Whole Foods Wednesday

When my love of food and quest for health combine, personal food rules are born. I've always thought I was not really a rules person, but I'll tell you what - the older I get, a love a good guideline. And a self-imposed one, woosh - don't even get me started with that. So my personal food rules (ps - does Michael Pollan have copyright of the term? hope not) vary a good deal and are usually based on my personal experience. Some examples...

- dont' eat a banana every day. or two bananas every day. (my digestion loves me for this rule)

- don't buy processed kid snacks (veggie chips, pirate booty, animal crackers) every week. If we buy them every two weeks, we will stretch them out.

- one dinner with meat per week (helps with budgeting and forces me to be creative)

My newest one: Whole Foods Wednesday.

I'm going to start with just Wednesdays and work my way up.

The "rules" of WFW, you ask?

I can process it, but I can't eat it if it's bought processed. Otherwise, I want to buy it as if it just came from the ground or came off an animal. And here were the results.

6amish, I started off the day super hungry with a plum and some coffee.

wfw fail #1: I do realize goat cheese is not a whole food. oh wait, and neither is salsa. I just got carried away. my hunger got the best of me.

9am: 2 eggs, hollowed out avocado w/salsa & goat cheese

noonish: black bean, cucumber, tomato, avocado salad with some apples.

afternoon snack: banana, plum, chopped almonds and honey.

pre-dinner snack: roasted eggplant with balsamic & honey.

dinner: three (or four, or five) sweet potato falafels and some tomato/cucumber salad.

I didn't count calories on this day but I am pretty sure I went over. I also ate a few handful of almonds in there and this morning I feel STUFFED and a little yucky. This post also doesn't include the picture of me taking like fifty "just for taste purposes" bites while making the sweet potato falafel.

hmmmmmm. All together, I liked WFW. I'd like to try a whole foods week soon.

But oh goodness how I miss some rice cakes and almond butter.

favorite movie quote ever

While watching the hilariously stupid movie, Man of the House,

I found my most favorite movie quote EVER.

"this combination here is proper as hell"

see below.

Teresa: [Sharp has a pizza delivered at dinner, while the girls all have homemade salads] What is that?
Roland Sharp: The Carnivore. Pepperoni, sausage, ground beef, ham and olive loaf all gathered together in one savory pie. With jalepenos. Want some?
Heather: Yes. No!
Roland Sharp: Extra thick crust.
Anne: I can't, I'm on the zone.
Roland Sharp: What zone?
Anne: The proper combination of protein, fat and carbohydrates.
Roland Sharp: This combination here is proper as hell.
Barb: I'm a total Atkins girl.
Evie: I'm on Weight Watchers, you'll probably blow all your daily points with just one bite.
Roland Sharp: This baby has one point and one point only, and that is tasting good.

4 successes

#1. Cleaning up the calories did the trick. After a week and a half of a small plateau, I watched my calories CLOSELY for one day and lost about two pounds. Which is GREAT except that eating those few of calories was pretty hard. But I think if I do three intentional days in a row, I'll do a fourth of easier healthy eating. So like three days of 1300-1500, on day of 1600-1800 (repeat) will be my new schedule.

#2. Running is going AMAZING. Well, maybe I should slow my roll. I suppose I shouldn't act like I'm busting out 5k's. But I've got about five running days down. Yesterday I did five minutes of walking, ran 1.3 miles, then walked another mile. Two miles, here I come:)

#3. fit club. Our church has an awesome fit club for women, once a month in an outdoor park. It's led by a great trainer who I love & there is a short devotional at the end. The last time I went was August and I was SKEEERED to death. That time I did the "postnatal" version of the fit club and I was still seriously spanked. I remember not being able to walk for a few days. Then, I couldn't go for like ten months because Nick had re:train the exact same weekend as fit club. Well, long story short - today I considered a success. I wasn't scared to go, I did almost puke a little, but it was a good, successful workout in which I didn't feel like the crazy out-of-shape lady getting left behind. AND on top of that - sweet Marisa (who teaches the fit club), gave me a beautiful new yoga mat which makes me a billion times more excited to do a long yoga session tomorrow. It's extra long and bright yellow and I can't wait to sweat all over it.

#4. three words. GOAT - MILK - YOGURT. Trader Joe's has it. Of course. They have everything good in the world. It's RIDICULOUSLY expensive - $5ish. But I figure, if I buy it once every three weeks or so, I can sparingly use it in oatmeal, snacks, and sauces. Amen and amen.

on the weekends...

On the weekends, there is really nothing NOTHING that

I enjoy more than cooking for my family.

presenting Elias' "scratchy cookie muffins"

Friday's dinner: biscuits-for-pizza-dough-pizza, salad for mama

Dlish

the day where I curse gluten/dairy-free eating

kiddo style

..............................

