and I literally was this weekend

I've got to get to the store before Hank gets home, so I'll tell you all about the Capital Throwdown tomorrow (spoiler alert - we didn't win). I wanted to get the menu to you before it got any later! So, here you go!

Monday:

Breakfast - 1/2 an avocado and two links of sausage (yeah... need to go to the store, ASAP!) 

Lunch - I'll grab something from the store! I'm going as soon I figure out this weeks menu! (Blog actually took way longer than I thought today.. I couldn't find my written calendar and it has me all discombobulated!!)

Dinner - We have an MRE Tug of War planning meeting tonight, so I need something quick and easy. I LOVE meatloaf, and so does Julie Bauer from PaleoOMG. Check out her Italian Meatloaf, so good!! I'll probably put together a salad to go with the meatloaf. That is unless I get totally stressed and don't get to cooking... then we'll go out and hopefully not cheat.

Tuesday:

Breakfast - hard boiled eggs and grapefruit

Lunch - Leftover meatloaf - assuming I wasn't bad. If I was, I'll make the meatloaf for lunch so we'll have some leftovers.

Dinner - Wholly crap, I just found this recipe and can not wait to try it!!! Donald and I are in a constant competition with his parents to find the BEST Shrimp and Grits. It all started on a trip to Beaufort, S.C. and the nearly famous Shrimp and Grits from Blackstone's Cafe. After that, all others were compared to them. Karen found an awesome recipe she makes for us so I'm really excited to try this Paleo version from PaleoGrub.com

Wednesday:

Breakfast - Leftover "grits" with scrambled eggs and bacon

Lunch - Salad

Dinner - I've been neglecting pork lately, so I looked for a recipe to rekindle the spark. This one from Julie at the Crankin' Kitchen is perfect especially since she even thought about the sides! Pork chops with cherry rhubarb chutney, mustard greens and herb roasted sweet potatoes.

Thursday:

Breakfast - Hard boiled eggs and fruit

Lunch - Leftover pork chops

Dinner - I'm not gonna lie... this Paleo Moroccan Lamb Stew really doesn't look too appetizing, but the spices she uses and all, sounds amazing so I want to try it. 

Friday:

Breakfast - eggs & fruit

Lunch - leftovers

Dinner - Out, we're going to see Dave Attell at Rams Head Live. I have no idea who he is other than Donald tells me he's a comedian and he's funny... hopefully I will agree. I figure either way, I've got a reason to dress up and look cute and get a date night out of him.

Saturday:

Breakfast - OK, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I don't cook breakfast. I hate cooking breakfast, honestly, in the morning all I want to do is sit down with a cup of coffee and read or watch the news. My kids even know not to talk to me until I've had my first cup of coffee. When they were littler their bedroom was upstairs, they would creep down the stairs on the weekend mornings and peak around the corner. If they saw me holding my coffee cup, they knew they better scamper back up until Daddy Don started cooking. 

Donald LOVES cooking weekend breakfasts. So, when we went paleo he had to learn to adjust his cooking as well. We originally got this Vegan Banana Peanut Butter Waffles recipe from our friend, that lead us to this recipe for Vegan Banana Pancakes (sub almond flour for wheat flour) that has become a Saturday morning staple!

Lunch -  Hopefully the weather will be nice and we can go out on the boat. Either way, we'll probably do Subway salads.

Dinner - There's lots of good football on Saturday, Georgia's playing Vandy, LSU & Auburn, and Alabama at Mississippi so we'll be grilling out. This Grilled Rosemary and Balsamic Flat Iron Steak is my go to easy grilled meat for a crowd or lots of leftovers. 

If you're going to make it, be sure to read thru all of the instructions, you have to start marinating the darn thing in the morning, but trust me, it makes a huge difference and is totally worth the hassle. I'll make these awesome Grilled Sweet Potatoes from Elise at SimplyRecipes.com to go with it all.

Sunday:

Breakfast - Hopefully Donald will make me something yummy!

Lunch - I'm sure we'll have plenty of leftovers.

Dinner - Honestly, by the weekend I'm normally cooked out and tired of cleaning the kitchen. Maybe I'll get some inspiration and come up with something, I'll let you know..

But don't hold your breath. 

at getting on track!

Ughhhh... Did anyone else have a "bad food" weekend? It was just all around horrible for us. We were acting like we weren't even doing a Paleo Challenge. I'm so mad at myself.

