Whole30 Days 2 & 3 and Rocks in Noses!

So I thought the excitement for my week was going to be getting through the first week of this Whole30 challenge. Livi had other plans! More on that later.

First, Day 2.

What we ate:

Meal 1: A turkey and apple hash that was super easy to make and a nice break from the eggs.  It was filling, though a little strange to consume so much meat in the morning.

Meal 2: Avocado Egg Salad.  I'm not going to lie, I hated this. The picture on Pinterest makes it look amazing, and even mine looks pretty tasty, but I could not do this combination.  I think I would much rather have  my eggs mashed with mustard and some pepper.  Nick thought it was pretty good, but later that night could not even think about eating avocados without getting nauseous.  This one is off the menu for a while.

Meal 3: I had to work late, so Nick made our typical chili recipe and just did not put the beans in.  It came out really good and filling.  The munchkin insisted on eating out of mommy's bowl. :)

How we feel:

Nick: Not feeling too great and has a headache.

Kelly: Well, from 5:30-7:30 I was in a meeting where food was catered and the smell of different types of bread filled the room.  It created quite a craving and because I ate dinner late, I had quite a headache.  As soon as I got home and ate I felt much better. I'm feeling less bloated and think I have lost some weight.

Now on to Day 3.

Here's what we ate:

Meal 1: I just had eggs.  I was running late this morning and did not get my veggies in! I know, I know, bad, bad, bad.

Meal 2: I had a lunch date at Chipotle and had the same bowl I had on Day 1.  It was yet again, delicious!

Meal 3: Here's where things get interesting.  I was out working and Nick picked Livi up from school. A few minutes later, here's the call I get:

Me: "Hello"
Nick" When are you going to be home?"
Me; "Why?" (No, I can't just answer the question)
Nick: "Livi has something stuck up her nose and it won't come out."

Cue Mommy Panic!

So I rushed home and attempted to get this object out of her nose with Nick.  We thought it was a black bean from the left over Chipotle she had had the day before.  Its after hours now, so we call our pediatrician's on call number. They tell us it's not really an emergency and she can sleep with it in her nose and we can bring her in the next day.  Or we can take her to Urgent Care. Ummmmm, my child is not sleeping with an object in her nose.  Off to Urgent Care we go.  There is one right down the street and they were amazing! It was a little traumatic for her (and me, I cried my eyes out) because they had to swaddle her in a sheet so she didn't move, but they got the object out in literally 2 seconds.  And it was not a bean. It was a big 'ol rock! Everyone at Urgent Care nicknamed her "Rocky" and she was quite the little star.

Of course, this totally threw off my dinner plans and I let Livi pick what she wanted for dinner.  For a 2-year-old she eats pretty healthy and does not eat hardly any processed foods, so when she said she wanted chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese, I obliged her.  We went next door to Chili's and she got what she wanted.

Nick and I had to be pretty strategic as this was not in our plans.  But life happens and you make the best of it. So we ordered a protein and veggies and asked for no butter.  I am sure our food was not 100% compliant due to who knows what was hidden in it, but we did the best we could.  And we felt really good about it because we were sooooooo tempted to throw in the towel, especially with this sitting on our table:

I had to finally put it all in a to go container and Nick had to close the box with sad stringed quartet music playing behind us.

A small victory for us! As for how we feel; tired, but proud we did not cheat!

Here's to a very boring, no rocks in noses, rest of the week!

Whole30 Day 1 Down, 29 to Go!

Day 1 of our Whole30 challenge is essentially complete! Woohoo!!

We started the day with the ceremonious before pictures and measurements. Hopefully I will be brave enough to share those at the end of the challenge.

So here's what we ate today:

Meal 1: A broccoli and beef frittata that I adapted from this recipe.  Check out how gorgeously yummy it looked!

I swapped broccoli for the spinach the recipe called for and it turned out pretty awesome! I paired it with some Monkey Salad. Even Livi enjoyed some, though she wasn't much in an eating mood this morning.

Meal 2: Chipotle. I had the standard Whole30 bowl. Lettuce, carnitas, hot sauce, guac, and more lettuce. I know it is probably odd to eat out on Day 1, but we had church today and the last thing I wanted to do after a morning of cooking and rushing to get there on time, is come home and cook some more. I was well aware I would feel this way, so I planned to go here for lunch ahead a time. It was pretty good. I'm not going to lie, it was a little hard not ordering my usual steak and I was jealous at everyone else's fluffy rice, but I survived and it was actually really good and I felt satisfied when we left.

Meal 3: Shepherd's Pie. Have I mentioned how much I love Pinterest! It just looked super healthy, even while cooking it on the stove. It feels good feeding my family this way.

As you can see, I'm trying to stick to the terminology of calling them "meals" instead of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I think it does make it easier to conceptualize what we are supposed to be eating.

