Photo Documenting

My breakfasts now consist of a smoothie with cocoa and greens every morning followed a couple hours later by the eggs, bacon and sometimes spinach. Since I put a full banana in every smoothie, I would not be surprised if the pounds started to come back on. This morning I made breakfast for my husband after letting him sleep in a little. It looked something like 2 eggs with red onion and fresh basil leaves topped with some heirloom tomatoes, bacon, wilted spinach with mushrooms, an orange juice spritzer with frozen peach slices, a fresh fig from a friend's tree and a couple of primal doughnut holes sprinkled with cinnamon. Voila!

We've been eating some really great meals lately. I have been having amazing burger salads with pickles, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, tomatoes and onion drizzled with balsamic and olive oil. I would definitely eat this every day if I could keep the burgers stocked. We made our own heirloom tomato sauce to which I added some ground beef and we poured it on spaghetti squash next to a side salad. I made lamb meat balls and we ate them in cabbage wrap form with homemade baba ghanouj, tahini, tomatoes and pickle relish. We had giant steaks that lasted two days and a sweet potato kugel that was to die for! These are some of my favorites and we finished them off with some homemade coconut milk/chocolate ice cream drizzled with almond butter and topped with sliced banana. All of this was no dairy, no grains, no legumes, no sugar (except for the fruit) and organic produce and pastured or grass-fed meat. So, with all these amazing meals.... what will the scale say? Well, I've been eating this way the whole time and losing pounds. I will have to wait for the next exam to see.

Photo Documenting

The past couple of days I have been really crampy and my belly looks huge to me. Again, I can't tell if it's from the food or my laziness about flexing my ab muscles or sucking it in. I definitely feel full all the time. Yesterday I was so crampy that I was sure I would wake up with a larger belly today because all that discomfort is probably my insides growing at an incredible rate. My pants are definitely beginning to feel tight.
Long before I became pregnant, I decided I was going to photo-document my growth. This is not at all uncommon but I wanted to have a cool background. I decided that I would stand infront of a large mural that I have been working on and hopefully over the months it will get finished and thus change from weeks to weeks in the photos. Here are the first two photos. Sometime this week I will be taking my "14 weeks" photo (if the sun will ever come back out).

Favorite Foods and Working Out

Breakfast has pretty much been the same every morning, with the exception of adding a smoothie every other day. I love my eggs. They are my favorite thing to eat and believe it or not, bacon is second. My body just really wants that choline I guess. Sometimes when I'm done with breakfast I think, maybe I could just do the egg part again. I haven't had too much trouble with the greens. Spinach is my first choice, but I know kale is better. I try to switch off every once in a while. I even tried taking some sauteed mushrooms and leftover kielbasa and adding it to the kale mix. Good move.

Favorite Foods
Most of the time the food we are really drawn to or have strong cravings for contain some nutrient that our body is telling us it needs. I think the first thing is pretty obvious, as it is something I have every morning (see above pics).
Cholula- This is something I used to eat back in college days and decided to recently buy a bottle because I remember loving it's smoky flavor. It's not a very hot sauce, but the taste is amazing. I have been regularly dousing my eggs with it in the morning, but now I'm starting to lighten it up a bit and appreciate the taste of the actual eggs.
Seaweed salad- I bought a container of this at Costco and had to pry myself away from eating it all in one sitting. It is a little on the sweeter side and has an alkaline feeling in my stomach which makes it good for me to eat when feeling a little nauseous. Seaweed has numerous beneficial nutrients including:  iodine, calcium, vitamins A and B-12, protein and fiber. I have been worried a little about my calcium levels because I haven't had broccoli in a while and I know that it is the best source of calcium of all green plants. But wait! Actually, seaweed is the best source. I really just found this out after having decided we should have broccoli with dinner. Broccoli contains 1 third of the amount of calcium compared to a portion of seaweed that is 35% smaller. Now I know why I want it so bad.
Horseradish mustard- We bought this at whole foods (it's their brand) and I can't find enough excuses to eat it! I love it. What could possibly be in it that I need? Besides boosting the body's intake of certain vitamins and minerals it also contains small amounts of selenium, magnesium, phosphorus and calcium. The mustard seeds themselves have insignificant amounts of various vitamins and minerals as well. This one may just be a typical vinegar/salt craving.
Pickles and Tahini- This is my substitute for pickles and peanut butter. By no means is this a craving I developed while being pregnant. The combination of pickles and pb has been around since I was a kid and my dad used to make it into sandwiches. I loved it then and still do, but since I don't eat peanut butter I had to find a comparable substitute. Tahini had the right salty alkaline qualities to offset the crisp, cool dill pickle. Sesame seeds are also on some lists for superfoods during pregnancy because they contain high levels of calcium besides their contribution to daily needs of thiamin, phosphorus and copper.
It's funny how I thought I wasn't getting enough calcium.
Lamb- The lamb meatballs we made the other night were amazing as usual and of course go extremely well with the homemade baba ghanouj and tahini I've been eating. It would seem as though I'm on a middle-eastern kick. The lamb is obviously helping with the high amounts of iron a pregnant woman needs to keep up energy levels while growing all that extra blood. I am truly lucky that we have access to such high quality lamb through our CSA with Herondale Farm.
Tomatoes- I have been eating quite a lot of tomatoes lately. I don't know if it is because we have access to so many during this time of year, or if I'm just drawn to their sweetness. I really like the little grape tomatoes I can pop in my mouth like candy. We have also been buying some heirloom tomatoes from farms and some of these are just amazing sliced and eaten as is. The flavor is crazy sometimes, like it has been seasoned. All it takes is a little splash of balsamic or a pinch of salt and I could eat a bowl full of tomato salad. I am definitely missing the luxury of goat or feta or buffalo mozzarella cheese bits though.  :(
Taken from LiveStrong.com:
"Like most vegetables, the tomato is nutrient-rich, supplying your body with essential vitamins and minerals needed for good health. A 1 cup serving of chopped or sliced tomatoes contains 25 mg of vitamin C, 27 mcg of folate, 1,499 IU of vitamin A and 427 mg of potassium. Vitamin C is necessary for the formation of collagen, and the support protein for your skin and ligaments. Folate is a B vitamin necessary for the formation of red blood cells and DNA. Vitamin A supports growth and health of teeth and bones. Potassium is a mineral needed for proper heart function and muscle contractions."

