Menu planning vs menu doing

It all starts with a nice solid plan. You know? You take the inspiration from cookbooks, Pinterest, fitness blogs, Facebook, Instagram, or what have you. You put pen to paper, stylus to screen, or fingers to keyboard and you’re off! Meatless Monday,  Tenderloin Tuesday, leftovers Wednesday, chicken Thursday, pizza Friday, tacos Saturday, and Sunday you do it all over again! At least,  that’s the plan. 

This week, I got pretty far, actually. I made the menu, made the corresponding grocery list, bought said groceries, and boiled the eggs. Then,  well. 

Little Elfkin started getting sick.  Like,  both of us missed work, worked from home, and kept her out of daycare for days kind of sick. I managed to boil a couple eggs, but really, the majority of my time was spent trying to make her comfortable and watch for changes. 

We were supposed to have a paleo breakfast bake for this week’s breakfasts. We ate a lot of cereal and/or bought breakfast on the way to the office while the other parent stayed home. 

Side note: Affogato Strada Espresso is delicious. 

*weak stomach warming, skip this paragraph*

Ohhh Roseola. Not fun.  SO not fun. The thought of cooking goes right out the window when your little one is burning up,  throwing up, and refusing to eat. Her fever got so bad at one point that it caused her to throw up, even though she hadn’t eaten anything.  Poor dear. Poor Jeff, too! She got him completely and stunned him.. that didn’t stop the process, though, so she also got the floor, the changing table, and my foot. All Jeff could say was “it’s HOT.”

103.8

So, off to the ER we went, where they told us that “sometimes, sick kids throw up.” …real insightful. 

All this to say: the menu was planned, but the menu was not done. The thing is, life will always be busy and hectic and in the way. I know how to not go completely off the rails, though! Some of it is planning ahead, yes, but more of it is sticking to my plan even when nothing else does. For example, when we had Jersey Mikes, I got a “sub in a tub,” and saved about 300 calories. When having pizza, I loaded it with veggies and split half with Jeff, even though it’s a personal pizza. At the gas station, I tried to pick snacks and meals that fit into my day by checking it on My Fitness Pal (sn: Aminarra) first and making a decision based on that. 

Now, if you open my refrigerator, you’ll find cherries that have gone soft, avocado that’s seen better days, and iceberg lettuce turning yellow instead of pale green.

This week’s plan is to salvage what I can and go from there. It’s always a bit grating to waste food, so we’ve learned to live with wrinkly peppers and to adjust our expectations. The plan is much simpler this time around. Oatmeal for breakfasts, batch cooked chicken for dinner, and either salad or sandwiches for lunch. I picked up some fruit at the grocery store because whole food is fast food. This is a plan I can stick to even if life goes crazy again. It’s not easy, but is doable. So just do it. 

Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary

Please forgive any typos, I’m sure to go back and fix them, but this blog is being written from my phone while the Little Miss sleeps on me.

Things I’ve learned in 1 Month as a New Parent

“Sleep when the baby sleeps” is easier said than done.  Old habits die hard.

“Blowouts” are just as much fun as they sound… Bonus–did you know that infant outfits are designed to be able to pull down over the child’s body instead of over their head? It really helps..https://youtu.be/rrISmbf8LBM

Swaddles are a miracle invention.  Nothing says ‘calm down and go to sleep’ to my BabyGirl quite like being confined 😛

Formula is a God-Send.  My girl wasn’t getting enough food to thrive, so we’ve been supplementing–now she’s healthy, alert, curious, and gaining weight on target with recommendations from the pediatrician.

Daddies do things differently–and that’s okay.  Jeff swaddles, changes, dresses, plays, snuggles, and burps BabyGirl differently than I do.

There are more hours in the day than ever before–and yet fewer of them can be used for house work.  The house work will wait.  Baby snuggles are important.

A month flies by faster than ever possible.

8pm is a really reasonable bed time.

Waking a sleeping baby is actually really adorable.  If you get them before they get you, you get to feed them, change them, and snuggle them before they realize they need it.  If they wake up before you? Hoo boy.. hope you like your ear drums.

It’s worth it. Everything that “it” represents–from the pain of birth, injury, changes to bodily functions, exhaustion, mood-swings, fear, worry, the lot of it.  It all pales in comparison with the gratitude felt at being able to be a parent.

Introducing our Baby Girl

Yay! My Facebook friends are already aware, but it’s time to let my readership know that Baby Girl has arrived!  The following is the story of labor, delivery, and the first few days at home with our little one.

