What’s up!

Hi guys!  Long time no talk!  I thought I’d pop in to give you a quick little update on what’s going on in my world.

First, I have decided to do a Whole30 challenge (again).  Back in November 2014, I failed miserably at it.  But, I don’t want that looming over me this time.  I’m more prepared, more aware of what is going to happen to my body, and even more disgusted with how I’ve been feeling.  I might write more posts on my journey with this – I’m undecided at this time.

Second, we just finished our home study to be foster parents!  So.  Exciting.  Anyway, I haven’t decided if I wanna do a series on foster care or not.  We’ll see.

Third, my domain name lease is up next month.  I don’t think I’m going to renew it.  As I’m sure you’re aware, this blog has been lacking A LOT in the last year.  I’m not feeling very determined to post or anything.  It feels more like a hassle to me than something I enjoy.

With that, I’ve been thinking a lot about rebranding and changing up what content my blog houses.  This blog was intended to share recipes and foodie-things.  The busier our household gets, the less time I have to write recipes/test/actually cook.  My meal plans and meals have gotten simpler.  My interests are changing.

And I have been feeling crappy about that.  I don’t want to just abandon ship.  I think a little thinking, rebranding, and reshaping is what I need.  But it’ll be a slow process.

So look out for that in the coming months.  And be aware that the (dot)com will be leaving my URL next month 😦

Thanks for being so supportive!
xoxo,

Whole30 Update, ii.

Here’s the post I’ve been dreading to write.

So, I made it about three days on the Whole30.  Then I caved.  Here’s what happened.

The first day was tough.  I had really bad cravings but I figured it was normal.  The second day started out alright, but as the day went on, I had major carb cravings.  The third day, same thing, started out strong and by lunch time, I had carb cravings so bad that I was instantly in a bad mood.  I got home and sulked on the couch for a little while.  I knew that this is what happened during the Whole30, but I don’t think I was prepared for how intense it was going to feel.

As I was sulking, I got to thinking.  I didn’t necessarily dislike the way we ate before, I just wished me made some healthier choices sometimes.  Also, food and cooking is my hobby.

I’m sure the Whole30 is wonderful for some people.  I’m positive it helps get your eating habits and weight back on track to where you want it to be.  It wasn’t for me.  Do I eat unhealthy things sometimes?  Absolutely.  But I never eat outrageous proportions of these things (unless it’s McDonald’s, but I’ve quit that cold turkey). We eat portion sizes of everything.  We don’t overeat on sweets or ice cream (which we probably eat once a month).  We also already consume a lot of vegetables and healthy proteins.

We made a conscious decision to stop the Whole30.  I didn’t like the feeling of restricting myself from eating certain food groups as a whole.  Would it make me feel a little better?  Probably.  But in someone who already has severe anxiety and depression, restricting was only make those worse.  I also enjoy cooking.  I enjoy experimenting with foods and finding healthy alternatives to things, but I also enjoy indulging every once and a while.  On a side note, I consider whole grains, rice, and some pasta healthy.

One thing that I did learn in my three days and shopping experience with this is just how many ingredients are in some products.  I will be more conscious to check labels and see how much sugar there is in things (like salad dressing, where I only found ONE without sugar!).  I was appalled by the ‘health’ foods that had copious amounts of sugar in them, yikes!

To everyone who has completed a Whole30, I give you tremendous kudos.  It’s difficult and not for everyone.

To everyone who supported me, thank you.  I appreciate it more than you’ll know.

xoxo.

Whole30: Day 1

Let me start by saying this: I didn’t expect it to be so difficult so soon.

I am incredibly glad today is over.  First, I knew that I had a sugar addiction, but I thought that I had curbed it a little bit earlier on in the year when I greatly decreased my sugar intake.  Second, Aunt Flo decided to show up today (TMI, sorry!) but this almost tripled my sweets cravings, and all cravings in general, ugh.

Here’s what I’ve eaten today:

Breakfast: Sweet potato, onion, mushroom, pepper, and spice baked egg muffins with half an apple.

Lunch: Leftover ‘chicken sink stew.’  (It wasn’t as good as it sounds.)

Dinner: Garlic roast beef, cinni-ginger mashed sweet potatoes, and garlic green beans

Snacks:  I’m going to preface this by saying that I am the queen of snacking.  This is something I hope to overcome with this Whole30.  I snack a whole ton.  With that, I have had a mandarin orange, 1/4 cup of almonds, gingerbread larabar, slice of all natural prosciutto, and a handful of raspberries.

So far today for drinks, I have had my black coffee this morning (ew), a black tea with lemon (tolerable) and three glass of ice water with lemon, which happens to be my favorite thing I’ve had all day.  I’m really trying to up my water intake, since I know that I don’t drink nearly enough water.

How I am feeling:  not as tired as I usually am for this time of night.  I know this is only day 1 but I feel less tired today (though I didn’t do much) and less bloated.  I think that my womanly time is throwing off how I could actually be feeling by making me still a bit crampy, but altogether, I am feeling less bloated and crampy from food than normal.

