It has been almost 6 months since I began my clean eating journey, and although I have had a few missteps here and there, overall I have stuck to my mission of eating whole and unprocessed foods. I feel great and am more tuned into my body and how food affects me than ever before. My family is eating healthier, we have more energy, and my husband and I are looking just as good as the day we got married. That being said, I am still a chocolate monster and I love to bake. So, what's a girl to do? Get creative! Who says a treat has to be full of sugar and junk? I scoured Pinterest for some Paleo treats and came across a few recipes that looked yummy. I decided to go out on a limb and combine elements of recipes that looked good to me. Always a dangerous idea since it doesn't always work out the way I dreamed up. This recipe turned out great! Since it reminds me of the cookie bars my in laws make around the holidays, I decided to name it after them (but the Paleo version), "Paleo Dream Bars." Be aware if you decide to try this recipe, the crust is very crumbly and falls apart pretty easily. This didn't bother us at all because it tastes great! We will be sticking this one in our recipe box and making it again very soon... Enjoy! Crust
Topping
Start by making the crust and popping it in the oven first so it can crisp up while you prep the other items. Blend the solid coconut oil and maple syrup together using a hand mixer. Mix in the coconut flour and salt until you form a cookie like consistency. Press the dough into a greased (I used spray coconut oil) 9x11 inch pan. Bake at 350 for about 7 minutes or until the edges get golden. While the crust is baking, make the coconut sauce. This is what makes the bars dreamy... Scoop out the coconut cream into a pan, leaving any liquid behind. Add honey to the pan and bring to a simmer while stirring, approximately 10 minutes. Allow the crust to cool and then top with your choice of chopped nuts and chocolate chips. Pour the coconut sauce over the entire dish and tilt the dish until the sauce is spread evenly. Top with unsweetened coconut flakes and place in the oven for about 25 minutes or until the top and sides look crisp and browned. Allow dish to cool, then place in the refrigerator for at least one hour to let the sauce solidify. Cut into bars and enjoy without guilt! Please let me know how yours turn out!
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I began this blog when my daughter was born. I felt like I had so much time at home to write and share my experiences compared to when I was in the office everyday. Then she started to grow and change (as babies do) and I started to get why moms talk about coffee and wine so much. Motherhood is constant. No breaks and no pay. Needless to say, my big writing career had to take a back seat. Once in a while I get to sit at the computer and get the thoughts and ideas out of my head and onto the blog. One of my favorite posts I've written to date was about what I learned in my daughter's first 7 months in the world (check out the original article here). Fast forward a few years later, my son just graduated his first 7 months in this life and I am feeling nostalgic and amazed at how much our life has transformed in the past few years. The more time passes, the more I learn and the more I recognize how much I still have to learn, about motherhood, about life. My children are my greatest teachers. They teach me about patience (oh, yes they do), presence, and love. Here are just a few things my son has been able to teach me in the first 7 months...
This 4-week series starts Tuesday! Start your day off right with some powerful yoga that is sure to rev your engine. If you think yoga is just for the flexible, come see for yourself. This class will challenge you and help you take your practice to the next level. Check out https://www.xtendbarre.com/studio/mission-viejo/ for more details about the studio and how to sign up for classes. First class is just $10 and you can get a 2-week unlimited pass for just $39! I hope to see you on your mat!
Being a mother is the greatest role I have been offered to date and I don't think anything could take its place. However, I am faced with some difficult feelings around being at home full time after having worked so hard to accomplish some pretty big feats in my career life. I was grateful to not have to go back into the office full time when my daughter was born and the freedom to have playdates or run errands on almost any day of the week has been an incredible blessing and luxury that I recognize working mothers who spend their days at the office don't have. Still, my mind battles between being a stay at home mom and a working mom. When I am really struggling, I go back to gratitude. If you haven't heard the news yet, gratitude changes everything. I have had many days where I have wanted to quit: quit working, quit teaching, quit trying, quit cleaning, quit cooking, pretty much quit life. In those moments, I have taught myself to close my eyes, take a breath, and be grateful for everything I can name: my health, my family, my home, my body... the list goes on. Sometimes, I have those moments where I'm so fed up, so drained, I can't think of all the wonderful things surrounding me so I choose to just be grateful for my breath. My breath continues to move through me, keeping me alive, whether I ask it to or not. In any given moment, my breath reminds me that I am here, now. I am alive and I have a choice how I respond to the moment.
