 medium green bell pepper, cut into strips
1 medium orange bell pepper, cut into strips
3 tsp. ground chile powder
2 tsp. ground cumin
½ tsp. ground black pepper
3 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
2 lb. raw chicken breast, boneless, skinless, sliced

Optional: 
8 6-inch whole wheat flour tortillas, warm OR 4 cups romaine or bib lettuce (for salads) 
½ cup fresh tomato salsa
8 tsp. low-fat (1%) plain Greek yogurt
½ medium avocado, sliced
Finely chopped cilantro

Preparation:
1. Place tomatoes, onion, bell peppers, chile powder, cumin, pepper, and lime juice in a 3-quart slow cooker; mix well.
2. Add chicken; cook, covered, on low temperature for 4 to 5 hours (or on high or 2 to 3 hours), stirring once or twice, until chicken is cooked through and vegetables are tender.
3. Evenly divide mixture between tortillas or onto lettuce for salads. Top evenly with salsa, yogurt, avocado, and cilantro.

For mine, I didn't use the greek yogurt or the tortillas (obviously), instead we made ours into big mouth watering salads!

For the salad:
2 cups lettuce & fajita veggies
3/4 chicken
toppings....

That left us enough chicken for salads tonight and just enough to make the kids some quesadillas from it.  I topped my salad with tomatoes, salsa, cheese and avocado. 

If you make yours like mine and are part of my Fix family: 2 greens (mix of fajita veggies & lettuce/tomato), 1 red, 1 blue. 

If you make them according to the recipe and use the tortillas it would be: 2 green, 1 red, 1,5 yellow, .5 blue. 

 

Keys to staying on track!

Some things I do to help me stay on track when I am following a program with specific nutrition requirements are:

1) Meal Plan --> You have to know what you are going to eat and how much, if you don't plan, you are more than likely (like, really likely) not going to eat according to the parameters of your programs meal plan guide which will mess up your results.

2) Make your grocery list and shop --> I usually make my meal plan and grocery list on Thursday evening or Friday morning. I hit up Trader Joe's on my way home from dropping Maren off at daycare to get most of our groceries and then sometime before Sunday (typical prep day) I run to Schnucks to get some items that Trader Joe's doesn't always have....

3) Meal prep --> This is KEY people! If you are prepared it is much harder to fail but if you aren't prepared you are setting yourself up to veer off track. It takes me a couple of hours on a Sunday to get my food ready for the week. I used to just prep lunches but lately I have been prepping our proteins for dinner 95% of the time and it has been even more of a time saver. I loved being able to grab lunch quickly when I am at home with Maren since she is usually keeping me busy but it is even better when I don't have to spend hours in the kitchen each night cooking dinner!

4) Print your meal plan --> If you are like me, you might like to cross things off of your "lists" once you have completed them, well I like to do the same thing with my meal plan. Once I eat a certain meal I cross it off, something about doing that makes me feel more accomplished! Not only do I do that but I also print off a tally sheet so I can keep track of my containers as I eat them and my water, yes...I give myself extra work here but I love seeing it all on paper.

Not only that but if there has been a time I have "cheated" or eaten an extra container that wasn't planned (like all the time on my last round of Hammer & Chisel, ha) I would write it out on my tally sheet so I knew what is going in my mouth and if it is messing with my results! For the record, yes, yes, it did mess with my results last time around!

I can't believe this is my final week making a meal plan for our 2nd round of Hammer & Chisel! Week 8! We did it, we are in the home stretch and it feels good!!  Check back next week for final results! 

The Lowdown on Hammer & Chisel

Ok, so I totally failed at the weekly Hammer & Chisel updates but that doesn't mean I fell off the wagon! I am still here, going strong! I have just been busy and so the blogging was put on the back burner! 

Week 7 starts tomorrow. Yep, we have 14 days left! It really went by faster than I expected and after I got over that initial hump (the first few days are ALWAYS the hardest, they suck really), I realized I would survive without wine or ice cream for 60 days. I just had to remind myself that I have goals I am trying to reach and those goals are more important than a bowl full of delicious Ben & Jerry's, The Tonight Dough (If you haven't tried it, you should. Now).  Or the Samoas that are still sitting in my bottom drawer of my freezer, seriously, how the hell have I avoided those this long?! 

Since we leave town a week after we complete this program and I know I will be busy, I wanted to give you my two cents on it now.  

1. What is this program about and does it work?  

Hammer and Chisel is a 60 day program built on 3 key areas: Stabilization, strength and power. 
The benefits of this program are a strong, chiseled, defined body, improved strength, power, cardiovascular endurance, balance, and agility, definition that you might not have been able to achieve before. and the flexibility to lean out, sculpt and maintain what you have, or build muscle, depending on your unique goals.

