Backwards

I've been feeling a bit queasy the past several days.  I'm not entirely sure why and I hope that I'm not getting sick.  We are leaving on Saturday to go on vacation for a week to Florida!  We are not going to Disney World since that is a four hour drive from where we are staying, but we are planning on spending a lot of time at the beach.  Living in a land locked state the kids are super excited to go to the beach.  They see the beach portrayed on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and they are so excited to go play in the water and in the sand.  We went to Walmart today and they each got a new coloring book and a very small box of crayons for the plane ride.  I'm going to charge my old DS and get out the two kids games I have for it and bring that.  We are flying on frequent flyer miles which means we have the longest rout that makes absolutely no sense.  We will be having a very long travel day.  Leaving our house at 8:15 in the morning, plane leaves at 11:30 and then we have a layover in Texas before we catch our plane to Florida.  We land in Florida at 7:10pm, with time changes that is 5:10 our time, but still a very long day and I hope the kids are up for it.  We have decided to bring our car seats instead of trying to risk renting.  It's more to carry on but I think it is the best option being cheaper, and safer.  I'm more worried about the flight back, which has us arriving in Denver at 10:30pm which will be 12:30pm Florida time.  But I don't want to think about that right now. 

I did Turbo Fire 40 yesterday and today I started doing Fire 45 but just felt tired and rather sick so I switched to doing Zumba Wii.  I played my flute since I'm going to my grandparent's house on Thursday to play for them.  I feel like some days I play really well and other days I sound like crap.  I wonder why that is, I guess I should ask my brother about it, he is a musician, and ask him if he has days where he just can't play (or at least feels like he can't play) and misses all the notes and sounds like crap.  I've been out of the music loop for so long that I can't remember ever having good days and bad days.... Of course I think I always tried to get out of practicing in High School, so I did a minimal amount of it.  I'm starting to look through my Christmas music to play for my grandparents so I'm pretty excited about that.  I love playing Christmas music.  I'm going to be playing a concert with my sister and brother for all the family at my parent's house and then I'm planning on playing a couple times for my grandparents.  I have some old Christmas books from High School with the play along CDs.  Yeah, that's cool ;-) Anyway, they seem to enjoy it.  I have enough songs I want to play for at least two and a half visits of pure Christmas music.  I am not sure if I will have time to practice it all.  I think a lot of it is pretty easy stuff though.  That's always good for my self esteem. 

I've been working on eating healthy, not been quite as successful the past few days staying out of the sweets.  Ironically enough my stomach was really hurting after dinner and Matt wanted dessert really bad, so of course I made cookies for him.  I ate some of the cookies because, well, they are homemade cookies and they are hard to resist, upset stomach or no.  And the weirdest thing happened.... I actually felt better!  What is that all about?  That is totally backwards, I should be eating healthy and feeling good and eating bad and feeling bad, but today I ate healthy and felt bad and ate unhealthy and felt good.  Weird.  I'm not sure what is going on there. 

I'm going to try to get one more post in before we leave for Florida but Friday will be lots of preparations.  Maybe Thursday night.

The Next Phase

Today has squarely landed me in the next phase, if yesterday was the kill all the things phase, then today is the I just want to nap phase.  I was tired all day.  I felt like I had no energy at all.  I wanted to workout at home in the middle of the day today but that didn't happen.  I played my flute instead, which at least was productive.  And then I was really hungry in the afternoon.  I just wanted to keep eating and eating.  I think it was the Pho that messed me up.  This time around I'm allowing myself to eat rice and not worrying about sugar or soy in sauces and marinades when I eat out so Pho is okay.  Except it made me feel like crap.  Which I was pretty surprised about.  I feel incredibly boated and my stomach hurts right now and the Pho is the only thing I ate today that was off plan.  In fact everything else I ate today was leftovers.  Leftovers for breakfast and dinner, Pho for lunch.  So I know it was the Pho.  Ugh, that stinks because that is one of our family's favorite restaurants to go to for lunch.  I guess I will start having to push to go somewhere else or try to find something on the menu that doesn't make me feel so sick.  Basically they have noodle bowls and Pho.... I guess I could opt for the spring rolls on the appetizer menu? 

Lily was feeling better today, or at least acting exactly the opposite of yesterday.  If she was tired and lethargic yesterday she was hyper and spastic today.  By 6pm she had completely fallen apart.  She was complaining of her eyes hurting and her teeth hurting.  I gave her some medicine and put her to bed which she was none too happy about. 