I was having a difficult week "just being a mom," so I called my mom (naturally), and as we chatted about what I made for dinner, she mentioned what an incredible service I was doing for my family my making a healthy home cooked meal. In that moment, something clicked inside of me. "Just being a mom," spending time doing "mom things" (like cooking for my family) is exactly what I am supposed to be doing right now. By spending my time, energy, and love preparing a nutrient rich meal, I am supporting the people I love in their greater purpose, teaching my children the importance of food, and creating a nurturing space for my family to come together and connect with each other. Now THAT's magical. During my experience with The Whole 30 (read the post here), I learned how much food affects your body's functioning in a much deeper way than I ever knew. In fact, when I began to reintroduce foods back into my diet, I realized how much things like wheat and dairy affected my mood and sleep, let alone my tummy. By preparing a meal that cuts "filler foods" and is filled with vitamins and minerals, I am helping my children develop and thrive, taking all the interference out of the picture. I am giving my husband the energy he needs to work with his patients, recover from his day, and sleep well. I am fueling my own body to be able to manage all the balls I have in the air, but even more- I am getting my own need of conversation with the people I love met. Having a meal together makes us slow down. When we do, we have a chance to make memories. Seriously magical. Now, I'm not saying that if you roast a chicken, time will stop and your family will turn into the Brady Bunch and everyone will hold hands and sing "Kumbaya". What I am saying is that all you moms out there feeling like you are drowning, you're not. You are working your butt off, and it matters, so don't quit. Slow down, find gratitude where you are, and never underestimate the magic of a healthy, home cooked meal. When I first heard about The Whole 30, I thought it was a little extreme and not really necessary for someone who ate as well as I thought I did. I understood the concept: eat whole foods for 30 days to change your relationship with food. I didn't think I needed to try it- my relationship with food was great, right? When I started to examine it, I had a long way to go. Part of me was in denial that I needed to work on my eating habits and part of me wanted to look back at how far I have come in my journey with food and just be done with the hard work already.
My course with food has been a total roller coaster. Growing up, I always wanted to be skinny and envied my friends who were just naturally thin. I grew up with athletic thighs and held onto my baby fat long after I was a baby. In high school, I went through periods where I would not eat or I would binge and purge because I wanted to look a certain way. I saw a counselor and nutritionist and although I stopped binging and purging, I didn't care too much about being healthy, I just wanted to be skinny. I would exercise and started to make healthier choices but I thought about food constantly. I counted calories and was always thinking about what I could eat and how much of it I could have as well as how much I would need to exercise to keep my weight a certain number. I spun on this crazy cycle for a few years. In my early 20s, I was driving home from work and realized I hadn't thought about food all day. I was so grateful to not be obsessing about food. In that moment I made a choice to start to educate myself about true health and wellness because I knew there was more to life than living in my head with a menu. I started practicing yoga regularly and started running on the beach because it felt good, not because I had to burn off the calories I ate at lunch. It was the beginning of learning to love myself in my skin. I began to try out different eating habits and settled on becoming a vegetarian. I liked the idea of not eating animals and noticed that I wouldn't feel great after I ate meat, so I gave it up. I was a terrible vegetarian. I didn't eat meat but I also didn't eat as many vegetables as I should have been in order to get all the proper nutrition my body needed. Soon after this, I met my husband. This was another big turning point in my food journey because he is a chiropractor and wellness advocate. He educated me on the vitamins and minerals our bodies need to thrive and why I should care. I was now beginning to "get it" about food. I was making educated choices and eating well. I was exercising because I liked to. I thought I had made it. A month after we got married, I became pregnant and although I had started to introduce fish and eggs back into my diet, I still hadn't been eating much meat. While doing my research about my body while pregnant, I decided to reintroduce meat in my diet since it was the easiest way for me to get the protein I needed for my growing baby. I cleaned up my daily consumption considerably since what I ate and drank was what my baby ate and drank. Fast forward a couple of years and I'm pregnant with my second child. A girlfriend of mine tells me that she is doing The Whole 30. I inquired and immediately thought she was slightly nuts. No dairy, no grains, and no SUGAR for 30 days?!?! It sounded so extreme to me and I even wondered if it could really be that healthy or if it was just a trendy way to starve yourself and lose some inches. Then a second girlfriend of mine told me she was going to do it... Hmmmmm, ok, maybe I should look deeper into this. I ordered the book and intended to read it and maybe even try this Whole 30 thing once I had the baby and after my milk supply was well established. The book sat around for a while. I was avoiding it. When I finally picked it