Friday Favorites

Can you believe it’s the first Friday of APRIL? Again, 1/4 of 2016 is already gone. Woah, Nelly.

In typical Friday fashion, i’m sharing my FAVORITES with you for this week. Join me and link-up with Erika, Andrea, and Narci.

Happy Friday to you!

The most exciting part of this past week was that Morgan and I threw together a little surprise for my parents. She had no intentions of coming home at all this semester, but when she told me her plans of leaving Gulf Shores halfway through their Spring Break I told her how fun it would be to have her surprise mom and dad. She agreed and we planned.

Our plan was that I would tell my parents I wanted to take them to lunch and when we’d walk in Morgan would be sitting there waiting for us. It worked for the most part, except Morg was awkward and didn’t know what to do so she went bouncing up to them and I couldn’t video it! ^ That was the best I got.

Pissed. Ha, just kidding, she’s in an intense conversation…aka probably being lectured by dad about something 😉

We got the cards going that night and enjoyed the rest of our weekend as a family of 6 again. So much fun.

My family has an obsession with Buffalo Wild Wings. Everyone but me that is. My siblings went for lunch that afternoon, but I tagged along for the company. You see, when Morgan isn’t here my brothers don’t want anything to do with me.

And then Sunday night she had to leave again. All good things come to an end, but as mom says, that just means she’s one day closer to coming home again.

While you northerners have been bundled up in your hats, coats, scarves, and snow flurries, we southerners have been laying out in our backyards catching some vitamin D. I’m usually not that excited for summer, but for some reason this year i’m seriously looking forward to it! This sun has been my FAVORITE lately and it’s putting me in the best spirits. I’ve been taking my reading out there while (hopefully) getting darker. We all know homegirl needs some of that.

On Tuesdays, I have a 3.5 hour break in between my classes. I dread it, but I’ve learned to take advantage of it. Usually I stay on campus, but this past week I drove to our nearest Starbucks and was pleasantly surprised to see this little outdoor area in the sun with comfortable cushioned chairs.

 

I pulled out my lunch, I got my coffee, and I ended up being so productive. It was one of those “ahhhh, I am seriously enjoying life right now” moments. You know those. This was definitely my FAVORITE 3.5 hours from this week.

For a while now I have been trying to get myself into hot tea. I just see all the advantages (on Pinterest of course) and I see how many people love it. I’ve been trying to detox lately and I picked up this Yogi Detox tea (which i’m totally loving) and sip on it right before bed while I finish up my blog or whatever it is that i’m doing. It seems like Yogi is everybody’s FAVORITE right now so I had to test it out. So far…2 thumbs up.

Okay. Hi, my name is Molly and i’m addicted to chocolate. And dessert. And having a chocolate dessert every night after dinner. Like it’s just a thing now. I was at the grocery store on Monday and snooped up and down each aisle as I always do. I’m notorious for spending way too much time at the grocery store.

WELL.

This week I came upon this little snack. And friends. My life is changed for the better. I have a chunk or two every night. It goes along with my food allergies to dairy and gluten, it’s healthy yet it’s dessert, and it’s in line with my sugar detox. Like, there’s no sugar (because it’s sweetened with date paste). A packaged product with no sugar? I about died. If you see it, just try my FAVORITE grocery store find.

A couple days ago I found this bag and within seconds of spotting it, I knew it was a keeper. It’s my FAVORITE. It’s big, it’s roomy, it’s perfect for these upcoming summer months. I’m totally loving all this light colors this year. Lots of white and stripes. Two of my FAVORITE things.

This week on the blog…

Monday I shared an update on my 2016 Bucket List. Some of my FAVORITE goals have been checked off already.

On Tuesday I shared what my talk show would look like if I had my own. You can bet two of my FAVORITE ladies were on there.

It was the first Wednesday of the month, so of course, I hosted my FAVORITE linkup…Bookworm Wednesday. It’s good stuff.

And yesterday I shared my FAVORITE go-to breakfast recipe at the moment. Healthy almond butter banana waffles for the win!

Have the best weekend!

The Sugar Detox

Hello! I told you this post would be coming eventually 🙂

As y’all know, I did a sugar detox from February 28 – March 11. I originally planned on doing a 21 day detox, but I chose to stop my detox before I went to Omaha last week. I decided to not worry about sugar because I knew it would be too difficult with eating out and the recipes my family was making. I really just didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.

Back in June of 2015, I did a 10 day sugar detox. But I didn’t really do it. A couple times I would get sugar free pumps of vanilla in my coffee and I would put 1/4 of a cup of sugar in my brownies and justified it by saying I was cutting down. NO! That didn’t do anything!

This time I decided to get real and take the detox seriously. I wanted to really see how it maximized all of my fitness efforts as well as how it made me feel.

