Pumpkin biscuits and weight fluctuations, related?

Hey friends!

It's Tuesday! That means we are that much closer to the weekend, haha. It's funny, when I went back to work I thought that I would countdown to the weekend, but I really was so busy that it seemed like each Friday would creep up super fast. Now that the kids and I are hanging out together all day, every day, I miss Daddy more, haha.

With that being said, I've been so happy and extra fulfilled with this decision, even though Cora is going through a massive turn with the terrible two's. Little Miss has quite the attitude and throws one hell of a tantrum, but we are working on helping her to not get frustrated. I think a lot of it has to do with her still not having much of a vocabulary to literally speak of, so she gets angry when she is misunderstood or feels ignored. I read an article last week about more mindful and involved parenting with children up to age 3, since it can more effectively help them deal with emotions. I forget how they described it, but it was like the Mom acts as an emotional gauge for the child, so I've been working on being available and not getting frustrated. We read more books, get down on the floor more and I've been messing with my phone less. So, all around a win!

I've also been putting way more effort in to doing the romantic ideals of being a stay at home Mom-ing. For instance...I COOKED PLAYDOUGH TODAY. We found a recipe on Pinterest and Ryker and I pulled out the ingredients, mixed 'em up, colored it blue and the kids are happily playing with cookie cutters. You know what I learned during this activity? My kid knows fractions! I asked him how many halves made up one whole, and he said two, like "duh, Mom". He also knew how many thirds made a whole, but I got him at how many scoops were needed with the 1/4 tsp to get to 1 tsp. He's so dang smart. I read him the recipe for playdough and the ingredients before the gym. When we walked in the door after we got home he was like "alright Mom, when I get my shoes off, we need flour, water, salt and blue coloring, that's what you said was in the recipe". I swear that kid remembers more than I do throughout the day. He reminds me of my grocery list, the fact that he listens and remembers my every word is fantastic...until he repeats some of the less than wonderful words that I use, haha.

My weight is mysteriously up to 138 pounds today. That's a five pound increase from last week which is fuckin' nuts, man. I've had some untracked treats, but not that much, so I'm guessing either my period is coming, or the cauliflower that I've welcomed back is still sitting in my digestive tract for insane amounts of time. Considering that with my marathon training on top of my powerlifting plan and the overall increased NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis) that comes with no longer being stuck in my car, but instead walking the dogs, cleaning the house, chasing the kids, etc, I just don't see how the slight increase we've made with my intake could lead to this much of a weight gain that quickly.

This is extra confusing and frustrating because (I overthink everything, but not the point I'm making), I'm wanting to gain strength and muscle while running this much. Now, I know those things are usually seen as mutually exclusive, you can't run this much and gain muscle, but you can if you do it mindfully. I read this cool article about a guy that referred to himself as a strength runner. My calories are still relatively low coming off of that prep, so I worry about losing muscle and bla bla bla. I had my longest run yet on Sunday, 7.5 miles and my plan called for a 10 min mile pace. Some people might find that super slow, but I've never claimed to be fast, haha. It took me a little over an hour and ten minutes to finish and I felt great afterwards. Yesterday, I squatted 140 lbs for three sets of 10, deadlifted 170 for three sets of 10 and benched 80 lbs for 4 sets of 10.

I write all of that and I'm like damn, girl! If I read about someone else doing all of this shit, the last thing that would stick with me was their weight being at 138 or that they gained five pounds in a week, except for thinking that the weight must just be a weird anomaly for the week, in fact, as a coach, I'd probably tell her to take a week off, haha. But alas, when do we ever allow ourselves the breaks we would suggest to others? I'm using this week to prepare for a fantastic off day on Sunday, lately I haven't been planning my workout well to allow for that, but I'm going to move my long run from Sunday to Saturday so that I can have one total rest day.

Now, if you successfully made it through all of that rambling, I am going to present you with a fantastic pumpkin biscuit recipe that I worked on last week! I started with one I found on Pinterest, but found that the dough just wasn't what I wanted it to be so I made some tweaks. I made FOUR batches before this one came out the way I wanted the biscuits to be! This makes a ton of biscuits, but it came out best this way.

