You’re gonna miss this…

If one more OLD person puts something on facebook talking about how us YOUNG MOMS should treasure every moment of our childrens’ lives, and to appreciate the good times because they go so quickly, and “your kids are small for such a short time” I’M GOING TO CUT THEM OFF FROM THEIR MEDS.  Jesus christ people.  Better yet, when they complain about getting old, or having surgery, or anything that’s bugging them, I’ll just tell them “Well you know, the other option is you could be dead”… Here’s the latest thing going around on Facebook

“I won’t always cry, Mummy,
When you leave the room
and my supermarket tantrums,
Will end too soon,
I won’t always wake, Daddy,
For cuddles through the night
& one day you’ll miss,
Having a chocolate face to wipe.
Yo won’t always wake to find my foot,
is kicking you out of bed,
Or find me sideways on your pillow,,
Where you want to lay your head.
You won’t always have to carry me,
In asleep from the car,
Or piggy back me down the road,
When my little legs can’t walk that far,
So cherish every cuddle,
Remember them all,
Because one day, Mummy.
I won’t be this small.”

But don’t worry, I fixed it

“I won’t always cry, Mummy,
When you leave the room
and I’ll help you carry groceries,
and stop scarring up your womb.

I will stop waking up you and Dad
For bullshit reasons through the night,
& one day you’’ll get to pee in peace,
And not be barged in on when you wipe.

You won’t always wake to find my foot
is kicking Dad in the balls,
Or find me sideways on your pillow,
After I peed all the way down the hall.

You won’t always have to carry me mid tantrum
out of a grocery store,
Or resist the urge to just leave me,
when I’ve thrown myself on the filthy floor

So cherish every cuddle,
Don’t drink so much you forget them all,
Because one day, thank God.
I won’t be this small.

You will get your life back,
as I spread my wings and start to live mine.
Don’t diminish my struggles when I’m a mom…
If you miss it so much, here, take a few of mine.”

Scared scurred eeeek!!!

I’ve enjoyed my months of being off a diet. It started the end of October and is pretty much just now wrapping up. I haven’t weighed myself but I’m sure I managed to gain 15 pounds. I don’t really mind- I don’t think I’m going to ever want to diet during the holidays. But besides the weight let’s look at my other side effects of eating like crap:
-feeling like poop
-not being able to poop
-having urgent care worthy poop owies (notice a trend here?)
-intolerable hip bursitis
-bruises all over
-tummy bloating and scary gas (ugh)
-lower back pain
-costochondritis (I’m guessing from overall inflammation)
-skin issues (dry skin, oily skin)
-three colds in three months
-severe lethargy
-brain fog
-did I mention I also gained 15 pounds?

Some of the things I ate were worth it- stuffing, pumpkin pie, potatoes and gravy, and Christmas cookies. But the rest? I don’t really remember. But I’ll remember the negative symptoms. At least, I hope I will. I wrote down all the negative ones I could think of because I want to remember what I’m up against, even if most of them are embarrassing to talk about.

But right now I’m feeling a bit lost in the land of getting back to eating like normal. Not getting back on a diet, just back to eating in a way that makes my body happy. No sugar no starch was very easy for me to sustain and I never felt like I was on a diet. It was never really that hard. I’m terrified, almost paralyzed from fear that any diet I start in a week is going to be hard and I’ll fail. I don’t want it to be hard.

I’m also scared I’m going to follow the wrong plan. I believe in the paleo diet for health. But high fat, low carb makes my body happy too. Last year I did a two week fruit/veggie/beans detox and lost 15 pounds in two weeks. What about just cutting out gluten? Would that get rid of my inflammation issues? Or is the inflammation from the PUFAs? And the high blood sugar? If I go low carb but use fake sweeteners is that going to keep me in pain? What’s the cheapest option? I’ve got a seriously bumpy financial year ahead and I can’t spend $60 a week on produce….

Add on top of all of this the fact that I want more kids- ideally we’d have a baby in 2014. But that could involve a 2013 pregnancy. I want to be eating a nutrient dense diet for at least 3-6 months before getting pregnant. I feel like I know in my heart the best diet, but it’s not cheap, not easy, not simple, not fast. Basically a ketogenic paleo diet. But oh goodness, the work that style of eating would entail overwhelms me.

So we will see. Right now I’m exhausted, achy, full of NSAIDs, feel years away from being healthy let alone having a baby, and I really just want to sleep in a bath tub. Sigh…

Cloth Diapering because you’re broke

There are a lot of cloth diaper blog posts out there that try to break down the cost of cloth diapering and prove how “over time” it will be cheaper than disposables. Well what if you find yourself low on diapers, low on money, with only a few more months of diapers ahead?

