The Start of my New Weight Loss Journey

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Girl Cooks World

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May 3, 2019

I have always struggled with my weight on and off but I think I really hit a low point this past year. But now I’m ready to get back on the right track and I hope that by sharing how I feel right now, I will be able to help some of you that might be in the same boat.

My mental health has been through a lot in the last few months.

I have been trying to eat healthy for a few years now but sometime around 10 months ago, I stopped seeing the effects. My weight has been gradually dropping, slowly but gradually. But then it just didn’t drop anymore. It seems that I have reached the limit of what just eating healthy can do. I was discouraged because it’s not like I changed anything else about my life that might have affected my weight loss. I felt cheated that it suddenly stopped working.

So I said to myself “To hell with it then” and stopped caring about what I eat. I quickly gained 50 pounds that I worked so hard to lose. Funnily enough, for a short while, I actually felt like I had more energy simply because my calorie intake increased. I was moving more and felt really alive.

After about three months, I had another mental crisis. A sudden onset of untreated PTSD caused by trauma from my childhood made me shut down. I was apathic all the time and I didn’t let anyone near me. I would not leave my room unless absolutely needed and just lied in bed all the time, unable to even fall asleep. Naturally, my weight soared again during this time.

Fortunately enough, I had people around me who cared for me and wanted me to get better. If it weren’t for my family and friends, I would probably still be hiding under the covers of my bed. They convinced me to find a therapist and I know now that it was the best thing I could have done. I had an amazing support system and I didn’t even know it until I really needed it. I am forever grateful to people who stood by me in that difficult time.

Recovery

I was slowly getting better. My weight gain stopped and I was finally able to get some good night’s sleep. I started leaving my house and was active on the weekends.

I combed through the Internet hoping to find some advice from someone who was in a similar situation. Then I found Go Kaleo and I truly consider her to be my savior. Talking with her made me believe that I could change for the better because finally, I had someone who would believe in me without even knowing me. It was such a refreshing change. Some other people understand it too. I gained immense inspiration from Fit Mama Training as well.

These people know how hard it is to feel motivated when you have so much weight to lose, especially when all you see around you are skinny influencers who make weight training seem so effortless. I highly recommend checking them out if you’re looking for a stress-free way to a healthier life.

Do you want to transform your life too? Let’s do this together.

It’s hard not to be skeptical when it comes to weight loss, especially if you tried several different methods already and none of them gave you the results you were hoping for. Story of my life. It’s always the yoyo effect or the temporary bursts of energy just to feel down again due to a diet that’s too restrictive.

It took me many years to finally realize that losing weight is not about finding the magical diet that works for you. It’s not about forcing yourself to work out even if it literally makes you vomit from the effort.

Now I think that weight loss is not about the goal but about the journey. By putting your mind to it and by creating new good and healthy habits, you transform your life into one you can enjoy without that constant nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that you eat like a pig. And that’s what I intend to do. Also, weight loss drinks in nz can be a critical solution to your weight loss journey.

First, I need to find a form of activity that will get me moving and one that I enjoy. Otherwise, I’m just going to abandon it after a few tries just like I did with hiking and jogging. These are simply not for me. When I was a child, I really enjoyed swimming at the local pool but now, I feel self-conscious due to my body. But I found a good selection of rash guards at SwimOutlet so I’m going to start swimming regularly, as well as taking an aerobics class at the local gym. If I think that they are not for me after all, then I will simply stop forcing myself to do these activities and search for something else. I want to become strong enough so that I can play tag with my children at the park.

It’s time to make a change.

