Reci-peas: Zucchini lasagna.

This recipe turned out really well too. I went into it with some suspicion since I knew that if I wanted and expected it to be just like real lasagna, I'd probably be disappointed. I learned the hard way with cauliflower "mashed potatoes" that grain-free substitutes do not necessarily taste like the things they purport to stand in for.

But, this was a super-satisfying success! Zucchini is so unobtrusive that really all this ends up tasting like is cheese, sauce and meat (if you use any), and how can that go wrong? The zucchini just kind of lends it legitimacy. It doesn't really provide the same kind of structure as the pasta does in "real" lasagna, but as long as you don't mind it all glopping together in a pile on your plate, that's quite alright. Recipe courtesy of Skinnytaste and discovered via Pinterest.

Meat, cheese and sauce, living in harmony.

One thing I recommend is to not even try this unless you have a mandoline slicer. I had just purchased one and this was the first time I tried it out. It's so easy (and fun) to slice with this thing! Barely an effort at all and all of a sudden your vegetable is gone and replaced by perfectly thin, uniform slices. I don't have very good knives either so this would have been THE BIGGEST PAIN to accomplish without it.

Mandolined zucchini.

Zucchini has a lot of water, so the recipe recommends grilling it a bit, waiting 10 minutes and then blotting it with a paper towel to reduce the moisture. I didn't have charcoal for the grill and didn't have a grill pan (and also don't know what it is?) so I just put it in a frying pan on medium-high heat for like, 2 minutes. And then I forgot the step with the paper towel, which I would recommend not forgetting because it did turn out pretty damp still (totes not a dealbreaker though).

 Pro tip: have a larger pan than this.

So basically, you brown your meat (I used ground turkey with some minced garlic and chopped onion), mix that in with the sauce (the recipe tells you how to make your own, but I used store-bought), and then layer it in a pan-- sauce, ricotta, mozzarella, and zucchini slices. Bake it a while covered and then a little bit longer uncovered-- the recipe says 45 mins covered, 15 uncovered, but I shortened this considerably since I was in a hurry to get to the bar for my friend's open mic night, and I figured all the ingredients were already cooked anyway. It turned out just fine for me, so use your judgment I guess!

Zucchini layer.

Yum yum yam. Highly recommend this one!

Reci-peas: Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms

Omg, YUM. I wasn't too sure about this guy as I've never cooked portabello mushrooms before, but it was not hard and turned out wonderfully. Recipe ganked from "A Food Centric Life" via Pinterest, and actually followed pretty closely.

Turkey sausage with stuffed portabello mushroom caps.

Grain free: day 8! (or 2?)

Well! All I can say for myself is that I've been a bit more successful at my diet than at updating my blog, thank god. I will try to get better at posting regularly.

So, my first week grain free! It went okay. I feel good about it overall. What have I learned, where has this gotten me? Let's break it down!

1. You don't need grains as much as you think you do. In this regard, this diet has kinda blown my mind. I didn't even realize how stuck I was on the idea that every meal needed to involve something bready to make me feel satisfied. Guess what. It's the complete fucking opposite! When I would eat grains with every meal, I'd feel gross and bloated when I was full, but then a couple hours later I'd get hungry for a snack. And then a couple hours after the snack, I wouldn't just be hungry for my next meal. I'd be fucking RAVENOUS, to the point that I couldn't function unless food was in my face immediately. 

That has completely changed over the past week. After a meal-- one that in the past would have seemed far from substantial, like a salad-- I feel perfectly satisfied without feeling stuffed, and that feeling maintains until it's time for the next meal. When I do get hungry, it's a feeling that I can acknowledge and understand without having to drop everything and feed myself immediately.

Inspired.

If only I could be as cool as this guy...

Day 1 grain free.

For my final act as a gluttonous gluten eater, last night I satisfied my late-night munchies by devouring a huge plate of leftover French toast. Ungh, back up. Not just any French toast... SALTED CARAMEL APPLE FRENCH TOAST from one of the best brunch spots in my city. They use real maple syrup and slices of apple and it's all infused with caramelly goodness. It is honestly one of the best things I've ever eaten and I'll probably never have it again, oof. :(

But! I had been mostly grain-free all weekend since I was at my (paleo/primal-practicing) mom's house, and I was feeling really good. Then I ate this French toast, and woke up today feeling so OFF. I was wide-awake and feeling physically fine for once on a Monday morning, but I just couldn't function. Making conversation was a struggle. I couldn't seem to find the right words (not such a good thing when you're a copywriter by trade). I couldn't focus on anything and I kept forgetting what I was doing. Now, I'm totally just trying to psych myself up for this diet, but I really feel like it was because of the gluten binge after a couple solid days without it! Mental clarity is one of the biggest benefits that people point to when it comes to gluten-free diets.

