Changing the way I eat

I have been thinking a lot about how I am going to eat through this whole postpartum journey. Actually all I can vainly think about is starting my workout and what I am going to eat and how I am going to approach the whole thing. Now that I am starting to slow down I mean REALLY slow down it is consuming my mind even more. I know that I should be resting more and I am but it's really hard when the past few years of your life have been active and healthy. 

So, I have been thinking about what approach helped me the best in my weight loss journey and truly it was eating good clean all natural foods. When I had the MOST success is when I went grain free for 21 days and my bloating and indigestion problems went away. Since I have gotten pregnant I let that lifestyle go because I wanted to enjoy pregnancy and give myself permission to indulge and to be honest I had not been following the grain free lifestyle for that long to have actually created a habit with it. 

I have slowly started to pick it back up again by making my breakfasts, most snacks, and lunches grain free and dinner sort of be a free for all a few times a week. It has been helping me put the focus back on the eating. With changing my diet this way over the past 2 weeks my weight gain has been steady or non-exsistent. I am over the 35 pound recommended gain so not gaining anything is ok as long as I am not losing weight I am ok with it. 

I started digging through my Paleo books and cooking up some of the recipes and I can tell you that some of the best recipes I have found have been from Against All Grain! Everything I have tried has been so tasty that you really don't miss the grains. 

Her website and cookbook have been the best resource for me. I love to cook with flavor and as long as flavor is there I am good to go. Hopefully, by the end of this pregnancy I will be able to make the full switch to a grain free diet. I don't think I will give up rice because as for now it doesn't effect my body in the way that certain vegetables and bread actually make me feel.

I plan on updating as time goes by and I gather some pictures of my meals if I really remember to keep everyone updated on what I am eating and some of my favorite resources that are out there. 

I still feel great being as pregnant as I am, even more so by eating the way that I am. I am not as lethargic or tired feeling and I have the energy to do more around the house that I thought before which helps me with the confidence in the way that I am eating and that makes me happy.

Just wanted to pop in on a little update on me :)

Well Fed Book Review

I had been obsessing over this book for weeks before I bought it and I downloaded the sample copy of the book and NEEEEDED to get it. SO I got my husband to order it for me LOL.

When I got the book it was smaller than I thought but it is packed full of content. I was NOT disappointed. The book was beautifully laid out it contained her story with the paleo diet, her background story and a cliffnotes version of the paleo diet. There are pictures of every recipe that is in the book and gives suggestions on different ways to make each recipe different or substitute different things which is really awesome! I love that there is multiple recipes in one ha ha more bang for my buck!

To be honest the biggest reason I bought the book is that she actually will teach you how to batch cook! I did it for a week and it was the easiest best week of my life but it was a little bit boring for me as I like to make different things and I got stuck in a rut but that was my fault. I made a few of her sauces but the Moroccan sauce was my favorite one, it had parsley, cilantro, olive oil and a few spices. It was delish on a salad and on some chicken.


The book has awesome recipe and I really want to try her brined chicken and even bought all of the ingredients to make it but I keep forgetting that I need to marinate it for a long time so I totally need to have it all ready for work and then add the liquid in the morning and cook it after work ha ha.

I really enjoyed the book and go to it and try to add one recipe every few weeks into my meal plan so that I can try new things and spice up my regular meals. If you want to get it you can snatch it up on Amazon and I don't think that you will be disappointed, if anything try out the sample that is linked up here and see for yourself :)

My favorite foods

So since I have been on the Paleo train I have found my few favorite foods that I have clung to and eat regularly.

Sauteed with some sesame oil and coconut aminos

Just baked or in soup

I use it as my starch when I get tired of sweet taters and regular ones

YUMMMM Aminos and sesame oil works just fine or olive oil and garlic powder is awesome too

daily salads that I eat for lunch it fast easy and healthy

I have eaten some other vegetables but these are the ones that I lean to more often. I have bought a few meal plans and I love this baked and brined chicken from the BUTI meal plans. It is some apple cider vinegar and coconut aminos mixed together in even parts and you marinate it for at least an hour bake on 350 until it is no longer pink and eat it up. I usually eat it with my salads it makes a good combo. I am in love with it and it has become the only way that I marinate my chicken now when I am making it with a salad.

I have a few ideas for posts so that this blog doesn't die. I feel like since I am on maintenance mode it's harder for me to come up with ideas on content especially since I have been more focused on my photography and expanding my family.

I am going to do some book reviews and provide some helpful tips that helped me lose weight and maintain the weight that I have now as well as some of the struggles that I am currently going through with weight to continue to hopefully still be an inspiration and a voice on healthy nutritional tips.

Until next time!

Paleo adventures!

