Bears, Bachelorettes, And Bananas

To say these last 10 days have been crazy busy is an understatement! I'm a firm believer in the 80/20 rule (and thank goodness for that this week!)  The 80/20 rule basically means at least 80% of the time we eat as clean as possible and adhere to the 5 pillars, and 20% of the time we allow ourselves to eat foods that may not be labeled as "clean" (even dirty treats!)  I've mentioned before that I have been overweight most of my life.  This has led to food becoming a central part of my life.  Whether it is trying to not eat the chips and salsa staring at me from the center of the table when I was on the South Beach Diet, being cranky because I'm only eating 1000 calories a day, or now counting points, food has always been a focus of my day.  My goal now is to make this such a lifestyle change that it becomes as "mindless" as possible and as balanced as possible.  The 80/20 rule allows me to do that.  It gives me the accountability to live clean, but the flexibility to still live in the realities of this dirty food world. It allows me to be able to go out to eat on occasion and not freak out if there aren't clean options, it allows Livi to have snacks at Grammy's that may have more ingredients than I prefer, and it allows us to live life in a way that makes sense for our family.

So rewind to about 10 days ago.  It was a beautiful Thursday evening and Livi was spending some fun time with her fabulous Aunt Cassidy, while Nick and I were on our way to watch our Baylor Bears beat the OU Sooners! I had been eating very clean that week and had every intention of utilizing my 20% at the game on a nice order of nachos. It was cold, I was hungry, I could envision the chips dripping with cheese and jalapenos...it was going to be awesome! Well after fighting the over 50,000 people crowd to get to our seats all my intentions went out the window.  There was no way I was navigating that crowd again and there was no way I was peeling my eyes away from that exciting game (which we won 41-12, Sic 'em!)  No nachos for me, which I guess was a clean win in this dirty vs. clean world.  Here we are (dirty food free) in our black out shirts after the win (I'm pretty sure Nick burned about 3000 calories from all the yelling and jumping up and down he did during the game.  I'm not sure who took over my husband that night, but he sure was fun!)

Then there was this weekend, where I took full advantage of the 20% of the 80/20 rule.  My beautiful little sister, Kimberly, is getting married in a few weeks.  My other beautiful sister, Mandy, and I threw her a personal shower and bachelorette party in Ft. Worth.  Here we are ready for the stockyards!

Dinner was at Joe T. Garcia's, which I highly recommend.  It was amazing! I'm pretty sure the fajitas were not totally clean (and neither was my beverage).  It was totally worth it though! Scrumptious food and night of fun! Oh...and then there was this...

I only had a piece (okay 2 very small ones).  It was a dirty (and hilariously ugly) cake!

So enough 20% talk, let's get to the 80%.  I have found a clean eating secret ingredient...bananas!! Yep, bananas! I have made some pretty yummy treats with these things! Bananas (or "nanas" as Livi calls them) are such a convenient and healthy snack by themselves.  Packed with potassium they can help regulate blood pressure, as well as provide many other benefits! They do contain a higher amount of natural sugar than other fruits, but it's not like I eat a whole bunch in a day (well most days) and it is natural sugar from the fruit, not processed sugar.  Bananas are also cheap and they aren't on the "dirty dozen" list, so if you can't buy everything organic, this is one you can typically get away with buying non-organic.  Let's hear it for bananas-b-a-n-a-n-a-s (I totally have that Gwen Stefani Hollaback Girl song running through my head right now!)

I will often include bananas in our green smoothies and they are such an easy snack for Livi.  If my bananas look they are about to turn bad or become too ripe (I like mine just barely ripe) then I will cut them in slices and throw them in the freezer.  This makes a really convenient way to incorporate them into smoothies and teething babies loves to snack on these!!

What I didn't know until this past week is that you can use bananas as a binder in recipes in place of oil and/or eggs.  Who knew?!  I set out to make a really clean granola bar.  I found this recipe on Pinterest from windsorstore.tumblr.com and decided to try it out.  It was okay to me, not the greatest, but okay.  Nick and Livi looooooved them! You can see below that Livi was so excited about these treats she insisted I see everything in her mouth!

It wasn't as hearty and chewy as I like my granola bars to be, but it had good flavor and I liked the coconut with the chocolate chips.  I found it difficult to cut these into bars as well, because they just weren't thick enough.  I ended up just breaking them into pieces and they came out to about 3 Points Plus a piece.

I also made this amazing banana-chocolate chip bread I found on Pinterest.  It uses applesauce (which I used organic because it contains apples only) with banana as the binder.  It comes out really moist and delicious!! If you cut it into 10 slices, it's about 5 Points Plus a piece (my favorite 5 Points Plus of my day!) After seeing this pic, I think I'm about to make a loaf!

So there ya have it! Some 80 and some 20 on our clean eating, clean living journey this past week and a half. Here's to a fabulously clean week!