So, anyway. For lunch I had some quinoa with vegetables that my mom had made and a little bit of chicken. Grain-free and healthy as fuck: A-plus! I was researching wheat belly/grain free diets and writing down recipes all day at work (since I couldn't concentrate on working) so by 4 or 5 I was starting to get really hungry and the realization that I basically couldn't eat anything in the vending machine was starting to really depress me, but then I discovered that Smartfood cheddar popcorn is GF and I had a bag of that.

For dinner, I totally improvised and I'm quite proud of myself! Sorry I have ugly plates and not a real camera and I didn't really try with this picture because I wasn't sure if I was really gonna start this blog or not...

I took haddock fillets and coated them in egg white, but instead of using bread crumbs, I made a crust of parmesan cheese and black pepper. I pan-fried them with olive oil cooking spray and they crisped up pretty decently, and had a nice flavor (if a bit fishy-- I think this was my first time cooking haddock and I didn't realize what a strong fishy flavor it has). I had an avocado that I wanted to use before it departed the realm of edibility, but I couldn't figure out how to work it into this meal so I just sliced it up with some fresh tomato, drizzled it all with olive oil and shook some feta cheese over top. Originally I was gonna top the fish with this, but I got worried that it would be gross so I put it on the side. Next time I'll definitely use this as a topping, it was the highlight of the meal and went great with the fish! Finally I paired it with some brown rice-- not cool with wheat belly, but at least it's not gluten.

I need to figure out more of what I can eat, and buy a lot more ingredients, and start planning ahead better. For my first day I don't think this was so bad, but I have a lot of room for improvement. Of my two fails (popcorn & rice) I feel worst about the Smartfood, because another motivating factor for me with this diet is that I want to eliminate GMOs from my consumption, which is next to impossible to do if you eat processed snack foods. I am planning to make my own grain-free granola bars to prevent future snacking dilemmas.

I did not exercise today, because I felt the new diet was enough of a challenge and also I usually give myself a free pass on Mondays. UGH EXCUSES EXCUSES. I will go tomorrow! I'm running a 5K in a couple weeks so I gotta keep up with my training for that.

This is how we do it.

A BIG OLE DISCLAIMER: I'm still trying to figure out a lifestyle that works for me. Please, please don't think I'm an expert. I'm just sharing my story with you, internet, and it's chock-full of fails.

I knew I wanted to lose weight, but I had no idea how. A couple of my friends use MyFitnessPal so I signed up, set myself a calorie limit of 1270 per day (which, btw, flew out the window every weekend), and started going to the gym. My only "running shoes" are a pair of really shitty beat-up Skechers that aren't actually running shoes at all, so I started using the elliptical instead of the treadmill (plus, I am so uncoordinated that when I'm on the treadmill I'm constantly stressing that I'm going to fall off!). I find that I actually prefer the elliptical because it's easier to target other muscle groups like your arms, and it doesn't make my joints hurt so much. I usually burn around 300 calories doing about 40 minutes at a time.

I love to cook and so I started following a lot of low-calorie recipes, and replacing my ingredients with healthier versions. Olive oil instead of butter, egg whites instead of the whole egg, baked instead of fried.

At the beginning of March, I quit drinking beer. Love ya and miss ya 4evs, beautiful brews. I've made a couple of exceptions, like when I was at a party and the only mixers were dollar store sodas that had 10 times the calories of the keg beer, or when I'd been attempting to snowboard all day and I needed something amber-colored and bubbly to (literally) cry into after hours of being laughed at by 5 year olds whizzing down the slopes past my broken and defeated body lying in the snow, or like just last night because it was the Game of Thrones premiere (!!!!!) and my friend got the Ommegang Iron Throne Ale (actually not so impressive, and it just made me feel bloated).

Thanks to the above, I lost around 5-8 pounds in about 3 months. I can see it a little in my face, which I think tends to reflect subtle weight changes really well, and in my arms. I don't feel like I've lost much in my belly, but jeans and t-shirts look ever so slightly better on me now than they did before, so I guess I have a bit.