My son is 20 months and I plan on using a 3 day potty training method once he turns 22 months. Supposedly this should work well and we will be done with diapers by then. Supposedly. But about a month ago I was facing a budget with numbers that didn’t put my family in the black by the end of the month, and I was sick of spending $40+ a month on diapers. So I did what any good hippie would do and I looked into cloth diapers.

$20 fraggin’ dollars a diaper??!?! Are you kidding me??! If I got the recommended number (minimum of 12) I would spend $240 bucks on cloth diapers. Not to mention the garbage/diaper pail, pail liners or garbage bags, extra laundry costs, etc… W. T. F.??  These cloth diaper hippies are the biggest capitalists out there, I told you so!  $240 would keep my baby in disposables for the rest of his diaper time, and allow me to stock pile 2 months worth of diapers for the next one.  One website said the average income of a cloth diapering family is $90k a year.  In a word, I felt screwed.

The point here was to save money NOW.  I had about $40 worth of disposables diapers stock piled and my goal was to spend less than the $120 I will  spend on disposables if we stay in those until January.  So what I did was buy 2 diaper wraps/covers, 1 trial pack that came with 1 cover and 3 prefolds, 6 flat diapers, and 6 more prefolds.  This was about $55 all together, and I split it up into two purchases.  My son still uses disposables at naptime and bedtime, and when we are out and about.  But the rest of the time when we are home, he’s in a cloth diaper.  Every 4-5 cloth diapers used equals a $1 saved on disposables!

I even made my own cloth baby wipes.  Did you know hippies try to sell these for $10 for 12 wipes?  HAHAHAHA.  I cut up a baby blanket and got about 48 wipes.  CAPITALISTS!!!

Anyway… Moral of the story, I am stretching our stockpile of disposable diapers, saving money, and not adding as quickly to the landfill.  Who’s the hippie now, suckas?

 

Square Peg…

I have been scouring the internet recently for 1950’s housewife nostalgic gems.  I’ve found a few- some sexist ads that are pretty funny, and the ever entertaining “good wife” list from a mid-century Good Housekeeping article.  But mostly what I’ve found are way left articles that disparage the role of a 1950’s housewife, or defensive articles that have the word “God” written every 5 words.  Then there are the hippies.  These are the people that my community seems to have the most of, and you’d think I’d fit in the best with them.  But they are the rich hippies.  The hippies who are total capitalists.  The SAHMs who don’t know how to budget or bargain shop because they’ve never had to.  The moms who don’t know what it’s like to literally have $300 or less of disposable income.  And by disposable, I mean what’s leftover after the minimum due on your bills are paid.  $300 for food and gas and diapers.  For the month.  THREE HUNDRED.

From the left I’ve learn that caring for your husband, and your children, means you care less about yourself.  That wanting to stay home and raise the babies you grew (or adopted or fostered), somehow equals self imposed slavery and dimness.  What?!  That doesn’t make any sense.  Then on the right there are so many well-intentioned folks who may support staying at home, but they also support an extreme view of religion that fosters an environment of judgement and hate in its own right.

I cannot be the only Catholic, liberal, beer drinking, meat eating, sugar avoiding, pro-choice, pro-gay, broke-ass housewife out there.  But when I look for support from the stay at home mom blog community, I’m met with random posts about politics that I don’t support or believe in.  And if someone believes in the things I believe in politically, they sure as hell don’t seem to believe in honoring and obeying your husband, being a stay at home mom, being morally obligated to clean the house, be in a good mood, have sex, do laundry, cook dinner, etc…

And today!  Someone guest posted about their financial lot in life as part of a series being ran by one of the blogs I follow- their NET income- NET SINGLE EARNER INCOME was over $65,000 a year.  They had $3200 left over after all their bills were paid each month.  How am I supposed to relate that when I don’t even GROSS $3200 a month?

Maybe, I should just start posting to this blog more.  Maybe someone will find it and comment that yes!  There are people like me out there!

Sigh.

Or maybe not and it doesn’t matter and I should just learn to take the good with the bad.  Meh?

Paleo pancakes (when you are out of almond butter)

I’m currently doing the Whole30 eating plan. It’s not that different from how I’ve been eating overall, but there are definitely some key differences. No dairy, no alcohol, no artificial sweetener. That means my beloved cream cheese pancakes would be out for a month. Sigh. On the bright side, I get to eat more fruit than I was before, and where I live the summer produce is nothing short of exquisite. And I’m not as hungry as I had been the past few weeks. Not that I was ever really starving but I’m basically forcing myself to eat these past few days.

