I'm hungry!!

My macros were recently lowered, SIGNIFICANTLY. I have forgotten how sacred each morsel of food becomes during the latter stage of prep. These carb master yogurts have awesome macros-9 g protein, 4 g carbs, 2 g fat. They are sort of an IIFYM prep diet,  power food. Yum, yum, yum. Thank you Kroger!

Supp Addicts Anonymous

There needs to be help for Supplement Addicts. We'd call it Supp Addicts Anonymous. We'd meet once a month and shamefully admit how much money we spent. We would discuss how we hadn't even tried some of them, we simply couldn't resist the promised results of bulging biceps and slim waists. We'd admit that sometimes we hide our supp purchases from our partners. Group members of SAA would understand and emphathize with the problems of no longer having enough room to store all our supps, and how we gradually had to take over the majority of kitchen storage and sometimes even monopolize entire closets...you know what, now that I think about it, we actually could make this addiction a positive community building experience. What we REALLY need is to have quarterly supp swaps!!! Oh my gosh I'm on to something here. We could trade out the proteins, pre-workouts, flavored BCAA's, or thermogenics that we're sick of or didn't do the trick for us. I know plenty of people that love the flavors that I detest and vise versa. Perhaps I am behind and such groups already exist. If so, please tell me about them!! Ah blogging can be so cathartic. A few minutes ago I thought I had a real problem, and now I realize it's only an oppurtunity to meet more like minded meatheads! Now to find or establish such group...

Top Fit Foodie IG Accounts

I want to share with you my top IG accounts for fit recipes. These ladies are fairly insta-famous so it's likely you're already following at least 1 of them. I've grown to love these women, they have saved me from many food ruts!!! Whenever I'm feeling at a loss for appetizing fit meals, rest assured I will find something that excites my taste buds on one of these accounts...

Megan is a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen! She brings attention to ingredients that I typically have available but would never think to pair. She puts together really filling meals and her love of food just oozes from her posts. I appreciate that her ingredients are budget friendly, and that she's super humble. I just love her posts.

Oh Jazzy! Most of you are probably already following this lady but just in case. She's truly one of kind, and is obviously doing something right with how she's blown up on IG. She is so darn passionate about reinventing recipes to fit a clean and fit lifestyle. She lists lots of fabulous recipes on IG but I also highly recommend her Crockpot ebook. Jasmine has introduced me to many of my favorite products and staple recipes. She's a must follow!

Kenzie is pretty adorable. She's a super ambitious college student. Her recipes tend be especially time efficient, which is oh so practical! Her recipes are simple and crowd pleasing. 

Danielle does a beautiful job with low carb concoctions! She has offered me some prep diet essentials. It's refreshing that I can always fit her recipes into my macros. She's kind of a magician when it comes to transforming recipes. Her food definitely packs a powerful punch! If you want a lot of bang for your macro buck, she's your woman. 

...with a little research you can satisfy any craving, on any macro plan. The farther I've come in this lifestyle, the more I've learned that it is absolutely maintainable. Utilize social media. Be on the constant lookout for fun new recipes. Always keep it interesting, and you'll be able to stick with your goals. Yah for Instagram!

Mom life

Today was exhausting. The kids are fighting a cold, so they couldn't get enough of my attention. Gabe had a really long day at the university. He felt bad for our babies when he got home so he made frozen cupcakes with them. They loved it. Mama not so much. Cupcakes usually aren't that tempting, but this mix is ridiculous. I made the selfless decision and gave half of them to our old neighbors. They don't want them, and I knew that, but I knew they'd want some snuggles from the kiddos. The kids ability to wreak havoc in the home was on pointe today as is evidenced by these pics. All I wanted to do tonight was eat the remainder of the cupcakes and curl up in bed comatosed. But gosh damn it my judgement got the better of me! I gave myself a pep talk, wrapped the cupcakes up, got them out of the way, and got to cleaning...

