The Struggle is Real!

I made an order of 50 cupcakes today….a mix of chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, some with chocolate frosting, some with vanilla, and all filled with oreo creme. Let me just say, it was WAY hard to not want to eat one! But I did try a sample of each of the frostings (to check for sweetness and consistency) and they both tasted so sickeningly sweet!! Makes me both happy and sad lol. I don’t really miss those sweet treats unless they’re right in front of my face, but dang do I miss cupcakes sometimes!

I was so busy with that and all our travel preparations today that I didn’t realize until about an hour ago that I’d only had a cup of coffee and a piece of cheese all day….oops! No wonder my head feels like it’s going to split in half. It was so hot though, that I did drink a gallon of water lol. So that’s a perk.

No exercise, other than cleaning, obviously. Poor kiddo just wanted to go out and play all day and I couldn’t take her out; I felt terrible. Especially knowing we will be leaving her soon. 😦 But her pawpaw and mimi will be here for the day tomorrow so I’m sure she’ll get in lots of play time!

Nothing else new or exciting to report. Our departure day is imminent and I feel like my to-do list is longer than ever! EEEKS!

Oh wait…we have been low carbing for one month today! YAY, go us lol. I don’t think we’ll be quitting any time soon, either. Both hubby and I are really enjoying it.

So, hope all is well out there in interwebs-land! I’ll make one final post tomorrow and that will be it until next weekend! See ya then!

Another busy weekend!

Hubby and I had a blast celebrating our anniversary this weekend! We went out for a steak dinner and then spent an evening living la vida loca at the local bingo hall LOL!! We used to go pretty often before we had our munchkin. Now we average once per year haha.

Stayed on track all weekend. Today we spent the day with the kiddo at the park…the weather is finally gorgeous so I feel like we walked all over the place! Plus warmer weather always makes me drink more water because, well…it’s hot lol. So yay! I feel like I finally got out of my funk and life is good!

This week is going to be full on CHAOS! But I will try to pop in every day, at most every other day….Friday will probably be my last post until maybe next Sunday, when we get back home. I can’t wait to park my butt on the beach, but I’m hoping not to get too far off track diet-wise while we’re gone. I’ve decided I’ll allow myself to splurge on a dessert one day if something appeals, but for the rest of the time, I’m going to eat like I would while we’re at home. Lots of veggies, protein, and healthy fat. And with all the walking and swimming we’ll be doing, I hope I’ll at least break even for the week.

I’m also REALLY hoping to get under 290 before we leave….fingers crossed.

Yeah not much exciting to report; I’m just in a really great mood and it’s been a great weekend! Vitamin D is a great thing. Can’t believe mine and hubby’s two year anniversary is tomorrow! My, how the time flies.

Adios!

A big bundle of nerves

That’s what I am today. The munchkin’s EEG is in the AM and I am dreading it. We had to keep her up late today. Recommended 2 hours past her normal bedtime. Well…that didn’t work lol. We made it to the 1 hour mark and she was falling asleep on our laps so we had to call it. Then I have to get her up early enough before her appointment that she will be tired and willing to nap while we’re there…which means I’ll be up at 430 AM, joy. Cranky mom, cranky toddler…oh boy. Plus she’s terrified of doctors or anyone in scrubs. Should be interesting. I just hope we have answers soon. Preferably before we leave for our vacation. I’m nervous enough about leaving her as it is…I don’t need anything extra to worry about!

In other news…my scale didn’t budge this week. ALTHOUGH…..it could be related to, uhh…”that time of the month”. lol. Sorry for the TMI but I do tend to retain water in the couple days leading up to it, so I’m hoping to see a good number next week to make up for this week!

I’ve been eating pretty decently lately. I’m wondering if I’m getting too much protein though. The last few days I’ve been between 30-35% protein, 10% carbs, and the rest fat. I think my fat percentage is supposed to be a little bit higher? So that could also be contributing to the lack of change on the scale.

Water intake has been up and down. Could be better, but could be way worse! Exercise is the same. Kiddo and I have been going on lots of walks and playing in the backyard…so nothing in the way of “formal” exercise but a decent amount of physical activity.

So yeah, that’s about it for today. Gotta try to get some sleep for all the “festivities” tomorrow.

Getting Jiggy With it!

Yeah I don’t know what that’s about lol…I’ve had the song stuck in my head all day. Tomorrow is weigh in day…I’m def hoping I’ve hit the 20 lbs lost mark! I’m so close I can taste it!

I’m keeping busy with spring cleaning and whatnot…when the munchkin lets me get anything done at all during the day lol. She is constantly bringing me her or my shoes and saying “Bye!” then running to the door. I get the hint lol! It’s finally warming up, and she is looooooooving being outside. I have a hunch we will be spending tons of time at the water park this summer! Which is fine with me because A) exercise, and B) I love being in the water! Plus yay for a tan haha.

Had a bit of a low carb speed bump today. Hubby’s workplace is having a potluck day tomorrow to say farewell to their interns. Well, let’s just say I have a bit of a reputation around his office for being a good cook, and a good baker especially. So usually they ask me to make a cake. Normally, not a big deal. But now that we are low carbing, it was torture! I couldn’t taste the batter to make sure it tasted ok, I had to live with the smell of Praline Honey Bun Cake in my house all afternoon….it’s like heaven in a pan. And then the glaze…oh the glorious glaze. I haven’t really been craving carbs or heavy, cakey sweets prior to today but now I am like….let me at that pan lol!!! I’m hoping there aren’t any leftovers. I’m not sure I can keep myself away from it if there are! Note to self, find guinea pigs to pawn the leftovers off on just in case haha.

In other news, I am MAJORLY slacking on my water. I just don’t want it. I’m bored with it! I need to get some frozen fruit so I can infuse it with flavor and see if that helps my interest. I can tell I’m dehydrated; I had a headache today and I constantly feel thirsty but I’d much rather drink iced tea than plain old water. Ugh. Why can’t water taste yummy out of the tap?!

Plus the kiddo is going in for an EEG Friday. We’ve been keeping it on the down low, but I’m honestly stressed and worried. I haven’t been stress eating like I normally do, so I call that an accomplishment, but I have no outlet for my worry except to…well, worry more I guess. I know it does no good, and whatever will be, will be and blah blah blah but ugh…this is my baby girl we’re talking about here!!

Anyway. Eating has been good. Average. Exercise has been meh. Need to get back into a solid routine but I’ll probably keep making excuses not to until we get back from vacation if I’m being perfectly honest lol!! Not good I know, but I do spend a lot of time with the munchkin outside at the park and on walks and whatnot so that’s good enough for now, and I can hit it hard in a couple weeks once the chaos settles down.

Enough rambling from me for the day. Fingers crossed for good news tomorrow!!!

Yet another quickie

Just a note to say that I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth lol. I’ve been staring at a computer for most of the weekend, and  frankly, I just want to enjoy the few remaining hours before yet another chaotic week begins.

I’ve been behaving (mostly) diet wise, but my water intake has been in the pooper so I def will be stepping that up tomorrow. I wonder if infusing water with fruit adds carbs? I want to start doing that again. Got in some exercise with a walk yesterday but it was short because I was working so…not that great.

Anyway, hope you all had a wonderful weekend…looking forward to the warmer, drier weather that is headed in our direction. Means I’ll get more quality time outside with the munchkin!

PS- I made tiramisu. Holy crap, it blew my mind! So I’ll have to be sure to post that recipe as well!

Yay for the weekend!

Just a quickie today…I’ve gotten out of the habit of eating regularly throughout the day; I normally end up eating breakfast around 11 or even as late as noon. I eat when I feel hungry but I’m not sure if that is the best way to approach things. I don’t want my body to think it’s starving or whatever. Does anyone have any insight on this? Is it ok to just eat when I’m hungry while low-carbing, or should I be following the “six small meals per day” ideology?

I noticed today that my clothes are starting to fit a little more loosely! And that I’m closing in on that 20 lb. mark!! I’m a little behind where I’d like to be, but only by 1.5 lbs so that’s not awful; hopefully I can make that up in the next month and keep up with my ten pounds per month goal. So exciting to realize my shirts are a bit baggier though! Holy cow!

I need to eat some more calories today; I haven’t quite made it to 1000 and I really don’t want to drink those calores so….I’m off to find some nuts or peanut butter or something. Hope everyone has a great weekend; I’ll try to post that Shepherd’s pie recipe tomorrow!

KK

Life is chaos! But there’s always time for a danish!

Holy moly, spring is in full swing! It seems like everyone wants us to be here or there. Sheesh! I want a weekend at home to re-cooperate!

So weigh in day went ok…294.6! Can’t complain about that after such a big drop last week, and the fun weekend we had!

The last couple of days I’ve been well behaved; drinking all my water, eating clean and hovering around 1200 calories/25 grams of carbs or less, getting a walk in or moderate physical activity in. I feel like I should up my activity, maybe add some high intensity interval training to really maximize my workout time.

As I promised, here is the Cheese Danish recipe…trust me, and make this. It doesn’t taste like diet food at all. Creamy, cheesy, decadent breakfast pastry goodness that totally feels like a cheat and isn’t!

adapted from uplateanyway.com….such a great blog! This is a three step process that *looks* like hard work  but really, isn’t too bad and comes together super quickly.

Ingredients:

Dough

——-

1. 1 1/4 cup 2% mozzarella shredded cheese (140 grams) (this type of cheese is important; using other types of mozzarells alters the texture and adds starch, etc.)
2. 6 tbsp Almond Flour (42 grams) (I didn’t have almond flour, so I used soy flour instead…turned out just fine, but did alter the carb count from the original recipe)
3. 3 tbsp Coconut Flour (21 grams)
4. 4 tbsp sugar equivalent
5. 1/2 tsp baking powder
6. 1/2 tsp vanilla
7. 1 egg (large)

Filling

——

1. 6 oz cream cheese
2. 1 tsp lemon juice (I omitted this and it turned out fine)
3. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4. 1/4 cup sugar equivalent
5. 1 egg yolk

Glaze

——-

1. 3 tbsp powdered sweetener (she ground hers up in a coffee grinder, I just used regular Splenda in the giant bag; it was very thick though)
2. 2 tbsp heavy cream
3. 2 oz cream cheese
4. 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Filling

1. Soften cream cheese and combine with lemon juice, vanilla, and sweetener and egg yolk using a whisk or electric mixer. Set aside in the fridge until you are ready with the dough.

Dough

1. Measure out almond flour, coconut flour, and baking powder. Combine well with a whisk.
2. Melt 4 tbsp butter and add vanilla and sweetener. Stir.
3. Melt 1 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese in the microwave, working in 1 minute increments.
4. Combine all the ingredients and add an egg.
5. Stir until batter is combined and the cheese and dough are completely mixed. Use your hands or a spatula to press and fold the cheese and the batter together. Reheat for 10 seconds in the microwave. Press and fold some more until 99% of the dough is all one color. (Tip-this gets sticky and if you wet your hands a little it helps tremendously. The water from your hands will stop the stickiness on the outside of the dough making it very easy to roll out.)
6. Reheat dough for 10 seconds and roll out into a square the approximate length of a rolling pin and slice into four quarters with a pizza slicer. You could also make 6 danishes to stretch the recipe a bit further and cut the carbs down even more! They won’t be huge, but they will still hit the spot.
7. Fold the corners into the center repeating with all four squares.
8. Spoon the filling into the center of each danish.
9. Bake for 10-12 minutes. (Check on this at 10 minutes and make sure to remove it from the oven as soon as it has a deep golden brown color!)

Frosting

1. Soften cream cheese in the microwave and add powdered sweetener, heavy cream and vanilla. Mix well with a whisk and pour into a ziploc bag. Cut a tiny hole in the corner and pipe onto each danish.

These are divine little bits of heaven!!!

Hope you enjoy the recipe!

KK

Busy, Busy.

Sorry for the radio silence yesterday; long story short, hubby and I booked a last minute vacay with some friends of ours so we were going back and forth deciding what to do and taking care of that last night. So yeah…in 19 days, we will be sailing off into the sunset! Can’t wait. We took a cruise together about a year after we started dating and it was heaven. I’m hoping we have the same experience! I’m pretty bummed that I’ll be spending all of Mother’s Day cooped up in the car for 20+ hours and away from my baby girl…still not sure how well I will handle being away from her for a week but I guess we will see!

So the past couple of days have been great. I’ve stayed on par with my carbs– 20 net yesterday, 30 net today. Calories yesterday were better than today. Yesterday was just barely 1200, today is nearly 1900….but that also includes a few beers lol. And I made a comfort food kind of dish for dinner that is heavier than we normally eat. I will def be posting the recipe for it because I am blown away by how awesome it turned out!! It was a shepherd’s pie, but instead of potatoes or cauliflower to make the mashed potatoes, I used a roasted butternut squash, seasoned up with some savory spices, butter, cream, etc. Then topped it all with a mozzarella/provolone blend and some bacon… and OH. MY. GOODNESS. lol! Yum! Plus I still owe you guys the recipe for the danishes, which are also fan-freaking-tastic!! So I’ll get that done this week.