Here is my guidebook for the next year:

I will get in at least 45 minutes of activity each day with two 90 minute sessions per week. It will be an activity I enjoy, not the one that will get me to burn the most fat. Whenever possible, I will try to spend that activity time with my family so that we can bond even more. I will start with walking the dog together.
I will spend more time outside. At least half an hour every day so that I can regularly breathe in the fresh air to clear my mind.
I will eat enough calories to support my activity level, not more and not less. Right now this is about 2500 calories. You need to be honest with yourself that you cannot suddenly cut your calorie intake and expect to reach a healthy weight. Big bodies need more energy and that’s a fact. Ignoring it will lead you straight to bouncing back once you stop dieting and will make you too tired to function properly. Believe me, I learned that the hard way. As I lose weight, my suggested calorie intake might decrease (unless I increase my activity level simultaneously!). You can calculate your recommended calorie intake using simple calculators available online.
I will not restrict my diet. Dieting is not about forcing yourself to eat salads every day, it’s about stopping yourself from eating too much. Everything in moderation – yes, even chocolate! I know that my problem isn’t caused by eating too many grains or dairy so I am not going to stop myself from eating them. As long as I am within my suggested calorie intake and the food I eat isn’t processed or filled with unhealthy additives, then I will continue to eat it. And I will not hate myself for having an occasional scoop of ice cream or a piece of cake. Don’t fall for mainstream lies about nutrition either; check out one of my articles for additional tips.

As a reference, I use the Metabolism Bundle that has all the information you might need about how metabolism works and how to eat better in a painless way. In the bundle, you will find 4 books: Eat for Heat, Diet Recovery, Diet Recovery 2, and 180 Degree Metabolism. I read them all and I found them to be a really good value for money!

I will sleep for at least 8 hours every night. The importance of sleep is often overlooked but it is actually crucial to maintaining healthy life habits. Not enough sleep causes problems with metabolism and increases stress. If I cannot fall asleep for some reason, then I would rather miss my daily activity session and take a nap than force myself to work out despite low energy levels.
I will practice relaxation techniques. Stress is my biggest enemy right now and I will do everything I can to keep it away from me. I will meditate and practice being grateful for what I have. I will keep seeing my therapists and if I feel like I’m slipping, I will ask my family for support. I will not stress about the pace of my transformation but rather focus on making the change one small step at a time.
I will keep myself accountable. I will write down my body measurements every month and take before and after pictures. Doing it more often can actually discourage you because you might not see the change you are looking for. I will post regular updates here too.
I will get stronger. That’s the whole point of this transformation. I want my body to be as powerful as my mind is.

Breakfast Scones with Cheddar Cheese and Bacon

Girl Cooks World

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May 3, 2019

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As much as I love sweet breakfasts (wholegrain waffles with raw honey and season fruit, anyone?), there are times when I need to start my day with a rich and savory meal. Having one of these cheddar bacon scones with a cup of black coffee kicks my motivation into overdrive so that I am ready for a full day of work.

The perfect combination of salty bacon and cheddar cheese together with just a bit of coconut sugar meshes wonderfully together in the crumbly scone pie. They are perfect not only for breakfast but also as a savory snack in the afternoon or a lunch you can bring with you to work. I usually bake around 12 of these scones at one time and then eat them throughout the following week. Thanks to this I don’t have to waste time in the morning to make myself breakfast. I just brew some coffee, pop two scones in the oven to warm them up, and I’m ready to go!

I think hot food for breakfasts is the key to good metabolism. If you read the acclaimed Eat For Heat book then you know what I’m talking about. The gist is that eating warm foods raises our body temperature which in turn has a positive effect on, among many, blood circulation, stress levels, and better sleep. So for example, if you often find your feet and hands cold then try warming yourself up with hot food. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Necessary equipment:

a food processor
a large mixing bowl
a rubber scraper
a glass pie plate
a jelly roll pan
parchment paper

Ingredients:

2 cups of freshly ground whole grain flour OR sprouted flour (I recommend using a light variety if possible)
2 T. of baking powder
1 t. of sea salt
3 T. of coconut sugar
5 T. of unsalted butter (chilled)
1 – 1,5 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup of cooked bacon cubes (about 6 pieces)
1 ¼ cups of heavy cream