And hell yes it works! Coming from someone who did a full 60 days with shitty nutrition then did it again and kept my nutrition on track, I can tell you that nutrition is KEY in combination with these workouts. Do I know better? Yes. Should I have had my nutrition in check the first time around? Yes. But I am human and I wasn't in it, I was having mindset issues which caused me to not really believe in my ability to do this program and succeed therefore I turned to food. But not this time! I went into it with the right mindset.  And so far I have proved to myself that with the right mindset anything is possible! 

2. Food brackets!

Make sure you are in the right food bracket! This can make or break your results.  I opted from day 1 to do the 2nd bracket even though my calculations tell me to do the 1st.  Why? Because I have done the 1st bracket for 21 Day Fix a few times and hit a plateau but when I moved to the 2nd bracket, I started getting results again.  Sometimes it is necessary at some point to increase your food intake to continue to see results so I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to have that happen.  Now, that being said, for these last 2 weeks, I am going back to bracket 1 because I can tell that my body is ready for the lower calorie bracket. Plus we have a cruise in 3 weeks, I need to buckle down a bit. 

Bracket 1 Meal Plan - Hammer & Chisel

3. What equipment will you need?

I opted to go all out and get the bench.  However you can use a stability ball.  If you go for the bench, it needs to be super sturdy.  Our first bench was cheaper in price and it was VERY wobbly during some of the workouts which is not safe at all so we decided to return those and splurge on some more quality benches. We have definitely gotten our monies worth so far....  

You will need weights and as you go along, you will likely need heavier weights because your strength will increase and in order to keep seeing results, you need to make sure you are upping the weights! 

A chin up bar/pull up bar or a resistance band with a door attachment is also a must.  We workout in our basement so my husband built us each a chin up bar that is mounted to our floor joist and since I can't use the bar just yet, I have the band attachment that I have on my bar to modify my chin ups and pull ups. It works great. 

What if you don't want to buy the equipment to do the workouts at home? That is ok, you can stream them from our Beachbody on Demand app and do them from the gym! Problem solved. 

Last but not least, get yourself an accountability partner. I can't tell you how much easier it made it when the alarm went off every morning at 5am knowing that my husband was getting up to workout with me! We have kept each other on track with not only our workouts but our nutrition. If you don't have someone to be your accountability partner, that is ok, message me, you can join one of my groups for extra support. 

4. Schedule your workouts. 

You schedule your meetings at work, right? Your nail appointment? Hair appointment? Well the same thing should be implemented in your life when it comes to your workouts, after all, you don't bail on your meetings with your boss, right?  When you have a workout on your calendar and have set aside a block of time, you are less likely to skip it. 

We like to get our workouts done first thing in the morning.  The kids are asleep, it doesn't cut into our daily routine and we get it done and out of the way.  It is nice to get up, drink my energize and get my workout done, sometimes even a shower in before the kids are even up for the day.  Everyone is different, you have to do what is best for you but I know that if I don't get up and get it done, I will find EVERY excuse in the book as to why I don't have time later in the day. :) 

5. Performance Line...do I need it?

Yes and no. Let's just say it is up to you and the results you are wanting to achieve.  I used the Energize and Recover for the 1st round but still had some soreness that kept me from really pushing the next day and I was also not hydrating myself properly in my workouts.  This 2nd round I have used a pre workout, a hydrate drink for during, a post workout and a shake before bed to help with muscle recovery while I sleep.  I have definitely been able to push myself harder in these workouts than the last round and I can feel a difference each day when I wake up, like, I don't know, I am able to walk. ;) I even had a week where I did two workouts a day, seriously on somedays I should have been in serious pain but I know that my recover and recharge helped me! 

6. Meal prep! 

Planning and preparation are key. Pick a day each week that you will spend a couple of hours, shopping and prepping meals.  I have decided over the past few weeks to keep our meal plan pretty consistent from week to week, it has been easier on us and helped us to stay on track...did you know that is a trick of most trainers or athletes? They keep their meals each day pretty much the same because they are healthy, taste good and it keeps them on track.  I make the same basic proteins each week, shredded chicken, turkey taco meat, turkey meatballs and extra lean burgers.  Then on the weekends, we add in a meal that doesn't involve those proteins like approved homemade pizzas or flank steak, shrimp, etc. 