Enough of that tangent lol. I’ve been drinking 3/4 gallon water the last couple days. Better than the weekend when I drank almost none! Workout….yeah, not so much. It’s turned cold again so I haven’t been getting out with the munchkin. Not a great excuse, I know. I need to make exercise a priority but it’s hard to get back into it after any amount of time off! I also know that drinking as much as we do is hampering our progress. We have a 4 beer max per day, but even drinking the low carb light beer, that ‘s 400 calories and 12.5 grams of carbs. Hello, empty calories AND carbs! 😦 but I just love beer so darn much haha!

Definitely worried about being on vacation for a week. Do i stick to as much low carb as I can? Do I just relax for a week and enjoy, but track religiously so I don’t go too crazy?? Have one splurge day and the rest strict low carb?? I’m at a loss. I don’t want to deprive myself; I’d rather enjoy our vacay and worry about it when I come back BUT…I don’t want to gain back everything I’ve lost, either. And our lives are going to be so chaotic the next few weeks. We will be away from home this weekend, celebrating our anniversary after that, and then vacay. When did my life get so busy?!

Worried about weigh in day tomorrow, too. I know I went a little crazy over the weekend on the caloric end. Ate a bunch of high fat no/low carb food to try to stay on track away from home. We will definitely have to plan that better in the future!

Enough whining I suppose. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!

KK

Just a quickie

So busy today! Cleaning, packing etc. to be gone for the weekend. We leave tomorrow to go to my parent’s house…looking forward to a date night 🙂 Just found out we are going to be away from home again next weekend to see hubby’s family. Brother in law apparently needs some help with his house building project, so he called in the cavalry lol. Not a big deal, I’m just nervous about sticking to a low carb lifestyle away from home. Dinners especially. I warned my mom already, but telling hubby’s family is not something I’m keen on. I’m by far the heaviest person in the family…both immediate and extended. It’s always been a bit of a sticking point for me. I never feel completely at ease because I am always so self-conscious. Which is sad, because they are legitimately great people. But I don’t want to answer a bunch of questions about why I’m eating weird haha. Oh well. Someday, I won’t be the fattest girl in the room!! I SWEAR IT!

Today was a good day–I’m under 20 net carbs at the moment, around 1100 calories, and I went for an hour long walk. Water was meh…now that it’s getting warmer, I’m really craving iced tea lol. It’s bad. I prefer it sweetened, but at the same time, every two packets of stevia is one carb and I feel guilty. So I’m trying to take it easy on that.

I’m still pretty excited about my success on the scale, but also trying not to get too far ahead of myself. I have to remind myself that not every week will be as successful as this one. It’s hard though lol. I just want to be back to a point where I’m comfortable in my own skin!! I want my mojo back!

So yeah. That’s it for today. Not sure how much I’ll be able to post over the weekend but I’ll try!

KK

Holy crap, holy crap, HOLY CRAP!!

295.8!!!!!! YYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

Haha can you tell I’m excited?! I’m back in the (terrible) 2’s!! I don’t think I’ve been under 300 since Bug’s birthday back in November! Ten more pounds, I’ll be to the lowest I got when I was calorie counting last fall; twenty pounds, I’ll be under my lowest since delivering my daughter; thirty pounds and I’ll be to my pre-pregnancy weight!! YAY! It sounds so doable breaking it down like that. And ironic that it’s in ten pound increments lol. So Ideally, I’ll get to 285 by Mother’s Day; 275 by Father’s day; and 265 by the time the State Fair rolls around in early August. Ok, obviously I’m hoping to do better than that, but a rough outline of goals never hurt anybody 🙂 That’s roughly ten pounds per month and totally within the realm of possible.

Today has been a great day lol. My excitement from the scale carried over into the rest of the day. I got in a good amount of exercise; a long walk with the hubs and kiddo, plus running around in the back yard with her during the afternoon. Carbs are at 15 net for the day, and calories are around 1200. Spot on! I also drank more than a half gallon of water–not quite as good as I’d like but definitely not too shabby!

I made some low carb chili for dinner. Not going to lie, I was convinced I’d miss my normal chili because let me tell you: I  LOVE CHILI lol. But I was surprisingly ok with the “just meat and veggies” version. I don’t think it will win any cooking competitions or anything, but I think it’s a perfectly acceptable replacement of “the real deal” in my low carb repertoire. That’s honestly one of my favorite things about this new way of eating– I love to cook, and switching to low carb has opened up a whole new arena of recipes just waiting to be tried! I’d probably never have even considered these recipes before.

So that’s it for today. I’m still so excited about such an awesome number this week, I hope this feeling doesn’t wear off! Hopefully you’re all achieving your goals as well! Thanks for sticking with me! (sorry for all the exclamation points LOL)

KK