Matt dove into the pumpkin pie tonight and said that it was really amazing.  I'm still not sure if he was over reacting for my benefit... Maybe it was to make me feel good so I will make him more pie in the future.  He said he wouldn't lie about something like pie because he wouldn't want to punish himself with bad pie in the future.  It made me laugh.  The kids each had a little slice before bed.  Lily was being her usual self and immediately said she didn't like it the moment she saw it (before even trying it.  We insisted she take one bite (although why we are encouraging her to eat sweets is beyond me... lets just say we are encouraging her to try new foods, that sounds much better).  She loved the pie and ate her whole slice.  She cracks me up sometimes.  She does that quite frequently where she makes a big fuss and then when she tries it she actually eats all of it.  I wonder if maybe she just likes the attention she gets or if she really is nervous to try new foods. 

Home made pie

I have to admit I tried a few bites.  Not a whole piece, just a smidge of what was leftover on the kids plates.  All that hard work to make pie and not even taste it?  Ridiculous.  And I never make pumpkin pie, let alone from a fresh pumpkin.  It was really good.  I liked the combination of spices.  I made the recipe from this website but I didn't make the sugared cranberries or the crust.  I made the crust from this website  because I didn't have to chill it overnight.  Only 30 minutes.  One thing I really want to make this season is a Pecan Pie.  I do love pie and I'm not sure why I never make it.  This is the first pie I've made in maybe two years, and that was a key lime pie and that was the first pie I had made in probably five years.  I guess I'm just more into eating cookie dough than pie filling.  There are some pretty awesome looking desserts in that new Paleo cookbook though that look scrumptious.  I will wait until after my mock whole 30 though.  Still trying to keep in tune with the spirit of the program and not eat pancakes and waffles for breakfast and not make paleo dessert yet. 

 

Here is my poor sick Lily yesterday passed out on the couch.

 

Here is my guacamole and bell peppers.  I made a big batch of guacamole with 3 1/2 avocados and Chloe ate most of it.  She had several bell peppers with it too.  That was her dinner.  At least it was healthy!



Feelin Better

Despite being super sore last night and tossing and turning all night because of it, I am doing much better today.  I'm feeling good, and I'm remarkably not all that sore today.  I thought I was going to be in for a rough day since my legs were so sore yesterday.  But this morning I hardly had any soreness.  However Lily woke up sick.  I cant believe she is sick again!  She has had a mild cough for the past week and a half and I've been giving her the Emergen-c hoping she won't get worse but she had a mild fever this morning and came into my room crying and saying her mouth hurt.  I gave her some Ibuprofen and she is doing pretty good now.  I hope this is just a mild sickness and doesn't turn into anything sinister.  She just got over croup three weeks ago! 

In other news I decided to check my weight today and see how my deflating progress is going.  I was 147.6!  I was super happy to see that because that means I'm pretty much all the way back to where I was after my original Whole 30.  One week after my first Whole 30 I was down to 146.6 so I'm only one pound over my lowest from a few weeks ago.  That makes me feel good because last week I really overate and ate poorly.  I'm starting to feel better today too.  I don't have a headache, but I did take some Ibuprofen because my bones were hurting.  Probably from being so incredibly busy this week.  Cleaning the house, exercising, running errands, playing with kids, and generally being very active.  Much more active than usual, which I am sure helped expedite the deflating process.

Today was more low key than most days because Lily didn't feel like doing much.  We did need to run to Costco, and of course I realized later tonight that we are out of toilet paper, so I will need to get that pretty soon.  Maybe I will wait until we get back from our Florida Vacation, I think we can last until then.... I suppose I should double check, there is nothing worse than running out of toilet paper. 

I managed to keep pretty busy today.  I played my flute, and baked Matt his pumpkin pie.  I wonder if it will be any good.  He isn't home yet to try it so I don't know yet how it turned out.  I'm sure it is at the very least edible.  I got in a new cookbook today!  It's a new cookbook by Juli Bauer called "Juli Bauer's Paleo cookbook"  and she blogs at paleomg.com
I have been enjoying looking through it and it is very different from the other cookbook I got from nomnompaleo.  For instance there are a ton more recipes for breads, desserts, muffins and the type.  I was really surprised when I started looking at it.  Some of the stuff in the breakfast section I will never make for breakfast and I think should be in the dessert section like chocolate muffins.  But I suppose muffins are not quite cupcakes.  There are a lot of good looking recipes I want to try out and I am glad to have the sweeter recipes to help me on my way as I try to transition to healthier eating and get away from binging on regular cookies.  There are recipes for pancakes, ice cream, and even breakfast pizza!  I'm super excited to make some of the paleo tortillas and have breakfast burritos and fish tacos and fajitas!  All without the added junk that comes from store bought tortillas!  (Did you know I can keep store bought tortillas in my pantry for over two months and they still don't mold!?) Talk about your preservatives. 

