Whole 30 day 9 and 6.5 lbs Down

My husband has been trying to make me budge on my paleo diet and is having a hard time with how strict I'm being, and asked me if I had weighed myself to know if it was working. I said no, I'm not supposed to weigh-in until the end. Well I was kind of bothered by that so I decided to weigh myself this morning and was surprised to see I had lost 6.5lbs. I started Whole 30 at 237.0 lbs and I'm at 230.5! I was so happy to prove how well it's working! It will help even more now that I'm adding in workouts.

I am feeling so good! I love how energized and healthy I feel. I'm never hungry between meals anymore, so no snacking at all unless I workout in the evening and then I have something like a banana and almond butter.

I did P90X3 at noon while the kid napped. I was planning to nap with them, but decided once they were all asleep to just do it and get a workout in. Of course 2 minutes before I'm done, Jordan decides to wake up from an extra short nap. Luckily her crying stopped when she was zoned out watching me sweat my ass off doing kicks, jabs and sprawls! 

I am loving the food and want to come up with something a little different so my husband doesn't get bored with trying the paleo stuff I'm cooking. I Love avocados and have either 1/2 or 1/4 of one at every meal so I feel fuller longer. I also have an amazing trick for keeping your avocado green all day after you cut it. 

Cut it in half and leave the pit in. Take 1/4 of the avocado flesh or 1/2 from the side without the out and try to keep the skin as intact as possible, if it rips or anything it will still work. 

My avocado this morning after taking 1/4 for breakfast.

Lay the skin from the avocado on top of the half with the pit, just like it was still a whole avocado. 

I used the other 1/4 at lunch and then did the same thing to keep the rest from going bad.

This is what it looked like at dinner :) then I ate the last half.

If it gets a little brown on top just remove the pit then take a knife and shave a tiny layer off the top of the avocado. Now you can have fresh avocado all day without it going bad and having to eat a whole avocado in one sitting.

I also got an awesome workout in with my friend this evening. We will be working out every night doing T25 :) I love it! 

I felt great after weighing in I had to take a pic

Here are some meals from the last couple days. 

Whole 30 Day 6 and off meds

Today I called my doctor to see if I can try going off my antidepressants since my mood has been amazing just eating healthy, and I was given the green light to try it! Woohoo no more feeling sedated and all thanks to eating completely healthy! If I feel weird or anything I may have to take them every other day but I'm so excited, cause it's been almost 2 years of yo-yoing to different meds since I had the twins. Plus I feel like I've lost quite a bit of weight already. I can't wait to weigh-in in August!

Today I'm adding in exercise. I was giving my body a break and a chance to get used to the new diet, and now that it's been almost a week, ITS ON!! T25, P90X3 and walk/jogging (possibly couch to 5k) all mixed! Wish me luck!! 

Here are pics of some more food: 

Whole 30 Day 5 Feeling good

Good morning :) Between using natural skin care products for the last few months including shampoo, deodorant and toothpaste an now eating Paleo I fe fantastic and my skin looks amazing! 

Yesterday I ended up with a crazy bad migraine that made me sick, I was lucky that it only lasted a few hours, so I had to make up some of those calories I lost later in the day. I felt better that evening and my friend invited me to go out with her, so I went and drank water and got a good workout dancing. It was so fun!

Being a mother of three kids (a 3 year old and almost 2 year old twins) you would think it would be impossible to eat healthy cause it just "takes too long". Honestly it's faster than most the junk I used to cook my family. I will share the few things I do to cut time down to the bare minimum!

1. Prep all your veggies and hard boiled eggs in one day right after you buy them. Even grill, bake or brown your meat so it's easy to throw together. This could take about an hour give or take. Dice veggies for omelets or Fritattas or casseroles. Slice onions and peppers for stir-fries or salads, and boil a bunch of eggs for fast protein for after workout. Doing this you can throw pretty much any combo together for any kind of meal. 

2. Eat enough healthy fat each meal, if I don't eat enough I am hungry a lot faster.

3. Drink lots of water, then drink more. 

4. Don't get overwhelmed. If you are and don't know what to eat, focus on what you can eat, not what you can't, then it isn't bad.

Breakfast "hash" and eggs for dinner last night. Sweet potatoes and whatever veggies I needed to use up in the fridge, with eggs and avocado.

Breakfast this morning: sautéed spinach, red onions, minced garlic. Sautéed in plenty of olive oil topped with two eggs then baked at 350 for about 7 min and two slices of bacon

Super easy, I just throw stuff together, add seasonings and BAM, a yummy meal!

Whole 30 day 4 a New Start

A few evenings ago I was just plain tired. Tired of being lazy, tired of being tired, tired of chasing my kids around with no energy and tired of only putting half assed effort into my healthy lifestyle. So I decided that night I needed to make a huge change. I had talked to my doctor and the behavioral specialist about my antidepressants a couple weeks ago and we all planned that if I could eat paleo and workout I could come off of my antidepressants that have been basically sedating me and making me sleepy. It took me almost 3 weeks, but I finally made the huge step towards making that happen. 

I decided that I needed to try something different to detox my body completely and reset the way I think about food. I decided to do the Whole 30 (basically paleo with no sweeteners of any kind).