There's nothing I love more than cooking for my family all weekend. There has got to be some hidden Italian or Jewish grandmother in me. Tonight after Benja had eaten two turkey hotdogs, a pound of veggie chips, 1/4 an avocado, and a rice cake, Nick told me,

"you know - you can say no."

oops.

keeping it clean.

I'm in the middle of a small plateau, having not lost anything for about a week and a half. So.... I'm cleaning up my calories a little over the next few days to make sure I'm not going too over. As I said in the previous post, my goal for calories is somewhere around 1200-1600. I'm going to tightly watch my calories though and aim for right around 1300. The only part I'm disliking about counting calories is how often I'm REALLY hungry.

I notice that somedays I just have a metabolism SURGE and I know those are the days that if I'm diligent with my diet, I can make some good headway on weight loss. However, if I just eat till I'm full on those days... not so much. Today, is one of those days. I woke up hungry at 5am. So, before the day got started, I planned out my calories perfectly so I'd know exactly where I was going to end up.

Here's what today looks like calorie wise:

(6am) rice cake with some honey - 75

(9am) oatmeal, apple, honey, flax, sunflower butter - 385

(11:30am) {see, seriously hungry}

1/2 black bean patty - 75

1.5 c of black bean soup & ezekiel bread with honey - 340

rice cake with honey - 75

(post-run snack) larabar - 220

(dinner) asian veggie salad with chicken burger patty - 300

(coffee/soy milk) 50

.... that puts me at 1520, DEFINITELY over 1300.

Now, if I can skip that Larabar & just eat dinner, I will.

But otherwise, I'll try tomorrow to hit 1300!

here's the 1/2 black bean burger from heaven.

lunch.

benja finishing the rest of the black bean burger.

thank goodness or I would've scarfed that sucker down.

my plan

Recently, I've just been pictures of delicious food. HOWEVER this is sort of weight-lossy blog, certainly not a how-to, but more of a how-I-am. So I'd like to keep a little balance and post my actual "plan" right now.

I hesitate to use the word diet or even weight-loss-plan, because I've used those phrases in such unhealthy formats before in my life. But the truth is, I am aiming to lose weight by eating healthy and working out. I believe that for the rest of my life I'll be eating healthy and working out, but doing it with the intention to lose weight looks a little different. So here are the main things that I'm doing.

- Making a calorie deficit. I'm pretty convinced that no matter what "plan" you're on, you have to make a deficit so that your body uses more calories than it consumes. To maintain my current weight with a lightly active lifestyle, I'd need to eat around 2200 calories/day. So I make a deficit by eating less and working out more. My daily calorie goal right now is a sliding range from around 1200-1600 calories a day. This puts me on a goal of losing 1-2 pounds per week. On day when I can't I absolutely can't work out, I stick to around 1200, but most days I hit 1400ish.

*sidebar: for calorie counting, I literally do all the counting. No estimations. I keep a handy little notebook with me at all times.

- Vigorous exercise. I think, I hope, for the rest of my life - exercise will be important. I mean, it's just silly to even list all the benefits - but I'm sure it's here to stay. Specifically yoga. I could literally do an hour of yoga every day for the rest of my life and be happy. However, to lose weight I'm bumping it up to vigorous exercise. Not just for my calorie deficit, but for metabolism. I know that with my thyroid issues, I need that heavy, hard burn that comes from a vigorous workout to boost my metabolism. So even when I do yoga, I try to run that day as well. I would love nothing more than lifting light weights and sitting in cobra all day, but it just won't cut it weight-loss wise.

- General wellness work. There are some things that I'm doing now that I probably won't be so strict about in the future, if I'm not working to lose weight. Such as... getting at least seven hours of sleep. I'm a little bit of a nut about it, but I know when I get less - my cortisol raises (increasing belly fat), I can barely work out the next day, and I feel gross. I also don't drink coffee past noon most days. I abstain from that so that by the time I fall asleep, my hcg levels aren't still elevated and they can go to work on my fat cells, rather than getting stuck processing my coffee.

- Blood type diet. I've been following the blood type diet for two or so months and I'll continue to loosely follow it as long I'm actively trying to lose weight. For me (type O) this means no gluten or dairy (which I probably will NEVER add back in), no corn, cucumbers, and potatoes. Theres a slew of other things, but those are the heavy hitters. I'll never eat dairy again, but I'm not sure about gluten - I may slowly leak that back in.

So, now I think it's time to publicly state some weight loss goals. You know, "publicly", on my secret blog. There is no way I'll give you numbers, I'm no dumb-dumb - but here are the stats, basically.