After going through the book I am buying my immersion blender tonight on Amazon.  It pretty much seems to be a necessary product for cooking this way.  Making sauces, mayo, and blending soups is a breeze with that tool and after exploding hot curried broccoli soup all over my kitchen yesterday I'm pretty much over blending my soups. 

Just let me eat the cookie!

I've been going through some serious sugar withdrawals the past two days.  Yesterday I had a headache all day long.  But at least a fair amount of my bloating has gone down.  As the day progressed I could see myself becoming a little less puffy (or at least I imagined it, hard to tell when It's my perspective of myself).  But by the end of the day my cheeks were a little less puffy and my stomach was sticking out a little less.  I felt better by the end of the day than I did in the morning when I woke up.  Detox stinks, and not just because I can't get my sugar fix.  Stupid sugar, why can't you be a superfood?  Then I'd be the healthiest person on the planet!  Last night I skipped dinner because I just wasn't hungry.  I ate a banana and drank a liter of water.  Last night I put some chia seeds in some coconut milk with honey and vanilla to try in the morning.  I was pretty excited.  It was ok, not quite what I was expecting.  I think the coconut milk was a bit too much for me.  I tried another recipe with coconut water and loved that one!  I had coconut water because they were on sale at sprouts and I popped open a can to try at lunch today and I really didn't like it.  So I figured there had to be something I could do with it, and chia pudding came to mind.  I loved the chia pudding made with the coconut water.  The recipe was 2 cups coconut water, 3/4 cup chia seeds, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 1 tbsp. honey or maple syrup.  I have organic pure maple syrup so I used that.  You would be surprised how much maple syrup is actually just sugar, high fructose corn syrup and maple flavoring.  It's definitely more expensive to get the real stuff but it is so good, and much healthier if only by the fact that it's not fake or processed. 

Yesterday I went to Zumba and today I am really sore.  I'm surprised at how sore I am.  It's not like I haven't been exercising.  but my legs and my arms even are sore.  Today I've been pretty grumpy.  Definitely hit the "kill all the things" stage.  Today is day 3 and this evening was super hard not to eat sugar.  I really wanted to eat some cookies from the cookie jar (the sugar cookies we made on Monday that I gorged on on Monday) and when we went to the grocery store to pick up a couple things all the sweets kept jumping out at me.  It didn't help that Halloween is close by and so all the Halloween candy is up front and center and in your face.  Unlike yesterday I was super hungry this evening.  I went to the gym in the early afternoon and just did a fast walk on the treadmill for an hour.  I was pretty tired and didn't want to run, not to mention that my legs are sore and so I couldn't run if I wanted to.  I decided just to take it easy today.  I was really tired by the end of it so I'm glad I didn't do too much.  Still working the junk out of my body, it will probably take two weeks to get back to feeling like my healthier and more energetic self. 

This morning I had chia pudding and left over egg/sausage cups.  I've started a paleo board on pinterest and I'm trying to find some diversity in my breakfasts.

Lunch was egg salad with avocado and tomato and lettuce.

Dinner was a really good cucumber chicken salad.  I was given the recipe when I signed up for Paleo Magazine emails. 

And I have been using my soda stream to carbonate some water so I can have some fizzy water.  It really helps with soda cravings, and I don't have to get all the other artificial junk in the soda.  Just water and bubbles

Preparations

Today wasn't too bad for a day 1.  I thought I was going to be suffering a lot today from all the sugar I ate yesterday.  I was tempted to eat some of the Halloween cookies we made, especially when Matt started eating them after dinner and was exclaiming about how good they were.  I know he was just doing it for the sake of the kids because the kids made the cookies and they were so excited that he was just loving them, but it made me want to eat cookies too!  But seriously, I've gone waaaay overboard on the sugar train and it needs to stop.

I think being exceptionally busy today helped me not feel the effects as much.  I did get a really bad stomach ache in the afternoon right after lunch and I was wondering if I didn't cook the chicken I put in my salad long enough.  There were many fervent prayers said after that meal and I decided to cook the remaining chicken longer just to be sure.  My prayers were answered and I apparently didn't poison myself with under cooked chicken, which is a good thing because I did a lot today.  This morning was spent cleaning the upstairs of the house.  The kids and I cleaned and organized their bedrooms, the spare room where all their toys are kept, and my room.  Plus we vacuumed and I gave the kids one of those enviro cloths from Norwex to clean the doors and light switches and walls from years of gunk.  I think there was still some poop smeared on the wall in the closet from when Chloe was smearing poop last year.... maybe not... hopefully not, but the walls and doors were dirty and that was their job.  It took all morning and it was noon before I knew it.  Then I started cooking chicken and making spices and I ended up eating my salad an hour later.  I made several things out of my Paleo cookbook today.  They were all in the basics section.  I made two spice mixes: Dukkah and Magic Mushroom powder.  Paleo Mayo, and Srirancha Sauce