Cravings: On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst cravings ever, I’d say today was a 10.  I craved sweet and salty, fast food and ice cream.  My biggest saving grace of the day was feeling like I cheated (already) by having a larabar.  Albeit, it was totally compliant and I don’t want to make them a habit, my immense sugar craving was making me incredibly cranky.

What I’m looking forward to: Dinner tomorrow.  We are making chicken fajita salads with homemade guacamole.

Overal thoughts: I think I underestimated how difficult this is going to be.  I figured setting a meal plan would make this a piece of cake.  I am eating my words.  Our biggest challenge, by far, is snacks.  I have plenty of fruit and some compliant snacks (applesauce, raisins, pickles) but we are used to grabbing the bag of chips or pretzels and filling up on a carb to hold us over until the next meal.  I am hoping that our meals start to hold us over until the next.  Also, I have learned that I don’t know when my body is full.  I barely finished breakfast because I was fuuuuulllll.  Ten minutes later, I felt hungry.  Honestly, I don’t think I was hungry. I was watching TV and I think that I felt hungry because I normally eat while watching TV.  Oh, some habits to break.

Any tips on how to curb cravings or some snack ideas would be appreciated!!

xoxo.

Whole30 Planning

Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday everyone!

This past week, I have planned and started prep for my Whole30 (ahem, Whole21, I should say..).  I wanted to be as prepared as possible to make it as difficult to fail at this as it could be.  I figure if I have it mapped out everyday what we can/will eat and have things prepped and ready, there should be no excuses to fail.

Also, I kinda liked planning all my meals out for the whole month.  It is going to make grocery shopping sooooo much easier.  I’m thinking about doing this for now on 🙂

So, I wanted to share with you the meal plans that I made up.  I went as far as dividing these off in a binder with the calendar pages first then tabs dividing the recipe by weeks, etc.  Here’s the calendars for the next 3 weeks:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Don’t mind the random red text on them, that was my way of knowing what I still needed to find concrete recipes for.

I have written out my grocery list by category and will be starting that tomorrow morning, bright & early!  I am actually very excited to spend a few hours grocery store hopping! 🙂

Let me know what you think!  I’ll be doing updates on here throughout my Whole30 experience.  And if there is any recipe in particular that you’d like to see a review on or have the link to, I’m more than happy to share!

xoxo.

Whole21?

So, here’s where I’m at with the Whole30 situation.  We decided that starting the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we’re going to start the Whole30 but we’re only going to do a 21-day run of it.  I know, that means it’s not technically a Whole30, but I wanted to get my eating on track as soon as I could and not restrict myself at Christmas celebrations at the same time.  This was the most logical for us.  Besides, it takes 21 days to kick a habit 😉

Anyway, we’ll do this for 21 days, which I already have pretty much planned out for meals and snacks.  It doesn’t seem as difficult as I thought, but I can’t speak because I haven’t started it yet.  The biggest thing is that our dinners are going to look pretty similar to what we normally eat, just minus rice.  It’ll be the snack and breakfasts that are the biggest changes for us.

Also, I won’t technically still be doing the Whole30 during Christmas, but that doesn’t mean I’ll binge.  It just means that I can have gravy and some pasta if I want it.  Aaaaaaaand, we’ll probably do this again for the full 30 days after the new year starts.

So, I’m thinking of either doing a daily “what I ate/how I’m feeling” post or a weekly one.  Thoughts?

xoxo.

Ugh, a lot on my mind

So the more I’ve been thinking about Whole30, the more I’ve started thinking about my eating habits.

Back when I started school for nutrition, I had this notion that nutritionists should abide by what they preach. So, I tried to change my eating habits. I stopped eating fast food, I told myself no when I craved junk food, and I developed a disordered way of thinking about food. I never starved myself or purged, but I did shame myself for having cravings for things that I deemed as ‘bad.’

Fast forward to today. I have relapsed on my ‘no fast food’ rule (big time) and am now craving fast food daily, and giving in more than not. I try to hide the fact that I eat so much crap food, and as soon as I eat it, I feel horribly guilty. Not to mention that the food makes my body feel horrible too.

When I eat junk food, I can’t stop at just two cookies or a serving of chips, I eat enough to feel full then beat myself up over eating that much crap food. I also shame myself for not going to the gym as much as a should. I give into my laziness and my motivation fails me.

So, thinking of doing the Whole30 is a concern for me. I want to get back to a healthy lifestyle. I would like to eat little to no fast food in my lifetime. (I mentioned I have an addictive personality in a previous post. So once I have something, I crave it all the time.) I want to do this to hopefully realign my digestive system and get my energy levels back on track. Currently I have no energy levels and most nights order out bc I don’t want to move to cook, which is something I normally love to do.

I guess this post is really for my piece of mind. I know that I have this totally twisted way of thinking about food and that I should be allowed things and moderation and not beat myself up for “slipping up.” I have never said these things to anyone. And I think this way of thinking is bringing me down. It’s making my already lousy feeling body even worse.

Thanks for listening.

xoxo.

Thinking about the Whole30…

So, I’m going to bring up a little bit of a personal subject right now.  If this is too personal for you, I apologize but I am warning you now.