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Cut the chilled butter into small pieces.
Put the flour, baking powder, salt, and coconut sugar into a food processor a pulse together until combined.
Add in the butter pieces and pulse about 10 more times so that the butter pieces become very tiny.
Add in the cheese and bacon and again, pulse twice so that they combine well with the mixture. Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl.
Pour the heavy cream over the mixture and stir gently with a rubber scraper to combine. It should gradually turn into a dough.
Transfer the dough onto a floured countertop and lightly shape it with your hands into a roll.
Use a knife or a pastry scraper to cut the dough into 8 wedge-shaped pieces.
Place the wedges onto the parchment-lined pan. Remember to leave ample space between each wedge.
Bake the scones for 11 to 14 minutes, or until the tops become nicely browned.
Cool for at least 10 minutes before eating. Store in the fridge in an air-tight container.

Enjoy these delicious savory cheddar bacon scones!

My Journey: 30 Days in

Girl Cooks World

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May 3, 2019

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One month ago I made a post proclaiming my will to change myself. I set out on a journey to lose weight for good and more importantly, to become a stronger version of myself.

This post is an update on how I’m doing after exactly 30 days. I want to show you whether my plan is working as intended and how I am feeling right now. Spoiler alert, I feel amazing!

However, I want to make a disclaimer first: it has been 30 days since I decided to count my calories to make sure I’m only eating around 2500 to 3000 per day. It has been 30 days since I decided to start doing daily activities with at least two longer weekly sessions at the gym. It has been 30 days since I started holding myself accountable for what I eat and what I do. But I have been quite health-conscious even before that so for me, it wasn’t such a dramatic change of lifestyle habits.

Sometime at the start of the last year, I read Diet Recovery by Matt Stone. Up until that point, I had been following restrictive diets that did indeed cause some positive weight loss effects but also made me stressed and fearful of the weight bouncing right back. I was not in a good place, mental health-wise.

RRARFing

Diet Recovery suggests doing something called RRARF. It stands for Rehabilitative Rest and Aggressive Re-Feeding. The process helps you fix your relationship with food and get rid of the stress of following diets all the time. I did for one month and I let my body rest. I ate what I wanted and how much I wanted without measuring my weight all the time (although I still avoided processed foods and tried to eat generally healthy things). RRARF also prohibits you from working out at all which I welcomed very gladly. I slept a lot and didn’t care if I didn’t leave the bed for 10 hours – it meant that my body was craving that rest.

The point of RRARF is to improve the body’s metabolism by increasing body temperature and thyroid function. The whole process is supposed to feel like a long session of meditation that rids you of the toxic stress and prepares you for a lifetime of healthy eating.

And while I did definitely feel more relaxed at first, it didn’t take long for the stress to appear again, this time due to different reasons. I felt guilty for sleeping all day and for stuffing myself with food. I looked at people around me who were going to the gym after a long day at work and I thought to myself: “is what I’m doing really the right thing?” I felt lazy and disgusted with myself.

SOCIETY PRESSURE

But now I see that what I was feeling was the pressure from the environment around me. I’m not blaming anyone from my family or friends. They have been really supportive and it’s not like anyone ever told me “wow, you let yourself go, didn’t you?” But it’s just that my mind has been conditioned by the media to think a certain way. I was feeling lazy not because I was lazy – after all, I was simply working on my mental health. I was feeling lazy because people on TV were telling me that heavy people are lazy. That I don’t care about my health or about how I look. I was miserable because I felt I didn’t deserve the rest.

But now I realize that what they were telling me was a lie. I wish I could have noticed it sooner. Now I focus on loving my body the way it is and I enjoy the process of shedding the unnecessary pounds. Not because I hate them but because they keep away from doing what I really want to.

I even started talking directly with Matt Stone and he encouraged me to keep RRARFing. And he was right, I did have more energy. I did gain a lot of weight (around 50 pounds) but I also felt more vigorous, I felt like moving because I wanted to, not because I was supposed to. It was such an amazing feeling!

But then it all crashed down when I had a mental breakdown due to untreated PTSD. If you want, you can read more about it in another post. It caused me to lose all of that gained energy. I kept to myself and rarely left my bed. I was in a really bad place and I quickly gained another 50 pounds. Thankfully I found a great therapist that helped me overcome my mental blocks and I was ready to set out on my weight loss journey again. I found inspiration in looking through before and after photos of other people and decided right there that I want that too.

