What's for DINNER?!

And breakfast and lunch...I only eat three meals a day. That's all I need. I seriously didn't think that was possible but when your body is working right and you don't have sugars in it, you only need three meals a day. It's amazing and I would not have believed it until I experienced it!

I have four breakfast meals that I like to rotate through. The first two I do every other day. Then the second two breakfast options require some planning but I then put them in the rotation because it makes four servings for each one. I don't do all of these this week but wanted to put out there the four I like to use. I will likely just do #1 and #2 this week but wanted to share the two others in case you wanted to try them already. I will probably make the porridge Thursday or Friday this week.

Breakfast #1: Three scrambled eggs in coconut oil with raspberries,blueberries, and apple with raw cashews.

Breakfast #2: One Aidell's Chicken Apple Sausage with an apple with Justin's almond butter (make sure it has no sugar in there!) I have found the sausage at HEB in their Organic section and also at Target.

Breakfast #3: Banana Nut Porridge I make this with TWO bananas, instead of just one, and I like to top it with raisins. SO GOOD. I divide it into four ramekins and cover with foil and heat up for about 30 seconds and voila!

Breakfast #4: Baked Egg and Proscuitto Cups The blogger adapted this from another recipe to make it whole30 compliant. Be sure not to use cooking spray but use ghee instead. I eat two of these and sometimes some fruit with it. It's so filling.

Okay onto lunches and dinner. In general, I make my lunch whatever was leftover from dinner the night before.

Tuesday

Lunch: Pork chop and pan-fried sweet potato cubes. I have leftover pork chops from a few nights ago. The sweet potato is easy. I cut it into small cubes and then pan fry it in coconut oil and add sea salt. SO GOOD.

Dinner: Leftover Crockpot Beef Stew (I made this over the weekend)

Wednesday

Lunch: Leftover Chicken "Parmesan" with yellow squash. I cut up the squash and pan fry it in coconut oil and sprinkle sea salt on.  This is another dish I doubled a few days ago and have leftovers still. I didn't make the sauce on this recipe but used this Make It With Your Hands Pasta Sauce. I also have found a marina sauce at Sprouts that is sugar free. That is nice to have on hand.

Dinner: Balsamic Marinated Chicken which is SO AMAZING. This marinade works for other meats too! It is INCREDIBLE on flank steak. I double this recipe so I have leftovers for lunch. Make with zucchini.

Thursday

Lunch: Leftover balsamic marinated chicken and sweet potato (can you tell I love sweet potato???)

Dinner: Tomato Dijon Turkey Meatballs with Make It With Your Hands Pasta Sauce and Steamed Broccoli with ghee melted on it and sea salt

Friday

Lunch: Leftover balsamic marinated chicken and yellow squash or zucchini

Dinner: Crockpot Pulled Pork This stuff is the BOMB. You have to make the Beasty BBQ Sauce that goes with it. I don't use all the sauce at once but instead divide and freeze one half to be used the next time I make pulled pork. I serve this with any vegetable I have on hand. My family eats it on a bun but I don't. It's that good! Plus buns aren't compliant!

Saturday

Lunch: Leftover pulled pork and any vegetable on hand

Dinner: Sweet Potato Chili. This is one of my favorites!

I will do some more adventuresome veggies next week like cauliflower rice and I might take a stab at brussell sprouts again. I'm pretty generic with veggies because coconut oil tastes amazing on everything! I also keep spinach leaves handy and toss then with chopped almonds and homemade Italian Salad Dressing.

TOMORROW is the day!

I've been waiting since November to start a new whole30 challenge but had to get through all the holiday eating and festivities first! Tomorrow starts my 2nd whole30 challenge. I was asked today a question someone else recently asked, so I thought I'd answer it in this post. The question of the day: What do you do to stay motivated? 

I honestly had to really think through this one. I'm a hard-headed person. Once I want to do something, I just do it and plow through. That's an intrinsic personality trait I likely take for granted. So I'll try to share what motivates me. There is first a very vain element. I want to fit into old clothes and go shopping for new ones. I want to feel sexy and beautiful.While David has always loved what I look like even nine months pregnant, there is this really primordial anti-feminism element that makes me want to please his eye. That sounds SO prehistoric that I'm nearly ashamed to share that! Seriously, that is not the only motivation but it's a nice perk knowing he likes the fit shape. OMGosh I can't believe I wrote that. Okay onto less embarrassing reasons....

