What I Ate Wednesday

Another quick and easy week which was also another kick ass week of keto.

Welcome to another What I Ate Wednesday: keto edition. 

Ahhhhhh.. It's that time of year that I dread the most. Back to school time. I know so many people love back to school time but I despise it. Seriously, I am NOT a schedule kind of person. Never have been, probably never will be. I enjoy coming and going as I please, and not having any time constraints.

Get them to school by this time, pick them up at that time, followed by running to and from practices, trying to get dinner done by a reasonable time... Which in itself isn't easy with a hubster that works crazy hours.. I try to have dinner ready or done shortly after he gets home from work cuz we usually wait to eat with him, but some nights he's home at 6:45, other nights it's 7:30, 8:00, even 9:00 pm!! Those nights suck, man! 

Anyways, yeah, quick and easy is most necessary most nights! 

Jumping right in, this week we enjoyed:

Grilled steak (hello, buy one pack get one free! My belly and wallet appreciates the shit out of you!) With asparagus. 

Eye of Round Roast (also for a pretty good price of $1.99 a lb!) with broccoli.. and yes, we eat it super rare..

We thoroughly enjoyed this shrimp alfredo with asparagus and spinach.. I had been using classico alfredo sauce till I found a killer keto recipe for one. TOTAL. GAME. CHANGER! This is the real deal, folks!

And finally, garlic lemon butter shrimp and asparagus. (Shrimp was buy one get one free, too, which explains shrimp twice in one week.)

With all this delicious keto food, I was down another 4.6 lbs this week. WOOOO HOOOO! After a week and a half of being "stuck", I will gladly take that! 

See you all next week, with more yummy keto-ness!

Helpful Keto Tips

If you haven't watched any keto videos from Dr Berg or Dr Barry, you are seriously missing out.

They have so many wonderful tips and truly helpful info! 

Here are just a few of my favorites!

THREE FIRST STEPS TO GOING KETO:

TOP 7 KETO TIPS YOU NEED:

WEIGHT LOSS "STALL" ON KETO:

KETO AND INTERMITTENT FASTING FOR BEGINNERS:

KETO Q & A:

WHAT'S MISSING IN THE "CALORIE THEORY":

Seriously, I highly recommend subscribing to these guys. They have a wealth of keto info!!

What I Ate Wednesday

Back to school week is usually hectic over here, (isn't it for everyone?) so I wanted to keep meals as simple as possible this week. Less stressing out over meals makes a busy mama very very happy. 

Also, I found a killer sale on pork roasts this week, so you will notice that we ate A LOT of pork. Full bellies all week with a little extra cash in my pocket? Ummm... yes please!

One of my favorites from this week was slow cooked shredded pork that I fried up in a pan with butter and eaten on top of some cheddar crisps that I baked up. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! 

Another favorite was actually from last week (I didn't post, sorry!) and it was pork on pork action in the form of bacon wrapped Pork tenderloin. Ohhhh yes! So good! 

Also the leftover shredded Pork that I used for the carnitas, was a big time favorite. Slow cooked on low for 9 hours, shredded, and topped with a little cheese was absolutely devine. Everyone raved about how delicious it turned out. 

And finally, last but definitely not least was this butter beef concoction. So soooo so yummy, ridiculously simple, and oh so filling. I actually meal prepped another batch of this for my mama and I for the week. I'll be posting the recipe for this bad boy next week. 

That's it for this week! See you all again next week!

Getting Started On Keto

I often get asked about how I got started on Keto. So I thought I would shed some light on what I did. 

Obviously, the very first thing I did was research the hell out of it. I had always been told, and preached myself, that carbs were a necessary way of life. And 'all things in moderation'. After completing a whole 30 round, I still felt like crap. I had taken a quiz that led me to thinking that carbs were an issue for my body. I wrote about that HERE.

I started researching Keto and the more I looked into it, the more convinced I was that this was going to be a Godsend for me. I'm not even going lie, I was terrified to start. I was a total carb junkie. I ate carbs, and lots of them, with every single meal. And probably between each meal, too. I told my mama about my plans to start keto and explained it to her. She looked at me like I was crazy and said "good luck". Just a few hours later she came to me and said "I'm in. Let's give it a try." I started the next day and she started the day after I did. We did so incredibly well on it and while I had to temporarily put keto on hold after 8 months after getting pregnant with our newest peanut, (Morning sickness and food aversions threw me WAY off) my mom continued to rock it. She's now half the size she was before and i'm SO proud of her! My brother also started about a month before Easter and when he came over for Easter dinner, HE was half the size he had been, too!! It was so crazy to see him like that! My oldest son is currently doing it too, to prepare for college wrestling season, and so is his friend. YES!!