Here I am on day 3 and I feel great. I have cute my antidepressant dosage in half and it is still making me feel a little tired, but my mood is so much better, I feel better, more energized and haven't had any real cravings for the junk I was eating before. Not everyone does this well, but I think I was beyond ready for a change. 

As soon as I can I will add in T25 and walk/jog intervals. I will be going to Vegas on the 5th so it won't be an entire 30 days, but I plan to eat fairly healthy on my trip and start back with Paleo as soon as I get home. I have to keep my diet as paleo as possible so my mood stabilizes on it's own. 

Wish me luck while I start this journey all over again, but this time for good.

P90X3 has arrived!

It took a lot longer to get here than I had anticipated, but P90X3 is here and I was so excited to open my door and find my beachbody package there this afternoon! I'm a bit like a giddy little school girl. I had been working out less frequently and focusing on my diet and trying to get my home in order after Christmas. It is still a huge mess around my house with clutter everywhere but, I will hopefully get it under control soon.

I have been eating paleo and I love it. I tried an amazing recipe from Paleomg for Salisbury steak and it was so good! My husband also made oven roasted veggies! I really enjoy eating paleo.

I feel so much better than I ever did eating clean. I have also become more sensitive to dairy and wheat since cutting them out of my diet. I still have a cheat meal here and there but I have to be careful not to eat too much otherwise I get sick. My kiddos are getting big and holy smokes are they getting into everything. Days like today I just have to throw up my hands and let them play with stuff I normally wouldn't so that they let me cook!! Tonight they raided the lazy susan cupboard (with no lazy susan in it) and pulled out all of my appliances and were "cooking" with my husband and I.

I finally was able to workout after the twins were in bed. It was an amazing 30 minute workout. I felt like I was working parts of my body I hadn't thought about since I did power 90 two years ago! I am so excited to do this program. I love Tony Horton's workouts, they are totally more my type of workout than T25!

Its almost Christmas!

As a mom of 3 young toddlers days like today can be very hard. Both of the twins are teething so they are crankier than normal. They day started with a little bit of crying but they were fine once all three were fed, dressed and watching a cartoon. I was able to catch up on wrapping some presents. The only thing I have left to do is print off some pictures for a frame I bought my parents. I also have to practice a song to sing for church tomorrow. After they all went down for a nap the day went from ok to terrible. My son wouldn't stop crying all afternoon even if I held him, and his twin sister crawled around following me whining and even managed to almost get her mouth stuck on a dining room chair leg trying to bite it. Ah the joys of children. My oldest daughter played with water beads for awhile until it became clear she wouldn't keep them in the bowl. She had fun though. I also made a great recipe for paleo gingerbread cookies last night and posed our elf Ginger with them this morning. They turned out a lot better than I thought. I highly recommend them to anyone who is vegan, eating clean, gluten-free, paleo, or even someone eating a normal diet. If you want the recipe go here Tonight I made copper river red salmon our friends caught this last summer. It was delicious. I also made some roasted cauliflower. You use butter on a pan to keep it from sticking, you don't need a lot, put the salmon skin side down (make sure its on medium low) sprinkle salt, pepper, and a little onion powder (or use your favorite spice blend) let it cook almost all the way through on the one side, then flip it and cook it for about 5 minutes or less. It turns out so moist and tasty!! I learned to cook it from watching Master Chef. HeeHee! The cauliflower is easy. Cut it into florets, put in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil (use as much as you want, a little for crunchier cauliflower or a bit more for more tender) cook at 375 for about 20-25 minutes Well have a wonderful night and Have a Merry Christmas!

Going Paleo...

Since my last post I have been having amazing success with eating Paleo. I've lost 10.5 lbs so far. I love eating this way, its like clean eating on crack as I told my friend a couple days ago, but I feel great. I don't crave anything and I'm rarely hungry unless its time for the next meal. I am also still doing T25 occasionally in between going to Zumba since my gym membership expires at the end of the year. I'm going a bunch now cause I can't afford the new membership for awhile. On or around the 1st of the year I will be doing P90X3! I can't wait to do this program. I had so much success with power 90, I know this program will do wonders for me! We had a family date night with friends the other day, and one of the things I can totally tell you is that when I start feeling good about myself, I love to "dress up". The reason I put that in quotes is because I don't own many cute clothes that can fit me yet. At least not till I lose more weight. We had fun, even though it took us just as long to get the kids dressed and ready to go as it did to eat dinner. I am now a huge fan of the sock bun! I found an awesome video on pinterest showing how to do it, and I'll definitely be doing my hair that way often! I am in the process of filling up my calendar with lots of things for the babies and my older daughter to do, activities to do at home, toddler tea time, tot tumble,toddler tango, baby boogie, mighty mites. Too bad I can't in alone time for this mommy. It will be good for them and for me to get out of the house and socialize. My oldest spends most of the day trying to tear ornaments off of our Christmas tree and crying about anything and almost everything the twins are doing to her. I am really looking forward to the day that all three can communicate. Another big thing I am changing is moving the girls into the same room and out computer to the living room in a play yard so I cant start doing preschool with my oldest. I'm also mourning the loss of the morning nap the twins used to take. Now all three of them are down to one nap. It makes me need a nap even more. I will be posting more over the next few days on the food I've been eating and adding links to the websites that I got them from. I love the food I've been making and can't wait to try more.