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Monday, October 28, 2013

Done with week one!

I have to say, I have had a busy but successful week back on the paleo wagon. First of all, I am going to do a weigh in on Fridays because that is the day that I started and will try to update the blog over the weekend and post on Monday. We all know we get off a little on the weekends but nothing that will kill our  momentum. 

We have had some great meals and Cap hasn't complained about any of the eating. He had a PT test for the army and a weigh in and had lost about 5 lbs. At first I thought he was going to quit right after that and go back to eating what he wanted but he told me he will eat whatever I make him and will tell me if he cheats. 

I weighed in on Friday and was at 231.4 so I lost 8.5 lbs in a week. As of this morning I am at 229.4 even with semi good eating and drinking habits over the weekend. We had some mandatory fun with the army at an Oktoberfest event Friday night. It was super cold for the baby's first late night outing but he was happy. I ended up eating a brat with no bun and a piece of schnitzel and one hefeweizen beer. John had two brats with my buns and the big piece of schnitzel with two beers that night. Over the weekend we went to a pumpkin patch, carved our pumpkins, the flea market, and watched a lot of football but I was also able to get in my exercising as well. He drank a ton of beer this weekend while I kept to my Mich Ultra Apple Gluten free cider. It's super light and I had two each day. I didn't gain anything because I kept my eating right. Here is some of what I made this week:

 Cap asked for banana bread, so I used this pin from pinterest for the recipe. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/106327241176050970/ but it obviously does not look like what I made. I added sliced almonds, cherries, and cranberries to bulk it up. It said to cook for 50 minutes but 40 in it was already this brown. Doesn't taste burnt but not as good as the cookies were last week (which are all gone btw).
 It looked much nicer before I put it in the oven!
 Baby C decided that pumpkins are delicious and awesome for teething.

 Dressed as warmly as possible for Oktoberfest! Not a bad looking family.
 Here is a recipe I made up because I didn't want to defrost anything from my freezer and didn't think about dinner until that afternoon. I call it Spicy Ranch Bacon Shrimp.
 Ingredients:

Irregular cut bacon that makes piecing it for recipes so super easy. About 6 slices
30-40 medium shrimp, frozen shelled, deveined, uncooked
Fajita mix of frozen peppers and onions
2-4 table spoons of spicy ranch dressing (we used hidden valley)
Romaine Lettuce leaves (about 8)

1. Cook bacon in a skillet to desired level of crispness. Leave bacon in pan with bacon fat and add peppers and onions.
2. Cook until nice and browned and caramelized. 
3. Add shrimp and ranch dressing. Cook only til shrimp turn pink and start to curl up. It is very easy to overcook shrimp.
4. Serve on washed lettuce leaves. Tastes awesome!

 Having cute babies in the kitchen also help add flavor and love to the mix.
Mexican stuffed peppers. I used ground turkey, fajita mix of onions and peppers, and a can of diced tomatoes with green chili. I also added a tiny bit of red paper flake and cumin. After the peppers were stuff, I cooked them for 45 minutes in a greased pan, then added fiesta cheese mix on top for another 15 minutes. AWESOME easy meal. So green and healthy!

This week I am in charge of a zombie run at the battalion so I will be out and about a lot. I am bringing lots of KIND bars with me along with protein shakes that are low carb and almonds. I haven't had to go shopping again yet but I will after Wednesday. Halloween is going to be hard! We are going to visit family and friends and will have to let myself have some wiggle room. As long as I am active and don't over indulge, this should be a safe trip. I am not going to beat myself up. I already met and exceeded my 10 lb goal before I left on the trip, so if i lose more before then gain back up to that 10 lb goal, I will be ok with it. Next goal will be 25 lbs down before Thanksgiving. I have 29 days from now to lose 14.5 lbs. I think I can average a 2-3 lb loss a week now that the big loss is out of the way. I can do it! Already on my way! This is going to be slower going than before, but its the healthiest way for us and to get ready for another baby.

Please leave feedback about your journey or your own blog or story. I would love to share with you my new friends!

Monday, October 21, 2013

Back on the wagon!

Hello old friends and new!

Boy has a lot changed since I last logged on. I vowed to myself that as soon as I got back on the health wagon, I would log back in and keep up with telling our tale. Well I got a little (or a lot) off track in the last six months after having our wonderful SON but I have so much to look forward to now that I had to share. 

First of all, we have been in Georgia for over a year and welcomed our little boy to the world in April. He was just shy of a week overdue and I was induced. The labor was awful, my epidural(s) did not work, and he came in to the world like superman, aka, arm in the air by his head like he was already able to fly. Long story short, there were some complications with a fever and tearing, a little hemorrhaging, but nothing a longer stay and some antibiotics couldn't fix. 

