Eat butter. Lose weight.

I lost 15 pounds!!!!!

Have I really not talked about this yet??  Surprising, since I have absolutely no filter.  But I think I have just been so busy the last few weeks!  And I also really wonder who cares.  When someone else loses weight, those of us still struggling to lose are genuinely excited for them, but sometimes it just makes you frustrated.  (Perhaps it is a tiny bit similar to an infertile woman hearing another pregnancy announcement?  Certainly nowhere near as painful, but sometimes hard to hear.)

I have wanted to lose the weight for a year and struggled with three kids, a move, and making tons of other excuses.  I was able to maintain my weight, but I can't lose weight unless I am focused and intentional about it.  The weight I needed to lose wasn't baby weight - I only gained 21 lbs with Roman and lost it right away.  It was the weight I gained while dealing with my mom's pancreatic cancer diagnosis and caring for her until her death 8 months later.  She didn't have an appetite, but I definitely ate my way through my feelings that year!

So, for anyone who is either really bored, hungry, or gives a damn, here is my weight loss story *so far*!!  I have at least 15 more pounds to go before I am in a healthy range for a normal person.  20 more pounds and I'm at wedding weight.  Not really my goal, but it would be cool to see.

Jason bought me a gym membership for Christmas and I have been dedicated since the first of the year.  I only attend the classes that are offered since the instructors push me WAY harder than I would ever do on my own!!  I have been able to get to the gym 3-4 mornings a week (usually 4) since January and I feel like a new woman.  Once, during a workout with a substitute trainer, I swore I gave birth.  I didn't, obviously, but I worked so hard that it felt like labor all over again.



Here is the kicker: I haven't modified my diet at all.  I don't think about calories.  I don't bother counting or weighing anything.  When I'm hungry, I eat.  On Sundays, I splurge.  I drink wine.  Lots of wine.  I haven't changed a thing about my diet in the last 2 years.  And I still dropped the weight!  

One thing that used to happen to us is that Jason and I would decide to start working out again, we would make it 3-4 days and then get sick.  Every.Single.Time.  We weren't eating enough nourishing foods to keep our immune system boosted during vigorous workouts.  But the worst part about dieting is the dizziness and crankiness from being hungry.  As a mom of three small children, there is no way I could survive "dieting".  When I am hungry, there is just no way I can function.  And it is in the best interest of all the loved ones in my life that I not go hungry...So I just eat lots of great foods to keep me functioning all day and workout hard.

And I still have to prepare food for the rest of my family.  I can't prepare two separate meals and not eat what is on their plates.  Especially if there is bacon on their plates...

I should specify that I am still nursing a ton.  So I get extra calories per day.  But I feel like when you are nursing, you are so hungry 24/7 that this isn't really a "win".  

My only philosophy is:

I didn't cut out any food groups.  I'm not paleo or primal, or low-carb anything.  Just focused on eating real foods.  However, yesterday was a Sunday in Lent so I had chocolate and ice cream.  Though both were "processed" - I can't seriously eat real food 24/7.  That's just unrealistic.  You gotta live a little!!  I follow an 80/20 rule.  And not perfectly :)  

I recognize that a gym membership is expensive.  I'm so fortunate that Jason splurged to buy it this year for me.  I tried my best to workout at home but I usually get distracted by all the things I have to do.  I needed to be out of my "office" in order to focus on a workout.  After seeing the change in my general demeanor, energy and lifestyle in the last 3 months, I no longer see a gym membership as a "luxury".  It is a necessity and I will try my best to budget it in yearly.

If you are interested in what we eat daily, here it is!  (Plus a couple of my favorite recipes)

Typical Day:
Breakfast:
Before the gym: Smoothies: homemade yogurt, frozen strawberries and bananas
After the gym: Soaked Oatmeal or Soaked buttermilk pancakes, Sourdough Pancakes or our new favorite: Soaked Dutch Baby! *Recipe below*
 - I add lots of butter, some vanilla extract and salt, a little maple syrup or muscovado sugar to my oatmeal

Lunch:
Eggs fried in lots of grass-fed butter and my homemade sourdough bread toasted with butter and jelly.  Pastured bacon or sausage from our farmer if we have it.
OR
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or grilled cheese.
OR
Cheese/Crackers/Nuts and Raisins
Sometimes we will have migas, sausage/egg/cheese mini quiche's or something fancy if my kitchen is clean.

Snack
Apple, Banana, Orange or Grapefruit, Sweet Potato with coconut oil, Nuts

Dinner
Last night we had this: Jolean Cheese Potato and Smoked Sausage Casserole with a real food makeover and raw veggies with homemade ranch dip (I used my homemade yogurt).  I'm soooo happy there are leftovers because it was AMAZING!!!  (We used the smoked sausage from the deer Jason shot earlier this year.  The meat was cut with a wild hog caught on his parents ranch.)

- Friday we had green bean casserole (with caramelized onions) and mac'n'cheese quinoa.  I had just made about 2 cups of homemade mozzarella that day so I used one cup per recipe.  When something calls for cheese, I tend to be a little heavy-handed :)

- The other day we had Alaskan salmon (found it at Sam's Club!!) baked in garlic butter, mashed potatoes with (yup) more butter, and sauteed broccoli (my absolute favorite broccoli recipe!!).

