weight loss Archives

Lean Lena September 29, 2015

Fried Rice: How to Cook it Perfectly

Hey guys! Happy Tasty Tuesday!

Loooong time ago, I spent 3 months working as a tour guide in Thailand. Apart from hard work, partying and loads of fun, I will always remember living in this country because they had THE BEST fried rice ever! I watched them make it thousand times, and then I tried making it myself another thousand times, and still did not come quite as close to the original as I wanted to.

Anyway, today I want to share my fried rice recipe with you – it is as perfect as it gets with me, folks. The recipe for making the rice itself (before you fry it) is by my wonderful husband, and what I do with the leftovers – my own business 🙂 So, here we go!

Filed Under: dinner, Food, Link Up, lunch, recipes, Tasty Tuesday Tagged With: dinner, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, lunch, recipes, weight loss 4 Comments

Lean Lena June 23, 2015

Five Whole30 Compliant Dinners as seen on Pinterest

Even if you don’t care about making your meals Whole30 compliant these dinner ideas will make you hungry! Besides, every recipe has a non-whole30 ingredient options included.

Filed Under: breakfast, dinner, Healthy Living Tips, Link Up, lunch, recipes, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss, whole30 Tagged With: good food, healthy breakfast, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, lunch, recipes, tasty tuesday, weight loss, whole30 8 Comments

Lean Lena April 28, 2015

Mini Weekend Spring Cleanse – Spring Into Health

It’s finally spring! Rejuvenate and energize your body and soul with this mini weekend spring cleanse.

Filed Under: breakfast, dessert, dinner, fitness, guest post, Healthy Living Tips, healthy snack ideas, Link Up, lunch, recipes, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss Tagged With: breakfast, dessert, dinner, fitness, good food, healthy breakfast, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, healthy snack ideas, lunch, recipes, salad, smoothie, tasty tuesday, weight loss 2 Comments

Lean Lena April 21, 2015

Whole30 Week 2 – Eats, Results and Plans

My latest update on our Whole30 Week 2 experience: eats, feels and results.

Filed Under: breakfast, Cycling, dinner, fitness, fitness events, Link Up, lunch, recipes, Spinning Instructor, Tasty Tuesday, Team Polar, Weight Loss, whole30 Tagged With: bicycling, breakfast, cycling, dinner, fitness, good food, healthy breakfast, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, lunch, new experience, recipes, salad, spinning instructor, tasty tuesday, weight loss, whole30 6 Comments

Lean Lena April 14, 2015

Whole30 Week 1 – Eats, Results and More

Whole30 Week 1 – recap, food, recipes, feelings, revelations and so much more to help you decide and do your own Whole30.

Filed Under: breakfast, dinner, fitness, Fitness Challenges, Healthy Living Tips, Link Up, lunch, new experiences, recipes, running, Tasty Tuesday, Team Polar, Weight Loss, whole30 Tagged With: breakfast, dinner, fitness, good food, healthy breakfast, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, healthy snack ideas, lunch, new experience, recipes, running, salad, tasty tuesday, weight loss, whole30 17 Comments

Lean Lena March 31, 2015

Healthy Lunches: 6 Days for 4 Weeks

Get your month worth of healthy lunches with recipes, ideas and pictures! These healthy lunches will sure give you the jump start on springing into health!

Filed Under: Crockpot Recipes, dinner, Healthy Living Tips, Link Up, lunch, recipes, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss Tagged With: dinner, good food, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, lunch, recipes, salad, tasty tuesday, weight loss 10 Comments

Lean Lena March 10, 2015

Smoothies: 7 Recipes for 7 Days

Smoothies season is upon us! Start yours off with these 7 Smoothie Recipes for 7 Days. Fresh fruit, vegetables and other nutritious ingredients will give your body a boost of energy and health after the long winter months.

