First Time Mom and Losing It

This is day 8 of the 30 Day Ketogenic Cleanse. This also marks week two of the 4 week cleanse. As the weeks are going by the food gets even more delicious. I am also getting into the groove of things with the meal planning. I try to chop my vegetables ahead of time so that I am not overwhelmed when I cook. Like I said in my What I Ate on Week 1 post the recipes are very involved with multiple steps and lots of ingredients. Although I complain sometimes when I am making these recipes it is all worth it when I taste how good the food is.

Meal 1: Bacon and Mushrooms with Soft-Boiled Eggs. There is a lot of mushroom eating on the cleanse. Each mushroom recipe has its own unique sauce or seasoning so I don't get tired of eating them. This recipe has lots of crispy bacon with the mushrooms so it gives it a nice texture. The mushrooms really soak up the sauce with oil, vinegar, and dijon so they are extra tasty. Instead of a soft-boiled egg I made a hard one because I like them better. Though this bowl of food make look small, all the healthy fats kept me full until my next meal.


Meal 2: Simple Crab Salad. I didn't want to eat the last two meals together so I had this one at 4pm. Instead of crab I used tuna fish because I don't like crab. At first I questioned why such a simple recipe was in the cookbook. When I took my first bite I understood why. I have never had tuna salad taste as good as this one! The celery and onion gives it a nice clean crunch. The dijon, mayo and lemon juice gives it the perfect flavor. I enjoyed the Simple "Tuna" Salad over some torn butter lettuce. This is a recipe I will surely make over and over again.


Meal 3: Slow Cooker Ropa Vieja. I started cooking this meal at eight in the morning in my instant pot. After the 6 hours I didn't think the meat was tender enough so I pressure cooked it for 20 minutes. That made the meat super tender and the sauce and vegetables combined perfectly. The stew was flavorful, meaty and super filling. The garnishes of olives, salsa and cilantro brightened the dish up and made it fun to eat.


Sometimes I look at the meals and think "Is this enough?". The old me was used to filling my plate to the brim and eating until my stomach couldn't fit anymore food. Now I am learning to satisfy my hunger with healthy fats and less food.

I started a Weight Loss Bullet Journal in the middle of March. I wanted a fun way to keep track of my weight loss journey. I love to check and color boxes when I have completed something. I also tend to get things done when I write them down so a bullet journal was perfect for me.

Progress: I finally took my measurements on March 25th and took some full body pictures. I plan to measure myself once a month to see how many inches I have lost. I also plan on taking full body pictures once a month wearing the same clothes so that I can see differences no matter how small. I want to track my measurements so that when I don't see the pounds lost on the scale, I can see the inches that I have lost.


100 Pounds Goal Tracker: Losing 100 pounds is one of the big weight loss goals I have for this journey. I drew one hundred boxes so that I could color one in every time I lose a pound. I was able to color in 20 boxes so far and feel so proud of myself whenever I get to color one in. Twenty colored boxes means I am 1/5 of the way towards my goal of losing 100 pounds.


Monthly Lost: I love to keep track of the weight I have lost each month in one place. My goal is to loss 100 pounds in one year so I know I have to lose at least 8.33 pounds a month to reach this goal. From March to April I lost a total of 13.4 pounds. That is 5 pounds over my goal for the month. It is exciting to see the that number because I know as the months go by and I get smaller I will not lose as much. The adjusted monthly weight loss goal to reach 100 pounds in one year is now 7.87 pounds a month.


Mini Goals: I just started a page for mini goals. I think it's a good idea to set mini goals that you know you can complete. Little goals like drinking 64 ounces of water or taking 10,000 steps is easily doable when you are motivated and can keep track of them. This is a great way to keep them together and color in your accomplishments as you do them.


Meal Planning: I was always doing my meal plan on this old notebook where I just wrote on any blank page I found. I would often lose the page and then have to change the meals I had planned. Now that I am doing the cleanse it's important for me to follow it so it's nice to have my meal plan in my journal so that I can easily go back and look at it.


Do you keep a weight loss journal? 

For the past week I have been doing The 30 Day Ketogenic Cleanse by Maria Emmerich. It is a clean way of eating the Ketogenic diet. You don't eat any dairy, nuts, nut flours, sweeteners or caffeine that you would normally eat on a keto diet. Eating this way puts you into ketosis faster and revs up your metabolism. I decided to try out the 30 Day Ketogenic Cleanse again because I had great results on it last year.


During the ketogenic cleanse you have a small window to eat. You are fasting for about 18 hours and consume your food in 6 hours. I usually like to eat my first meal at 12pm and eat my second and third meal at 6pm. The food is full of good fats so I am don't feel hungry at all during the day. I was the type of person that always snacked at night while watching TV so this has been working really well.

Morning Meal: Like I said above when I am doing the Ketogenic Cleanse I like to start eating at 12pm but this day I had to eat earlier than that. I am taking some medication that requires me to take the medicine in with morning with food so I decided to have a couple of hard boiled eggs. Eggs is the easiest thing to fit into the rules of the ketogenic cleanse so I went with it. I drizzled some extra virgin olive oil on top for some extra fat and salt and pepper for taste.