Here's how we feel:

Kelly: Good! Not hungry and no major withdrawals yet. I'm not feeling so great from my carb/cruddy food fest I allowed myself to have this week, but hopefully that will subside soon!

Nick: Good, has a headache he cannot get rid of, but may not be related to food intake today.

Livi: Get out of the kitchen mommy!!

I would say overall, Day 1 has been successful. But from what I read, this may be the easiest day!

Ready to tackle tomorrow!

Ready, Set, Whole30!!

To say there has been a lot going on in Livi-Land is an understatement.  2014 has not been the greatest year for our little family, but I am determined to end it on a positive note, with our chins up looking forward to 2015! With stress always comes unhealthy eating patterns, at least for me.  The last several months have been filled with days of clean eating and running (okay, okay,  sloth jogging) and days of pizza, Torchy's, and Oreos.  Thankfully I've managed to not gain any weight, but I haven't lost any either, and to be honest, I feel awful.  But tomorrow is a new day, and for me (and Nick) that means we are starting our Whole30 challenge.

You can visit the Whole30 web page to learn more (or read It Starts with Food), which I highly recommend.  I have had a few friends jump on the Paleo bandwagon and I have researched it extensively.  It just seems to make sense and I am committing the next 30 days to see how this works out for me. Before you get as confused as a I did, the Whole30 challenge is slightly different from Paleo as it does not allow you to create "trigger" foods with compliant ingredients.  (So basically I can't make pancakes out of eggs and bananas or yummy muffins out of almond flour and coconut oil!)  The Whole30 challenge is about more than resetting your body, it is also about resetting your mind and disconnecting some of the psychological associations that exist between our brains and food.  Damn the dopamine!! I'm pretty excited and anxious as well.  Good news is I have enlisted Nick and a friend to do it along with me! Woohoo...we can all be cranky pants together! We have already made our trip to the grocery store for the week.  Check out this stocked fridge (yes, that is 5 dozen eggs!)

I have posted the weekly menu on the fridge with several recipes I got from Pinterest.  Thank goodness for Pinterest! I also put up some "rules" on the inside door of our pantry.  These aren't necessarily the official Whole30 rules, but they are rules that I wanted to make sure we saw when we go into the "danger zone".

I'm also adding a little more to the challenge by picking one vegetable a week I have never cooked and trying it out. This week: butternut squash.

Funny enough, I'm not really anxious about not having grains or dairy, or my super yummy crunchy peanut butter, I'm more nervous about not being able weigh for the next 30 days. Ever since I was about 14 I have had an, admittedly unhealthy, obsession with the scale.  I would often weigh multiple times a day, clothes off and clothes on, before eating, after eating, before working out, after working out, you get the point. So the idea of putting the scale away for 30 days is a little frightening.  To avoid temptation I am going to have Nick hide it.  Let's hope he does a good job.

I plan to post daily on what we have eaten and how we are feeling.  I won't be posting the blog entries on Facebook every day, because, well, I want to keep my friends.  But feel free to come by and visit and see how things are going!   Here's to a clean, whole, (and hopefully not sugar withdrawn cranky) week!

Quiche, Quiche, and Questionable Chocolate Pudding

It's spring time here in Texas and the weather has been either beautiful or disgusting.  By beautiful, I mean sunny with the best breeze ever, and by disgusting, I mean wet and humid and basically a terrible hair day for me! Spring time always makes me crave light and fresh meals and one of my favorites is quiche.  When I was pregnant, after every check-up, Nick and I would go eat at La Madeline right across the street from my doctor's office.  I would devour their quiche florentine, it's amazing! I'm not sure how I only gained 15 lbs during that pregnancy (oh wait, 1st trimester sickness, yes I do).  I don't know anyone who can turn down eggs and cheese baked in a flaky, golden crust, and if I do, then we shouldn't be friends!

Well, we all know that flaky, golden crust is not supportive of weight loss goals so I set out to find some ways to mimic that taste without all of the fat and using fresh, clean, whole foods.  I found this recipe on Pinterest for a Three Cheese Zucchini Frittata from Kalyns Kitchen.  A frittata is basically a quiche without the cream and crust, so I was thinking it would hit the spot and it did.  I made this one Sunday morning for brunch and it was delicious.  Check out that golden top! Yum!

Yes, that is real bacon on my plate.  I used to only eat turkey bacon, but after realizing how turkey bacon is made, I stick to the real stuff now, in moderation.  I will expand upon this in a future post.

I couldn't get enough of my quiche fix, so we had it for dinner Monday night as well.  Poor Nick! This time I made a Crustless Asparagus Quiche from SkinnyMs and it was awesome! The little bites of feta cheese were amazing and I loved that it was packed with veggies.  The other awesome thing, the entire thing is 8 points.  8 points!!! I had half of this dish for 4 points, with yes, real bacon again. I ate this right after I got home from Zumba and was starving, so I forgot to take a pic of the quiche as a whole.  Here it is mid-bite and you can see the inside goodness!