29 Weeks and feeling fine :)

29 Weeks 1 Day

I’m reading The Martian in my spare time, and it inspires me to say that I’ve reached ‘critical mass.’ I’m officially at a point in my pregnancy that:

1. I’ve knocked stuff over because I misjudged the space I take up
2. My baby bump has surpassed my boobs 😛
3. If I stand up straight, I can’t see my feet…but I can confirm their presence if I just lean a bit 😉

Hyperbole and a Half

Baby Girl is doing well, from what I can tell, and we’re starting in on the time where I’ll get a checkup every two weeks for a little while.

In other health and fitness news, today’s adventure is a mixed bag. I have The Blerch back on my desk reminding me to make healthy choices. To that end, I’m back to using my standing station. It’s great, but I need to get used to it again.

I’m in good company, though. I relocated in the office to a row where 3 other people are also using standing stations, so I’m inspired to use it more.

Lunch isn’t perfect, but it’s delicious and has way more vegetables, both in the salad and the egg rolls, than I would’ve had if I had gotten my usual turkey burger and fries. I’ll count it as a win.

In terms of non-physical health, I’m concerned about the widespread computer glitches this morning, but this blog isn’t the pace to get into it.

Woosah, and carry on.

Cleaning day!

Every Sunday is cleaning day in the MegsFitness household. That, and, if I’m lucky, batch cooking day. Today, it could very well turn out to be neither if I’m not careful.

I had a ton of fun with my family yesterday. Lots of good food, conversation, and plenty of fresh air. This is the daughter of one of my cousins, but it pretty much represents my attitude too:

Woo! Party!!

All that fresh air and excitement makes for a really sleepy megsyface. This blog brought to you by: procrastination.

Check list for the day:

Install doors in crawl spaces
Dispose of broken baby gates (thanks, Darwin)
Vacuum nursery play room
Change out guest bedding
Clean up office desk…

*Maybe* get some menu planning done.

Oi. Better get started.

End of a Chapter

I burned a bridge last night. This morning, I’m not happy about it, but I’m also not going to ever be the one to start rebuilding it. Because of the interconnectivity of the bridge I burnt with other friendship bridges, another one collapsed, and a couple more are smoldering.

This metaphor isn’t going to last the whole way through this blog entry. Basically, there are a few things that have been, and probably always will be true about me:

1. As a water sign, I’m ruled by emotion.
2. I will drop even good friends like a hot coal if I’m burned. I’d rather have a select few true friends than a plethora of fair weather friends.
3. I call it like I see it.

These three added up yesterday and it ended up spelling the end of an era. Before I was “MegsFitness” on WordPress, I was MegsFitness on SparkPeople.

Through Spark, I really got started in caring about my health, wellness, and fitness. I met a great group of like minded people there and we banded together as the Weight Loss Warriors.

With this group of inspiring women, I ran my first 5k. I completed the warrior dash. I started addressing my hang ups about food. And I realized that I didn’t have to wait until I was skinny to be happy.

There are a few success stories that sprang from that group. Women who set their mind and their money towards achieving their fitness goals and making it their sole mission in life. There are others who made family more of a priority. Others who focused on career first. It was a safe zone where we could, and did, talk about all of these facets of our lives.

And then there’s me.

One of the success stories posted her own personal opinion to her own personal timeline yesterday. But it was so far from the ideals that we had held as warriors that I was appalled. With open eyes today, I see that it’s possible that she just may not have explained herself clearly. The fact of the matter, though, is that she had friends trying to explain on her behalf and not only did she not disagree, but she voted her agreement with the handy dandy ‘like’ button. The message that I was getting loud and clear was that if you’re still fat, it’s your own fault, and you should be ashamed of yourself.  There were caveats and qualifications–she’s not talking about people with a medical condition, or people who are currently in progress of losing weight–she’s only talking about people who are unhappy with their weight and refuse to do anything about it. Well, okay, but how can you tell whether someone has given up by LOOKING at them? That was the question that went unanswered the whole night. The article that was shared in order to illustrate this woman’s disgust was a blog on HuffPo about a woman’s realization that it’s more important for her to be making memories with her son than to constantly be ashamed of her body. Perhaps the unintended message on the WLWs part is that motherhood is no excuse for being fat. This was CERTAINLY the message this woman’s friends were touting.

Here’s the offending paragraph from Huffington Post:

“I vowed to myself, there in that kitschy water park, that I won’t ever sit on the sidelines again. I won’t deny a pool date because I don’t want to wear my bathing suit. I won’t skip the ice cream with my son when he begs me to eat one with him. I won’t enter calories on my phone. I will wear my bathing suit. And I will do it and remember you, the mom at the water park today — and the role model I must be for all my girls.”