Anywho, I kind of jumped into this Whole30 without a lot of prep work. I’ll never be able to throw out all the bad food in my house due to a roommate and a husband who literally would starve to death if he didn’t have pasta and cheese. We all know that you can eat enough calories and still be malnourished, but I’m too young into my marriage to nag another adult about what he eats. So my cupboards and fridge will remain full of chips, cookies, crackers, soda, donuts, and beer, and I just have to navigate my way around those things. Oh and ice cream. And pop tarts. And candy and chocolate. Le sigh…

I should have done better about planning my meals and making sure there was good food in the house. But this morning, there I was, out of bacon, out of almond butter, and out of coconut oil. I just wanted some banana pancakes! I can resist all the other crap in this house but when I’m tired and need breakfast, I don’t like to be f$&ked with. And yes. Not having almond butter was the equivalent of being f$&ked with. I don’t even have almonds to make homemade almond butter. First world problems I realize, but stay with me here. I still wanted pancakes. And I wanted to change the 3 ingredient recipe that’s out there bc I think the ratios are all wrong. 2 bananas to 1 egg? Who are we kidding here? That is not a protein packed breakfast. That is a sugar coma waiting to happen. So I knew I wanted to do 2 eggs to 1 banana. That’s still a lot of sugar for someone who is used to eating under 30 g of carbs a day, but it’s a bit more balanced. Instead of almond butter I used almond flour, and added a spoonful of the thick, fatty, gloriously separated coconut milk that I had in my fridge.

I realize most people don’t have almond flour or separated coconut milk just chillin in their fridge. So for everyone else you could use any nut butter, or the flour of your choice to thicken the batter if you omit the nut butter.

Here’s what I used, the results were great!

1 banana
2 large eggs
Almond flour to thicken (about a heaping tablespoon)
1 tablespoon coconut milk (the top part that separates in the fridge)
Cinnamon and vanilla extract to taste

Throw everything into a magic bullet (or equivalent) and whirl away.
Pour onto a griddle. I like to make these the size of silver dollars.
Consume!!

Love these!! Peace be with y’all!!

Baking

I am going to a BBQ on the 4th of July. I love to make desserts. Usually I volunteer to bake or make something delectable. But this year I’m at a loss. I found an amazing flag cake recipe- but cake is already forced upon us at every birthday party and it’s never anyone’s most favorite thing anyway. I could make cookies with royal icing, but those are more for looks, not taste really bc royal icing tastes like shit. I could do a paleo fruit tart or just berries and cream… I just don’t know!!!!!!!
If I make something just to show off my artistic skills it doesn’t always taste the best. If I make something super tasty it might not be as holiday themed and might not have the wow factor. But it would have the OMG taste factor. I would choose to not eat either of these. I could make something that I choose to eat, but then that might also be lacking in the wow factor. I really like baking. I just worry that I’ll look like a total bitch if I bring this fancy dessert to a party and then don’t eat any of it. But all the people there love me. And I love to bake. I could always say that since I’m changing how I eat I don’t get the chance to bake as much as I used to so I revel in the chance to go all out… Meeehhhhh. I have zero time to make something fancy and I haven’t even committed to bringing something… Sometimes it’s just nice to day dream. On that note, as of today I’ve lost 65.5 pounds!! 34.5 to go! Yyeeaahhh!

Look at my dinner: cauliflower mash and homemade raspberry vodka. Um, yum.

F gluten

My dear sweet amazing funny friend Sam and I were talking via twitter yesterday about gluten. She has cut it out of her diet and claims she feels way better. I cut it out about two and a half months ago but I didn’t feel like I really noticed much of a difference. I started getting back into weight lifting a few weeks ago and started toying with having some concentrated carbs pre and post workout. So without really thinking, I bought some whole grain bagels and for three days I had half of one with some natural peanut butter before my workout.
The workouts seemed to go better, I think, and I had more energy the rest of the day. The reason I say I think the workouts went better are because while I was able to get my muscles to the point of failure, I didn’t really feel a burn. I thought maybe that was because my muscles were being fueled so well so they didn’t have to burn. But I wasn’t sore after my workout either. Again, maybe that’s because I was perfectly fueling my body for my workouts. Or maybe I was tired from the carbs and wasn’t able to push myself as hard…
Either way, I won’t be eating those bagels anymore. My tongue started to hurt after eating the bagels, and within 2 days my geographic tongue was back in full force. Geographic tongue is a sort of autoimmune thing where your tongue swells and gets red painful bumps that move around on the tongue. Gross huh? Anyway, I hadn’t had any problems with it since cutting out gluten but I really hadn’t noticed the lack of pain. Along with my painful tongue, my seasonal allergies seemed to appear out of nowhere and my skin broke out. I’m using prescription acne medicine so there is no reason to be breaking out. I’m convinced this is from the bagels. Or rather the gluten in the bagels. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not going to try again and find out.