Well I have been at this Paleo "thing" for awhile now and I have had some serious mis-steps like eating gluten yesterday because I did not prepare any food at a meeting that I went to. I now know that I am gluten sensitive for SURE. I was bloated, I got a super mega headache from hell, I was very very lethargic, and I just didn't want to do anything but sleep. I went to my bible study yawning and it is not really normal for the person that I have been. What did I eat? Oh ya know pasta and one hella good chocolate chip cookie and 3 mini eclairs. I am totally the kind of person that is like well if I already messed up might as well top it off ha ha. That is NOT the mentality to have trust me because I felt like garbage afterwards and SO guilty it wasn't even worth it!

It takes 2 weeks to get gluten out of your body so basically I have to start over......super fail right? To a degree yes, but I learned something that I am intolerant to gluten and I was able to FEEL what food actually did to me.  I know salt from processed food is killer on my weight and makes me gain at least 3 pounds in one sitting. That's terrible if you asked me! I am coming to a point where if my clothes fit I am fine though I don't really weigh myself until things start fitting me "not right" and I am typically right about my being heavier. Anyway back to the Paleo

I have found that through this process I have been more creative in the kitchen but I still make a lot of mistakes in regards to this new lifestyle and the choices that I make outside of my home. I think the grace period of trying it out is over and I have to decide if this is what I am going to do or not. Mostly for my sanity and I know that the answer is yes I am going to stick with it. I felt (before yesterday) that I was at my optimal health. I have made a few recipes on my own which I am super stoked about and I feel that I have dipped my toes in the water long enough to say that this is the way that I want to go and what solidified that for me the way BLOAT that I am carrying today and how I ballooned so bad that I had to unbutton my pants which is something I have not done in a very long time. 

Next week I am going to start the Whole 30. 

It is a "program" that helps you get your nutrition on track and help heal you from the inside out. I was going to start on October 1 and that makes a lot of sense to me but the sooner I do this and go through with it the better it will be for my sanity. Just be determined and get it done right? If you are interested in doing it let me know in the comments and I can hook you up with everything that you need to do it! I would be so excited to have some buddies around.

Lessons on living a healthy lifestyle

I am back from the wedding that I was at and I am all settled in to the routine of that thing called daily life. The wedding was fun, there were lots of laughs dancing and drama but would it be a wedding without any of that? Probably, but not in my circle of friends! HA HA!

So now that I am back all the weight that I have lost has crept right back up but I knew that was going to happen. I went out yesterday afternoon with my family and I put on jeans that normally give me a little bit of breathing room and they fit. Not a bad thing to say the last but DAMN I know that I have to start all over again.......which is DOOKIE! I did learn a few things from that trip that I am taking back with me and embracing as a learning process.

Getting ready for the wedding :)

As I go through my journey with my weight I am constantly learning new things about health and nutrition and I love it. Sometimes it is at the cost of me gaining some weight but seriously I gained a few pounds but I had fun doing it and life isn't all about weight its about the memories and the relationships that you make in this world. Weight and health IS important but it is not the only facet of life.

Before I went to the wedding I went on a pretty strict paleo diet and I felt the best that I had ever felt in my life. I guess I had some serious inflammation and that went down and my stomach was flatter that I had ever seen it. I felt confident and I loved it! When I went to Cali all the paleo went out the window because we were just simply too busy to do anything (It was too new for me to make a serious lifestyle change) and when we went out to eat I indulged BIG time........I went to a luau and ate three plates of food where one of them was desert! ha ha ha! Jesus help me! But you know what we hadn't eaten all day and that was the first real meal we had.

Lesson 1: Fuel your body through out the day so that you are not binging! 

Local food from the Farmers Market I went to last week!

I seriously ate 1-2 meals a day while I was there, which was booty and I should have made time for my health and I didn't. It almost cost me getting into the dress on the wedding day.....2 people had to zip me up! What a  mess it was! I seriously freaked out for 5 minutes that damned thing was WAY too tight the whole night and was uber uncomfortable! It fit my boobies or lack thereof didn't show and it was GREAT!

I drank A LOT!!!!!! I was on vacation, I didn't have to be a Mom or have to get up for work so I totally indulged on that as well. I don't know of many people that would have done anything differently but!

Lesson 2: Drinking will make you fat! You will eat things that you normally wouldn't and alcohol has sugars in it and it will turn to fat because you aren't burning it. 

Yes I totally ate all those plates in front of me!

We slept about 5 hours a night. 4 AM was a normal thing and waking up at 9-9:30 became a serious thing. We had so many wedding projects left to do and family was in town and we went sight seeing which put the wedding on the back burner so when my friend and I got home we were kind of punished with wedding projects which was cool I had gone early to help her out but DAMN I was tired. Guess what happened? When I got home I caught the nastiest cold and I can only assume that  it was because of my lack of rest, the lack of nutrition that I was putting into my body, and the drinking that happened almost nightly. My body was not running like the machine that I had made it previously going to Cali.

