Hey friends! So this post is all about Recipes! YAY!!
After about a month of transitioning to a Real Food Lifestyle, it was time to crack down and start getting stricter with my Real Food/Processed Food Ratio so my metabolism can heal and I can start to lose weight!
I have talked about the 80/20 rule here on my blog, check out this post for more info, but after more research into Real Food and weight loss, I began to realize that I probably need to aim more for a 95/5 or 90/10 rule in the beginning in order to see weight loss results.
The reason?
My body and metabolism are totally jacked up from decades of processed foods, following crazy diet myths, low fat foods, chemicals, and just overall mistreatment. During the first month of my Real Food Revolution, most of the month (with the exception of the first crazy weekend where I went a bit nuts) was spent slowly transitioning healthy real food in and unhealthy food out of our home. It was also a month of learning what to buy, where to find it, and how to afford it. It was a time of pantry restocking, learning how to properly prepare grains, beans, and nuts, and researching where to buy part of a cow.
Oh, and detoxing. Yes, you heard me correctly. Detoxing. Like in rehab. Only my body was detoxing from processed chemicals and it wasn’t pretty. Diarrhea and relentless headaches, anyone? But I will say it did confirm to me that something was really wrong with the way I was eating if that’s what happened when the junk was on the way out.
Needless to say, I wasn’t able to hit the 80/20 rule as much as I would have liked. And as a result, the scale wasn’t moving in the direction I was hoping for. This is not uncommon, as I’m learning from my research, so I’m trying not to get discouraged. I know my body is working hard to repair the damage it has endured so I’m going to not stress about the scale and concentrate on healing. I’m working hard to repair my metabolism, listen to my body, and stick tight to a 95/5 rule for the time being.
My Real Foods guru, DaNelle at Weed ’em and Reap advocates that the 80/20 rule is great for maintaining a healthy weight, and a stricter 95/5 rule can be more successful for weight loss.
So that’s where I’ve been living for the last week. And you know what?? It’s been awesome, satisfying, and (most importantly) delicious!
And to get me there? I am following DaNelle’s weekly meal plans from her e-book, Have Your Cake and Lose Weight, too! (Why do the work when someone else was awesome enough to do it for me?? “Not I” said the cat.)
One week down and for the next three weeks, I’ll be making delicious meals from her book and following her meal plans, complete with prep instructions and shopping lists. It really couldn’t be easier. Thanks DaNelle!
So here’s what we’ve made so far this past week:
Roasted Chicken with Roasted Root Vegetables (I called this Magazine Chicken because this bird deserves her own photo shoot!)
Chicken Enchiladas
(These got eaten so fast, there was no time for a picture. They were AMAZING! I will definitely double the recipe next time.)
Beef Chili and Soaked Corn Bread.
And Butter. Lots of Butter. (Mostly because I love butter, but also because I may have over mixed the batter despite the explicit instructions not to, and because I may have also forgotten to add the salt and may have tried to mix it in at the end when the batter was already in the pan which resulted in some very bland and some very salty bites of cornbread. Lessons learned.)
Asian Marinated Pork Chops and Asian Stir Fry Vegetables with Jasmine Rice. The pork chops were not part of the original meal plan but I subbed them in because, as open minded about food as Husband is, he just couldn’t get on board for the Asian Lettuce Wraps (plus we didn’t have any chicken and we had pork, so you know…) A quick note about this marinade recipe: I replaced the brown sugar with organic Sucanat, the soy sauce can be replaced with coconut aminos, and I didn’t have red chili paste so I used Red Cayenne Pepper. It was awesome.
Leftovers on Thursday night because I had cupcakes to make for a going away party at work on Friday. I made DaNelle’s INCREDIBLE cupcakes from her e-book. When she said to “frost and devour,” she was NOT kidding. (No picture for those either, I got too distracted trying to make sure I made a successful real food dessert for work…unlike the last attempt with the infamous baby shower cookies.)
Friday night was Date Night (Woo!!) so we went to a movie and made dinner together at home. We had Brinner. Have you ever had Brinner, aka Breakfast for Dinner? It’s a fav in our house, plus I love that the name comes from one of my all time favorite shows, Scrubs. Oh Brinner…sigh. You are so good. Anyways…we made sprouted flour pancakes (DaNelle’s e-book recipe), fried eggs, and oven fried bacon.
(Does anyone else have a smoke detector that goes off relentlessly if you blow out a single birthday candle?? I mean, I’m comforted to know that I will never die in a fire in my house, but it makes cooking bacon almost impossible. Best case scenario: oven fried bacon with the smoke detector unceremoniously ripped off the ceiling. Okay. Rant over.)
I even had left over whipped cream from the cupcakes to top our pancakes. GLORIOUS. (I think I was too hungry to take a picture of our Brinner Night. I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.)
Pizza and wings NIGHT!! This was our second pizza night and I actually got the crust right this time! I mean, it was freaking delicious! Here’s our pizza with organic tomato and basil sauce, fresh mozzarella, spinach, roasted red peppers, green peppers, and mushrooms.
We also made Grilled Spice Rubbed Chicken Wings! They were soo good. I think Husband would have traded his left pinky for my helping of wings. Scary good.
All in all, it was an amazingly delicious week. If you want the recipes from DaNelle’s e-book, feel free to grab it off her site. It’s totally worth it! Not only does it have meal plans, over 60 recipes, prep and shopping lists, Real Food Printables (those are just the Bonus Materials!), it is chock full of information, research, statistics, and incredible real life implementation on living a Real Food Lifestyle and how it heals our bodies. Grab a copy of your own ASAP. It a gold-mine!
What are you guys cooking this week?
Thanks for reading everyone! Happy recipe-ing this week!
Ditching the Processed. 