The Dress

I've had a dress-suit hanging in my closet unworn for a little over three years. It was my favorite for a long time. It had gotten a little snug, but still fit fine, or so I thought. One day at my former job a 'lead' (think manager) took me into her office and told me I was too fat to wear it and needed to go shopping. Other women got taken in to be told they were inappropriately dressed. Without talking about how incredibly inappropriate this woman was, I will say it did a number on my self-esteem.

I hung that dress in my closet and thought "some day I'll be thin enough again." Three years, a complicated pregnancy, a baby, a year of breast-feeding (No I was not one of those people for home nursing sheds the pounds), and the discovery of Paleo and I am finally confident to wear the dress again.

I have not weighed myself since the start of our Whole30, but I know I'm losing weight. My clothes are the proof. The fact that I'm rocking "the dress" to work today and totally confident in it, just seals the deal.

Paleo on a Budget

A friend, starting her own 30 day challenge, posted on Facebook about how expensive her first shopping trip proved to be. I'll admit I had sticker shock when we first started to convert to a Paleo/Primal lifestyle. When the bulk of your calories comes from meat, followed by veggies and fruit, it gets expensive. Especially when you are "paleoifying" things as paleo-sweeteners tend to be more expensive overall.

Now that the whole family is on Paleo I've managed to find a few ways to save some money.

My Tips

• Shop the freezer on a regular basis - this week 2 nights are freezer entrees.
• Buy slightly more than you need when meat is on sale so you can make a bit more of the recipe and have enough to freeze.
• Take inventory before you go to the store so you know what you already have
• Meal Plan using the meat and/or produce on sale
• If you have the time, shop at multiple stores to get the best deals. Grocery Outlet often has great deals on organic items

While our overall bill is a bit more than pre-paleo (after all you get coupons for frozen meals, but not rib-eye and asparagus), I've found we spend less money since we do not eat out very often, and there are no trips to the coffee shop. So while I may spend more in one trip, our weekly spending is actually a bit less.

Days 6 & 7

This little family had a great weekend to round out the first week of our Whole 30.
Saturday morning began with a super easy sausage and sweet potato hash for breakfast. (Recipe here, I added fennel and oregano and skipped the cinnamon). We all loved it, and it was nice for Isaac to have something substantial. He doesn't eat eggs, so breakfast has been consisting of an egg protein shake (technically primal, not Paleo, but given his aversion to eggs I'm letting it slide)

We had a cleaning crew in to do a major spring cleaning so in an effort to stay out of their way, we went out looking at play sets. They were still cleaning at 5pm so we ended up grabbing burgers, no-bun, while we waited for them to finish.

Sunday we went to the zoo in the morning, and relaxed at home for the afternoon. We had the "Lasagna" from Every Day Paleo for dinner. (recipe here) Now some of the strictest Whole 30 folks will say this wasn't compliant, since I "Paleofied" a dish. But aside from the fact the dish was layered, and the sauce had the same flavor profile, it wasn't really "lasagna". Had I stir fried, baked, or otherwise cooked the exact same ingredients it would satisfy those folks. And since I didn't cook it because I was craving pasta and wanted a substitute, I still think it counts.

Overall I am feeling much more energetic. The cravings I had in the beginning of last week for sweets have largely subsided. The creamer in the office fridge was not even remotely tempting. I also feel better prepared for the week. I know better that I feel better with slightly larger meals and a snack around 5pm to tide me over till dinner. I also bought almond milk to make the office-coffee palatable and remembered to actually bring it to work.

Hailey has been totally off milk since Saturday, although she did have some cheese at dinner that night. But she seems to be doing better. Last night she easily went down to bed. And she loves coconut milk (which btw has more calcium and the same amount of fat as 2% cow's milk, who knew?)

Days 3/4

Days 3 and 4 are reported to be among the hardest for most Paleo/Whole30 challengers. In large part because these are the days when most have the most withdrawal symptoms: headaches, general aches, *ahem* digestive issues. Luckily for me I had a slight headache and nothing more. I was exhausted on Day 3, but I think that had more to do with my daughter's sleeping habits than anything else.