When I grocery shop, I stick to the basics. Meats and veggies.  Of course, I get the kids the food they need as well but I don't keep extra crap laying around the house that will tempt us.  I also save money this way, so it is nice! I mean, I rarely shop anything but the perimeter of the grocery store and we haven't had a meal out in weeks (so rare for us foodies). 

Here is a small glimpse into our meals and prep over the last 6 weeks.  You think you could handle some of those meals? They don't disappoint. ;) 

Bottom line, this program is going to push you.  It is going to make you step outside of your comfort zone so you can do things you didn't know were possible.  There were days I wanted to quit, I wanted a bite of my kids food or I wanted to skip a workout because my bed sounded way more comfy than my basement but I did it anyways.  I knew that I needed to do it for me. I went into this with the mindset of "I can" and giving up was not an option.  From day 1 my goal has been to prove to myself that I can do this and I knew quitting would only mean letting myself down which wasn't part of my plan.  And I know 14 days from now when we have completed this program, I am going to be proud of myself because I did it. The girl who has always quit.  The girl who was SUPER impressed when she made it through 21 Day Fix a couple of times without cheating or quitting finally caved and did a program that was 60 days even though I was scared as shit to fail.  <3

If you ever want more info about this program or others, I would love to give you more info so you can participate with me! I offer:
-support
-accountability
-meal plan ideas
-recipes
-tips
-daily coaching
-a free shirt or other schwag depending on the program
-a chance to win $500 (What?!? Yeah, awesome, right?) 
Contact me or send me an email for more information: ashley.molitor@gmail.com

My next group starts April 18th, don't miss out! 

Almost 33...

Earlier this week I was cleaning pictures off my phone and I came across MANY before/after photos of my journey over the past year.

As I slowly (or not so slowly) creep up on 33, I can't help but feel thankful to be where I am today. A stay at home mom, coaching amazing people on their journey while working on my own health and fitness goals.

If you would have told me in college that I would be healthier at 33 than I have ever been in my life, I would have laughed at you.

I was your typical college kid, I drank, I smoked (yep, not proud of that one AT ALL), I partied a lot, I ate like crap every single day (not exaggerating), I didn't exercise unless walking to and from campus was considered exercise and I was so negative all the time, not to mention I had terrible OCD and anxiety that could have been controlled better with clean foods and exercise.

But I used to think that I couldn’t be the girl who worked out and took care of herself. I used to think that you had to be a certain type of person to do that, that you had to be athletic or born into a family of athletes. Or that some people were just lucky enough to be “fit” and stayed that way all of their life.

It was all about how I perceived myself. It was all about my mindset.

Once Mason was born, I knew I wanted to make a change in my life, but I never quite knew how to make it stick. I tried fad diets, trainers at the gym (who I loved but they weren’t on my ass everyday and clearly, I need that), heck, I even got really lucky one time and an old birth control I was on made me lose a ton of weight but was I healthy? No. (And for the record, that birth control was BAD…I was like the devil woman on it)

Although healthy isn’t about weight. Healthy is about how you fuel your body. It is about being active. It is about how you feel inside and out. It is a lifestyle. I truly didn’t realize that until completing the 21 Day Fix last year with the support of my coach. I became a coach myself because I realized that I am in charge of MY LIFE and coaching keeps me accountable. Coaching helps me stay on the right path and allows me to set the example for my kids I always wanted to set but never knew how….

So yes, it finally dawned on me last year at age 32, that this is a lifestyle I can live, this is a lifestyle I can share with others. I can enjoy the foods I love in the proper portions. I don’t have to feel deprived or hungry, I just have to eat the right things. I can workout from my home when it is convenient for me because life with two kids is busy. And I can get results working out from home and reach my goals, while helping others reach theirs. Even as a mom of two, I am capable. I finally realized that I am the type of person who can take care of herself and be healthy and fit, inside and out. It is never too late. I deserve it. My kids deserve it. You deserve it too!

That is why I post about coaching and these programs, that is why I invite you to my challenge groups or to join my team. Because I know what it has done for me. This whole experience over the past year took a girl who thought she didn’t have what it took to lead a healthier life or didn’t deserve to be happier and changed all of that. I workout regularly, I eat better than I have EVER have before and I sure as shit don’t feel like I am turning 33 next week! I read personal development to learn and grow plus it reminds me each day that I am capable of great things. I am more confident in my skin than I can ever remember being and I know without a doubt that Beachbody is the reason I am where I am today. It provided me the tools I needed to make the change in my life that was long overdue.

Message me if you want more info on becoming a coach or to join my next challenge group, we start April 18th and I am currently offering a gift to new customers in honor of my birthday! 

Change your mindset. Change your life. <3