Meal 1: Bacon And Egg Ramen. This has to be one of my favorite meals on the Ketogenic Cleanse. The broth alone is so flavorful that I could eat it by itself. The broth has loads of flavor from garlic, ginger, onions, coconut vinegar, and coco aminos.  It's fun to have the fixings of the zoodles which taste just like al dente noodles. The crispy pork belly gives it nice texture and the egg makes it super hardy. The green onion gives it a nice fresh taste.


Meal 2: Reuben Pork Chops. I crisped up a nice thick porkchop in a pan with salt and pepper. I put it on a bed of shredded cabbage and added some sauerkraut and homemade thousand island dressing on top. Who ever though sauerkraut and thousand island dressing would taste good on a porkchop?

Meal 3: Marinated Italian Mushrooms. These mushrooms are so flavorful and taste best room temperature. Lots of Italian herbs, garlic, onion and coconut vinegar gives it a nice punch.


You can eat all of this on The 30 Day Ketogenic Cleanse. Sometimes the recipes are time consuming and there are a lot of ingredients but it is so worth it. This food is so good and restaurant worthy.

This week was pretty tough for me because it is the first time in my life that I have experienced allergies. I never knew how sick and out of it you feel when you have allergies. I was supposed to start the ketogenic cleanse on Monday but did not because I wasn't feeling my best. The ketogenic cleanse recipes are very involved with a lot of steps and ingredients so I just couldn't commit to the time it takes to create the meals. I ate out a few times and kept easy things to prepare like hard boiled eggs and rotisserie chicken.

For the past five weeks I have been doing a form of lazy keto. I eat ketogenic foods and recipes and keep a quick track in my head of how many carbs I am eating. I try to stay under 20 grams of carbs a day but don't beat myself up if I go past 20. Most of my carbs come from vegetables so I am OK with that. This way of doing the ketogenic diet has been working for me and I have lost 13.2 pounds so far. It is beginning to feel more like a lifestyle and less like a diet. I am enjoying the foods I am eating and never feel hungry. I remember doing low fat diets years ago and always feeling hungry. This is what I always dreaded when I would start a new diet. I am happy to say that with Keto I don't have that problem.

Food: One of my favorite meals was the Easy Sesame chicken from Maria Emmerich's Keto Restaurant Favorites cookbook. Sesame chicken was one of my favorite meals to order at my favorite Chinese restaurant so I am happy that I can make it myself while staying keto. It tastes just like the real thing and it is super easy to make.


Exercise: Since I am feeling better with my aches from inflammation I think it is time for me to start thinking about exercise. I want to start with some stretching and take family walks after dinner. We have a gym at my apartment complex so I also want to start taking advantage of that this week.


Going Forward: I heard about Maria Emmerich doing the Keto Cleanse challenge with prizes given weekly to those who post pictures of their food. Last year I completed the challenge with great results so I attempting to do it again. The Keto Cleanse is a really clean way of doing the ketogenic diet. No dairy, sweeteners, nut flours or caffeine. You are eating clean and healthy fats, lots of veggies and fatty meats like pork belly and steaks. Since Maria Emmerich is such a genius when it comes to ketogenic recipes everything tastes delicious so you are not missing out even with all of those restrictions.


We are well into 1/4 of the year being over, are you keeping up with your healthy lifestyle goals? 

I am the type of person that has to write things down to be productive. I love checking off items on a to-do list as I complete them. It is a sense of accomplishment when I have checked off everything on a list. Seeing it on paper and having to check off the items makes it more likely that I will do it.

I have tried countless times to go digital when it comes to lists and scheduling. I feel like I don't do as much when my lists are digital. I often get distracted when I am on my phone and then realize that I haven't even looked at my list. This is the reason I want to start having a Bullet Journal for my weight loss. If I journal on paper I am more likely to stay on track and get motivated to continue.


There is a huge following of bullet journal layouts on Instagram and Pinterest. I find myself scrolling through both platforms to get ideas on layouts for my pages. These are the layouts that I included in my journal.

Quote: This quote is what motivated me to start on my journey again. I have started so many weight loss journeys and most of the times I get off track and gain back everything I lost. I want to look at this quote whenever I have thoughts of sabotaging my weight loss efforts. Whenever I feel like things are too hard or I just want to get comforted with food I will look at this page and stop! Next year I want to be proud of how far I have come.


Weight: Tracking my weight is important to me because it gives me an idea of how I am doing on my journey. Seeing the weight go up, down or stay the same will give me the data to tweak what I eat and how much I move.

Measurements: Keeping track of my measurements will help when my body is fluctuating and I am not losing as much as I would like. There are weeks where I am not going to lose anything so having my measurements on hand will show me that I am still losing weight.


100 Pound Weight Loss Tracker: A huge weight loss goal I have is to lose 100 pounds. I think it will be fun to check off every pound I lose. I am not sure if I will color in the boxes or use stickers. Wanting to check off all of those boxes will definitely keep me motivated to reach this goal.


These are all the pages I have for now. I am looking at different layouts and trying to decide on what to add next.

Do you keep a weight loss journal?