And here is just some of the vitriolic response from someone who was supposed to understand:

I went off on her. I called her out for being judgemental of a person based on looks. For not understanding that developing healthy relationships with family are more important than weight loss–but what I should’ve said is that they’re more important than burdening the next generation with the same self consciousness and shame that we had to overcome. Having one ice cream sandwich with your child on a hot summer day does not mean you’ve given up on fitness. I daresay it means you have a healthier relationship with food than someone who is constantly scrutinizing every morsel and tracking every calorie. That’s disordered eating, and it’s not healthy in the long run.

But this blog isn’t about that discussion again. It’s about burning bridges. Of course the natural action from me was to unfriend this person and stop following their fitness page. The angry part of me also called her friends a  douche-canoe and a bitch, respectively.

Then I took it to the Weight Loss Warriors. I asked if we could have a vote on kicking her out. After all, this group was always saying how it’s safe to go to the gym because no one is judging you–and here this member of our ranks was obviously judging everyone who didn’t drop the weight like she did. I expected discussion, even agreement! But I was wrong, and that’s why a second bridge collapsed and even more are smoldering.

Some agreed with me and actually booted the member in question outright. Some completely disagreed with me. One even left the group in a rush of wtf. They wanted to keep the group whole and invite everyone back to talk, but the damage was already done for me.  I’m not going to associate with someone who says that motherhood is an excuse and deems that you’ve given up soley based on the fact that you don’t say no to a summer treat and you’re still overweight.

I’m sad, this morning, about how it played out, and that I felt compelled to leave the group myself. They were such a huge part of my fitness journey and really making it into a lifestyle change. The good news is that I have the like-minded folks as friends on my page, and I still have the Nerd Fitness Academy behind me. I’ll be alright.

Legend of the Triceratops

Hello, blogosphere.

I was thinking back to the days when I used to blog all the time and I realized what was different –

– I didn’t have *much* of a social life

– I went out and did things to pass the time (biking, exercising, sight-seeing in the city, drawing)

– I wrote about the mundane happenings in my life in a ‘dear diary’ format. (now I do that on Facebook)

The cool thing about those days is that I actually connected with people on a more personal level and made genuine friends writing about life.

The down side is that my family didn’t really appreciate me writing about *their* lives in *my* journal—they wanted their privacy, after all.

Now that I’m an adult, and I’ve had things about my life spread through the family grapevine without my permission in the past, I kinda *get* that feeling.  Don’t tell a story that’s not yours to tell.

Unfortunately, that leaves me in a little bit of a writing rut.  There’s not much that I *do* any more, not that I feel worthy of blogging about.

I suppose this is my attempt to change that.  I’m going to go back to the dear-diary format, except that I’m going to respect the wishes of my family and friends.  That means you’ll see mundane stuff here, but I’m also going to write about my experiences that might resonate with you.

Entry 1: Legend of the Triceratops

So getting back on the fitness bandwagon, I’ve been more active in the Nerd Fitness Academy Facebook community.  The women in that group are inspiring at every level of fitness and it really motivates me to keep up.  It’s not unusual to see someone’s progress pictures put up and then to see a whole slew of comments reflecting on where the changes are observable to the third party.  They’re all positive.

When someone asks ‘what is it about this community that makes us so judgment free and welcoming?’ the resounding reply is that people are still judgy, but they check their attitude at the proverbial door.  ‘Not here,’ is the general consensus. I think that’s great, because little by little, I think it helps the women in our group to become less judgmental overall.  If you have enough practice putting your snark in check, eventually it becomes second nature.

Well, then someone who didn’t get the memo to check the snark at the door decided to comment on someone else’s progress photos. They weren’t outright attacking the person, but they were not exactly appreciative of the person’s decision to post progress pics in their undies.  Such remarks were made as “women shouldn’t lift,” and “have some class.” It wasn’t fair, and I think it stung a fair few of us to read her scathing retort.  It blew up, not because those two comments are wholly against the NF way of life, but because this person only had something to say when a woman who was not already fit decided to share her progress.

Another Rebel stepped in, though, and delivered one of the best rebuttals I’d ever read.

“WOMEN should do whatever the [expletive removed] they want to do, be it body building, bikini competitions, ballet, yoga, or anything else they want.  WOMEN should be proud of the body they have regardless of if it “looks like a mans” or looks like a [expletive removed] triceratops.

…Here, we love.  Each other, ourselves, the good, the bad, the big, the little, the round, the sharp, the muscle, the fat… We don’t judge, we don’t criticize, even if we don’t understand or believe the same as someone else, there is nothing but love.  I will tolerate ABSOLUTELY nothing besides love and respect in this group.  Join us or leave us.” – Ginny Mason

Since that post, the women of the Academy have been sending “Rawrs” of appreciation to each other, buying merchandise to support the cause thanks to a little pop-up shop that another Rebel made, and generally making better decisions because we’re all thinking “what would a triceratops do?”