Some things I learned:

1. YOU MUST READ LABELS.
2. If you aren’t sure of a specific ingredient from a label, google it or just skip the product.
3. Freaking pickles have high fructose corn syrup in them. Wtf?
4. Spices have sugar.
5. Ketchup (and many condiments) have sugar.
6. Peanut butter has sugar.
7. My protein powder has sugar.
8. Vanilla extract has sugar.
9. No breads (you’ll have to make your own…no worries there are plenty of recipes online!). Follow me on Pinterest to see some I pinned.
10. I started craving carbs because I wasn’t getting sugars. And carbs are a sugar. I also found myself craving salty foods too.
11. If you look up sugar detoxes on the internet, they all say different things. Some say you can’t have fruit, some can. Some say you can have a limited amount of artificial sweeteners and some don’t. I say yes to fruit and no to artificial sweeteners.
12. The sugar detox aligns with whole 30 if that’s something you’re interested in.
13. Grapes became dessert for me. They are SO SWEET now and so refreshing to me!
14. Just because it’s fruit doesn’t mean you can have it. Dried fruit is made with sugars so you need to read labels!

So how did I get some sugar/sweetness?

Date paste is what I used when a recipe called for sugar and I felt like it was needed. It’s super simple, you soak dates in water for 10 minutes, throw them in the food processor, and process until it’s a paste. I love it. I keep this in my refrigerator at all times now.

What did I do about condiments?

I made my own ketchup and stored it in a mason jar (it wasn’t pink like this picture makes it look like, I promise it’s red haha). I love this ketchup better than normal ketchup. I’ll never go back to buying ketchup again. It tastes so artificial and fake now!

I made my own BBQ sauce, too. 🙂

I also made my own mayonnaise and ranch dressing but I made it wrong so they didn’t taste good.

What did I eat?

These plantain chips became my best friend. Like I ate half of the container one night with salsa. Because guess what…some chips have sugar and these don’t!

I made turkey nachos. It’s ground turkey with taco seasoning on top of plantain chips with tomatoes, cheese, lettuce and some salsa. To die for.

Another thing that I ate was a lot of these when I needed some sort of sweetness…

I highly, highly, highly recommend Larabars. They are healthy and satisfying. Do you remember when I did the protein bar test last August? Well, it was then that I found my love for Quest Bars. I used to take them everywhere with me and snack on them for dessert, but now thinking back…they bloated me like crazy! And i’m thinking it was due to the erythritol and other artificial sweeteners. Now I don’t buy quest bars; I only get Larabars. Because they are made out of dates (the natural sugar) and can be used as dessert.

La Croix is the only other thing I drink besides black coffee and water. You can drink unsweetened teas, unsweetened almond milk, and coconut milk too.

I made some pulled pork and threw it on top of lettuce with cheese and DILL pickles (because those don’t have high fructose corn syrup) and some of my homemade BBQ sauce. Again, labels people!

I made almond butter cookies. They really weren’t that good but when you’re craving a cookie, but can’t have sugar, it will totally do.

I made my own blueberry chia seed jam.

This was good on my favorite pancakes…

with almond butter. I lived off of almond butter during this detox. You have to be sure to read the label..some have sugar and some don’t. This was a good brand that I found.

And with that almond butter, I also ate a lot of these almond butter banana waffles.

I am so thankful that sweet potatoes weren’t off limits (they are on some sugar detoxes) because I lived off of sweet potatoes too. Baked sweet potato fries, sautéed veggies, and a turkey burger with homemade ketchup. Notice the La Croix in the background 😉

More sweet potato fries and homemade chicken fingers. This has been my go-to meal lately!

And for dessert I would make a probiotic bowl. I diced up some fresh strawberries and banana (or whatever fruit you like) and poured some Green Valley Kefir to get probiotics in my body!

Doing this detox gave me a lot of reason to get creative in the kitchen, which just happens to be one of my favorite things!

You know, when you’re in the actual process it really doesn’t feel like you’re seeing any difference unless it’s super obvious one day, but now that i’ve introduced it back into my diet and haven’t been as strict on myself…i’ve definitely noticed how much it really did affect me. And because of that…I decided to do another detox starting yesterday. I want to get rid of all those toxins in my body from the processed foods and sugars i’ve allowed recently.

^^This is super helpful for label reading!

When I posted about bloating a while ago, I mentioned that I wanted to see if sugar had anything to do with it based off of what my cousin was telling me happened to her when she did Whole 30. Sooo, with that said, I would recommend doing this for anyone struggling with bloating and cannot figure out why…I absolutely noticed a difference this time around.

Let me know if you have any questions about the detox so I can answer! I want to help!

Ps. Follow me on Pinterest. I find lots of good things for the sugar detox (and well, all things healthy that I can). I’ll follow you back!! 🙂