This weird low-carb low-meat diet I’m attempting is tough for several reasons, but the thing I struggle with the most is snacks and dessert. These little cookies, which I’ve named Nutty Cocoa Cookies function as both of those things for me. They’re a bit salty, rich, and sweet (but not too sweet). And I can keep them in the freezer and pull out a few at a time when I’m feeling snacky.

They aren’t really cookies in the traditional sense, but let’s not dwell on that fact okay? I need to feel like my diet doesn’t feel like deprivation, and you can’t feel deprived when you are eating cookies. Right?

These are adapted from a four ingredient recipe I found at Whole Family Fare. My recipe has six ingredients because I added cocoa and salt.

First, whir your almonds around in the food processor until they are are ground up. I know they’re done when they just start to get moist (you want them to be ground really fine or it affects the texture of the cookie and isn’t as good).

That right there is my Blendtec with the Twister Jar attachment.  I personally like my Blendtec a lot more than the Vitamix (which my mom has) but I think either is a great choice.

Add in cocoa, vanilla, peanut butter, and salt. Blend a bit more. If your peanut butter is dry (ours is the natural kind and when TH mixed it up he added extra oil and made it really soupy) add coconut oil. You’ll definitely need coconut oil if you grind your peanuts from scratch (if you do that, grind your peanuts first, remove from the processor, then do the almonds).

The last thing I add is the dates. I like adding them last because sometimes they don’t get ground up all the way and then you get nice juicy date bits in your cookie balls. Find the medjool variety if you can. They cost more but all the foodies say it’s worth it.

Once it’s all ground together you should have a mass that looks a little bit like this. If yours is looking dry, add some coconut oil or peanut butter.
[Read the rest of this entry...]

I’m really not that great at writing posts about day-to-day life. I admire those who do, and I want to be like them, but it doesn’t seem to work that way for me. Here are a few updates on our life.

I went out and took two year pictures of T1 last week. The light was great right up until we got outside and started shooting (of course) so I think I’m going to give it another try, in the same spot where we did the first portion of our family pictures. Wrangling a two year old all by yourself can be tough, but I like that doing it solo means the majority of pictures are more photo-journalistic than they might be otherwise. He is free to run and dig and play and I scurry all over the place trying to catch him in action. I want the pictures to reflect what he is really like at this age (busy, happy, independent).

On Saturday I photographed a wedding, my second and sadly last one this year. Photography businesses are built on referrals, and it’s hard to grow and build a client base when you are moving as often we have. Not to mention a summer schedule like mine, where in a 14 week period I will go from Chicago to Washington to Provo to San Francisco to Poland to San Francisco to Thailand and back to San Francisco again. Of course I want all of these things to happen, but I like weddings and I like photography and I would love to be doing more of it. I’m working hard to accept that I can only do so much at one time. Know anyone getting married in July in Utah that needs a wedding photographer? I’m game.

This school quarter has been the toughest one yet for us. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Readers, meet Aims. If you’re part of the Facebook group you may know her as Aims Ca. She is a really inspiring success story from TWLC2 and I’m so happy she was willing to share her story here. I think a rewards chart that broke down my goals and paired them with rewards (not just weight goals, but fitness and nutrition goals as well) is something that would work very well for me! First, let’s read her story, and then you can see the amazing results she has achieved! She lost 16.63% of her body weight, or 58 lbs during the course of TWLC2.

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I hit my perfect adult weight according to the charts and graphs in 8th grade. By high school graduation I was closing in on 200 lbs. I continued to gain weight until I exceeded 400 lbs in July of 2011. Only twice did I really try to diet and I lost a few pounds but they came back on over time. Last year I decided that I was not living the life I wanted. I did nothing on weekends because I needed to sleep. I was miserable and my work was suffering. I decided that it was time. It is not that I did not know what I needed to do. I have a degree in Human Nutrition (Yeah, that is embarrassing to admit.)

I read a couple of books Food: The Good Girl’s Drug: How to Stop Using Food to Control Your Feelings bySunny Sea Gold and The Small Change Diet: 10 Steps to a Thinner, Healthier You by Keri Gans . I started to apply the principles in these books and cleaned out the kitchen. This was not a diet this is a lifestyle change. I found mynetdiary.com and started logging what I ate. I like the calculators in mynetdiary and the recipe builder. Logging intake has been critical to me. If I have a bad food day I log it. If I eat it I log it. I have to be honest and accountable to myself at the end of the day. I started making a salad everyday for lunch. (I fill up 2 relish trays every Sunday with chopped vegetables). I have a job in the food industry so I have to taste products throughout the day.