I had to try the Mayo twice because the first time I totally botched it.  The recipe said to use an immersion blender and I thought I could just use my blendtec blender, but it didn't emulsify *sob* which is extra sad because I was using avocado oil and doubling the recipe.  I was left with a soupy mixture that went down the drain.  Now I'm out of avocado oil, but at least there was enough left for me to try it again mixing it by hand.  It worked but it wasn't very fun.  I think I'm going to buy an immersion blender, I keep seeing them in recipes and they are not very expensive.  Only about $35 on Amazon.  You are encouraged to make your own mayo because it is used a lot in other sauces for dipping meats and vegetables in and it adds a lot of taste and variety to your meals.  You can't really buy Paleo Mayo at the store because it is so heavily processed.  The mayo I made today only lasts 1-2 weeks in the fridge... I think I've had the same bottle of store bought mayo in the fridge for three months and it doesn't taste bad.  Talk about your preservatives.  The Magic Mushroom Powder is made from a special mushroom called Porchinci Mushrooms.  They apparently have a whole lot of flavor.  That is all I know about them.  I ordered dried mushrooms off of Amazon because even my health food store was sold out of them when I went to go look.  It's basically glorified salt, with an emphasis on the glorified.  I used it on my fish tonight and it tasted awesome!  The Dukkah started out as a mixture of spices to put in oil so you could dip your bread in it, but this recipe is used as a seasoning, or a rub.  I used it on my chicken this afternoon.  It smelled strongly of the cumin I put in there.  It has cumin seed, coriander seed, sesame seed, hazelnut, and pistachio nuts in it.

I had to grind them in my baby bullet because I don't have a spice grinder.  After trying to grind the dried mushrooms in my blender and getting fine powder everywhere (I'm not kidding those mushrooms went poof!  Mushroom powder was getting everywhere, in the air even and floating away.  I got a big wiff of it up my nose.....  Good thing these mushrooms aren't narcotic or the whole "magic" part would take on a whole new meaning).  Anyway, sidetracked.  I remembered my baby bullet had a milling blade and it worked wonderfully for grinding up my seeds for my Dukkah.  The Sriracha sauce is a spicy sauce made from red jalapeno peppers.  It was pretty easy to make, and this time my blender did the trick.  I had to blend up all the ingredients and then boil it for 10 minutes.  Pretty easy, and super tasty.  It made the whole house smell good too.  I used the sriracha sauce to dip my fish and veggies in for dinner and it was super yummy.  Spicy yes, but not too spicy.  If you like spicy you can use spicier peppers, but I'm a wuss and so the red jalapenos were plenty spicy for me.  The recipe has some honey in it, but I'm not doing a super strict Whole 30 this time around.  I'm more wanting to get back to eating healhty, and experiment with more ways of cooking and working on finding a better lifestyle.  I also made a citrus vinaigrette for my salad dressing that was pretty yummy.  Fortunately I had an orange on hand to juice, although I did have to run to the store anyway to buy an extra 1/2 pound of peppers for my sriracha since I only bought 1 pound and I needed 1 1/2... Next time I should put quantity of food items on my list instead of just "red jalapenos".

Tomorrow I want to boil some eggs so I can have some hard boiled eggs in the fridge.  There is a really good method in the book I want to try out.  I also need to clean the main floor of my house and make some more yummy stuff.  I am thinking of making the Macadamia Ricotta tomorrow.  I have one more mason jar left, and that sounds good :-)

It feels good to be back to eating healthy and working towards being productive.  I'm a happier person when I am productive and I feel like I have accomplished something besides eating and sleeping all day.

Breakfast

Lunch- There is the salad dressing I made!

Whole 30-Ish

We just got back from having a good weekend in the mountains.  It's always nice to get away for a little bit and having Matt around.  We left Friday night and came back this morning.  Over the weekend I've been thinking more and I really want to be able to find a good lifestyle so I have decided on some first steps.  I feel confident that I can give up candy pretty permanently.  I usually eat candy when I am in a binging state and I'm trying to find as much sugar as possible.  Other than that I don't eat much candy.  So I've decided to go ahead and give up candy pretty much permanently.  Just candy though.  I've been worried about giving up some of my favorites for forever so I've decided to take it slower. 

However I've been feeling really yucky and bloated over the past several days from having an out of control diet this past week.  So I'm going to do another Whole 30-ish month.  I'm not going to cut out rice and I'm not going to be so incredibly strict on added sugar in my spices, but I just feel out of control and rather sick and I know that going back to the Whole 30 will help my sugar cravings and just help me feel better, then I can start really working out what is a good diet for me.  I am planning on cooking Paleo at home. 