up and started to dive into it, I realized how truly wrong I was. This is about so much more than food. This is about educating yourself on your own body. When you cut all the crap out of your diet, you get to start over and experience how your body was made to FEEL. Wow. When was the last time your body felt truly alive? When was the last time you woke up with energy and looked into the mirror at your bright eyes and clear skin? The writers of this book talk about non-scale victories achieved through The Whole 30 and I can tell you this is what it is really about. I haven't thought too much about scale numbers in years (because it's not good for my soul) but I know that many of us hold onto an ideal weight with a death grip. When I stepped on the scale before starting my whole 30, it was the first time in a very long time. It was a tough moment for me and it brought up some hard feelings. It was so good for me to get through those feelings and refocus my energy on what else was happening as I cleaned up my act with food. I actually feel younger since I started my Whole 30 journey and I am going to take the tools I gained from this experience and move forward with an education about what my body needs to feel its best. I look back at my younger self and want to hug her. How lost I was in the scenery of societal beauty standards. Nobody else could have told me what I needed to know and ultimately the shift had to come from within me. I can even look back at myself a couple of months ago when I thought I had it all figured out and I am grateful that I am standing on the other side of this experience realizing that the journey never ends. Don't stop searching for answers or questioning what you think you know for sure. Keep diving into deeper waters and trust that you will learn to swim. When you do, new worlds will open up to you. If nothing else, don't ever stop educating yourself on yourself. Photo by www.katietphotography.com Coffee with half and half is one of my favorite things in the world. During my first pregnancy, I didn't drink any coffee in my first trimester and limited myself to one cup only a few times a week after that. After all, studies have shown correlations between too much coffee and miscarriage in the first trimester... Right? Even my OB said I had nothing to worry about. Regardless, I just couldn't be too careful the first time around. Fast forward to my second pregnancy and I can honestly say that with a 2 year old, I don't think I would have survived the wild days and sometimes long nights of the second pregnancy without my regular cup each morning. And let's be real, I just like it.
I had great plans for my second pregnancy. Being a yoga instructor and behavior analyst with a chiropractor as a husband, I had this lofty goal of writing a book journaling my pregnancy and making it the healthiest possible pregnancy I could inputting the knowledge and education I have gained through the years. It was going to be called, "Diary of a Healthy Pregnancy." Hahahahahaha! All I can do is look back and laugh at my sweet naivety and excitable spirit. At first, I was really down on myself for not measuring up to my own expectations of how I could (and thought I should) move through my second pregnancy. I had such little energy and was so nauseous for the first half of my pregnancy, the only thing I wanted were the 2 B's: bagels and burritos. So I ate them. I also ate my share of greens, but for a person who loves salads, you would think I was chewing on grass. Each bite nearly made me gag. Yeah, I was a great health and wellness role model... One major difference in my second pregnancy was my teaching prenatal yoga throughout. In the early super-sick-I-don't-want-to-throw-up-on-you days, I taught mostly sitting on my mat or walking around the class giving verbal cues. As I felt better I worked my changing body giving more modeling cues, but one thing remained the same throughout: I was teaching my soon to be mommies to listen to their bodies. Yoga has taught me a myriad of things, one of the most valuable being to listen and tune in with my body. This has been both a blessing and a curse because you start to notice things you didn't before. Ignorance can definitely be bliss when tuning out what your body has to say. Ultimately though, when you tune the messages out, you pay for it in the long run. Chronic pain and sustained injuries can be consequences of that ignorance. The beauty of hearing the body is that you are able to care for your body the way it needs and wants you to. This takes time, stillness, focus on the breath; all things you have a chance to do during a good yoga session. When you quiet the mind and begin to listen to your body, it will tell you, "Move in deeper," or, "Back off there." When you pay attention to what your body tells you, you are able to find another level of self care and in doing so your body can feel it's best. During pregnancy, this practice of attending to the body's messages is an even bigger asset and a tool for a healthy delivery. When you listen to your body, you are listening to your baby. It's the first step toward being a good mother. Partway through my second pregnancy, I heard my own teaching and realized that I didn't need to have the perfect pregnancy. I didn't have to eat only kale and chicken for 9 months. I just needed to continue to tune in and give my body and baby what was essential for that moment. Sometimes it was rest. Sometimes it was movement. Sometimes it was a salad... and sometimes it was a bean and cheese burrito! If I can urge pregnant mommies to do anything, it is to find a good prenatal yoga class during which you can learn to tune in and listen. This one thing can change the course of your pregnancy and birth of your most precious being, your baby. |