InstantPot March Madness

I have been so excited about this for a while! Last year, I was finally told I had the MTHFR genetic mutation (I’ll do another post about this later) in addition to a few other diagnosis that I go into detail about in my first blog post. So of course I started Googling, Pinteresting, and YouTubing about this weird cuss word looking genetic thing I’d never hear about. If you are unfamiliar with it yourself, to the best of my research, it is basically a genetic mutation that reduces your enzyme activity and different mutations cause a variance in severity. I have one of worse forms of the mutation so my enzyme activity is incredibly low to non existent. With a reduced enzyme activity, your liver doesn’t function properly resulting in it not detoxing fully, which is crucial for weight loss especially. It was a huge relief to finally have an answer on one of reasons I couldn’t lose weight and be armed with a name to start researching “weight loss and MTHFR”. And that leads me to this. I was scrolling on Pinterest (thank you, Lord, for algorithms and cookies) and saw this article about a lady who lost over 100 pounds with the MTHFR mutation and hypothyroidism (which I also have), by using her InstantPot. Ya’ll! I was BLOWN away! I kept reading her story and finding her so real and relatable and I was like “I have to know more”. Low and behold she had written a cookbook and was about to come out with her second! So guess who bought the book and got on the pre-order list for number 2? Yep! This chick!

Okay, so who was this super cool person? Her name is Brittany Williams and she is basically the InstantPot queen. Her first book is “Instant Loss Cookbook” and her second (my personal favorite) is “Instant Loss: Eat Real, Lose Weight“.

I kept doing research on her website InstantLoss.com and reading her first book and got insanely excited about implementing her method and mentality in our home. Here’s the fun part… that was in the middle of November with the holidays in full swing and I was already overwhelmed and a major lifestyle shift would’ve failed so I said that the month of January 2020 is when I would start.

Low and behold, mid December I found out I was pregnant with little Leo and very quickly became insanely sick and almost bed ridden beginning Christmas Day. Needless to say I determined to just survive the first trimester sickness (during which I lost 15 pounds from being so sick and not being able to eat) and make this a goal for spring. Now that I’m not pregnant, I have made it my goal to cook entirely out of Brittany’s two cookbooks and off of her website beginning March the 9th and finishing on the 31st. This will actually be a permanent lifestyle for us but in order to jump in all the way, I decided to be very deliberate and “make it a thing” so to speak. So yeah- I’ll be using my InstantPot (thanks, Mom!) and Brittany’s cookbooks/ methods and committing to turning this big ship around into a consistently healthy lifestyle. What’s crazy is that we aren’t big junk food eaters and honestly, up until the last couple months, stuck to a fairly low carb/ healthy diet but with too much extra-ness over the weekend like pizza and eating several fast food meals. It wasn’t deliberate by any means but also not insanely junky either.

I have used my InstantPot quite a bit over the last few months and have loved it! Have you ever used one? What do you love the most about yours?

After a little googling, I found these awesome, free, printable meal planner sheets that I’ll be using to plan out my meals for the week. I might even get ambitious and plan a couple weeks at a time… I’m not a big fan of meal planning so if I’m in the zone I want to just go ahead and knock it out. I’ll also be going ahead and submitting my Walmart grocery pick-up order at the same time because I can do that several days in advance. Grocery pick up has been an amazing tool and definitely essential for me to stay on track.

So yeah… this is my main plan for March and why I chose it as my first big step, and I’m looking forward to finally getting into something I’ve been chomping at the bit to start for months now. And like I said in Monday’s post, this isn’t about weight loss for me- it’s about eating healthy, healing my body from years of not knowing how to treat or nourish it properly, treating my illnesses, and giving my family a better shot at having optimal health.

What are your health/ dietary goals? Are they personal (just for you) or do they involve/ affect your family? Have you already made a big change at some point in your life or are you currently concocting your plan? I’d love to hear from you and if you want to keep up with how my InstantPot March Madness is going, feel free to follow me on Instagram or Facebook! Wishing you health and happiness!