Matt and I have been talking and we are thinking about having another baby.  I've been pretty nervous because I got really sick and really tired when I was pregnant with Chloe.  And this is the last year I have with the kids before Lily goes to school.  When I was pregnant with Chloe I was so tired that Lily was basically watching the ABCs on youtube on the ipad for several hours a day.... Granted she learned the ABCs and all the sounds but I don't want to be knocked out and sick so that I can't do anything with the kids anymore.  I think a very important part of preventing that is really controlling my diet.  When I was pregnant with Chloe, my diet was horrendous.  And that probably greatly attributed to how sick and tired I felt. 

It also gives me more to think about because getting pregnant again means no longer trying to lose weight and it also means gaining weight.  I want to make sure it happens in a healthy way and that I don't gain as much as I did the first two times.  The last thing I want is to end up back at 200 pounds.  But that also puts a new spin on everything.  Suddenly weight loss is no longer a goal.  So if I'm not losing weight then why do I want to eat healthy and why do I want to exercise?  I'm going to be forced to change my Why or risk gaining everything back.  It is so easy to just throw everything out the window and eat and eat and eat when pregnant. 

Well one step at a time I suppose.  For now I'm going to work on deflating and getting back to feeling energetic and good.  And now I will leave you with some photos of this weekend!

Permanent

It doesn't take long for me to slip back into old habits.  This week has been awful for me as far as controlling my eating.  I did so good on Whole 30, and I felt good, but it was only 30 days, and it ended.  Once I officially decided I was done with Whole 30 all my old bad habits came rushing back.  This past week has been one long carb-a-palooza and I've been left here sitting wondering what happened.  I've been thinking a lot this week about what to do and I've decided that what I need to do is that there is no timeline.  I've decided that on Monday I am going to make a permanent change in my diet, and go Paleo.  It is very similar to the Whole 30 but not as strict, a little more flexible.  I'm also going to keep in rice and some dairy.  If I make a permanent diet change I figured I would need to be able to make it fun and enjoyable and there are a lot of great Paleo recipes I can use for some old favorites like paleo coconut pancakes and paleo ice cream and you can even make paleo cookies if needed.  Naturally I would try not to eat many sweets for a while as I'm learning to switch my diet permanently.  I'm going to start by cooking my way through Nom Nom Paleo. 

I want to do this for me and for my health. I know I need to make a permanent healthy change and I know eating this way makes me feel good and energetic and happy from doing my whole 30.

I'm terrified, and full of doubt, but I'm also determined to make a positive lifestyle change and kick the sugar bug and the binging habit for good. 

We are headed out for the weekend so I won't be blogging for several days.  I'm going to officially start on Monday.  Then I can think to myself that "I just don't eat that" instead of "I can eat that again in a little while".  I really think it is the best thing for me to do. 

So, here goes nothing....

Lessons

So I made a mistake on Monday and I definitely learned a lesson from it.  On Monday I went to the gym to do my Zumba toning class.  I love that class, and I had a great time.  Right after Zumba toning I was feeling really good and there was a Zumba class starting right after my class, in the same room.  So I stayed for the Zumba class.  Totaling 2 hours of cardio with no breaks and no refueling in between.  All I ate for breakfast was my normal breakfast of eggs and potatoes.  I walked out of the Zumba class utterly exhausted.  I had zero energy.  The Zumba class was great fun but the last half was really tough because I was just tired.  I crashed, and I didn't get my energy back for the rest of the day.  After the two hours I took a shower and ate a quest bar because that is what I had, and then I went home and ate and ate and ate.  I was starving.  I ate my lunch and my stomach was pretty full but I was still feeling hungry, probably because I didn't fuel myself properly for exercising for two hours and I didn't refuel afterwards properly.  So I ate some cookies.  Then I was just so tired the rest of the day.  It reminded me of how I felt all the time before starting Whole 30.  Killing myself in the gym, not eating properly and then feeling tired and like I just want to sleep the rest of the day.

Lesson learned.  Do not do a bunch of unexpected exercise without proper fueling.  If I'm going to do a double class at the gym I will have to bring something to eat inbetween, or make sure I am eating something that provides energy right before and right after.  Like almond butter.  I have discovered that my body reacts really well to Almond butter when I am exercising.  I love to eat it right before a workout, it helps me keep my energy levels up.  It's what I ate at the triathlon inbetween my events.

The rest of the day was wasted since I ate poorly the rest of the day and was so tired.  When I get very tired I tend to eat, and it's usually snacky food.  So I had popcorn and cookies, which is of course the most nutritious dinner and snacks.  Yesterday I was recovering from Monday.  I was tired and grumpy and felt kind of sick all day.  That is what happens to me when I don't eat well.  When I stick to my Whole 30 plan I feel great, when I deviate from it I usually REALLY deviate. That tends to be my pattern.  I can't just eat one cookie, no I go all out and then I'm stuck feeling like crap for the next 48 hours.