I also added an egg muffin and some blueberries to my breakfast and was satisfied until noon....maybe I don't need to eat every 2-3 hours after all.

What I ate Day 3 :
Breakfast - 3 egg muffins, blueberries
Lunch - left over steak kabobs and cauliflower "fried rice"
Dinner - a banana and some almond butter... I didn't even have a snack

Day 4:

Breakfast - scrambled eggs cooked in coconut butter, a banana
Lunch - Almond crusted chicken (Dipped in dijon mustard, rolled in crushed almonds, bake at 350 for 45 minutes) and spinach
Dinner - Chicken Stirfry


We also made a decision to put Hailey on a Paleo diet for a few weeks. I've thought for awhile she may have a slight dairy intolerance. Even when she was exclusively breastfed I noticed I couldn't have very much cheese or milk or she'd get very cranky. (At the time I was not paleo, or even primal). Then I stumbled across an article that linked common food intolerance to gluten and dairy with sleep issues. I started to think about her latest sleep regression, which times very closely to when we started to pump her full of milk and cheese to try and fatten her up. I'm curious to see if she really does have a connection or not. From Day 3 of our challenge on she'll be Paleo. If there's an improvement when we reach day 30, she'll remain Paleo with us. If there's not, she won't.

Day 2 - Rule Breaker

There are some rules to the Whole30 I don't follow. You'll see that I probably eat more fruit than the strictest of the bunch would allow. But you know what, I like fruit. It's yummy. And it helps me to resist the temptation of the bagels and cream cheese sitting in the office kitchen. Apparently it's also "recommended" that you space your eating out 4-5hours and only have 3 meals and 1 snack a day. They say it takes that long for your hormones to do everything they need to do. Maybe for my next Whole30 I'll try it. But right now? Well I know because I had to test my blood sugar every few hours for 6 months of my pregnancy, and then chose to after that, my body prefers fuel every 2-3 hours, and I get up early. And since eating dinner at 4 and going to bed at 8 just doesn't work with my schedule I'm going to continue eating every 2-3 hours.

What I Ate:

Breakfast - 2 egg muffins and a banana.
Snack 1 (I know, I'm such a rebel) - ants on a log (using almond butter)
Lunch - left over chicken and slaw
Snack 2 - 2 clementines, I brought some chicken as well but did not feel like I needed it.
Dinner - Steak, zucchini, mushroom and red bell pepper kabobs

30 Day Challenge - Day One

What I Ate:

Breakfast - 2 Egg Muffins at 8:00 am

Lunch - Salad with organic greens wild-caught canned salmon, sliced almonds, 1/2 an avocado, olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar and dill, at 11:00 am because I was starving!

Snack - a large bowl of fruit, ham, 1/2 an avocado

Dinner - Roast chicken, Slaw with red cabbage, cucumber, mango, a shallot, olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Dessert - Plantain "chips"


How I felt

I'll be honest, the first day was really hard. Largely due to the amount of sweets around our office. At home it's easier because I don't have anything to tempt me. But I have to pass the candy bowl every time I go to the restroom, or grab a file, and that makes it hard. By noon I was craving something sweet. I ran out to the store and bought a very large bowl of cut fruit.

It made me realize that I need to pack a bit more food than I did, and make sure I include fruit as part of my meals and snacks.

A Meal Planning Crisis

I'll start out by saying, I realize this is a completely first-world problem. Isaac has been working a lot these days. Last week there was one night he was home before midnight, and that was just a quick check in to give Hailey a bath so he could see her. He has a big brief due today, so I already knew going into the weekend that we would not see him on Saturday.