Besides the above foods, I have of course been having cravings of milk and cheese and soft, squishy rolls with onions on them and all the other things I see at the store. I smell all the cheeses on display at Whole Foods and daydream about my favorite sharp cheddar to the point of almost tasting it. I smelled a baguette the other night and was having a really hard time walking away from it. I'm pretty sure I seem like a crazy person... but it is worth it. I smell my husband's sangria, barrels of roasted coffee beans and anything that has an aroma to stop me in my tracks. It's always only the things I can't have. Sometimes I think if I smell it long enough I can recall that smell and imaginary taste later when sitting on the couch imagining my future re-introduction to these foods. It makes my mouth water and I almost start chewing on my own tongue. I decided that as soon as I can eat bread and cheese again I will get myself a baguette and a good hunk of cheese and put slices of the cheese in the baguette and eat it just like I did in France at 16 years old. The way I figure it is, if I breastfeed for a year after my due date I only 560 days until I can have this dream come true. If I breastfeed for 1 1/2 years that makes 742 days. Geez. That's not a bummer....

For lunch today I had leftover spaghetti squash with meat sauce and a little seaweed salad for some greens. This meat sauce is a total comfort food for me. I can't get enough of it! Definitely gonna have a huge stash of this for when the baby comes. Below is a picture of a dinner we had with sausage and organic farm peppers and an heirloom tomato and arugula salad on the side. Also another favorite meal maybe because it is so extremely easy.

Working Out
I finally got off of my lazy ass yesterday and went to the gym again. I haven't been feeling as exhausted during the day as I was before, so now I really have no excuse for not working out.

Yesterdays WOD:
Squat cleans- I did 5 at 65lbs. - 5 at 85 lbs. - 5 at 105 lbs.

10 chin ups (I did ring rows)
15 sec Support hold on the rings

3 rounds (I only completed 2 in the time allowed)

Barbell Complex:
5 – Deadlift
2 – Hang power clean
2 – Front squat
2 – Front rack lunge (alt legs)
2 – Hang power clean
5 – Deadlift

***10 rounds***

-The entire complex must be unbroken. If the bar is dumped at any time, the round must be started over
-increase the weight by 5-10 lbs each round

I did 8 rounds total: 5 rounds at 65 lbs. - 1 at 85 lbs. - 1 at 75 lbs. - 1 at 65 lbs.

We got to see our little guy/girl on Tuesday at a sonogram appointment. I will get into detail in the next post.

Dinner tonight is fish and broccoli. We bought some wild Hake at Costco. It is a mild white fish and comes in a long skinny piece that reminded me of fish and chips.

Liver

I ate a smaller breakfast today- 2 eggs, 1 piece of bacon, a little bit of arugula and onion in my eggs and a couple of slices of tomato and avocado. Oh yes, and I added more Cholula, which still seemed to be not enough. I love that smoky flavor.

Not much going on today. It's 90 degrees and there's a crazy storm outside. I had another burger salad for lunch and we got our CSA meat for the month. I have been excited to see what form of lamb we are getting because I've been craving it since we had lamb-burgers last time around. Turns out we are having lamb sausage and peppers for dinner with a salad of course. Yum!

Liver
We also got plenty of chicken liver, so my husband made liver paté. Liver is important as a source of iron, folic acid and vitamin A. I agreed that I would add this to my diet and hopefully he did a great job and it tastes better than I imagine. I didn't grow up on the stuff, so we'll see.
In a guest post on Mark's Daily Apple by Chris Kresser he counts liver as number one in his list of superfoods for pregnant women:
 "1. Liver. Ounce for ounce, liver is one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. It’s loaded with fat soluble vitamins like retinol (pre-formed vitamin A) that are crucial for reproductive health, and difficult to obtain elsewhere in the diet. Liver is also a great source of highly absorbable iron, which helps prevent miscarriage and maternal anemia, and B12, which is required for proper formation of red blood cells and DNA. Liver is also a good source of bioavailable protein, zinc, and folate."

It looks better than it tastes, which doesn't say much. My husband did a good job though. I think I can get used to it if I find a good recipe for a primal cracker to spread it on.