Today I'm finally feeling better and I think I'm just going to do HIIT 15 today, and hit the gym tomorrow.  We have lots of things planned for today.  I'm taking the kids to the park this morning for playgroup so I'm going to miss my Zumba class, hence the HIIT 15 plan.

I made this recipe for breakfast this morning.  It was pretty easy and it is something different.  It has apples mixed in with the sweet potatoes.  I never would have thought of that!
http://www.ourpaleolife.com/recipe/eggs-nest/

http://www.ourpaleolife.com/recipe/eggs-nest/

I didn't have any bacon crisps to put on top so I ate it with just the potatoes and eggs.  It was a welcome change to my normal routine!  I'm trying to find some new recipes since that is how I cook.  I am not one of those people who can just make up their own recipes or throw a bunch of food together and make it taste good.  I'm a recipe follower.  Tonight we are having grilled steaks, I looked up a marinade recipe and I'm going to grill some potatoes and make some veggies.  That is about as close to cooking without recipes that I can get.

Checking out Paleo

Last weekend was awesome.  I absolutely loved going to Time Out For Women, which is an event put on by Deseret Book that is a spiritually uplifting event for women.  They bring in speakers and music artists and it is a lot of fun and inspirational.  I loved going.  Even better I had my Mom go with me at the last minute!  I did pretty good with my eating over the weekend.  The hotel we stayed at offered some food in the club room from 5-7 and so we decided to eat there instead of going out.  They had chicken and hummus and some cheese and fruit.  Along with other things I didn't eat like crackers and cake.

Yesterday I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and didn't do so well staying out of them.  Today I ate a huge lunch of leftover ground beef stir fry and I am so full that my dinner is pretty much just water.  Ok, and I really want to try that Paleo Ice cream recipe I saw in the new book I bought.  I bought the cookbook from the nom nom paleo website 

Source

I bought the hard back copy because I have come to the conclusion that I do not like my cookbooks on electronic format.  I have tried it before and I have a hard time with it.  I'm loving this cookbook.  It's full of great information and really good looking recipes.  Spice mixes to throw on your meat to make easy meals, and how to make perfectly hardboiled eggs that peal easily.  The pictures look awesome and the cartoons are funny.  I bought this book because I loved the Whole 30 so much that I wanted to look more into a practical Paleo approach for long term living I did great on my Whole 30 but once it was over it was kind of like "well now its over" and it didn't take too long to cave and overeat sweets and other junk again.  If I want to be able to lose weight and keep it off for life I have to make a life long change, and I love the idea of eating whole healthy foods.  I also really want to get the kids eating whole healthy foods and less foods like goldfish and fruitsnacks.  Paleo is very similar to Whole 30 which is why I'm looking into it.  I've been going through the book and realizing how much more learning I really need to do and how much I don't know and how much more practice I need.  So I've been thinking about cooking my way through the entire cookbook.  I've never done that before and I've had a desire to do something like that ever since that movie Julie and Julia came out.  I think this might be the book for me!  Except I refuse to make that coffee ice cream in the back.  As a Mormon I don't drink coffee and you have to use brewed coffee in the recipe, so I refuse to make it.  But I will suffer through all the mushroom recipes, and maybe just maybe I will find some mushroom recipes I actually like.  I'm getting pretty excited for it.  I think I'm going to start after our trip to Florida which is the first week of October.

Hard Times

This will be a quick post, I'm leaving for the weekend in just a little bit.  Yesterday was a great day, I felt good, had lots of energy and I got a lot of things done.  Last night Chloe wet the bed and then decided not to go back to sleep for the next several hours so I'm pretty tired today.  I've been really struggling today mentally.  I just keep thinking how terrible I look and how fat I am and I try not to think about it but I can't help it.  It might be because of how poorly I slept last night that caused this change in mood, I'm not sure.  Hopefully this day will pass and I will start feeling back to my better more cheery self soon.

I've been pretty stressed today since I'm leaving for tonight and tomorrow without my family, I'm going up to a Women's church event and I am really excited to go, but I'm going with three other girls and one of them got really sick so we were worried about her (she had to go to the hospital) and find a last minute replacement for her (otherwise she would lose all the money she paid to go) and then the timing that everyone is getting picked up at kept changing and now we are leaving pretty late and I'm worried about traffic and I hope we can get to the evening session on time.  That has made me want to eat a lot of junk like usual.  My emotional eating reared it's ugly head.  I did snack, but I had some mango, and nuts.  As far as snacking goes that is much better than what I used to eat when I would emotionally eat.