- We had burgers and baked french fries a couple nights ago.  I could live on those french fries.

- Tomorrow is Beef, Broccoli and Rice Casserole.  And at some point this week I will be making Roasted Cauliflower with Bacon and Garlic.  Probably as a side to a salisbury steak or something.

If I'm still hungry after dinner, I'll munch on banana chips, nuts, chips/salsa/sour cream, sourdough with butter and jelly or a banana and peanut butter.

I seriously don't worry about the quantity of food I'm eating.  The only thing I can overeat are those dang banana chips.  SO GOOD!!  But everything else is impossible to overeat on.  You are satisfied, full and energized throughout the day.

Now here is my favorite recipe. I make it at least once a week!!

Soaked Dutch Baby Pancake

Ingredients:
1 cup raw milk
4 eggs
2 pinches cinnamon (make sure it is real cinnamon and not cassia bark!)
2 pinches salt
4 tablespoons of grass-fed butter or coconut oil
pure maple syrup for topping.

Directions:
The night before, combine 1 cup raw milk and 1 cup whole wheat flour in a glass or ceramic bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap and put in a warm place to sit overnight.

In the morning, preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Put 4 tablespoons of butter or coconut oil in a cast iron skillet and put it in the oven to melt while you mix the batter.

Use an immersion blender to blend 4 eggs into the milk/flour mixture (or beat vigorously).  Toss in a couple pinches of cinnamon and a couple pinches of pink himalayan sea salt.  Pour batter into cast iron skillet (if the butter browned a bit, don't worry!!) and bake at 425 for 12 minutes.  Cut like a pie and serve with maple syrup.

I LOVE this recipe because you don't have to stand there and do batches of pancakes.  You can just bake it while you get ready for the day.  And it is SO good!!

(this post contains affiliate links)

7 Quick Takes (#48)

7 quick takes sm1 Your 7 Quick Takes Toolkit!

In which I feel like I have a "real job" outside of the home:

1) Our brand new foodclub here in town is out of control!  We had a huge foodclub drop this week - as a group we spent over $3,500 in only our second month!!!  In order to make it happen, members have to volunteer to sort all of the goods and food.  One of the food sorters came to help organize our delivery and brought her sister who was visiting from out of town.  She is studying to be a Nurse Practitioner and her husband is a lawyer.  This was her conversation with her husband after she left:

Husband: So???  How was it?!
Wife: None of them had dreads and no one was wearing Birkenstock's*!
Husband: Oh.....Really????
Wife: Yeah - it was just a bunch of completely normal moms.

(*Little does she know...)

Three cheers for hippies who wear deodorant!!!!
Etsy page

2) Aside from the general awesomeness of the foodclub and the rapid growth, I have made SO MANY new friends in this town!!  Moving can be a little scary for an introvert/homebody like myself.  But I have an actual social calendar that is filling up by the minute and I love it!!

My fears and anxieties over moving have been slowly chipped away.  At first, I met a few friends on facebook who liked knitting.  We started meeting up to knit twice a month.

One of those friends had a big dream about getting a huge farmer's market going in town.  8 months later, there are three farmer's markets about to open in May!!!  This friend is revamping the way this town shops for food - keeping it local, fresh and tasty.

3) This friend also needed some help.  The Mini-Maker Faire was coming up and the Food Coalition (Farmer's Market) had a booth.  We would be showcasing items of trash from the kitchen that had been upcycled - our booth would be called "Junk Food".  I made some upcycled tin cans:




And I made k-cup flowers!




4) But I had a backseat in this.  My friend was the driver and I was just a happy passenger looking forward to awesome food at the farmer's market.  But then I got a text from her this morning, "Can't make it to the faire today - home sick with a fever and possibly walking pneumonia."

I had to hustle to get our entire booth set up with all the homemade awesomeness - But MAN it was fun!!!


Homemade composting buckets with charcoal filters to remove odors 

T-shirt grocery bags! 


Old jars upcycled into flower vases (holding k-cup flowers!)


Milk Carton Wallets

Upcycled jelly jars and seedbombs! 

Eggshell and k-cup starter gardens


5) The Mini Maker Faire was hosted by a Discovery Place that we had been in one time, but only back to a classroom to work.  The kids desperately wanted to see the inside.  So at lunch, I ran home and scooped them up and brought them to enjoy the Faire!  When we arrived, we immediately saw this:

His name was "Andy" and Leo was so excited to meet a talking car.  


 They chased each other around the parking lot until...


Leo spotted the two ambulance drivers with the remote control and the earphone headset and figured it all out.


Watching Leo get so excited for this little remote control car just about made my life complete.  Seriously - is there anything better than the innocent joy of a child?  He didn't even notice the crowd of adults gathering around him to watch him talk to this car.  For about 10 minutes, we were all kids again.

6) The kids also finally got to see what was inside the building.  This place is a homeschooling moms DREAM!!!