There's the vanity as I've already said. There is also the knowledge that my body has been in shape before and so I have that image in my mind and KNOW that I can attain it again. It might not be exactly what it was at 35, 30, and most definitely not at 25, but it can be the best possibly fit bod at 39. I feel better when I'm in shape and healthy. That feeling motivates me. Knowing what it feels like to be healthy and unhealthy is a motivation to keep focused on the goal. I also was not happy with my body as a teenager so I think when I finally had a shape that I was proud of, part of me is wanting to continue making up for lost time. I think women who have struggled with their shapes as teens have a deep desire to be in shape because we weren't the girls in the short skirts and skimpy tops as teens. So in some ways, I have a deep appreciation for fitness and a healthy body that maybe others, who come by it naturally, take for granted. 

Then there are deeper reasons. I showed my children my pictures before my third pregnancy. Makenna said to me, "poor mommy." She could see how much I had changed since then and they felt bad for me! ha! We talk often about health here although we don't talk about size or weight. But we talk about being athletes and being healthy and strong. I wanted to be the healthiest and strongest example for them. I don't want my daughters to struggle like I have. I want them proud of me. 

Then there is a really deep core reason that I believe is the drive behind everything. It is the love of the life God has given me and the deep respect for taking care of the body he has given me. When I'm on my bike and I want to quit, I can appreciate that I'm alive and strong enough to ride. When I see the wealth of this country and all the food I have at my fingertips, I am motivated to eat right when all the right foods are available and so many people around the world are dying of starvation. 

So it's a lot of reasons. And not just one. But I pull from different reasons at different times. I think motivation is different for everyone. You have to know your 'why.' For me, it starts with vanity but underneath that is a desire to care for the only body I've been given and live as long as I can so I can see my grandchildren grow up and have babies.

In my next post, I'll post my menu for the week!  

I love to eat DIRTY but eating CLEAN is so much sexier!

I've labeled my holiday-eating as dirty eating this year. And it fits. And it's oh so good good good. But my body pays pays pays. My plan was to start another whole30 on January 2 as I know I'll want to eat yummy goodies on January 1. In fact, we have plans to go eat pancakes at Kerbey Lane this week too! Guess we will go and this girl will be eating something clean which won't include their pancakes. Whhaaaa!!!!! But my thighs and hips just sighed and said THANK YOU!

I did my first whole30 in October and it changed my life forever. What is whole30? I'll get to that. First you have to know where I was 'at' when I embarked on this adventure. I've lost and gained weight more times than I can count now. A time for truth...When I was 15, I got fit just riding my bike all over Georgetown. It was easy. Then I developed fat. I didn't 'get fat.' Fat doesn't define me. Fat is something I 'have,' just like I have hair and fingernails. It's not who I am. So...fat grew on me. Then I dropped some again when I was a senior in high school...and then some more my freshman year of college thanks to lots of marching band at Tech and riding my bike since I didn't have a car that first semester. Then...fat grew on me again. And again. Ugh. At 23, I got serious again and did the Weigh-Down workshop. I learned how to portion control. I don't recall really paying attention to calories/fat or cutting out grains but I also exercised. Religiously. And I went from a girl with a whole lotta girl to love to a size 2 teeny-tiny thing by 24. Then I got married. Fat crept in again. Then i got pregnant. Well the fat loves a pregnant girl. Especially one who eats everything in sight and quits working out. After Baby #1, I got FIT. I mean, seriously fit. I was into high-protein drinks, lots of veggies, lots of meat, and hardly any grains. And boy did I work out. Religiously. Then I got pregnant again. Remember that fat loves a pregnant girl. Also, at 23, I vowed I would never have fat again like that. Oh well, so much for vows. But then I did it again post baby #2. I got super fit and super controlled with what I ate. And I became a serious coffee addict. And diet coke addict. Weight crept in again and baby #3 began. And after Baby #3, what happened? The fat stayed. And grew.