Still trying, still working, still living.

Busy Days

Now is about the time when I start to realize that I can't do everything every day.  I have now gotten to the point where I have added so many things into my day that I just can't fit everything in there.  Which I think is a good thing, it gives me variety and makes sure we are not doing the same thing every day.  Between preschool, music time, story time, reading time, going to the gym, cleaning the house, cooking, taking the kids to activities like going to the zoo or going to the park etc. daily scripture study, playing my flute.... wow, that is a lot of things.  And the list goes on, there is Chloe's ABC time and number time, playing board games.  There are so many things to do.  My life finally feels like it is picking up and I finally feel like my life has purpose and meaning.  Because I gave it meaning.   I gave it a purpose.  I have let go of my identity as someone who is worthless and who can't do anything, and someone who needs to lose weight to be of any value and I have been eating healthier and therefore have more energy and I have moved myself into a place where I feel good about myself.  It has been hard to get over my problems with hating myself and it has taken a lot of mental self talk to tell myself that I really do have worth. It also took action.  I had to start doing things, I had to succeed at something, and launch myself into a better and healthier place.

On Saturday we went to the happy apple farm and picked a pumpkin and some raspberries.  They didn't have any apples because they had a frost that killed a lot of the blossoms and then they had a bad hail storm that destroyed a bunch of apples.

 We took the kids on the hay ride, and they really loved that.  Yesterday we drove to the top of Pikes Peak and the kids had a good time going up the mountain.  We stopped a few times to get out and hike around and we had a picnic (when we were still in the trees) it was pretty cold on top and we didn't stay up there too long.  There wasn't much to do at the top except sight see.  Not any trails we could see, but the kids were pretty cold anyway.  It was really windy up there.

I have been feeling pretty good with my eating.  At the beginning of last week I was 149 after coming off of eating a little too much in the way of popcorn and eating out.  Sunday I weighed 147.6 and I am happy with that especially since the first two days of the week were not good eating days.  Tuesday and Wednesday were the hardest days, getting back on track with healthy eating.  I really had to fight the sugar demon on those days, but now I'm feeling pretty good again.  My energy is pretty high again and it is much easier to avoid sugar again now that I have not been eating it for a week.  I made Matt some chocolate zucchini bread last night and didn't have any or even taste the batter.  There were free samples of cookies at the store today and I didn't eat one, didn't even feel like I wanted to eat one (they were probably stale anyway which is why they had free samples for those cookies when they usually don't).  

I've given up my fitbit.  I don't need it anymore because I know for a fact that I get in over 10,000 steps every day.  My weekly average for the past 8 months has been 100,000 steps.  But it also signifies a change in my mentality.  I am still working out of course, but my focus is changing from trying to lose weight by working out like a crazy person to trying to live a healthy life by changing the what and how I eat.  I'm more focused on the food portion than I am on the workout portion.  That being said, I still went to the gym today and ran for an hour and then did bodyflow to stretch out.  I am by no means abandoning my exercise, I just know that I don't need to wear my fitbit because I know I get in enough exercise, I don't need to track my steps anymore.  I know I'm an active person.  

The other day I made a really good Thai Shrimp Curry and had rice on the side.  Matt loved it, especially with the rice.  

It has bell peppers in it and I usually don't like bell peppers especially in that large of chunks, but this was just amazing.  I am enjoying discovering new healthy foods and finally getting away from cooking with cream cheese, and canned soup.  I'm staying away from processed foods like chips and crackers as much as I can, those are all foods without breaks for me.  I can just sit down and eat a whole family size bag of chips, or half a box of crackers in one go.  

I try not to obsess over getting down to 145, but I am so close it is hard not to think about it.  When I catch myself obsessing over my weight like I used to, I will stop myself and say "lets go do something else".  I do the same thing if I'm thinking about snacking endlessly in the afternoon when I know I don't really need to eat.  It has been good for me to get more things done in the day instead of sitting around eating or sitting around bemoaning the fact that I'm not a few pounds lighter.  I will usually go do something with the kids, or go play my flute and that is much more productive.  So you should now know what the absolute hardest time of day is for me to control my thoughts.  That would be when I'm in bed trying to fall asleep at night.  It gets so hard not to dwell on weight loss and body image when there is nothing to distract me.  Often I'm so busy trying not to think about weight loss that I can't fall asleep because I'm thinking about too many other things.  And before you say it, no, thinking about weight loss will not help me fall asleep, it will just make me antsy and feel like I need to go workout some more so I can lose weight this week.  