Pumpkin Biscuits

1 can of pumpkin puree
5 cups of flour
2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
2 sticks of frozen butter
3/4 cup sour cream (full fat)
3/4 cup of milk

Pre heat the oven to 450. Mix together the dry ingredients and whisk them up so they are fully incorporated. I learned the fancy new trick of grating the sticks of frozen butter in to the flour mixture with a cheese grater. As you grate the butter, try to get it to land all over the bowl covering the flour mixture evenly. Mix the sour cream and milk in another bowl until smooth, then pour evenly over butter and flour and mix all of it with your hands. Then, I spooned in the pumpkin so that it got evenly mixed throughout the dough. It also helped to pick up the dry spots of flour. As you knead the mixture into a ball, your hands will warm the butter and help the mixture get incorporated. Once it is, place it on a floured cutting board.

Roll out the dough to about 1inch thickness. Don't go any thinner, in fact thicker may be better! Flour the dough as needed to get it there, I didn't have trouble with it getting to dry during this part. Using a round cookie cutter, or a mason jar, cut out the biscuits and place them close together on a greased baking sheet.

Start by baking them for 10 minutes, then check them! They will rise and have those super sweet layers that Grands Biscuits do! These overcook quickly, so err on the side of caution. I think that I found 12 minutes was perfect in my oven.

I suggest keeping them in a tight container in the fridge, the pumpkin makes me nervous, haha. I found they tasted downright amazing when you microwave one for about 10-15 seconds and topped it with Nutella. Oh. My. Goodness. Enjoy!

Building a smaller waist

Yo, yo, yo, friends! It's Tuesday, yay!

Yesterday was damn near the most productive day of my life. I hit 27,333 steps yesterday!

I woke up at the lovely hour of 4:30 with Vic, like always, and once he was out the door I was on my treadmill and I knocked out 5 miles to get the day going. Ryker scared the shit out of me by sneaking up behind me, and the day was off and running. We had a painter come out and do some touchups, and luckily he came during the first thirty minutes of the four hour window they gave us, so we got to the gym nice and early after taking the dogs on their morning walk. 

Paul and I switched gears to a powerlifting training plan and it has been nothing short of amazing. I thrive on goals and checking boxes (which is why I thought sales would be cool, I was wrong, haha), and so I do better with his training plans than just going in to the gym and auto-regulating my workout. There are days for auto-regulation, but I enjoy his plans much more! Yesterday I had 3 sets of 10 for squat (140lbs), bench (75lbs) and deadlift (165lbs). I'm taking more time to warm up for each lift with foam rolling and stretching and slowly working up to the working set weight and I've noticed a HUGE difference in my performance! I'm going to try and post more training videos to my IG when I can, so come join the party over there!

We stopped off at Wal-Mart, or the Sunshine Store, as Ryker likes to call it, for pumpkin biscuit ingredients. It may have taken four batches, but I adjusted the recipe I found to make my own recipe and they turned out AMAZING. Vic is having a little awards event at work today and that was what I volunteered for the spread. I also made pumpkin butter which turned out super tasty, but looked like brains in the mason jar. Oh well. I'll post the biscuit recipe later this week!

Once the kids were down, I actually got off my lazy butt, paused Grace and Frankie and kept my word to follow along with the Clean Mama's schedule for easy house cleaning. Go follow her on IG! She posts daily tasks and it really does help. This week, my goal is to stay on schedule and hopefully it will help my at home tasks not get to the "Jesus, why is there so much to do?!" point. I scrubbed and wiped down all three bathrooms and felt super accomplished, and the smell of Comet also made me feel like I have almost completed my transformation into my Mother. Shout out to Momma and her incessant cleaning.

I hit my macros on point, but I also added in an untracked glass of red while baking because guys...baking biscuits is fucking stressful! I'm a cook, where I can fudge stuff and make it up as I go, baking is so damn specific and precise and luckily, I'm finding my groove with more and more practice. I'm also working on not being such a food weirdo, haha, so of course I had to take a sample bite of each batch of biscuits. I can't tell you how much baking I did last year where I didn't try anything because of macros! Ugh.

I started this post with a point in mind and then got away from myself. I was pretty stoked on how I looked and felt this morning and took a quick Count Mickula selfie in my kitchen and was pleasantly surprised by my lats. That led me to want to share how you can BUILD a smaller waist, by working on your back! I love training my back because it makes me feel so strong, and I have just a few absolute favorites that I love to use. The idea here is that by building the muscles in your back (which are super sexy and really show off that you're a badass in the gym), you create the illusion of a smaller waist because you create that taper.

