Banana and Berry Muffins

Here is the recipe to my new favorite paleo goodness treat - Banana and Berry Muffins

Thanks to The Civilized Caveman for the recipe. Check out his site, he cooks goodness galore.

I am more into making this in a mini loaf tin so I can slice it)

Stuff in it

• 3 Free Range eggs
• 1.5 Tbsp Honey (or same amount in dextrose for less insulin load)
• 2 Tbsp Coconut Oil (I melted the oil so it didn't make lumps in my batter of love)
• 2 Tbsp Coconut Milk
• 1/4 Tsp Salt
• 1/4 Tsp Vanilla
• 1/4 Tsp Baking Powder
• 1/4 Cup Coconut Flour
• 1 Banana (mashed up)
• 1/2 Cup Whole berries (I used frozen mixed berries and bashed them a bit to make smaller)

Make it

1. Preheat oven to 180 Degrees C
2. Mix together eggs, honey, coconut oil, coconut milk, salt and vanilla
3. Sift together baking powder and coconut flour and combine with your wet ingredients
4. Mix your batter well and then fold in banana and berries and mix until combined well
5. Divide batter into 6 Muffin tins or put in 1 mini loaf container and bake for 20 minutes, or until you test with a test thing and it doesn’t stick, if you know what I mean.
6. Enjoy and don't eat the whole batch in one go. 

Damage control

^ that is the total nutritional value for the batch, so per muffin divide by how many you make. Do your maths and see if you can ‘afford’ the treat I suppose.  

Let me know what you think  xx

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Week 3 – review

A few words come to mind when referring to week 3 of paleo: frustrating. annoying. wasteoftime.

Frustrating and annoying derangement

I received my results from a hormone check I had before I started the paleo challenge. Ok I actually have had my results for a while, I have just been confused by them. I am not going to go into too much detail here, you know - too much information and care factor=zero and all that, let’s just say I am now googling terms like insulin resistance and hormone elevations and derangement.

After many online searches and the resulting self-diagnosis, I am stating to you I am no longer on a ‘30 day paleo challenge’. I am now on a ‘paleo for the rest of my life challenge’. Fun times.

Weight loss will be a challenge for me, evidently I lost and gained 100 grams this week. But I am pretty smart (and by that I mean, I am good on the interwebs and google searches) so I will work out a way to drop my pesky pounds and maintain. 

I will even find out the best way to have a few very naughty and very occasional treats such as cheese and crackers, lemon tarts, beer, pizza and ham and cheese croissants. 

And maybe one day too I can feature as paleo testimonial porn and be no longer hormonally challenged. 

Wasteoftime

This week I had a bit of sads and woe is me’s. I ate a few too many paleo banana and berry muffins (I will post the recipe next post). I got carried away with salted macadamia nuts and started a national salted macadamia eating crisis among the paleo twitter community (well not really, I am not that well connected, but I may have been responsible for one or two paleo #faileo's). I ate feta. I ate a few paleo brownie slices (ok almost a whole batch). And I ate fruit fresh and dried. And I drank a few large strong latte coffees. With full cream milk.

I was out of control!!

I guessed now I am doing the ‘paleo for the rest of my life challenge’ thing, I could relax while I overcome my ‘I am not 100% perfect' moment (who would have thought?). What is a few grams of lactose and fructose between friends?

Doing it right? Last week I didn’t really care.

This week, well that is another matter. Back to it. Long blacks. No dairy. Minimum fruit and nuts (I know they are paleo – I am just a recovering nut addict). Good quality meats, fish, vege, lots of water and daily fish oil. I am permitting myself a few paleo treats. I will just try to make it not an every day (sometimes even twice a day) thing and only for specials.

Gosh look out friends. I am going to be so fun to be around. for. the. rest. of. my. life. 

Anyway, enough FML. Having self medicated my brain with information and indulged my self-sabotage with entire batches of paleo treats, I have this covered now. And next week is the new attitude.  

Next xx

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Some stuff I read this week*

How to lose fat - awesome blog on fat loss 101 with bullet points and a bit of detail on hormone stuff for my nerd friends

Paleo Babies (no I am not with bun in oven) - interesting observations on paleo baby & plus cute comments when THE Robb Wolf posted a comment and everyone got star struck.

Paleo Pad thai - this has been added to my paleo cooking list for next weekend. I will post on how I go with it. I have a sneaky feeling that USA squash is different to our squash as our squash would make very little noodles. Oh well. 

Grains make us fat - science I love you. Take that grain lovers. Bamm! Science wins.

