vegetarian – Sweat, Love, & Macros

Vegan Chocolate-Peanut Butter-Banana Pancakes & Waffles

Chocolate, peanut butter, and banana pancakes and waffles…that are vegan?! 😳😍🤤👌

I used this vegan protein smoothie powder from Vega mixed with banana, peanut butter, and almond milk to make them!

20g Peanut Butter mixed with 3/4 cup almond milk and 1/2 tsp of baking power

Cooked mini pancakes in a skillet and mine waffles in my mini waffle iron.

Macros: 365 calories 36P/29C/12F for the whole plate!

Macro Friendly Pasta Salad

Macro Friendly Pasta Salad that only requires 4 ingredients! Perfect side dish to bring to any party or super simple dish to make for a meal prep! Shown above is a serving of the pasta salad which comes out to 128g in weight and 162 calories 6P/27C/3F. The big thing that can make pasta salad have not the friendliest macros is that they can be high in fat from a large amount of oil based dressings or high fat additions like cheese, avocado, and olives. Since pasta salad is typically a party food/side and since most parties will already have foods/treats that are higher in fats then I thought having a lighter and easy pasta salad could be a great recipe to have!

I kept this pasta salad super simple, but you can definitely add in more veggies to make it MORE nutrient dense! I added sautéed spinach to it here and loved it! And since this recipe is so low in fat you can have the easy option to add in those other fats without worrying about overdoing it on the fat macros for this dish 🤗

I LOVE these Wacky Mac Veggie Spirals! Easy to make and packed with nutrient dense ingredients!

I also added a 10 oz container of grape tomatoes which I sliced with this cool trick I saw on the Food Network! You simply put a bunch of your tomatoes between two plates and then slide a knife between the plates to cut the tomatoes!

Saves A BUNCH OF TIME as opposed to slicing them individually!

Remember how I was mentioning that a lot of pasta salads are higher in fat because of their dressings? Well here’s my solution! I still used a delicious high fat Roasted Tomato, Parmesan, & Basil Dressing BUT I kept it in moderation by only using 4 tbsp(60g) (while most pasta salad recipes say to use an entire bottle of Italian dressing) and mixed it with 75g Nonfat Greek Yogurt, salt, and a bit of water. This let me have that great taste without overdoing it on the calories!

I added in teaspoons of water as I whisked it to check that I was getting a good dressing consistency. It ended up being probably 1.5 tbsp of water but this can vary depending on the greek yogurt and salad dressing you mix it with.

Last step is to toss the pasta and tomatoes in the sauce and enjoy!

I figured out that a serving was 128g by weighing my container before adding anything (500g) and then weighing it again after I added everything (1785g) and subtracting those amounts to make the total weight of the pasta salad 1285g. Then I just divided that by 10 to say that it makes 10 servings at 128g each.

Macros per serving:

Ingredient List:

Macro Friendly 5 Layer Dip

You guys! I’m too excited about this one! A Macro Friendly 5 Layer Dip?! Perfect for any party and it’s packed with nutrient dense ingredients that you’ll feel good about! I made a few tweaks from a classic 5 layer dip to make this dip almost 40 calories less than a regular dip with less fat grams and more protein!

Layer1: The first tweak I made from a classic dip to bring in more protein and less fat is that I used steamed lentils instead of beans for the base! I got my lentils pre-steamed from Trader Joe’s, so all I had to do was puree 1.5 cups lentils in my food processor with half a tbsp of extra virgin olive oil to get a good base.

Layer 2: Next layer is 175g mashed avocado. Nothing extra added because why ruin a good thing 🥑

Layer 3: Pico de gallo! I used my vegetable chopper to make this pico de gallo in less than a minute! I sliced 300g tomato and 100g onion before chopping so that it gave me more even cuts.

And pulsed the tomato and onion mixture in my food processor with cilantro and salt just to mix it a little bit more.

Layer 4: Cayenne Powder & Cilantro seasoned Greek yogurt instead of sour cream! This is one of the tweaks to the original recipe that makes it SO much more macro friendly! 1 cup nonfat greek yogurt has the macros of 140 calories 24P/10C/0F while 1 cup sour cream is 480 calories 8P/16C/48F!!

I used 12 oz non fat greek yogurt, 1 tbsp cayenne powder, and 1 tbsp cilantro flakes with a pinch of salt for a great kick of flavor!

Layer 5: Reduced Fat Mexican Cheese! This last layer helps make this dip more macro friendly than the original because it’s lower in fat and higher in protein than regular Mexican Cheese. Using the reduced fat lowers the recipe by 40 calories and 4g of fat!