My office closed early on Friday, I picked up Hailey and we had a great afternoon together. My plan was to do my meal-planning for Easter and the start of the 30 day challenge after she went to bed. Then I'd be able to grocery shop on the way home from an Easter Egg Hunt Saturday morning. Everything was going swimmingly, Hailey went down very easily. The housekeeper had come so I didn't have anything to pick up. I sat down on the couch and fired up the laptop only to discover there was once again a problem with our AT&T Internet. I started to panic. I do all my meal planning online. All my recipes are online. The grocery store ad so I know what's on sale? Also online.

I attempted to start planning on my phone. But even though my phone is awesome and has faster Internet than our DSL (even when the DSL works). My little 6ish inch screen is not fun to try to plan a weeks worth of meals. Then I remembered I actually have Paleo Cookbooks - 3 to be exact. Lucky for me the first one I started thumbing through was ">Everyday Paleo, where I discovered toward the back she has a 30day Family Meal Plan! Not only are the recipes laid out, but there's also a shopping list to the right of every 5 days worth of food.

I did make a few modifications to her plan. Her egg cupcakes call for bacon, but under the Whole30 bacon is a no-no. I substituted fresh sausage (no sugar, no gluten) instead. And they taste amazing. And Day 5 called for Blueberry pancakes, but because I've committed to not "paleoifying" foods, and/or using sweeteners including maple syrup, I decided we'll just have blueberries and almonds with our scrambled eggs. And because we have some leftover ham, we're having ham instead of jerky on a few days. (Although I did pick up some beef to make my own jerky).

Whole30

Even though I have not been great about blogging the last few months (way too much going on in our world), our primal lifestyle is still going strong. We keep about 80% of our meals (100% of at home meals) paleo or primal, and 20% are cheats. But both Isaac and I have hit a bit of a plateu in the weight loss arena and need a recharge.

Most of the primal and paleo plans suggest you be strict-paleo for 30 days first, and then switch to 80/20. But when I started I was breastfeeding and didn't yet trust that I could get everything I needed by being so strict, so I've always done 80/20. Now that I'm more comfortable, and nursing is less and less a source of nutrition for Hailey, I'm ready for our first Whole30.

Which means starting Monday April 9, 2012, we will not be eating any dairy, legumes, grains, sugar or sugar-substitutes. Nor will we be paleoifying treats like cookies, brownies, and cakes. (Paleoifying is way too common in our house right now.) You can read more about the Whole30 here.

Why start on the 9th? Why not start now? Well, I'll be honest. I LOVE Peeps. I don't want to sacrafice my one-time a year I allow myself to partake of their marshmallow-sugar yumminess. So we're starting the day after Easter. It seems fitting to start at a time of renewal anyway.

Plus we'll end on the 9th, just in time for my *gulp* 10 year college reunion. I hope this 30 days will help me to shed some excess poundage before then.

A Pinterest Meal Plan

I have had so much on my plate lately that I haven't had time to put up this current week's meal plan. I guess I'll just combine the plan with my review of the recipes. This week I went entirely off things I found on Pinterest - with Great Success.

Saturday - Green Coconut Salmon with Cauliflower Rice . This was to die for! Seriously, even my normally Salmon-hating better half scraped every last crumb off his plate. Even better bonus - it was super easy. I think this may become a regularly scheduled recipe for mid-week.

Sunday - Stuffed Cabbage This was pretty good - although I wish I had made extra sauce. The jar she calls for would not be enough. I did modify the recipe a bit. I forgot the jarred mariana sauce, so I ended up throwing my own together with what I had (a can of whole plum tomatoes, two fresh, some jarred red peppers and basil). The recipe made a ton of filling. I froze enough filling to make another complete meal someday. And we had enough stuffed cabbages left for a whole dinner some other night. While it was a time-intensive recipe I did get three + dinners out of one prep.

Monday and Tuesday Grain-free Lasanga This was one of my favorite things this week. It was definitely more Primal than Paleo due to the cheese, but it was oh so delicious. And even having it two nights, we froze another night's worth.

Wednesday Paleo Orange Chicken I only wish I'd thought to make cauliflower rice to go with this. It was good, and had a little kick which I find often lacking in Paleo Recipes. The one modification I did was instead of using the zest of one orange, I used some of the pulp left from juicing.