Twitter (missjflynn) - my favorite twitter stuff to stalk this week are search - #paleo #crossfit and #masterchef (I love being juxtaposed, if that is even a word).

Happy reading xxx

(*I do a lot of traveling)

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Week 2 (almost) complete

I am one day away from completing week 2. I feel bummed today. I don’t really know why. I guess because I may have set myself up for a bit of failure with all my fine-tuning rules. Here were my rules again:


This week I am not consuming the nuts. (ha ha sounds rude right). I will try not to have the paleo treats, chocolate and whatnot. I will have my fish oil.

I will try my hand at intermittent fasting to kerb the appetite and get a bit of calorie deficit in my life. This may be against the paleo philosophy to worry about calories, but heck I have a deadline and am currently eating that of a professional athlete training for the regionals, not a normal boring human tyring to lose fat cells.

I will aim for 3x (+) crossfit sessions, with 1x lung-airing run and 1x sprints. Sleep? Well. I am trying. Robb Wolf podcasts help a lot. No offence intended, but they make me have nice snoozy commutes to work, and I feel I am osmosis learning the paleo ways whilst I snore away. Efficiency is very crossfit you know.



Nuts, Yep I had them, not as much as week one, but I had a few moments in the world when I didn’t plan my meals properly and had to buy nuts before I had hunger rage. I am not too worried about the slip-up as they were ‘in case of emergency’ nuts, and really were the only natural thing to eat around me.

Observation - most people eat shit and even think their eating-shit is not shit. Case in point with Mr ‘low carb, no vege/fruit, no fat’ dude from work who is completely obsessed with my food habits and challenges me on a daily basis, ‘why are you eating that avocado? It will make you fat blah blah blah’. Meanwhile he is throwing down low fat yogurt and skim lattes with 3 equals and can barely lift the cup to his mouth as he is so emaciated having cannibalised his muscles. Em sorry I digress.

Paleo treats. I had them too. I am such a cup of tea and biscuit addict, I was in the high risk category of elevated cortisol meltdown at even the thought of no treat of some sort to end my day. I realise this now – Admit to self is the first step, I. AM. AN. ADDICT. Don’t judge.

Tea (black) and air is just not as satisfying.

I tried black tea and a grapefruit but for some strange reason that was revolting. Yeah I know who would have thought right.


So after stalking my #paleo twitter feed I found a swear word amazing brownie recipe I adapted to reduce sugar and hopefully not spike my insulin. I made a batch, ate a few, and threw out a few as to not eat anymore fews. I made another batch, gave most away to my coach at BODYM. I may have also eaten a few more fews and also a few lines of the dark chocolate, just to test out the smoothness. Other than that, all was well.


Recipe of love
(Thanks to Crossfitsouthphilly)
I have changed a little bit to add Australian ingredients for you.

- 140 grams high-quality dark chocolate (I used Lindt 80%)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (I used apple puree from canned fruit section in shops – check for no added anything)
- 1/2 cup high-quality cocoa powder
- 2 organic Omega-3 eggs
- 1 cup light agave nectar (I used ½ cup of glucose syrup – in baking section of shops)
- 1/2 cup almond meal
- 1/4 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
- Spray olive oil spray on an 8×8-inch square baking pan an line with baking paper.
- In one mixing bowl, whisk the eggs until lighter colour.
- Add the other liquid ingredients to this bowl.
- In a second mixing bowl, mix together dry ingredients.
- Place the 150g chocolate in a microwave. Don’t over-melt, and keep an eye on it.
- Pour melted chocolate into dry ingredients.
- Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients.
- Mix together
- Pour into lined baking pan. Bang on the counter or table a few times to get air bubbles out.
- Bake in the centre of a preheated 180 degrees C oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the brownies are set.
- Don’t overcook. I removed them when they were firm to touch in the centre, as I think they cook a bit more when removed anyway.
- Cool on a wire rack.
- Get out anyway how. I am a bit crap at this, but allegedly you turn over with plate and wish for the best.

Intermittent fasting was a bit of a fail too. I managed to do alternate day intermittent fasting, but for every day was a stretch. For those not in the know, basically the go for IF (as *they call it) is to do 16 hours of fasting each day and 8 hours of eating. I try to do no eating after 8pm and then break the fast at around 11am, as women rules are a few hours more lenient. Disclaimer: don’t take my word as the proper rules, I could be getting it completely wrong and just be skipping my breakfast as I am too lazy to pack my eggs to work.
(*they=the elite)

Crossfit sessions and running – I did ok. Managed 2x crossfit sessions, and loved being there, and did 2x 4.5km runs, with improvements on my pace each time. I wagged 1x crossfit session as I was tired and thought I would try prioritising rest as per Mr Robb Wolf rules. Well that was my excuse and said excuse is possibly is more acceptable than I wanted to have a bath and watch TV on my lazy fatness.