Now, on to my clean eating fail for the week.  To say I love chocolate is an understatement.  It is my Kryptonite and I am always on the hunt to find healthy, clean recipes that include chocolate.  I used to eat those Jell-O sugar free puddings quite often before I was aware of ingredients that went into processed foods.  This week I decided to try my hand at a Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding recipe also from SkinnyMs. You have to put all the ingredients together and then refrigerate, then blend, blend, blend.  My pudding did not end up looking like the picture in the recipe, as you can see below, and I never got that smooth texture (I blended for like 30 minutes).  It also wasn't very sweet.  I added some honey to try to sweeten it up, but I didn't care for it.  I decided this snack was not worth my 6 WW points. Here the pudding is pre-mixing, after mixing before fridge, and after blending.

I do believe everything happens for a reason, even minuscule events like making a failed chia seed pudding. The reason behind this event? So I could discover dates! Oh my goodness, where have these amazing little things been all my life?  They are the "sweetener" for this recipe, but I would much rather have them alone. They are amazing and my new favorite snack.

Go make some quiche and have an awesome and clean week!

Back with Banana Ice Cream and Breakfast Sausage

Guess who's back, back again.  Kelly's back, tell a friend! Okay, okay, no more Eminem (for now).  It has been a while since my last post and that's primarily due to a crazy busy last couple of months.  That craziness has not only left me very little time to post on my blog, but it has also distracted me from eating as clean as I should be eating.  Don't get me wrong, I haven't fallen completely off the wagon.  For the most part, I have been eating clean and I have been working out a lot more than I was back in the fall.  (I have somehow taken 4 minutes off my mile since January-wha what!!)  But, there has been this pesky little enemy that has kept me from losing any weight and has caused me to get into a rut when it comes to my eating, I'm talkin' about the weekend! I love the weekend. I get to spend time with Nick and Livi and that typically means doing things outside of our daily routine, which also means the opportunity to try different foods and eat things that I know are not good for me.  Now our goal is to live by the 80/20 rule.  This means we eat clean and wholesome 80% of the time, and allow for special treats here and there.  However, when you are allowing yourself special treats every weekend, there is a problem.  It sets up a cycle where I have done fabulous all week and by Friday I am feeling great.  Great enough to go have chips and salsa at one of our favorite Mexican food restaurants, followed by an ice cream treat.  Then Saturday, of course, there is brunch followed by some more good eats.  By Sunday I'm feeling pretty frustrated and ready to start fresh, but I have essentially sabotaged my progress.  Now if you are not trying to lose weight, this may be a fine practice.  But I am trying to lose weight and this cycle is only causing me to maintain my weight and not lose.
So this weekend, Nick and I had a long talk about this cycle and we have a renewed commitment to eat clean and be consistent, primarily for this little cutie!

One of the things that often motivates me and keeps my good eating on track is experimenting with different foods and recipes.  To say I get bored easily is an understatement.  It's getting warmer here in Texas and one of my favorite warm weather treats is ice cream.  But we all know, ice cream can easily pack on the pounds and ever since I was pregnant with Livi, dairy hasn't been so kind to me.  So, I set out to find a way to create a clean and low-fat ice cream.  I had heard several times of using frozen bananas as an ice cream.  My Grandma used to put whole bananas in the freezer for us when we were little and when we would come in from playing outside, they were cold and delicious! I decided to give turning this childhood favorite into ice cream a go.  I sliced some bananas, froze them, and then threw them in the blender.  Sure enough, they turned into a creamy delight.

I added some Enjoy Life chocolate chips and it tasted pretty close to chocolate chip ice cream (with a banana flare of course!)  At only 2 Weight Watchers points per serving, I don't mind this at all.  And it is clearly Livi approved!

In planning for the week, I decided to tackle one food that I have kept as a staple for Livi, Owens pre-made breakfast sausage.  I'm not a morning person, so anything to make mornings quicker for us is a win.  We typically make Livi eggs and then pop in a pre-made breakfast sausage in the microwave, and with some fruit on her plate she is good to go.  The ingredients aren't the worst I have ever seen for a processed food, but they aren't the best (after all, what exactly are the "natural flavorings"?).

My goal this week was a clean breakfast sausage for Livi.  So I bought some organic ground pork, added some spices, formed into patties and cooked up some sausages.  Which one would you choose?

Now, they don't taste exactly like sausage, probably because I did not add salt or any other type of sodium product to the mix, but they taste pretty good.  Another bonus, the pack of pork cost me about $3.50 for a pound and cooked up 12 patties.  The box of Owens sausage I typically buy is about $3.50 for 8 pre-made patties.  Eating clean on a budget can be done!