IS MY APPROACH WORKING?

Yes, it is! I am gradually losing weight at a steady pace without feeling like I’m starving myself or forcing myself to do what I hate.

I eat healthy food but I do not care about whether I’m eating a lot of fat, or a lot of gluten, and so on. As long as it’s healthy, I put it in my mouth.

I move for at least 45 minutes every day. This is either a long walk with my family or a quick swimming session at the local pool. When it’s not crowded I swim for longer. I haven’t done that since childhood so it is such a thrill to be able to swim again! It is something I look forward to each week.

I also take a 90 minutes class at the gym twice a week. At first, I decided on aerobics but quickly found that it wasn’t for me. It simply wasn’t something I enjoyed. So I went for weight training with a personal trainer and for now, I’m sticking with it! It’s great to have someone experienced to guide you and show you the right way to maximize your efforts. It takes me around 90 minutes because I also make sure to do a proper warming up session before and a stretching session afterward. It helps increase my mobility and prevents injuries.

I make sure to play with my kids (they love tag so I get some more activity there). It’s been great because I finally feel like I can keep up with them! I still do get tired rather quickly but I expect that it will also improve with time.

And for the actual weight loss results, I lost 10 pounds! This was so much more than I was hoping for so I am really pleased right now. I hope to keep up the same pace for the rest of my journey but I won’t stress over it if next month I will only lose 5 pounds. You know why? Because I now believe the number of pounds you shed is not an accurate measurement of how healthy you are.

I get enough sleep and I don’t let stress take over my body and mind. I eat the food I like and I don’t spend all my time counting carbs and proteins and so on.

All of the above are indicators of a healthy change happening. The 10 pounds I lost are just a bonus.

I am living proof that you don’t need to follow restrictive diets to see an evident change in your weight. I know now that these diets are the last thing that will help you be fit and healthy.

THE NEXT STEP

I think for the next month I will try to write down what I eat during the day so that I can share it with you later. It might be hard to imagine what 3000 calories look like so I want to help people visualize that.

Hopefully, I will see another weight drop next month but I’m not thinking about that too hard. I simply want to get even stronger.

See you next month!

Ultimate Iced Caramel Macchiato

Girl Cooks World

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May 3, 2019

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I was never a big coffee drinker until I learned how to make my own iced caramel macchiato. Coffee often made me feel drowsy instead of energized and I found that it would often cause me to have painful headaches a few hours after I had drunk it.

My sister, on the other hand, is a big fan and a self-proclaimed coffee expert. She knew about my dislike for coffee and would never push me to drink it for which I am very grateful. But one day, at a family gathering, she served a drink called ice caramel macchiato.

This coffee was so fragrant that it immediately caught my attention. The honey color was very inviting and I asked her to make me a glass too. That was the drink that finally convinced me to give coffee one more chance!

Caramel macchiato

A caramel macchiato, whether it’s iced or hot, is still my favorite type of coffee beverage. Since then I have grown to drink other varieties as well but this one tops them all. It’s a perfect mix of sweet and salty caramel that combines very well with the deep coffee bean roast. And even though I am nowhere near being as knowledgeable as my sister when it comes to coffee, I believe I have perfected the art of preparing caramel macchiato at home.

Caramel macchiato is a beverage made up of a cup of espresso and milk. Another name for it is latte macchiato. The hot milk serves as the base to which you add a cup of espresso. It’s more of a coffee beverage rather than just coffee because the emphasis is put on the milk.

How I make coffee at home

Ever since my sister’s heavenly drink finally introduced me to the wonderful world of coffee, we have come to own a few different coffee machines at home. We have a single cup coffee maker, a French press, and a stovetop espresso maker (sometimes called a mokapot).

