w16d3&4

Yesterday, my husband was home. Like all day.

He's a 3rd year family medicine resident. He's also in the Army National Guard and moonlights at urgent care. He's NEVER home. So we spent the day doing what normal people do. Weeding, repairing door knobs, and hinges, and folding doors. I mean that's totally what normal people do on their only day off, right? Thought so. (Operation House On The Market!!!)

I took pictures of my foods, and yesterday was kind of a bad food day. I was also having some gastro distress...too much Natural Calm.

Wednesday-Day 3 (Mostly compliant!)

Breakfast was 4 Jones Natural Sausages (not pictured because they were cooking and I was STARVING), 2 hard boiled eggs, a cutie and 5 prunes.

Lunch was spent at Ikea. I was pretty excited about a compliant-ish meal. I didn't eat the brown rice but grilled chicken over mixed greens, cucumber and grape tomatoes. Bowl of fruit including grapefruit, pineapple and orange.

Dinner was rotisserie chicken from Costco shredded with a whole cucumber, salt, a littttttle pepper ;), and balsamic vinegar. It was delish. Also the chicken is being buried by the cucumbers. I promise that there is a lot of chicken in there.

Thursday-Day 4....

It started off great! 3 eggs scrambled with mushrooms and cholula sauce, a cutie and 4 Jones sausages. 

Barry brought Chipotle home. How can I say no to the deliciousness? I mean I know corn isn't compliant but he didn't...I totally ate the delicious corn. (And as an effort of full disclosure 10 of the kids' corn chips because they're delicious and were about to get thrown away!!!)

Dinner was salmon with lemon, dill, and rosemary. Steamed broccoli and lemon onion and potato.

Snacks....this is where I went OFF the rails. I had saved 2 snack size/mini Coconut Twix that I'd purchased after Easter. Those who know me know that coconut is my weakness. When dinner was cooking I ate those because I was dying. Then the sweets floodgates were opened. I had a handful of Reeses Pieces Eggs and finished off my pint of Ben & Jerry's The Tonight Dough. (That ice cream is Jackie's fault...)

Back at it today. My intestines feel less angry, so that's a definite plus! I'm thankful that I don't feel sick from my short ride on the wild side. 

w16d2

Day 2 is in the books!

Successful and oh man, my dinner was so good.

Breakfast- 2 hard boiled eggs, cutie and 5 prunes and 4 Jones Sausages*. (black coffee)

Lunch-Leftover stuffed pepper stuffings and mixed green salad with olive oil & balsamic vinegar. Added copious amounts of salt and pepper.

Dinner was an experiment. 

I chopped up 2 white potatoes and 1 sweet potato and 1 sweet onion and lined the bottom of my cast iron casserole pan. Coconut oil first, then onions, white potatoes, sweet potatoes. I seasoned them with salt, pepper, paprika and red pepper flakes. And then put in the chicken breasts. Seasoned them with salt, pepper, paprika and red pepper flakes and cooked for an hour at 375º. It. Was. Delicious.

I had 1/4 cup of mixed nuts and banana as a snack.

*So here's my thing. Could I make my own sausage that's 100% compliant? Yes. Do I really have time to do that? No. So I compromise and eat these sausages and call them close enough to compliant. The ingredients are as follows: pork, water, salt, spices, sugar. So judge my compliant-ness if you will but these make my life easy and they're delicious.

As promised. Here are my w16 BEFORE pictures :) I am excited to see the progress I can make in these two weeks. 

I see things that I wish weren't there but most of all I see the progress I've made.  One day I'll share my true before pictures. Even though that's not me anymore they are still hard and make me feel extremely vulnerable. 

Allow Me To Introduce Myself

My name is Christia. I have always struggled with my weight. Always thought I was too fat, too wide, too this, too that. After the birth of my third son, Owen- he’s 4, I decided to start running. My dad has run his first marathon and I thought, If he can run a full marathon, I can start running too. So, I did. I started with the Couch to 5K app. It’s amazing. If you have desires to learn to run, I can’t recommend it enough. I feel like I finally started to understand how my body works. Why counting calories worked. What foods were off limits for me. I set realistic goals and celebrated as I met them. I was making leaps towards fitness and then the unthinkable and completely unexpected happened. I got pregnant.

After my daughter, Emilia- she’s 2, was born I knew that there were certain things that would allow me to get back to my goal weight. Running worked. Counting calories worked. Eating lots of veggies worked. I knew what worked, or so I thought. I quickly shed the baby weight and was back to my pre-E-pregnancy weight quickly. I still wasn’t satisfied.

It wasn’t about the number on the scale. It was more about how I felt mentally. How I looked in the mirror. I didn’t, don’t, want to be skinny. I want to be healthy.

Fast forward to December 2014. I’d heard a lot about paleo, and whole 30 and thought that there was no way that I could successfully complete something like that. No dairy? No grains? No gluten? No sugar?!?!? No soy, either? What the heck could I eat then.

December 1st I decided I would do a whole 30. Holidays be damned. I was stronger than sugar cookies, and chocolate chip cookies, and candy canes and…well I mean you kind of get the picture, right? I wasn’t. It’s a horrible time to attempt my first w30. I did like a full 11 or 12 days before my husband’s work holiday party. They had beef wellington, I just ate the beef, none of that wellington. Salad, fresh veggies. I tried so hard to stay true to the plan. To not eat anything ‘bad’ for me and was doing pretty decently. Until dessert. They had coconut cake. My one biggest weakness in life is coconut anything. So I ate it. And I felt SO incredibly nauseous afterwards but did that stop me from a downhill slide right towards batches of sugar cookie dough? Nope.

January 1 I vowed to start again. This time I prepared by reading the entire book, It Starts With Food If you’re considering, even entertaining the idea, of starting or doing a Whole 30, I highly encourage you to read the book. It’s so good. So informative without being overwhelming. Scientific without being boring. It’s a good read and I’m so glad I did read it. It made the w30 seem doable, and worth it. To retrain my body into wanting real and wholesome food vs. manufactured and processed garbage.

Tomorrow I’ll share with you my progress. This is me. This is my journey. I’m trying to be whole.