OK, not that mad, but I do wish we'd lasted more than 5 days, lol. Friday night wasn't too bad, just some extra wine and popcorn at the Greenstreet Gardens outdoor movie night (which was so much fun!!). Saturday breakfast was yummy and paleo - did you see our picture on Instagram? Donald made us eggs & bacon with fruit and 1/2 an avocado. But then it went downhill from there...

After we found out Donald got another assignment on Ft. Meade and we'd be staying in Maryland another four years, we decided we needed to pick a local college football team to support. Since The Naval Academy was right down the street, we went with them. Our friends from the gym invited us to tailgate with them on Saturday. In my mind, we weren't going to be that bad. I made these yummy Bacon Wrapped Dates from Paleo Plan - except I didn't stuff them with the nuts and it took about twice as long in my oven to get the bacon crispy. They were a huge hit, even with me and I don't like dates.. quite frankly they look too similar to cockroaches, but bacon wrapped cockroachy looking things..yum!

I also packed up the Soda Stream (LOVE this thing!!) and fresh oranges and grapefruits with the thought that we'd stop and grab vodka for Skinny Crushes. Not paleo, but better than beer, right? We finally got everything in the car and were half way out the neighborhood when we realized the ticket were still laying on the kitchen table. So, Donald flipped a U-ey and sped home. He jumped out of the truck to go grab them and decided to grab the vodka we already had at home so we wouldn't be any later to meet our friends. Round two - we're driving down the street and all of a sudden Donald screams out "*uck, I forgot the tickets again! And something smells like shit" As I was trying not to laugh at him, we gathered that he must have stepped in dog poop from someones dog that had left us that nice little treat right in our driveway! Round three - tickets, clean shoes, vodka; check check check. Finally on the way. Once there I started to set up everything to make the crushes and to my dismay - I forgot water and the bottle to the soda stream... crushes were simply not in our cards for Saturday. Thus started the downhill spiral... beer led to hamburgers with buns, more beer led to snacks and then more beer led to BBQ topped Mac and Cheese. Ugh!!

That's me, in the middle double fisting... bad choices.

Sunday wasn't much better. Donald went fishing in the morning and bought home a rockfish. Then we decided to take our boat out to pick up Hank and have a late lunch out.

So, now it's Monday and it's time to get back on track. We have the Capital Throwdown this weekend and need to be focused. I have no delusions of thinking we'll even place, and I know I'm the slowest on our team but I don't want to look back and say "If I'd only eaten better.."

Here's our weekly food plan to get things back on track!

Monday:

Breakfast - hard boiled egg, protein shake after the WOD

Lunch - I'm going to grab a big salad at the grocery store.

Dinner - Rockfish Salad! If you don't have rockfish - any tougher fish like grouper, sea bass or halibut.

I'm going to make this Coconut Rockfish with Mango Salsa from Angling Unlimited that I found on Pinterest and serve it on a big bed of Organic Girl Super Greens - my new favorite. 

PS - did you know I have a Paleo Cookbook Board on Pinterest? I keep all of the recipes plus a bunch more on there, check it out!

Tuesday:

Breakfast - Hardboiled egg and 1 of the many grapefruits I have from the weekend.

Lunch - Leftover Fish salad

Dinner - I still have some spaghetti squash leftover from last weeks Spaghetti Squash & Meatballs crockpot dish. I always make two spaghetti squashes when I cook them so we'll have plenty of leftovers. That dish from last week didn't have enough sauce though, so I was stuck with a dish of squash and nothing to do with it.. Then I remembered this Spaghetti Squash Pizza Casserole from The Preppy Paleo dish that everyone LOVES! So, this will be easy since I already have it half done. (Note - I don't use that cheese it calls for. My family didn't really like it so I just leave cheese off and let the kids add regular cheese if they want.)

Wednesday:

Breakfast - eggs and more grapefruit - I bought a whole bag of them so we gotta get rid of them!

Lunch - leftover pizza casserole

Dinner - This so yummy Sweet and Sour Chicken from The Domestic Man with Cauliflower Rice. This one is a little labor intensive, so save it for a night when you have some time. But trust me - it is so worth it!!