Thursday Left Over Pork Stirfry I added some Coconut Aminos to this (a substitute for soy sauce, with far less salt) and it came out really well. I also used left over pork chops from last week.

Friday - Cannibal Peppers I'm making these with Left over chicken from last week.

Egg Muffins

In my mind, I'm still the girl who wakes up at 4 am to work out, eat breakfast, and has plenty of time to get ready before heading out the door to the office at 8.

In reality, I'm the mom who never gets enough sleep. Who still gets woken up by my daughter many nights every week. Who needs the precious extra sleep between the hours of 4 and 6 am, and goes into the office an hour earlier than pre-baby, so I can leave an hour earlier. So in reality, I have very little time to actually get ready. Throw in a little person pulling at my leg, and running around while I'm trying to get dressed, and I'm always scrambling to get out the door on time. And I never have time for breakfast.

Since breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I will eat my entire lunch by 10am if I do not manage to eat something by 8, I had to face reality and figure out a new, paleo friendly solution. Enter the scrambled egg muffin. I was inspired by a recipe in Every Day Paleo. And let me tell you these babies are good! And they freeze well. And for something based on eggs, they have enough veggies that they aren't too "eggy". I was able to make a batch of 18 on Sunday afternoon while Hailey napped, and will have breakfast through next week.

Here's my version of the recipe:

10 eggs whisked well
2 zucchini
3 cups kale
1/2 a cup jarred roasted red peppers
1 lb COOKED breakfast sausage (check the label to make sure it's paleo)
pepper to taste (I used about a tablespoon)

Preheat oven to 350 and grease (I used olive oil) muffin pan(s) (recipe makes 18)

In a food processor throw in the zucchini and jarred peppers and process until finely chopped. Add chopped veggies to your eggs, along with the cooked sausage. Throw the kale into the processor, chop and add to your eggs. Mix the egg mixture well.

Put 1/4 cup of egg into each greased muffin cup.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the eggs are set in the middle.

I eat 2 every morning. You can mix out the meat (bacon for example), and the veggies. Some recipes out there call for frozen spinach instead of fresh (or kale like I used), but I found it makes the cupcakes too soggy.

Meal Plan Monday-errr Tuesday

The long weekend has me off on dates, so this is posted a day late. Inspired by http://onceamonthmom.com/ I'm trying to cook more in one sitting and lesss during the week. While I'm still doing my own menus/meal plans and doing it on a weekly basis I'm aiming to have more frozen left overs during the week.

Yesterday I doubled my recipe and froze half the pork chops, I plan to incorporate them next week (making a stir-fry maybe?). Tonight's chicken will be shredded and frozen for chicken soup next week. And you'll see a lot of our meals this week are leftovers from last week.

Monday - skillet pork chops with carmelized onions and apples
Tuesday - Whole Chicken in Slow Cooker and sweet potato "fries"
Wednesday- Left over chicken leg adobo from last week, with cauliflower "rice"
Thursday - Left over chili (note - when buying dried peppers, it's probably a good idea to check the heat index online, because this stuff was SPICY)
Friday- Zuchini Spaghetti with left over sauce
Saturday - Shrimp tacos (in lettuce instead of tortillas)
Sunday - Stuffed Roasted Eggplant

Getting Back on Track

Most of my readers already know my family suffered a huge loss on January 21, when my brother (Honolulu Police Officer Garret Davis) was killed in the line of duty. The subsequent days and weeks were a whirlwind of traveling, visitors and funerals. We are so grateful to everyone who brought food so we did not have to worry about cooking. But three weeks of eating lots of gluten and dairy took their toll.

This Monday, I went back to work and we've started to try to get back to our normal routines. This means getting back to clean, whole food, and to this blog.

Just two days back in and I already feel much better (health wise) than I did on Sunday. I'm only 10 lbs from my goal weight, so my goals are shifting from pure weight-loss, to shaving minutes off my 5k time.