This week I also read some killer articles, re-read Robb Wolf's The paleo solution, and am halfway through reading Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint. I will add links to some of the articles in a separate post if you are interested.

Week 3 focus
write more | eat less | sleep more | move more | stress less.


Anyways, another week, another few Kg (ok 1kg to be exact, whatever, who's counting), some more happiness (mostly). Bring it on xxx

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Week 1 complete

Yep done 1 week. 

3 more to go, but in all honesty I will need more than 3 weeks to achieve anywhere close to a goal. So the latest is the paleo challenge continues until my budgers are visible and waving a jello-hello.  Seriously though - I think I cheated a bit this week and didn't get the results I wanted. I know it is only week one, but I want to try to get to the bottom of this self sabotage and get results.

Move/

I went to crossfit 3x, and did 1x 4.5km run and 5x steep hill run things (done badly but still done. Note to self: I need to stop training with one of Australia’s elite crossfitters as it plays havoc with my sense of achievement and progress).

I have noticed my rowing has improved. A baby step of progress but I don’t get gassed on a 1km anymore and want to cough up a lung. I have seen a 10-15sec improvement on the 500m. I will have to do a 1km this week maybe to baseline and track progress.

I am still breathing like a wheezing old dog (poor me) after running 400m or so. I didn’t realise this until a crossfit newbie said to me a few times during a particularly gruelling WOD ‘Come on Jose, you can do it’. Thanks I thought but worry about your own work love (see I am still not ‘that’ nice). When I said thanks to them after the WOD, they were ‘oh no problems, I thought you were going to die, you were breathing rather noisily’. Thanks for that. Not. Crap. I am noticeably an ex-smoker. 

I don’t know – did I really think I would get off lightly for 15 (+) years of smoking? Lung please be nice, I am sorry. Respect. ‘scuse me whilst I cry for a moment. Never again. Vomit.

Eat/

I did ok. No dairy. No grain. No other baddies. Much.

I had some slip ups: I ate more than one paleo brownie. I used glucose instead of agave so I didn’t have an insulin reaction. Is a no gluten, no fructose, no dairy cheat still a cheat? Yep. I hear it is. Whole9 say about not having Frankenstein paleo treats and losing the sugar habit and whatnot. I say I bloody tried and this was the least-bad treat I thought of.  

More confession: I also had some nut slice thing made with coconut oil, nuts, almond meal and other stuff. These babies were bad (as in paleo bad). They had heaps of nuts and a few tablespoons of honey. Hello omega-6 imbalance and insulin triggerness. 

So along with those two badies, I also had a lot of nuts as you know. Oh and 2 rows of 70% dark chocolate (with nuts for extra measure). International fat sign. 

Live/

I still am obsessing about food and I think my appetite surpasses my partners (he is a 20kg bigger than me). Safe to say my body hasn’t converted to running on fat yet. 

Results - I have more energy. I am still a bit allergic to the world and still have rashie eyebrows (hot). I am less cryie, and tired. I feel stronger, I mean I even got a PB for my strict press (I can now push 23kg – look the f-out world!)I lost about 1kg of gut, and budgers. 9 to go.

Week 2 Fine-tuning

This week I am not consuming the nuts. (ha ha sounds rude right). I will try not to have the paleo treats, chocolate and whatnot. I will have my fish oil. 

I will try my hand at intermittent fasting to kerb the appetite and get a bit of calorie deficit in my life. This may be against the paleo philosophy to worry about calories, but heck I have a deadline and am currently eating that of a professional athlete training for the regionals, not a normal boring human tyring to lose fat cells.

I will aim for 3x (+) crossfit sessions, with 1x lung-airing run and 1x sprints. Sleep? Well. I am trying. Robb Wolf podcasts help a lot. No offence intended, but they make me have nice snoozy commutes to work, and I feel I am osmosis learning the paleo ways whilst I snore away. Efficiency is very crossfit you know.

Observations

People in my office are full of it. Full of crap ideas on health and full of crap food. Good to watch though and feel elite-er than them. Opps is that bad karma?

No interventions, I am too self-obsessed xxx

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