Being a mom, cleaning the house is obviously nothing heroic(although wouldn't it be awesome if it was??!) It was simply a small feat for me, to stay in control of my emotions, rather than eating them. I have a tremendous amount of respect for moms who live the prep life, it's seriously not easy. But man is it satisfying to put in a good days work, to know you gave it your all. Sometimes our ALL means not bingeing on your kids cupcakes, and cleaning your shi* storm of a house. That was my all today, hopefully tomorrow I'll have more gas in the tank.

Getting work done

HIIT is what's going down in my ghetto basement these days! I bought a used bike off KSL yesterday, and it's pretty awesome. Super stoked that sweet seat cover came with it! Bonus! I made a commitment to Gabe that I will only watch MY shows(real housewives, anything kardashians) while getting work done on this bike. I set my bike up in the corner of my basement in hopes I could drown out distraction. I've done 45 min collectively in the last 2 days, so you could pretty much say it's working. Cardio ain't got nothing on me!!!! Helpful Hint: Download the APP Interval Timer for your HIIT workouts. It'll beep at you through your music. Not staring at your clock the entire workout makes it go SO much faster!!

Try one more time

This montage up here documents only a few of my "before" pics. I kind of can't express how grateful I am that human beings are evolutionarily designed to be optimistic about our ability to change. If we weren't then we would just give up and die. The end. Thankfully our survival instincts are engineered to help us WANT to pick ourselves up and give it another go. I suppose it's our survival instincts or anti-depressants...prob both in most cases. If you don't want to try anymore you should probably consider an anti-depressant. I can say that bc I take quite the cocktail myself! Anyways, we must continue to try. In the process we are eliminating what doesn't work. There truly are no failed attempts, we are just weeding all the BS out. I'm grateful for all I've learned through my "failed" attempts. They allow me to help others to reach their potential that much faster. I have learned what doesn't work, and what works for a few weeks-perhaps months, then fails miserably. I'm humbled that I've found my place with flexible dieting. I'm proud of myself that I kept trying one more time. We're given a beautiful oppurtunity to transform every day. Tomorrow could be the fresh start you need. Never.stop.trying.

Feeding the fam

This week has been rough getting back into the swing of real life after the glory that was the holidays. I've been trying to find my stride with prepping hard and supporting Gabe during this super high pressure time. (He's supposed to graduate with his MFA in 2 months and we still have a bunch of furniture that needs to be manufactured as well as negotiating terms for our St George Crepery). As I'm trying to figure our ways to lighten his load, I'm thinking I really need to take the bull by the horns and cook dinner & prepare lunches for him on a regular basis. To most, I realize that this is a, no duh!, moment. But for me and the dynamics of our family it has been a very difficult task to tackle. There are a few reasons I can easily name for this difficulty...Gabe is a foodie, and he can really cook. He only wants to eat good food. What I mean by good food is-obnoxiously long recipes, high maintainence cooking procedures, with absolutely no fat-free, lean meat, low carb alternatives. You can empathize with me that I have a hard time living up to this!? I don't know where or when he became this foodie, because he is the youngest of 9 children. I can guaran-damn-tee that his Mom wasn't making any gourmet faire!! I do know she cooked with a ton of butter and refined starches, so I can't even petition her help. Top it off with 2 kids that only want easy Mac and hot dogs. To say the least, it's a painful task to find recipes that please the entire crew! When we do find one everyone will eat, I still have to make my own variation to cater to my prep needs-but that's fine. As long as it works with my macros and is cooked long enough(no pink meat!!) then I can use enough condiments to make it edible. What I've learned works for our fam, is, cooking a lot of a crowd pleasing recipe that will feed us lunches for days. Tonight we made a fav that I've posted previously on my blog, and that's Bobby Flay's Balsamic Meatloaf. It has tons of veggies and it doesn't get old for an entire week with the many variations meatloaf lends itself to. Gabe got home earlier than planned so he ended up cooking BUT I did the hard work in shopping and cleaning it all up! Pen loves helping Daddy!! Check this recipe out, it's legit.

I guess this isn't the most appetizing pic but it's sort of unbelievable.