I have been having some health issues lately.  I went through a major bout of depression where I thought I could handle it on my own, and then realized I couldn’t.  It came down to me having multiple panic attacks a day, and it was debilitating.  I ended up with a low dose medication to help, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Also, I have been having some gastrointestinal problems.  Virtually anything I eat upsets my stomach, causes pains and gas/bloating, and sometimes make me nauseous.  I know that I was eating very healthy for quite a while (cutting out junk and fast food) and I relapsed onto an semi-unhealthy path.  I still eat pretty balanced meals, three of them a day, but my snack choices are not the healthiest.

For breakfast it’s usually a bagel or oatmeal.  Lunch is usually a salad, sandwich, or soup with some kind of fruit (apple, clementine, grapes, banana), pretzels (or lately, a junky snack) and string cheese or yogurt.  Dinner is usually the meat, starch, veggie combo.

Snacks in between meals are usually cookies, high fat coffee drinks, or fast food.  All super unhealthy.

I get to points in the day where I crave fast food.  I don’t know if I have an addiction problem with it (don’t laugh- I have an addictive personality) or if I am really craving salt.  Either way, it manifests in the form of McDoubles (ew).

This all ties into my blurb on depression because while I am on an antidepressant and it is helping, having these GI problems brings me down.  It’s embarrassing and puts me in a crappy mood.  Also, I am super uncomfortable ALL.  THE.  TIME.  Ugh.

So, here’s what I am thinking.  I want to do the Whole30 to straighten out my system and get to the bottom of what is actually causing these problems.  Part of me wonders if I have a gluten sensitivity (my sister does) and part of me wonders if just eating healthier would help.

Problem is, I want to start it after Thanksgiving (right during the holidays, woo!) but I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.  The holidays can be stressful.  And starting after Thanksgiving means that I will be eating according to Whole30 on Christmas Eve and Christmas.  Hmm.

Buuuuuut, if I wait until after Christmas, I will be dealing with these issues for the next two months, which is not something I want to do.  I am torn.

Any advice??  Please help!

xoxo.

My not-so-normal hobby

The one question I despise more than anything is, “so, what do you like to do for fun?”

Well, my idea of fun is usually laughed about and made into some weird nerd joke.  So I usually avoid the question.  But after scrolling through the internet most of the day and devouring a whole season of Marriage Bootcamp: Bridezillas on Netflix, I thought that maybe I should actually get a hobby.  Or two.

But wait!  I do have a hobby.  Food blogs.  Yes, reading food blogs is what I consider my hobby.  I probably read through 2-3 blog archives a night.  I think I’m running out of some to read too.  Uh-oh.

And usually, reading them sparks my ideas for posts to write.  This one is inspired by the long running list of recipes in my bookmark tag. Because c’mon, bookmarking recipes to use later on is a quite useful hobby 🙂

Also, I was scrolling through Chocolate & Zucchini (my new favorite blog, by the way!) and saw a post where she mentioned writing a cookbook.  I thought, hey that sounds like fun!  Though, I will probably never write my own cookbook, I feel like all the recipes I have saved could be a book in themselves.

So now that I have ranted a bit about my not-so-normal hobby, I’ll link you to some of my saved recipes.

The tried and true, ones that have gotten the thumbs up from not only me, but the real critic, Kait:

Pork Roast with Apples & Onions

Peach Chicken

Eggplant Parm

Cranberry Pork Roast (what we had for dinner tonight!)

And some I’m yet to try but will soon!

Rough Puff Pastry Dough

Taco Burgers

Cookie Dough Bites

But of all the recipes that I have in my bookmarks, this is the one I have been raving about to everyone!  It’s by another favorite blogger, The Freckled Foodie.  I have made this so many times that I don’t even have to look at the recipe anymore!  I know the measurements by heart!  And I may or may not have eaten one of these as my before-lunch snack, oops.

Obviously, this isn’t even close to all the bookmarked recipes I have.  There’s quite literally, millions, to go through.  But hey, I don’t think I’ll run out of ideas for dinner anytime soon.  Though, most of them have vegetables as the main ingredient, so I don’t know how well Kait will like that…

Let me know what your favorite recipe is!  And what other food blogs you read; I’m running out of reading material!

xoxo.

 

To detox or not to detox?

I’ve come to a bit of a dilemma.  I know people who have done a food “cleanse” or “detox” and it has worked wonders for them.  I looked into trying to accomplish the Whole30 program but the restrictions kind of scare me.  I have read great things from people who have done this program and how it has changed their lives.  I understand why it restricts the types of food it does — they’re irritants to certain body systems.  But I don’t necessarily want to feel like I am restricting myself of certain things.

I have always prided myself on eating what I want, when I want.  I’ve never had to be concerned with weight or anything because I was blesses with a fast metabolism.  I do eat pretty healthy but I have some food addictions.  I wrote about my worst one a couple weeks ago: sugar.  The amount of sugar I consume is dangerous and disgusting.  It more than triples the recommended 25g per day for women.

I would like to be able to cut the amount of sugar eat down immensely but fear that there is no way to do it without the help of a detox.  I could try cold turkey but that seems extremely difficult.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could do this?  Or any feedback/thoughts on a detox/Whole30?

xoxo.