Today was a very busy day, in the morning I made breakfast for four people, cleaned it up, then did scripture study with the kids and then immediately got them and myself ready to go and off we went to the Gym where I ran and then did Bodyflow.  From the gym we went to the grocery store and did the shopping for the week, and when we got home it was putting groceries away, feeding the kids and myself, cleaning the kitchen, sweep and mop the kitchen floors, go take a shower, *phew* Now it's time for the kids to get a snack, and lets do ABC and number time with the kids so Chloe can get more ABC practice.  Ok, now it's time to get the mail and start dinner.  Mom comes over right after I start making dinner and she helps make dinner and then we all eat, and then I do her nails while the kids watch some TV.  Matt comes home, feed Matt, finish nails.  Mom leaves, clean kitchen again, put kids to bed and now blog.  And tonight I need to work on a new music routine for the kids and look up new Whole 30 recipes as I feel like my stash of healthy recipes has been made several times and it is time for something new.  

Pictures

I was going through some old pictures on the computer the other day looking for photos of the kids to put in the picture frames I have when I stumbled across several pictures of me from before I lost the weight and I was really surprised at what I saw.  I have my weight loss timeline but still, I don't usually think about it.  Reality hit me hard.  I realized how far I have come, how much better I look now.  How much more I can do now.  I don't spend the day lying around the house exhausted, I don't dread exercise or taking the kids out or going hiking.  Life is much more livable and much more enjoyable. I realized how much happier I really am now that I have lost the weight and it helped me to come a little closer to loving myself and loving my body and being proud of myself for the hard work that I have done and what I have accomplished.  So often we get caught up in where we want to go, that we don't realize how far we have come.  I was so focused on getting down to 140 and into the 130s that I never stopped to appreciate where I am now.  I don't have my dream body, but I do like my body.  The whole 30 has helped me get past a huge hurdle and has started to help me learn how to eat properly for the rest of my life without dieting, without counting calories.  Learning to trust my body and my hunger signals, learning to resist cravings and temptations.  Learning how much to exercise and when to exercise.  For the past year and a half I have been exercising so much that I would just be wiped out the rest of the day and I spent the better part of it exhausted because I would expend all my energy exercising.  Not anymore.  I used to workout 6 days a week and I think it's time to let go of that.  There is so much more to do during the day now, so many adventures to find and to take the kids on.  So much to teach them, and so much fun to be had in the meantime.  And being with the kids, and really interacting with them is very active and is a workout in and of itself, I just couldn't hardly do it before because I was so tired from my two and a half hours of exercise.  But you see I never got anywhere with my weight, which just goes to confirm something I already knew.  It really is how you eat that determines your size, not how much you exercise.  Doing the Whole 30 has helped me let go of using exercise to lose weight and to burn more calories so I could eat more.  And If I'm not working out to burn calories to lose weight and eat more then why am I working out?  Like I mentioned in a few posts back, I like working out.  I enjoy Zumba, I enjoy moving my body and getting sweaty and feeling like I accomplished something and just feeling happy.  Exercise makes me happy, moving my body makes me happy and I am so thankful that I have been able to come this far.  And I do hope that I will be able to continue to lose weight, but I have come to a place where it is much less important to me.  I have FINALLY come to the place where I really just want to be healthy and happy.  And as long as I am eating healthy, and I have the energy I need to do the things I want to do, that makes me happy.

June 2012

July 2012

August 2012

Pictures are from right when I barely got pregnant with Chloe so I had been loosing weight from Lily's pregnancy.  As you can see I'm still very heavy.  I only got to the threshold of obese/overweight (175) with trying to lose weight after Lily was born and then I fell off the bandwagon and by the time June 2012 came around I was back in the 190s.

When you do what you are supposed to

I've noticed that there is a certain peace and happiness that comes when I am doing the things I am supposed to do.  When I am eating right, I feel good about myself, and I feel good inside.  I have been interacting more with the kids over the past few weeks and that makes me feel good too.  We have been doing story time where they listen to the Standin' Tall story book (I think I mentioned my project of getting all the cassette tapes into MP3 format) and we have been listening to the story books and dancing to the songs.  We have been doing Music Time where we do action songs and rhythm songs.  The kids are having a great time and so am I.  It is a challenge to keep everything orderly and I do need to spend more time preparing, but I can prepare once and use the same thing over and over again before the kids get tired of it and I will need to prepare something new.

I have felt better about myself over the past few weeks than I have for most of my life.  Every time I add something into my life that is meaningful I feel good about myself.  I am so happy to be playing my flute and I am happy to be interacting more with the kids.  We did preschool again yesterday and I'm planning on doing it again Friday.  Tomorrow I have to get my eyebrows waxed so I am going to be taking them to the Mall to go play.

I have been struggling with my sweet tooth the past few days.  Although I have managed to eat well I have eaten entirely too much fruit, so I am going to try and take the fruit eating down a little bit, but it is better to overeat fruit than to overeat desserts.