7) And now I sleep.  And ignore any requests to do anything for the next several weeks.  How do moms who work outside of the home do it?!?!  

Now go visit Jen's!

Lounge Pants

I spent St. Patrick's Day nursing a sore tummy. Montezuma struck with a vengeance after we went out to eat Saturday night. 

PSA: A full parking lot does not necessarily correlate to the goodness of a Mexican restaurant...

So - after a night of pain and suffering, what is better than lounge pants!!!

But after a series of unfortunate events my absolute favorite pants in the world suffered a long and painful death due to over-use. Wearing them virtually daily for 2 1/2 years turned them from this:

Into this:

There were so many holes in these pants, I was starting to think about wearing leggings under them to be decent.  Then I thought about just patching the holes, but the fabric was so threadbare in most places, it would take too long.  So I chopped them up and used them as a pattern to make a new pair of lounge pants!!


These were some seriously well-loved pants.  

Check out how well these new ones lounge!!!


Most normal people would just buy a new pair of lounge pants.  But I have two issues.  I suffer from White Man's Disease - The UnButt.  And I have a disproportionately large waist to hips ratio.  So I thought I'd rather spend my money on on a brand new pair of awesome new jeans and made homemade lounge pants instead.  No one except my unfortunate neighbors will see me in these pants anyway.  And Jason...poor husband.  

I bought a basic black jersey t-shirt fabric at the store and laid it on top of the two pant legs, pinned and sewed straight lines.  Easy enough.  But then came the waistband... 

They sat on my sewing machine for 2 weeks, unfinished, because I was so scared to sew the waistband incorrectly.  And the waistband is the most important part of the pant.  Period.  
Amiright???

I finally bit the bullet and sewed very slowly and carefully to get a really nice waistband!  I bought two 1-inch waistbands and sewed them along the fabric one at a time.


The end product turned out so comfortable and perfect that I didn't even have time to finish the bottoms before I started to wear them!  I'll get around to hemming them someday.

The bottom half is the outside of the band and the top half of this photo is the inside of the back band.  Sloppy, but it works!

I love them so much, I actually photographed myself wearing them.  Excuse the pregnant looking belly (sooo bloated),

Out with the old!

I spent the last couple days trying out three different blog readers now that Google Reader is kaput.

And here is the winner:

BlogLovin!!!!
http://www.bloglovin.com/

If you are in the market - I storngly suggest this one.  Soooo user friendly.  And it actually saves your place as you bounce around to comment and then return to the main screen.  I LOVE it!!

The Losers:
1) Feeder

But I think since it is linked to Google Reader, it might disappear as well.  And, it only works on one computin' device since it manually installs on your toolbar.  And I only used it once...meh

2) NetVibes

I tried really hard to love this one.  I was all set up to go and then found out about BlogLovin from Kat.  It is just not as good.  Similar.  But I prefer BlogLovin since it is easier to comment and visit blogs.


EXPORT FILES!
It is so easy to transfer your entire reading list to BlogLovin.  You just need to export the file from Reader first.  Under Reader, go to Settings, then click the Import/Export tab.  Then click Download your data through takeout.


7 Quick Takes (#47)

7 quick takes sm1 Your 7 Quick Takes Toolkit!

1) Elena is a big girl.  She don't need no stinkin' nap!


...Clearly...


2) This guy hasn't napped in a year...


3) We pulled out Elena's 4T clothing and she chose her first outfit:


4) This is the best coloring stage ever.  She draws them on everything.  Even my bible study homework.  Which is awesome because I always get a smile on my face when I see these little doodles during Bible Study :)


But Leo came up with something brand new today.


This is the first time he drew the belly under the head.  And then he drew a baby in the belly.  Because it's me  and he is relentless about asking for a new baby.

If and when we ever get pregnant again, you better believe this will be my formal announcement:


5) I am participating in a faire with the other members of the brand new Farmer's Market.  It is the Tyler Mini Maker Faire and we are upcycling food-based items into really cool things.  I saw this DIY tutorial on Pinterest and finally got around to making mine!  I'm making 10 for the Faire and 10 for our pergola in the backyard.  (I got all the tin cans from a freecyle member).




We used one of these little fake flickering flames but I think a real tea candle will be much better.

 


6) Being Catholic was never as much fun as the other day watching all my friends with the Catholic Meme's on Facebook.  But the excitement of hearing about the white smoke and then waiting for our new Pope to come out onto the balcony was just blowing us over!!



Leo was so excited.  And even more excited when I told him that the Pope might be called Leo.

But then he wasn't Leo and I felt like the worst mom in the world...

But Elena was seriously so excited to hear that his name was Pope Princess.  


And then, all my hard work paid off, when Pope Francis started the blessing and both of my kids did this:
*Swelling with pride*

7) The first couple days were easy.  Now, the internal dialogue in my head sound like this all.day.long.

Is it Sunday yet?
No.
------






Is it Sunday yet?
No.
------
Is it Sunday yet?
No.
------













Now go visit Jen for more Habemus Papam Takes!!!
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