Welcome!

Welcome to Delicious & Nutritious! I've been wanting to start this blog for a long time and I've finally done it. Eating healthy is something that has become really important to me over the last few years. I would by no stretch of the imagination call myself a health nut but I have learned a lot about food as I've struggled to lose weight and reach my goals. I always knew that "diet" was about eating less and exercising more but for some reason that never really clicked. To me that just meant exercise a lot and eat as little as possible. Well folks...I like food WAY too much so that never worked for me. Long story short I knew I needed to get educated. So I joined a gym and invested in a personal trainer (best investment I've ever made by the way). Maybe I was just lucky but I think I got the best guy they had. He pushed me hard and helped me to realize that meeting my goals was possible as long as I wanted it bad enough. But even more important he taught me about the importance of nutrition. I came to understand that being healthy is about making good food choices not about depriving yourself of food or eating what you hate just because you think that it's good for you. It's about eating the food you enjoy in moderation and paring foods together correctly so that you have a well balanced meal so that you stay satisfied and have energy to do the things that you enjoy doing.

So now to the point...I really enjoy cooking but I don't get to spend a lot of time in the kitchen since I work full-time so I am always looking for meals that are quick, easy and healthy. I go online a lot looking for recipes but often get discouraged because the "quick easy meal" ideas out there are generally high in calories, use foods I don't enjoy, require ingredients I don't normally buy or are complicated to prepare. Hence the reason I decided to start this blog. I wanted to share some of the recipes I have found that are quick, easy, delicious and nutritious. But I don't want to have all the fun and that's where all of you come in. I invite all of you to share your recipes and meal ideas too. If you want to submit something to be posted send it to the email listed on the sidebar and I will review and post it. But first you have to do your homework...if you don't know how many calories are in your recipe use my favorite website (also in the sidebar) called CalorieKing to find out how many calories are in each ingredient and then add them up, divide by the number of servings and WALA! You know your total. Not only will this make it easier for me to post your recipes but you will also learn a lot about what you've been eating. I was shocked when I first started doing this. I realized that even pairing a lot of good, healthy foods together can cause a meal to be high in calories. So regardless of where you are in life, losing or maintaining, I hope this can be a good resource to get ideas. So happy cooking!

Note: If you find your recipe online please provide the link so that I can make a reference to it in your post. Thanks!