Filed Under: breakfast, Healthy Living Tips, healthy snack ideas, Link Up, Product Reviews, recipes, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss Tagged With: fitness, good food, healthy snack ideas, recipes, smoothie, tasty tuesday, weight loss 20 Comments

Lean Lena February 24, 2015

Larabar Giveaway and Tasty Tuesday Linkup #55

Hey-hey, guys! It’s Tuesday! Tasty Tuesday no less!

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, which I’m sure you have noticed by the fact that this blog has only been updated once a week lately.

Such is life that you never know when it’s going to get in the way next time and prevent you from doing what you really want making you do what needs to be done instead. #philosophical 🙂

Anyway, due to life things getting in the way – no new recipe this Tasty Tuesday for you, guys. But before you get disappointed and click away – it’s LARABAR giveaway day instead!

Filed Under: Ad-Free, fitness, Giveaways, healthy snack ideas, Link Up, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss Tagged With: fitness, giveaway, good food, healthy snack ideas, larabar, tasty tuesday, weight loss, whole30 15 Comments

Lean Lena February 17, 2015

5 Things to Meal Prep for Perfect Salads and Tasty Tuesday #54

Are you trying to get more veggies into your diet on a daily basis? Follow these easy steps to meal prep for perfect salads! Get it done on the weekend and enjoy nutritious salads for lunch during the week.

Filed Under: fitness, Healthy Living Tips, Link Up, lunch, recipes, Tasty Tuesday Tagged With: good food, healthy lunch, lunch, recipes, salad, tasty tuesday, weight loss 32 Comments

Lean Lena December 29, 2014

2014 Review: What Happened and What Didn’t

With 2015 approaching, I couldn’t help but think about what 2014 has brought, what I have accomplished and where I’ve failed. It is that time when we all reflect, analyze, think, and hope.

So I decided to do a 2014 review: go back to my 2014 Resolutions and see what happened in 2014 and what didn’t.

Filed Under: Cycling, fitness, fitness events, holidays, Motivation Monday, running, spinning, Spinning Instructor, Team Polar, TRX, Weight Loss Tagged With: bicycling, cycling, fitness motivation, holidays, new experience, running, spinning, spinning instructor, weight loss, whole30 8 Comments

Lean Lena December 2, 2014

Leftover Turkey Soup Recipe and Tasty Tuesday Linkup 43

Hey guys!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had a nice holiday.

We ran/walked the Turkey Trot on the Thanksgiving morning:

And then we got home, put the turkey in the oven and snuggled with the kitty for a bit:

Our turkey was 15lb, but this year it was just the two of us on Thanksgiving, so we had plenty of leftovers!

Since ’tis the season of soups, and our bodies were begging for something lighter after the Thanksgiving feast, I made soup.

But! Before I could make soup – I made turkey broth. The wise and awesome friend of mine named Jennifer had an awesome idea which I used to make my broth. Check it out here – I promise, you’ll never use store bought broth again!

See? I told you that girl was genius!

So, back to the soup recipe. This one is super easy and quick to make, as most of my recipes.

Leftover Turkey Soup Recipe

Filed Under: dinner, holidays, Link Up, lunch, recipes, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss Tagged With: dinner, good food, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, holidays, lunch, recipes, soup, tasty tuesday, weight loss 23 Comments

Lean Lena September 9, 2014

Whole30 Final Recap – Results and “Now What?”

Hey guys!

So today is Day 30 of my Whole30! I did it!!! I feel pretty awesome and proud of myself 🙂

Since today is Tasty Tuesday I decided to summarize my experience with Whole30 as it all does start with food indeed.

But first, let me remind you what Tasty Tuesday is 🙂

Every Tuesday I post a recipe, a collection of recipes, a restaurant review or anything related to food. There is then a linkup at the end of the post where you can add links to your food-related blog posts! The linkup stays open for a week – right until the next one comes around. How awesome is that?

Don’t forget to check out other link up participants and there’s only one rule to the linkup – link back to this blog or grab the link up badge from the sidebar. Let’s spread the word so we can have more people checking out your posts next week!