So here's our Conrad: 8 lbs 13 oz, 21.25 inches long! Big guy like his daddy!







And now he's six months old! I can't even believe how big he's gotten! This guy is already blowing through his nine month clothes and mostly wearing twelve month. The plan had been to breastfeed for a year, it is awesome for the baby and helps you get back in shape better. Well he had really bad reflux and at his two month doctor visit, he was only in the 30%. I know that's fine but I was worried. He was put on medication but the feedings were still really hard to get through, with the baby screaming at me when I tried to get him to latch, especially in the evenings. When he was three months old we went on a trip home and to the beach and I decided to feed him in the mornings and evenings and pump the rest of his feedings. Well, it only lasted a few weeks. With his feeding so frequently before and then it really slacking off, I dried up really quickly and by the time he was four months old, I could only produce enough for one feeding no matter what I did, so we switched him to formula and he's been doing great! It's also helped his relationship with daddy, getting to leave them alone more often and not having to stop to pump wherever I went. I'm still proud of the fact that he was exclusively breastfed for three months though! We do what we can. 

The problem that came up though was that with the breastfeeding I was hungry all the time and it didn't seem to matter what I ate, I wasn't gaining anything. So after I stopped, I had become addicted to sugar and grains again, I was able to drink again, which I very much overindulged in, and the weight came back on with spades. I also got back on birth control after I stopped breastfeeding so we wouldn't have another one so quickly. The birth control added to the weight gain and last week I was up to just three pounds under my weight on the day I gave birth. I was devastated. 

Now, even though I'd been eating horribly, I had joined a gym with a daycare for the baby. I even started couch to 5k again and am now on week 5 where the real distance running begins. But I'm bigger than I've ever been and the running is excruciating. The baby has also gotten sick about every other week being in a daycare type environment. We had to take off for a week for him to get over his first ear infection not long ago. So I have been exercising, but if you're eating badly, it doesn't matter the exercising you're doing, nothing will come off. 

I looked at myself in the mirror on Friday and decided it was the day things were going to change. I gave myself a short term goal of losing ten pounds before leaving on a trip down south for a bridal shower and a baby shower. Overall I need to get down fifty pounds before I want to have another baby, but I also want that to happen very soon. Cap and I had talked about trying again at the new year, but we decided that the hormones in my pills were too much for my body so I got off of it this weekend as well. When the doctor put me on the pills, he did blood work on me for my hormone and glucose levels. It turns out that pregnancy has pretty much cured me of PCOS and I'm no longer close to being diabetic. All my levels were normal and that was even at an elevated weight. But I still know that the only way I can get in shape and lose weight is eating a healthy whole foods diet. 

This time though, Cap is joining me in eating exclusively paleo diet ways. I spent way too much at the grocery store getting the necessities like coconut oil, almond meal, almond milk, many nut butters, dried fruit, fresh produce and meat, but I know that's just how the first shopping trip goes. His lunches for the week will consist of low carb wraps with turkey cheese and tomato, peaches, cucumber slices, string cheese and protein shakes.

This morning, the fourth morning of my decision to change my ways, I am down six pounds! I've been gorging on apple slices, bananas, grilled chicken, salads, and my newest obsession: paleo breakfast cookies. I got the recipe here: http://butterinmycoffee.blogspot.com/2013/01/breakfast-cookies.html

In my recipe I added dried cranberries, dark chocolate morsels, and almond slices and I quadrupled the recipe and got about five dozen cookies. I froze four of them for later. They are AMAZING! 



So here we go again. I am admitting defeat! I am now a warrior for healthy ways and getting back in shape to be the best mom to my little boy I can be and for any future miracles God gives me. 

Tonight we are grilling up some NY strip steaks that have been dry rubbed and sitting all afternoon with some baked sweet potatoes. YUMMY!

So here we are now:
We are all human, we all get lost, but there is never a time where you've gone too far away, you can always get back to where you were. This is my mantra. Be healthy, be there for your loved ones. 

So, the numbers. At the birth of my son I was 243. I gained 52 lbs during my pregnancy. After the first month I was down to 212 lbs. Friday morning I was 240. I am now 234. First goal is 230. Goal for my 32nd birthday: 200 lbs (3 months from now). Goal before getting pregnant again 190 lbs. Happy place goal: 170 lbs. Extremely happy goal 150 lbs. Hey, anything is possible!

Oh and I'm running in a 5k in remembrance of my grandmother on Thanksgiving with my family and I hope to PR at that race and get under 36 minutes. Right now I'm at a 40 min 5k. Here's to running!