Hope everyone had a terrific weekend!

First things first – a new recipe! I had 3 overly ripe bananas just sitting around, dying to be baked into something. I didn’t have any peanut butter to make my usual recipes (this is a rare phenomenon that there’s no pb in this house), so something new had to happen. Banana blueberry bread!

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1.5 cups oats
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3 ripe bananas
• 2 egg whites
• 1 TBSP Greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• cinnamon & vanilla, to taste

I’m pretty sure the directions are the same as every other recipe I make:

1. Mix everything together in a bowl.
2. Spray a square pan with cooking spray, pour in batter.
3. Bake at 350 for about 40 mins (keep in mind, my oven is crap, so this guideline may be way off).

The banana / blueberry combo is really good!  I added a scoop of protein powder to the batter and sprinkled some chopped walnuts on top, but it’s not necessary. Enjoy!…. now I’ll freeze mine until my next cheat night. 😦

Just because I’m on prep doesn’t mean I stop baking! Oddly, it makes me want to bake and experiment with food even more.

In other, non-fitness, non-food related news: we’re MOVING OUT! To be honest, we reached our breaking point living in the apartment and have decided to be out by the end of March. The stove and fridge are hooked up at the new house, and even though we won’t have countertops or all our furniture right off the bat, we don’t care. Living there will allow us to do smaller tasks throughout the week, and will make life in general easier (and more pleasant). It’s been five long months of living in 300 sq feet, waking up feeling like crap because of the chain smokers downstairs, and listening to their sad, angry, super annoying dog howl endlessly. See ya ghetto!

How about a workout? This weekend marks 10 weeks to the stage, and I don’t have much to report. My diet is pretty solid, and I haven’t had many cravings at this point. Starting to slowly add in some cardio throughout the week, after my training sessions, as a way to start getting my metabolism moving a bit before any diet changes take place.  I switched up my leg workout this week in an effort to put the focus on my glutes and hamstrings rather than my quads. Fact – even if you think you’re doing an exercise for a specific muscle, you could have secondary muscles taking over the work, therefore not hitting the primary muscle as well as hoped. This is my issue with legs. My quads just want to take over… leaving my butt less than exhausted, and bikini shows are won from the back, sadly. LOL. Here you go:

• 4 sets sumo squats (holding a dumbbell)
• 4 sets single-leg leg press
• 4 sets weighted lunges (front foot elevated on step riser)
• 5 sets hip thrusts with barbell (freeze & squeeze at the top)

Glute selfie? 10 weeks out.