A lot of the research I found on Paleo sites said you don’t really need carbs post workout until you are extremely lean. Like, 15% body fat for women (I’m at 35%). Post workout I was having a protein shake and using whole milk instead of my usual water, and adding a large handful of frozen fruit. That’s a lot of carbs within an hour!! But I did like the energy I had during the workout so my new plan is to drink my protein shake before and during my workout. That way the carbs are immediately used for energy, and hopefully I won’t have the cravings and crashes I’ve had the last week. We shall see…

Gaining

My weight tends to fluctuate as such: two weeks of losing, two weeks of staying the same or gaining. I’ve learned to notice this so I don’t freak out, but this month I can’t help it. I’m in the gaining stage of the month and I know I should just relax, and if by the time I get to the normal losing stage and I’m not losing, that’s when I should fret. But it’s still hard to think you are doing everything right and the scale is not rewarding you accordingly.
Whenever I have problems losing I always freak and start looking at new diet plans. The current one I’m exploring is the Paleo diet, which is pretty similar to what I’m doing now. The only difference would be less dairy, more fruit. Not a bad trade off for all the amazing fruit that will be in season over the next couple months. But I’ve been playing with carb intake a bit lately (another reason I might be staying the same) and I’m finding that I am REALLY carb sensitive. I have cravings and I’m hungry if my blood sugar gets wacky. I haven’t been hungry since starting my no sugar/gluten/starch plan and I’m not enjoying feeling hungry.
Sigh… Anyway. My main priority is to make sure my carbs get back down low and I start tracking what I’m eating. Not to count calories but to count carbs to make sure I’m not going crazy over my daily need. Today I’ve had coffee and half n half, measured out, for one gram of carbs. Bacon is in the oven, and there will be salad for lunch, nom nom nom.

Finally, Happy Father’s Day to all the daddy-os out there. Thanks for putting up with us moms 🙂

Day of rest

The new workout plan I got myself into doesn’t have a day of rest in it.  Huh.  “Rest” days are days where you do cardio only.  30 minutes of high intensity interval training.  Not very restful…  yesterday I did legs and abs and hoolllyyy sh!t.  I had to use the handicap bathroom stall at work just so I could have something to hold onto, lest I put my full weight on the toilet seat.  Every single movement hurts.  Good hurt.  But it’s a restricting kind of hurt.  Today my workout plan said I should do back, biceps, and cardio.  Truthfully I could have done the weights but there’s no way I could have accomplished the cardio.  Not on my poor legs.

I’ve always liked the analogy of weight training being an earthquake that rattles your muscles, aka a building.  If you workout again before the “building” is repaired, it’s like another earthquake and just does more damage.  But is it true?  Should you wait until your muscles are no longer sore before lifting again? 

My back and biceps have recovered from last week.  But my body is working so hard right now to recover from yesterday.  I couldn’t face tomorrow with a sore upper body on top of it.

So what do you think?  Are my reasons just excuses for not wanting to workout since I work 9 hours on Sundays?  Are recovery days important?  What should a recovery day look like?  How often should you work the same muscle group?  How long until new “Mad Men”?  Oh wait, that last one might be for another post… 🙂

Peace be with you always!  Happy Sunday!

YoYo Dieting (and, should we even care?)

Ready for some whirlwind numbers?

140-173 

173-140

140-167

167-149

149-185

185-155

155-250 

250-200

200-258

258-165

Those are my yoyos.  Those are the weights I have bounced between since I was 17.  First gain was from dating a guy who drank soda and ate ice cream every day and I joined him.  First time I learned I REALLY couldn’t just eat whatever I wanted.  

Then I lost the weight, until I started drinking in college.

Then I did Body For Life, lost the weight, got another boyfriend who ate like crap and I went along with it (didn’t I learn anything?), went through a break up with him, and gained all my weight back and then some.

Did WW to get the weight off, then got pregnant.  Then got pregnant again.  And so here I am.  Trying to get the weight off again.

I feel like the “should we care” question has two parts.  Should I care about trying to lose weight again, and, should anyone else care or show support, or should they just roll their eyes and be like, “Oh here we go again…”?