(let's start with the good news)

- I'm 30 pounds down from post-Benja body.

- I'm 20 pounds down from May, which is when I went gluten/dairy free and starting counting calories.

- I passed one MASSIVE goal of getting back to what I was just after I had Elias.

- I have about thirteen pounds to go to get to my second MASSIVE goal, pre-all babies weight.

- And about twenty five pounds to go to get to wedding weight. So, sometime around the new year, I'd like to be hitting that goal.

In total, that will be about 55 pounds that I never want to see again. Ever.

Thank you very much.

what I ate today.

I forced myself to take a break from oatmeal with some cinnamon raisin ezekiel bread & sunflower butter. Two eggs, and coffee. I REALLY missed oatmeal.

Not pictured is a morning snack of one small plum, and a few bites of Benjamin's turkey hot dog that I picked up off the floor. Oh, I only wish I was kidding.

My official lunch was a black bean soup with a little bit of goat cheese. Spinach salad with tomato, cucumber, asian dressing and a little bit of honey.

Also not pictured was my afternoon snack of a rice cake, topped with sunflower butter, flax seed & a drizzle of honey. But, dinner was veggie chili. Black beans, kidney beans, navy beans, sweet potatoes, spinach, goat cheese, and avocado for good measure.

Calorie breakdown:

(breakfast)

ezek bread 100

sunflower butter 100

honey 60

2 eggs 180

(440)

(lunch)

plum 30

bb soup 150

goat cheese 30

salad 80

dressing 100

(snack)

rice cake, sunflower butter & honey 200

(dinner)

I calculated the bowl to be about 350 calories.

......... that puts me at 1380, not counting coffee and creamer.

Off to do 30 day shred with the husband and earn those calories:)

my new favorite fruit salad.

Mostly, I don't miss dairy. But today, I just wanted some stinking fruit salad. With yogurt.

And not yucky after-tasty soy yogurt.

So I whipped up some goat cheese, almond milk, and a

little honey to make this little concoction.

And then, this little cutey started stealing my grapes.

But seriously, she's so cute I'd just give them to her.

So I poured that stuff on.

And oh my goodness. It was delish.

Eating & working out has been off this week. I guess eating hasn't been bad, but working out has been shotty for the first time since I really started losing weight. Subsequently, I only worked out really hard twice. The heat here isn't helping anyone.

You have to work out at like 4am or you're screwed because you're so sweaty.

Here's what I'm going to try tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I'm going to make a playlist of music for about 40 minutes and I'm going to make up my own little yoga routine for about thirty of it. Then the last ten minutes I'm going to do some dancing, jumping jacks, running place, and did I mention dancing? Then I'm going to go on a short little run and call it a day.

Hmmmm.... we'll see how it goes.

catching up.

Can I keep up a secret-side-food-blog while trying to fundraise for a church plant and move cross country and spend as much time as possible with friends before I move? Can I keep a normal blog up during this time? Can I stay sane? I'm not totally sure. The past few days have been nutty and for now, I'm going to say I'm going to keep trying to secret-food-blog at least in the hopes that I'll stay excited about watching my food/calories/exercise and you know - just for some sanity in these crazy days.

some seaweed chips and yucky vitamin C drink Nick made me drink to make sure I stay healthy since he and the kids have been sick. I LOVE the seaweed.

Great for pre-dinner cooking hunger. Also, only .99 from Trader Joes.

An AMAZING chop salad we had the other night. And 1 of 2 of our ridiculously overloaded produce bowls.

This meal, I promise was the best thing I've ever cooked.

Maple/mustard/flax seed marinated pork and the aforementioned chop salad.

and oh, oatmeal. You do me good.

Up today:

egg in a hole with Ezekiel bread.

playing with Annie - making a good salad.

taco salad for dinner

Biggest Loser weightloss yoga for workout. If I can get Elias to fall asleep.

just pictures.

Too, too tired to blog. Long day with the kiddos.

(breakfast)

2 eggwhites in the hole on Ezekiel bread.

drizzled with honey & maple (180+90 calories)

(lunch)

.5 banana (60 cal)

leftover sweet potato stew (200)

veggie chips and cilantro dressing (200)

(snack)

two brownies... oops. (340 calories)

(dinner)

black beans. just black beans.

it was that kind of day. (200)

...................................................

I did not eat the adorable children, I just too their picture.

goal for tomorrow: not eat two brownies & maybe hold off on the bananas since I don't think they're doing wonders for my digestion.

Saturday's food

After my vigorous run:), I had an what I call an eggcake.

2 egg whites, 1 egg, a squirt of honey - prepared like a pancake.

Topped with almond butter, maple syrup, flax seed, and 1/2 a banana.

