A little intro to kick things off.

This is post number one on my new blog!! I must admit I am very excited about this! I have been following a healthy diet since I did the six week fat-shredder through Tyson Method (thetysonmethod.com) and discovered how much better I feel as a result. 

A little. More about my diet (incase you wonder about ingredients) I am dairy and soy free because I am pumping breastmilk for my little boy who has reflux (not fun at all). If I don't stick to it, I have to deal with projectile vomit!

I know I know. So cute and definitely worth my effort! Basically I never cheat because the consequences are not worth it! 

Going dairy and soy free really kick started my healthy living. For one thing, literally every big chain restaurant uses soy in every dish. I mean every single one. It's a marinade, it's a chemical flavour enhancer and its the cheapest commercial oil to cook with. So ya. I had to stop eating out. And when I was out and about I have learned to bring food with me!  (Also, soy is estrogenic, meaning it triggers your fat-storing hormones. So on top of being usually a salt or fat, it's also telling your body to STORE excess fat! So cutting it out makes a big difference)

The second way going dairy and soy free helped me was the dairy part. So much of what I consumed about dairy was not healthy!! Butter, cream cheese, other cheeses, creams, etc. rarely was it a glass of milk or unsweetened Greek yogurt. I have also come to learn about lots of crap in milk (hormones etc...) and can genuinely say I feel better and more energetic, less moody etc without milk stuff!! I'm not saying I won't go back to dairy once I am done this wonderful world of lactation, but it will be limited for sure. 

So I have made replacements in my life! 

1) fast salads! I make a bean salad, wild rice salad, quinoa salad etc... At the beginning of the week and that is my go-to "fast food". If I know I will be out over lunch I bring some with me! If I am home, I add some chicken breast, salmon or tuna to these and I have a nice healthy lunch. 

2) coconut oil: now that butter is out, this is all I use. For cooking, baking etc... It's even good on corn on the cob!  I won't start a rant about how amazingly healthy coconut oil is. Just google it if you are curious. It's safe to say this has been a monumentally healthy change in my life. 

3) refined carbs: this one has just sort of evolved for no reason. Pretty much everything flour based I make whole wheat now, and I use lots of other sweetener options when I bake including dates, maple sugar, palm sugar, honey, agave, and maple syrup. It's more expensive, but to me that seems better proportioned to the amount of sugar we ought to consume anyway. We shouldn't be able to buy truckloads of it for pennies. 

4) a new recipe binder: filled with healthy recipes that I can eat. I put my other one in a less accessible spot and this is what I cook from. It has made me more creative in the Kitchen and raised my standards of what qualifies as healthy to me. 

Anyway, there's a little bit about me!

My plan is to use this blog to share all my creative cooking and baking. I have been increasingly creating things without recipes and it has been going very well! I hope you enjoy this blog and find it useful.