Lesson 3: Get your REST! It is essential in keeping your body regulated and boosting all of your bodies natural ay of keeping you healthy. 

Bachelorette Partay!!

My sicky soupies!

When I came back home it was really hard for me to fall back into my eating and sleeping schedule. I got a really bad cold as I had said before and I ate a lot of salty soup and barley eating because I didn't have an appetite. I was making up for all the lost sleep that I had and then battling this cold. It took me about a week. Tuesday was the first day I had worked out since the beginning of August.........I was sore as heck and I still get sore. I had to take an additional rest day for T25 to add in some Yoga because everything was so stiff. Crazy right! I was at what I thought ultimate performance......not so much! I lost it all and I am back at ground zero. I am still having problems on the grain free Paleo front as I am resorting to eating them again.

This week begins my Paleo journey again with T25 and maybe some Crossfit here and there. We shall see but I kind of want to start running again so it may be a mixture of everything that I like with T25 as the base workout.


I know that all of these things happened to me because I am a person of routine and I don't ever steer away from it. I don't take vacations by myself, and when I do take vacations it is to go and see my son at my parents house and I have control over what I eat. I am sad to report that I gained weight back but I am happy because I am have a learning experience to go back to and I didn't let myself get too carried away. I went there weighing 121 and I am 125.6 now and already everything is tighter.....not so good but it is going back to my "happy weight" very soon!

I have added some pictures of my time in Cali for your enjoyment :)

Weight and Paleo....again

A few weeks ago I was desperately seeking some weight loss because I could not fit into my bridesmaid dress. I had no idea that those damned things ran small so I was essentially wearing a smaller size than my normal?? Anyway It wouldn't fit and I seriously took it to the seamstress and she said that I needed 2 inches taken out but she could only give me one! I had three weeks until the wedding and losing 5 pounds was more of a mind &*&%^ than anything else. I couldn't do it because I kept sabotaging myself with the foods the kids were eating candy, popcorn, eating out ect.

Needless to say I got "desperate" and bought this meal plan and it was a grain free meal plan. I was like eh WHATEVER I need to lose these few pounds or inches so I can get into this dress. I knew that this way of thinking wasn't healthy but what was I going to do? I HAD to fit into this dress. I am in the military supporting 2 kids and a house and I just can't throw $150 out the window because a dress doesn't fit.

SIDENOTE! I DO NOT CARE THIS BAD EVER ABOUT WEIGHING OR LOOKING A CERTAIN WAY THIS DRESS WAS GOING TO POTENTIALLY COST ME $150 + THAT I DON'T HAVE TO SPEND!

I made it through the first week on the meal plan and it wasn't that hard but I did eat some popcorn (that and chicken wings are my vice) I wanted sugar one day and sugar was in this popcorn so I ate it LOL. Not so great of a first week but I managed. I ate grain free the rest of the week. You know the story because I posted pictures on my last blog post. So fast forward. I am still doing the meal plan the dress fits and I feel better than ever! I have no complaints what so ever and that makes me happy because I thought that it was going to be terrible lol I have lost minimal inches and lost a pound from it BUT I lost the inflammation that I was having due to maybe I assume grains?

On that same weekend my husband told me the best news that I have heard in years! Other than the fact that we were leaving Kodiak, AK. LOL He was ready to have baby #3 with me! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I have never planned a baby the way my husband and I are planning it now and we are going to start trying here very soon. Which makes me ecstatic but also scares the living crap out of me. My last 2 pregnancies I had a handful of these "amazing" pregnancy ailments and I don't really want to experience them again :( I did not have enjoyable pregnancies because of these ailments and I want a healthier lifestyle for me and my new baby.

I didn't really know that grain-free was a part of being paleo, so when I started doing some research on grain free diets google hooked me up with Paleo diets lol. Paleo seems to fit what I am doing with my diet though because I am not eating legumes, dairy, or grains. I cannot really digest lactose so I try to stay away from it unless it comes to pizza lol. Anyway I have been doing a lot of research on how eating less carbohydrates and keeping a good diet for myself would help the baby and the primal way seems to make sense to me. I know I have gone vegan and vegetarian and I may seem a bit faddish but I don't blog about every single facet of my healthy lifestyle. Giving up grains has reduced my flatulence, I am not so tired all the time, and I can eat with no bounds but I don't over eat. I don't get bloated after I eat and I don't get the FULL feeling anymore like I did when I would eat breads and pastas. I would ALWAYS go to the cupboard for something sweet after having a starch like that other than oatmeal. So for right now I am just going with the flow.