Paleo Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

When I was fairly early on in my pregnancy I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The worst part for me was not that I had to prick my finger and test my blood sugar four times a day. Nor was it counting every single carb that went into my mouth. It wasn't even the fact that I couldn't just eat when I was hungry. Although I hated all those things, the worst part was breakfast. My options were limited as I was allowed a mere 15carbs for my morning meal. All of my favorite breakfasts were well above 15 carbs. I was basically left with eggs, eggs, and more eggs. I grew to really dislike them.

Oh, how I wish I'd known about paleo/primal back then, Then I would have known the possibilities for low carb, high protein, breakfasts go way beyond eggs with a side of eggs.

My new favorite are pumpkin muffins, the following is a recipe I've adapted from many different sources, with my own special addition of chocolate, because I really like chocolate.

1/2 cup coconut flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tbs unsweetened cocoa
1/2cup pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie mix)
6 eggs
4 tablespoons melted coconut oil (or you could use unsalted butter)
1/3 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Shift all dry ingredients together
3. In a separate bowl, add one egg at a time to pumpkin puree, until well blended. Then add coconut oil, honey and vanilla. When mixed well wisk in dry ingredients.
4. Put batter into well-greased muffin tins. * I use a large 6-muffin tin
5. bake 20 minutes and enjoy

*if you like your muffins to look pretty, be sure to flatten out the batter after putting it in the tins. I've found any non-grain flour will pretty much bake in the same position you put it in the oven. Flattening it out helps them look a little more "normal"

Koren Rice Bowls

Lots of recipes for Paleo/Primal Korean Rice Bowls can be found on various paleo blogs, and in cookbooks. For example, This one from Primal Rampage, Or this one from Paleo Table, (which adapts the basic primal recipe to take out the Tamari Sauce). Since we are more of a primal family than strictly paleo, I went with the primal recipe for the most part.

Marinade :
4 garlic cubes (I cheat and use these fabulous frozen minced garlic cubes each one = 1 clove)
1/4 cup Tamari Sauce (most will say 1/2 cup, however I find it makes it a little too salty)
1/4 cup water
2 tbs rice wine vinegar
1/4 sesame seed oil

Mix all together in a small bowl

"Rice"
Cut up 1 head of cauliflower, pulse in a food processor until shredded. And then microwave for 2 minutes and separate into two bowls (or two bowls plus a toddler bowl like I did)

Toppings
The possibilities here are endless, use whatever veggies are in season/on sale in your area.
I used:
1 egg
2 cups frozen spinach
2 cups grated carrot
2 shitake mushrooms sliced
1/2 lb beef (I used a cut that was on sale) sliced into thin 2 inch strips

1. place beef in 1/2 of the marinade and mushrooms into the remaining 1/2
2. Heat 1 tbs of oil (I used olive) in a wok or large skillet
3. Saute each vegetable separately until cooked. Then place on top of "rice" in bowls
4. Fry the egg in the same pan to desired doneness
5. Remove meat from marinade and cook in pan, place on top of cauliflower rice
6. Put mushrooms in the pan, cook until soft and remove, placing in bowls
7. Add marinade to pan, bring to a boil for 3 minutes and then pour over bowls.

Enjoy :)

Because I had already pre-shredded the cauliflower, and prepped the veggies this meal took about 10 minutes to get on the table which makes for a great quick weekday-night meal.

Meal Plan Week Three

Saturday - Dinner at a friend's birthday party (mac n' cheese for Hailey, lucky girl)

Sunday - Meat Loaf and Mashed Yams with coconut milk and cinnamon. Both were really good. Even Isaac ate the yams, and he normally steers away from the orange stuff. We just added about 1/4 cup canned coconut milk and some cinnamon to 6 mashed yams.
There was actually enough left that we had the left overs for Monday Lunch and Dinner.

Tuesday - Cauliflower "Arroz" con Pollo from Primal Blue Print Quick and Easy Paleo - this was ok. I thought it was spicy without being flavorful. I think next time I'll try this recipe, which looks much more flavorful.