Thursday:

Hank has the day off of school so I'm going to take him into D.C. to one of the museums. I'll get up and go to the early WOD at 5:45, then breakfast at home and then into the city. For lunch, we'll find somewhere that I can be good but he'll still enjoy and we'll be back home in time for dinner. Then we'll be off to the airport because Chloe is coming home for the weekend!! WOOHOO!

Dinner - Since we'll be running around all day I'm going to put together this Paleo Crockpot Chili from paleogrubs.com (yeah! It's finally chili season!) in the crockpot before we go so it'll be all ready when we get back!

Friday:

Breakfast and Lunch - normal eggs and leftovers.

Dinner - We're leaving for the Capital Throwdown at Crossfit Rubicon (I am so excited to check out their facility!). Since it's a two day event we decided to get a hotel up there for the weekend. We're staying at the Sheraton Tysons Corner since there's a pool, bar and they allow dogs! Everyone is very excited. We'll eat dinner on the road somewhere. 

Later this week I'm going to post about competition day nutrition and replenishment.

Did anyone else cheat last week or over the weekend? 

Good luck to everyone this week!!

at signing up for stuff

Sometimes I'm last, but not this time! Donald and I are already signed up for this years Lurong Living Paleo Challenge! I am so excited to start the challenge this year.

Yeah right, I'm excited. Are you kidding me? 8 Weeks of no bread, no quinoa, no butter, no pizza and no beer. I mean it's right in the middle of the most glorious time of year, Football Season! 

Fall is meant for tailgates and bonfires, beer and bourbon, flannel and cute boots. Not special WODs and restricted eating. We did the challenge last year and came in last. Shocker, I know.

But even though we came in last (because we "cheated" ... a lot) something crazy happened... we still lost weight, lost inches and after all the sugar withdrawals, we felt better.

The first week was a nightmare. Every day Donald came home and went immediately to the cupboard to look for a snack and would start whining that there was nothing he could eat. Poor baby. I struggled daily with meal planning and grocery shopping. I scoured the Internet all day looking for recipes that Hank (our then 9 year old) would actually consider eating and gritted my teeth as I payed upwards of $3.00 for a 1/2 gallon of coconut milk.

Slowly we were adding less and less coconut sugar to our coffee and realizing that 1 dozen eggs only lasts 2-3 days. We discovered the joys of brussel sprouts and bacon thanks to Michelle Tam over at nomnompaleo.com (If you aren't following her, you need to be!)

If that doesn't look good to you something is wrong with you.

After a couple of weeks being "good" we decided to be really "bad". We went out for ice cream. A mistake I shall never make again. I always knew that ice cream sorta made me feel bad after, I just assumed it was all the sugar. Sometimes I would go into a sort of panic - sweating and feeling faint after ice cream. This particular time was way worse, probably because I had not had any sort of dairy for weeks, those two scoops were like a full on assault team invading my body.



The National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC) list the symptoms of lactose intolerance as:

• abdominal bloating, a feeling of fullness or swelling of the abdomen
• abdominal pain
• diarrhea
• gas
• nausea

To say I had these symptoms is an understatement. Even the dog knew something was up..

Poor Bella - Thanks Catherine. After that I started thinking back to all the times I had felt so horrible and realized it really was the lactose. After mashed potatoes filled with cream and butter, after creamy pasta dishes, after milkshakes - I'd try to appease my angry stomach by munching on Lactaids like they were candy. I think I seriously thought it was all a normal part of life.



If I had never done the Lurong Living Paleo Challenge I probably would have never put 2 and 2 together. I was literally making myself sick because of something I thought was healthy for me. Well, honestly, with all the ads showing girls like this

I thought choking down some Lactaid so I could drink a few extra ounces of milk a day couldn't hurt in getting me to look like that...I may have eventually gotten there through regular bouts of diarrhea, but I think my new approach is much healthier. 

A year later, we've changed a lot about our diets. Somethings will be easy to give up during the challenge like milk, and others won't, like butter. Now that our diets are "cleaned up" I'm curious to see which food items I was thinking were "cleaned up" but I'll realize aren't once I start logging all of our food. Knowing what we know now, I wonder if this year will be easier or just as hard? As I sit here drinking a beer, I wonder if I'll struggle with giving it up again or if we'll just cheat like last time? Time will tell...

Good luck everyone! Stay tuned, I'll be posting our meal plan for the first week of the challenge Sunday!