It’s even permeated my home life and ‘being a triceratops’ is what me and Jeff have been using as words of encouragement for each other.

Jeff: I’m not doing too well

Jeff: [Explanation]

Me: Can you be a Triceratops?

I mean, like, screw what other people think, because you’re freaking awesome.

I know [detailed related to explanation]

You’ve done great things with your life, and you’re doing so much more.  You need to tell yourself that you’re a [expletive] Triceratops and trample anyone who says otherwise.

Another time, we were supposed to go to the store, but I had been wearing shorts around the house, even though I hadn’t shaved in about a week or so 😛 I told him that I’d need to change first and he said “No you don’t! Triceratops don’t care what other people think!”

LOL

It was absurd but so encouraging anyway.  Under guise of being a Triceratops, I’ve avoided some sweets, gone on more walks, and made it down to the gym more often than I probably would’ve without that fire.

It seems to be tapering down a little bit in the Academy, but I’m going to make a post later today about how I’m a Triceratops for going to the gym when I *really* didn’t want to.  RAWR, they’ll all say, and I’ll puff up my chest and nod in agreement—RAWR indeed.

Kick off to grilling season

When the in-laws were in town, one of the things we accomplished was to assemble the awesome grill that my parents had bought us as a house warming gift.  Kudos to Jeff and his dad for figuring THAT out!

Sunday had amazing weather. It was warm, sunny, and I guess the wind was a little strong, but alright!  Since the weather was what it was, we decided to break in the grill and cook some steaks!

Mother nature had other ideas and started spitting as soon as Jeff was back with the propane.  That’s okay, though! Mother Nature has got nothing on MY mom… So off to the garage we went.

Mother Nature picked up the pace and brought roiling thunder and some lightening.  Jeff brought an umbrella and an extra place setting.

Jeff manned the grill while I set up an impromptu dining room out of canvas chairs and a coffee table that I wanted to refinish.

When the steaks were done, the meal was served, and the thunder rolled.

Consider grilling season officially started!

Pumpkin Pancakes

My in-laws are in town for Easter. They drive all the way down from Winnipeg, and I like to think it’s just for my pumpkin pancakes.

I’m allowing myself to call them “mine” because I make a couple tweaks to the original recipe. It’s actually a recipe from Diane Sanfilippo, from the book entitled Practical Paleo.

Since everyone was still sleeping, I had the entire first floor to myself. Step one: turn on some tunes.

Now that you’re bopping around to some good tunes, you should realize that you’re starving.  Eat a can of pears while getting your ingredients together!

As you’re getting your ingredients together, question the freshness of your eggs since you can’t remember when you bought them.  The Float Test works really well!  If you’re questioning your eggs, give it a try.

Ruh roh… One of them is bad. Two are alright, and one is fresh.  Toss the baddie and swap in another fresh egg!

All set? You should have 4 eggs, 1/2 cup pumpkin puree, 2* TBLS vanilla extract, 2 TBLS maple syrup, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp baking soda, and 2 TBLS coconut floor*.

*quantities or ingredients vary from original recipe.

All set?? K, let’s mix the wet ingredients first.

Whip that up–I use an electric beater, but a whisk would work too.  Next, get together the dry ingredients. Make sure to get your cook book all messy… This is required. 😛

K, mix the dry ingredients together so that we can sift them into the wet ingredients next.

Mix these together, then set it aside for a moment. Now is going to be a great time to clean up your dishes and get the skillet or griddle pre-heated.

That’s one of the things that I learned from my grandma.  If you clean as you go, the end clean up won’t be so bad.

Now, if you’re using a nonstick skillet, you shouldn’t need the coconut oil that’s called for in the original recipe. I normally prefer to leave it out, but I used a little this time just to stick a little closer to the original recipe.

These cook up a little differently than normal pancakes. Depending on how hot your griddle is, these might cook up in a couple minutes, but it could take longer.  Our griddle is starting to lose heat in some areas, so I had a couple false starts.  You can watch for the bubbles to burst, but it could be a little while before you see that.

Flip! These are a bit wet, even with the added coconut flour, so I like to press them after they’re flipped to get them to cook through. I also flip them again to make sure both sides of the batter that ooozes out (yummy!) is cooked.

Slice up some fruit to have with your meal, and you’re all set. These pancakes are so flavorful that you won’t need butter or syrup to go with them.  By all means, feel free to dress them up!

Enjoy!