Way to go Babe!

After I had the kids Stephen was able to take an entire month off to stay home with us while we all adjusted and settled into a routine. I’m incredibly grateful for this. Anyway, he took advantage of all that time by getting back into his cross fit gym. He has done cross fit for several years off and on but its hard when we get busy and what not. He worked really hard for 2 months and had little results and was getting a little frustrated. I don’t blame him! He would lay on the ground for 20 min after a work out sometimes because it was so intense and still weigh the same. Not that he really needed to lose a lot of weight but he wanted to be in better shape. Health and fitness are a big part of our lives and pregnancy especially our double dose threw us out of our rhythm. Anyway, at the beginning of the year his gym offered a challenge similar to a “biggest loser” but with a specific diet. The Paleo diet. Look it up. Basically if you can grow it or kill it you can eat it. It goes back to Paleolithic era (think Nephi or cave men) when people lived to be 200 and cancer, food allergies, heart disease and obesity didn’t exist. It is HARD to avoid sugar and flour and gluten. No rice no corn (because these were discovered later) no peanuts NO DAIRY. Basically you can eat any meat you can think of, we eat eggs with bacon almost every morning. And sausage (we keep it to chicken or turkey) any veggie you can think of we love avacados, nuts mainly cashews and almonds and sunflower seeds, fruit but very little mostly bananas and apples some blueberries and strawberries. Fresh produce. This diet is high in all natural healthy fats. I lasted 4 days mainly because I am responsible for the nutrition of 3 people and this girls gotta eat as much as I can. I even usually have a slim fast shake with my meal to add calories. Which obviously isn’t paleo:) Here are a few of our favorite meals: Hamburgers wrapped in lettuce with onion tomato pickles and bacon sometimes guacamole. Seriously once a week and its my favorite night. Grilled chicken and asperagus-simple healthy delicious. We only drink or use almond and coconut milk. Obviously lots of salads, spinach is a staple to our every day. We fill them with nuts and flax seed and chicken or turkey and Stephen usually tops his with pico (onion tomato cilantro with lime and garlic) while I cheat a little and use some raspberry vinaigrette. Apples pears craisens with zucchini or cucumber the options are endless and it just depends whats in the fridge. Sweet potato fries!! Best ever! Cut up and coated in olive oil, chili powder, garlic, sometimes Italian seasonings or a pinch of cayenne pepper and fried up on the stove. They are so good we feel like we are cheating the diet. Sweet potato pancakes with cinnamon and nutmeg or banana pancakes, simple ingredients and no where near as good as the real thing haha but it is a sweet tooth fix. Topped with almond butter (I use peanut butter) and honey or 100% pure maple syrup. Crock pot anything, I usually keep it simple and just add salt and pepper to the meat then later we can add different things and just serve it with veggies. Babies don’t like broccoli which is hard to avoid when eating healthy but it just forces us to get creative:) Home made applesauce. Seriously killer. I get a variety of apples and peel and slice them and cook them in the crock pot with cinnamon and lemon juice and OH MY serve warm and it is like having a piece of apple pie. For Christmas we bought a juicer and love it. Great way to get your veggies and it’s the only way I will eat kale. Plus I would rather drink green juice than a green smoothie, it just goes down easier and easier for your body to digest. Especially with no added sugar, just apples or lime/lemon juice to sweeten it basically. Anyway, it is not easy but Stephen was so dedicated with it. Even when he came home to me eating chocolate or cookie dough the man stayed strong. 6 weeks solid. There were about 20 people doing the challenge and you had to keep a journal of what you ate and what work outs you did and your weight. Then at the end you had to write a short report on your progess and how you felt. And my man WON the challenge! And $200 bucks! So proud of him. And he is sticking to the diet still. He lost 20 pounds in 6 weeks and kept most of his muscle. He is a firm believer in food being the fuel for your body and paleo being the premium fuel. He even got the guys at the fire station to do it with him and all had great results and are still on paleo. His captain had some health issues, high blood pressure and such and paleo is slowly but surely healing him. Our world is slowly trying to kill us with its processed foods and its working too. (among all the other horrible things in the world around us) we see it as trying to keep our bodies clean. We clean the outside regularly, we stay away from foul books and movies and music to keep our minds clean and with the food we eat we can keep our insides clean and running like a fine tuned machine. He plans to take such good care of the body he has been blessed with and live to be 100. Which is great because I plan to live one day less than him:) Congrats babe! Way to go!