Happy Sunday everyone! How has the New Year been treating you? Has anyone tried to follow along these meals plans? I know it will be much more helpful one I compile more days on here for guidance, but always just use these days as a guide for others! Example: mix it up by changing out the lean protein I call for, just be sure to use the same amount. Smart choices for protein include chicken breast (duh!), beans (use about 1/2 cup for every 3 – 4oz. of lean protein called for), shrimp, tilapia, extra-lean ground beef, lean ground turkey, lean beefsteak such as tenderloin or even flank steak, or even simple hard-boiled egg whites are packed with protein!

Eating healthy and having a low-calorie lifestyle doesn’t have to be boring...

Hi guys! Happy New Year! Sorry for the lack of recipes on my blog lately. No real excuse more than being too busy. I promise, it’s one of my new year’s resolutions to post a recipe once a week. Starting today!

Here’s a quick, easy, and convenient dinner option for a busy weeknight. It fits perfectly into the meal plans I have been sharing, and it only requires simple and very few ingredients. It reheats well for lunch the next day, too!

Feel free to double the recipe to make four servings. Note that the nutritionals only factor in half of the marinade since you discard at least half before cooking the chicken.

If you haven’t noticed, I have an obsession with spaghetti squash...

Hi all!

As promised, each Sunday (and hopefully more if I have time! We’re moving homes soon…) you will get a new day in your meal plan schedule to slim down and shape up in 2014. Let me know how you like it! Make sure to fit in some exercise into your days to increase and help your metabolism, state of mind, and weight loss!

Meal 1 - 260 calories 

1 double fiber English muffin (or whole wheat English muffin with about 120 calories or less) + 2 sprays spray butter & sprinkle of cinnamon + 4 egg whites cooked w/1 cup spinach, 1 cup raspberries

black coffee with Truvia, unsweetened green tea with lemon, 24 oz water

Meal 2 - 110 calories

1 large Grapefruit with 1 packet truvia + 1 Babybel Light cheese

Meal 3 – 350 calories

Turkey sandwich made with 3 oz...

Happy 2014! Wow, I can’t believe how fast 2013 flew by, and this post is a long time coming! I have been wanting to share with you all how I do a healthy slim down, and also introduce you to my healthy eating lifestyle by sharing an eating plan with exercise tips. Below you will find my journey to a new year slim-down and the first day of meals and snacks to follow. Once or more a week I will be posting new recipe ideas and meal ideas in the form of a new day.

I  want to have a healthy approach to slimming down and focusing on clean and healthy eating habits. I want to share with you my struggles and my successes along the way. So here it goes.

Last year, I discovered Tone It Up! A fitness blog (and now TV show and so much more!) that is SO inspiring...

And it begins. My attempt to incorporate spaghetti squash into every meal possible. Honestly, I think it really can be used as a carb swap in almost any kind of dish. And I really never even considered using it in a Mexican dish until I was left with some enchilada chicken and cooked spaghetti squash. Wa-la! Low carb, low cal, flavor-loaded enchilada bowls!

This is easy, fun, and healthy. Cook up your chicken ahead of time and just toss it in the sauce right before constructing! Get a large squash, about 6 lbs, and it should easily yield the 6-cups the recipe calls for. Feel free to alter the amount of squash if necessary. It’s only 42 calories a cup!

To cook spaghetti squash, nuke it whole in the microwave for 5 minutes...

Time for a little indulgence. It’s Halloween after all!  I am all for a healthy lifestyle, but I also think that includes a little decadence here and there. These cupcakes are perfect for those times! I think I have expressed my love for Sally’s Baking Addiction before, and here I go again. If you haven’t yet, head over to her blog. It’s seriously adorable and packed with amazing treats! I have been eyeing these from-scratch funfetti cupcakes for quite some time. I finally decided to try them out.

Confession time: I adore boxed cake mix and I LOVEEEEE packaged frosting. And no matter what I do, no matter how many times I try to make baked goods from scratch (with the exception of cookies) I always end up preferring the packaged kind more...

Woooooo!! Happy 1st birthday to Callie Cooks (Sept 18)! I really have a hard time believing it’s already been 1 year since my very first post: Funfetti Donuts. That very first post actually made appearances on Gourmet Live and Babble. Pretty exciting! In addition, my Carrot Cake Donuts made the cut on a Buzz Feed post!!! Super exciting! I am so honored that my recipes have been linked to by those just mentioned and also other blogs.

Also exciting? I broke the over 3,000 visits per month this week too! That was a nice b-day gift.

I have to say I am super proud of how far CC has come, and am so excited to see where it will go as I really have been trying to put more work and effort into it lately. I dream of having my own cookbook someday.

As you may know, I do largely contribute to reci...

While I typically make simple, clean dinners, with the loom of fall on us (HA! It’s still 90 degrees in the valley of LA) a comforting baked pasta dish sounded appropriate. I’ve been eyeing this recipe on Kraft.com for quite some time, wanting to make a few adjustments to bulk it up and bring down the calories. The recipe itself really isn’t all that bad, it even qualifies as a “Healthy Living” recipe for Kraft. My thing is I love HUGE serving sizes. And while this does have a pretty impressive serving size of 1 1/2 cups for 390 calories, I wanted to make it even more impressive.

I had to make this twice before I was happy with it. The first time around I had used the original recipe’s sauce cream cheese, chicken broth, sour cream mixture...

So admission: this recipe was totally supposed to be a burger, but the meat mixture was too thin to hold as a burger, so I got creative and divided it up into a muffin tin. Meatloaf minis! Ta-da!

These are full of buffalo flavor, with none of the fat from being fried. Yes, these are super-high in sodium, due to the wing sauce, which is loaded with sodium. I don’t recommend you eat these often, but they are a great swap for when you have a wing craving. You could also eliminate the cheese on top to avoid some sodium (and calories & fat) too!

This is a great recipe for a weeknight dinner. These are simple, low-cal, and they come together in less than an hour!

Hope you like them!

Enjoy!

xoxo

Callie

Buffalo Chicken Meatloaf Minis

Serves 4

2 meatloaf minis: 260 calories, 13g fat, 1,538mg sodi...

Hi!

So sorry I have been a little MIA lately. I kept telling myself I needed to write this post as I made and photographed it weeks ago, but I either was too busy, or too lazy to do it!

Normally I spend my Saturday mornings/afternoons working on my blog, but it’s been a couple busy weeks! Last weekend my best friend (basically my sister) and her friend came to visit me. I took Friday off and we spent it in Disneyland! It was such a great day!

Saturday the three of us met up with 3 other friends of mine, and we hung out at a pool in downtown LA and then went to see the amazing miss Taylor Swift!

It was such a great, long weekend with great friends! Nevertheless, I didn’t have any time to share a recipe with you all until now!

This recipe is tasty and unique! My boyfriend, Jake,...