TODAY, this very day, the first of April (but this ain't no April fools!) I am starting a gluten-free diet and hopefully shifting into a mostly grain-free lifestyle. I don't think I have a gluten intolerance/Celiac's disease, but I do feel bloated pretty much all the time and my belly fat is quite stubborn. I don't know if this will work! But I think it's worth a try. My mom (who is on the primal/paleo diet and loves it) suggested I look into the Wheat Belly diet, which sounds disgusting and seems more and more like a crock of shit fad diet the more I look into it, but it also seems like something I can pull off and a lot of people do swear by it. I love to cook and I'm a little excited about the challenge of finding new ways to keep myself fed without relying on my go-to carbs, and really as long as I can eat all the cheese I want, I'm a happy gal. I'll probably be writing a lot about wheat belly/grain-free/gluten-free on here. I've decided to give the diet a solid month to see how I feel, and then go from there.

A brand new blog: why I'm here.

I'm starting this blog for me, really. In month 3-ish of my fresh, fit lifestyle, I'm realizing how helpful and motivational other fitness blogs are. The problem is, I don't really see myself in any of them. By and large, the people that run successful fitness blogs seem to love nothing more than eating healthy and going to the gym, seem to be tickled pink by counting calories. They don't drink. They go to bed early and wake up early and sometimes they even exercise before the fucking sun comes up, and they love it. It's easy to think, I'm not like that, and I guess I'm just not meant to be in shape. I've thought that way for a long time-- that's just not who I am, so this just isn't for me. But ya know what-- that's bullshit! Anyone can get fit, even a lazy drunk like me. At least, that's what I'm trying to prove.

I'm starting this blog so I can keep track of my progress and my success. So that I'm motivated to keep going. But it's going on the internet in the chance that there are others who share my attitude and perspective, and may want to share my journey.

So here's who I am: a 25 year old gal living in a city known for beer and cheesesteaks (that'd be Philadelphia), just starting to find her feet in life. Since I was a kid I've been lucky enough to have a decent metabolism and a family that valued healthy eating, so I stayed quite thin with absolutely zero effort. I went to college and started drinking a fuck ton of beer and eating a diet of strictly cheese and carbs, and it slowly caught up with me. It fluctuated down a bit after doing some traveling post-college and moving back home with my super-healthy mom, then it fluctuated right back up and kept going when I moved to this city of endless beer and grub and got a boyfriend. Boyfriend weight, anyone? It's a thing! Especially when your boyfriend is the best and seems honestly delighted with your body no matter how many rolls you've got on your belly.

It took me a long time to admit that I had a problem with my weight gain for a few reasons. Probably the biggest is that I found it embarrassing to acknowledge. I wanted to be confident, I wanted to own it. And it's not like I want to be a sack of bones-- I dig on curves. But for every ounce that pads my lovely lady lumps, another goes to my beer belly. And really, that's what it all came down to. That fleshy inner tube around my waist. And I don't really even mind how I look naked, but that strip of fat right around my midsection makes it nigh impossible to dress myself. Jeans pinch me right in the middle of it no matter what style or size I've tried. Form-fitting dresses make me look preggers. And those midriff-baring tops that have grown so unfortunately popular? Not a fucking chance.

In the past I've made a lot of grand plans about getting into shape. I'd make a gym membership and go LITERALLY THREE TIMES before getting so discouraged that it wasn't working that I'd give up for another year or two. Even though the only thing making me fail was my own laziness, it fed on itself, and I convinced myself that it wasn't even worth trying because I knew I'd just give up. But lately I've accomplished a lot of things that seemed pretty impossible for me not long ago at all. I got a real professional job that I enjoy and excel at. I started budgeting. I started paying my student loan bills on time and getting out of debt. I started cooking a lot and getting good at it. I quit smoking cigarettes. When this past New Years rolled around, I made my first ever resolution, because suddenly, keeping it seemed possible. I decided to get in shape fo real.

I started off in January 2013 with a fresh layer of holiday blubber and weighing 150 lbs. At the time of this posting I'm down to right around 142 lbs. 130 is my current goal, but we'll see what the bod looks like when I get there (I also refused to use a scale for about 5 years, so I'm not even sure what I weighed when I looked and felt my best). I'ma tell you about my methods and my plans, but this blog post is getting pretty long so let's save that for the next one, eh?