Shenanigans and Rainbows

Wow! I have no idea where this week went! I’m so wiped out. I will say tho, that despite the craziness, I was able to stay on my new eating plan 95% of the time. I pre-planned and pre-packed lunches even for running errands, I swapped some of my planned days that got busy so I still had time to cook and prep healthy food, and I learned a lot for this week as far as what my pitfalls are more likely to be and how to adapt for them. Here is what I learned and how I’m going to adjust:

1– Mondays will absolutely not work long term for me to get groceries and meal prep. I kinda already knew this, but having to do that out of necessity this week from being out of town, I found it’s definitely not feasible. For this coming week, I did my shopping first thing Saturday morning and I think keeping that up or doing Sundays after church, will always be my golden times. I took about 1-2 hours to meal prep by cooking meat and chopping veggies for the grab and go salads and I must say, I feel insanely prepared and already like the week is off to a good start. Here are some of the amazing things we ate this week.

Skinny Enchiladas

Chicken Salad on a bed of Spring Mix Greens

Cowboy Chili

One Pot Creamy Chicken Spaghetti

Easy Egg Bites with and Orange for Breakfasts

Open-faced Breakfast Omelet

2– I do have to make sure I have a form of chocolate to curb the afternoon sweet craving. One afternoon I ended up having half of a chocolate bar I had on hand and it didn’t have any preservatives or bad ingredients, per say, but it was still sugar and milk chocolate (it was from my birthday and I hadn’t eaten it yet so there might have been some extra excuse making…). So I went ahead and made sure that didn’t happen again by making the brownies I had written into my meal plan.

The “Guilt Free Brownies”, from Brittany’s first cookbook definitely hit the spot! They were easy and cost effective to make and I adjusted them to bake in the oven since I don’t have a large instant pot to accommodate the springform pan.

So I’ll be making these, her Lava Cakes or her Chocolate Cake on a routine basis to have on hand. I’m one of those people that’s hypercritical about “diet food” and knock offs and would just as soon go without than to eat something gross just to sorta satisfy my craving. And I promise, you cannot tell these brownies were made out of black beans! A must try if you have the book!

3– Normally I’m not a munchy person, but I’ve surprised myself by how frequently I want to snack lately. I ended up almost completely depleting my supply of broccoli and decided to stock up on more munching veggies this time around so I grabbed extra broccoli and then added cucumbers and pre-sliced them for an easy grab and go snack.

4– And finally, I got bored of the salads a lot faster than I have in the past. I think it was because I didn’t have a variation of toppings like an assortment of pre-chopped veggies, feta, and even another option or two of lettuces. So for this week, I got feta, more lettuces, and of course more veggies like cucumber, bell pepper, and tomatoes.

So yeah- all in all, I’m really happy with how this past week went nutritionally and the progress I’ve made in narrowing down what works and what doesn’t and what I need to add or change.

Activity wise, I did really good this week. Since I was 90% bed ridden 3 weeks ago for a duration of almost 3 months, I had lost a lot of muscle tone and stamina, and I’m so glad to be getting that back. Week before last I averaged around 7,600+ steps and this week I’m on track to average around 1k more than that each day.

The time change has been amazing! It’s allowed me to go on a few solo strolls and increase my step count because Isaac is getting home before it’s dark and he’ll watch Emmy so I can go for a long walk.

Since Emmy has learned to ride without training wheels, she’s been loving accompanying me on some morning strolls.

My goal for this week is to average 10K steps per day. If you are unfamiliar with how steps correlate to activity level, the general guideline is as follows:


-Sedentary: Less than 5,000 steps per day
-Low Active: 5,000 to 7,499 steps per day
-Somewhat Active: 7,500 to 9,999 per day
-Active: 10,000 to 12,499 steps per day
-Highly Active: 12,500+ steps per day

In order to be considered actually active in any of these categories, you need to still incorporate 20-30 minutes minimum of deliberate exercise of some form each day. This coming week, I’ll be doing a virtual workout challenge with the Instant Loss community and it will be using Jillian Michael’s 30 day Shred program. I will probably stay on it until the first of April when I’ll be commencing my April goal (stay tuned for more- I’m super excited about this one).

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Now I think it’s time to move on to the fun stuff! Since Leo, I haven’t been able to rekindle my love for coffee. When I get pregnant, coffee makes me feel sick and now it doesn’t make me sick, but it doesn’t sound good anymore. I can still do latte’s but my morning cup of coffee has turned into tea. I’m glad that I do really love the tea but it makes me kinda sad that I don’t want coffee. Hopefully it will return soon but I found the perfect mug for my tea in the meantime, as you can see.

Apart from focusing on the day to day staying healthy and deliberate with food choices, I had a busy week with MOPs, meeting a friend for fun pictures and a playdate, making sure I go for walks (sometimes multiple times a day), regaining organization of the house from our trip, and catching up on some nitnoid stuff.
I got up first thing Saturday morning to go grocery shopping because the Walmart Grocery Pick Up app crashed due to everyone freaking out about the Covid-19 virus quarantine threat and trying to submit their orders. So I decided to get up and get the shopping knocked out before it got too crazy and man am I glad I did. It was nuts even at 7AM and by the time I left, the parking lot was completely full and most of the shelves were empty. Chicken breasts were the only thing I was not able to get (fresh or frozen) so I’ll have to hunt those down for the week, but otherwise I was still able to get all the things I needed to follow through on my plan for the week.

The highlight was definitely doing the Half Pint .5K with my friend Ashely and attending the World’s Smallest St. Patty’s Day Parade with Isaac and Emmy here in downtown Enterprise.

After the parade and everything was over, we came home so I could get some meal prep done, we could get showers and dinner then go to a neighbors house to hang out for a bit. Emmy ended up completely passing out and once 11:15 rolled around, I quickly followed suit. I feel terrible because I never fall asleep in public and I guess I just couldn’t keep going after a crazy day, not to mention week.

I am super excited about trying to get back to my actual schedule this week with consistent rising and bed times, getting into a work out regimen, and being able to be a little more productive and deliberate with my use of time. My sweet husband helped me gain control of the house today and I’ve got the meal prepping done so I’m chomping at the bit to get going!

Riding off into the sunset and into a new week ❤

Do you have any fun goals for this week? Anything specific you’re trying to accomplish or revamp? Lemme know!!!

Have an amazing week peeps, and I’l see you around on the blogosphere!