Wednesday - leftovers

Thursday - Pork Chops with Shredded Brussels Sprouts. Originally I was going to just use salt and pepper on the Brussels Sprouts, but after my friend Heather posted this recipe on her blog, using whole sprouts and maple syrup and bacon, I think I may be adapting the plan a bit. Seeing as how bacon and maple syrup are both ok with most of the primal/paleo community. (Except the super hardcore people who basically abstain from eating anything fun, I'm not one of those people)

Friday - Pot Roast in the slow cooker

Week Two Recap

A bit late after a crazy busy weekend...

Cheat Meals - 2 I caved and had a real donut Friday when I got to the office after court, and then at a friend's 30th party on Saturday

Energy- Good

Hunger- Not really, but I was craving something sweet

Favorite Meal - Chicken Pie in a Pot - super yummy, although my crust did not stay together well and I ended up crumbling it on.

Workouts - 5 I made working out a priority, and although I used to be an early riser I've realized I cannot count on that with an infant who also likes to get up early

Pounds lost - 2. Pounds to go - 25

I hate Fridays

Fridays and I do not get along. I know that sounds strange, I mean who doesn't love Fridays? But Fridays at my office mean Donuts. Although donuts are not something I generally crave, and the smell of which made me physically ill during 66% of my pregnancy, I somehow always cave and have at least a few bites of one on Fridays.

A few bites sabotages my day. I know, I know, I'm a grown-up, I have will power. But I swear to you something in the donut destroys my self control. Then lunch time comes, and we always go to lunch as an office on Friday, and I find myself ordering something very non-paleo.

To ward off the temptation I decided to make my own paleo/primal donuts to bring into the office this week. Sunday night, I used part of our grocery budget to buy a donut pan, and set off on my journey of finding the perfect donut.

My first attempt was the Paleo Sugar Cookie Donut from whatrunslori.com (http://www.whatrunslori.com/2011/12/paleo-sugar-cookie-doughnuts/) While they tasted wonderful, they were just a little too wet to come out of the pan in full donut form.

Tonight, I plan on making a few tweaks to hopefully get something that more closely resembles a sinfully good donut. I also need to figure out how to make the outside crispy, as if it were fried, but don't want to fry it. I would love your ideas on how to achieve this.

Making the most of my 90 minutes

The downside to not eating processed food is cooking often involves lots of slicing and dicing. Even recipes designed to take 30 minutes or less, take closer to an hour once I'm set up with all the necessary chopped veggies.

Since I get home from the office with Hailey around 5, and she goes to bed at 6:30, I don't want to spend our entire 90 minutes together chopping onions.

To save down on my dinner prep time, I take Sunday evening and go through the week's recipes. I chop all the necessary veggies, mix spice rubs together, and set the oils I'll need at the front of the pantry. I then store the chopped veggies in a larger zip lock bag labeled with the day of the week they are needed. I also set myself google calendar reminders for throughout the week to make sure things go smoothly, since I would otherwise forget to put the chicken in the slow cooker, or turn the slow cooker on.

This week I plan to take it one step further by pre-cooking some meals the evening before after Hailey goes to bed, so I just need to heat it up the next night. I plan to do this with the Chicken in a Pot Pie and the Meatloaf. This way, I can devote my entire attention to Hailey during those 90 minutes, which go by all too quickly.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Weekly Menu Plan

Our plan this week was motivated by my sinuses, my colder than normal office (which means I don't warm up all day during the week) and what's on sale at the store.

I wanted something spicy tonight to help clear out some of the gunk, and the spicy chicken wing recipe we chose really did the trick. Being cold all day also means I crave comfort foods for dinner. Unfortunately most of what comes to mind revolves around grain-based carbs. Thankfully my copies of Everyday Paleo ** and Paleo Comfort Foods ** arrived bright and early this morning, along with my subscription delivery of almond flour from amazon.com. I found some great adaptations of some of my favorite comfort meals.

