Eat. Lift. Play. Repeat.

Eat Clean :: Lift Heavy :: Play Daily :: Repeat

Breakfast Grits with Kale

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Breakfast Grits with Kale

Can you tell that breakfast is my favorite meal of the day? Luckily, it is considered the most important meal of the day. I have been known to eat breakfast, have a second breakfast around 10:00am and finish the day with breakfast-for-dinner. No joke, I love it that much.

If you’ve followed Eat. Lift. Play. Repeat. for very long then you know that a lot of my recipes are intended for breakfast. I apologize if you hate breakfast, but I can’t stop my love for it!

First of all, growing up we rarely had grits. I don’t even recall having grits until I was in Florida visiting my grandparents when I was 13 years old. Grits are more popular in the south and just weren’t part of our diet in Colorado. [Read more…]

Anything & Everything Friday – September 16th

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Friday

It has been pretty cloudy here in northeast Colorado the last few days but today’s forecast is SUNSHINE. Aka suns out, guns out! I want to wear a tank top simply because Ron Burgundy is telling me to….

 Happy Friday! Not surprise, but this week flew by. It is always busy at the office when I get back from a longer vacation and it definitely felt that way this week. Nothing too overwhelming, but one thing after another after another. It made the workday go fast and now it is the weekend. Holy cow. I’m not mad about it! [Read more…]

Day in the Life: Mel’s Meals [#33]

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Mel's Meals

I was excited to get back to clean eating foods after being on vacation for an entire week! Don’t get me wrong, I love trying new restaurants, but eating out every single meal for days gets old for me. I love cooking and I love knowing exactly what is in my food. The trip was great and I loved the food, but coming home and making food again was fantastic!

It is no surprise that I gained weight while on vacation (I didn’t track one single calorie the entire time), so I wanted to get back down to normal fairly quickly. I don’t do any crazy cleanses, but I try to pay particular attention to what I eat and drink. My meals are typically clean anyway, but I tighten it up even more right after a vacation or indulgent weekend. [Read more…]

Grocery Shopping & Meal Prep – Week 18

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Grocery Shopping & Meal Prep

Donny & I were gone for an entire week on vacation in Oregon (read about the trip here)! I enjoy eating out, but a week of eating at restaurants is too much for me. I needed to get back into the kitchen to actually cook! Plus, I was in need of some clean eating vegetables. We’d had vegetables at some of our meals, but deep fried Brussels sprouts are not exactly healthy!

Grocery Shopping  & Meal Prep posts are intended to help guide you in the grocery store to find healthy, clean eating friendly foods. Then I like to talk about how I prepare my food for the week so that you can get some ideas for simple meals that are healthy! [Read more…]

Portland, Oregon 2016

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Portland

We had a fantastic time in Oregon. My cousin and his wife planned a fantastic wedding that was beautiful and well put together, yet so much fun and 100% them. The wedding took place in Eugene then on Sunday we drove to wine country in Oregon, stopping at two different wineries.

We stayed the night in McMinnville at a historic hotel downtown called The Hotel Oregon. It was a small town, but very cute. One surprise at the hotel was that they had communal bathrooms. I opened the bathroom door to instead find a closet! We had to walk across the hall to a bathroom. Hadn’t done that since college! We survived and have a great story now! [Read more…]

Sweet Potato Yogurt Bowl

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Sweet Potato Yogurt Bowl

We made it back from our weeklong vacation to Oregon. We had the best time!  Donny & I both had fun and feel like we came back refreshed, which is the point of a vacation right?!

We try to keep vacations pretty relaxed with a few activities each day, but not go-go-go the whole time. We ate some great food and tried some interesting beer. I didn’t take a TON of pictures, but I have some that I’ll share those with you tomorrow. [Read more…]

Anything & Everything Friday – September 2nd

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Vacation

This is absolutely 100% me. No joke. I packed anywhere between 30 and 130 outfits for this trip. I can’t make decision about what I will wear without knowing where I will be going or what we will be doing!

Happy Friday! I am especially happy on this particular Friday because it is vacation time!!! We head out to Oregon later this afternoon and I am SO excited. Donny & I normally go on quick weekend-long trips to places, but this trip is a week long! I had a really busy week at work, so it makes me even more ready for some time off. [Read more…]

Day in the Life: Mel’s Meals [#32]

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Mel's Meals

I decided to get a little more creative with my meals this week, which made me plan a little bit more too! It was well worth it because I have been loving every meal that I’ve eaten. You know it is a good meal when you think about it all day… just waiting for the time you get to eat it. Is that just me? Does anyone else do that?!

If you have questions about how I prepared any of these foods, then check out yesterday’s post Grocery Shopping & Meal Prep Week 17. Now here is Day in the Life: Mel’s Meals: [Read more…]

Grocery Shopping & Meal Prep – Week 17

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Grocery Shopping

I had a great time preparing food this last weekend. Donny was playing in a golf tournament so I hung out at the house and took my time preparing different foods.

This week I also took a little extra time and planned out my meals quantity-wise. I have the My Fitness Pal app so I calculated how much of each food to put in the container to make a balanced meal. Burrito bowls was one of the meals I wanted to take. First, I calculated how many beans to take, then how much meat, next how many veggies, etc so that once all the food was cooked I could get right to filling the containers. I did that with both the burrito bowls and the spaghetti squash. Planning ahead really does save time in the long run! [Read more…]

Date Night at Old Major

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Old Major

Donny & I had a date night at Old Major this last weekend. We sort of drew another restaurant out of our cigar box. I say sort of because I was doing inventory of the restaurants in order to take out any we’d been to now and we decided to draw one out. Donny picked Pizza Republica, but immediately knew he didn’t want pizza for our date night. Technically we aren’t suppose to do that, but I let it slide this time because I didn’t want pizza either!

His second pick was Old Major, which he’d been to but I had not. It is a really cool place in the Highlands area of Denver. Basically they love meat and they love seafood at Old Major and it shows! They even cure their own meats in house. The bar area has red brick all over the walls, which I love, and the other parts have the walls covered with reclaimed wood. All the chairs/stools look homemade, but in a classy way. [Read more…]