I am excited about this renewed commitment and I will never give up on this journey because Livi deserves healthy parents and healthy food.  Sure there will be ups and downs, but that's life!

Here's to a clean and great week!

Clean Comfort

In case you missed it, the Austin area had an "arctic blast" this past week! (Which essentially meant it was cold outside and there was a chance for some sleet.  Central Texas gets excited any time the temperature gets close to freezing!)  It was pretty cold outside and a little dreary, which of course meant we needed some good ol' comfort food!

I wanted to figure out a way to make some comfort food and keep it clean. Most recipes for comfort foods that I have include cans of condensed chemicals and lots of fat and carbs.  One of my most favorite comfort foods happens to be my slow-cooker pot roast.  I typically throw a shoulder roast in the slow cooker with a few cans of condensed cream of mushroom soup (the reduced-fat kind, because that makes it better, right?) a packet of onion soup mix, and carrots.  I don't put potatoes in with the roast because I like them mashed on the side (I'm getting pretty hungry reading this).  I'm not going to lie, it tastes so good and is the perfect meal on a cold Sunday evening!

There had to be a way to clean up this comfort favorite. I first began searching for clean roast recipes and there were a few on Pinterest, but I couldn't really find one that looked great to me (and that didn't have a million ingredients).  I have a one-year-old.  We have to keep it simple.  So, I decided to break the ingredients down from my recipe above and just create clean versions of each to use for my roast.  First step was to get an all natural (organic, if possible) cut of roast.  I found one at the HEB meat market and it was a really nice cut of meat.  Next, I needed a clean version of the condensed mushroom soup.  I found this recipe on Pinterest from simplecleanliving.com.  It worked perfectly! Here is the soup before it went in the slow cooker.

The next ingredient I wanted to clean up was the onion soup mix.  I used this recipe from thegraciouspantry.com and it was super easy and created enough to use for the roast and put away for future recipes.

 I added organic baby carrots and it looked really good already! Check out all those mushrooms!!

8 hours later, we had this.

The soup mixture did end up making the roast look a little "gritty," but it did not taste "gritty" at all.  It tasted just as good (if not better) than my previous non-clean versions.  I added some mashed potatoes on the side (red potatoes boiled with skins on mixed with a little real butter and a little organic milk and pepper). I must say, we felt quite comforted after this meal! Be sure and use a slow-cooker liner for extra comfort in the fact that there is little clean up after you are done enjoying your meal.

I was so tempted just to revert back to my non-clean version, but I am so glad that I didn't!

I hope everyone has a Happy (and as clean as possible) Thanksgiving!

Clean Eating Meets Gluten Free

Before my family panics, no we are not going gluten free (yet)! Ha ha!  I had a work meeting on Friday and I volunteered to bring a sweet treat.  You may be noticing a trend here, I'm pretty much obsessed with sweet treats! One of the members of my team is gluten-free, so this sweet treat needed to be gluten-free so she could enjoy it as well.

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye.  A gluten-free diet helps to treat celiac disease and others have found it helpful in treating other digestive issues, such as IBS.  It has become a trendy diet and I have friends who have gone gluten-free because they just think it is a healthy way to eat.  I am currently in the camp that believes we do not need to be gluten free unless there is a medical reason to do so and no one in my little family is really dealing with digestive issues, so we plan to keep gluten in our lives at this point.

My mission: create a clean and gluten free sweet treat that also tastes phenomenal!I gladly accepted and set out on a Pinterest journey to find one that looked super yummy, but also did not have a million ingredients and would be easy to whip up.  I found this recipe for Gluten Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars from littleleopardbook.com.  It looked relatively easy and I could easily clean up the ingredients.  I used organic peanut butter, Enjoy Life chocolate chips mentioned in a previous post, sucanat for the white sugar, and organic brown sugar instead of regular (organic brown sugar is not completely clean, but it is better than non-organic and falls into my 20% for the week).

This recipe was very easy to make, however, an "arctic blast" was brewing outside (people have to laugh at us Texans when we consider 40 degree weather with no sleet or snow an "arctic blast") and Livi was having a hard time staying asleep. To minimize noise when she finally fell asleep I ended up having to make this in our study because it required use of a mixer.

Yes, that is a mixing bowl on my desk! The things we do when we have kids!

I took these to work the next day and they were a huge hit! Everyone loved them and couldn't believe they were clean and gluten free. I was able to sneak a bar home to Nick and Livi and they agreed as well. They are rich, chocolaty, and devine!

I have some leftover gluten-free flour so I may experiment with some more gluten-free recipes. Stay tuned!

Have a clean weekend and Sic 'Em Bears!!