Happy Fourth of July!

I feel that the Fourth of July really puts you in that Summer mood! I'm totally excited for fireworks (: I know that many of my readers out there are trying to stay healthy and not eat a lot of junk food! So, I wanted to share with you guys a couple recipes that I'm making with my dad today and a few tips on how to snack lightly! 

• First off, don't be too uptight on what you eat today, meaning, allow yourself so wiggle room. Just think, you can work extra hard on your workout tomorrow and be fine. The more you restrict yourself, the more likely you will binge!
• If you have already started munching on all the junk food and can't stop, don't beat yourself up about. There's always a new day tomorrow. I like to do a detox the day after I eat super unhealthy meaning drinking nothing but water the day after and munching on fruits and veggies all day. Also remember, one pound is equal to 3,500 calories.
• Before you eat, drink a glass of water it will fill up a little bit of space in your stomach and not make you over eat.
• If your craving something sweet, try adding a low-cal Crystal Light packet to your water to curve your sweet tooth. If your still craving whatever it is after 20 minutes, then go ahead and have a piece of the darn thing! Just make it a reasonably sized one!
• When at parties, try to stay away from the snack table. For instance, don't stand and chat by it that will make you more likely to grab things to snack on. 
• If you think that there won't be any healthy snacks, pack your own. ( I always pack a couple things just in case.) A few of my favorite things to pack are portion controlled low-fat chips, an apple or a kiwi, grapes, edamame, and a granola bar.
• If you want to snack on things go for things that aren't too sugary, fried, or grease soaked. So if you want chips, lean more toward the ones that have less grease.

This Forth of July my parents are trying to watch what they eat. Our family decided to make  kabobs on the grill, which is extremely easy and fun. Each person in our family is able to customize their kabob. There really isn't a recipe we use for this because we just pick out stuff that sounds good. All you need is skewers and your good to go. We like to put things like shrimp, scallops, lean mean, chicken, green and red peppers, mushrooms, and more! Of course, those don't all go on one. We usually pick three to four things we like and create a pattern on the skewer. Another great thing about kabobs is, you can make dessert ones too! We like to buy apples, pineapple, mango, and strawberries. Then you place them on the skewers and grill them until they get a nice golden color.  Squeeze a bit of lemon juice on them to add a little bit to the flavor. Then you can either allow them to cool and drizzle with a bit of white and milk chocolate or create a special dip for them. The dip is very simple, its just plain vanilla yogurt with cinnamon added to your taste. Once you've mixed that together, your finished!