I jumped in head first and cut my carbs, most often only eating between 5 and 15 NET carbs a day. I also drank chicken broth with a bit of Kerry gold butter melted in it once a day for the first week or so to help keep the carb flu at bay. And it worked cuz both my mom and I never got the carb flu. *whew!*

What I *didn't* do: I didn't stress myself out about it. It is such a drastic change for most people, so if you need to start out with baby steps, then do that! Start one day by removing all the crap carbs and sugary stuff from your house. Get rid of your bad oils (canola, corn, veggie, soy... etc these are HORRIBLE!). The next day, make it your goal to eat 50 net carbs or less. A day (or two or three) after that, bump it down to 20 or less net carbs.

Anyways... There is an overwhelming amount of information out there about keto. Lots of it is garbage. There's a ton of MISinformation out there about it, too. There are so many doctors and nutritionists out there that simply haven't been properly educated on keto so they look down their noses at it. They shake their heads and talk about how necessary carbs are... yeah yeah yeah.

Pinterest is your friend... and also not your friend. There is an abundance of keto recipes on pinterest. However, NOT all of them are actually keto! Some are created by people that want the blog traffic keto recipes will bring, but aren't very knowledgable about what keto actually is. So be sure to check out the ingredients in each recipe before getting all excited. 

With the crazy amount of info out there, I give you two important things: 1) different people keto in different ways. Some of us eat "dirty keto", which is basically allowing foods that have iffy ingredients but still fit within your macros. Some eat "clean keto", which is NOT allowing foods with those ingredients. Some allow certain artificial sugars, (I do) some don't. Do what YOU feel comfortable with.

The second thing is a website I found during my months of research while doing keto. Ruled me is hands down THE BEST site out there, in my opinion. And they have a truly fantastic guide on starting keto. You can scroll and scroll and scroll some more and it just tells you EVERYTHING you need to know. I can't recommend it enough! You can find that guide HERE. They even have a keto calculator (there are so many out there and this is the only one I truly trust. I've had the best results using theirs.)

The most important thing to keep in mind while doing keto is to think of it this way: your carbs are your LIMIT. Your protein in your GOAL. And your fat is your LEVER. 

What does this mean? It means that each day, be sure to stay at or below your carb allowance, try to hit your protein goal without going over it, and if you are still hungry, eat some more fats. If you are stalling after a while, cut back on your fats.

 If you have a lot of excess fat in your body, I recommend NOT eating all of your fats each day. Why? Because you want your body to target the fat stores inside of your body. If you are eating too much fat, your body will burn that fat first, before moving onto burning your stored fats. 

Another thing that I feel VERY strongly about: you do NOT need to buy ketone supplements. Once Keto started gaining popularity, the vultures started coming out of the woodwork. "Hey! I have this coffee/preworkout/tea that has ketones in it. You can get into ketosis in hours instead of weeks!!" HELL NO. Why would I buy something that my body makes FOR FREE?!? Don't let them talk you into that crap. Seriously, you don't need it. Your body knows what to do. It's in our DNA!

Keto has been the best thing I've done for myself and I have no doubt that my mom and brother (and so many countless others out there) would say the same thing. If you need meal inspiration, scroll through my blog here and keep an eye on my What I Ate Wednesday posts. Also, if you're on Instagram, you can find me there as @keto_glam. There are so many wonderful people in the Instagram Keto Community!

Also, I highly recommend checking out both Dr Berg and Dr Barry on YouTube. They really know their keto shit and have so many helpful videos! (Also check out Nurse Cindy's keto "whoosh" video.)

I hope that this post has helped you in some way. Don't forget, if nothing else, please be sure to check out the ruled me keto guide I linked above. It's seriously amazing and tells you everything you need to know. And remember, take it easy on yourself! There is a bit of a learning curve with keto, but once you are a few days into it, you'll find your groove!

Love and light!
💗💗💗

How Doing Nothing All Week Opened My Eyes As A Mom

Well, I wouldn't say I did nothing at all.. because taking care of a baby and 3 other kids (granted two are much older and pretty self sufficient) isn't exactly doing nothing. Lol

But housework? Yeah, I haven't done a lick of it. Dishes have piled up, laundry desperately needs to be done.. etc

This was me, basically all week. 

I have been sidelined with a horrible dental abscess and let me just say, I hope you never have to experience one yourself. Seriously, the pain is like nothing else. Dare I say it hurts worse than having my last baby without any drugs. I've had them abscesses in the past, (Pretty sure I inherited my daddy's bad teeth) and i'm usually able to take care of them on my own until I can get into a dentist. This time? This time has been ridiculous. Definitely the worst one I've ever had. 

By day 4 I had finally had enough and called the dentist. That speaks volumes cuz I have a legit dentist phobia. I would've probably gotten in sooner had the abscess been on the bottom portion of my mouth but it's on the top. What's the big deal you ask? 

