Long Time…

I know it’s been a month since I last blogged… it’s been a month for all of my blogs… I’m not proud of it. But I think it’s about time I came out of hibernation.

The whole 30 challenge wasn’t as stellar as I was hoping, mostly because I had a bit of a…broken…ankle which stopped me from going to the box all that much, so I only lost about 7 pounds overall, and I’ve been struggling with it since then. I’m growing thinner, my chest is smaller and my pants absolutely don’t fit again.

I’ve been still strict Paleo with the exception of dark chocolate since the beginning of the year and my weight has been down since I’ve sprained my non-broken ankle so I’m not working out and being Paleo helps me lose the weight whereas Paleo + CrossFit means I gain weight… I’m sure I’m just not eating enough.

I made pancakes for dinner last night after seeing the recipe on Paleomg.com. She made banana, vanilla and coconut pancakes with a berry compote. I knew I had everything except for the vanilla bean at home and Boyfriend looked like he wanted to eat the screen they were so delicious-looking. I told him I’d make them for dinner when he came over on Sunday and I hoped they’d be amazing.

The recipe calls for two bananas, smashed (perfect, there’s 7 in the freezer), 3 eggs, 3 tablespoons of coconut flour, a splash of vanilla, 1/4 tsp of baking soda and that’s it!

When I made it, the batter was super thin, so I added almond flour to thicken it a bit and got it to a pancake-consistency but it was kind of a mess to make them. Paleo pancakes are much heavier and much more dense than All-Purpose pancakes, so they don’t flip and/or rise the way AP does. Some of them wound up being rather messy until I went to a smaller pancake size (about 2 inches in diameter at most) and was rather successful. They also need to be much more brown before flipping. Oh! and you need higher heat on the pan/griddle. Trust me on that.

We finished off the pancakes with some of the delicious sides made by Boyfriend’s best friend Jon and his wife Amanda for Christmas. I was so grateful that they made these things Paleo for us that it made the massage I bought her seem so mediocre. She created a wine jam, honey butter and lemon curd. Last night was the first time I’d opened the jars since we got them and it was all SO DELICIOUS. The lemon curd was so tart and sweet at the same time and the honey butter made my heart go all aflutter. The jam was the perfect consistency and mixed all together, the pancakes were just amazing. Boyfriend ate them faster than I’d ever seen him eat.

This morning we woke up and the first words out of his mouth were ‘I think you should make some pancakes for breakfast’ and kept insisting (even to the point of whipping the blankets off me and practically pushing me out of bed) until I was in the kitchen making the pancakes. I altered the recipe slightly in that I didn’t use coconut flour, but almond flour and I only put 2 eggs rather than 3 in the mix. It made the batter thicker right away and it was much easier to pour and cook. We used just the curd and honey butter and I wound up scraping up the remnants of it off the plate when the pancakes were all gone. Golly it’s good.

That picture just doesn’t do it justice at all.

So now I get to digress:

My mom started Paleo (HI MOMMY!) at the beginning of the year and has since lost about 11 pounds and astonished her doctor when her cholesterol and blood pressure came back with increasingly normal numbers. The first thing I said to her when she told me this news? “I TOLD YOU BACON WAS GOOD FOR YOU!”

I’m a really great advocate for fat and bacon, to be honest with you. It’s weird that I tell people ‘eat fat’ but they don’t quite understand how good fat is for you. I mean come on… I wouldn’t be nearly 50 pounds down if I ate carbs. There’s a mason jar half-filled with bacon fat reserves, there’s always at least a pound of bacon and 12 eggs in my fridge and I willingly absorb the shock of groceries by shopping on the perimeter of the store. I don’t remember the last time I had bread…or white sugar…or milk chocolate. I no longer have migraines, I have more energy every day and I sleep way better at night. The pros outweigh the cons immeasurably when it comes to eating Paleo.

So when someone posts a status about eating egg whites with spinach and tomatoes, I think, “Where’s the bacon?” to which I get the reply “Bacon got me into this mess” which I just simply can’t believe is true.

Pasta got you into this mess. Bread got you into this mess. CHEESECAKE GOT YOU INTO THIS MESS!

Cut out grains, dairy, excess sugars– and eat clean foods fresh from the market and you’ll be amazed at how quickly the fat falls away to reveal the real you. This world is so full of processed foods or the new ‘fad’ foods to tell you how bad fat is for you and you shouldn’t be eating eggs or bacon because they’ll ruin your cholesterol when it’s simply not true. Take my mother for example: her blood pressure AND cholesterol are down because she’s eating clean; she’s eating bacon and eggs and she’s getting healthy. She ate carbs before and was on tons of medication to regulate her body… I’m willing to bet that in 6 months she’ll be off almost all of her pills and will just be taking fish oil and a multi-vitamin.

The cavemen had something going for them.