BAB Week 1 + Working Out

When you restrict your food, you feel as if all those things still in the house are staring you in the face, speaking to you, telling you to eat them.  Well that's been me this week with honey and those Trio Girl Scout cookies in the freezer as I went through week 1 of the Badass Body Diet 21 strict days.  I'm not going to lie, see all the sweets in my freezer and not touching them as been hard!  Especially since the Trios are almost gone.  But not being to use honey has probably been the hardest.  Since starting I haven't been drinking my tea in the morning and it would have been perfect last week considering the weather was freezing cold!  Instead I have been drinking water which hasn't been to terrible, but I might have to start adding some flavor of fruits or veggies to it.  I use to add cucumber to my water and then eat the cucumbers afterwards.  But other than that the food hasn't been too bad.  I've been able to stay away from the extra peanut butter and cashews this past week.

Sunday is always meal prep day for me and I sometimes work on prepping on Saturday.  This past Sunday I did a lot of prepping.  One of the things I prepped which I'm extremely excited about are ribs.  It was a task to try and find a recipe for ribs that would comply with the standards I needed.  First was to find ribs that were: 1) pork and 2) didn't have a lot of fat on them.  I picked up some Louisiana style ribs made by Smithfield, probably not the best choice out there but there weren't any ribs that were plan and not prepackaged.  I'll have to do some roaming around in my area for this and let you know what I find.  I also had some ground turkey meat that I was going to make Mexican Turkey Meatloaf with from Paleomg.  This is one of my go-to recipes that I absolutely love.  I also had Sweet Potato Jalapeno Biscuits I was going to make, also from Paleomg.  The only thing with those is that I leave the shrimp out.  So it was going to be a busy Sunday.  Since Sunday was my last cheat day and Super Bowl Sunday I had ordered pizza and cheese bread from Papa John's. 

Ribs with BBQ Apple Sauce
I scoured the internet for paleo rib recipes because I knew they would have the most natural ingredients. Natural ingredients are the key! And the only sweetener that are usually found in paleo recipes are honey, coconut sugar, pure maple syrup or something similar to that effect.  Of course I had to click on several links before I found one that worked.  I finally found one from Paleo Leap with a BBQ Apple Sauce ( http://paleoleap.com/ribs-bbq-apple-sauce/ ).  I worked the recipe a little different than what the instructions called for.  I purchased unsweetened apple sauce (check the ingredients on the back to make sure there are no additives) from Wal-Mart.  I believe the brand was White House.  The recipe called for the ribs to be cooked in the oven but since I would be cooking the meatloaf in the oven I threw them in the crockpot, which is what I have been dying to do anyway.  I have been dying to try and cook ribs in my crockpot every since I heard that it was possible. O and I can't forget that I've been craving ribs for the past couple weeks, or was it that I just wanted to cook some in the crockpot.

Ribs (top R) with corn on the cob, mashed sweet potatoes w/
butter and small salad

Anyway I cut the rack of ribs in half and mixed up the dry rub.  It says to rub it on there but I sprinkled it and then rubbed.  I hate how it gets stuck to my fingers.  I'm not the ribs!  After that I placed them in the crockpot and I mixed up the bbq ingredients.  I will admit, I was lazy with the sauce.  I was suppose to heat and mix it up in a pan on the stove first and then bast  it on the ribs after they cooked for a little while but I just threw all the ingredients in the crockpot, but I'm saving this recipe again for later and will actually do what the recipe calls for with the sauce before throwing it in the crockpot.  Cooking it on the stove first helps to blend all the ingredients together.  I also skipped out on the minced onion because I hate having my eyes water and when I was going through my vegetable drawer last night I'm glad I did because my onion had grown mold from me trying to use it once before and failing because of my crying eyes.  So into the crockpot with the wet ingredients and some more dry ingredients.  From there I placed the crockpot on high and cooked them for 4-5 hours.  And let me tell you, the aroma that was coming out of that crockpot...
The ribs are still going strong and were part of my Valentine's dinner with corn on the cob and sweet potato jalapeno biscuits.  I look at those ribs and my mouth starts going crazy, even just writing about them now  It is definitely a recipe that you need to check out!

Other things that I prepped for this week were Paleomg's Mexican Meatloaf and I use ground turkey meat instead of beef because it's leaner and I also don't put in all the ingredients, part of my lazy moments in cooking but I do add red pepper flakes to add some spice back into it for taking out some of the other ingredients.  The other thing I have been fixing is chicken breast.  I use a lot of seasoning on them and sometimes I just use pepper and place it on my George Foreman.

The Aesthetics Of It All
I can already see a difference after week 1 and am looking forward to the final results.  I did use one of my cheats on Sunday, which is a typical cheat day for me already but not like on the Badass Body Diet. So when I say a cheat day for me on the Badass Body Diet all it means is that I add extra carbs into my diet at my night time snack and carbs that are approved on the diet.  I love my homemade ice cream so instead of half a banana I use a whole one and I add a single serve bag of popcorn with some melted butter which is also allowed on the maintainer program.
But also along with cutting out the suer is how your body should feel.  You should feel more energized during the day and it could also help with moods.  All the processed foods and sugar can make you feel sluggish and not as euphoric as not having it might be. I'm not really sure how my body is feeling after cutting out the other sweets but it could take awhile for me to notice it since there wasn't a huge change in my diet.  But being able to notice even a subtle bit of a difference is all that I ask.

This picture is from this past Sunday.  On the left is a picture from Day 1 and the picture on the right is from this past Sunday.  I can notice some of the difference on my hips and stomach which is what I was looking for, but of course before Day 1 I did have pizza and cheese bread from Papa John's so this could be a result of not having my normal cheat days on Sunday.

The Challenge
So I'm going to have a big challenge this week as well as this weekend.  On Thursday I will be having my self-gifted Valentine's Day present which requires a 3+ hour of traveling and then having some fun during my meal times which is going to be a little hard when I get hungry so hopefully I can work around that and still have my snacks and meals.  The other challenge is going to be my sister-in-laws baby shower this weekend.  And with showers come all the sweets.  Luckily my mom and I are in charge of doing the fruit tray for the party so I will have the option of fresh fruit, and this will be around my snack time during the day so I should be able to work that out.  I will just have to be good and try and resist all the munching of other things that will be set out and I'm sure all the sweets that will be there as well.  I'm not going to lie, Saturday is going to be a very tough challenge while at the baby shower but I'm looking forward to seeing how I do during it.  I'm really scared that I'm going to cave in and eat something I'm not suppose to.  And you would have thought that someone who eats healthy most of the time wouldn't have any issues with it.  Normally, if I wasn't on this 21 days strict, I wouldn't care and would just probably eat a cupcake or at least the frosting and be good to go but not this time around.  Being home with family is always a challenge because the unhealthy foods are there in front of my face.  Whereas when I'm at my place those unhealthy foods don't exist in my house and if they do I have them stashed to where I can't deliberately see them when I open up the cabinet or refrigerator door.  I will keep you posted on the goodies for the party this weekend and from the Valentine's Day present on Thursday to let you know how I did!

~God Bless

"Training strength and endurance mentally, physically, and spiritually."