Cheesecake...and a new plan for how we eat

Yep, cheesecake...that's what was in my refrigerator the day I realized I was tired of being tired. It was my 35th birthday and we had a cheesecake chilling for the celebration. My hubby had been suggesting that I watch "Fed Up", a documentary about child obesity and the massive amounts of sugar consumed by Americans. So, I watched it, and my whole world was completely changed.

Tim had been on the Paleo diet last fall and lost 20 pounds and felt better than ever, but the holidays came and he just got back to eating carbs. So when I watched this documentary and had my mind blown by the concept of not eating sugar, he suggested that we go Paleo again.

So, that was 2 weeks ago, and we are on the eve of day 1. I thought it'd be good to blog about our journey. I know that I will not be able to post every day, and I may even get lost in the real world as I go back to school, but I wanted to at least try to blog, for as many days as I can to get started. Maybe I can at least look back at it and see where I started and where I'm headed.


Goals for our new diet:

1. I don't want this to feel like a diet. I want it to be a lifestyle change. I want to begin to embrace this new diet as a lifestyle decision that I can keep. I want to eliminate sugar until I get down to the size that I want to be and then slowly add some carbs to my diet from time to time.

2. Speaking of size, I don't really have an ideal size I see myself in, I just want my clothes to feel comfortable. I want to put clothes in my closet on and feel okay in them.

3. I want to be present in my holiday pictures. I don't want to hide from the camera because I'm fat or I don't like the way I look.


So here I am, at the beginning of this journey...hoping to get to a better me by the holidays. Goodbye Cheesecake!

The Summer Lag

First of all, I'm not promising that I'll get back to blogging everyday, because we all know where good intentions fall. I'm just going to post because I feel like it and we'll see where is goes from there.

SUMMER LAG...Do you know what summer lag is? If you aren't a teacher or a stay-at-home mom/dad, you might not. Summer lag (as defined by me, because it's my blog, take that!) is that time of summer toward the end of July, sometimes the beginning of August. It's time can usually vary depending on how busy your summer has been and how often you've looked at the calendar. Mine usually takes place after my birthday (the 15th of July, if you forgot to tell me Happy Birthday), but usually before August. It's about the time you realize the summer is over halfway over,there will be an end to these blissful days of doing nothing, and right before the Back to School items line the aisles. (Wait, who am I kidding? They started putting out Back to School stuff on July 5th.) It's that time when your brain is tired from too much TV or internet, you are starting to get a little annoyed that you never know what day it is, and your sleeping patterns are so out of whack that you are thinking that maybe, just maybe, getting back on a schedule with something productive to do could be a good thing.

But then you think, NAAAAA!! I wait all year for these days and weeks of summer. I'll try to savor every minute for the next few weeks, because we all know it will be another 10 months before this time come around again!

Oh, and just to make this post interesting, I'll add some pics.

Raiden with his VBS headband and Darth Vader

That's their super hero t-shirts. The latest craze at the Dean house.

Landed in a New World

So, life has changed. Tim has a new job working in mental health, I am teaching middle school Social Studies, Roman is in Kindergarten, and Raiden is in a GREAT child care center learning all kinds of things.

Suffice it to say that although we have moved back to Rocky Mount (well, at least for me it's back), we have definitely landed in a new world!

I promise I'll try to update more!

It's been so long

It's been so long since I've posted. BUSY BUSY and more BUSY is the best way I can describe it.

I wish I had something really interesting to post, but honestly I don't. We are actually in the middle of a whirlwind of a Family Crisis, but I can't really go into the details quite yet.

I will try to get something posted in the next few weeks but I make no promises.

In the meantime, I'll post a few pics of what we're up to...

E-Mealz

Okay, I know it's been a LONG time. That's the life of a teacher. The Spring Semester always FLIES faster than I want it to and I never have time to get everything done.

This week I have used 5 new recipes! I think that's more than I have used in our entire marriage combined! We have discovered the art of E-Mealz!!!

I recently got into Dave Ramsey material and have really been trying to find ways to save money so we can be DEBT FREE! With that, we have learned that we need to cut back on eating out. The problem has never been that we can't cook, but that neither of us can ever decide what to make. We spent a lot of time staring into the pantry thinking, "What should we fix?" And we are not too creative, so the weeks we did a menu ended up being a repetitive cycle of tacos, spaghetti, baked chicken, or steak. I love all of those, but they get REALLY old!

WE'VE FOUND OUR SOLUTION!! E-mealz is a cheap, easy way to get a balanced menu on your plate! Basically, you sign up, visit the site once a week, download the menu and shopping list, go to the store, follow the isle by isle/section by section grocery shopping list, go home, post your menu, and each meal follow that step by step instructions. The meals are EASY to fix and most are pretty quick! They are GREAT recipes that are very filling! We are pretty picky eaters and have loved most of the meals! We even crossed one off this week that we didn't like, and it was simple to mark off the grocery list what we didn't need.

It is really awesome! It's only $5 a month and the groceries run about $75-80 a week! There are all kinds of menu choices: meals for 4, meals for 2, low-fat, low-carb! It's GREAT!!! And the best part is we haven't went out to eat in over a week! YES! Think of the money we are saving!!!

Check it out and make sure you give me referral credit! deanfamilync@hotmail.com The link is on the side bar!