Day 2

Weight, 158 lbs
Pictures taken on 10/16 at 7am
I don't want to post pictures yet because I want to have something to compare them to!

So I've been locked in on the diet for over 3 weeks. Yesterday (Monday) marked the beginning of my 4th week. I didn't have an excuse to put it off like I did for working out (until I went back to work from maternity leave, I didn't really have the flexibility to go to the gym). So I've ironed out a few kinks and am moving along quite nicely. Some of my cheats are probably a little bigger than I'd like (for example: beer AND pizza...lots of pizza!), but it's football season! I do have to plan my cheats in advance. It gives me something to look forward to and I don't find myself on Sunday with a house full of people eating football watching food and drinking beer while I sip my water in a corner. That happened on week 1...never again!

Quick disclaimer - I am a terrible recipe poster. I never follow the recipes I find online or in books to a tee and when I make stuff up - which is frequently - I don't measure. I almost always add garlic and/or onions to things for flavor. Paleo says no salt, but I can't give that up.

You can easily Google Paleo Diet to find out the ins and outs, but the basic premise is eating like cavemen. No processed foods, plain and simple. That cuts out grains, dairly, refined sugars, gluten and all of those ingredients on things in boxes that you can't even read. Now in today society, everything is a little processed. I live in a big city, have a job, a husband, 2 small kids and friends that I like to keep up with so I can't dedicate tons of time to hunting and gathering. I prefer to get my meat from Whole Foods, Publix or Costco. All of those places will cut things to order for the most part. I don't always get organic because there really isn't a whole lot of definition around what has to be done to stamp "organic" on something at this point. For chicken and eggs, I do try to find vegetarian fed. I used to have a customer that was a poultry processor and I learned WAY too much about how that works!

With paleo, you can have nuts and fruit. When I'm on lockdown I don't. Not because I'm super badass, but more because I have very little self control and have to keep the lines firmly drawn or I will find ways to bend my own rules. Also, I don't used prepared sauces or dressings with the exception of brown mustard (I read the ingredients, first - everything is good to go) and Tamari (gluten free soy sauce). So I make all of my marinades and dressings, which I know sounds cumbersome but once you start, you never go back --- soooo much better than store bought!

Lean meats (though you'll see an occasional listing for bacon), veggies and good fats (think coconut and olives in their various forms, avocados, etc). I don't eat fish. Period. The end. My husband doesn't eat fish. Period. The end. I pray that my kids do eat fish because it will make their life and health a lot easier! Oh - I lied - I will eat sushi. Weird, I know.

Okay, okay, here we go...This is my weekly menu. I haven't quite gotten down to figuring out my lunches, so I typically buy enough to eat leftovers or at least allow some extra chicken for something I can throw together. I also make big pots of soup every few weeks and freeze some for days like today where I don't feel like messing with the stove.

Honestly Sunday I was so full from pizza and beer, I didn't eat dinner. Huge no-no. Whoops!

Monday - Steak, Cucumber Tomato Salad in Balsamic Vinaigrette
Tuesday - Chicken BLTA (A=Avocado) Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing
Wednesday - Pork Tenderloin, Sauteed Brocolli and Spinach Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette
Thursday - Crockpot Pot Roast
Friday - Burgers, Sweet Potato Fries, Guac, Homemade Salsa
Saturday Lunch - Stir Fry

I always try to keep stuff on hand to throw together a soup, stir fry or veggies to sautee to eat with leftover chicken if I can!

Last night, we did one large steak and one piece of chicken on the grill and split it half n half. I guess that would be turf and turf since there was no surf involved? The steak is pretty simple, I just season it with whatever spices I get my hands on and then sprinkle some Tamari on it.

Cucumber Tomato Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette
Ingredients (amounts can vary based on your preference)
1 cucumber, quartered long ways and sliced thick (1/2 inch?) with skin on
1 handful cherry or grape tomatoes cut long ways or in quarters
1/8 cup fresh basil diced
2-3 cloves minced garlic
1 quarter of a diced or thinly sliced white or red onion
Balsamic vinegar to taste
Oil to taste

I just threw the salad together while my 22 month old, Rhett, was chowing down on some mac n cheese (lucky guy) then let it sit in the freezer while I gave him a bath and put him to bed. Then came down and lit up the grill and grilled the meat while my husband bathed and put down our 3 month old girl, Baylor. Unfortunately, there was a messy incident where my husband required my assistance, so the meat didn't get turned as often as I like, but the steaks were still a grea pink in the middle and the chicken was nice and juicy!

For lunch yesterday, I just did a quick stir fry. I took a picture, but I honestly have NO idea what all I put in there. The suace was fresh grated ginger, garlic and Tamari. Below are some links to some pins I found on pinterest with tips. I couldn't figure out how to get that Asian stir fry flavor, but the ginger really helped!
http://pinterest.com/pin/155796468330687349/
http://pinterest.com/pin/155796468330687356/

Here is how mine turned out. I timed it and it was 20 minutes from getting stuff out of the fridge until the wok was cleaned and put away (well at least set it on the rack to dry...well not so much of a rack - I actually use my stove as a rack to dry my pots and pans...whooops). That included cutting the chicken - one of my least favorite tasks in the kitchen - but I do cheat and buy some of the veggies precut like the carrots and broccoli.

And yesterday, I did make it to the gym! I did a crossfit class at lunch time and it hurt so good. And so bad! I'll get more into exactly what I am doing in the workouts, but need to figure out how to work it in. If you know crossfit, you know I worked hard. If you don't - trust me, I worked hard!

Introduction

Here we go... first off let me explain that this blog is really just for me to track my journey. I don't expect anyone to read it or follow it. I don't plan on censoring it based on who might read it and I don't plan on proofreading it much either!

So what do I mean by my journey? The short version - which you will find is hardly ever short, though shockingly still abreviated (as I am quite wordy) - is that I am a person who likes to be relatively fit. I also like to live life. I enjoy the health benefits of fitness, but I am also quite vain. I do not enjoy being out of breath at the top of my stairs or asking for help bringing in the groceries. I recently had my second child in less than 2 years. 3 months ago, I had my daughter Baylor via scheduled C-section. At the time, my oldest was 19 months old. When I got pregnant with my son, Rhett, I was in the best shape of my life - eating well, working out regularly and enjoying a great work life balance.

I continued to work out during my pregnancy (Crossfit, mostly - but we'll get to that) and ate relatively well but added dessert to my daily food routine. I'm not usually a sweets person, but that was my "craving". I would sometimes eat dessert after lunch and not say anything about it when I got home and then have dessert again! I laugh as I type/say that because I was enjoying the splurge and certainly working hard enough to justify it.

When my son was 8 weeks old, I went back to the gym and started with crossfit again, but had to slowly get back into it since my incision site was still healing. At 12 weeks, I went into lockdown mode. I had a wedding to go to at the beach with several friends who were a couple of years younger (read: still had good metabolism) and who did NOT just have a baby, so I wasn't aiming for a 6 pack, but just wanted to work hard enough to be comfortable in my own skin in a bathing suit.

So what did this lockdown entail and why is that important? I'll answer the second part first to say that my daughter was 3 months old yesterday and it is lockdown time again! This time, it's fall so I don't have a bathing suit taunting me from 6 weeks away, but I do have another wedding for good friends (who were actually at the beach wedding) and I've got to make it through the holidays which are a hard time for everyone! Then it is just a matter of time before that bathing suit season looms again. More importantly, I have an entire closet full of clothes begging to be worn...not stretched or shoved into, but worn! Aaaaaaand, I really need to be able to bounce up and down the stairs repeatedly, sometimes carrying a moving 30 lb weight and a 15 lb sack of coal all at the same time without dropping any of my preciuos cargo and still have energy not to fall down when I reach the destination. Plainly said, I want and need to be fit so I can keep up with my family and enjoy them and their boundless energy!

My intention on this blog is to track my progress and hold myself accountable. I'd love to have a record of my journey, a place to store my recipes, a motivational tool to get me rebooted when I fall off the wagon or lose my momentum.

I find myself searching Google and Pinterest for recipes, quick workouts, etc and always love being directed to a blog written by a real person who lives a real life (as opposed to celerities who can spend hours a day working out, have trainers, chefs, people to care for their kids, etc --- or people whose sole mission in life is to be completely fit all the time without any wiggle room). I grow frustrated when I find recipes that require hours to prep and cook or come with the assumption that I am home all day and can pop down to the kitchen to do step 6 in a 14 step crock pot recipe. Crock pots are meant to dump ingredients in and GO, am I right?!?! AMEN!

I am fighting the urge to explain more about myself, who I am, my circumstances, what I do and so on, but I hopefully have plenty of time for that, so I'm going to get right to it.

Here is my lock down, plain and simple. Strict paleo eating with 2 cheats per week (my beloved cocktails =cheats for the purpose of this lockdown. Even gluten free ones), working out a minimum of 3 times per week (I'd prefer more, but this has to be realistic) and trying to get a reasonable amount of sleep. For working out, my primary focus is crossfit, but I'm also trying some new things and might pop into a spin class here or there depending on my schedule!

So that's it! That's what we are working with. I plan on using this blog to post pictures, track progress, post recipes, menus, etc. I would love to chronicle this journey and perhaps be a pit stop for folks looking recipes, workouts, etc!