Photography: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Lydia DeGaris-Pursell

Barbecued Lime Shrimp and Corn

With virtually no cleanup, cooking a meal in foil over the fire is simple. Buy premade foil oven bags, or fashion your own from heavy-duty aluminum foil. Then toss the bag directly on the coals. If you skip the couscous, soak up the juices with French bread.  Recipe Courtesy of CookingLight.com.

Ingredients
1/3 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons grated peeled fresh ginger
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 ears corn, each cut crosswise into 4 pieces
1 1/2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 cups cooked couscous

Instructions:
At home, combine the first 9 ingredients in a heavy-duty, zip-top plastic bag, and seal. Place the corn, shrimp, and couscous in separate heavy-duty zip-top plastic bags, and seal bags. Place the shrimp in cooler.

At campsite, place lime mixture, corn, and shrimp in foil oven bag. Place directly on hot coals (or in a 450° oven if at home); cook 10 minutes. Serve over couscous.

Nutritional Information:
Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 5 ounces shrimp, 2 pieces corn, and 1 cup couscous)

CALORIES 473 (7% from fat); FAT 3.9g (sat 0.7g,mono 0.6g,poly 1.5g); IRON 5.3mg; CHOLESTEROL 259mg; CALCIUM 115mg; CARBOHYDRATE 66.7g; SODIUM 534mg; PROTEIN 42.8g; FIBER 4g

Ok, so…yeah…the title is a bit deceptive but for those of you that are looking for a quick fix, you really need a reality check and hopefully this it.  If you really read the title then you may have realized I didn’t say anything about losing weight being fast!  Can you lose a lot of weight quickly?  Most certainly but the likelihood of you keeping that weight off is inversely proportional to your chances of keeping that weight off in the long run. 

What I mean is the faster you lose the weight, the less likely you are to keep it off.  This statement comes from personal experience and not from a scientific study.  Take a look at my completely made up graph that I dreamed up:

Completely Made Up Graph

There are anomalies.  There are some people that have dropped massive amounts of weight, quickly, and kept it off.  However, for the sake of this article we aren’t going to delve into how they accomplished it. 

If you are wanting, or needing, to lose a lot of weight and keep it off, here are a few pointers that may help you in that journey.

Grilled Shrimp, Mango, and Avocado

What’s not to like about this recipe?  It has grilling, seafood, and avocado!  Recipe courtesy of CookingLight.com.

This dish features a Vietnamese-style sauce known as "nuoc cham" [noo-ahk CHAHM] that traditionally includes fish sauce, lime juice, chiles, and sugar. Your avocados should be ripe but still slightly firm so they’ll slice easily and not break apart as they grill. Leaving the skin on helps them maintain their shape—remove skin before serving, if you like.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar
6 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 3 limes)
2 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon finely grated carrot
1 tablespoon thinly sliced serrano chile (about 1 chile)
36 large shrimp (about 2 pounds)
Cooking spray
2 ripe unpeeled avocados, halved
2 peeled mangoes, each cut into 6 wedges
12 lime wedges
6 large Bibb lettuce leaves
Chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

Instructions:
1. Combine first 5 ingredients in a small bowl. Reserve 3/4 cup juice mixture. Stir carrot and chile into remaining 1/2 cup juice mixture, and set aside.

2. Peel shrimp, leaving tails intact. Starting at tail end, butterfly each shrimp, cutting to, but not through, backside of shrimp. Combine reserved 3/4 cup juice mixture and shrimp in a large bowl, tossing to coat; cover and marinate in refrigerator 1 hour, tossing occasionally. Remove shrimp from bowl, reserving marinade.

3. Prepare grill for medium-high heat.

4. Place reserved marinade in a small saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. Cool slightly.

5. Thread 3 shrimp onto each of 12 (10-inch) skewers. Place shrimp on a grill rack coated with cooking spray. Grill shrimp 2 1/2 minutes on each side or until done, basting frequently with cooked marinade.

6. Cut 3 avocado halves in half lengthwise; peel and dice remaining avocado half. Brush cooked marinade over mango and avocado wedges; coat with cooking spray. Arrange in a single layer on grill rack coated with cooking spray. Coat lime wedges with cooking spray; place on grill rack. Grill fruit 2 minutes on each side or until marked but not soft, basting frequently with marinade.

7. Place 1 lettuce leaf on each of 6 salad plates; top each leaf with 2 mango slices, 2 lime wedges, and 1 avocado wedge. Place 2 skewers on each plate; sprinkle evenly with diced avocado. Sprinkle with cilantro, if desired. Serve with carrot mixture.
Nutritional Info:
Yield:  6 servings

CALORIES 324 ; FAT 11.8g (sat 1.8g,mono 6.1g,poly 2.1g); CHOLESTEROL 230mg; CALCIUM 109mg; CARBOHYDRATE 23.7g; SODIUM 811mg; PROTEIN 33.1g; FIBER 5.9g; IRON 4.5mg

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’d probably agree that my main focus has been on weight training.  While going through my past posts, I found myself thinking, “well what about the kids?”  Maybe not in those exact words but I realized I have neglected the family aspect of fitness and nutrition. 

Growing up in my home, I can’t say that physical family activities were a number one priority.  When I was in elementary school, I used to always tell people, “My mama is a great cook!”  Now, combine the lack of physical family activity with “my mama is a great cook” and you get an overweight teen and an obese adult.  At least that’s the way it was in my case.

So what can you do as a family that is both fun and helps promote physical fitness?  “Fun” is the key here.  As a family, if you are trying to promote physical fitness and it isn’t “fun”, it ain’t gonna stick.  Hopefully these ideas will make something that can be very boring for your family both fun and healthy!

Tuscan Pork Loin

This recipe takes a bit of time to prepare but makes for one great low carb main dish.  Courtesy of FoodNetwork.com.

Ingredients
1 3-pound pork loin, trimmed of fat
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
3/4 cup dry vermouth or white wine
2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar

Directions
Tie kitchen string around pork in three places so it doesn’t flatten while roasting. Place salt and garlic in a small bowl and mash with the back of a spoon to form a paste. Stir in oil, rosemary and lemon zest; rub the mixture into the pork. Refrigerate, uncovered, for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the pork in a roasting pan. Roast, turning once or twice, until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part registers 145 degrees F, 40 to 50 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board; let rest for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, add vermouth (or wine) and vinegar to the roasting pan and place over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and cook, scraping up any browned bits, until the sauce is reduced by half, 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the string and slice the roast. Add any accumulated juices to the sauce and serve with the pork.

Roasting Tips

Very cold meat won’t roast evenly. Place it on the counter while preheating the oven.

Durable cotton kitchen string is sold at kitchenware stores, most gourmet markets and large supermarkets. Do not use sewing thread or yarn, which may contain inedible dyes or unsavory chemicals.

A heavy-duty, high-sided roasting pan is essential for conducting heat evenly. Never substitute a cookie sheet. A broiler pan will work in a pinch, but the roast will inevitably be somewhat chewier.

Give it a rest. A roast’s internal temperature will rise about 10 degrees while resting. The natural juices will also reincorporate into the meat’s fibers and the skin or crust will dry out slightly for a more toothsome yet more succulent dinner.

Nutritional Information
Serving size – 3-ounce serving
Calories 221
Carbohydrates 1 g
Protein 24 g
Fat 11 g
Saturated Fat 3 g
Cholesterol 69 g
Monounsaturated Fat 6 g
Dietary Fiber 0 g