Favorite back exercises:
Kneeling single arm cable pulldown
V-Bar pulldown
Seated cable row
Underhand bent over barbell row

For the first two, I suggest going light and high rep until you really learn how to get that mind muscle connection, sometimes I like to place my non-working hand on my working lat to ensure I'm feeling it properly. The right muscle activation is way better than working heavy! Go with a weight that is challenging but allows you to get to 10-12 reps for the cable row, keep that back straight and doing roll your shoulders forward all crazy. For the bent rows, keep that low back in check and always go for form over heavy weight. I track all of my workouts in BodySpace, an app from Bodybuilding.com and they have awesome videos and tips for every exercise!

From there, I'll stop blabbing and get my day started! Happy Tuesday, friends, I'll talk to you soon!

Where'd my abs go? Friday's are for pizza and ice cream, duh.

I had Papa John’s and two pints office cream yesterday, and we’re going to talk about I can stay on track while making crazy decision like that and still getting in plenty of veggies!

I broke down and weighed myself, haha. I took about a week off from it, and it felt good! I’m not going to jump back in to my daily weigh ins, but I am going to keep an eye on the scale a few days a week in an effort to keep things from getting too far out of control. Because even though this is improvement season, I’m still a crazy control freak!

So, I was 134 yesterday. The last time I weighed myself was right before my parents visited, and I was 132. A few days before that I was 128 lbs. Moral of the story here, is that the second I stop cutting super hard, my body puts weight back on. That is what it should do! I kept an inconsistent period throughout this last cut, so my hormones aren’t nearly as out of whack as they could be, but my body needs to get back to normal and putting fat back on will get me there. Would it be nice to walk around with super visible abs all the time? Hell yea! Does my body do that while also allowing me to enjoy life (because food+enjoyment go hand in hand here, I love food)? Nope. In the past, I would let myself get heartbroken about this. But, my Coach said something in one of his recent podcasts that has been helping me out, in comparison to people who aren’t so focused on shredded abs and aesthetics, I have strong, visible abs, I have definition, I’m athletic and it’s crazy that I need to see each bit of my lower abs to feel accomplished. That might sound vain, but it’s the truth. I still look good, even if it’s not the best I’ve looked. That’s the hard part about the stage and prep, you see your body at its peak abilities and then have to let it go until next time.

But, I digress. The point of this post is that I had pizza and ice cream yesterday and I want to tell you how to balance it out. So, I hit my macros like a boss yesterday, but I also finished my macros by about 2 pm. This is normal for me, and I like to not be bloated at bedtime so this is my normal routine. Those macros included a pint of Cookie Shake Arctic Zero, which I truly love, the key is to let it melt for about 15 minutes which happened to be how long it took me to get home from Wal-Mart. #winning

My post workout meal was that pint of Arctic Zero and this bowl of cauliflower-oats topped with whit chocolate chips and peanut butter, and fat free Reddi -whip because its AMAZING. 

Then, Vic got home from a long day of work and was craving Papa John’s. We never order Papa John’s and I had a crazy AMRAP squat and bench day, so I was pretty hungry. I had one slice of his sausage pizza, and for good measure, I also had a pint of Oatmeal Halo Top because it’s delicious, haha.  Saturdays are my refeed day, so I logged all of that on my Saturday My Fitness Pal entry. Papa John’s pizza comes to roughly 330 calories, 37 C, 15 F and 15 P for one slice from a large pizza. That Halo Top was 280 calories, 48 C, 8 F, and 24 P. I add a little trick in though, since I want to maximize muscle growth during this season of my training.

If you go in to My Fitness Pal and go to add a food, you’ll see there is a section for “my foods”, and then “create a food”. I have created two foods that I unfortunately use often, haha, they are titled Carb Overage and Fat Overage. Each gram of carb is 4 calories and each gram of fat is 9 calories. I just enter that in when creating the food, the serving size is set to 1 gram, but when I log it I can adjust the number of servings as needed.

So, there is a way to balance out wanting yummy foods, even on days where they may not fit your macros. Normally, Saturday is my refeed day, but I adjusted it to Friday. With everything I had, I managed to go over even those numbers by about 35 F (my refeed days have lower fats to account for the higher carbs) and 25 C. So, I will log those as overages for today's normal training day. No beating myself up, no starvation, just being accountable for the overage and moving forward. My day today won't be miserable and I don't feel guilty. 

