The Cheese-free No longer Stands Alone

So you have decided to eat on purpose.  Maybe that means Paleo, Vegan, or Gluten-free.  Maybe it's for health reasons, environmental reasons, animal rights reasons, or a mixture.  You have kicked the processed food addiction and are feeling absolutely amazing.  Great job!

The LoCo Locavore Takes OVER

Welcome to the 30 Days of Change Blog Carnival hosted by Living Peacefully With Children and Hybrid Rasta Mama. In celebration of the New Year and forgotten resolutions , we're sharing the results of our 30 day commitment to addressing one habit the we either needed to eliminate, reframe, or include in our life. We hope you are inspired and energized to make one positive change in your own habits.

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Hi, I'm Jaye Anne and I want to tell you about my 30 days of change... sniff... I smell...

LOCAL FOOD!  (crash, camera flips over, falls on ground.  View is sideways as you see me transform.  I now have crazy hair and am holding heirloom squashes.)

Weird Ingredient: Liver Breakfast Sausage

So we all gotta get our liver in, right?  Now that we are more and more aware of its healing properties and extremely nutrient-dense superfood nourishment.  I love lamb's liver because it is not as tough and gamey as beef liver, so it has more of a ground beef quality to it.  Even when I overcooked it, it is still mostly edible.  That's saying a lot for liver!  Guess what?  My kids (ages 1.5 and 2.5) love LOVE liver!  Here is my latest recipe:

"It ain't easy but it ain't hard" weight loss program: episode 1

Hi my name is Jaye Anne.

I lost 35 pounds of prepregnancy weight.  I don't know where it went.  It took me about 3 weeks for the first 10, another 4 or 5 for the second 10, and the last few have come off in the subsequent 3 or 4 months.  I just keep losing weight, seemingly by accident.  I have gone from a size 10 or 12 to a size 4 or 2 in jeans.  My skin is the best it has ever been, and so has my digestion and sleep (even with two littluns).  Then I got the best job ever with the greatest benefits the world has ever seen and get a massage once per week on my insurance company.

By now, you are either intrigued or disgusted.  Thanks for keeping on, intriguees.

So here is episode 1.
I had 2 back-to-back pregnancies.  Both of them were uneventful (gold stars in blood pressure and gestational diabetes testing) and ended in wonderful births at the hospital with only minor hospital-induced complaints.  After the birth of my son, I was left feeling pretty drained and quite exhausted.  As if the pregnancies were not draining enough, I was breastfeeding both kids.  With the resurgence of milk supply that comes with birth, my daughter nursed as much as the newly-born... well, newborn.  I desperately needed more energy and searched constantly to increase my internal resources.  I was seriously depleted.  I had always had a certain sense about the general nutritional information of the day being odd (I think mostly because of my being taught to go against the crowd, generally speaking), but had spent a enough time there during the last pregnancy to know I was ready for a change.  I decided on an elimination diet since I knew it was safe for breastfeeding moms. 

The one I tried was vegan and extremely based on grains other than wheat.  It was so minimalist that I couldn't handle it.  I got pretty depressed from the restrictions and was worried about my protein intake.  I mentioned these things to my chiropractor and she handed me the book I have come to find second only to the Bible.  Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.  As the pages unfolded, there were exciting stories about saturated fat and cholesterol being good for me!  I had always wondered if this might be the case, but here was someone coming out and saying these things and not getting arrested!  My days of just craving fat were over and now I was on to eating it.  I stopped my 28-day diet 21 days into it and started cooking everything in bacon fat and butter.  I was glad to trade sugar for fat.