Saturday Lunch - ham and plums: Dinner- spicy chicken wings from Paleo Comfort Foods and slices of red pepper (I had accidentally bought fresh red peppers last week for our spaghetti sauce, when the recipe actually called for jarred roasted)

Sunday Lunch - leftover Wings Dinner - Shepard's Pie, adapted with mashed cauliflower rather than the traditional mashed potato, and arrowroot to thicken my sauce

Weekday Lunches - larabars, fruit, cucumbers, egg salad and lunch meat
Weekday Breakfasts - Almond flour pancakes and coconut butternut squash

Monday Leftovers from Shepard's Pie

Tuesday Spice Rubbed Slow Cooker Chicken from Everyday Paleo

Wednesday Pot of Chicken Pie made with left over slow cooker chicken, adapted from Paleo Comfort Foods

Thursday Bangers and Mash (cauliflower of course)

Friday Meat Loaf with Mashed Yams adapted from Paleo Comfort Foods


** full disclosure, if you click one of the above links and make a purchase, I get a very small percentage of the sale

Week One Recap

Cheat Meals - 1 - sushi for lunch on Friday.

Energy- Up, way up

Hunger- Nope

Favorite Meal - butternut squash with coconut for breakfast (added to meal plan after the blueberry balls were just not filling enough, recipe to follow with next week's plan)...followed up by the Korean Rice bowls for dinner (longer post on those to come)

Workouts - 0 :( With Hailey waking up for hours at night, and my being sick. It just didn't happen.

Pounds Lost -1... not great, but considering I didn't work out, not bad either.

Goal for Next Week - find time to work out, no excuses.

When Less Costs More

When grains and beans are absent from your diet, inexpensive fillers are difficult to find. I do save money by planning our meals around the meat and produce on sale at the store, but there is no "extreme" couponing to be had when we mainly shop the perimeter of the store instead of the aisles.

While I know the benefits to our general health are priceless, I get a little bitter about how much more it costs to eat healthy. And then there are times when the additional cost of eating healthy baffles me. I thought about this yesterday as I had to search to find unsweetened coconut flakes.

Sweetened coconut was cheap and plentiful at the store, with three different brands to choose from. The "organic" one coming in at a whopping $2.50 for a 16oz bag. Unsweetened coconut was hidden on the bottom shelf, with only one brand available and I paid $4.63 for a little 12oz bag. It's not even organic. I just don't understand how not having the added sugar costs more. You would think that the opposite would be true.

It's no wonder we have such an obesity epidemic in our society.

Meal Plan Week One

Breakfasts - Nutty Blueberry Protein Balls

Lunches
Isaac - Lara bars, lunch meat and apples
Amanda- Tuesday & Wednesday Jalapeno Egg Salad with lettuce
Thursday & Friday Egg Plant and Fennel Salad

Hailey (16 months) gets left overs from dinner


Dinners
*Monday Night - Vegetable Coconut Stew From my Quick and Easy Primal Blueprint cookbook

* Tuesday - Spaghetti Squash with Ragu
* Wednesday & Thursday- Slow Cooker Pork Loin with Apples and Saurkraut, based on this recipe
* Friday - Korean Cauliflower “rice” bowls

Introduction

As a New Year's Day baby I have always hating making resolutions on New Years Day. No one else (well aside from other Jan 1 babies) is asked what they want to improve on in the next year on their birthday. For the same reason, I refuse to eat black eyed peas for good luck. I hate beans and I'm not going to force myself to eat them on my birthday, the one day I should be able to eat whatever I want.

So I generally make my resolutions on January 2, and this year is no different. The big change this year is that Isaac and I have madea joint resolution. After veering off our Paelo/Primal track over the last few weeks we both realize how much better we feel when we are strict. So for the next year we will be a strictly Primal family. (The difference from Paleo being we will have a small amount of dairy).

For myself I also need to make more of an effort to pre-make breakfasts and lunches. Those are the two meals I most often find myself eating out for, and the more I eat out the harder it is to be grain/legume and mostly dairy free.

This blog will track our progress, meals, and health over the next year.