We’ve got Ryker’s football practice this morning and then we might go to the Pumpkin Patch! This afternoon, a woman from our neighborhood is bringing her puppy over to introduce to our family because I may be dog sitting in early November. I figure if I’m home, I might as well do stuff like that for some extra cash! She offered $35 a day for 12 days, so that’s a pretty easy YES to me! Have a happy Saturday and feel free to ask any questions for macro help, just head to the Contact Me button for the best way to reach me!

Picking up where we left off

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

― Paramahansa Yogananda

 Hey friends!

I made a crazy decision last weekend, last Friday to be exact. Something was eating at me, and with my Mom and Dad in town and on a drive up to Busch Gardens, I knew the decision was something I had to follow through with. I had gone back to work over the summer, taking a sales job. Actually, with the same giant company that Vic works for! Vic loves his job, and I craved that same sense of outward approval and satisfaction that comes fro a job well done. I enjoyed my time in the Navy, and had hoped I would get a similar feeling that I used to get from solving problems and developing solutions while I was there.

I’ve tried sales before and I hated it. Turns out, I still hate it. My team offered support and training, but I still hated it. I don’t like to push things on people, I don’t like to push past objections and while I thought I would appreciate the sales goals, they wound up keeping me up at night. No joke, I would wake up to need to use the bathroom at 2 am and the first thing I would think about was work. Considering I had only been there for six week, I knew that this wasn’t going to be a healthy scenario for me.

I’m an outrageously anxious, overly stressed out person. Shit, I’m probably a fantastic candidate for anti-anxiety medication, but it’s just not something I want to bring in to my life. You see, I know that a lot of my day to day concerns and stress are self-produced. Ryker had brought up months ago that he wanted to go back to preschool. So, I started looking for word. When it didn’t happen as easily as I wanted it to, I got in my head about being a stay at home Mom and how people probably think I’m pathetic and haven’t accomplished anything and wouldn’t be good in the workplace. So, I took the first job I got offered and wanted to run with it, despite knowing that sales makes me super uncomfortable. I wanted it to work, but it just didn’t.

Worrying about what people think of you is just so dumb! In hindsight, I highly doubt that anyone gives a shit about what I do with my day, haha. I told Vic that I feel like I’ve seen the light with my being a stay at home Mom, I stepped away for a minute and I missed my babies and our routine and my ability to be there for Vic when he needed me the entire time. Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a powerful woman in the corporate world. No joke, my Mom has a plate I made when I was a kid where I drew myself in a pantsuit dreaming of being just like Barbara Walters. I used to watch her nightly as a small child, I’m not kidding, and dreamt of being a journalist. I loved Working Girl with Melanie Griffith, especially the scene where she walks in to work in her suit and tennis shoes and then changes in to her heels. Who knows why, I just loved it. That’s where I saw my life going.

Fast forward to now. The extra money would be super nice, but the extra time with my kids is nicer. In a year, Ryker starts school and I will never get this time in his life back where he has no outward obligations. So, I’m going to soak it up. I’m going to put a little more effort in to doing fun things, and I’m going to work with them myself on preparing for school. But, I’m also going to be kinder to myself, as a woman, a wife and a mother. I’m going to enjoy my life to the absolute max and help ensure that my family does the same.

 Vic threw my own favorite words at me while I struggled over the last few months to force myself into a groove that wasn’t right. “You can’t pour from an empty cup” and “you have to water your own grass”. So, here I am, with a full cup and my watering pail and I’m taking care of my home first and foremost. I’m working on solely making today a great day, and tomorrow, I will take care of tomorrow.

Today, the kids have their last day of daycare and I have an empty home, so I’m going to hit up the gym and get the house to what I like to think of as “beauty base zero” (hurry, name that book/movie!).  I would love to hear your thoughts and share stories and conversations on how you’ve found your groove! It’s time for me to start getting the day started, I’m happy to be back here with you guys and focusing on what I love and what brings me joy, so that hopefully I can light up my little part of the world just a bit more. I recognize that not everyone has the awesome opportunity to just walk away from a job like this, and I’m going to be sure to take full advantage of how lucky I am. Happy Friday, folks!