Well, when you get work done on the top, you get that shot in the roof of your mouth which makes it feel like it's super swollen and you feel like you can't swallow. Some may be thinking "yeah, and so what? We all get that feeling. Suck it up, buttercup.." And that may be true, but my throat is permanently swollen from being sick so much as a kid. There isn't much room back there to begin with. So when it feels like the roof of my mouth is swollen, I really REALLY feel like I can't swallow and my anxiety kicks in and I start to have a panic attack.  It is NOT good times. 

There are other reasons I tend to avoid going to the dentist, too, but I'll save that for another post cuz I have a lot to say.

My dentist was awesome enough to call me in some antibiotics and made an appointment for me to come in next week. The antibiotics took a couple days to kick in and give me any relief. So that was over a week of excruciating pain that truly takes everything out of you..

Ok, I'm going on and on about my abscess and getting a bit off track from my point.. What have I learned from my week of doing nothing but snuggling my youngest peanut? 

Well, two main things. 

One, is that nothing bad really happens if you choose some extra snuggle time with your little ones over doing some housework. Seriously, the dishes and laundry will still be there waiting for you when you're ready. Trust me on this. 

Which brings me to two: the dishes, laundry, and most everything else was indeed still there. Cuz no one else did them. And I realized that this was my fault. Growing up, I did almost everything for them. If they were asked to do something and they didn't do it, I just sucked it up and did it myself. They loved helping me around the house when they were little, but the older they got, the less willing they were to help. And the more lax I got in enlisting their help..

I've always been so torn, because I believe that as the mom and wife, I should be serving my family. No, not waiting on their every beck and call, but doing the housework and helping them as much as I can. But I also want them to be fully self sufficient for when they leave the nest. So really, have I been doing them a disservice all these years by not making them do things around the house? Have I been doing more harm than good?! 

It really has opened my eyes to the fact that sometimes I just need help. And that it's ok to ask them for that help. Or tell them rather than ask them, if need be. Enlisting their help around the house will still be serving my family because it's preparing them for life as an adult. I want my daughters to know how to keep house and cook, should they decide they want to be a mama and homemaker in the future. I also want my son to know how to keep house and cook so that he can be a helping hand for his spouse in the future. 

With all this in mind, going forward, there will be changes made around here. Everyone will be pitching in more. There may be some grumbling along the way, but this mama is putting her foot down. It's time!

Now, does anyone want to go to the dentist for me later today?!? Anyone? Anyone? 😂

Another Newest Addition To Our Family

So, we love our bearded dragon, Drago Malfoy, so much that we decided to give him/her a brother or sister. Lol

Without further ado, let me introduce to you, Ron Beardsley. (If it turns out to be a girl, we'll call her Ginny Beardsley.)

Look how precious! This little guy is SO chill. He just sat in my hand and went to sleep.. About a minute after the pic was taken, he rested his little head on my finger. Awwwww!

The kids just love watching the dragons. My six year old especially loves watching them chase down their crickets at meal times. I have to admit, I do, too. 😂

Pretty sure we're done adding to our zoo, err, home. We're plenty full now between us, 4 kiddies, 3 dogs, 2 cats, and 2 beardies. But then again, who knows what the future will bring. Lol

What I Ate Wednesday

This week was chock full of yummy keto-ness. 

Not gonna lie, keeping myself back on track this time around has been a bit rough. Maybe it's because I'm nursing my little one and it's making me want all the freaking carbs... Maybe it's that I'm so busy with the kids and housework that I don't want to stop and make myself food, so I opt for a quick (carb heavy) grab. I don't know. 

I'd go a couple days, then have an off day. Then back on track for a few days, then have another off day. Granted, my off days weren't all that bad, but I want to be all the way on track. I want to get back to where I was this time last year. 

And I think that the answer to both possible reasons why I keep going off track is pretty clear: I need to start meal prepping again. 

So Monday morning I made a Sausage Egg Bake, cut it into servings, packed them up, and threw them into the fridge. 

Then Tuesday night, I made BLT sammies for the family. My mom and I ate ours on low carb wraps with cheese and ranch (Cuz yum). So I cooked up a little extra bacon and packed that up for eating throughout the week, too.

It's not much, but it's a start. I go grocery shopping tomorrow, (yaaaaaay!!) so I plan on coming up with a few keto meals to pack up for myself, too. 

Long post cut kinda short, here are a couple of my other favorite meals from the week.

Chili (yes, again.) With homemade keto dinner rolls. (Recipe can be found HERE ) I wasn't super fond of the rolls while they were still warm out of the oven, but after they cooled off? YUM! I will definitely be making these bad boys again. Maybe adding some herbs and cheese to them this time. 

Also, cracklin chicken with lemon feta roasted green beans. Super yummy!

That's it for now. See you next Wednesday!