Fruit... Veggies.... and special sauce.

So we also went to get fruit and veggies.  Tons of them!  When you don't eat sugar sometimes all you need is a little sweetness to finish off your meal.  Fruit is perfect (most of the time).  We went to Rancho Markets in Provo.  It had really cheap fruit. (you have to pick through it and it might have been there for a while so it needs to be refrigerated but it was delicious to eat!)

And then Sunflower market (in Orem) is kind of a farmers market/health food store.  The fruit there was better but not as cheap.  Still a good price though. The best thing I have in my day is this delicious fruit smoothie from (once again) my awesome SIL Leah:

Take 2 peeled cold oranges, throw them in a blender, add 2 ice cubes.
Blend till smooth
Add  2 bananas blend till smooth.

I only use one of each because I have a small blender (sort of like a magic bullet) and eat it with my daily bowl of oatmeal.  You can also add any fruit to it.  Left over berries, pineapple, mango are some of the different kinds I have tried.  All delicious!

We also got lots of veggies

Jicama
avocados
cucumbers
yellow and orange peppers
sweet potatoes

I love this sweet potato dish  from Leah.  It's seems a little hard at first cause I don't have fresh herbs sitting around or the dressing or the feta.  But once you get it.... BAM!  This will be a simple veggie dish you do often.  Or every night for a week, like me.  It's that good people.  

Special Sauce:
I got some Greek yogurt from Costco.  Then I made Ranch dip with the Ranch powder packet.  Regular Ranch has sugar people! And lots of garbage.  So this is a good way to make dips for those veggies and I also use it for a salad dressing when I make taco salad.  I spread it on a turkey sandwich too.  Delish!

Day 1

 1*8.5 (Starting weight.  There's an asterisk cause, seriously, I don't want everyone to know my weight, thank you very much.)

OK so maybe it's because I was taught never to waste food but today I ate everything in the house that's left with sugar in it. Maybe it wasn't everything, but it was a crap load of junk that I never would have eaten otherwise. I also thought, "This is the last time I'm going to have ice cream in a long time." Way to start, Carly, way to start. 

So my resident expert, Leah (sister-in-law), took me to a few places to get started.  We first went to Alpine food storage where this lady (who has 11 children, and one on the way, by the way...off topic) sells lots of healthy food storagey stuff.  Leah has me get maple syrup for starters cause its one of her fav things to substitute for sugar in recipes.  And she doesn't feel sick when she eats it.
We also get
Coconut cream
Shredded coconut
Spelt, Which until now I thought it was svelte.  Silly Carly.
and a Pure Agave Nectar (agave apparently can have corn syrup and other fillers in it if you don't get the right kind.  I think this is called volcanic something or other)

Next we go to Good Earth.  Now I am luckily more familiar with this place.  I have been a healthy wanna be for a long time but I've never really gone off sugar so this will be interesting.


She showed me her favorite crunchy cracker type thing that has no sugar.  It's good for when you need something crunchy and sort of salty (not too salty though). They are called sesame garlic crackers and are found in the bulk section.  Leah likes these on salads and so forth. 
 And we also got a licorice for when you need something chewy and sweet. Its a cherry flavor with a panda on the box.

So this is my start.  So far, so good.  I haven't really gotten the hang of anything yet but I think its good to start with little steps.  I did a Superfoods diet once and I jumped strait in.  All day, every day I was making crazy recipes with ingredients I had never worked with before. Eric and I still laugh at the recipe that we call "Chicken Balls".  Not to be dirty or anything but they were literally balls of chicken (and walnuts, yogurt and basil or something) but we had balls of chicken for dinner.  It was a nightmare.  It lasted 2 weeks. 
I lost 3 lbs and gained it back right away. 

So we are doing this slowly.  I still ate pizza for dinner that night. Maybe this shouldn't be called day one.  How about day zero?

Ok, that's it! Cut me out of these pants. (Why I went off sugar)

So I know you've all been there.  Right?  When you go to pull out your summer clothes and you think, "Oh Yeah!  I love these pants." and then you go to pull them on and the thigh won't go over your calf.  Well, at least not as easily as they used to.  And then you pull them up and squeeze them over your butt and then you realize there is absolutely no way that you are going to button them without some Crisco and a second person involved. 

Maybe it didn't happen that way for you but I'm there.  Now.

 I could make the excuse that I just had a baby and I'm nursing.  But he's five months old and I still look six months pregnant.  And I could make the excuse that I have 2 babies, 17 months apart and I don't get more than 5 hours of sleep in a row at night and exercise is the LAST thing I think of doing during my free time. But I never really exercised after my first baby and I fit in those pants just fine.  And I could make the excuse that blah blah blah....

But I still feel tired, fat and too depressed to buy new size (blank) pants to wear while I weigh this much.

But I can't do one of my cleanses that are usually my "go to" diet.  I'm nursing. So I decided I was going off sugar. Seriously going off.  Not just skipping dessert, but actually not eating anything with the word sugar on the label.

 Intense, I know.

Then as I started thinking about it I started finding out several people in my life were doing the same thing and have been for a while.  And it was working!  My cute sister-in-law had been doing it mostly cause her health was not good and she had found that sugar was the main cause.  As a side effect, she said she was smaller than she had been since 8th grade!  Not sure if she was exaggerating but I'll take it.

And then my BFF has been doing it for 4 months and had easily lost 20 lbs.  I know that's not a lot in a short amount of time but she's little already and she said it was the easiest 20 lbs she's ever lost.   Her husband had lost more than 30 and he was still eating weird stuff at work.

So I enlisted their help and started doing it.  I want to blog this so if it works I can send people here and they can see how I did it.

 I also am the kind of person that plans dinner at about 5 pm and usually ends up feeding my family chicken quesadilla's cause that's what we have.  And I don't like recipes that have more than 5... maybe 7 ingredients.  I try some with more because that's what you have to do but it's usually going to be stuff I already have around the house with a few new ingredients I got at the health food store. 

Ok so wish me luck!