Sound anything like you and your journey? I think at some point post baby #3, I decided that my fit days were behind me. I worked out 4 days a week but it didn't seem to matter. I had come to a point where I didn't want my picture taken. I had no energy. Even though I worked out, nothing changed with my body. THAT is depressing. Really depressing. I ate chicken and beans for lunch every day. HOW was I possibly not able to drop any weight? Then at the end of September 2014, my spin instructor Jules started talking about whole30. I perked up. She mentioned a book called It Starts with Food and I heard the key phrase "backed up with scientific data" and "lost 15 pounds the first month" and "I was never hungry and didn't starve." I seriously perked up.

Timing is everything. I was ready for a real answer. Too many people had offered diet shakes, diet pills, you name it gimmicks and I just had this strong feeling that healthy shouldn't cost me a ton of money and shouldn't involve a product some company had to sell me. I didn't like the idea of being dependent upon a company to be healthy. When my friend Jules said that being healthy should be free, I was hooked. Real answers. Real food. No gimmicks. And FREE.

I poured over www.whole30.com and began reading story after story. I ordered It Starts with Food by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig and started meal-planning which terrified me. As I read the website entries from the authors of the book, what totally hooked me into the program is their straight-up way of talking to you. Here's what got me: This isn't hard. Cutting out milk, grains, and peanut butter isn't hard. Fighting cancer is hard. Losing a child is hard. This.Isn't. Hard. I paraphrase them a bit but the gist was what I could do for 30 days was NOT as hard as I thought. I told myself why not just SEE if this could work for me.

Then the book further sold me. I was in. You give yourself 30 days to reset your body and its hormonal functions. You cut out legumes, dairy, grains, yeast, soy, ANYTHING inflammatory. So nothing processed. ICK. You won't want processed foods after this. (of course you will still treat yourself to them but you won't want them like you did before the challenge). And you cook. You make real food and cook with spices you didn't realize could make your food taste SO DANG GOOD. And you cook with REAL FAT, Olive oils, coconut oil, ghee, YUM! And best thing? No counting calories, no weighing food, no counting fat grams. I EMBRACE fat now because it's what fills me and gives my food FLAVOR that I love!

30 days resets your body. I kept a diary and what I think I'll do for the next 30 days is post my entries from my first whole30 so you can see what I was going through as I did my first whole30. I challenge you to do this with me! And if you aren't ready to start on Tuesday, give yourself a week to get organized and PLAN out your whole30 challenge.

PLANNING is key. You MUST plan. I don't care if you don't like to plan or if it's a pain. You have to. It's important for your entire life. It's the only body you've been given. It's your future. Remember Monica from Friends when she had her "Jam Plan"? Well this is your JAM PLAN. You plan out your meals, you shop, you stock your pantry and then you let yourself be your own lab rat and see what 30 days of clean and whole eating will do for you.

It's critical to educate yourself on the plan FIRST before starting. I've read many people get into it without planning, without following the rules, and it affects the results. Plus it's cheating. You have to follow it exactly as Dallas and Melissa Hartwig say to do it.

I nearly forgot to say how much I lost that first challenge. And it's because it's not the most important thing! I lost 8 pounds and two full sizes! I kicked my soda habit to the curb and even gave up coffee! (Don't worry, you CAN have coffee during the challenge!!!!) I no longer have artificial sweeteners in my diet and I NEVER WILL AGAIN. I love that I'm no longer addicted to caffeine and sugar. THAT alone is my greatest reward and joy.

I'm no cook but now, I feel like I'm quite the chef! Whole30 made me feel competent in the kitchen. It forced us to surround the table for meals together. I had a motivation to provide my kids with clean food and they got into it, wanting to know what I was going to make now. It's been fun educating them. I don't make them follow the plan. They still eat junk and grains and milk. But their dinner is about as clean as I can get it. And that's very satisfying as a mom.

I promise each blog won't be this long! Ask questions if you have them so others can learn too! I'll do my best to answer them! Be looking tomorrow for my menu for the week!