Spaghetti Squash!

By Ciara Cappo

Last month I set a goal for myself to eat healthier and clean up my diet. I set this goal for myself in order to have a healthier lifestyle. Sometimes we can go day to day and not realize how much the things we put in our mouth affect our body. The things we consume can affect our bodily functions, energy and mood. One thing you should take notice of when changing your diet is how your body feels and if there are any changes that occur with your body during this time. I have become more aware of how my body feels since changing my diet, when eating certain things I have noticed what my body does and does not like. I have noticed that since cleaning up my diet I have felt better and seem to have more energy than before!

 I started my ‘clean’ diet by eating as much fresh fruits and vegetables as possible, chicken and fish, and 

started eating brown rice instead of white. I come from an Asian culture so switching over to brown rice was very difficult for me luckily I found a brown rice and quinoa medley that I like and tastes great! A great tip for making diet and lifestyle changes such as this is to find foods that go along with your change and also taste good. If you don’t enjoy what you are eating, you will be least likely to follow your diet change. Most of the time I have been altering recipes I currently use to incorporate fresh ingredients but the other night I tried a completely new recipe. I made spaghetti squash! I first heard of this recipe from a woman I met while working- she said her granddaughter loved it. I thought to myself “if kids love it, then why wouldn’t I?” At my next grocery store visit I happened to walk past the squash and noticed a recipe sticker attached to it, it was the recipe for spaghetti squash. It was a sign! If you’re lucky enough to find a squash that comes with directions you should definitely try it.

Spaghetti squash was somewhat easy to make. Basically instead of using traditional spaghetti noodles for the pasta, you cook and string the squash to use as noodles. You can add your usual pasta sauce or make your own like I did.

1.     You must poke holes with a fork around the entire squash.

2.     Next you microwave the squash for 8-10 minutes or until the skin begins to soften. Carefully remove squash, cut in half and remove seeds.

3.     Using a fork, scrape along the inside of the squash. This will cause the squash to peel off in a stringy fashion. Do this to both halves of the squash until the desired amount of “noodles” are obtained.

4.     Now you are ready to add your homemade sauce and enjoy!

Here are a few pictures from my experience with this dish

What a Great Quarter!



We have just finished up our second quarter as a club and it has been been full of progress. We had very high hopes for this quarter, setting big goals and I have to say that we have made tremendous progress as a group. We have now established a website, serving as a home-base to our organization and have begun to produce educational articles in blog format to further support our mission of reaching out to the online community. We also held The Work Hard Play Hard Fundraiser as one of our many upcoming fundraisers. The event had a great turn out and served as a great way for us to get exposure and funding as an upcoming club. Beginning last week, we launched our own workout program as a club. Each week we will be meeting on a voluntary basis to practice what we preach and get a great workout in! Thus far, it has been a fun experience and we will be continuing this in the future.

And now on to the good stuff...

Three weeks ago, we held our first Healthy Choices Seminar! We got the opportunity to have an awesome time sharing exercise and nutrition with 15 kids at San Jose Family Supportive Housing. The event was such a great experience for all of us and we learned a tremendous amount from the hour we spent there. We are incredibly excited to have the chance to return there in the future and implement our program in many other locations throughout The Bay Area.

We have taken some huge steps in the right direction in the last 10 weeks and we don't plan on stopping by any means. We have many more goals set for the upcoming quarter and have seminars lined up for the new year. I can't wait to see how much our club will grow in the coming year. Thank you all for your support, we appreciate all that we have recieved and are excited to continue our efforts in changing The Bay Area for the better!