(470 calories)

mid-morning snack, rice cake, almond butter, & honey (200 calories)

lunch - spinach, 1/2 tomato, roast beef, 1/2 cup black beans

cilantro/honey vinaigrette.

STRANGE combination, (260 calories)

not sure how I made it to dinner without an afternoon snack, but somehow I managed.

sweet potato, quinoa, spinach & chicken sausage casserole (200 calories)

* I was way too hungry at that point to take a picture *

two slices of bread (180 calories)

Running part 1, I google everything.

It would just be so nice to be a runner.

Get out of the house to exercise. Great calorie burn. Did I mention get out of the house?

I really want to be a runner, but I've just never been one. In college, I REALLY worked at it and got up to about two and half miles, which felt like a marathon to me. I'm on a quest again. Maybe not to become a every-day-long-distance-runner, but to push myself and see if this is something I can work at, semi-conquer, and add to my list of workouts.

So, I did what any normal person would do who wants to figure something out.

I google it. I simply typed in, "how to become a runner".

Nick had plenty of jokes for me as he looked over my shoulder, but I knew there was some sort of plan or steps I could take out there on the internets.

Sure enough, I found this little schedule. And maaaaany more resources I'm still working my way through.

Week 1: Walk 5 mins, run 1 min, repeat 3 times. 3x in the first week.

Seems easy enough?

I decided to try the 5 minutes of walking, then run for as long as I could because I reallllly hope it was longer than 1 minute. This morning I set out, tired but super hopeful. After my first five minutes of walking, as I began running - my feet heavy and achy from the get-go. I averted my eyes from the watch, and just tried to listen to my body about how long I could make it. Seven minutes later, I slowed down into a fast walk.

5 more minutes of walking, then about 3 minutes of really slow running.

5 more minutes of walking, then about 3 really fast (for me) minutes of running to finish it off.

Then I ran home from our track, about .25mile away.

In all, about fifteen minutes of running and fifteen minutes of walking.

I don't know if running will stick, just like I'm not sure if food/exercise/diet blogging will stick. However, I LOVED it. I loved being out of the house early in the morning. For the last part of my time, I was at the nearby track, with about five other northwesterners jogging it out in the light rain - which felt a little like being back in a gym again. More than that, after I got home and ate breakfast, my metabolism was pumping all day. I still did some moderate yoga during the kid's naptime, but in general - the run started my day off great.

Time will tell.

b4.

black baked bean burgers.

My husband was wary. I was excited.

These will make many more appearances in my life.

I started with 1 cup of black beans, 1 cup of kidney beans, and 1/2 cup of organic baked beans, mostly for flavor.

Then, this is where you can get a little creative.

I threw in some red onion, cumin, chili powder, salt & pepper.

I'm a little lean on the groceries, being that it's the end of the week, but you could just go nuts here! Cheese? Why not! Avocado chunks! Sure. Garlic? Definitely!

A few tablespoons of whole wheat flour help for the congealing process.

A few minutes on the griddle on each side and woosh, what a beauty.

I was SO hungry and paired mine with one slice of ezekiel bread, organic ketchup, dijon mustard, and honey drizzled corn.

The hilarious thing was, the whole time I ate this - I kept thinking how funny it was that this is now a splurging meal for me. Because I ate corn and an extra bean patty.

And for real, I am FULL. Beyond full.

the husband's opinion: "it was really good. the baked beans were good. it was a nice surprise." If I keep blogging about food, I'm going to have to groom him on his comments.

one patty tops out around 200 calories and I don't mind telling you I'm way over my calories for the day. But goodness gracious, it was worth it.

I love you b4.

starting off

I love blogging. I love food. I love learning to live healthier, to the glory of God.
Hence, a fun side blog to address these issues.

I plan on posting daily menus, calorie totals, and some pictures.
I don't plan on anything else at this point!
................................................................

So, today so far.
(breakfast - basic banana oatmeal)
1/2 cup irish oats 150
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup almond milk 40
1 tbsp blueberry flax seeds 40
1/2 banana 45
1 tbsp marantha almond butter 100
drizzle of honey 60
{literally, my favorite food in the whole world right now - 435}

*no snack since I haven't worked out yet & ate an early lunch*

(lunch)
1 cup black bean soup 70
1 tbsp goat cheese 60
Trader Joes' veggie chips 150
slice of ezekiel bread with honey 150
{430 - woo! a hearty lunch!}

*no afternoon snack since I probably won't work out till after dinner, and I can't wait to post about dinner later on! Black bean burgers!*

And for my workout, I'm going for level three on Jillian's 30 Day Shred since I haven't gotten to work out for two days due to a sick baby.