I bought a basic treadmill that would handle my weight and started walking. It took me a few weeks to be able to walk a mile in 35 minutes. I got a Fitbit. I love my Fitbit it is with me 24/7. I needed an activity gauge so I know I am getting enough movement in my day. My days are variable at work so I can walk 2,000 to 10,000 steps depending on the day. I am trying to hit 10,000 steps a day. During TWLC2 I walked 227 miles on the treadmill.

I was on a secret mission for the first 4 months and no one really noticed or commented. I had been stalking That Wife and knew another TWLC was going to start. I decided that I would join to get some motivation and to boost my accountability. I joined twitter and facebook to have more interactions. This was key to my continued success. I had lost just over 50 lbs when TWLC2 started and hoped to knock off another 50 during it. Well I managed to do slightly better with a 58lb loss. I am not even halfway done with my weight loss but TWLC2 helped with that first 100.

By December the secret mission part was over and I had to admit to working on losing weight. I was surprised by the mental part of the journey at this point it was good to have the TWLC facebook group and twitter to see that others were struggling too. Knowing this was a long project I started a 101 in 1001 list setup to follow on this journey. I also decided on some big rewards that should be part of the 101. I have a chart with rewards for hitting goals. I included every 10% of what I want to lose, every 100 miles on the treadmill, every million fitbit steps, and every stone lost (14 lbs.). I have found that moving ping pong balls from the need to lose to have lost jar is pretty rewarding.

I have gone through a lot of pants sizes from 32 to 20. The Salvation Army is loving my donations, which includes 14 garbage bags so far. I am limiting my pants to 2-3 pairs in a size but that adds up to a lot of laundry. My size 4x lab coast would not snap last July now it overlaps about 8 inches.

I am grateful that I have a support system online and IRL that is there for me when I hit a rough spot. I know that this first 100 was hard in the getting started and committing but easy in the shock to the system. The next 100 will be harder and the last 50 or so will be killer. I do not know where my happy weight will be, but I will be much healthier and I am already happier.

It was great to run up and down the soccer field with my friends kids at Easter. Last year we walked around the block and I was dying. I am looking forward to TWLC3. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Last year I booked a really big wedding. I wanted the pictures to be perfect, and the key to good coverage for me is having an excellent second shooter. What better second shooter to hire than the person who photographed my own wedding? So I flew Kelli Nicole in and we worked together all day Saturday photographing a gorgeous wedding. I couldn’t have done it without her.

While she was here, she did our family pictures! I’m really excited with how they turned out.

The first half of the session was very short, done in the freezing cold wind just a few blocks from our apartment.

The second half was in our bedroom. We did puzzles, read books, jumped on the bed, and snuggled and laughed a whole lot.

Thanks so much Aunt Kelli! You take such good care of us and we love you.

It’s going to take me some time to get through all of them, but I’m really excited to share with all of you.

How did everyone else do? I’m not really down on the scale, but I definitely feel better. I did pretty good with my goals, but there were some areas of improvement. I didn’t run 3x (only twice, I was going to do the third run the morning of  my wedding on Saturday (where I was scheduled to shoot for at least 12 hours) but That Husband convinced me that was kind of insane and so I only got two runs in this week). I did great on dessert, barring some dark chocolate (maybe that should be an exception in moderation?), and forgot to start weighing my cheese right away but I have high hopes about doing better next week.

I decided to start a new feature in these posts, featuring two pictures from my food blog.

Best food choice I made this week:

I love both of these dishes and hope to eat them regularly. The asparagus salad is an adapted version of this one from 101 Cookbooks, using basil instead of cilantro and adding in nutritional yeast to give it a cheesy taste. The one in the foreground is a celery, dill, and apple salad similar to this one.

Worst food choice I made this week:

I was trying really hard to limit my carbohydrates, and I’d like to completely eliminate the processed white variety (barring dessert 1x/week). We were out and about and I waited far too long to eat and I chose to snack on some of these.

Tell me about your first week of TWLC3.