We also now have the Tasty Tuesday Pinterest Board where you can pin your posts every week. To be able to do that, please follow me on Pinterest and let me know in comments that you did, and your Pinterest username so I could send you an invite.

Filed Under: fitness, Fitness Challenges, Healthy Living Tips, new experiences, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss, whole30 Tagged With: fitness, fitness motivation, weight loss, whole30 13 Comments

Lean Lena September 2, 2014

Sweet Potato-Squash Soup Recipe

Hey my foodies! Happy Tasty Tuesday!

Are you ready for some tasty recipes? Me too!

Filed Under: dinner, lunch, new experiences, recipes, Tasty Tuesday, Weight Loss, whole30 Tagged With: dinner, good food, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, lunch, new experience, recipes, weight loss 18 Comments

Lean Lena August 21, 2014

Whole30 Days 1-10 Recap: Program Friendly Meal Ideas

So I am 1/3 of the way through – done with my Whole30 Days 1-10.

In case you missed the beginning – after some thinking I decided to try this program with my buddy over in the Netherlands – Yuliya.

Ok, now that you have all the links, go ahead and read – I’ll wait 🙂

Welcome back!

So. 10 days later I decided I’d recap the highlights of the first 10 days of the program, let you guys know how it feels and what it takes.

Filed Under: breakfast, dinner, fitness, Fitness Challenges, Healthy Living Tips, healthy snack ideas, lunch, new experiences, recipes, whole30 Tagged With: breakfast, dinner, fitness, good food, healthy breakfast, healthy dinner, healthy lunch, healthy snack ideas, lunch, new experience, recipes, salad, smoothie, weight loss, whole30 8 Comments

Lean Lena August 11, 2014

So…Whole30 Gets a….YES!

After careful consideration, my Whole30 Challenge is a go!

Won’t go into much detail as to why – I guess there’s both pro and con opinions out there – and plenty of both, too. I just feel it’s the right thing for me to do at this point in my health journey.

I’m missing something. And I’m hoping that Whole30 will help me find that “something”.

Anywho. It just so happens that Yuliya over at Welcome to Mommyhood is starting another round of hers over there in the Netherlands as well. How exciting is that? I have a Whole30 buddy!

We decided to cheer each other on and post recaps on our blogs for every 10 days of the challenge.

We will also be posting daily highlights over at Lean Lena and Welcome to Mommyhood Instagram pages.

Make sure you follow both our blogs and Instagram pages if you would like to follow along and find out what the first Whole30 feels like (that would be me telling you that) and how to make it enjoyable with Yuliya’s recipes and previous experience with this program. 🙂

Don’t miss out on the real experience and true recaps!

So… Whole30.

This weekend I sat down to plan my meals for the week. I’m saying “my” because my family is not following me along. They’re not crazy enough 🙂 Joking. They are. They just love pizza too much 🙂

The good thing is we don’t have the kids with us for the first 7 days of my Whole30, my husband is very flexible with food so we can eat program-friendly meals and hopefully, I will ease into it pretty quickly with less temptations.

So, back to the weekend prep.

On Saturday we went berry picking. It was so awesome! The place is wonderful and we had so much fun. If you’re in the area, check out the Yellow Hill Farm.

We picked a ton of blackberries.

We made blackberry cobbler that night, and I lie to you not – on Sunday morning my family sat down for breakfast and put away the whole 8″x8″ of it – right out of the pan 🙂 Ok, well…that wasn’t very Whole30 friendly 🙂

Back to the good stuff now.

On the way back from the berry picking we stopped by at the Peach Festival, and got a whole huge bag of peaches!

On Sunday our hot water heater said “I’m done!” My husband and the girl worked on it all day and ended up replacing the whole thing, while I was getting busy in the kitchen.

I made these awesome Turkey Ginger Breakfast Patties (stay tuned for the recipe tomorrow):