It’s a tough question.  I know some women who just simply don’t diet.  Or if they do, they certainly don’t talk about it. They don’t fill up pinterest or tumblr with motivational posts, and they don’t seem to be spending their valuable time worrying about how they look, weight wise.  Instead they spend their time reading, cleaning, writing, daydreaming, working in the garden, planning vacations, etc.  I wonder sometimes how much intellectual power I am ‘wasting’ on thinking about diet and exercise.  I love spending the time on it because it creates a challenge for me, it creates something that I can accomplish, and I love setting and meeting goals for myself.  But the time I devote to it takes away from other things.  Like cleaning my house.  Writing letters to my brother.  Playing with the kids.  Spending time with my husband.  Reading the news.  Learning to play an instrument.  SO much time is spent on planning meals and exercising and FOR WHAT?

My reasons are mine and mine alone.  There are days when I think, “Why bother?”  Why keep going?  Why not just be happy with what you’ve done so far and let loose a bit?  

1) Because it’s not enough.  What I’ve done so far is wonderful and so great for my health.  But I am still at a minimum, 21 pounds overweight.  And that’s the MINIMUM.  I’ve been overweight for so long, and was so huge when I was pregnant, that my poor body deserves a frakking break.  My joints and my back deserve a chance to not be so overwhelmed with excess weight.  My skin deserves a chance to not be stretched to its limits.  My organs deserve the chance to not have to work so hard all the time.    

2) My children, present and future, deserve better.  A couple of thoughts here- one of the biggest reasons I am trying to lose a lot of weight is because I want more kids in the future, and I do not want to be giant when I deliver, and more importantly, have blood sugar issues like I did before.  My babies deserve the healthiest mama they can get.  My current kids deserve a mom who isn’t tired, who WANTS to be active, who gives them good food and gets them outside to play.  And let’s be honest, life is hard enough without having the “fat mom”.  Kids are assholes.  I don’t want to make it worse.  

3) My husband deserves better.  He deserves a total hottie for a wife.  Who doesn’t want their husband to have that?  What mom doesn’t hope her son marries a pretty lady?  Guys like beautiful women.  This is no shock, and what better way to show your husband that you love him and you care about what he wants and he needs, than to look your best?

4) My soul deserves better.  My poor head.  It’s been tormented my entire adult life with disdain towards its bodily host and I just want to know what it’s like to like your body.  Is everything really better?  If I liked my body would I then have time for all my other passions?  Would I be a happier, holier, better person?  I don’t know.  Because obviously there are overweight people out there who are completely happy.  So why not me?  What I know is that this supersedes everything.  Certain things are just bigger than everything else and it doesn’t matter what else is going well, if this one thing isn’t, nothing else matters.  We all have those things.  Sometimes it’s the city you live in, or the job you have, or being in a relationship or not in one.  Certain things are make or break.  And this is one of those for me.

5) I want to prove I can do it then SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT IT.  OMG.  Sometimes I make myself sick just hearing the words come out of my mouth.  SHUT UP ALREADY.  One of my biggest goals with losing weight this time around was to not be a total blabbermouth about it.  Just keep it quiet until a big milestone.  Which brings me to my second point…

Should anyone else care?  Should anyone else even bother saying “Good job!” every time I say I’ve lost 10 more pounds?  I was pretty quiet about losing weight on Facebook, I didn’t say anything until I lost 50 pounds, but on Twitter my friends knew what was going on.  Even then I tried to keep my posts to 5 pound increments at a max, and even then it was simply “55 pounds down, yay!”.

Why do I feel the need to even share tho?  Why am I even writing this blog right now?  Why not just keep this entry private as a diary entry?  Because I want some external praise and validation for my internal struggles.  I want to know I’m not alone.  I want people to feel proud of me.  I want people to believe right along with me that I will lose all the weight I want to and I will keep off as much of it as I want.  I want to be held accountable.  I want to be part of the huge weight loss community that exists on the internet.  I want to be the after picture.  I want to STAY an after picture.  I want this to be just another thing in my life that I accomplished.  I didn’t graduate college at 20 by being a lazy slacker.  I’m a princess and if I want something I GET IT.  I want to be thin.  Except for my boobs, I want big ones, but that’ll take surgery 🙂  I just want something else to obsess over!  I want to get this done, and move on to newer things.  Like planning a baby, doing a home makeover, paying off debt, getting more tattoos, moving to another state, getting organized, etc.  I don’t feel like I can do any of those things well until I meet my weight loss and fitness goals.

So, on that note, let’s do this!!!