I love the French press because it can be used for other beverages besides just coffee. I use it to prepare homemade infusions and loose teas as well! It’s a great and versatile machine. The single cup coffee maker, on the other hand, is great for larger parties because it can whip up a cup of steaming coffee quickly and without much hassle.

But when I need a nice cup of espresso (for example, for my caramel macchiato) then the steel stovetop espresso maker is an absolute beast. I originally got it because I was tired of making espresso in the French press (it can be done but it’s quite bothersome). I found it hard to justify the purchase of a third coffee machine but I do not regret it one bit. The espresso maker makes preparing espresso and various types of lattes a breeze!

What types of coffee and espresso are needed to make caramel macchiato?

The vast array of different coffee beans can be confusing, I know. I have been there. But just like me, you can learn the basics of coffee making fairly quickly!

For starters, you should know that you do not necessarily need to have separate beans for the coffee and beans for the espresso. The same type of beans can be used to prepare both but they will need to be ground differently. Beans for espresso need to be very finely ground while beans for coffee should be left coarse.

Secondly, I whole-heartedly recommend buying whole beans rather than pre-ground beans. This way, you can grind them yourself and it will give you full control over their shape. Freshly ground beans also taste so much more amazing than the pre-ground ones. You will need a coffee bean grinder but believe me when I say that it is worth it.

Also, remember to buy organic coffee beans that were grown on fair trade farms to avoid giving money to big corporations that exploit farm workers!

Caffeine or Decaf?

Personally, I always go for decaffeinated coffee. I have now realized that the negative symptoms I was experiencing when drinking coffee in the past were actually caused by caffeine rather than the coffee itself. That’s why I only buy decaf when in coffee shops and prepare my own coffee from decaffeinated coffee and espresso beans. I might occasionally drink regular coffee but in general, I try to avoid it.

But the decaffeination process is not so straight-forward. A few different methods of extracting the caffeine from coffee beans exist. Most of them work by soaking the beans in various chemical solvents to separate the caffeine from the beans. There is nothing wrong with using chemistry to do that. I took chemistry in college so it’s not like I perceive the words ‘chemical processing’ to mean something bad and harmful. It’s a normal part of modern food processing.

But do you know what the traditional method of decaffeinating beans was? Steaming them in a chemical compound called benzene. Benzene is one of the most common petrochemicals and is responsible for that gasoline smell at petrol stations. How could we ever decaffeinate coffee beans using benzene is beyond me! It has since been proven to be toxic and causing cancer.

Other methods involve soaking the beans in either dichloromethane or ethyl acetate which are also suggested to be potential carcinogens. Just perfect, right? It is unbelievable how little corporations care about their customers’ health.

You might think that if you rinse beans enough times in water then there will be no harm anymore. But I respectfully disagree. Soaking something in ethyl acetate for ten hours is bound to make the toxins permeate deep into the beans which is something that can’t be simply removed with a flow of running water.

That’s why I’m not taking any chances. There are enough potential health hazards in our supermarkets as it is, I don’t need to add another one.

Safe Decaf Coffee

The safest method of decaffeinating coffee is called ‘the Swiss water process’. The coffee beans are repeatedly soaked in hot water and rinsed for as many times as is needed. This makes them 99,9% caffeine-free. You might get the slightest amounts of caffeine in your coffee but at least you won’t get any carcinogens which is a win in my book. Search for the words “water process” when buying your beans and remember that the more ethical the brand is, the more chances you’ll have that they are not lying to you. If you can’t find the description of the decaffeination process on the product then it is best to confirm with the manufacturer. USDA organic Swiss water decaf coffee with no mycotoxins or pesticides.

Coffee substitutes

Some people are allergic or sensitive to coffee beans, decaf or not. But this caramel macchiato is so amazing that I still recommend you try making it using a coffee substitute. There are many different ones on the market so I’m sure you can find something that works for you.

Most of them do contain grains, however, so they won’t work for people on the GAPS diet. In that case, I always recommend this delicious coffee substitute made from…dandelion! It is incredible how coffee-like it tastes!

Ok, let’s move on to the recipe!