If/when I get pregnant I will totally blog my whole experience because I think that people should know about it. I know there aren't many blogs out there now and the ones that are have very little information as to what the person ate and how it helped them and what not and they stuck to the general pregnancy aspect of it. I guess over the next few days I will talk about my past pregnancies and how I felt about them and the symptoms that I had with each of them to keep you posted.

What is Paleo? The Cliffnotes version

I know that in another post awhile ago I talked about eating Paleo for a week and I never really did lol. 

I recently stumbled upon more information and I have become seriously intrigued and I wanted to post an overview of what it is. Paleo is first and foremost a lifestyle, it is usually taken on by people who do Crossfit and that is why I believe it has become so popular but also because of the increase in autoimmune diseases in the United States. I of course stumbled upon it the second time by accident because I was eating grain free and lactose free which is essentially Paleo. 

I don't really like to label myself as anything but I eat like everyone else. Vegetarianism didn't work for me because I had a family that ate meat and it was too hard to see all the meat there and I WANTED to eat it. It was just something that was not for me and I don't necessarily have the budget to buy groceries for three different diets. My husband wasn't on board at all and that was fine with me but I held on as long as I could and it seriously did turn out to also be WAY too expensive. SO, I went back to my normal eating habits and I ended up eating a lot of processed foods such as Cliff Bars and that led to drinking and eating lots and lots of popcorn, late night snacking and it led to my weight gain. Ok so you know the rest of the story and here I am today. Please be reminded that I just started this over a week ago and I am still new to this whole idea. SO what is Paleo. 

Paleo is a lifestyle that;

Tries to mimic the hunters and gatherers from the stone ages and such. 
They eat full fat GRASS FED beef and pork without antibiotics or hormones. 
Shell fish and fish
Poultry and eggs that are cage free. 
Organ meats 
Homemade bone broth
Starches such as sweet potato, plaintains root vegetables, squash ect. 

 

They DO NOT EAT

Grains of any kind
Dairy unless it is raw and not pasteurized
Legumes of any kind
Soy  

It is all natural clean eating just like Tosca Reno's Eat Clean diet with some restrictions. The whole premise of the Paleo diet is that it is to heal the gut and decrease inflammation, bloating, gas, indigestion, lose unwanted body fat through eating foods that were similar to those of our ancestors. It is a lifestyle that is geared through healing people by eating the foods that are available to us in the least processed way possible. 

MY THOUGHTS:

I think that this is a lifestyle that is tough on those that eat too much processed food. I do think that it is totally doable for someone that suffers from gluten intolerance (bloating, gas, fullness, uncomfort after eating a meal containing a food that has gluten). I think that it will heal inflammation as I saw it in my own body. I do think that it requires some research and I don't think that you should give up anything at once. One thing at a time should do and then eliminate little by little and re-introduce things later if you feel that you can handle them and if they iritate you than you probably shouldn't be eating it anyway. 

After a week of eating Paleo and eating Chipolte I had chicken, beans, rice and avocado. It did not sit well with my stomach and even though I did not isolate the foods to distinguish if it was the beans or the rice the way I felt today was enough to know that I don't want to eat either again. I gained 3 pounds overnight and I have bee VERY bloated all day. I believe that this lifestyle works and I am very eager to get back from San Diego, get pregnant and live this lifestyle to the fullest. I feel that I am onto something here and if I am right OH boy it is going to be life changing for me :)

 

Paleo anyone??

** I am not being endorsed or paid for this post **

So while I was on FB yesterday I found a like page for emeals. I went and checked out the website and I clicked on the several different meal plans that they offer and it was really cool. I was able to score a whole meal plan from the website and it was a Paleo meal plan. The cool thing is, is that they give you a meal plan and then they provide you with a grocery list and if you pick a grocery store they can average out what you are going to spend for the weeks worth of dinners.

I have heard a lot about the Paleo DINNER meal plan on FB and on some of the blogs that I read on my free time and I was curious about the way that they ate but didn't really want to do all the leg work in the way of eating because I sort of thought that it was a fad type diet but I looked over the meal plan and it is VERY CLEAN and very healthy so I am going to accept the emeals Paleo Challenge! I am going to start next week.

So all week for 7 days I will be having a Paleo meal dinner. The menu includes;

Asian spiced salmon, crustless herb quiche, maple glazed chicken, grilled tilapia fillets, pork tenderloin with peach salsa, mustard thyme roasted chicken, blackened skirt steak. They all include sides which look delicious too. I will attempt to post pictures of my dinner meals every night and review what they tasted like and show my receipt. If I like the meal plan I may subscribe to the service and make it my go-to meal planner! I am excited to try this!!!!!!