Camping!

So, on the 19th day of my 21-days-of-no-sweets, I shared a Hershey chocolate bar with an 8 year old boy and ate two marshmallows.  :(  I was so close to 21 days!!!  Anyway, overall I think I did pretty good while camping.  While I did eat potatoes every day, I mostly ate eggs, bacon, sausage, cheese, burgers, hot dogs, brats, veggies, water, tea, coffee, trail mix, beef jerky and a couple of alcoholic beverages.  Not bad!  I also went for a 2 mile run both Saturday morning and Sunday morning and did a lot of swimming and hiking. Getting back on track for the rest of the week will look like this:

Dinners
Tuesday: Grilled marinated chicken breasts, butter crisp lettuce salads, kohlrabi
Wednesday: beef brats, cauliflower with ranch, kohlrabi

Beautiful waterfall near our campsite!

Thursday: steaks, sauteed onions/peppers, kohlrabi
Friday: cheeseburgers, tomatoes, onions

Lunches
Tuesday: whatever i can find at the grill down the street
Wednesday: leftover chicken breasts
Thursday: leftover brats
Friday: leftover steak, sweet potato (microwaved)

Breakfasts:
hard-boiled eggs

That's a pretty rough menu based off of what's left in our fridge/freezer, but it will work.

Holiday Weekend Menu Planning

We're going camping/4-wheeling this weekend. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE cooking over an open fire!  I don't want to use camping as an excuse to fall completely off my eating-clean train, so of course, I'm planning our menu!  I AM planning a little bit of cheat in there, but we'll get to that later...  Here's what our menu generally looks like:

This menu is pretty general, but we'll be in the woods for 3 nights and about 2-1/2 days and I don't intend to plan exactly what we'll eat when.  We can only eat what we take with us, of course.  The Pudgie Pies (think toasted sandwich pocket) are a total cheat food.  We basically NEVER eat bread, but I plan to make these as they are a favorite camping treat and we haven't been camping in almost 3 years!  I intend not to eat more than one PP a day (if even that).  I planned to take bottled water and some lemon wedges to drink, but husband has asked if we can take some diet soda.  That would be another "cheat" for me.  I'm not sure if I want to do that.  Although, I guess I can take them for him and I can just drink water.  I've already purchased 6 different flavors of Bold Blue Diamond Almonds for snacks (instead of chips...etc).  The only downside is that another couple is coming along and I suspect they'll have a ton of junk food with them.  I just have to be sure to resist :)

I plan to create another menu for the rest of next week before we leave so that we won't get off track.  I feel SO much better knowing what we will have for dinner each night and knowing the ingredients are all ready at home waiting for me!

Twice Baked Sweet Potato!

If you ask my mother what my favorite meal that she makes is, she'd probably say her famous Twice Baked Potatoes made with ham, cheese, garlic and love!  So, when I stumbled across this recipe for twice baked sweet potatoes from Strictly Paleo...ish!, I couldn't resist giving it a try!  I chose cream cheese, shredded cheese blend, green onions and bacon for my fillers.  I went ahead and baked them on Sunday night while I had the oven on for baking my hubby's cod.  After they cooled, I scooped the guts out and put them in a container in the fridge.  I put the shells in a separate container.  I also opted to finish them on the grill since I was already firing it up for our steaks.  I left them on with the lid down for 8 minutes (the cheese on top was getting "melty" already) and then I cooked our steaks for about 7-1/2 minutes with the top up.  I closed the lid and left the potatoes on for about 2-3 more minutes after that.

All the ingredients ready to go!

4 slices of bacon, cooked & crumbled
2 oz of regular cream cheese
1/2 of a bunch of green onions
1/4 C. shredded cheese
S&P

All mixed up and ready to go in the shells!

Eating Clean!

I did start using MyFitnessPal again last week in order to gauge how I'm doing as far as getting enough protein...etc.  I think yesterday was my cleanest day of eating EVER!  Although, I've already picked apart how it could have been even cleaner.  Here's what it looks like:

I changed my meals to include time windows because I'm playing around with Intermittent Fasting using the condensed eating window method.  I'm basically just trying to increase my "fasting time" and decrease my "eating window" from the 12-13 hours that it was down to around 8-10 hrs for now.  So far, this is working out great.  I am not intentionally reducing my calories, but it seems to be a natural side effect of eating breakfast later.  I get full from one hard boiled egg and a cup of tea with honey (probably because of the caffeine in the tea).  And I stay fuller longer.

Weekly Menu Planning ~ Week 2

I meant to post this last week, but ran out of time.  Here's our menu for this week (although, I forgot that we'll be camping on Friday so, I can save that meal for next week):

I made the woodchuck chicken from this recipe.  I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts in stead of the bone in thighs and I used raw honey in stead of coconut crystals.  It was really good!  Now I have yet ANOTHER reason to love woodchuck!

No Sweets = Extra Fat Loss?

I haven't been working out or running a whole lot these last couple of weeks, but I have been eating pretty clean and eating no sugar (really just no sweets like ice cream, candy...etc.) and I have lost 2.8 lbs!  I think that's proof that eating clean is a bigger part of getting lean than working out.  I think both are important, but there are a lot of people that think that if they run or work out a lot, they can eat whatever they want.  That might be true for some people who are already in great shape, but that's no way to lose fat!

New Goals, Ideas and Paleo Heaven

New Goal:

• Replace some of my "red meat" meals with more fish/chicken/turkey.  I eat A LOT of beef.  I know it's not necessarily "bad" for me, but I think I could get a little leaner if I ate some leaner meats.  My plan is to alternate days on my weekly menu so that I am making a "red-meat" dinner (which also serves as lunch for the next day) on night and a "lean-meat" dinner the next.

New Idea:

• I want to try some form of Intermittent Fasting to see if it helps me lose fat.  My thoughts are that currently my "eating window" is about 12-13 hours (6am-7pm), so I want to try to reduce it to 8-10 hours.  Since my hubby works 3rd shift, we don't eat dinner until after 7pm, so I am going to have to start eating my first meal later in the day.  I also need to get in the habit of eating more calories at night.  The idea is not reduce calories (necessarily), but just to have a longer "fasting" period to burn more fat.  This will be a work in progress.

I mentioned in a previous post that the Farmer's Market Vendor that I bought my cabbage from was handing out copies of a good recipe.  I tried it last night (slightly varied, of course) and it was very good!  My cabbage was huge, so one quarter was enough for both of us.  I put 2 pieces of bacon on quarter and instead of baking it, I put it on the grill for about a half hour before grilling our steaks.  I also sauteed some onions and bell peppers.  This is what Paleo Heaven looks like: