Good evening! This post is coming later than I had planned but it’s only 9pm PST so I am coming in just under the wire. We have been out partying the afternoon/night away and by partying I mean spending time with friends enjoying drinks and sweets and laughs.
Neil turns 34 tomorrow and in honour of his big day I decided to plan a surprise get together with a group of our friends. I worked out a plan with friends of ours to invite us for beers and burritos, a dinner date we had already discussed doing, in order to hopefully spare any suspicion Neil might have. So our friends invited us and I secretly invited a bunch of other friends to join us. Unfortunately the Mexican food truck we had hoped to have dinner at closed so we changed the time to an afternoon event of beer/drinks and cake (and fries for those who were lucky enough to indulge).
Neil was suspicious because it’s not a huge surprise that I like to throw him surprise birthday parties – side note this is the third or maybe fourth surprise party that I have thrown and on the years I didn’t throw one we have been on a mini vacation. Anyways he had his suspicions and of course he was right but that didn’t matter because we still had a great time chatting with friends, enjoying beers (just one for me), eating vegan chocolate mousse cake from Whole Foods and watching our girls play together (the boys are 5 and 6 months old so they just hung out).
After the gathering we decided to head out for dinner for Neil’s birthday and we ended up getting Bamboo Sushi <– so good and then Neil and Edith wanted Salt & Straw so we indulged and shared some vegan ice cream as well. I can tell you right now I am stuffed, exhausted and happy. I am however dreading going downstairs to weigh in and take my photos for my DietBet game that I am participating in that starts tomorrow (more on that tomorrow). And now this is where I quickly have Neil take my photos and I go to bed because tomorrow is the first day back to the grind and mama needs her sleep.
The birthday boy and his little man
Goals for the day: Successfully pull off Neil’s birthday party. Check.
Eats of the day: Bamboo Sushi- yummmmm. Chocolate Mousse Cake – double yum.
Quote of the day: Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same. – Audrey Hepburn
I have a problem with following through with things. Not all things rather goals or challenges I set up for myself. I just can’t commit to myself .I don’t know what it is but when it comes to committing to myself I start a task and tend to lose steam about 25% of the way in and by the half way point I give up. At least I can say that I follow through 90% of the time (hey I’m only human) to commitments that I have to others.
I finally came to terms with this a few months ago and have been making an honest effort to follow through. The first challenge I had for myself was my DietBet* challenge. I did this because I wanted to get myself back on a healthy path. I knew I couldn’t lose the 4% body weight healthfully while nursing but I did know that I could get myself into a better place and I did it. I followed through and while I didn’t see a big drop in the numbers I did in the way clothes fit.
My second challenge to myself has been to participate in the #Elf4Health challenge this month. I love having the connection with other participants and my own elf and I have committed to giving daily updates on my Facebook page regarding each of the tasks. This has been such a great challenge to participate in and I’m so glad I opted in and have followed through. I have made more time for myself, focused more directly on my health and fitness and have made connections with others. This challenge is not over but with only a few days left I can say that I already know that this is a success.
My third challenge is one that I did because Neil decided he wanted to do a juice til 4 cleanse. Now I did not juice til 4 with him due to the negative side effects that a cleanse can have while nursing but I did agree to challenge myself to increase the amount of fruits and vegetables I ate and have no coffee, gluten, processed foods, or alcohol for four days with him. I did it! But even more notable is that HE DID IT! My husband spent the last 4 days doing a juice til 4 cleanse and I have never been so proud of him, okay maybe I have but still this is huge, if you know my husband you might know his will power to pass up free treats is low and he is notorious for being one of those “well I worked out so..” type do people and yet he did his. 100% committed did it. He feels great, isn’t craving the crap that he was and just overall is feeling like the restart button has been pushed. I feel better too and just like him cut the cravings for processed food and sweets.
What Have I Learned? Committing to myself feels good. I have been feeling successful and healthier both mentally and physically. That being said I am thinking that monthly challenges for myself might be a good thing to try. I have done this in the past and they have helped me out a lot but I also have learned that I do this better when I can do it with others. So that being said who wants to take on some monthly challenges with me? I am thinking starting January doing a monthly health or fitness challenge would be fun. I know that incentives help so I am thinking a giveaway at the end of each challenge for those who finish a challenge might be a fun addition. That being said who is interested and what kinds of challenges would you want to participate in?
*For full disclosure I made $0 off the entire game after deducting Neil’s entry into the game.
Doing: Sitting on the couch with my snuggly boy while Neil makes us breakfast. Also trying to plan out our week and get a little bit more organized.
Thinking about: This is the last week of DietBet and well (not surprisingly) I am not close to my 4% weight loss goal. I say not surprisingly because to lose 9 pounds in one month as a breastfeeding mom is much more of a challenge. Like I said before DietBet wasn’t just about losing the weight (which I have lost some of) it was also about making some healthy changes so right now I am thinking about what else I can do this week.
Watching: Lately Neil and I have been really into watching The Good Wife. We are finishing up the first season right now and I am really loving it.
Looking forward to: Next week! Neil will no longer be working on contract and will be fulltime as of the 24th (wahoo for him right?!) and that means our trip to Seattle next week will be so much more fun and relaxing. That being said for my local PNW friends if you have suggestions for Seattle please let me know because we didn’t love it our first time around but are really wanting to get the most out of this trip.
Reading: I’ve been reading I’ll Seize The Day Tomorrow by Jonathan Goldstein. For my Canadian friends and CBC radio listeners you probably know him his from WireTap show and if you enjoy listening to that then you will love this book. It is seriously hilarious to read and it has short sections so as a busy parent it makes reading in small spurts easy.
Loving: Weekends with my little family especially when we get out and hike or go to the farmers market.
I have been wanting to share this book with your for awhile now but honestly have just dropped the ball a bit when it comes to regular blogging due to pregnancy, birth and now moving (we move in 9 days!!). I have a moment this morning while Neil is our running, Edith is watching an alphabet show and Alder is napping in my arms so I wanted to share one of my new favorite books Plant-Powered for Life: Eat Your Way to Lasting Health with 52 Simple Steps and 125 Delicious by Sharon Palmer.
I received an advanced copy of this book to check out and to feature on the blog if I so chose (<–disclaimer). I often receive books and don’t end up featuring them because they just aren’t ones that I love or ones that I think you will be interested in but this book has easily become one of my favorites and is feature worthy. That being said if I didn’t own it already I would buy it for myself and I see it being a perfect gift this holiday season for family and friends.
This book is NOT about becoming a vegetarian or vegan but rather about incorporating more plants into your diet whatever that may be. The aim is simple: to show how anyone, from meat-loving omnivore to junk-food vegan, can benefit by making room in their diet for more whole plant foods.
Delicious Arugula Salad Pizza recipe that I made – so good!
The book is laid out so that there are 52 different steps that one can take to become more plant powered. Along with tips on how to incorporate more plants into your diet each step includes 2-3 recipes that go along with the theme of that step. One idea that I think would be great is to use this book as a jumping off point to add more plants to your diet by following one step and the recipes in that step each week for one year. It would be a great way to transition your diet to a more plant powered one without becoming too overwhelmed. Now I don’t know if that is why there are 52 steps but I think it would be a great plan and of course you can go in any order you’d like, although I would do step one first because it has you set a goal such as you want to go 100% vegan, you’d like to become a more plant focused vegetarian or a plant powered omnivore.
The steps are really inspiring and even though I would consider myself a plant powered veg I could always use room for improvement because it really is easy to become a junk food veg or slip into that at times especially when life gets chaotic.
So what about the recipes? I have been cooking up lots of the recipes in this book because they all just sound so good. I also love how easy most of them are to put together. There are a few more time consuming recipes or recipes that I have had a difficult time finding the ingredients for but the majority of the recipes are healthy, easy and tasty. The book also includes great photos for most of the recipes, tips and side notes and nutritional facts.
So far my favorite recipes are the Arugula Salad Pizza, Tofu Ratatouille and Neil and Edith love the Black Bean Brownies with Walnuts (recipe below). Have you read this book yet? If you do or if you try this recipe come back and let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: Whole Foods Market provided me with my own $50 gift card to purchase ingredients for the recipe below. As always all opinions are my own.
Cherry season is here! I have seriously never been so excited for a fruit to be in season. I LOVE cherries and am lucky to live in the Pacific Northwest where a large portion of the cherries and North America are grown. When we lived in Vermont we hardly ever bought cherries, not because we didn’t enjoy them but because they were hard to come by and super expensive.
Currently our fridge is filled with cherries (although I bet most will be gone in the next day or two) because we took advantage of Whole Foods Cherry Fest and the $1.99/lb (!!!!) deal that happened this past Friday. We have been eating them by the handful but since we have so many I have been trying out some new recipes with them including the recipe I am sharing below for Fresh Cherry Limeade.
3/4 cup lime juice, plus 2 teaspoons finely grated lime zest
Sparkling water
1 lime, cut into wedges
Method:
Put 1 pound of the cherries, sugar and 1 1/2 cups water into a medium pot; cover and simmer over medium heat (reducing heat, as needed, to maintain a simmer) until cherries are very tender and have made a fragrant syrup, about 20 minutes. Set aside to let cool and then purée in a blender with lime juice and zest.
To make each glass of limeade, pour about 1/2 cup of the cherry-lime syrup and 3/4 cup still or sparkling water over ice in a tall glass. Stir well and then top with a small handful of the remaining cherries, garnish with a lime wedge and serve.
Nutritional Info:
Per Serving: Serving size: 1 drink, 150 calories (0 from fat), 0g total fat, 0g saturated fat,0mg cholesterol, 0mg sodium, 39g carbohydrate (2g dietary fiber, 35g sugar), 1g protein
I shared this with Edith after photographing and we both really enjoyed it (don’t worry I drank 80% of it). I am keeping the leftover syrup in the fridge to make up more Fresh Cherry Limeades this week because they were just well YUM!. With the remaining cherries I’m thinking of diving into a big bowl right now and also topping my bowl of oats with them tomorrow. I’m going to be sad when cherry season ends but until then I am going to eat all the cherries!
Giveaway // $50 Whole Foods Gift Card
Whole Foods has generously offered to provide one reader with a $50 gift card! If you win you might like to try the recipe above or one of these cherry recipes.
Doing: Nesting. Yeah surprise, surprise! I’m 37 weeks pregnant and full on nesting mode. I over did it a bit yesterday with the cleaning and I can’t wait until I can bend over multiple times and not need a break every 20 minutes. Basically I am getting everything ready for baby #2’s arrival which at this point could be anytime now.
Thinking about: How many things I need to do before this baby arrives and also thinking about life after birth. We are moving in August (I know perfect timing, eh?) to just a new bigger home that is closer to Neil so not a huge move but alas it’s still a move with a toddler and a newborn. I am also really thinking about postpartum fitness and diet since I’m going to be honest I have been indulging a little too much the past few weeks.
Watching: Lots of YouTube videos – even as I write that it seems pretty strange to me but that’s what I have been doing. Also catching up on a few years worth of Covert Affairs which I am happy to say gets better and better.
Looking forward to: The weekend! This has been a long week and we have so much to do still before this baby arrives so I am looking forward to having Neil home to help get things done and to catch up on a bunch of work that I am behind on.
Reading: I haven’t really been reading anything besides lots of children’s books to Edith. I started The Book Thief but I just couldn’t fully get into it.
Loving: berries. fans (it’s ridiculously hot here). family time with Edith and Neil.
I have talked very briefly about my experience with the ParaGard IUD and I am finally sitting down to share a little bit more indepth! Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional this is just my personal experience please consult your care provider if you have concerns or questions regarding the ParaGard IUD. Towards the end of my pregnancy with Edith we were exploring our birth control options and to be honest we were leaning towards going the snip snip route because me + hormonal birth control do not mix. Seriously my experience with hormonal birth control is a whole other story in itself and if you’d like me to share it just let me know! When it came time to discuss birth control with the midwives we said we were thinking of going snip route and she said well unless you are 110% sure you don’t want more children that maybe a better route would be the ParaGard IUD a non-hormonal birth control. This was the first time I had heard of the ParaGard and was very interested to learn more. When we got pregnant with Edith we had been loosely practicing the FAM method for about two years. However, I knew going back to the FAM method wasn’t something I wanted to do just because of the potential risk of getting pregnant again before we were ready and the fact that it’s hard to follow this method until your period has returned and as a breastfeeding mom who knows when that would occur. So it seemed that since hormonal birth control was out, FAM method wasn’t ideal and we were only 90% sure we were one and done that the ParaGard was the (only) way to go.
At eight weeks postpartum I had the ParaGard IUD inserted and had no immediate issues with it. Within a month of having the ParaGard I found myself back up to my pregnancy weight, after having lost 15 of the 25 pounds I put on. While I can say that nursing, diet and lifestyle may have also factored into weight gain I continue to be unable to lose any of the weight even when improving diet and lifestyle. At around six months postpartum my period returned and the first month was on the lighter side but come the second month I was experiencing a heavier flow which I attributed to a postpartum period. I also had incredibly painful cramping to the point of nausea. I figured it was just my body getting back into things and that eventually I would get back to “normal”. Well that just wasn’t the case at all. Every month I experienced the same heavy flow and extremely painful, nauseating cramps.
I really didn’t know what to do though because we just were not ready to even consider having baby #2 and we were not ready to rule it out either. I decided to do some further research on my “symptoms” and found that it is very common for women to have pain and increased bleeding during the first year of having the ParaGard IUD and it’s actually one of the top reasons women get it removed. I also read that things usually common down after a year of having the ParaGard IUD so I decided to wait it out and see if things changed after a year.
Well nothing changed and that’s when I finally said I’M DONE. I discussed things with Neil and while we were not ready to have #2 we both agreed that getting my IUD out was the best choice for me and my body. We had planned to go back to the FAM method and while we were not officially ready for #2 yet we were okay if it happened. I set up an appointment with a naturopathic doctor/midwife and went in to discuss my IUD and having it removed.
At my appointment we discussed my issues with the IUD and one thing she pointed out is that the copper in the ParaGard IUD is there to irritate the uterus and work as a spermicide and all this can cause inflammation in the body. Inflammation in the body can cause an increase in appetite and weight gain. This is when I went DUH! I know this but why didn’t I just put this all together? So while we were supposed to just have a conversation about the IUD and my issues with it my doctor said she could take it out right then if I wanted her to and without thinking twice I had her take it out. Well I should have made note of the fact that Neil and I had been intimate the days before because I ended up ovulating that night and since sperm can live up to 72 hours we ended up pregnant with baby #2 (this is just a side note for those who are thinking about getting their IUD removed).
So that all being said I will not be going back on the ParaGard IUD after baby #2 arrives instead Neil is going to take one for the team because we are two and DONE.
I thought I would also include some other people experiences with the ParaGard IUD:Friend #1: She also got the ParaGard IUD after her daughter was born and found it challenging to lose the baby weight until after about a year of having the IUD. She didn’t experience any other issues and is still currently using the ParaGard IUD.
Friend #2: While she never experienced any issues with the ParaGard IUD she did end up with a surprise pregnancy after about 12 months of using the ParaGard IUD. Now she is debating what to do next as she doesn’t plan to go back on the ParaGard after #2 is born (I mean why would you if you got pregnant on it the first time around!)
Naturally Family Facebook Friend: I have a Paragard and it’s been fantastic for me. I got it one year postpartum (used a diaphragm first year postpartum for protection). It was terribly painful to insert (maybe because I had a c section). The cramping was awful and periods were awful for the first 6 months…but since then, things have completely stabilized. Normal periods, normal cramping (about a days worth every cycle). No weight gain or skin issues. Love that it’s non hormonal. I’m sorry to hear your experience wasn’t a good one! I am interested in reading about it.
Naturally Family Facebook Friend: I had a horrible time with it and had it removed roughly 17 months after placement, thankfully your advice about abstaining the day before prevented us from an unexpected #2
What are you currently using for birth control and how is it working for you? For those of you who have tried the ParaGard IUD what has/was your experience like?
