Is anyone out there? Time for a reboot

I haven't posted to this blog for over a year, mainly because it was a whole foods/primal/paleo/grain-free eating blog and I haven't eaten that way in a long time.  Until now.

I had my second baby (Marshall) three months ago.  I had a difficult pregnancy-- I was exhausted, nauseated, lots of back pain and cranky, while wrangling a not quite two year old and a nearly full time job.  It was a lot and I didn't eat as well as I should have and I definitely didn't get enough exercise.  If we have any more kids I do not want to go through pregnancy so broken.

When my second was about 8 weeks old I started really feeling ready to get my life together, stop languishing in the land of too much sugar and grains and get back on track.  I joined a new gym that does only personal training of the high intensity kind-- I like Cross Fit fine but I needed something a little more one on one given my propensity to injure myself.  And at the end of January, after Max's second birthday  I said good bye to all but a tiny bit of sugar (I still have a few bites of very dark chocolate here and there).  

I had been eating dairy for over a year, but Mars is starting to develop eczema so it's a good excuse to ditch it for awhile and see if he improves.  In the week since I've been off it my digestion has been better, so I suspect I'm better off without it. 

What's working?  Planning and cooking ahead a lot.  I work 2 long days a week, and on the other days it's not practical to cook 3+ meals a day with two little kids underfoot.  I plan our dinners on the weekend, shop for most of it, and cook ahead some stuff.  That combined with making extra every time so I don't have to cook every night is helping.  I am still struggling with how many carbs and how much to eat to slowly get this baby weight off but support breast feeding- more on that later.

So this week, here's what we are eating:

Sunday: we had beef taco salad.  No real recipe, just a bunch of cumin and garlic in ground beef, plus lettuce, avocado, salsa and cheese for the guys. Not going to lie-- we also had Phad Thai today.  Sometimes you just need take out.

Monday: leftover taco salad
Tuesday: Crock pot pot roast, yams, broccoli
Wednesday: zuchini "noodles" and meat balls
Thursday: sausage/yam/apple bake (recipe soon)
Friday: no bun burgers

What I made ahead:
egg casserole-- I throw some kind of meat (sausage, ham, ground turkey etc), some vegetable (kale/broccoli), and a dozen eggs in a 9x13 pan with some salt and pepper and maybe garlic or basil and bake it.  It was better with cheese but it's still good and it saves me time making breakfast.

yams-- between me and the two year old we go through an insane number of these. I also some times do squash but prefer sweet potato.

roasted vegetables-- I am on a brussels sprouts kick, did some broccoli too.

mushrooms-- this is seriously one of my favorite things.  Incredibly delicious on anything savory

I made some bacon too but ended up snacking on half of it.  I think bacon is my new candy.  Oops.

Lunch is always leftover dinner from the day before (or a couple days if I made tons). 

I have lost somewhere between 2-5 pounds so far-- it seems to vary.  At least it's going in the right direction-- I still have around 15-20 pounds of baby weight to go.  It doesn't come off as easily the second time, in case you are wondering. 

Time to feed the baby and think about bedtime.

Days 20 & 21: Mini Treats, carb increase and sleep

The end of this week I was tired and and really not very hungry due to poor sleep. Last night I both upped my magnesium and took a little melatonin (.5mg). I slept a lot better, only waking up once instead of 4 or 5 times. Often Melatonin makes me kind of hung over the next day but I woke up feeling like I'd really slept for the first time in awhile. I've still been tired and cranky today though, perhaps from residual fatigue not being totally caught up, but even more than that I woke up STARVING. I haven't been all that hungry this whole time, given how few carbs I've been eating and I kind of like it. I also slept in and didn't get breakfast in until 11am-- today I've been an eating machine! I've had probably twice the carbs I usually do, and a bit of sugar (in the form of dark chocolate as pictured above-- it's pretty low sugar chocolate, but it has some). I've also kind of gone to town on carrots and sunflower seed butter. I figure I was probably behind on calories and needed to catch up. The extra carbs left me feeling less satiety though-- even when I'm full I still kind of feel like eating, a sensation I don't get when I keep the carbs lower, so I don't think I'll make a habit of this.

Yesterday I ate:
B: leftover ground beef stir-fry
L: 2-3 eggs cooked in coconut oil with salsa, coffee with coconut milk, dark chocolate
S: more leftover ground beef stir-fry
D: baked cod, 1/2 a small yam, broccoli with olive oil

Today:

B: Rainbow chicken soup (recipe below), 1 cup frozen berries with coconut milk
S: still hungry, had the last of the ground beef stir-fry and broccoli, then 1 cup carrots and 2 T sunflower seed butter
L: More soup, more carrots and seed butter, dark chocolate
D: planning lamb, which I've never made before-- I don't think I've even ever eaten it before, other than in Indian food with a lot of sauce, with broccoli or greens.

Today worked out to about 100 grams carbs instead of my usual 50 ish. Tomorrow I'm going to try specifically targeting more carbs (yams) after crossfit and see how that goes.



Rainbow Chicken Soup:

8 cups chicken stock + 4 cups water
4 lbs chicken thighs, diced into bite sized pieces
a whole lot of veggies! I used
4 Zucchini, 3 summer squash, 1 head chard, 4 small golden beets (peeled), handful of baby carrots-- all diced (see pic)
1 T Thyme
1/2 T Tarragon
4 cloves garlic, crushed
Salt to taste (probably 3-4 Tablespoons)

I threw all of the above in a giant stockpot and simmered it for an hour or so.

This soup tastes good, but if I made it again I'd alter the ratio of veggies to meat-- there are so many veggies that I'm hungry again an hour after I eat it because I get full on veggies and broth, but only get a couple oz of chicken. I might add extra protein to this as I eat it-- I made a ton of it and was thinking I would eat it for breakfast this week.

I'm trying to shift my perspective to what amount of nutrients makes me FEEL the best and stop thinking so much about losing body fat. I think the body fat thing will happen slowly over time-- I have maybe 10 pounds max to lose, and am likely gaining muscle, so I don't expect to see much scale action. I don't like that hungry/cravings feeling though, so will not continue with the higher carbs all day scenario.